Under Biden, internal debate, stockpile concerns delayed weapons to Ukraine

Reuters conducted field reporting with Ukrainian forces in the Dnipropetrovsk region in the company of a military press officer. In line with Ukraine's wartime media regulations, we are withholding some details from an interview with a soldier about equipment at the press officer's request.

DNIPROPETROVSK OBLAST, Ukraine, Feb 3 (Reuters) - It’s been months since the Ukrainian battalion stationed on the frosty, rutted frontline has received a new armored personnel carrier to take men forward, supply munitions and evacuate the wounded.

The battalion and others like it are the endpoint in a complex chain moving American military equipment to the front in eastern Ukraine.

For a unit commander, who goes by the callsign Tyson, any delay in that chain is a matter of life or death. The armored vehicles, supplied by the U.S. and its allies, are prized because even old ones are safer than the Soviet-era equipment usually available to Ukrainian forces.

“When we don’t have enough cars, we’re not able to get the injured,” Tyson said, shifting his feet in the sticky January mud of a training field where he waited for vehicle repairs. Icy winds fluttered the camouflage netting concealing the vehicle.

“When we didn't make it in time, they died,” he said.

In the final year of President Joe Biden’s term, decisions on key shipments and weapons in Ukraine were stalled not just by months of congressional delays, but also by internal debates over escalation risks with Russia, as well as concerns over whether the U.S. stockpile was sufficient, a Reuters investigation found. Adding to the confusion was a chaotic weapons-tracking system in which even the definition of “delivered” differed among U.S. military branches.

Delays were worst during the months it took Congress to pass $60 billion in supplemental aid for Ukraine, held up by opposition from Donald Trump and congressional Republicans amid Trump’s successful run for president. But the jam continued well after the money was approved, according to a Reuters analysis of official announcements, U.S. spending data and interviews with more than 40 Ukrainian and American officials, congressional aides and lawmakers. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security deliberations.

Including the splashy April 2024 aid package, the Biden administration authorized a monthly average of about $558 million through September. The average value of shipments accelerated sharply after Trump won the presidential race, to levels not seen since mid-2023, the Reuters analysis found.

But despite the Biden team’s billing of the later announcements as a surge in aid from October through Inauguration Day, monthly aid from the U.S only reached the $1.1 billion monthly average established during the first two years of the war, the analysis found.

By November, just about half of the total dollar amount the U.S. had promised in 2024 from American stockpiles had been delivered, and only about 30% of promised armored vehicles had arrived by early December, according to two congressional aides, a U.S. official, and a lawmaker briefed on the data.

In the final 12 months of Biden’s term, Ukraine lost nearly all the land it regained in its largely inconclusive 2023 counteroffensive. As 2024 drew to a close, Russian forces were capturing a daily average of around 20 square kilometers, claiming nearly the equivalent of the area of Manhattan every three days, according to data compiled by the Institute for the Study of War.

Some analysts said there was no clear link between the delays in U.S. aid and Ukraine's territorial losses: Kyiv's inability to fix other challenges – issues of manpower, morale and how Ukraine uses the weapons it already has – were more to blame. Ukrainian officials had already privately told Americans they did not expect major offensives in 2024, a senior U.S. official said.

“Wars are never entirely won or lost by aid packages,” said Seth Jones, president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This requires strategy, force design, force employment, leadership, morale of forces and other things, not just incoming aid.”

But in 2024, Jones also saw no clear strategic objective from the U.S. and European allies. “If the objective is to start to beat back Russian forces or to get a stalemate, then what was given to Ukraine was not sufficient.”

TRUMP RETURNS

Uncertainty over Ukraine’s war effort has intensified with Trump’s return to power in Washington. His new administration can halt shipments anytime, even those already committed. In his first week in office, Trump froze foreign aid to Ukraine, among many other countries.

He and his congressional backers have made clear they want to cut support for Ukraine, and at a presidential debate he refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win. Among his campaign promises was a boast he could end the war in a day. That hasn’t happened, but many Ukrainians fear he’ll impose terms favorable to Russia.

Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Gen. Keith Kellogg, would not say directly whether the administration would continue to send weapons to Ukraine.

When asked, he told Reuters: “Anything that gives you leverage is critical in negotiations.”

