The Biden administration on Thursday announced $500 million in additional military aid for Ukraine as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin is getting desperate after nearly 3 years of war.
The latest aid package, drawn from existing weapons and equipment stockpiles within the Department of Defense, will provide Kyiv with air defense missiles; air-to-ground munitions; and equipment to support Ukraine’s use of F-16s.
Armored bridging systems, secure communications technology, small arms and ammunition and spare parts for military equipment will also be provided, according to the Pentagon.
The new firepower for Ukraine is part of the “surge in security assistance” that President Biden pledged for the war-torn nation last September, when the 82-year-old commander in chief welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House.
The drawdown is the seventy-fourth tranche of equipment the US has provided Ukraine since August 2021. In total, the US has provided Ukraine with $66.5 billion military aid since Biden took office.
The aid package was announced ahead of Austin’s 25th and final meeting with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group – an alliance of the 32 NATO members and 25 other nations formed by the defense secretary to support Ukraine counter Russia’s invasion.
“I ended our session by challenging this history-making coalition to continue to support Ukraine,” Austin said in remarks at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the site of the contact group’s first meeting, nearly a thousand days ago, in April of 2022.
“We still face major challenges ahead,” Austin warned. “But as the founder of this Contact Group, I am very proud of the way that our allies and partners have stepped up.”
“Since April of 2022, the Contact Group’s other members have committed more than $60 billion in direct security assistance to Ukraine,” the defense secretary said, touting the contributions of other nations that have about equaled what the US has put into the war effort.
Austin, 71, described the contact group as the “most consequential global coalition in more than 30 years,” and attributed the alliance work with putting Putin in a state of desperation.
“Since 2022, Russia has suffered more than 700,000 casualties in Ukraine,” the defense secretary said, noting that last November Russia “lost nearly 1,500 troops a day.”
“The Kremlin has been reduced to scouring Russia’s jails and coercing contract soldiers. Moscow has even rushed troops from North Korea into a war that they don’t belong in,” he added.
“That’s another clear sign of Putin’s desperation.”
Austin said some estimates peg North Korean forces having suffered “far north” of 1,000 casualties since December.
“Putin has not achieved a single one of his strategic objectives” since the invasion, Austin declared. “Not one.”
Zelensky, who also attended the contact group meeting, urged President-elect Donald Trump to continue supporting Ukraine when he takes office later this month.
“We’ve come such a long way that it would honestly be crazy to drop the ball now and not keep building on the defense coalitions we’ve created,” Zelensky said. “No matter what’s going on in the world, everyone wants to feel sure that their country will not just be erased off the map.”
