U.S. Senate negotiators from both parties were reported on April 1 to have reached agreement on a “COVID” section for the Fiscal 2023 budget legislation, which had disappeared abruptly and been replaced by $13.8 billion in funds to recoup the Pentagon and other agencies for military and other aid flowing to Ukraine. However the agreed COVID-19 funding is considerably below the $15.6 billion which had disappeared from the last White House draft of the budget, and cuts out all of the nearly $6 billion which had been requested for vaccination aid to low-vaccination, low-income countries. These include countries already offered U.S. vaccine donations but which had rejected them due to inability to distribute the vaccines within their shelf-life. The proposed COVID budget is no longer $15.6 billion, still less the original White House request of $22.5 billion, but now $10 billion overall.
Meanwhile U.S. military aid continues to pour into Ukraine, with another $300 million just issued under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative so-called, which involves the Pentagon buying Ukraine arms directly from manufacturers rather than shipping its own arms. Combined with the similar efforts of all NATO nations and others – a total of 35 trans-Atlantic and Oceanic countries fighting in one – these shipments are keeping Ukrainian forces constantly resupplied with various high-tech drones, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles and firing tubes, mine-resistant APCs, artillery pieces, machine guns, ammunition, fuel, etc.