Under Biden, the U.S. has pledged more military aid than any other country to Ukraine. The administration ultimately eased restrictions on American-made weapons, allowing Kyiv to strike inside Russia with long-range missiles, and ramped up investment in Ukraine’s drone industry. On several occasions, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan ordered the Pentagon to divert air defense interceptors from other countries to Ukraine, three senior U.S. officials said.

“My frustration is that Ukraine could have received more weapons earlier and more advanced capabilities earlier in the war so that the assistance was not metered out,” said one of the three officials. The official said the slow pace of aid in 2024 prevented decisive Ukrainian breakthroughs.

A senior Biden administration official denied that the U.S. moved too slowly or metered out aid. Without Washington’s support, said the official, Russia could have taken even more Ukrainian territory.

But Kellogg criticized Biden's overall approach.

“There was a lot of talk about providing things, but they weren't in the right numbers. They weren't in the right time. The Biden administration had a fear of escalation. My belief is that great powers do not fear escalation," he said.

Standing in the field in eastern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, a soldier who serves with Tyson in the 33rd Separate Mechanized Brigade recounted harrowing battles in Avdiivka as Russian forces poured in.

The invaders sometimes climbed through water pipes to infiltrate behind Ukrainian lines, he said. The defenders were overwhelmed, outnumbered both in force strength and ammunition.

“What is 10 shells for a mortar for 24 hours? It’s nothing, simply nothing,” said the serviceman, who goes by the callsign Beekeeper.

The lack of weapons and ammunition deliveries also led to unnecessary deaths, Beekeeper said.

“People die. It’s as simple as this,” he said, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. “But there's nothing we can do about it, this is our land, our homeland.”

Officials from the Pentagon and the Biden White House declined to comment on the record. The Ukrainian military declined to comment, and the Defense Ministry and president’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the Reuters findings.

RAISED HOPES AND STALLED AID

In December 2023, as Ukraine’s second counteroffensive was winding down to an inconclusive end, Biden stood alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and said the U.S. wanted to see “Ukraine win the war.”

The comment took some White House officials off-guard, according to two senior U.S. officials.

They said some close to Biden worried about unrealistic expectations about Washington’s ability and long-term willingness to help achieve what Ukraine saw as its victory objective: Liberating all Ukrainian land captured by Russia since 2014.

Other Pentagon leaders feared the focus on Ukraine was diverting attention from critical situations elsewhere, including the Middle East, U.S. officials said.

But in Ukraine, Biden’s statement raised hopes that the countries were aligned on what Kyiv needed: A dramatic increase in American-supplied weapons and permissions to use them to strike inside Russia.

Biden was openly confident he could unlock billions in aid stalled on Capitol Hill.

At the time, American weapons were still arriving in Ukraine, leftovers from previous Presidential Drawdown Authority packages, which allowed the U.S. to draw from its own military stockpiles for Ukraine. But their numbers were dwindling, according to public statements made then by Ukrainian officials.

As Congress debated, top Ukrainian officials warned about a dire shortage of artillery shells, saying at one point that Kyiv’s forces were out-shelled 10 to 1.

By February, months of ammunition shortages, combined with Russian assaults, had forced Ukraine’s stretched forces to retreat from Avdiivka, a town Moscow-backed separatists had tried to capture since 2014.

Oleksandra Ustinova is the lawmaker who heads Ukraine’s parliamentary Commission on Arms Control and advises the defense minister. From Kyiv, she was scrutinizing developments in Congress.

Ustinova is one of Ukraine’s main advocates for U.S. military aid, traveling frequently to D.C. to personally lobby American lawmakers. Her aide jokes that her cell phone is practically an extension of her arm as she negotiates across continents.

Ustinova, who speaks fluent English in a machine-gun staccato, described meetings early in the war where Ukrainian requests were frequently rebuffed.

'WHERE ARE THE SHELLS?'

At one 2023 meeting, Ustinova said she and other lawmakers were told by a then-high-ranking American defense official that the U.S. did not believe Ukraine needed F-16 jets.

Ukraine received its first F-16s more than a year later and used them for air defense.

“Every time we're asking for something, it comes six, nine months later, when the war has already changed,” she said. “And it doesn't make that impact it could have done if it came in time.”

