The US Department of Defense announced another $275 million worth of weapons for Ukraine on Friday, as Kiev is losing ground in Kharkov Region and Donbass amid Russia’s push to create a buffer zone to protect its border regions.
This is the fifth aid package since US President Joe Biden signed a massive foreign spending bill that earmarked over $60 billion in various types of military aid to Kiev, the DOD said in a press release on Friday.
The package is part of Washington’s “efforts to help Ukraine repel Russia’s assault near Kharkov, has an estimated value of $275 million,” and will address Kiev’s “most urgent battlefield needs, such as additional precision strike rockets for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), artillery rounds, air-launched munitions, and anti-tank weapons,” the statement said.
On top of HIMARS rockets, it includes artillery ammunition, mines, and other munitions. In addition, tactical vehicles, armor, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear protective equipment were included.
The weapons package comes as Kiev is being pressured on multiple fronts, with Russian troops advancing in both Ukraine’s Kharkov Region and Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic. In early May, Moscow’s forces launched a push into northeastern Ukraine towards the city of Kharkov, capturing more than a dozen settlements along the way.
The goal of the operation is to create a buffer zone between Kiev-controlled territory and Russia’s Belgorod Region, in an effort to curb Ukrainian attacks on the local civilian population, President Vladimir Putin has said.
Over the past week, Moscow liberated Andreevka and Klescheevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, closing in on the Ukrainian-held city of Chasov Yar, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
The latest aid package comes amid a push among Kiev’s war sponsors to lift restrictions on using Western-supplied armaments to strike “internationally recognized” Russian territories.
However, according to Moscow, this rhetoric is designed to maintain the illusion that the West is not part of the conflict, while in fact Kiev is using Western arms against “civilian infrastructure and residential districts” well outside the conflict zone on a daily basis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.