WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon on Tuesday provided more details about the $200 million military aid package for Ukraine approved by President Joe Biden in December.
“This package includes additional Javelin and other anti-armor systems, grenade launchers, munitions, and nonlethal equipment essential to Ukraine’s front-line defenders,” said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Anton Semelroth, a Pentagon spokesman. “Those deliveries are ongoing.”
The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine on Tuesday afternoon reported that 79 tons of security assistance, including about 300 Javelins, arrived in Kyiv.
The package was not announced previously, but CNN broke news of the approval earlier this month.
“We have a $200 million package that the president just approved right before Christmas that we are now fulfilling,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told Fox News on Monday. “I think there’s been at least two, maybe three deliveries already just in the last few days. And they will include additional Javelin anti-tank missiles. They will include some air defense systems. They will include small arms and ammunition, certainly medical support, that kind of thing.”
On Monday, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that the latest tranche, authorized in December, arrived in Kyiv overnight Friday and into Saturday.
This week, the Pentagon put roughly 8,500 troops on a heightened alert in case of a Russian incursion into Ukraine, and Washington allowed the Baltic states to send American-made weapons to Ukraine.
Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $2.7 billion in security assistance to build the capacity of Ukraine’s forces, including more than $650 million in 2021 alone.
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
Howard Altman is an award-winning editor and reporter who was previously the military reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and before that the Tampa Tribune, where he covered USCENTCOM, USSOCOM and SOF writ large among many other topics.