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The funding was approved by congress in December, but has only just been released.
The United States Department of Defense has officially unlocked a massive military support package for Ukraine, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told lawmakers yesterday, according to multiple news outlets.
On April 29, Hegseth faced lawmakers at a House Armed Services Committee hearing. He confirmed that the bureaucratic roadblocks had finally been cleared and that the $400 million military aid package for Ukraine could proceed.
This is good news for the war-torn country, but when you look at the timeline for the military aid package, many questions remain.
Especially when considering when the package was approved.
Months of waiting
The package was approved by Congress as early as mid-December 2025, meaning it had been sitting idle in the Pentagon for over four months before being released.
It was bundled into a colossal $900 billion defense spending bill passed in December.
In an April 28 op-ed in The Washington Post, US Senator and former leader of the Senate Republican Committee, Mitch McConnell, criticized the Pentagon for not releasing the funds for months. He also wrote that Senate appropriators had tried to get an explanation for the delay, but no answers had been provided.
It is unclear why the military aid was not released sooner, but McConnell placed the blame on Undersecretary Elbridge Colby.
Shipments stopped over stockpile fears
In July 2025, several outlets, including The Guardian, reported that “some shipments” intended for Ukraine had been put on hold over fears of dwindling domestic stockpiles of weapons.
According to The Guardian, the decision was made quietly by Elbridge Colby in June 2025.
A week after the news broke, CNN reported that Hegseth did not inform the White House before the weapon shipments were halted.
On April 14, 2026, POLITICO reported that the US would not send Hegseth to a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, where over 50 defense ministers met online to discuss further commitments to support Ukraine.
Sources: The Kyiv Independent, The Guardian, CNN, POLITICO, The Washington Post
