• U.S. Foreign Policy
• United States
• Russia
• Europe
• Ukraine

September 4, 2025, 12:57 PM View Comments ()

At a cabinet meeting last week, U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated a key milestone: The United States, according to him, was no longer funding Ukraine in its defense against Russia.

“We’re no longer involved with funding Ukraine, but we are involved with trying to stop the war and the killing in Ukraine. So we’re selling missiles and military equipment, millions and millions and ultimately billions of dollars to the NATO people,” Trump said. “So, they’re funding the entire war. We’re not funding anything. I think it’s an important point to make.”

Trump’s not entirely wrong—but he’s not exactly right, either, according to government reports and think tank analysts. On the military side, the United States is still set to spend billions of dollars on weapons for Ukraine, while on the civilian side, aid continues to flow, albeit with significant reductions.

The bulk of U.S. aid to Kyiv has come through five mammoth congressional appropriations bills totaling $175 billion in support, of which $128 billion goes to programs that directly support Ukraine’s military and civil society, according to the Council on Foreign Relations think tank. The rest goes to secondary goals related to Russia’s assault on Ukraine, such as supporting nearby countries and boosting the U.S. military presence in Europe.

Of that $128 billion figure, $70.6 billion has gone to efforts that help Ukraine’s military, chiefly in the form of sending it weapons and munitions, according to the Council on Foreign Relations report. The United States sends military supplies through three key programs. Presidential drawdown authority (PDA) buys new U.S. weapons to replace stockpiled arms sent to Ukraine. Through two separate programs, known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and Foreign Military Financing (FMF), Washington buys brand new weapons for Kyiv. Ukraine also acquires weapons on its own and through donations from Western partners.

The remaining money of the $128 billion has funded humanitarian programs and direct government support, which helps Ukraine pay the salaries of first responders, teachers, and other key workers, taking a budgetary burden off Ukraine as it uses its budget revenue to prop up its vastly expanded military spending.

On the military side, Trump is correct in that, in his second term, Congress has announced no new funds for Ukraine. The Biden administration previously announced spending plans for all of the $70.6 billion allocated for military aid, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank.

Instead of asking Congress to approve new funds, the Trump administration has said that European nations will fund the purchase of weapons for Ukraine, with the Netherlands in August becoming the first country to announce their participation in the new scheme to support Kyiv.

But that doesn’t mean that the United States has stopped spending money to support Ukraine militarily. Delivering weapons takes months, and building them from scratch can take years, meaning that only a portion of the previously allocated $70.6 billion in military aid has actually been delivered.

More than $50 billion in Ukraine-related PDA, USAI, and FMF funding has been appropriated but not actually spent yet, according to the State Department. In combination with the funds expected from Europe under Trump’s plan, that means that Ukraine will continue to see levels of military aid on par with past years, according to analysis by CSIS.

It’s not enough for offensive operations, according to CSIS advisor Mark Cancian, which typically require the attacking force to have an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions. Still, “it’s a pretty healthy volume” of military aid, Cancian said. That means that Russia will be less likely to make breakthroughs on the battlefield, but so too will Ukraine struggle to regain any ground—essentially freezing the conflict’s lines as they stand.

On the nonmilitary side, the reality on the ground is also more complex than Trump’s assertion. In terms of direct budgetary aid, the United States has completed the transfer of nearly all of the $33 billion allocated to the Economic Support Fund, the primary means by which Washington has paid into Kyiv’s budget, according to the State Department. The United States has not announced any further budgetary aid to Ukraine.

The gap in U.S. support, among other factors, means that Ukraine will face as much as a $19 billion dollar budget deficit next year, according to the Financial Times, theoretically raising the specter of civil servants walking off the job. European Union member states are in discussion about how to make up the budget shortfall.

In contrast to Trump’s claim, however, the United States continues to spend money on humanitarian aid. Ukraine funding was broadly spared the massive cuts to global aid programs made early in the second Trump administration, with 91 percent of funding for Ukraine having survived, according to a June analysis by the New York Times.

Surviving programs include efforts to provide water—a key consideration given wartime disruption to water supplies—and medical services for children, according to a document sent by the State Department to Congress in March and shared with Foreign Policy.

Further cuts would not necessarily be catastrophic, said Dafna Rand, a former State Department official who led foreign assistance efforts for Ukraine. That’s in part due to the Ukrainian government and civil society’s success in managing civilian needs as the war has gone on, she said.

Still, the history of the war has proved Russia adept in putting pressure on Ukraine’s civilians, notably by attacking Ukraine’s energy grid during the winter.

“If it’s really, really cold [this winter], there will be humanitarian concerns,” Rand said.