US to Obligate Remaining Ukraine Aid Before Fiscal Deadline

The Trump administration has made legally binding commitments to spend nearly all of the $400 million that Congress approved for military aid to Ukraine late last year, according to three people familiar with the plan. The move ensures the funding will not expire when the fiscal year ends on September 30.

As of early this week, $307 million of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funding had been obligated. The administration intends to lock in the remaining $93 million before the deadline, the sources said. The Pentagon, which manages the USAI program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The funding had become a point of friction with Congress. Democrats and some of President Donald Trump's fellow Republicans accused the Pentagon of sitting on the aid, which lawmakers from both parties voted for last December. The USAI package was the last major Ukraine funding passed by Congress.

In recent months, Trump has adopted a more positive tone toward Ukraine. He signed off on a proposal to grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot interceptor missiles and signed a Russia sanctions bill. This week he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at UN headquarters in New York. After the meeting, Zelenskiy said they discussed efforts to end the war with Russia, including a possible bilateral ceasefire on energy-related targets.

The first deliveries under the package, which include offensive weapons and equipment such as spare parts for armored vehicles, began this month. The rest are expected to be delivered before October 2029, the sources said. Trump's White House term ends in January of that year.

The remaining $93 million does not have to be spent by the end of the year, but it will expire if it is not formally placed under contract by then.

One source said the equipment does not include Patriot missiles, despite Russia's continued bombardment of Ukrainian cities with drones and ballistic missiles. The US war in Iran and the Ukraine war have depleted global supplies of Patriots, and Kyiv has been pleading for more.

The administration had previously told Congress it could take years for the equipment to reach Ukrainian forces. The Pentagon has held up weapons shipments to Ukraine several times out of concern that US weapons stockpiles were too low. Lawmakers said then they were unhappy with the Pentagon's timeline, which they considered unusually slow for an ongoing conflict, and the issue has come up repeatedly at congressional hearings.

Ukraine has been by far the top recipient of US foreign aid since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, but the US commitment to Kyiv has been called into question since Trump took office and his Republicans took control of both houses of Congress in January 2025.