US approves $300 million tranche to arm Ukraine

House Republicans closed ranks and narrowly passed their annual defence spending bill late September 28 after they removed Ukraine aid from the legislation, which cleared in a separate vote.

The $826 billion defence bill passed in a near-party-line vote of 218-210. All but two Democrats opposed the bill over its myriad conservative policy provisions while all but two Republicans supported it, according to Politico.

The measure is one of four spending bills Republicans aimed to pass this week. But the incremental GOP victory is overshadowed by an increasingly likely government shutdown this weekend.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who failed twice last week to advance the bill to the floor, finally locked down enough Republican votes to pass the bill after the House stripped $300 million to arm Ukraine from the text.

The separate bill carved out to allocate those funds for Kyiv passed in a 311-117 blowout bipartisan vote. Republicans had won a close procedural vote earlier in the day to separate the Ukraine money from the Pentagon bill, a move meant to flip a handful of GOP holdouts.

The decision to create a separate bill for Ukraine marked a major U-turn after most Republicans helped defeat an identical proposal just a day earlier to remove those funds from the Pentagon bill.