Senate Backs Ukraine Aid In Draft Military Spending Bill Ahead Of Trump's Statement On Russia

WASHINGTON, DC -- The US Senate Armed Services Committee has approved $500 million in security assistance for Ukraine in the draft 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) amid reports that President Donald Trump could separately announce a new round of aid for the embattled country.

The bill, which was passed by the committee on July 9, includes a provision to extend the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) through 2028, increasing authorized funding to $500 million from $300 million in 2025.

News of the bill’s aid contents comes a day after Trump said he would make a "major statement" regarding Russia on July 14. US media reported earlier that Trump may announce a new tranche of aid to Ukraine that could total $300 million under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA).

Trump, who criticized the amount of US aid to Ukraine last year while on the campaign trail, has grown frustrated with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who has rebuffed US efforts to strike a cease-fire deal in the 40-month-old war.

Trump has held six calls with Putin since taking office on January 20 to resolve the war in Ukraine. Russia has only stepped up its attacks since Trump launched his peace effort, killing hundreds of civilians in the process.

During their sixth call on July 3, Putin told Trump he intended to achieve his goals in Ukraine, which experts say include toppling the democratically elected government in Kyiv and pulling the country once again into Moscow’s orbit. Trump described the call as disappointing.

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Trump’s predecessor, former President Joe Biden, approved $67 billion in military aid to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022. The aid, which has been indispensable to Ukraine’s dogged defense against the more powerful Russian armed forces, comes from two main sources: PDA and USAI.

PDA refers to the authority of the president to direct the immediate drawdown of weapons and other items from US stockpiles in response to an “unforeseen emergency” while USAI involves the procurement of new items. When Biden left office in January, there was still $4 billion in PDA available to Ukraine.

Trump, who has made ending the war in Ukraine a top foreign policy priority, has refrained from tapping the PDA for Ukraine or slapping new sanctions on Russia while pursuing talks with Moscow. Russia has dramatically increased its air attacks over the past few months with the number of drones fired into Ukraine-controlled territory surpassing 700 in a day.

“Trump has been taking criticism since April for not responding to Putin's clear obstruction of his peace proposal. That has finally sunken in,” John Herbst, the former US ambassador to Ukraine from 2003-06, told RFE/RL.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy weeks ago agreed to Trump’s request for an immediate 30-day cease-fire while Putin put forth various demands that experts say were meant to drag out talks while he pursued his invasion.

While the increase in the USAI to $500 million in the Senate Armed Service Committee’s draft NDAA bill is still a small sum for a war in which each side fires tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons a day, Herbst said the signal it sent was important.

“It is a sign of a changing dynamic on the Republican side,” he said.

While Republican lawmakers were initially supportive of US aid to Ukraine at the outset of the full-scale invasion, a wing of the party in Congress, taking cues from Trump, began to question the size of the support. Republicans held up a bill for six months that included critical aid to Kyiv, undermining Ukraine’s war effort.

The Senate’s NDAA bill still must be reconciled with the House’s version, which includes $300 million for Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Congress could soon take up a new Russia sanctions bill meant to force Moscow to the negotiating table.

The bill, which gives the president the authority to impose a range of sanctions to damage Russia's economy, including on foreign financial institutions that do business with sanctioned Russian banks, enjoys wide support in both the Senate and the House.