Biden to leave Trump with billions for Ukraine weapons

The Biden administration doesn’t have enough time left to use the billions of dollars lawmakers have authorized to arm Ukraine, U.S. and congressional officials said, leaving in President-Elect Donald Trump’s hands what to do with the remaining money.

The administration still has more than $6.5 billion left in what is known as drawdown authority, which allows the Defense Department to transfer weapons and equipment to Ukraine from its own stocks, U.S. officials said. The Pentagon has reached the limit of the weapons it can send Ukraine each month without affecting its own fighting capability, however, and is facing logistical challenges in getting the arms to Kyiv’s forces, they said.

The U.S. would have to ship more than $110 million worth of weapons a day, or just shy of $3 billion in December and January, to spend the remaining funds in time. “I would say it’s impossible,” one congressional official said.

What Trump decides to do with the remaining money will have implications for the battlefield and could help determine how much leverage Kyiv has going into any potential peace negotiations with Russia. Trump has said he would end the war, and U.S. officials worry that his incoming administration could choose to withhold weapons to get Kyiv to the negotiating table.

The remaining funds “offer the next administration considerable leverage to stop or suspend shipments to Ukraine,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a U.S. think tank. “The Trump administration’s first order of business will be to decide what to do with remaining equipment and how best to pursue the next supplemental request to Congress.”

A spokesperson for the Trump transition team didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Pentagon is now aiming to transfer $500 to $750 million worth of weapons per month from its stocks to Ukraine, said one senior defense official, an increase from the average amount in previous months. But any more than that would require the Pentagon to draw down U.S. inventories to levels that would affect the U.S. military’s own readiness to fight, which defense leaders are unwilling to do.

“We are scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of easy stuff to send off the shelf,” the senior defense official said.

The upcoming shipments are expected to be largely ammunition and artillery, in part, because they are easier to ship, U.S. defense officials said. Heavier equipment such as armored vehicles or tanks can take months to inspect, test and clean before it can be delivered.

The White House, which until two weeks ago said it was confident it could send the full amount to Ukraine before the end of the administration, is now backing off that claim, but arguing that people, not arms, are the major challenge for Ukraine. The Ukrainians “now have healthy stockpiles of the vital tools, ammunition and weapons that they need to succeed on the battlefield,” a senior White House official told reporters Wednesday. “Today, the most pressing challenge for Ukraine is manpower.”

Kyiv isn’t mobilizing enough people to fight and needs, at minimum, an additional 160,000 troops to fill out their ranks and stabilize the front lines, the official said.

Russia had made some of its biggest advancements of the war, pushing aggressively into the Donetsk region. In addition, overnight, Russia launched a record 188 drones across Ukraine in a nighttime blitz. Most of the drones were intercepted. Moscow also has mobilized North Korean troops to supplement Russian forces in Kursk.

The U.S. also has another more than $2 billion remaining to fund long-term equipment contracts for Kyiv, officials said. The Pentagon is working to get as much of that money as possible on contract by January 20, the senior Defense Department official said.

And there is still just under $5 billion in funding from Congress to buy new weapons to replenish U.S. stocks. While the pace at which the administration can spend the money is limited by how quickly the Defense Department can get weapons on contract—and how quickly the industrial base can produce them—U. S. officials said they are hopeful they will be able to exhaust that fund by the end of the term.

Earlier this week, the Biden administration asked Congress for an additional $24 billion for weapons for Ukraine. Of that, $8 billion would go towards long-term contracts to supply weapons for Ukraine while the remaining $16 billion would pay to replenish U.S. stockpiles.

The incoming Republican-controlled Congress has signaled that it will be reluctant to approve to sustain support at Kyiv at the levels provided during the Biden administration.

During the presidential campaign, Trump said that he would end the war immediately upon taking office by calling the presidents of Ukraine and Russia. He didn’t explain what a potential ceasefire deal could look like.

The administration has tried to help Ukraine in other ways since the Nov. 5 presidential election, including allowing Kyiv to fire U.S. provided long-range missiles inside Russian territory and approved the delivery of anti-personnel mines to help stabilize the lines. The administration also has allowed American defense contractors to operate within Ukraine.

But going forward, Kyiv still depends heavily on the regular supply of weapons from the U.S., said Kofman, who has frequently visited Ukrainian front-line units.

“Ukraine depends on regular shipments of ammunition from the United States along with other types of materiel assistance without which there could be a visible effect on the battlefield within weeks of suspension,” Kofman said.

Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com and Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com