Ukrainian officials also continued to press for long-range missiles – weapons that could potentially allow them to strike military targets inside Russia.

In January 2024, Sullivan convened multiple meetings in the White House to discuss sending long-range ATACM missiles to Ukraine, according to two senior U.S. officials. Limited numbers were available and their tactical benefit to Ukraine was unclear, Secretary Lloyd Austin and others in the Defense Department argued.

It would be at least two months before a package for Ukraine contained ATACMs, though their inclusion wasn’t openly disclosed, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. then secretly delivered the missiles to Ukraine, according to multiple U.S. officials, but the National Security Council’s Russia directorate and the Pentagon blocked their use in strikes inside Russia. They worried Russian President Vladimir Putin would target U.S. troops abroad or step up Moscow’s sabotage campaign in Europe, according to American officials who described the closed-door meetings.

Others in the National Security Council and State Department disagreed, pressing Sullivan and Biden to loosen the restrictions, with the argument that greater retaliation from Putin was unlikely.

In April 2024, the long-awaited passage of the aid package unlocked $60 billion for Ukraine. Ustinova, like many Ukrainians, thought the wait was over.

“I haven't seen so many happy faces, especially during the wartime in Ukraine, because people realized that there’s help coming, life-saving help,” she said.

Biden promised the U.S. would make up for lost time.

“I’m making sure the shipments start right away,” Biden said on April 24.

The Pentagon announced a $1 billion weapons package, but package sizes quickly dwindled. And actual deliveries, Ustinova said, were slow and sporadic.

She began fielding calls from friends and colleagues on the front.

“Where is the stuff? Where are the shells?” Ustinova said, looking back on the conversations. “Where are the vehicles? Where are the missiles? And you don't know what to say, because there have been promises made.”

PLEADING WITH LAWMAKERS

The chaotic tracking skewed Pentagon data and made it almost impossible to accurately pinpoint the weapons in the shipping process at any given time, according to public reports from the Government Accountability Office.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials began warning that Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, just 25 kilometers from the Russian border, was at risk of falling to Russia.

Michael Carpenter, senior director for Europe at the National Security Council, met with Zelenskiy and his top aides in Kyiv. Zelenskiy’s office formally asked Carpenter for Washington’s blessing to use American weapons to strike inside Russia. Kharkiv’s future was at stake, Zelenskiy and top adviser Andriy Yermak told Carpenter.

Carpenter had advocated fiercely for Ukraine both publicly and privately, but he left without making any promises, knowing the tenor of the internal White House debates.

At the beginning of May, Moscow opened a new front, staging lightning incursions north of Kharkiv, marching troops into lightly defended Ukrainian villages and firing from just inside the Russian border.

Ustinova watched in horror from Washington as videos circulated of the Russian weapons systems firing unimpeded and the Kharkiv region getting struck by armaments almost impossible to intercept. She decided to push Ukraine’s case more publicly.

The Kremlin called the description of the tactic of firing from just behind the border “unproven and unsubstantiated” in a response to a request for comment from Reuters.

Ustinova and other lawmakers were ferried all around D.C. in a van. They began meetings by showing video of Russian forces placing weapons near the border, knowing Ukraine could not strike back with Western arms. They pleaded with U.S. lawmakers to lobby Biden.

By mid-May, Biden agreed to relax restrictions – in limited circumstances and range. U.S. rockets were allowed to fire across the Russian frontier to protect against cross-border attacks on the Kharkiv region, said two U.S. officials familiar with the Pentagon’s communications with Ukraine.

Sullivan also said at a May 13 press briefing that the U.S. was trying to “accelerate the tempo” of weapons shipments.

“The level of intensity being exhibited right now in terms of moving stuff is at a 10 out of 10,” said Sullivan.

But by July, shipments were still delayed, Ukrainian officials said. Zelenskiy’s top advisor Yermak said publicly that some weapons the U.S. had announced in April had yet to arrive.

Zelenskiy expressed similar sentiments during the NATO summit in Washington.

“How much longer can Putin last? The answer to this question is right here in Washington,” Zelenskiy said. “Don’t wait months.”

STOCKPILE FEARS

Shipping U.S. weapons abroad in wartime requires complicated logistics and coordination among multiple American agencies and allied governments. It can take months.

