Ukraine may get a funding from NATO fund that had been earmarked for Afghanistan

The talk of transferring funds from the Afghanistan aid fund comes as Kyiv is asking for more support from Western countries to repel Russian advances in the coming months.

Politico reported about this.

NATO countries are considering using leftover funds from a pot of money previously used to back the Afghan security forces to provide support to Ukraine in the coming weeks, according to five Western officials familiar with the matter.

Kyiv has asked NATO nations to consider reallocating some of the $3.4 billion to help support their effort to fight Russia, two of the Western officials said. All of the officials requested to remain anonymous to speak more freely about internal NATO discussions.

The push to reallocate the Afghan funds appears mostly uncontroversial within the alliance, but comes as individual countries face increasing tension at home about how much funding to provide to Ukraine — especially as high inflation and rising energy costs, raise worries.

Money from Afghanistan’s trust fund could become a temporary solution to Ukraine’s financing problem — at least in the short term. It could also ease tensions inside the alliance at a crucial moment in the war — a time when NATO unity is key.

NATO officials have discussed the possibility of using the Afghanistan funds for Ukraine for more than a month, including during a meeting in Brussels in October, according to one of the Western officials. The fund has been frozen and the alliance has worked to come up with a mechanism for transferring the money back to individual nations or moving it somewhere else, but it is up to each donor nation to decide how to use the money. Some NATO countries are considering using some or all of those funds for Ukraine.

Kyiv has been asking Western allies to increase their financial support for months — in the form of weapons, humanitarian aid and funding for rebuilding the country’s energy infrastructure — as it tries to hold its position amid Russia’s continued bombardment of missiles.

Numerous donations to Ukraine over the past 10 months have created a burden on the defense budgets of some European countries. And while the European Union has promised to reimburse individual countries for their donations, the plan has prompted complaints from other major donors, such as Poland, that the funds are not enough to cover their growing costs.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO countries have individually put up tens of billions of dollars to support Ukraine with both weapons and humanitarian aid. The United States has led the way with $19.7 billion in military assistance since the start of the war. The leftover funds from the Afghanistan account are likely not enough on their own to help Kyiv sustain its operations through the winter. But the money could help those European NATO countries with smaller budgets ramp up their donations to Ukraine at a time when their economies are struggling.

As previously reported, the financing of the Afghan defense forces stopped after the Taliban successfully completed a large-scale operation to seize power in the country. It began in the spring of 2021 after the US announced its decision to withdraw its armed forces from the country.

On August 15, the Taliban entered Kabul without a fight, and President Ashraf Ghani left the Republic. On the night of August 31, the American military left the Kabul airport. On September 7, the radicals announced the composition of the provisional government, the legitimacy of which has not yet been recognized by any country.