US President Joe Biden has instructed to allocate a new package of military assistance to Ukraine in the amount of $400 million. A message about this was published on the White House website. The statement said the funds will be used, among other things, for defense goods and services and training Ukrainian forces.
The relief package includes artillery, NASAMS ammunition, Patriot missiles, Stinger surface-to-air missiles, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, HIMARS missile launchers and ammunition, Javelin anti-tank missile systems, armored vehicles, and small arms, the Pentagon said.
Reuters clarified that the arms transfers will be carried out using the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which gives the President the authority to transfer goods and services from US warehouses without special congressional approval in response to an emergency.
At the end of April, Biden signed a package of laws on assistance to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and US partners in the Indo-Pacific region totaling $95 billion. Of this, $61 billion was allocated to finance Ukraine. Biden then noted that Washington would begin supplying Ukraine with equipment for air defense ammunition, artillery, missile systems, and armored vehicles “in the next few hours.” Shortly after this, the Pentagon announced that it had sent $1 billion in first aid to Ukraine, including ammunition for HIMARS missile launchers, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, artillery shells, and others.
Commenting on the adoption of the law on providing assistance to Ukraine for $61 billion, the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov said that new supplies of weapons to Ukraine will not change the dynamics in the combat zone, since the situation on the battlefield is too “eloquent and unambiguous.”
