The US may run out of money to bankroll the Kiev regime "in a few weeks," National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby warned in an interview with US media.
Unless a stop-gap budget bill incorporating additional funding that the Biden administration has requested is passed, Washington’s ability to support Ukraine will be impacted, Kirby said.
"We’ve got a little bit more funding to go, so I think we’ll be ok for the next few weeks or so. But without the supplemental request that we asked for, it will absolutely have an effect on our ability to support Ukraine well into the fall and into the winter months... Not getting that supplemental request if there’s a shutdown – that’s gonna have a significant impact on their ability to succeed on the battlefield," John Kirby told the host of the Situation Room.
Kirby urged Congress to pass an additional $24 billion funding request to help Ukraine while “favorable conditions on the ground” remain, stressing that once the weather turned for the worse, combat conditions will become more challenging. The looming government shutdown may affect Washington’s ability to support Ukraine, the spokesperson added.
The White House Strategic Communications Coordinator also acknowledged that the first US-made Abrams tanks had arrived in Ukraine. According to the Pentagon, the first batch includes 31 tanks. Kirby acknowledged that the use of the sophisticated tanks by Ukraine would face challenges, as they require “skilled maintenance, logistics and sustainment backup in terms of making sure they got all the spare parts to keep them running.”
On the long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) that US President Joe Biden promised Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensly during is visit to the United States, Kirby still had no announcements to make, as there is yet no clarity as to how many of them will be delivered to Ukraine, nor when they will arrive.
“We are going to keep those security assistance packages coming,” said Kirby.
The White House warning about Ukraine funding comes as the US government is hurtling towards a government shutdown unless lawmakers on Capitol Hill reach a deal on a spending budget by the end of the month. To avert a shutdown and to keep the government open past September 30, Congress needs to pass what’s known as a continuing resolution (CR). However, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has failed to muster enough votes in the House to pass a CR and send it to the Senate. A group of Republicans in both the US House and Senate have been promising to block any spending bill unless their demands are met, including removing any additional funding to Ukraine from the bills.
Some of the most vocal Republicans in the House have been Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA), while in the Democrat-controlled Senate, several Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Rand Paul (R-KY) have also vowed to block any fast-tracking of bills that include additional Ukraine aid.
Sens. J.D. Vance (R-VA) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) have also expressed a willingness to shutdown the government and were two of 29 lawmakers, including Paul, who signed a letter demanding more transparency about how much is being spent in Ukraine.
"[The Biden administration's request implies] an open-ended commitment to supporting the war in Ukraine of an indeterminate nature, based on a strategy that is unclear, to achieve a goal yet to be articulated to the public or the Congress," the letter read. It added that until their concerns are met the lawmakers will "oppose" additional expenditures to support the Kiev regime.
Moscow has repeatedly denounced foreign arms shipments to Ukraine as only serving to prolong the conflagration. US weapons would “burn like all the rest of them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted earlier when commenting on the Abrams tank shipments to Kiev. Furthermore, Russia has warned that weaponry being funneled to Ukraine increasingly often finds its way to the black market.