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The Pentagon said Monday it was sending Ukraine an additional billion dollars military assistance, including tens of thousands more munitions and explosives — the biggest package since Russia launched its invasion in February.
the ad It comes as Ukrainian forces launch a counter-offensive aimed at retaking the southern city of Kherson. the operation it is seen in Kyiv and Washington as a vital bet to prevent the Kremlin from fulfilling its promise to absorb the occupied territories through planned planning. referendums Senior US officials have denounced Moscow’s annexation plan as a “farce”.
the new The security assistance package includes ammunition for the high-mobility artillery rocket systems known as HIMARS and 75,000 shells, as well as mortar systems, surface-to-air missiles, Javelin. anti-armor missiles, claymore mines and demolition explosives. push total US military support to Ukraine exceeded $9 billion since the war began, officials said.
“These are all critical capabilities to help the Ukrainians repel the Russian offensive in the east and also to address developments in the south and elsewhere,” said Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl. He characterized the package as the type of weapons that “the Ukrainian people are using so effectively to defend their country.”
Kahl said the Russian military has suffered considerable setbacks as a result of US efforts to arm and equip Ukraine, indicating that its forces have suffered between 70,000 and 80,000 casualties in the past six months. The figure includes dead and injured personnel, he said.
Russia’s vote to annex occupied Ukraine sparks divisions and pleas for help
But the counteroffensive in Kherson will likely be a challenge for Ukrainian forces.
The government in Kyiv has indicated for weeks that it intends to move into the city, which before the invasion was home to about 300,000 inhabitants. And while the Ukrainians’ efforts have already helped retake some nearby villages, Russian units have taken notice, said Dmitry Gorenburg, a senior research scientist at the CNA think tank and an expert on the Russian military.
It remains to be seen, he added, whether Washington’s latest arms transfer will be enough enable Ukrainians to achieve their immediate goals.
“The Russians have redeployed a lot of defenses … in that area,” Gorenburg said. “Kherson is a big city. And the same problems of attacking a big city that the Russians faced in the early stages of their attack, the Ukrainians would face if the Russians decided to defend it.”
While the influx of munitions and anti-tank systems in Monday’s aid package are “good for stopping offensives,” Gorenburg said, “it’s not necessarily going to be that helpful if you have a lot of dug-in infantry.”
In Ukraine, the sense of urgency is dire, officials say. President Volodymyr Zelensky told members of Congress late last month that his military had just a few weeks to change the course of the war — a timeline driven partly because of Russia’s threat to annex parts of occupied Ukraine as soon as next month and because of the knowledge that the operation will become exponential more complicated if it drags into winter.
Ukrainian leaders have asked the West for more HIMARS, which along with other sophisticated weapons systems have allowed them to destroy Russian command posts, ammunition depots, air defense sites, radar and communications nodes, and long-range artillery positions . So far, they have received 16 US-made systems, three British-made equivalents and a promise from Germany that three more will be delivered, according to Kahl.
Zelensky’s top advisers have said dozens more are needed if Ukraine is to roll back the Russian advance. Asked Monday if the absence of additional HIMARS was an indication that the United States was depleting its stockpile of systems, Kahl declined to answer directly.
The weapons, he said, have been “very effective at hitting things,” while making it “harder for Russia to move forces around the battlefield.” The The Pentagon, Kahl added, is committed to “delivering weapons from the United States’ stockpiles when they become available.”
While waiting for the guns, the Ukrainians hold the line with Soviet artillery
While HIMARS’ long-range precision capabilities are not particularly well-suited to the close-range combat of a slow-moving counteroffensive, they have been useful in holding down Russian logistics, the weak underbelly that crippled their efforts to sack Kyiv early in the war. on the back foot, experts say. By targeting Russian munitions depots inside occupied areas of Ukraine, HIMARS strikes have complicated Russia’s resupply of its own front, wreaking “havoc on supply lines” that could provide Ukraine with openings for additional gains , Gorenburg said.
But the Ukrainian military must be ready to take advantage of these opportunities, he said. Although Western governments have consistently pledged military assistance to Ukraine, in many cases the promised munitions have been slow to reach the front.
According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, as of July 1, the United States and Germany had delivered less than half of the announced military aid to Ukraine. (The institute said it plans to update its figures this month.)
Zelensky calls on West to ban all Russian travelers
But Zelensky wants his benefactors to do more than provide weapons to help his country fend off the threat of annexation., an imminent fate became more real on Monday when the head of the Russian-appointed occupation administration in Zaporizhzhia signed a decree to move forward with a 9/11 referendum.
In an interview, Zelensky told The Washington Post that the United States and its allies should take the unprecedented step of banning all Russian travelers from their countries.
“The most important sanctions are to close the borders, because the Russians are taking someone else’s land,” Zelensky said. Russians should “live in their own world,” he added, “until they change their philosophy.”
Isabelle Khurshudyan in Kyiv contributed to this report.