President Biden on Friday announced a new $225 million weapons aid package for Ukraine, which will include deliveries of additional artillery systems, air defense interceptors and munitions.
Biden announced the new security assistance during remarks alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ahead of a meeting in Paris, and he noted the package is the sixth tranche of equipment approved since signing the new foreign aid supplemental in late April.
“And, you know, [the Ukrainians] haven’t bowed down. You haven’t yielded at all. You continue to fight in a way that is just remarkable. It’s remarkable. And we’re not going to walk away from you,” Biden said on Friday. “I apologize for those weeks of not knowing what was going to pan [out] in terms of funding, because we had trouble getting a bill that we had to pass that had the money in it from some of our very conservative members who were holding it up. But we got it done, finally.”
The new $95 billion supplemental bill passed in late April included $60 billion in further aid to Ukraine to continue assistance for its fight against Russia’s ongoing invasion (Defense Daily, April 24).
Friday’s $225 million weapons aid package for Ukraine, the 59th to include capabilities pulled from existing Pentagon inventories, includes providing more ammunition for Lockheed Martin [LMT]-built HIMARS launchers, additional 155mm howitzers and 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds as well as 81mm mortar rounds.
The new security assistance announcement also arrives as officials this week confirmed the Biden administration has approved allowing Ukraine to use some U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia near Kharkiv for counter-fire purposes.
Under the new package, Ukraine is also set to receive missiles for HAWK air defense systems, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, TOW missiles, Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems, M113 Armored Personnel Carriers, coastal and riverine patrol boats, night vision devices and small arms ammunition and grenades.
“As President Biden announced today in France, the United States is sending Ukraine a significant new package of urgently needed weapons and equipment to support the Ukrainian military as it fights to repel Russia’s assault near Kharkiv,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “We will move this new assistance as quickly as possible to bolster Ukraine’s defense of its territory and its people. As President Biden has made clear, the United States and the international coalition we have assembled will continue to stand with Ukraine.”
During a visit to Kyiv last month, Blinken announced the U.S. had approved $2 billion in new Foreign Military Financing for Ukraine, which would come in the form of a “first-of-its-kind defense enterprise fund” (Defense Daily, May 15).
Blinken at the time said the new fund will cover three main components: FMF funds Ukraine can use to purchase U.S-made weapons it requires in the near-term, investments in Ukraine’s industrial base, “helping to strengthen even more its capacity to produce what it needs for itself but also to produce for others,” and funds to help Ukraine purchase military equipment from other countries.
The Biden administration on May 24 also approved a $275 million drawdown package for Ukraine, which included “additional precision strike rockets for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), artillery rounds, air-launched munitions, and anti-tank weapons,” the Pentagon said in a statement.