The Pentagon has halted shipments of critical US Patriot air defence systems and other precision weapons to Ukraine after concern that US stockpiles are running too low, prompting alarm in Kyiv.
At the end of last week’s Nato summit, Donald Trump hinted that supplies of Patriot missile interceptors were running down because some had been supplied to Israel, though he suggested he would like to help Kyiv.
After a meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the US president acknowledged that Ukraine did “want to have the anti-missile systems, as they call the Patriots, and we’re going to see if we can make some available”.
But Trump added: “They’re very hard to get. We need them. We were supplying them to Israel,” implying that supporting Israel in its war with Iran – a priority for the Republican administration – had set back its willingness to help Kyiv.
Congress controls money. Biden could not give anything. It was Israel buying with its US allowance because Congress had previously given Israel money. Biden sped up the buying process by letting it go through immediately without Congressional approval.
What’s more important than the nuances of appropriations is the fact that Biden could have stopped giving weapons to a state committing genocide, but didn’t.
Everything else he did or didn’t do with respect to the situation is comparatively minor.