Kiev needs to supply coal to international markets for five months and 17 days in order to earn the sum necessary to finance just one day of the Ukraine conflict, calculations made by Sputnik have revealed.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, who was replaced by Rustem Umerov on Monday, claimed in an interview with a local media outlet that one day of the conflict costs Ukraine at least $100 million.
He spoke amid Washington’s ongoing efforts to shore up Kiev as Russia continues its special military operation in Ukraine. Since the start of the operation, the Biden administration has directed more than $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial, and military support.
The $100 million a day figure equates to the same sum that was allocated in August by Texas leaders to implement projects throughout the whole month to boost school safety and mental health services following the 2022 Uvalde massacre, which killed 21 people.
This was also the case with several other US states, such as Pennsylvania and Minnesota, where local authorities have yet to deliver on their promises to allow some students in the poorest districts to attend private schools and “take the city of St. Cloud into the future”, respectively.
Like in Texas, Pennsylvania and Minnesota leaders are expected to spend about $100 million on fulfilling the projects as a whole.
“There's no accountability for the expenditures going on right now in Ukraine, […] but $100 million a day of spending is a lot in the minds of the American people, especially when they're confronted with inflation. That's real money to them,” Maloof said.
“When he [Reznikov] comes up and starts making comments like that and we're seeing the disasters that we are in, the question then arises, why are we continuing to fund this thing? We're not seeing results. The West is not seeing results. Europe is saying the same thing,” he added, in an apparent nod to Kiev’s bungled counteroffensive.
He noted that when one expends $100 million per day “on a battlefield for a war that no one really understands, it's going to raise a lot of questions.”
“I guess that might be one reason why [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky had to get rid of the defense minister because he was being truthful for once,” the ex-Pentagon senior security policy analyst argued. Maloof called the $100 million a day an “incredible amount”, warning that the quality of life in the US “is going to be affected by this”, something that he said would also cause “even greater inflationary trends in the US economy.”
The ex-Pentagon analyst warned that the US’ ability to continue pumping Ukraine with money “is going to diminish greatly and it's not going to be in the too distant future.”
“The Biden administration is just totally oblivious and doesn't have a response to all of this. They're just acting now and doing what they can, knowing that perhaps their own time is limited unless they can fix the election again and retain power. But then what do they have to offer? Nothing. So from a budgetary standpoint, it's a total disaster. And it's almost an insult to hear the Ukrainian former defense minister say that they spend $100 million a day. It's clear that that's not going to last long,” Maloof asserted.
When asked how long the US will be able to finance Ukraine, the former Pentagon analyst suggested that there would be “great resistance in the House” to Washington’s continued push for funding Kiev.
“That's going to really affect passage of the defense authorization bill”, Maloof added, recalling that “if these budgets are not approved” and the Congress fails “to get a continuing resolution to fund the government,” it may shut down on September 30.
“That's just the reality of the system. The Congress is going to be under severe pressure to get funding going and unless they get the continuing resolution going, further funding for Ukraine could be greatly affected,” the analyst concluded.
An American news network has, meanwhile, cited an unnamed senior State Department official as saying that US Secretary Antony Blinken is “expected to announce more than $1 billion in new funding for Ukraine."
Blinken is currently in Kiev for talks with Zelensky “amid concerns that Ukraine's counteroffensive has been going slower than hoped,” according to the US broadcaster.
The reported visit follows Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announcing on Tuesday that Ukraine had suffered heavy losses during three months of its summer counteroffensive against Russia but had failed to achieve its goals at any part of the front line.
He said that the Ukrainian Armed Forces had lost over 66,000 soldiers and more than 7,600 heavy weapons since the beginning of the counteroffensive in early June. President Vladimir Putin earlier described Ukraine's efforts to break through Russian defensive line as a “failure” rather than a “stalemate.”