The U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) budget request for Ukraine for fiscal year (FY) 2025, from October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025, is $481.6 million, according to materials on the agency’s websites, whose assistance to foreign countries has been frozen by the new U.S. administration for 90 days.
“We must ensure the strategic failure of Putin’s war against Ukraine by supporting the Ukrainian government and people,” the document justifies the allocation of funds.
In particular, it is noted that $321 million is intended for fully or partially managed USAID accounts “to help respond to growing economic, development, and security needs, including strengthening energy infrastructure after systematic attacks by Russia, improving cybersecurity, developing the agricultural sector to create exports, and supporting civil society, including activists, journalists, and independent media.”
According to the document, the funds requested for 2025 exceed the FY2023 budget, when they amounted to $411.1 million, but that year additional budgets for Ukraine were allocated for a total of another $18.94 billion.
As noted on the USAID Ukraine page, since the beginning of the war on February 24, 2022, the agency has allocated $2.6 billion in humanitarian aid, $5 billion in development assistance, and $30 billion in direct budget support.
The FY2025 budget request for Ukraine, in particular, includes $71 million for healthcare, including $53 million and $12 million for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, $27.1 million for climate goals, $22.6 million for agriculture, $91.1 million for democracy, human rights and governance, $13 million for digital technologies, $21.2 million for gender policy, and $2.4 million for higher education.
Already this weekend, Ukrainian recipients of USAID funding began to report that it had been terminated.
In particular, the Veteran Hub announced the forced suspension of its Vinnytsia branch and the Support Line for an indefinite period, which had been operating continuously since 2020 and March 2022, respectively.
“Since 2018, we have refrained from public fundraising because we believe that donations are needed primarily for the army. Today we are forced to publicly ask for support for the first time,” the organization wrote.
The suspension of USAID programs was also felt by MP Nina Yuzhanina, who was supposed to go on a study visit on Sunday as part of a delegation organized under the USAID RADA Next Generation (RANG) program in cooperation with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WF). “But late last night we were informed that the visit was canceled,” she wrote on Facebook.
“At a time of extreme hardship for Ukraine, stopping humanitarian projects is tantamount to a catastrophe. The abrupt cessation of funding creates huge risks for Ukraine,” Olesya Olenytska, a member of the Supervisory Board of the Eastern Europe Foundation, wrote on Facebook.
According to her, such a decision will lead, among other things, to the termination of the construction of shelters for safe education during rocket attacks by the Russian Federation, the termination of financial support for schools and hospitals in the frontline regions of the country, and the destruction of established projects in the humanitarian sphere.
Over the weekend, the Financial Times reported that officials from the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs have asked new US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make an exception for Ukraine in the freeze on US aid to foreign countries, similar to the exception made for Israel and Egypt (their budget requests for FY2025 are $3.3 billion and $1.433 billion, respectively).
“We don’t know yet whether this request will be approved – in whole or in part – but there are positive signals coming from Washington,” the FT quoted an email sent to USAID staff in Ukraine on Saturday, January 25.
