A new $2 billion initiative announced in Kyiv today by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is intended to help build a domestic defense industrial base in Ukraine as it faces long-term conflict with Russia.
The Ukraine Defense Enterprise Program aims to use $2 billion to support foreign military financing for Ukraine to procure weapons via foreign military sales, as well as “facilitate co-production between Ukrainian and U.S. industry and help support Ukraine’s defense industrial base to strengthen Ukraine’s capacity to produce weapons to defend itself,” according to a State Department official who provided UDEP information to reporters on background.
Blinken in Kyiv called the UDEP a “first-of-its-kind defense enterprise fund” that will invest in the capacity of Ukraine’s defense industry, “helping to strengthen even more its capacity to produce what it needs for itself but also to produce for others.”
Additionally, Blinken said, the UDEP fund will “help Ukraine purchase military equipment from other countries, not just the United States, for Ukraine’s use.”
The State Department official who outlined the program on background said the assistance is “a mix” of fiscal year 2022 and FY-24 funding, “with $1.6 billion coming from the recently passed national security supplemental, which President Biden signed into law on April 24.”
“Increasingly, it may also build upon recent efforts to use FMF to incentivize production of new defense articles urgently needed by Ukraine with partners and allies, potentially via co-production efforts with U.S. industry,” the official said.
Additionally, the official said, UDEP may also “strategically weaken Russia” by transitioning U.S. allies “away from Russian-systems and supporting FMF loans to partners and allies, including to replace weapons and equipment they could provide to Ukraine.”
Blinken’s announcement is the fourth Biden administration announcement of security assistance for Ukraine since Congress approved a massive security supplemental spending bill last month.
“All of this, and particularly as we’re thinking about the defense industrial base, builds on an incredible spirit of innovation, of ingenuity, of entrepreneurship that we here see in Ukraine and that I again had a chance to witness for myself,” Blinken said.