The newest arms bundle, which officers say contains Javelin antitank missiles and Stinger antiaircraft missiles, follows a $350 million arms bundle that the Biden administration accepted final month. Altogether, the administration has licensed $1.2 billion in weapons for Ukraine prior to now 12 months, officers mentioned.
The weapons come from present U.S. army stockpiles in Europe and are flown to neighboring nations equivalent to Poland and Romania, the place they’re shipped overland into western Ukraine. In lower than every week initially of the Russian assault, the US and NATO pushed greater than 17,000 antitank weapons, together with Javelins, into the arms of Ukrainian commanders.
Russia has up to now not attacked these shipments as a result of its forces have been too busy preventing in different components of Ukraine, Pentagon officers mentioned. However on Saturday, in accordance with the Interfax information company, Russia’s deputy international minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, warned that Moscow would begin firing on such shipments, stirring fears of an escalation to the battle.
The West has rejected Mr. Zelensky’s repeated pleas to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine and to offer Ukraine with Polish MIG-29 fighter jets out of worry of drawing the US and NATO right into a direct confrontation with Russia, a nuclear energy.
As an alternative, the Biden administration and 14 different allies have despatched antitank and antiaircraft weapons that analysts say have been efficient at attacking Russian army would possibly on the bottom and within the air. Pentagon officers mentioned they had been additionally working intently with Japanese European nations, specifically, to offer extra surface-to-air missile defenses to Ukraine, including that such deliveries may very well be introduced within the subsequent few days.
