USA, hole in the defense budget: traces of a billion sent to Kiev have been lost

A hole in the US defense budget but it has already happened in other wars

It's now official: a report from the inspector general of the United States Department of Defense lifts the veil on what is happening regarding supplies of American weapons to Volodymyr Zelens'kyj's Ukraine. The Pentagon would have lost the trail of a billion dollars in missiles, attack drones, night vision devices and Javelin anti-tank missiles that the US government sent to Kiev to defend itself from the Russians.

After the accusations of corruption in the ranks of the Ukrainian defense, this too is a tile. In the past, there have been quite a few articles by US journalists on reports of arrests and resignations linked to scandals and corruption in Ukraine, including the detention of a former deputy minister for Infrastructure Development and the departure of Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, following accusations. These events reflect the condition of Ukraine which has been facing similar problems for years, but this situation undermines the international credibility of the country which in order to secure aid must always assure partners that resources are used effectively and transparently.

However, a case of this kind has already occurred in the past among the US ranks, for the wars in Iraq, Kuwait and Yemen, financed and supported by the American giant. Today, however, with skyrocketing inflation and a post-pandemic economic crisis from which it seems not so easy to escape, the “mixup”, let's call it that, weighs a little more: we are talking about a billion dollars out of a package of 1.69 billion dollars in weapons, some of which are to be considered as not meeting the required requirements.

However, since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the attack on Ukraine, the United States has provided Kiev with 46.3 billion dollars in weapons, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent think tank founded in 1921 and considered among the most important in the world.

Last Tuesday the Biden administration did not relaunch the sending of resources for the war. Today the Republican front seems more compact than in the past on a position of rejecting the hypothesis, also because the cavalcade of Donald Trump in the internal primaries seems to have given greater strength to the position. The former president is firmly against the sending.

But as Congress waits to approve more funds for Ukraine's fight, well-informed US newspapers say Washington will look to European allies to continue bridging the gap.

Days ago in Brussels (soon there will also be voting for the EU) NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced a joint contract to 1.2 billion dollars to purchase shells to send to the war. This type of ammunition (155 mm) is among the most used in the conflict with the Russians.

However, the lost billion seems like a US refrain.

According to a previously declassified Department of Defense audit obtained by Amnesty International in 2017, the US military also reportedly missed out on a billion dollars worth of weapons in the Iraq and Kuwait wars.

Same tune in 2009, where a report from the US Government Accountability Office revealed loss of thousands of weapons supplied to security forces in Afghanistan. And so it also happened in Yemen with 500 million dollars in military aid supplied but traces of which have been lost, reported the Washington Post in 2015.