‘Accounting Error’ That Freed Up Additional Ukraine Funding Is Bigger Than Previously Thought

The “accounting error” discovered by the defense officials last month is bigger than anticipated, a Pentagon spokeswoman announced Tuesday. The “error” was initially valued at $3 billion but has now been revised up to roughly $6.2 billion, freeing up a hefty surplus for additional military aid for Ukraine.

The error was the result of assigning a higher than warranted value on weaponry that was taken from U.S. stocks and then shipped to Ukraine, Reuters reported last month. “We’ve discovered inconsistencies in how we value the equipment that we’ve given,” said one Pentagon official cited in the report.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon provided an update on the situation and announced the corrected valuation.

“During the department’s regular oversight of our execution of presidential drawdown authority for Ukraine, we discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement Tuesday. “In a significant number of cases, services used replacement costs rather than net book value, thereby overestimating the value of equipment drawn down from U.S, stocks and provided to Ukraine.”

In total, the additional $6.2 billion breaks down to $3.6 billion for the fiscal year 2023 and $2.6 billion for the fiscal year 2022, Singh said.

BREAKING: 'Accounting error' provides extra $6.2 BILLION for Ukraine, Pentagon says pic.twitter.com/75022IXg9k

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) June 20, 2023

The extra $6.2 billion will likely allow the Biden Administration to bypass Congress when approving additional aid packages throughout the remainder of the current fiscal year, which ends in September.

Shortly after the error was discovered last month, national security advisor Jake Sullivan defended the error and told CNN that it was “not a waste.”

“Well one thing I just wanna make clear, that is not money that just went out the door and disappeared, that is not a waste of that 3-billion-dollars,” Sullivan told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “It is simply a tally of how much military equipment we have given them.”

“And the way that the Pentagon was counting it was, ‘what’s the replacement cost for the equipment we provide,’ rather than just the actual cost of that equipment. Once you make that adjustment, it turns out that we have an additional 3-billion-dollars that we can spend to provide even more weapons to Ukraine,” he added.

The White House has stated that it does not intend to ask Congress to allocate additional Ukraine funding throughout the remainder of the fiscal year, though the packages will continue.