Acting on behalf of the US president, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued instructions on Friday to suspend any new foreign aid expenditure for 90 days.
Contracting and grant officers from the State Department and USAID were directed to ‘immediately issue stop-work orders… until such time as the secretary shall determine, following a review,’ according to a leaked cable cited by the Financial Times of London (FT).
The newspaper claimed that by Saturday evening, several organizations in Ukraine had received orders to stop their operations until further notice.
However, USAID in Ukraine has generally chosen to defy Rubio’s decree to issue ‘stop work’ orders until it receives more clarification from Washington, the FT reports.
