Reckless Ukraine military aid spending could haunt Biden: Experts
4 Min Read
Only eleven Republican senators have voted against the latest US $40 billion of aid to Ukraine, citing concerns about failure to prioritize the US economy.
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A Ukrainian soldier holding a Javelin anti-tank missile system during exercises in 2021
Experts said, as quoted by Sputnik, that the Biden administration and the majority of Congress could face trouble in the midterm elections for wasting billions on a Ukraine supplies package in the name of supporting a corrupt regime in Kiev.
The US Senate approved a $40 billion Ukraine supplies package, including more than $20 billion in military funding, on Thursday.
Only eleven senators, all Republicans, voted against the bill, citing concerns about oversight of weapons transfers and a failure to prioritize the US' economy as the country faces inflation and supply chain crises.
Senator Rand Paul's call to establish a special inspector general and oversight panel solely dedicated to overseeing how the funding is spent, similar to the one established for Afghanistan, initially delayed the legislation. Such an amendment, however, was never even considered.
The new package is in addition to the $4.5 billion in military supplies already committed to Ukraine by the Biden administration. Despite the fact that most voters supported the initial aid packages, polls show that Americans' interest in spending money on Ukraine is waning.
Experts in foreign policy Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald believe that American voters will realize the true nature of the Ukraine aid package and that Biden and those who supported the reckless spending will pay a price in the midterm elections.
"He’s carrying forward an ideological agenda that more and more Americans become opposed to as they realize what’s really going on," Fitzgerald said.
US voters are likely to turn against Republican lawmakers who supported the bill, while progressives - none of whom voted against it - may face a backlash from the antiwar crowd, according to Gould and Fitzgerald.
The two experts did not express confidence in increasing oversight and preventing weapons from entering the black market most notably since everyone knows corruption is rampant in Ukraine and the funding will help arm Nazi militants.
Read more: Experts warn arms for Ukraine could have disastrous consequences
"There should, by all means, be an oversight committee to control that money, but it won’t happen under Biden because there’s too much at stake," Fitzgerald stressed. "It’s a straight-out giveaway for the defense companies and they don’t want anybody looking over their shoulder."
A big black hole
One month ago, a senior US defense official warned that hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US weapons sent to Ukraine might “drop into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time."
Read next: US arms supplies to Kiev may end up in shadow markets of other countries
The official stressed, as quoted by CNN, that the US military supply to Ukraine is "certainly the largest recent supply to a partner country in a conflict."
In the same context, current US officials and defense analysts agree that the risk is that some of those weapons will end up in the hands of mercenaries.
Russia has constantly warned that flushing US weapons into Ukraine will have dire consequences.
Since Russia launched its operation in February, the US has delivered billions of dollars in weaponry and other military supplies to Ukraine. After initially sending thousands of anti-tank missiles and ammunition to the war-torn country, the Biden administration has since delivered heavier armaments to Volodymyr Zelensky's regime.
