The Pentagon has obligated nearly all of the $400 million in aid Congress provided for Ukraine, a senior member of the Senate defense appropriations panel confirmed Tuesday, one day before the money was set to expire.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) told The Washington Sun that Pentagon officials informed him Tuesday morning that 99.8% of the funding had been obligated.
The confirmation caps the Pentagon’s late push to commit the money before the fiscal year ends on Wednesday. None of it had been obligated as of late July. By last week, Reuters reported, the department had obligated $307 million and planned to commit the remaining $93 million before the Sept. 30 deadline.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Coons sharply criticized the Defense Department for waiting until the final hours of the fiscal year.
“The fact that they are finally doing it, like on the last possible day, tells you everything you need to know about that relationship,” he added. “They don’t brief us on time. They don’t follow the law, and the partnership is struggling.”
Lawmakers from both parties had pressed the Pentagon for months to act.
At an April 30 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst said the funding had recently been released and would be “put to work very shortly.”
The department then missed a May 15 deadline it had given Congress for providing a spending plan.
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) responded by leading abipartisan letter demanding that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth obligate the money. Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) and Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada) also signed it.
The Pentagon’s plan included $200 million for weapons, ammunition and explosives, $99.9 million for vehicles, spare parts and equipment, and $100 million for services such as transporting military equipment, Reuters reported in July.
More recent contracts include offensive weapons and spare parts for armored vehicles but no Patriot interceptors.
Patriots are the only system in Ukraine’s arsenal that can reliably intercept Russian ballistic missiles, and Kyiv has repeatedly asked for more. Trump recently said that he will grant Ukraine a license to produce the interceptors, but the production is expected to take more than a year and would not address the immediate shortage.
Coons said the Pentagon provided lawmakers with some information about how the money would be used, but had not yet reviewed it.
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