For Ukraine, the Pentagon shipped inventory from its warehouses around the world by a combination of truck, air, ship and rail.

Smaller arms packages could arrive in a week or two, according to four U.S. officials with knowledge of the process. For larger deliveries, and when Washington tried to ship weapons in bulk, the process was slower. If something needed repairs, it could take up to four months.

Most U.S. shipments over the summer were limited: They included short-range air defense interceptors, replacement vehicles, and artillery so Ukraine could defend itself, but not launch significant offensives, the Reuters analysis found.

More aggressive weaponry – sophisticated air-to-ground missiles for F-16s, and expensive missiles that hunt radar arrays – was held back, according to the analysis of spending data and Pentagon announcements.

Multiple U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter attributed the decisions to hold back aggressive weaponry through last summer to fears that American stockpiles were running low.

Reuters looked at each U.S. shipment announcement in 2024 to measure and compare weapon capabilities – for example whether they were air- or ground-launched, offensive or more defensive, and how expensive and technically advanced they were.

Beginning in October, the announcements shifted in tone and content. From then until year’s end, the systems included more powerful and capable air-to-ground munitions, but the language became more vague and it was less obvious that they were more deadly.

But a classified analysis submitted to Congress by the U.S. European Command found several weapons systems that the U.S. could provide without draining stockpiles and that Ukraine could use effectively, according to two people who read the document. They did not specify the systems.

Through summer, the U.S. announced delivery numbers on the Pentagon’s website that appeared to indicate that almost everything promised from U.S. stockpiles had been delivered.

But separate investigations by the Pentagon’s inspector general and the Government Accountability Office found that the administration seemed unaware how many weapons had been delivered – or how much the shipments lagged.

A U.S. official familiar with the matter said the Pentagon has since updated internal manuals to clarify how service branches should define delivered. But to this day, it’s not clear how broadly that rule has been implemented or whether it applies retroactively, two officials familiar with the GAO and Pentagon inspector-general investigations said. The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the data discrepancies.

Ustinova, meanwhile, flew to D.C. to meet with the Pentagon unit that handles the transfer of military equipment to allies. Patching in two officials from Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, Ustinova raised the issue of the “substantial number” of unanswered formal requests for military equipment.

The Ukrainians said they would accept deliveries in any shape, even subpar equipment, if it would speed things up. They figured someone in Ukraine could find a way to use it.

In late August, Ukrainian troops launched a bold incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

By then, Biden had been forced off the Democratic ticket for the 2024 election.

OVAL OFFICE MEETING

The president summoned top advisers into the Oval Office, according to two officials with knowledge of the meeting, who gave an account on condition of anonymity.

Sitting behind the Resolute Desk, the president called in Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sullivan, Secretary Austin, Carpenter and national security communications adviser John Kirby.

Biden had a simple question about lifting restrictions: “Is this worth doing?”

The men were divided.

Sullivan laid out pros and cons but took no position. Carpenter argued that Russia was unlikely to meaningfully react to the loosening of American weapons restrictions. Putin was already using sabotage and other unconventional attacks against European countries supporting Ukraine, and he said that the hybrid warfare campaign would continue regardless.

Brown and Austin disagreed, claiming Russia could escalate in other ways, including targeting U.S. military personnel overseas. Kirby agreed.

Biden came to no immediate conclusion, telling his team he would have to think. But the U.S. president soon decided against it, again.

Biden’s spokesperson and Brown didn’t respond to questions about the discussions.

In the following days, American reporters pressed the administration on the weapons restrictions.

In response to a reporter's question about long-range strikes following a Sept. 6 meeting in Germany, Austin said he did not “believe that one specific capability is going to be decisive.” Austin’s statement echoed the findings of a recent U.S. intelligence assessment that also estimated that retaliation from Putin was likely, according to multiple American officials.

For at least two months, the Pentagon and the White House continued to say U.S. policy on long-range strikes would remain unchanged and gave no indication of the divisions that the Oval Office meeting had laid bare.

At the time, polling showed a tight race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump, who had already indicated he would cut aid to Ukraine if elected. That added pressure to the outgoing Biden team.

In August, when Ustinova attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Harris backers promised that the same level of support would continue if their candidate won.

