The White House is trying to disburse last $7bn in aid approved by Congress before Trump begins second term

Summary

The Biden administration announced $725 million in military aid to Ukraine, including Stinger missiles, anti-drone weapons, Himars munitions, and artillery shells.

The assistance aims to bolster Ukraine’s defenses ahead of Donald Trump’s presidency, as he has pledged to cut all aid and push for peace talks.

This package is part of a larger $7 billion effort to support Ukraine before Biden leaves office.

It includes measures like Atacms strikes into Russia and repealing restrictions on U.S. contractors repairing equipment in Ukraine.

Deliveries will be expedited through Pentagon stocks.

  • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    129·
    22 days ago

    Just think of all the US schools and hospitals we could decide not to spend this money on.

    • phar@lemmy.mlEnglish
      203·
      22 days ago

      Ukraine is a massive supplier of grains around the world. People outside the US are humans too.

      • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        22 days ago

        Oh I think it’s a good use of money. Sorry my irony is very subtle but my point is that if anyone is saying “that could have been a lot of schools and hospitals AMERICA FIRST” then my answer is that we would never have spent the money on that anyway because we suck.

    • perestroika@lemm.eeEnglish
      71·
      22 days ago

      While thinking of that, it’s also advisable to think of all the schools and hospitals ruined across the world, if all dictators should realize: “if you are big and have nuclear weapons, there is no international law - take what you want, treaties and borders are mere ink on paper”.

      It is also worthwhile to compare the expenses in Ukraine to the US budget.

      This hard-won assistance package (it was stuck in Congress for months) totals about 60 billion. Of that, about 7 billion actually goes to Ukraine as weapons - the rest goes into other purposes like humanitarian and economic aid, purchasing new weapons to replace the donated weapons, etc. A considerable part of the money never leaves US soil.

      So, the number to compare against is either 7 (pure weapons) or 60 billion (all allocations permitted by the bill).

      The US budget is 6 trillion. One trillion is 1000 billion.

      This means that weapons to Ukraine form about 1 / 1000 (one promille) of the US budget, and the total volume of the bill (not limited to Ukraine) forms at most about 1 / 100 (one percent) of the US government budget.

      Meanwhile, to put things in perspective, Ukraine is defending itself with approximately one half (50%) of its government budget, and Russia is attempting to conquer Ukraine with approximately one third (30%) of its government budget (likely to reach 40% in the next year).

      Basically, while the sums are huge, US isn’t about to fall over from supporting Ukraine, but Russia is indeed going to fall over, sooner or later, from continuing to attack Ukraine, if other countries bother to support Ukraine somewhat. Which I trust they will.