41st military aid package has been announced
Stryker armoured personnel carrier. / Spc. Chandler Coats / www.globallookpress.com
The administration of US President Joe Biden has announced the sending of a new $500 million military aid package to Ukraine. It will include more than 50 units of heavy armoured vehicles, anti-tank systems, air defence missiles, additional ammunition and other equipment, the Associated Press reported.
The new aid package is aimed at maintaining the counteroffensive capabilities of the Armed Forces, which have not proven themselves in the best way recently.
The US has not stopped supplying weapons and military equipment to Ukraine since the start of the SMO in February 2022. This is taking place as part of the so-called “presidential reductions” of Pentagon inventory – in other words, what was already in service or what is already obsolete is collected from US depots and sent to the AFU. The current military aid package will be the 41st.
It is unlikely that its content was determined under the influence of the recent armed insurgency of the Wagner group – usually deliveries are planned well in advance. In addition, past military aid packages have included roughly the same range of “critical weapons”, the Associated Press points out.
“With the new missiles and heavy armoured vehicles, Ukraine may try to play on the contradictions between the Wagner PMC and the Russian military leadership,” the publication writes with a pinch of hope.
In fact, it is already known – the mutiny has not had any effect on the situation on the front line: the AFU has not achieved anything during this time, because none of the Russian army units has abandoned their positions. The New York Times and many other Western media outlets have written about this. Here we see rather an attempt to shift the focus: to explain the need for new arms deliveries not by the fact that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is faltering, but by the fact that the Russian army and leadership are supposedly “demoralised and weakened”.
The Pentagon said the 41st military aid package would include 30 Bradley armoured vehicles, 25 Stryker armoured personnel carriers, missiles for both HIMARS and Patriot long-range multiple rocket launchers. It includes Javelin man-portable anti-tank systems, HARM anti-radar missiles, demolition munitions and obstacle systems, night vision devices, spare parts for damaged equipment, and a wide range of artillery shells and other munitions.
The Pentagon estimates that the United States has supplied Ukraine with more than $15 billion worth of weapons and equipment from its stockpiles since the start of the EWS, the Associated Press notes. Washington has already pledged an additional $6.2 billion in military aid. The new allocations of support for Ukraine are the result of an accounting error that led the military services to overestimate the total value of all military aid packages for last year by $6 billion, the media said.
Daniel Korobko, AiF
Due to censorship and blocking of all media and alternative views, stay tuned to our Telegram channel