US plans sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, complicating Ukrainian conflict
The United States administration has formally notified Congress of its intent to sell 210 anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, in a move deemed a major escalation in the Ukrainian conflict.
The US administration on Thursday notified Congress of plans to sell to Ukraine 210 US-made Javelin missiles accompanied by 37 command launch units, worth 47 billion dollars in total.
The US military has already begun training Ukrainian forces on how to use the lethal weapon.
The missiles would be shipped from the existing US Army stockpiles in a bid to speed up the process of transferring them to the Ukrainian military forces.
The weapons would most likely be delivered to Kiev sometime in April, AP reported, citing “several congressional officials” who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The US military’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency also issued a statement saying that, “Ukraine will have no difficulty absorbing this system into its armed forces.”
The White House had initially approved the sale of the anti-tank weapon to Ukraine back in December last year, but no missiles had been delivered since the administration hadn’t completed the formal process for foreign military sales.
After Thursday written notification to the US legislature, lawmakers are allowed a 30-day period to block the sale if they disapprove of it. However, the top Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the foreign relation committees in both chambers of the Congress have informally supported the sale, and the arms deal is expected to ease through the legislative body.
Ukraine has long sought to enhance its military force against ethnic Russians seeking independence from Kiev in the east of the country, where since 2014 the Ukrainian government has been carrying out a crack down on them.
The missile deal deepens American involvement in the Ukrainian conflict and might further deteriorate tensions between Washington and Moscow.
The development came on the same day that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin declared that his country has developed new nuclear arms that cannot be intercepted by an enemy.
“You have failed to contain Russia,” President Putin said, in a reference to Western countries led by the US.
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