CLAIM: The U.S. is not providing cash to Ukraine; it only supports the country through donated military equipment.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. While the U.S. is indeed providing weapons and equipment to Ukraine, it has also provided billions in financial assistance to the country following Russia’s invasion.
THE FACTS: Former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, made the inaccurate suggestion recently while taking aim at Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been critical of U.S. aid to Ukraine.
“People like MTG in re: #Ukraine. The aid is not pallets of cash. It’s in the form of military equipment, assigned a value, that is donated,” Kinzinger wrote in a tweet. “That equipment is usually older and would be replaced in the next few years anyway, at a cost. I’m sure she doesn’t understand this.”
But while the U.S. has indeed sent Bradley vehicles, ammunition, weapons and other equipment to Ukraine during its war with Russia, the support doesn’t stop there.
“We’re not providing only military assistance,” Tom Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations with expertise on U.S. foreign policy and Ukraine, told The Associated Press. “We are obviously providing financial assistance — budgetary support — and there’s humanitarian assistance as well.”
Between January 2022 and January 2023, the U.S. committed more than $26 billion to Ukraine in financial assistance, according to data compiled by the Ukraine Support Tracker at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank. That’s about a third of the roughly $77 billion in total aid noted by Kiel, including humanitarian and military assistance, pledged by the U.S. government. The numbers represent money promised, not entirely distributed.
Another tally from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget places the total amount of aid approved by Congress in 2022 for supporting the Ukrainian government and allies at about $113 billion. That includes about $27 billion in economic support funds, $7.9 billion for international disaster assistance and $6.6 billion to support and relocate refugees.
Graham noted that the war has wrecked Ukraine’s economy and that U.S. assistance has helped keep the government functioning.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has in releases and a report to Congress outlined how budgetary support to the Ukrainian government has been used. Some of the funding has been spent, for example, on social assistance payments and salaries for health care workers, first responders and educators. It also helps cover pensions and support Ukrainians displaced by the war.
Still, the largest bucket of overall U.S. aid committed to Ukraine — more than $46 billion, according to Kiel’s tracker — is military support.
U.S. funding to support Ukraine, while appropriated by Congress, comes from different sources. For example, in some cases, assistance comes from funding that is periodically tapped by the Biden administration in the form of a “presidential drawdown.” There’s also the Defense Department’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.
Much of the military equipment has indeed been pulled directly from existing U.S. military inventory, as Kinzinger noted in his tweet. But funding has also been used to purchase new weapons from industry manufacturers as well.
Graham said in some cases assistance is also used to replenish existing equipment provided to Ukraine by U.S. allies. He added that military support also comes in the form of things such as training and logistical support.
Members of Congress have questioned how closely the U.S. is tracking its aid to Ukraine to ensure that it is not subject to fraud or ending up in the wrong hands. The Pentagon’s inspector general told lawmakers at a Tuesday hearing that his office has found no evidence of such corruption or wrongdoing, but cautioned that investigations are only in their early stages.
An AP inquiry to Kinzinger through his group, Country First, was not returned.
___
This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
