US Congress approved allocation of $350 million of military assistance to Ukraine
The draft of the US defense budget for the 2018 fiscal year assumes that $350 million will be allocated to provide security assistance to Ukraine. The details of the document approved by the Senate and House of Representatives Armed Services Committees are posted on the Senate Committee’s website.
"The NDAA ( National Defense Authorization Act) authorizes $350 million to provide security assistance to Ukraine, including defensive lethal assistance. The legislation restricts half of these funds until the Secretary of Defense certifies that Ukraine has taken substantial action to make defense institutional reforms critical to sustaining capabilities developed using security assistance," the report posted on the website of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee indicates.
In the approved version of the document there is a clause that only allows for half of this amount to be spent. The ability to spend the second half will not be approved until the head of the Pentagon assures Congress that Ukraine has taken substantial actions towards institutional defense reforms "critical to sustaining capabilities developed through the use of the security assistance."
In general, according to the proposal, the US plans to allocate $4.6 billion to counteract the Russian threat in Europe in the 2018 fiscal year.
In September, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that the US Senate agreed to allocate $500 million to Kyiv for defense. The House of Representatives did not agree with the Senate, suggesting to reduce this amount to $150 million. As a result, after approvals in both chambers of the Congress, the allocated assistance amounted to $350 million.