Ukraine is concerned about the loss of its greatest weapon: American military aid

In the two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine has found its back against the wall many times, in many forms: fighting with Molotov cocktails and weapons distributed to the population, dealing with power outages and fleeing refugees. But there was always the prospect of more American aid on the horizon.

That support was crucial, say analysts and leaders in Kiev. The United States has provided about half of the foreign military aid to the Ukrainian arsenal, about $47 billion.

But this week, leaders in Kiev have been waiting anxiously to see if that lifeline would end, as a standoff among lawmakers in the U.S. Congress threatens to end U.S. support for the war against Russia for the time being.

A measure that would allow U.S. weapons to flow to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and fund border security was defeated in a Senate vote Wednesday amid growing Republican opposition and deep divisions on Capitol Hill.

After the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would take an alternative path, pushing ahead with a vote on foreign military aid stripped of the more controversial immigration measures. Both Democrats and Republicans expressed some optimism about the new measure, but lawmakers were deadlocked again Wednesday evening. Mr. Schumer adjourned the Senate until Thursday afternoon.

But even if the Senate approves the aid, its fate in the House of Representatives remains uncertain.

Ukraine's military would not be suddenly overwhelmed, analysts say, but the degradation of its forces would be inexorable. European countries do not have U.S.-level stockpiles of weapons and ammunition and are unlikely to fill the gap, military analysts say.

“Ukraine could effectively hold out for part of this year” without more U.S. military aid, Michael Kofman, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “But over time there would be no prospect of rebuilding the army, and they will slowly start to lose.”

The lack of further U.S. aid, he said, would “point to a severe, negative trajectory in the second half of this year.”

Not since the first chaotic months of the invasion, when Russian troops crossed its borders from all directions and the country rose up en masse to resist, has Ukraine faced such a precarious moment in the war.

Russia, its army bolstered by weapons from Iran and North Korea, is launching attacks on towns and villages along almost its entire frontline in the east. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is preparing a shake-up of civilian and military leadership that could oust a popular commanding general.

Since late last year, Russia has stepped up its large-scale aerial bombardment in an effort to exploit dwindling supplies of critical Western air defense munitions and inflict maximum damage. On Wednesday morning, a salvo hit Kiev and other cities, waking residents with air raid sirens and explosions.

“Ukraine needs help,” Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president's office, said in a statement. “Only the joint efforts of democracies will stop the criminal Putin.”

The declining level of aid, officials and soldiers say, is having consequences for Ukraine on the battlefield, where Russia is using its advantage in artillery and personnel to wipe out Ukrainian defenses.

During the heaviest fighting in the east, over the city of Avdiivka, the ratio of Russian to Ukrainian artillery fire is five to one, Ukrainian commanders say. Soldiers say they no longer shoot at just one or two approaching Russian soldiers because they run out of ammunition and don't want to use it on small groups.

The US military and financial aid package stalled in Congress would not be spent entirely on new weapons for Ukraine; part would go toward replacing weapons from U.S. stockpiles already delivered to Ukraine. Other funds would go to maintenance and spare parts, as well as to fund training, intelligence sharing and mine clearance.

Ukraine has found itself out of power before. In the first days, the military handed rifles from the back of trucks to anyone who wanted to take them into Kiev, as Russian troops advanced through the city's outskirts. Eventually, new American weapons arrived, such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS, and Patriot air defense missiles.

Now Ukraine is again looking for ways to adapt and improvise by expanding domestic weapons production and relying more heavily on drones built with commercially available, off-the-shelf parts.

To that end, Mr. Zelensky this week announced a new military branch: the Unmanned Systems Forces. Mr Zelenskiy said the aim was to replicate on land Ukraine's success in fighting a vastly superior Russian naval force in the Black Sea through the use of maritime drones.

Currently, however, Russian superiority in firepower and personnel is causing Ukraine to fall behind along most of the front line.

To some extent, Ukraine has contributed to its own problems. Corruption, long a problem in the country, has siphoned off millions in the acquisition of supplies and other land. Mr. Zelensky occasionally overplayed his hand by berating allies for not providing enough support, leading to rebukes.

On the battlefield, Ukrainian military leaders ignored US advice to concentrate their counteroffensive on one specific region. Instead, they spread the attacks and failed to achieve a breakthrough despite months of trying.

Uncertainty about future ammunition supplies is starting to dawn on soldiers. “There is some fatalism,” said Captain Oleh Voitsekhovsky, a member of a drone reconnaissance unit. “It is what it is, but we still have to carry out our duties. The number of deserters is small but continuous.”

General Anatoliy Barhylevych, commander of the Ukrainian Territorial Forces, said he still expected US military aid to arrive. “But no matter how it turns out, the Ukrainian army will continue our fight,” he said. “We have no choice but to fight this enemy.”

The European Union has collectively provided some $148.5 billion in aid since Russia launched its large-scale invasion, surpassing the total of $113 billion appropriated by the US, of which $75 billion has been allocated directly to Ukraine for humanitarian, financial and military support. Another $38 billion in security assistance-related funding is spent largely in the United States, according to the Institute for Study of War, a Washington-based research group.

While European and Asian allies have significantly stepped up their efforts to support Ukraine and Kiev seeks to scale up its own weapons production, ISW researchers say U.S. aid remains essential.

The United States, they wrote, is “the primary source of sufficiently large quantities of essential military equipment, such as M1 Abrams tanks, armored personnel carriers, advanced air defense systems such as Patriots, and long-range strike systems.”

Western support for Kiev has not kept pace with Moscow's military supplies as Russia has scaled up its drone production, resolved bottlenecks in its military industry and been bolstered by supplies from Iran and North Korea. In the barrage fired Wednesday, two of the five missiles that hit the eastern city of Kharkiv were manufactured in North Korea, a city police official said.

The salvo killed at least five people across the country, according to local officials. When the Ukrainian air force warned around 7 a.m. that missiles were flowing along the Dnipro River towards Kiev, interceptor missiles streaked through the air to counter the threat. But air defense systems to thwart such attacks are running low, officials say, and are desperately needed. U.S. officials have estimated that if funding were secured by March, there might not be a gap in air defenses.

Beyond the battlefield, a collapse in U.S. financial aid would send ripples through the Ukrainian economy, causing budget cuts and rising inflation. The U.S. aid would include about $11 billion in non-military financing.

The European Union has approved a four-year, $54 billion aid package that will partially cover Ukraine's needs. But without American help, the International Monetary Fund's war aid, which is conditional on the United States continuing to support the Ukrainian government, would have to be renegotiated. Ukraine could be forced to print more money, potentially leading to a debilitating cycle of inflation.

While Ukrainian officials have gone out of their way to express gratitude for all the support the United States has provided in the past, there is palpable disappointment at Washington's dysfunction, which Ukrainians say is already costing lives on the battlefield.

“Every day we have corpses that we would not have had if we had had this help,” Oleksii Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said in an interview in Kiev this week.

Ukraine has been in difficult situations before, he said, and there is only one response: fight with what you can. If the West stops supplying weapons, he said, “we will bite them with our teeth.”

Maria Varenikova reporting contributed.