Aid for Ukraine runs out. The United States Government announced on Wednesday a new shipment of 250 million dollars (225 million euros) in weapons for the country that Russia invaded in February 2022, the Department of Defense reported. According to the Pentagon, this is the last shipment of aid to Ukraine from the United States, the largest donor to date, unless Congress approves new financing, a complicated scenario, since talks on the issue are stalled.
The package consists of ammunition and other components for air defense systems, ammunition for high mobility artillery systems (such as the well-known Himars), 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, anti-armor ammunition and more than 15 million rounds for small arms. It also includes Tow anti-tank missiles, Stinger surface-to-air missiles or Javelin and AT-4 anti-tank missiles.
The weapons sent will be removed from the Pentagon’s reserves. The problem is that there is no more funding to replace weapons taken from the department’s stockpile, explained Defense spokesman Marine Lt. Col. Garron Garn. And the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provides long-term funding for future arms contracts, has also run out of money. As a result: “Without the supplemental funding, there will be a shortfall in replenishing US military stockpiles, which will impact US military readiness,” Garn warned.
This is why Joe Biden’s government has been asking Congress for months to approve a military aid package that includes another $61 billion for Ukraine, of which approximately half will be used to replenish Pentagon stocks, in addition to about 14 billion for Israel in its fight against Hamas. It also includes $14 billion for US border security. Other funds would go to security needs in the Asia-Pacific. In total, the sum reaches 110,000 million dollars (about 98,800 million euros).
Government and defense leaders have argued that the weapons are critical for Ukraine to maintain its defense and continue its efforts to mount an offensive against Russian forces during the winter months.
However, the skepticism of a good number of Republicans to allocate more money to Ukraine in the face of a stagnant war scenario has prevented its approval from going ahead for the moment. Republicans are asking, in exchange for approving this package, for profound changes in the internal immigration policy of the United States.
Due to an accounting error that overvalued some of the weapons shipped to Ukraine over the past year or more, about $4.2 billion still remains in restored withdrawal authority. But since the Pentagon does not have the money to replenish the inventory sent to Kyiv, its spokesman has warned that from now on it will be necessary to “rigorously evaluate” any future shipment, if any, so that it does not harm the US military’s ability to protect the United States.
The current arms shipment is the 54th tranche of military aid sent from the Pentagon to Ukraine, and is similar in size and content to many of the other recent packages. The United States is by far the world’s largest donor of military aid to Ukraine.
From Europe, aid to Kyiv also finds it difficult to continue flowing. Earlier this month, Hungary blocked an EU package worth €50 billion for Ukraine.
As funding from Ukraine’s Western allies has been reduced, Russian forces have continued fighting in the east of the country, where they seized Marinka, a key Donbass city on Tuesday, in what would be the biggest Russian victory since last May, how much Bakhmut captured. Kyiv forces, for their part, claimed on the same day to have destroyed a Russian ship in Crimea. And yesterday Moscow bombed a train station in Kherson, where more than a hundred civilians were waiting to catch a train to the capital.
