ISW: Pauses in US military aid to harm Ukraine's warfighting capabilities

Suspension of US military aid will hurt Ukraine's ability to fight, but it will take weeks to months for this to affect the frontline, according to an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The ISW report says that two anonymous US officials told ABC News on March 3 that about 90 percent of the weapons that the United States committed to Ukraine through past Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) packages has already arrived in Ukraine, including munitions and anti-armor systems.

ABC News reported that the remaining 10 per cent of PDA equipment is still slated to arrive in Ukraine by August 2025 and that private weapons contracts between Ukraine and US companies - many of which Ukraine has already paid for — will likely facilitate at least a small flow of arms deliveries to Ukraine "for at least the next several years."

The editor-in-chief of Ukrainian defense-focused outlet Defense Express, Oleh Katkov, stated that the United States reportedly supplies about 30 per cent of Ukraine's arsenal with Ukraine's European partners supplying another 30 per cent and Ukraine itself supplying domestically supplies about 40 per cent from domestic production.

Ukraine will continue to fight with the materiel it currently has, with the materiel European partners have given and will continue to provide, and with the materiel Ukraine itself produces.

“The Trump administration's aid pause will detrimentally impact Ukraine's ability to defend itself and pursue offensive operations at its current rate, but it will not collapse the front entirely in the coming months,” ISW says.

ISW analysts note that Russian forces will likely exploit expected Ukrainian materiel shortages if the suspension of US military assistance persists, as Russian forces did during the previous suspension of US military assistance in early 2024.

“Russian forces will likely attempt to take advantage of the pause in US aid in order to make further gains in eastern and southern Ukraine in order to justify their territorial claims to the entirety of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts,”

By Khagan Isayev