The Armed Forces Committee of the United States House of Representatives has proposed to allocate $250 million worth of security assistance and intelligence support to Ukraine as part of the National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2019.
The document presented on May 7 by Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry in particular states that $50 million of the proposed appropriations for Ukraine are to be spent on providing the country’s government with “lethal defensive weapons.”
The House committee’s proposal for 2019 increases defense aid to Ukraine by $100 million compared to the $150 million initially proposed for 2018. However, the total sum could be higher – U.S. President Donald J. Trump on Dec. 21, 2017, signed an NDAA for 2018 that ultimately authorized $350 million in defense aid to Ukraine.
In February 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv reported on its Facebook page that the new draft budget act for the fiscal year 2019, which is due to begin on Oct. 1, 2018, and end on Sept. 30, 2019, envisaged $200 million defense aid for Ukraine.
The multi-million dollar assistance to the country is seen as a part of a broader U.S. policy of confronting Russia’s increasing aggression towards its neighbors, the Senate committee said. For this reason, it encouraged the U.S. Department of Defense to continue training, advising, and equipping Ukrainian military and security forces to help Ukraine maintain its territorial integrity amid the ongoing Russian military intervention in the Donbas.
Earlier, in late December 2017, the White House approved the provision to Ukraine of a consignment of 37 FGM-148 Javelin launch pads and 210 missiles for them, worth a total of $47 million – the first-ever supply of U.S. lethal weaponry to the country. The Senate committee recommended that the U.S. Defense Department continue using the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), a program for supporting the defense of Ukraine initiated by the U.S. Congress in 2016, as the source of funds for future lethal weapons assistance to Kyiv.
Also, as the chairman’s remarks stipulate, none of the allocated funds from the U.S. state budget can be used to fund any activities that would recognize Russian sovereignty over the occupied Crimean peninsula.
Earlier, on April 23, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch asserted that the United States had provided nearly $1 billion military aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its war on Ukraine in early 2014.
