Aid for Ukraine is running out. The United States Government announced on Wednesday another shipment of 250 million dollars (225 million euros) in armaments for the country that Russia invaded in February 2022, the Department of Defense reported. According to the Pentagon, it is the last aid shipment to Ukraine from the United States, Kyiv’s biggest donor, unless Congress approves other funding, a complicated scenario as talks 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), 155 mm and 105 mm artillery ammunition, anti-armor ammunition and more 15 million cartridges for small arms. It also includes Tow, Javelin and AT-4 anti-tank missiles and Stinger surface-to-air missiles.
The weaponry will be withdrawn from the Pentagon reserves. The problem is that there are no more funds to replace weapons taken from the department’s stockpiles, Defense spokesman Marine Lt. Col. Garron Garn explained. 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 additional funding, there will be a shortfall in US military stockpiling, which will affect US military readiness,” Garn warned.
That’s why Joe Biden’s administration has been asking Congress for months to approve a military aid package that includes an additional $61 billion for Ukraine, about half of which will go to replenish the Pentagon’s stocks, plus of about 14,000 million for Israel. It also includes $14 billion for U.S. 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, as well as Ukrainian authorities, have argued that the weapons are critical for Ukraine to maintain its defense and continue efforts to prepare a counteroffensive against Russian forces in the winter months.
However, the skepticism of a good number of Republicans to allocate more money to Ukraine in the face of a stalled war scenario has prevented the approval from moving forward for now. Republicans are demanding, in exchange for approving the package, deep changes in the internal migration policy of the United States.
From Europe, aid to Kyiv is also having difficulty continuing to flow. In early December, Hungary blocked an EU package worth 50 billion euros for Ukraine.
As funding from Ukraine’s western allies has dwindled, Russian forces have continued to fight in the country’s east, where they seized Marinka, a key Donbass town, on Tuesday in the biggest Russian victory since of May, when he captured Bakhmut.
The forces of Kyiv, for their part, assured the same day that they had destroyed a Russian ship in Crimea. And a day later, Moscow bombed a train station in the southern city of Kherson, where more than a hundred civilians were waiting to catch a train to the capital.
