WASHINGTON, February 21. /TASS/. The White House does not have a piggy bank of cash for Ukraine so it’s waiting for the US Congress to pass a bill on aid to Kiev, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said at a briefing.
"It’s not like we have a piggy bank where we just keep cash lying around that we can provide to Ukraine," he said. "There is no magic solution to this absent Congress appropriating funding," Sullivan added.
"We need the Congress to discharge its constitutional obligation to appropriate and obligate funds that the president can then put to use to send American-made weapons, made by American workers and American states, to Ukraine," he went on to say.
Sullivan blamed Ukraine’s withdrawal from Avdeyevka on US lawmakers’ inaction. "This happened in large part because Ukraine is running out of weapons due to congressional inaction," he said, adding that Ukrainian troops were "not getting the level and tempo of supplies that they need and deserve." "And they’re not getting them because we have now gone weeks and months without the necessary funding," the White House official noted.
On February 13, the US Senate passed a bill allocating $95 bln in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. However, on February 15, the House of Representatives went on a two-week break without voting on the bill.