The latest U.S. aid package will include more Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles
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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s latest $325 million military aid package to Kyiv will include the kind of armored fighting vehicles that have already become a mainstay in the counteroffensive Ukraine has undertaken in its east and south, two Pentagon officials said on Monday.
The aid package, which will come from existing Pentagon inventories and is expected to be officially announced on Tuesday, includes a total of about two dozen Bradley and Stryker armored fighting vehicles, the officials said. It also includes more rockets for the HIMARS mobile system and more missiles for the air defense systems known as NASAMS, they added. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the aid package before the announcement.
The German Leopard 2 tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles that Ukraine’s army has sent forward over the past week as part of the long-anticipated counteroffensive are an upgrade from its aging fleet of Soviet-era equipment. They have helped lead a multipronged assault against Russian forces along a front that arcs for hundreds of miles, focusing on a swath of the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.
Sending additional American armored vehicles took on added significance in the past week as fighting intensified. At least eight American-made Bradleys were abandoned by Ukrainian troops or destroyed, based on videos and photographs posted by pro-war Russian bloggers and verified by The New York Times.
The United States has already sent 109 Bradleys and 90 Strykers to Ukraine, according to the Defense Department. Some European countries have also sent dozens of their own armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine in the past several months.
With the latest military aid package, the Pentagon has committed just over $40 billion in arms, ammunition and equipment, whether from its own stockpiles or from new contracts with defense companies for future delivery, since Russia’s full-scale invasion started in February 2022.
The additional aid comes as Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, prepare to leave for a series of NATO meetings later this week in Brussels, where the war in Ukraine will be the main topic.
— Eric Schmitt
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