Fifteen days remain until May 9, the day Russia celebrates victory over Nazi Germany, and Vladimir Putin is reported to have ordered his forces to capture Chasov Yar, a small town in eastern Donetsk, by then. Ukraine – on the one hand to be able to give the media a symbolic victory, on the other to serve the narrative that the invasion of Ukraine was a special operation to “de-Naziize” it.
Russian soldiers are already on the outskirts of the target city. Whether they will be able to figure it out will likely depend on how quickly the first billion-dollar military aid package prepared by the Pentagon actually reaches Ukraine before the Senate voted on the package on Tuesday night. aid of 60.84 billion dollars to Ukraine and, yesterday, Joe Biden ratified the relevant law.
In the statements he made, however, the US president assured that the flow of weapons to Kiev would begin “within the next few hours” – saying at the same time that Ukraine “is a fighting force with the will and the ability to prevail”.
Fast developments
The frenetic pace of developments in Washington stands in stark contrast to the immobility of the previous six months. All the more, the aid package to Ukraine remained blocked in the Parliament, due to the opposition of the Republicans.
The turning point, it seems, was an in-depth briefing of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson by the intelligence agencies, which detailed the grim fate that awaited Ukraine without that support:
Last Saturday, the House passed the controversial package, by a vote of 311-112, and along with it voted three more bills, providing $26 billion in military aid to Israel, $8 billion to Taiwan and other US allies in the region. Asia-Pacific, $9 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in war zones, the possible ban on TikTok if it does not cut ties with its Chinese parent company, as well as the possible transfer of seized Russian assets to Ukraine.
The upvote
Three 24 hours later, the package of bills also passed the (Democrat-controlled) Senate, by a vote of 79-18, allowing Biden to call yesterday “a great day for world peace”, assuring that the bills that passed Congress “will make America and the world safer.” “We are not abandoning our allies, we are supporting them.
We don’t let tyrants win, we resist them,” declared the Democratic US president. It is an undoubted victory for Biden, which took place, as he characteristically wrote in Financial Times Edward Lewis, “while Trump slept,” busy as he is in court.
The results of the votes (101 Republican congressmen and 31 senators voted in favor of the package for Ukraine) also showed, according to the Mondewhat the Trump wing really is in the US:
“A minority united in a vision of the world that stops at its borders.” But the big question now is: How quickly will the weapons reach Ukraine and how quickly will the difference be seen?
One to two months
According to analysts, this last one will take one to two months. However, the package of one billion dollars that is already being sent includes according to them New York Times Stinger surface-to-air missiles, 155 mm missiles, anti-tank guided missiles, combat vehicles as well as ammunition for the HIMARS systems, which can launch ATACMS missiles.
The source of New York Times declined to confirm whether it would include ATACMS missiles, but Zelensky himself thanked Washington on Monday for its decision to send long-range, 300-kilometer ATACMS to Kiev. The developments in the USA “do not exempt us here in Europe from the mission to further expand support to Ukraine”, Chancellor Soltz said yesterday – the obvious – at the end of his meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Germany just recently announced its intention to send a third Patriot anti-aircraft system to Ukraine, and Scholz appealed to European countries with Patriots to consider offering such systems to Ukraine in turn. At the same time, however, he again ruled out the possibility of Germany sending Taurus missiles to the country.
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