US president Joe Biden is expected to announce $800mn in additional military aid for Ukraine on Wednesday, including artillery and armoured vehicles, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The assistance comes as Ukraine is preparing for a new Russian offensive in the south-eastern Donbas region, after successfully forcing a retreat of Moscow’s forces from the area around Kyiv.
The US and its allies are looking to provide weapons to help Ukraine as it transitions away from the street and city fighting that dominated its defence of Kyiv to the more conventional battles expected in eastern Ukraine.
The move comes in response to pleas from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for additional lethal aid from the west. On Wednesday Zelensky made an English-language video appeal calling for more weaponry to combat Russian tanks and missiles.
“Freedom must be armed better than tyranny. Western countries have everything to make it happen,” Zelensky said.
Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, and Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, last week spent two hours on the phone reviewing Ukraine’s requests for aid with the head of the country’s armed forces and Zelensky’s top adviser.
“Some of that’s been delivered, some of it’s on the way, and some of it we’re still working to source,” Sullivan told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.
A National Security Council spokesman said the US was “working around the clock to provide Ukraine with additional capabilities they have requested and need to defend their country”.
The new pledge will bring the total US assistance supplied to Ukraine since the beginning of the war to $2.5bn. In addition to artillery and armoured vehicles, the package will include engineering and field support and night vision equipment.
The funding will come from the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the president to draw on US stocks of weapons during an emergency without congressional approval. The administration did, however, consult with Congress about the decision on Tuesday, the person said.
The Pentagon is also convening the top eight US arms makers on Wednesday to discuss stepping up assistance to Ukraine and preparing for a protracted conflict, a defence official said.
Additional reporting by
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