US Prepares To Send $1 Billion In Latest Ukraine Weapons Package

The Biden administration is reportedly about to send $1 billion more in US taxpayer funded aid to Ukraine, in what will be one of the largest packages so far, Reuters reports.

Ukrainian servicemen load a truck with the FGM-148 Javelin, American made-portable anti-tank missiles provided by U.S. to Ukraine, at Kyiv’s airport Boryspil on Feb. 11.Sergei Supinsky / AFP via Getty Images file

The aid will include munitions for long-range weapons and armored transport vehicles, according to three anonymous sources, who added that the package had not yet been signed by President Biden, and could change in value and content before it’s a done deal. As it currently stands, the assistance includes munitions for HIMARS, NASAMS surface-to-air-missile system ammunition, and up to 50 M113 armored medical transports.

As Reuters notes, the latest assistance – which could come as early as Monday – would bring the total amount given by the Biden administration to $8.8 billion (or 9 fired Ukrainian prosecutors, if one rounds up), since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The new package comes on the heels of a recent Pentagon decision to offer medical treatment to Ukrainians at a US military hospital in Germany near Ramstein air base.

It also comes on the heels of a separate security assistance package worth up to $550 million which was announced by the Pentagon last Monday, which includes additional ammo for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

The new package would be funded under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), in which the president can authorize the transfer of articles and services from U.S. stocks without congressional approval in response to an emergency.

HIMARS play a key role in the artillery duel between Ukraine and Russia has been described as “grinding” with very little movement of the front line in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

Since Russian troops poured over the border in February in what Putin termed a “special military operation”, the conflict has settled into a war of attrition fought primarily in the east and south of Ukraine. -Reuters

The latest round of assistance (which comes two weeks after Ukraine’s first-lady and Vogue magazine ‘Portrait of Bravery‘ Olena Zeleska asked for more weapons) should come as no surprise… after all, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recently said the quiet part out loud – revealing that as long as US taxpayer funded assistance flows into Ukraine in what he considers ‘the right path,’ they can ‘fight to the last person.’