Ramstein Air Base (Germany): Dozens of uniformed officials looked to the head table at the dimly lit officer’s club here. They were staring at Lloyd Austin, America’s secretary of defence, the man who brought them all together.
But as the day began, the focus was less on Austin than what it means for him to depart. In the last three years, the secretary has convened this Ukraine Defence Contact Group — a gathering of 50 countries supporting Kyiv — 25 times. Over that period, he’s helped bundle $126 billion in military aid and search through inventories for the weapons Ukraine needs the most. He’s done it when the Pentagon had full coffers, and when it was out of money, calling on Congress for more.
Now he’s handing over control of that group to a team that may not want to maintain it. On January 20, Donald Trump will return to the White House having called for a swift end to the war in Ukraine. European officials fear that message — and his nominee to replace Austin, Fox News host Pete Hegseth — may signal an end to the group without a clear alternative.
“It’s clear that a new chapter starts for Europe and the entire world just 11 days from now, when we have to cooperate even more,” said Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, at the start of the meeting.
Austin came here with a further $500 million of military aid drawn down from American stocks, a package that included air defence interceptors, small arms and spare parts. This final round of aid during the Biden administration brings its total security commitments to $66 billion, nearly half of the total raised by the entire Ukraine group.
The Trump administration will now have $3.8 billion in authority to keep sending stocks but no money left to replace them — and none left in a separate fund to support Ukraine over the long-term. Unlike in previous years, Congress is not yet considering more funding for Ukraine.
In part, the Pentagon has been here before. Last year, defence leaders spent months without any money left for such aid while waiting for Congress to approve a supplemental defence bill. Officials in the Pentagon and Europe later blamed that delay for Ukraine losing territory in the east, where Russia has since made gains.
Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, told a group of reporters traveling with Austin that it took four to six months for Kyiv’s supply of weapons to dwindle last year. He expects the supplies to last longer this time, given the Biden team’s rush to send as much aid as it could before leaving office, alongside support from European partners.
“They’ve got a pretty good tranche of things,” LaPlante said of the Ukrainians. “It’s not going to be [gone] like that. It’s just you might lose momentum.”
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