How new US aid to Ukraine will (and won’t) change the war

Brian Bonner's April 22, 2024, story for The Cipher Brief on what the $61 billion in U.S. assistance will buy and how much it will help Ukraine.

A $61 billion U.S. aid package to Ukraine cleared its toughest hurdle—the House of Representatives—on April 20, 2024, and will soon become law.

How New U.S. Aid To Ukraine Will (and Won’t) Change the War

Ukrainians greeted Saturday’s long-awaited House passage of $60.8 billion in aid with justifiable jubilation. For months, their soldiers, civilians, and political and military leaders had endured the practical, life-and-death impact of a shortage of ammunition and other essential weapons – as well as the psychological pain that came with thinking their greatest ally had abandoned them.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on his Telegram channel that the U.S. aid package “will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations become stronger.” 

Zelensky highlighted the provision of long-range ATACMS missiles, capable of striking targets 190 miles away. U.S. Senator Mark Warner, chairperson of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, told Face The Nation Sunday that ATACMS will likely be sent to Ukraine soon after the legislation is signed into law. “The (Biden) administration was prepared over the last couple of months to prepare or to provide ATACMS,” Warner said. 

“I don’t say that with this supplement everything is finished, it’s not,” Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, told CNN. “But without this supplement, everything can be finished, but in a very bad way.”

Ukrainians also cheered the passage of a separate measure enabling the U.S. to transfer billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. “We are deeply grateful to the U.S. House of Representatives for approving the vital aid for Ukraine and the REPO Act, advancing the confiscation of frozen Russian assets,” Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said on X.

The House package—approved by a lopsided 311-112 vote—will go to the Senate, where speedy passage is expected. U.S. President Joe Biden will then sign the measure into law, likely in the coming week. The new aid will bring total U.S. military spending for Ukraine to $107 billion since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

Amid the celebrations, many experts warned that the joy may be short-lived, given what Russia has gained during the delay, and the hard realities of a war that shows no end in sight.

But in addition to the desperately needed military supplies, the House vote provides “a much-needed psychological boost” for Ukrainian troops and civilians alike, said Peter Dickinson, the Kyiv-based editor of UkraineAlert.

“Ukrainians will once again have faith in the resolve of their country’s partners,” Dickinson said, “and will be able to look ahead with a degree of confidence that has recently been lacking.” 

The immediate impact

The aid is expected to help keep Ukraine’s outmanned and outgunned forces in the fight for the rest of the year, especially if the additional air defenses, artillery ammunition, long-range missiles, and other critically needed weapons arrive soon. 

Pentagon officials said Friday that they were preparing an initial package before the vote, and that some of the military supplies could be in motion within days after the bill becomes law. The Guardian reported that the U.S. has munitions stockpiled in Europe that could be headed for Ukraine within “a week or two.”

The potential impact is best understood by examining how much the absence of aid has hurt. Russia’s capture of the Donbas town of Avdiivka in February was widely blamed on the Ukrainians’ acute shortage of ammunition – a 5-1 imbalance in Russia’s favor that some said was closer to 10-1. In the last six months, Kremlin forces have captured at least 150 square miles of Ukrainian territory.

With a battle expected soon for the Donetsk Oblast city of Chasiv Yar, there were concerns that Ukrainian artillery would prove unable to repel Russian forces there and along other areas of the front. 

The Atlantic Council’s Eurasia director John Herbst, a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, said after the House vote that a fresh injection of American artillery shells “will have an immediate, positive impact on the course of the war.” Herbst added that the Kremlin had viewed the delay “as a victory, because without U.S.  weapons, Ukraine would likely be conquered.”

Russia has also taken advantage of Ukraine’s diminished air and missile defenses, hitting two power stations in the last month in the Kharkiv region and another near Kyiv last week. Zelensky told PBS that Russia destroyed the Trypilska thermal power plant, the Kyiv region’s largest electrical generator, on April 11 because “we ran out of missiles to defend” the facility. In these recent attacks, Ukraine lost about 7 gigawatts of power-generating capacity.

Dickinson said Ukrainian commanders will use the aid to “plug growing gaps in the country’s dwindling air defenses”—protecting both troops and civilians. 

None of this guarantees lightning-fast changes on the frontlines. Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, told The Guardian that “it may be weeks before we see significant battlefield effects” from the new aid.  For his part, Zelensky warned Sunday that Russia might attempt an immediate offensive or fresh air raids while Ukraine waits for the American reinforcements. 

The Institute for the Study of War echoed that concern. “The frontline situation will…likely continue to deteriorate in that time, particularly if Russian forces increase their attacks to take advantage of the limited window before the arrival of new U.S. aid.” 

Longer-term troubles

Almost no one believes the U.S. aid – whenever it comes – will be enough to drive Russian forces out of Ukraine entirely. At best, experts say, the assistance will avoid what could have been a 2024 disaster in terms of Russian advances. It will likely keep the Russians at bay for another year by stalling their ground offensives and protecting the nation’s cities and infrastructure from the Kremlin’s relentless aerial bombardments.

