Follow us on social

Congress doesn't know how much Ukraine money is left: Sen.Warner

Congress doesn't know how much Ukraine money is left: Sen.Warner

As the battle over funding for Kyiv heats up, there is widespread confusion over how much cash is left in the coffers.

Reporting | QiOSK

Lawmakers are in the dark about how much money the Biden administration has left to spend on Ukraine, according to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“I still don't have 100% clarity,” Warner said Tuesday. “Of the $113 billion that we've already appropriated — $62 billion, roughly, on the defense side — how much of that was left? There was a little bit of ‘hide the ball.’”

The “lack of clarity” made it difficult to make the case for new Ukraine funding, which the House stripped from an emergency measure that staved off a government shutdown until November, according to Warner.

There is widespread confusion over how much Ukraine money the Biden administration has left to spend as it pushes for an additional $25 billion aid package for Kyiv. As RS reported yesterday, there appears to be a large amount of humanitarian and financial support money remaining, and Defense Department officials say they still have roughly $5.5 billion in funding to send surplus military equipment to Ukraine.

Warner, for his part, said he’s seen public reports indicating that there’s roughly $5 billion left in military cash, while others have put that number as low as $1.9 billion.

The comments came during an event with Punchbowl News, a journalism startup focused on Capitol Hill. RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, sponsored the event, which was followed by a friendly interview with one of the military contractor’s executives.

Companies like RTX were a key part of Warner’s argument for why the U.S. must continue to fund Ukraine’s defense against Russia. “The overwhelming majority of this [money] is going to, frankly, the American defense industry,” he said.

Virginia, Warner’s home state, is the largest recipient of American military spending, raking in $62.7 billion in defense funds last year, roughly $42 billion of which went to contractors. Notably, RTX was not a leading contractor in Virginia last year, though that could change following the company’s 2022 decision to relocate its headquarters to Arlington, a move that one analyst called “WD-40” for the “revolving door” between the Pentagon and the weapons industry.

Warner gave a thorough case for the benefits of continuing to arm Kyiv and endorsed a recent advertisement from “Republicans for Ukraine” that highlighted the extent to which the war has hurt Russia without putting American troops in harm’s way.

The prominent lawmaker also argued that a robust defense of Ukraine is the best way to stop China from taking back Taiwan. “If [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is successful in Ukraine, that is a total greenlight for [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] and China,” Warner argued. “If you don't get that, you flunk Geopolitics 101.”


Photo credit: Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) speaks during a Punchbowl News event in Washington, DC, on October 3, 2023. (Screengrab via punchbowl.news)
Reporting | QiOSK
Trump ASEAN
Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump looks at Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., next to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim when posing for a family photo with leaders at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 26, 2025. Vincent Thian/Pool via REUTERS

‘America First’ meets ‘ASEAN Way’ in Kuala Lumpur

Asia-Pacific

The 2025 ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Kuala Lumpur beginning today are set to be consequential multilateral gatherings — defining not only ASEAN’s internal cohesion but also the shape of U.S.–China relations in the Indo-Pacific.

President Donald Trump’s participation will be the first by a U.S. president in an ASEAN-led summit since 2022. President Biden skipped the last two such summits in 2023 and 2024, sending then-Vice President Harris instead.

keep readingShow less
iran, china, russia
Top photo credit: Top image credit: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi shake hands as Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu looks on during their meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS

'Annulled'! Russia won't abide snapback sanctions on Iran

Middle East

“A raider attack on the U.N. Security Council.” This was the explosive accusation leveled by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov this week. His target was the U.N. Secretariat and Western powers, whom he blamed for what Russia sees as an illegitimate attempt to restore the nuclear-related international sanctions on Iran.

Beyond the fiery rhetoric, Ryabkov’s statement contained a message: Russia, he said, now considers all pre-2015 U.N. sanctions on Iran, snapped back by the European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) — the United Kingdom, France, Germany — “annulled.” Moscow will deepen its military-technical cooperation with Tehran accordingly, according to Ryabkov.

This is more than a diplomatic spat; it is the formal announcement of a split in international legal reality. The world’s major powers are now operating under two irreconcilable interpretations of international law. On one side, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany assert that the sanctions snapback mechanism of the JCPOA was legitimately triggered for Iran’s alleged violations. On the other, Iran, Russia, and China reject this as an illegitimate procedural act.

This schism was not inevitable, and its origin reveals a profound incongruence. The Western powers that most frequently appeal to the sanctity of the "rules-based international order" and international law have, in this instance, taken an action whose effects fundamentally undermine it. By pushing through a legal maneuver that a significant part of the Security Council considers illegitimate, they have ushered the world into a new and more dangerous state. The predictable, if imperfect, framework of universally recognized Security Council decisions is being replaced by a system where legal facts are determined by political interests espoused by competing power blocs.

This rupture followed a deliberate Western choice to reject compromises in a stand-off with Iran. While Iran was in a technical violation of the provisions of the JCPOA — by, notably, amassing a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (up to 60% as opposed to the 3.67% for a civilian use permissible under the JCPOA), there was a chance to avert the crisis. In the critical weeks leading to the snapback, Iran had signaled concessions in talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Cairo, in terms of renewing cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s inspectors.

keep readingShow less
On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants
Top Photo Credit: (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants

Europe

While diplomats labored to produce the Dayton Accords in 1995, then-Secretary of Defense Bill Perry advised, “No agreement is better than a bad agreement.” Given that Washington’s allies in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw are opposed to any outcome that might end the war in Ukraine, no agreement may be preferable. But for President Trump, there is no point in equating the illusion of peace in Ukraine with a meaningless ceasefire that settles nothing.

Today, Ukraine is mired in corruption, starting at the very highest levels of the administration in Kyiv. Sending $175 billion of borrowed money there "for however long it takes" has turned out to be worse than reckless. The U.S. national sovereign debt is surging to nearly $38 trillion and rising by $425 billion with each passing month. President Trump needs to turn his attention away from funding Joe Biden’s wars and instead focus on the faltering American economy.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.