US to furnish further $1bn in weapons aid to Ukraine

The US will provide an additional $1 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, including artillery, coastal defence weaponry and advanced rocket systems, US president Joe Biden said on Wednesday.

Speaking after a call with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Mr Biden also said the US would provide $225 million in additional humanitarian assistance, as the West steps up effort to help Kyiv resist the Russian assault now in its fourth month.

“I reaffirmed my commitment that the United States will stand by Ukraine as it defends its democracy and support its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of unprovoked Russian aggression,” Mr Biden said in a statement.

The pledge comes as western defence ministers met in Brussels to discuss additional aid for Kyiv. Ukraine has asked repeatedly for more heavy weaponry to fend off Russian advances in the eastern Donbas region, with Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Anna Malyar saying this week that they had received only 10 per cent of what was needed.

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The new weapons come out of the $40 billion in additional assistance that the US pledged last month, including about half for military assistance.

Speaking in Brussels at a meeting convened to co-ordinate military aid, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said the West “can’t afford to let up” in offering assistance to Ukraine. “We don’t have any time to waste. So we’re here to dig in our spurs and deepen our support,” he said.

But western officials also cautioned that the battlefield use of western weapons was being slowed by the need to train Ukrainian troops in how to use the more high-tech equipment.

Anti-ship Harpoons

Ben Wallace, UK defence secretary, on Wednesday said that British delivery of long-range, multiple-launch rocket systems was “imminent” and that London was also looking to send land-launched anti-ship missiles such as Harpoons to help Ukrainian forces repel Russian warships in the Black Sea.

Speaking in Oslo, Mr Wallace stressed that a bottleneck was Ukraine fighters’ need for the “very key component of training” as they burned through the Soviet weaponry they have been using and moved on to western-supplied Nato kit.

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg echoed that caution, saying: “There will... be some time needed to just make the Ukrainians ready to use and operate these systems.”

There are also concerns among some western countries that their own stockpiles are running low. Mr Wallace said there was “little left on our own shelves” of some weapons, adding that the UK had recently purchased 155mm howitzers from a third party which it had refurbished and sent to Ukraine.

At the depot in the German city of Stuttgart where western allies co-ordinate arms supplies to Kyiv, UK and US field commanders said weapons were getting to the front lines in as little as 48 hours once they had been taken to the border and put into Ukrainian hands.

After Moscow launched its attack on Ukraine in February, the West at first supplied relatively simple weapons such as NLAW anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. But since April, as Russia has sharpened its focus into an artillery-dominated war in the eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s need for more sophisticated equipment has risen.

“We make it as easy for them to learn and understand the new equipment we’re giving them so that they can use it as effectively as possible,” Brig Chris King, who leads the UK contribution, told pool reporters.

One repeated request from Ukraine is for more drones, of which there are deep western stockpiles. The US has provided “kamikaze” Switchblade drones and is debating whether to supply high-end MQ1 Gray Eagles that can launch precision hellfire missiles and provide detailed surveillance data. Among the issues are fears of Russian escalation and worries about technology transfer as well as training.

“We can only get them what we have, but in the case of the drones that’s not the issue,” Adam Smith, chair of the House of Representatives’ armed services committee, said on Wednesday at a breakfast with reporters. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022