“The main point is that this funding can probably only help stabilize the Ukrainian position for this year and begin preparations for operations in 2025,” said Matthew Savill of the RUSI military think tank. Gen. Hodges said the aid meant that 2024 would probably be “the year of industrial competition,” as both sides try to build up resources to strike decisive blows next year.

Meanwhile, many landmines – literal and metaphorical – are strewn in Ukraine’s path to victory – or even its survival as a nation.

Russia’s advantages

The Kremlin’s mission in Ukraine has not changed. As recently as Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin seeks a Ukraine “that is truly Russian, that wants to be part of the Russian world, that wants to speak Russian and educate its children.” 

In the short term, Russia has set its goal of capturing Chasiv Yar, a strategic hilltop city in Donetsk, by May 9 – Russia’s “Victory Day,” the day the country celebrates the Soviet victory in World War II. In the medium term, Russia seeks to conquer Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, located only 20 miles from the Russian border. Russia has taken advantage of Ukraine’s lack of air defenses to pummel the city – which had a pre-war population of 1.4 million – with bombs and drones, destroying energy infrastructure in its quest to make the city unliveable. 

While the U.S. aid will help, Russia still holds the advantage in key areas. 

The mismatch in the warring sides’ armed forces is large and growing. By some estimates, Russia now has more than twice as many soldiers serving in direct combat roles. Russia aims to recruit up to 30,000 soldiers monthly, offering far higher pay than most recruits make in civilian life, and with nearly four times the population of Ukraine, Russia is also drafting men aged 18 to 30; Ukrainian politicians, meanwhile, dithered for months before recently approving a modest reduction in draft age to 25 from 27, leaving it with a depleted army whose average age remains in the low 40s. Ukraine has millions of fighting-age men sitting out the war in civilian life – and another 650,000 abroad. 

“There are still plenty of men in Ukraine,” veteran military analyst Michael Kofman told Brian Whitmore, host of the Power Vertical podcast on Saturday. “Ukraine will have to mobilize men at a much higher rate than they have been. That will take months.“

Regarding artillery shells, the U.S. aid won’t erase the Russian edge. Russia and its allies, including Iran and North Korea, are still able to produce more shells than Ukraine and its Western supporters. Again, the fresh support will help, and Western nations are ramping up their production, but Ukraine may not achieve parity with Russia for at least another year.

Undoing the political damage 

The six-month delay in the House passage of Ukraine exposed another recurring trend that has characterized the West’s response: It often acts decisively only when Ukraine is in danger of losing. Ukrainians say the holdup in aid cost thousands of lives and millions of dollars in property losses because they ran out of weapons. Ukrainians also bitterly took note of the difference between the way that Western allies are treating them compared to Israel. A coalition of nations, including the U.S. and UK, deployed forces and air defense systems to shoot down Iran’s April 13 barrage of 320 missiles and drones against Israel; the West has not brought comparable support to Ukraine. 

Zelensky said last week that “the whole world saw that Israel was not alone in this defense — the threat in the sky was also being eliminated by its allies.” Goncharenko said “we can only count on ourselves,” and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba chimed in as well. “Even if you cannot act the way you act in Israel, give us what we need, and we will do the rest of the job.” 

The former founding rector of American University in Kyiv, Roman Sheremeta, was among Ukrainians with an even harsher reaction: “A painful truth: the U.S. has never been a true ally of Ukraine and their policy toward Ukraine is hypocritical and cruel.”

The new aid package should go a long way to easing some of the hard feelings.

Prognosis for the coming year

While Ukraine is rapidly developing its domestic arms industry, it will depend on Western weaponry for years or decades to come – with the possible exception of drones. This means that the nation remains at the mercy of domestic politics in the U.S. and Europe. America’s fiscal year ends in five months, kicking off another contentious and partisan budget process just before the November elections. And as officials in Ukraine are well aware, a Donald Trump victory in November might shut the aid spigot once more.

Ukraine must also show that it will spend the U.S. aid package wisely. The House bill has called for greater accountability to combat corruption.

On the bright side for Ukraine, few military analysts believe that Russia will now have the capability to make major breakthroughs on the ground, let alone seize a major city such as Kharkiv. Russia also has yet to establish clear air or sea superiority. Meanwhile, the U.S. delays have prompted several European nations to step up their assistance to Ukraine. One notable example is the Czech-led initiative to purchase one million rounds of artillery shells for Ukraine.

As they digested the news from Washington, it was clear that for the moment at least, Ukrainians felt they had something to celebrate. The BBC quoted a soldier named Vitaliy who expressed his gratitude.

“Every cent matters,” he said. “It is very much needed. We need everything—every cartridge, every cent, every positive thought. We need all of it.”