USA will provide almost $1 billion more in long-term arms support to UkraineAs stated this Saturday by the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austinas the Biden administration races to deliver all of its remaining congressionally approved aid to shore up kyiv before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.
The latest package will include more drones and munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, that the United States has provided. Although these weapons are badly needed now, they will be funded through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which pays for longer-term systems to be contracted.
The weapons systems acquired are usually intended for support Ukraine’s future military capabilitiesnot to make an immediate difference on the battlefield.
The $988 million package comes on top of another $725 million in U.S. military aid, including counter-drone systems and HIMARS munitions, announced Monday, that would be drawn from the Pentagon’s stockpile to get to the front lines more quickly. The United States has provided Ukraine with more than $62 billion in military aid since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
“The baton will be passed soon,” Austin said. “Others will decide the course to follow. And I hope they build on the strength we have built over the last four years.”
Ukraine is facing an intensified attack by Russia, which is now using thousands of North Korean troops to ramp up its fight to retake the Kursk region. Moscow has also launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile and regularly attacks kyiv’s civilian infrastructure.
With questions over whether Trump will maintain military support for Ukraine, the Biden administration has been trying to shift every remaining dollar from a massive foreign aid bill passed earlier this year to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position.
“This administration has made its decision. So has a bipartisan coalition in Congress. “The next administration must make its own decision,” Austin said in a speech at an annual meeting of national security officials, defense companies and lawmakers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
Trump hurriedly met this Saturday with Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky and Frenchman Emmanuel Macron during his stay in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral. Macron and other European leaders are trying to persuade Trump to maintain his support for Ukraine.
Trump, a long-time admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has criticized US aid to Ukraine and called for a quick end to the war.which has raised concerns in Ukraine about the conditions that may be set for any future negotiations.
Austin said he was “confident that President Reagan would have stood on the side of Ukraine, American security and human freedom.”
It was one of Austin’s last major speeches as President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Defense and a capstone to his more than 41 years of service as a soldier and general.
Under Austin’s supervision, the Pentagon launched a regular meeting in 2022 in which more than 50 countries now participate to figure out how to get tens of millions of ammunition and billions of dollars in advanced weapons to Ukraine. Without that flow of aid, it is possible that the country would have fallen into the hands of Russia after its invasion.
“Together, we have helped Ukraine survive an all-out assault by Europe’s largest army,” Austin stated.
Austin and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longtime Republican leader, were honored at the conference for their lifetime of service, and used the opportunity to push for the United States to continue building and supporting its alliances, a stark contrast to the Trump’s “America First” policy.
Austin called Ukrainian Defense Contact Group “the most consequential global coalition since the time of President George HW Bush and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990,” showing that “the United States and our friends have become the arsenal of Ukrainian democracy.”
Before Saturday’s announcement, about $8 billion remained to be used to remove existing weapons from US arsenals and to contract additional weapons to assist Ukraine.
“We’re not going to stop Putin by telling Ukraine that we’re not going to give it anything else,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said on a Forum panel. of Reagan National Defense.
(With information from AP)
