Washington needs to secure additional funding before it gets “really hard” to continue propping up Kiev, John Kirby has admitted
White House national security spokesman John Kirby during a daily news briefing on November 30, 2023 in Washington, DC. © Getty Images / Alex Wong
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby has said that the White House urgently needs supplemental funding for Ukraine support. The senior official admitted that the Biden administration effectively only has time before the end of the year until it gets “really hard” to continue propping up Kiev.
Kirby made the remarks on Thursday during a joint press briefing with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. The official claimed Russia’s new campaign against Ukrainian critical infrastructure was imminent, and, despite the US administration and Kiev “working aggressively” for months to get ready for it, there were still things to be done, he warned.
“We have more work to do in support of Ukraine, and we need Congress to take action to pass additional supplemental funding so that we can keep providing Ukraine with air-defense assess – assets, the protection equipment, and the backup supplies that they need,” Kirby stated.
The window of opportunity for securing the funding is getting narrower, the official admitted, urging Congress to allocate it finally. “The supplemental funding is important. We didn’t pull those figures out of thin air. We need that funding. We continue to urge Congress to pass that supplemental as soon as possible,” he said.
Again, as I said before many times, the runway is getting shorter. And we think we got until, you know, about the end of the year before it gets really, really hard to continue to support Ukraine. And the end of the year is coming soon.
For weeks, the Biden administration has unsuccessfully tried to push its new “national security” funding package for Kiev through Congress. The latest iteration of the package includes roughly $106 billion for combined aid for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.
The new attempt to pass the package will be undertaken in the first week of December, according to US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. According to Schumer, “the biggest holdup” to passing the supplementary funding was the opposition of Republicans and their insistence on tying foreign aid to US border security policy changes.
“One of the most important tasks we must finish is taking up and passing a funding bill to ensure we, as well as our friends and partners in Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific region, have the necessary military capabilities to confront and deter our adversaries and competitors,” Schumer wrote in a letter to senators last Sunday. The senior lawmaker claimed that Kiev was likely to lose the conflict with Russia without receiving further funding from the US.
Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, the US has provided Kiev with more than $76 billion in military hardware and other aid but recently warned that available funds were running out.
