The plank Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is being made to walk is getting shorter. The Ukrainian president has spent the last few days in New York at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) lobbying world leaders for more support in his war with Russia, and, some suspect, canvassing them for their reaction should he open ceasefire talks with Russia at a mooted second peace summit in November.

During his last visit to the US he was met with plaudits and backslapping, leaving with the promise of billions more in aid and weapons packages. This time he has been met with sniping and criticism.

Top of the billing was his “victory plan” which he presented to US President Joe Biden on September 26, which the US president is now examining, but no one has high expectations that the smorgasbord of weapons, funding and missile permissions will be given.

Zelenskiy will return to Kyiv with some welcome extra money and some badly needed reinforcement for Ukraine’s air defences, but the country will also be facing a slow collapse of the front line in the Donbas and increased uncertainty over next year’s funding. 

He will end his visit to the United States without permission to use Western long-range missiles for strikes deep into Russian territory, The Times reported on September 27. Zelenskiy won’t receive any help that will turn the tide of the war and certainly not enough aid to ensure Ukraine’s victory.

$8bn new package

The Biden administration announced a fresh $8bn aid package on September 26, which was gratefully received by Zelenskiy in a joint press conference with Vice President Kamala Harris.

The package is split into two main parts. The larger part of $5.5bn is to be allocated for immediate use from existing funds, with the goal of delivering the money before the US fiscal year ends on September 30. This part includes critical equipment such as Patriot air defence systems, additional missiles and precision-guided glide bombs, which can strike targets up to 130 km away, providing Ukraine with a significant boost to its long-range strike capabilities.

But this money was already allocated as part of a Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) mechanism for providing weapons to Ukraine until 2025. This month Biden was trying to get Congress to extend the facility beyond the end of the financial year on September 15 as a way to “Trump-proof” funding for Ukraine, should the former president win the elections in November.

"We have $5.8bn remaining for Ukraine under the PDA mechanism. All but $100mn of that amount must be used by the end of the fiscal year. The Department of Defence will continue to provide aid packages to Ukraine under this mechanism for the foreseeable future and is working with Congress to continue the PDA, which is in effect beyond the end of the fiscal year," Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said last week.

If the funds fail to be extended, the White House could announce a mega-aid package for the total amount by October 1 and then gradually send these weapons in small batches. However, this is considered a worse option than receiving an extension on the PDA, as there may be certain legal difficulties with allocating the remaining amount all at once.

The smaller part of $2.4bn comes from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which allows the US to procure new military equipment from manufacturers rather than depleting its own stock. This includes unmanned aerial systems, air-to-ground munitions, and various other defence technologies. It also focuses on improving Ukraine's defence industrial base and providing ongoing maintenance and training, including expanding pilot training for Ukrainian F-16 pilots.

The Pentagon estimates the total US military aid to Ukraine during Biden’s presidency at $56.9bn. Israel quietly was granted a new $8.7bn military aid package on the same day, two thirds of which will be spent on air defence.

Ukraine fatigue

While the new package will be welcome, it falls far short of what Zelenskiy was asking for. While the details of the list are not known and Biden has yet to pronounce on Zelenskiy’s victory plan, it is highly unlikely that he will authorise a new and very large package for Ukraine. Apart from anything else, there is no time left to draw up a plan before he leaves office in just over a month. Any further support decisions will fall to either Trump or Harris, with the former promising to end aid to Ukraine completely and the latter likely to continue Biden’s policies.

However, getting new funding through Congress will be hard, as the growing Ukraine fatigue in the US is palpable. There has been a string of reports that some Western allies are actively looking for an off-ramp, Bloomberg reported on September 17. But Zelenskiy's visit to Washington was marred by scandals and criticism.

Republicans accused Zelenskiy of “bipartisan support for the Democrats” by visiting an arms factory in Pennsylvania in Biden’s hometown. During a bipartisan meeting of senators, many failed to show up and Zelenskiy faced angry questions from some Republicans, The New York Times reported on

September 26.

On September 25, Speaker Mike Johnson demanded that Zelenskiy recall the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States for organising his trip to the ammunition plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which promises to be the most stormy state in the presidential election. That same day, Kentucky Republican and Oversight Committee Chairman James R. Comer opened an investigation into whether the Biden administration misused public funds by sending Zelenskiy on a military plane to visit the plant.

Bloomberg reported again on September 27 that Ukraine is struggling to convince Western allies to make good on their promises as it confronts its third full winter since Russia’s 2022 invasion, anonymous sources said. Other reports said that those familiar with Zelenskiy’s victory plan were “unimpressed” and that it was simply a “repackaging of the old demands.”

Ukraine’s military supplies for next year are under threat as some of its allies grapple with securing funding, while others are increasingly reluctant to fund a “forever war.” Zelenskiy himself told the New Yorker in an interview last week that if the victory plan was not accepted Ukraine would face a very long and hard war with no easy end in sight.

Meanwhile, Russia’s war efforts continue to surpass Ukraine's ability to obtain essential ammunition, missiles and military hardware to repel ongoing attacks and the situation around the key town of Pokrovsk in the Donbas continues to deteriorate.

One of the NYT’s sources noted that Russia’s economy is fully geared towards war production, while as bne IntelliNews reported, the Western allies have been very slow to sign military procurement contracts needed by the arms companies to make the necessary investments to boost Western arms manufacturing.

Running out of money again

Kyiv has been close to running out of money several times in this war, starting in September 2022, when the Western allies rushed through the first financial support package.

The new $8bn package will be welcomed by Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) but it is far from enough. As bne IntelliNews reported, there is already a $12bn hole in this year’s budget and a $35bn hole in the 2025 budget, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said last month.

A significant portion of Ukraine’s military funding for 2025 is expected to come from a G7 $50bn loan package that will be serviced by interest payments earned from Russia’s $300bn of frozen reserves. The problem is the deal has to be reaffirmed every six months under EU rules and so is vulnerable to a Hungarian veto. The US wanted the period extended to three years, but on September 26 said it would be willing to contribute $20bn even if the renewal period was not extended.

However, while the G7 loan will tide Ukraine through to the end of the year, it will not be enough to fund all of 2025 as well. Ukraine needs an estimated $100bn per year of funding, according to Timothy Ash, the senior sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management in London. Ash is an ardent supporter of Ukraine but has become increasingly disillusioned this year.

“Over two and a half years now into Putin’s full scale war on Ukraine and I think the West should be asking itself where it has gone wrong,” Ash asked in a recent opinion piece. “Why has the West, with a combined GDP of $60 trillion, thirty times that of Russia, been unable to give Ukraine the support [it] needs to bring it a speedy victory? And sure, some will argue that the fact that Russia has not beaten Ukraine is in itself a victory, but the reality is that Ukraine’s continued survival against overwhelming odds owes more to the bravery of Ukrainians than the support it has received from the West.”

Even the G7 loan is not a done deal, but looks increasingly likely to be signed by the end of the year. Ukraine’s allies will then need to immediately start considering where they can raise more funding. With Europe teetering on the edge of recession and Germany, Ukraine’s biggest supporter in terms of both money and arms, facing its own budget crisis, raising more funds to continue to prop Ukraine up is going to get harder and harder.

Much will depend on who wins the US election, as Harris could up the ante and increase the US commitment, but political analysts believe that she will simply continue on the trail blazed by Biden. During Zelenskiy’s visit and in speeches on the campaign trail recently she has played down the Ukraine issue, although she has pledged to continue to support Kyiv.