Ukraine will receive more than half a billion dollars in new British military aid, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Tuesday. The package will include ammunition, air defense, drones, and engineering support, as well as the UK’s largest-ever single package of equipment.
The aid is aimed at helping Ukraine push back the Russian invasion on land and sea. It comes on the heels of the U.S. House of Representatives passing a $60 billion military aid bill, which is expected to be passed by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden on Tuesday.
With the boost in Western support, Ukraine’s military command needs “to start seriously thinking about the counteroffensive and recapturing their land,” Ukraine analyst Viktor Kovalenko told Newsweek.
The latest funding will be used to rapidly deliver ammunition, air defense, drones, and engineering support, Sunak’s office said. The drones will be procured in the U.K., and the funds will support a scaling up in domestic defense supply chains, Sunak’s office said, with the British Ministry of Defense sending “our largest-ever single package of equipment from the UK.”
The package contains:
* The Storm Shadow long-range precision-guided missiles have already proven effective
* Crucially, the package will include 4 million rounds of small arms ammunition, which has been sorely needed by Ukraine’s forces
British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said in a statement that the “record package of military aid” will help Ukraine “kick Putin out and restore peace and stability in Europe.”
“The UK was the first to provide NLAW missiles, the first to give modern tanks and the first to send long-range missiles,” he said. “Now, we are going even further.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that following the House’s passage of U.S. aid, “the full-scale invasion of Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine will definitely end with our victory.”
Kovalenko, a Ukrainian combat veteran from 2014 to 2015, said that despite the Western support, “time is definitely on Russia’s side to cut the Donbas, and they have manpower for that.” With the U.S. package, “the Ukrainian military command needs to start seriously thinking about the counteroffensive and recapturing their land,” he said.
“If Kyiv won’t be able to do that this year or…gain back just a few villages, President Zelensky will have to go to the negotiating table with Putin to save Ukraine as a state, at least in [its] existing shape,” Kovalenko said.
