The United States has announced $400 million in new arms aid to Ukraine.
“The United States announced a new military aid package for Ukraine on Friday worth $400 million primarily comprised of ammunition, but for the first time will include tactical bridges to move tanks and armored vehicles.
The bridges could be used by Ukrainian troops who have been training in ‘combined arms maneuver’ warfare, which is the coordinated use of artillery shelling, alongside tank and armored vehicle attack movements, to retake territory seized by Russian forces since they invaded Ukraine a year ago.
The additional ammunition is being sent to help boost stocks in anticipation of a spring offensive.
‘Assault bridging is essential for combined arms operations. It allows armored vehicles to cross narrow rivers and ditches that would otherwise cause a whole force to slow down’, said Jack Watling, a Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the London-based Royal United Services Institute.
‘Importantly, assault bridges are only critical for offensive operations showing that the U.S. is preparing Ukraine to continue retaking its territory’, Watling added.
Anatoly Antonov, Russia's ambassador to Washington, said the U.S. wanted to inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow but had no chance of succeeding, TASS news agency said.
‘All foreign weapons that fall into Ukrainian hands on the battlefield will be ground up and destroyed’, TASS quoted Antonov as saying.
The package will be funded using Presidential Drawdown Authority, or PDA, which authorizes the president to transfer articles and services from U.S. stocks without congressional approval during an emergency, Blinken said.
Overall, the United States has provided nearly $32 billion in aid to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia, which invaded its pro-Western neighbor on February 24th last year”. -Mike Stone, Reuters
Of all the various countries providing military assistance to Ukraine through the mechanism of NATO, the United States is far and away leading the pack.
Still, the BRICS alliance as it stands dwarfs the manufacturing capacities of the NATO alliance backing Kiev.
Unless the U.S.-occupied European nations eventually surrender to Russia and break from their allies in the NATO-imposed war in Ukraine, the Washington, D.C., neoconservatives could potentially trigger a hot war with Russia that the United States and Western Europe may be poised to lose.