The US Congress gave final approval to a long-delayed US$61 billion aid package for Ukraine on Tuesday. Ukraine hopes to quickly get fresh supplies to the war zone as Russia makes battlefield gains.
A big, new package of US military aid will help Ukraine avoid defeat in its war with Russia. Winning will still be a long slog.
The arms and ammunition in the US$61 billion military aid package should enable Ukraine to slow the Russian army’s bloody advances and block its strikes on troops and civilians. And it will buy Ukraine time – for long-term planning about how to take back the fifth of the country now under Russian control.
“Ultimately it offers Ukraine the prospect of staying in the war this year,” said Michael Clarke, visiting professor in war studies at King’s College London. “Sometimes in warfare you’ve just got to stay in it. You’ve just got to avoid being rolled over.”
The US House of Representatives approved the package on Saturday after months of delays by some Republicans wary of US involvement overseas. It was passed by the US Senate on Tuesday, and US President Joe Biden said he would sign it on Wednesday.
The difference could be felt within days on the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russia’s much larger army has been slowly taking territory against massively outgunned Ukrainian forces.
The aid approval means Ukraine may be able to release artillery ammunition from dwindling stocks that it has been rationing. More equipment will come soon from American stocks in Poland and Germany, and later from the US.
The first shipments are expected to arrive by the beginning of next week, said Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.
But opposition lawmaker Vadym Ivchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s National Security, Defence and Intelligence Committee, said logistical challenges and bureaucracy could delay shipments to Ukraine by two to three months, and it would be even longer before they reach the front line.
While details of the shipments are classified, Ukraine’s most urgent needs are artillery shells to stop Russian troops from advancing, and anti-aircraft missiles to protect people and infrastructure from missiles, drones and bombs.
