Defense & National Security – Biden asks Congress for $33B for Ukraine funding

by Jordan Williams - 04/28/22 6:08 PM ET

President Biden asked Congress to approve $33 billion to continue providing military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine

We’ll break down the spending, and we’ll talk about a push by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to address civilian harm done by U.S. military operations.

This is Defense & National Security, your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. For The Hill, I’m Jordan Williams. A friend forward this newsletter to you? Subscribe here.

Biden asks for $33B in Ukraine aid

President Biden is asking Congress to authorize more than $30 billion in additional security, economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine to help the country fend off the prolonged Russian attack over the next five months.

The massive $33 billion request is what the Biden administration says is necessary to help Ukraine’s military defeat a sustained Russian attack over the coming months and address the global impacts of the war. Officials believe the funding will last through the current fiscal year, which ends in September.

Breaking down the numbers: The White House says it needs Congress to approve about $20 billion in security assistance for Ukraine, including $5 billion for weapons and other military aid, $6 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and $4 billion for the State Department’s foreign military financing program, an administration official told reporters on a call previewing the request.

Additionally, Biden is asking Congress to approve $8.5 billion more in economic assistance for Ukraine and $3 billion in humanitarian assistance and food security funding, the official said.

A possible damper: There is expected to be bipartisan support in Congress for sending more assistance to Ukraine, but the path toward approving the assistance could prove complicated as the Biden administration also tries to convince lawmakers to approve additional funding for the COVID-19 pandemic response.

An earlier attempt to approve more pandemic preparedness funding was marred by partisan disagreements and Congress eventually took the funding out of a massive package passed in March.

In response to a reporter’s question, Biden said he didn’t care whether Congress moved the funding requests together or separately but added: “we need them both.”

State of the war: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is dragging into its third month, and Moscow is focusing its efforts on an offensive in eastern Ukraine.

A senior defense official told reporters on Thursday that Russian forces are advancing slowly in the region due to logistics problems and other issues.

In southern Ukraine, meanwhile, the U.S. has observed some Russian forces leaving the heavily bombed port city of Mariupol, which has still not fallen to the Kremlin, to head northwest toward Zaporizhzhia.

Something to watch for: Biden on Thursday also sent to Congress an outline of measures to tighten sanctions enforcement on wealthy Russian allies of Moscow and ultimately use seized assets to help Ukraine rebuild in the wake of Russia’s invasion.

The package of proposals would establish new authorities for seizing the property of Russian oligarchs, crack down on sanctions evasion and establish new protocols for how the seized funds can be used to assist Ukraine.

Warren legislation addresses civilian harm

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is leading a new push to overhaul how the United States military investigates and mitigates civilian harm caused by its operations.

Warren plans to introduce two bills that would expand current civilian harm reporting and public transparency requirements, as well as moving investigations on civilian harm outside of the chain of command of the unit responsible for the strike.

Lawmakers joining Warren: Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are joining Warren in the Senate effort.

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) will lead the effort in the House.

The bills: Warren’s Department of Defense Civilian Harm Transparency Act aims to strengthen the annual reporting requirements that were first passed in the fiscal year 2018 NDAA. Under that legislation, the Pentagon is required to submit to Congress an annual report on the civilian casualties that occurred during the prior year.

The bill would specify that the report should include explanations on why the strike occurred and how the Pentagon determined whether its targets were civilians participating in hostilities, among other requirements. Crow will lead the introduction of this legislation in the House.

Warren also plans to reintroduce the Protection of Civilians in Military Operations Act with Khanna. The pair first introduced the legislation in 2020, and it would require that investigations into civilian harm be conducted outside of the immediate chain of command on the unit responsible for the attack.

The issue with civilian harm: The issue of civilian harm from military operations was thrusted into the spotlight last year when a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 29, 2021 killed 10 civilians.

The Pentagon initially said that it struck a vehicle in Kabul that posed an “urgent ISIS-K” threat, but it later admitted that the driver of the vehicle was a worker for a U.S.-based aid group.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in January ordered his agency to develop a “Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan” to improve how it prevents civilian deaths and responds to claims of civilians harmed by military operations.

Ukraine files first war crime charges against Russia

Ukraine on Thursday filed the first-ever war crime charges against Russia, accusing 10 soldiers of torturing and committing violence against citizens in the town of Bucha.

Iryna Venediktova, the prosecutor general of Ukraine, announced criminal charges against 10 Russian soldiers with the 64th separate motorized rifle brigade, saying they were being brought by the Buchanna District Prosecutor’s Office in Ukraine.

The allegations: In a Facebook post, Venediktova said a short investigation had revealed the soldiers “captured unarmed civilians hostage, killed them with hunger and thirst, held them on their knees with tied hands and closed eyes” in Bucha.

“We have evidence [of] that, of course, and these soldiers of the world’s first army of looters [who] robbed locals, taking personal belongings and ‘trophy’ household appliances,” the prosecutor general wrote on Facebook.

The backstory: After Russian forces retreated from the region around the capitol of Kyiv, they allegedly left behind hundreds of graves filled with the bodies of civilians in Bucha, raising cries of war crimes and human rights violations.

Russia denied the reports and said the photos of mass graves and dead civilians with hands tied behind their backs in the streets of Bucha were staged.

Other allegations of war crimes: President Biden has said Russia committed war crimes and after Bucha, accused Russian forces of carrying out a genocide, although the U.S. has not issued a final determination on those accusations.

Similar war crime accusations have been made in the port city of Mariupol, where tens of thousands may have died amid a brutal shelling attack that has completely decimated the city.

Following the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv, Ukraine has been combing through evidence of war crimes in Bucha to prosecute locally and potentially internationally at the International Court of Justice.