Military Aid Package – OFT Ukraine Mission

THE US ANNOUNCES A NEW, UNANTICIPATED $800 MILLION MILITARY AID PACKAGE
Since the beginning of August, the Pentagon has announced two previous military aid packages worth $550 million and $1 billion.

This latest aid package either coincides with the significant shift in the war’s momentum in favor of the Ukrainians or has in-part caused that shift.

By Dr. E. C. Olson, Director
OFT Ukraine Mission

In what came as a bit of a surprise to Ukraine stakeholders and observers, on August 20^th, the Pentagon unofficially announced that President Biden was preparing another military aid package, authorized and funded via his Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the President to authorize the transfer of “excess weapons” from U.S. stocks. The official announcement could come as soon as August 22^nd.

In all, the new aid package carries a value of between $775 million and $800 million. Most of the funding for those weapons comes from money that Congress had approved after the Russian invasion – including $13.6 billion in March and another $40 billion in May (approximately one-half of that total amount was earmarked for military assistance, the rest for humanitarian and medical aid). According to reliable sources, to-date the US has used approximately $11 billion of that, including this latest aid package, the 19^th such aid package given to Ukraine by the US.

Why we are focusing our reporting on US military and humanitarian aid packages…beginning with the obvious: approximately 50% of the US aid coming to Ukraine is in the form of humanitarian and medical aid equipment and supplies, a small portion of which would be available to our Mission. But in speaking specifically about the military aid, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken pointed out additional importance, “These military capabilities are carefully calibrated to make the most difference on the battlefield and strengthen Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table”. There’s no question that as long as the war continues, the need for humanitarian aid will only increase significantly, so anything that brings about a peaceful end to this war is important to us and our Mission.

The Pentagon announced that in this new aid package were substantial defense equipment and ammunition, including HIMARS missiles, artillery weapons and ammunition, and mine-clearing systems. This array of military aid mirrors that of the last several aid packages that were released since early-July, and what distinguishes this latest release, and those other ones is that everything that the US is providing meets the Ukrainians present and future needs.

Also included in this latest aid package are 15 Scan Eagles surveillance drones, and 40 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles known as MRAPs with mine-clearing rollers and 2,000 anti-armor rounds.

This matching aid supplies are vitally important as the Ukrainians look to expand the current counter-offensive action in the southern portion of the front lines, in the general vicinity of Kherson, Mykolaiv and Crimea, where they have made significant progress in pushing the Russian forces out of territory that had occupied since March. The Ukrainian attacks in Crimea have been especially damaging to Russia’s war plans and in the morale of Russian soldiers and civilian sympathizers. Russians consider Crimea to be “theirs”, having occupied the large peninsula since 2014.

As was expected, the Pentagon announcement was viewed by the Russians quite negatively, but their initial reactions went past the standard response of “this again shows that the US wants to continue its global hegemony by dragging the war out” to include new warnings of “unpredictable consequences”. Also, in a strictly public relations move, the Russians also announced that in the past few weeks their military forces had destroyed a number of US-provided and European-provided weapons, but they did not provide any facts supporting that contention.