Clarity on US Aid to Ukraine: No, $100bln did not go missing.
President Zelensky gave an interview to the Associated Press on Feb 1 where he rightfully highlighted the key principle of no discussion about Ukraine without Ukraine for any potential peace deal with Russia.
This key point got overshadowed by a poor turn of phrase by President Zelensky which has been taken out of context to concoct fantastical images of a massive corruption scheme.
In speaking about the US military aid that has been given to Ukraine, President Zelensky said
"One-hundred billion (dollars) of these 177, or 200, some people even say, we have never received. We are talking about specific things, because we got it not with money but with weapons. We got $70 something billion worth of it. There is training, there is additional transport. There are not only prices for weapons, there were humanitarian programs, social et cetera."
President Zelensky was making a nuanced point that the total aid packages for Ukraine appropriated $177 billion dollars but not all of that was appropriated to Ukraine and not all of it was military aid.
Our good friends at Protect Ukraine Now have a complete analysis of all the aid bills for Ukraine. Of the $177 billion allocated under the 6 separate Ukraine Aid bills, $60bln were never intended for Ukraine. They went to other key areas affected by the Ukraine war, such as US troops in Europe, refugee assistance and global food security. Additionally, of the funds which were to go to Ukraine, over $40bln were allocated towards Humanitarian and Economic Aid not Military. (Politfact makes a similar clarification.)
Sadly, Social Media and the Russian press jumped on the poor phrasing by President Zelensky to accuse the Ukrainian government, the Biden Administration, the CIA and many other groups of stealing the $100bln.
Just one example, Elon Musk retweeted a random troll positing that the CIA skimmed the money or Ukrainian generals took their cut in a massive money laundering scheme.
So, no $100bln in Ukraine Aid did not get stolen. It simply was never intended for the Ukrainian military in the first place.