US election looms over NATO discussions to Trump-proof Ukraine aid

The imminent US presidential election hung over a meeting of NATO defense chiefs this week, as NATO allies braced for US support for Ukraine to shrink over the next year if Donald Trump wins even as Iran, North Korea and China step up their military aid to Russia.

In a closed-door meeting with his counterparts on Thursday at NATO, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke about the upcoming election in response to questions about it from allies and how it might impact Ukraine aid, saying he can’t predict the future but that there is still bipartisan support for Ukraine in Congress, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

NATO officials say they are preparing for the US to take on a lesser role.

“We can’t expect that the US will continue to take on an outsized burden” in supporting Ukraine, a senior NATO official said on Thursday, “which is why the Secretary General wants to see NATO leading on security assistance, rather than one ally taking that on.”

“Europe needs to step up even more,” the official added.

A potential Trump victory has thrown the future of US aid to Ukraine into doubt. The former president declined last month to say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war, and has described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “salesman” who “should never have let that war start.”

The timing, to some officials, could not be worse.

“I’m very worried,” the NATO official said. “Optimistic is not the word I would use to describe the situation [in Ukraine] right now.”

Russia has continued to make small, tactical gains inside Ukraine, is outfiring the Ukrainians three to one on the battlefield, and maintains a “significant” advantage in personnel and munitions heading into the brutal winter months, the official said. And President Joe Biden remains opposed to allowing Ukraine to use US-provided long range missiles to strike deep into Russia, a policy that many NATO officials disagree with.

“I don’t think there’s anybody that would argue that there are not valid and legal targets in Russia that would have a battlefield impact” for Ukraine, the NATO official said. “Ukraine needs to have a range of capabilities that it can target those with.”

Secretary Austin suggested on Friday that Ukrainians’ own cheaply made long-range drones were a better way to take out targets inside Russia like ammunition depots than expensive, precision-guided missiles. “The UAVs have proven to be very effective and accurate,” he said, referring to the unmanned aerial vehicles.

More broadly, the uncertainty over the US’ future role in large part spurred NATO to consolidate authority over the training of Ukrainian troops and provision of military assistance, giving Europe more control if the US decides to slow or halt aid to Ukraine under a Trump administration. But that mechanism, known as NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine, is not yet fully operational and won’t be for several more months, another NATO official said on Friday.

European nations, meanwhile, are trying to ramp up production of key weapons and equipment, not only to maintain aid to Ukraine if the US withdraws support, but also to ensure their own security in the face of the Russian threat.

Trump said earlier this year that he told a NATO-member country that the US would not protect them against a Russian invasion if they didn’t meet NATO spending guidelines, and that he would “encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”

An EU and G7 plan to help secure long-term funding for Ukraine’s military and reconstruction is also in limbo. Hungary is blocking a change to EU sanctions on Russia’s frozen assets that is necessary to issue a $50 billion loan to Ukraine using the windfalls from those assets, saying a decision should wait until after the US election.

The Biden administration has been scrambling to ensure Ukraine has what it needs for a long-term fight, and Biden is now “emptying out” all of the congressionally allocated funds for Ukraine, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O’Brien said at a conference in Riga on Friday. The administration has also been investing “billions” in Ukraine’s defense industry so it can make its own munitions, O’Brien said.

“Every day, we are building long-term capability to Ukraine,” Austin said on Friday. “That will help to spell success for Ukraine in the long haul.”

It’s unlikely the West will be able to catch up to the Russians in the near future, however.

Russia alone is producing around 3 million munitions per year, while NATO collectively is producing less than 2 million annually, NATO officials said on Thursday. That’s up from only tens of thousands of rounds per year a few years ago, but still falls short of what Ukraine needs.

Russia can sustain its high level of munitions production for at least the next few years, the senior NATO official said, because it is producing very low-tech weaponry like dumb bombs and has moved its entire economy to a war footing.

Russia is also getting significant help from North Korea, which has provided Moscow with 11,000 containers of ammunition consisting of around 2 million artillery rounds since last year, according to the senior NATO official. North Korea has also shipped 1,500 soldiers to Russia for training, South Korea’s spy agency said on Friday.

Iran, meanwhile, has sent three shipments of ballistic missiles to Russia, and China continues to be a “critical enabler” of Russia’s war effort, the NATO official said.

Austin has tried to reassure allies that the US is working to surge domestic weapons and equipment production so that US military aid can continue to flow to Kyiv through at least the next year. And at a meeting with NATO’s Indo-Pacific partners on Thursday, Austin and his counterparts discussed defense supply chains, NATO officials said, to try to identify and source raw materials needed for increased weapons production.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Thursday that he was confident the alliance “will not lose” its unity when it comes to Ukraine. And on Friday, he made a thinly veiled dig at those characterizing aid to Ukraine as a handout.

“Supporting Ukraine is not an act of charity,” he said. “It is also an investment in our own security. Because the cost of letting (Russian President Vladimir) Putin have his way would be much higher than the cost of supporting Ukraine.”