The Biden administration is facing a Sept. 30 deadline for $5.8 billion worth of drawdown authority to send military aid to the Kiev regime and so is seeking an extension from the Congress so that it can keep doling out packages a couple of hundred million dollars at a time. “We have $5.9 billion left in Ukraine Presidential Drawdown Authority; all but $100 million of which will expire at the end of the fiscal year,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in an email to The Hill. “The Department will continue to provide drawdown packages in the near future and is working with Congress to seek an extension of PDA authorities beyond the end of the fiscal year.”
The Hill reports that House Speaker Mike Johnson has put on the table a six month stopgap spending bill which is vehemently opposed by the Pentagon, but is also being bollixed up by Donald Trump’s demand that it include legislation requiring proof of citizenship for voting.
Other kinks in the weapons pipeline include the following:
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy complained yesterday that the U.S. has reduced the flow of HIMARS rockets to Ukraine. “HIMARS has helped us a lot. At the beginning of deliveries and use of HIMARS there were three times more [projectiles] per month than now,” Zelenskyy said in a video published on his Telegram channel, reported TASS. He emphasized that the Ukrainian armed forces continue to experience a shortage of artillery shells of both 155 mm caliber and other types, FPV drones, air defense systems and missiles. “Our defense forces use one missile, while the norm is two,” he emphasized.
