The US Senate approved the 2026 defense budget bill with assistance to Ukraine

Members of the Senate's specialized committee approved the draft National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA), which determines the level of funding for the US Armed Forces, by a vote of 26 to 1.

The NDAA draft provides for national defense funding in the amount of $925 billion, of which $878.7 billion is planned to be transferred to the Pentagon and $35.2 billion to the Department of Energy.

The bill also includes provisions to extend the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative through 2028, and its funding increases from $300 million in fiscal year 2025 to $500 million.

It is currently unknown whether this provision will remain in the final draft of the NDAA, which still needs to be approved by the full Senate as well as the House of Representatives and signed by Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, it has unofficially become known that Trump plans to transfer $300 million worth of weapons from US stocks to Ukraine for the first time during his term, using the presidential powers mechanism that Joe Biden usually used for this purpose.

The US president publicly said that he had agreed to provide American weapons to Ukraine "through NATO" and that the Alliance would pay for them "100%."