US to announce additional $3 bln. in military aid for Ukraine
The United States plans to announce an additional roughly $3 billion in military aid for Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing military operation in the ex-Soviet republic.
The package, set to be announced on Wednesday, would be the largest batch of weapons to be headed to Ukraine, since February 24, when Russia began a “special military operation” in its neighbor, Reuters reported, citing an American official as saying on Tuesday.
“The package uses funds from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) appropriated by Congress to allow the [President Joe] Biden administration to procure weapons from industry rather than taking weapons from existing US weapons stocks,” the report said.
The official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said the weapons apparently did not comprise any new type of arms, rather mostly including ammunition and weapon systems.
On Monday, various US media outlets, including Politico, published reports pointing out that Washington was providing Ukraine with more weapons than the Biden administration had publicly announced.
According to the news and analysis website, a senior Pentagon official had revealed on Friday that the US military had been quietly supplying the Ukrainian forces with High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM) for some time to target Russian radar systems.
“When we first announced the initial provision of HARM missiles, the way that we characterized it in the announcement was not specific. We described that we were providing a counter-radar capability,” the official was quoted as saying.
Washington has already provided Ukraine with $10.6 billion in military aid since the launch of the Russian operation.
In line with what Russian President Vladimir Putin has specified, the operation in Ukraine is aimed at “demilitarization” of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics in eastern Ukraine, which are collectively known as the Donbas region.
The two republics broke away from Ukraine in 2014 after refusing to recognize a Western-backed Ukrainian government that had overthrown a democratically-elected Russia-friendly administration.
Announcing the operation, Putin said the mission was aimed at “defending people who for eight years are suffering persecution and genocide by the Kiev regime.”
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