US Admits Accounting Error in Ukraine Support, Says Additional $6.2B Obtainable

The US Division of Protection (DoD) admitted Tuesday that it had overestimated the worth of army weapons and tools despatched to Ukraine over the previous two years.

Earlier estimates confirmed that as of June 13, Washington had dedicated greater than $40 billion in safety help to the war-torn nation.

Nonetheless, when the Pentagon recalculated the help, it turned out that the nation had offered lower than $34 billion in army tools to Kyiv.

The $6.2-billion surplus would reportedly enable the US authorities to offer extra army support to Ukraine with out asking Congress for extra cash.

“In a big variety of circumstances, [military] companies used alternative prices quite than web ebook worth, thereby overestimating the worth of kit drawn down from US shares,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh mentioned.

The most recent figures are “ultimate,” she added.

Monitoring Concern

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, US President Joe Biden has authorised a number of tranches of army support to assist Kyiv’s protection.

Not like the traditional course of, the DoD is using presidential drawdown authority to tug weapons, ammunition, and different tools from Pentagon shares for quicker supply.

With out going by the acquisition course of, the tools reportedly reached Ukraine “in a matter of weeks.”

Nonetheless, due to the expedited course of, the Pentagon’s inspector normal discovered that the US army was unable to correctly observe donations to Ukraine.

In a single occasion, 1000’s of small arms, night time imaginative and prescient goggles, and chilly climate gear had been transported with out a manifest, forcing personnel to open the crates and manually depend the objects.

“DoD personnel didn’t totally implement their normal working procedures to account for protection objects and couldn’t affirm the portions of protection objects acquired in opposition to the amount of things shipped,” the inspector-general report acknowledged.