US Congress approves $40 bn for Ukraine

WASHINGTON: Congress approved a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine on Thursday, the latest tranche of US assistance under President Joe Biden’s promise of unwavering support for Kyiv in its fight against Russia’s invasion.

The vote was an unusually bipartisan move for harshly divided Washington. "Aid for Ukraine goes far beyond charity," Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said. "The future of American security and core strategic interests will be shaped by the outcome of this fight," he said ahead of the vote.

The bundle includes $6 billion earmarked for Ukraine to boost its armored vehicle inventory and air defence system. Nearly $9 billion is set aside to help with Ukrainian "continuity of government," among other items, including humanitarian aid.

Congress already approved almost $14 billion for Ukraine in mid-March, only weeks after Russia’s invasion. But as fighting has shifted away from the capital and to the eastern and southern parts of the country, Biden has been calling for another round of financial support for weeks.

The US president has often repeated his desire to lead in what he depicts as a great struggle of democracy against authoritarianism. But funds already designated for Ukraine support were about to run out, he said.

The US House of Representatives had already approved the $40 billion package -- the equivalent to the 2020 GDP of Cameroon -- last week. Such bipartisan support is rare in a Congress often divided along party lines.

"When it comes to Putin, either we pay now or we pay later," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who earlier in the conflict took to Twitter to call for the Russian president to be assassinated.

Though it originally intended to send only weapons of defense, Washington has since supplied artillery, helicopters and drones to the Ukrainian army, whose troops are trained to use them in the United States or third countries before heading back to the front line.

Another $9 billion of the latest package is also set to help the United States re-supply its own weapons back-stock. On Wednesday, the Senate additionally confirmed Bridget Brink, a career diplomat, as the next US ambassador to Ukraine.

The position had been vacant since 2019.Meanwhile, a senior Pentagon official said on Thursday that the Ukraine war could continue for a long time despite Kyiv’s forces recapturing the Kharkiv region and their use of substantial US artillery supplies.

The official cautioned against analysts saying that Russian forces are stretched to capacity and could within weeks reach a point at which they are no longer able to advance. "It’s difficult to know where this is going to go over time," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official praised Ukrainian forces for their command and control, cohesion and spirit, calling it "nothing short of historic" compared to the Russian forces. However, the official said, the Russians still possess a numerical advantage and a "significant amount" of combat capacity in reserve, and are holding their ground along a long front from the Donbas south and west toward Mykolaiv.

"All of that, combined with the fact that we’re talking about an area of Ukraine that these two sides have been fighting over for eight years, leads us to continue to believe that this could be a prolonged fight," the official said.

Some respected military analysts have suggested that Russian forces could run out of steam in the coming weeks. The Russian military is "approaching its high-water mark in Ukraine," wrote former Australian army general Mick Ryan, saying Moscow’s forces were "corroding... physically, morally, and intellectually from within."

Michael Kofman, the direction of Russia Studies at the CNA security think-tank in Washington, wrote last week that "Russian options are shrinking." "The more they drag their feet the further their ability to sustain the war deteriorates, and the worse their subsequent options," Kofman said.

And an analyst who posts well-informed, detailed daily updates of the war situation on Twitter under the pseudonym "Jomini of the West" referred to military theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s concept of a "culminating point," the peak of a military’s fighting ability after which its attack cannot be sustained.

"Russian forces may be coming close to a culmination point in which they will have no choice but to halt offensive action for a more extensive refit to reconstitute combat losses," the analyst wrote.

The Pentagon official said Russian forces face continuing issues in sustaining their invasion. "Combat capability itself doesn’t win wars. You got to have the will to fight, you have to have good leadership. You have to have command and control, and they’re suffering from that," the official said.

But the official said that, after Ukrainian forces recently forced Russians away from Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city, neither side is making major gains along their long front. "This is a knife fight," the official said, referring to the close-quarters combat and shelling in the Donbas and the battle lines near Kherson and Mykolayiv.