The United States is providing up to $500 million in additional military aid for Ukraine, three U.S. officials tell VOA, in a package that is expected to include 55 more Stryker and Bradley armored vehicles.
One official, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity ahead of the package’s release Tuesday, said the latest aid also includes munitions for Patriot surface-to-air missile systems, along with more rockets for Ukraine’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).
Another official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told VOA the aid package would provide Ukraine with a large number of Bangalore torpedoes — explosive charges placed within connected tubes that can clear obstacles from a protected position. The charge can be used to create about a 4-meter-wide path through barbed wire, heavy underbrush or areas covered by mines.
The official said smaller numbers of Bangalore torpedoes have proven “extremely useful” for Ukraine to date.
The chaos inside Russia over the weekend did not appear to lead to changes on the battlefield during that period.
“Wagner [Group forces] may have moved, but the minefields and other obstacles didn’t,” the second official said.
The latest aid package marks the 41st authorized presidential drawdown of military equipment from Defense Department inventories since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Moscow began a renewed offensive in Ukraine earlier this year that has stalled, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently confirmed that Kyiv’s massive counteroffensive was underway.
Russian forces have spent months heavily fortifying their positions inside Ukraine, making Kyiv’s counteroffensive even more difficult to execute.
“It's harder to go on offense than it is to be on defense,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “[Ukrainians] have entrenched, dug-in Russian forces with minefields in front of them. That's about as hard as it can get in warfare.”
