WASHINGTON, April 28 – President Joe Biden has asked Congress for $33 billion in support for Ukraine – a dramatic escalation in US funding for the war with Russia – and for new tools to siphon off Russian oligarchs’ assets.
The massive funding request includes over $20 billion in arms, ammunition and other military assistance, as well as $8.5 billion in direct economic assistance to the government and $3 billion in humanitarian assistance. It is intended to meet the needs of the war effort through September, the end of the fiscal year.
“We need this law to support Ukraine in its fight for freedom,” Biden said at the White House after signing the motion on Thursday. “The cost of this fight – it’s not cheap – but giving in to aggression will be more expensive.”
The United States has ruled out sending its own or NATO forces to Ukraine, but Washington and its European allies have supplied Kyiv with weapons such as drones, heavy howitzer artillery, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles.
Biden also wants the ability to confiscate more money from Russian oligarchs to pay for the war effort.
His proposal would allow US officials to seize more oligarch assets, give the money from those seizures to Ukraine, and further criminalize sanctions evasion, the White House said.
Proposed moves include having the Justice Department use the tough US racketeering law once used against the Mafia, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, to develop cases against individuals who evade sanctions.
Biden also wants to give prosecutors more time to build such cases by extending the statute of limitations for money laundering cases to 10 years instead of five. He would also make it a criminal offense to possess funds knowingly derived from corrupt deals with Russia, a summary of the proposed legislation said.
U.S. President Joe Biden during a speech in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, U.S. April 21, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo
The measures are part of a US effort to isolate and punish Russia for its February 24 invasion of Ukraine and to help Kyiv recover from a war that has reduced cities to rubble and more than 5 million forced people to flee abroad.
Biden has already asked for record peacetime amounts to fund Pentagon research and development and efforts to counter perceived threats from countries like Russia.
The total package represents one-fifth of Ukraine’s pre-war annual economic output, and the US$20 billion in US military aid alone is about a third of what the Russian military spent in total over the past year before the war began.
A package would include food security assistance, economic stimulus for Ukraine and funds to use the Cold War-era defense production law to expand domestic production of key minerals that are in short supply due to the war. Continue reading
But the funding measure could run into problems on Capitol Hill. Biden asked for $22.5 billion for the COVID-19 response in March, and Democrats with tight control of the Senate and House of Representatives could push for it to pass at the same time as Ukraine’s measure.
While lawmakers are broadly supportive of spending on Ukraine, Republican congressional aides said Thursday efforts to combine war funding with pandemic response could make it difficult to sustain.
“I don’t care how they do it,” Biden said. “They can do it individually or together, but we need them both.”
US military aid to Ukraine alone has surpassed $3 billion since Russia launched a so-called “military special operation” to demilitarize and remove fascists in Ukraine. Kyiv and its western allies dismiss this as a false pretext.
The United States and its European allies have frozen $30 billion in assets held by wealthy individuals with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, including yachts, helicopters, real estate and art, the Biden administration said.
Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Edited by Robert Birsel and Alistair Bell