The Ukrainian was hardly comforted. That was the same month the totals announced by the administration dipped to $125 million – a low mark in the multi-year campaign.

“If we have the same level of support, we’re going to be dead in eight, nine months,” she said she told Democrats at the convention.

By September, the growing realization that Trump could regain the presidency added urgency to Zelenskiy’s effort to finish drafting a plan to end the war. Zelenskiy’s victory plan included one main objective: Creating negotiation leverage over Russia.

To do that, Zelenskiy told the Biden team, he needed more aid – much more than Ukraine had received in recent months. And he needed to take the fight directly to Russia’s most important military assets.

COUNTDOWN CLOCK

On Sept. 26, with the U.S. race tightening, the Kursk operation in full swing and Zelenskiy pushing his victory plan, Biden announced a surge in aid. He directed the Pentagon to allocate all remaining military funding that had been appropriated for Ukraine by the end of his term. He also authorized $5.5 billion for weapons from U.S. stockpiles.

The Pentagon now faced a countdown clock.

Recognizing that the summer shipments were too slow, Sullivan sent a series of Cabinet memos pushing the Pentagon to speed up deliveries. He set deadlines and demanded regular updates on key weapons, two senior U.S. officials said.

The Pentagon would have to move a monthly average of $1.2 billion – the same rate as in 2022 and 2023, but twice what it had moved in the six months prior.

Zelenskiy kept pushing, saying in an interview Oct. 30 that only 10% of U.S. military aid approved by Congress in 2024 had arrived. The statement angered Washington officials, who told reporters that Ukraine was downplaying deliveries to get more support from European countries.

That same month, U.S. intelligence detected thousands of North Korean troops heading into battle in Russia’s Kursk region. North Korea’s entry into the war shifted the Pentagon’s thinking and Biden’s, according to White House officials.

The president finally agreed to let Ukraine fire American-made long-range missiles deep into Russia.

The Pentagon did not provide Reuters with an overall estimate of how much of the promised weapons from U.S. stockpiles were delivered to Ukraine in Biden’s last year. But a spokesperson for the agency said that as of Jan. 10, the U.S. had delivered 89% of critical munitions and 94% of anti-armor systems. The plan, still in place when Trump took office Jan. 20, is to deliver more armored vehicles next summer, another U.S. official said.

Another U.S. program – through the American military contracting system – is currently set to deliver up to $30 billion in weapons in coming years.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters the dynamics of what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine were positive. He said Russia remained determined to achieve its goals but was open to negotiations.

“The U.S. is in fact constantly increasing the level of its involvement in the conflict by supplying arms and other military assistance to the Kyiv regime,” Peskov said.

In recent weeks, Ukraine launched its largest counteroffensive against Russia since last August, taking some ground in Kursk after months of losses there.

Ustinova splits her time between Kyiv and the U.S., where her 2-year-old daughter lives. Her daughter, who Ustinova named Victoria in hopes that Ukraine will prevail, asks why she can’t join her in Kyiv.

Tearing up, Ustinova says it’s not safe.

“I don't want to tell her you can’t go because there’s war, because she will ask me what war is. And I don't want … to explain to her that people just want to kill people.”

Soldiers and the government alike say any new advances will require not just equipment and ammunition, but significant manpower that the country lacks. Troops in eastern Ukraine say that weapon deliveries have picked up in recent months, including spare parts for U.S.-supplied armored vehicles battered by years of fighting.

Still, in eastern Ukraine, servicemen stood recently in a repair hangar lined with Soviet-era infantry fighting vehicles and newer arrivals from France.

The 24th Separate Mechanized Brigade has not received a large delivery of American M113s since 2022. Newer shipments tend to go to fresh brigades, the servicemen told Reuters.

One soldier, Leonid, huddled in the bone-chilling cold. He described the exhausted infantrymen he saw in a recent repair mission near the front.

“They’re holding on; there’s no other choice,” he said, shrugging.

Asked about Trump’s return and possible peace negotiations, he laughed: “Don’t even ask me about that.”

Pressed again about what the troops expect, he turned serious. They have lived with uncertainty for so long, it was hard to say whether it was worse now.

“Here, everyone is tense because they don’t know what will happen next.”