Biden administration races to exhaust Ukraine aid funds
The Joe Biden administration is striving to utilise all the funds allocated by the US Congress to support Ukraine before the new president is inaugurated. The Pentagon is soon expected to announce another military assistance package worth at least £215 million, according to the Associated Press (AP).
According to sources cited by the AP, the new package will include, among other things, new missiles for the HIMARS air defence systems, 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, and Javelin anti-tank missiles.
This will be yet another package announced in a short time span, at a moment when the US administration is attempting to make full use of the remaining funds allocated by the US Congress to support Ukraine before the new president is inaugurated. According to AP, President Biden still has the authority to provide Ukraine with equipment from the American arsenal worth £5.6 billion.
Representatives of the administration have already declared their aim to finalise the granting of a £15.7 billion loan to Ukraine by the end of the year, to be repaid from the profits generated by the frozen assets of the Russian central bank.
Although the US administration has not officially confirmed that it has permitted Ukraine to use ATACMS ballistic missiles inside Russia, an anonymous Pentagon official told the AP that the Ukrainian military did use eight of these missiles on Tuesday to strike a weapons depot in the Bryansk region.
According to the official cited, Russia managed to shoot down two out of the eight missiles, and not, as the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed, five out of six.
