The Pentagon reportedly plans to send Israel tens of thousands of artillery shells that were designated initially for Ukraine, according to Axios.
“The U.S. will give Israel tens of thousands of 155mm artillery shells that were originally set aside for Ukraine, Axios reported on Thursday. The Israeli military reportedly told the Pentagon that it needed the shells to prepare for a ground invasion of Gaza.
The U.S. maintains a stockpile of ammunition at a facility in Israel, which only U.S. forces have access to. Earlier this year, the U.S. began taking shells from this facility and another stockpile in South Korea in order to meet Ukraine’s massive demand for ammo.
Israeli officials told the news site that the U.S. will now be refilling this stockpile with ammunition from its own stocks that had been earmarked for Ukraine, at the direct request of the Israeli government. The officials said that the shells will arrive in Israel in the coming weeks.
The conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted at a crucial time for Ukraine. With its summer counteroffensive over having achieved only minimal gains at an enormous human cost, Kiev is currently lobbying European nations that can’t manufacture the arms it needs, while American officials are reportedly preoccupied with rushing weapons to Israel.
Israel has not yet made heavy use of artillery in its war against Hamas, opting instead to pound Gaza with airstrikes while artillery and tanks engage in sporadic exchanges of fire with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and the Golan Heights. However, Israeli troops are currently massed along the Gaza border in preparation for a ground operation, which Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Thursday would take place ‘soon’.
Artillery would be ‘urgently’ needed for such an offensive, Israeli officials told Axios”. -RT
Aside from the people of the Gaza Strip, it’s evident by now that the biggest sufferer of the Israeli military operation against Hamas is Kiev, while the biggest victor is seemingly the Kremlin.
The artillery shells previously reserved for America’s Ukrainian proxy getting sent over to better arm the Israelis could lend credence to the idea that the United States either anticipates a potential military escalation from Hezbollah along the Israel-Lebanon border or that it could find itself having to fight on two fronts against both Russian and Chinese forces if it gets thrust into a dispute over the Taiwan Straits with China if it doesn’t abandon its efforts to one day reclaim the Crimean Peninsula from Russia on Kiev’s behalf as well as the four separatist provinces of eastern and southern Ukraine.