As Lloyd Austin arrived, the US announced another $400 million in military aid
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made an unannounced trip to Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, as Washington announced a new $400 million withdrawal of munitions from Pentagon stockpiles for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s war effort.
Austin arrived by train, and there were “no major announcements,” according to the Wall Street Journal, which noted that Ukraine had hoped for NATO membership or permission to use US-supplied long-range weapons against Russia.
The US “will get Ukraine what it needs to fight for its survival and security,” Austin said in a speech after meeting with Zelensky and his counterpart, Rustem Umerov.
“For anyone who thinks that American leadership is expensive — well, consider the price of American retreat,” he added, noting that “the price of principle is always dwarfed by the cost of capitulation.”
Meanwhile, the Pentagon said it would release $400 million worth of US stockpiles – mainly ammunition for HIMARS, mortars and artillery, along with some M113 armored vehicles – to Ukraine. This is in addition to the $425 million batch of military aid the US announced last week.
According to the Pentagon’s own records, the US has provided Kiev with 68 tranches of aid since August 2021. The WSJ estimated the value of the aid at over $64 billion, not including the additional “tens of billions” from Canada and NATO’s European members.
Austin’s visit to Kiev is likely his last as Pentagon head, the Journal reported, citing current and former US officials who thought the retired general’s “cautious approach” may have “hobbled Ukraine’s war effort.” Heather Conley, senior adviser at the German Marshall Fund, told the paper that the US should have “been clear and upfront and given them full capabilities” from the start.
Such a notion is “one of the greatest myths in Washington,” Colin Kahl, Austin’s deputy for policy who left in July, told the Journal.
“It engages in a series of magical thinking, where you can move things instantaneously, give Ukrainians things they are not trained on, have them appear out of thin air, and it assumes there is no trade-offs,” Kahl said.
An anonymous Pentagon official told the Journal that Austin deserves credit for helping Kiev “defeat Russia’s strategic objective” of conquering Ukraine.
Moscow has never declared such an objective. Russia’s stated goals in the conflict include making Ukraine a neutral nation with caps on its military strength, the reversal of discriminatory policies against ethnic Russians by Kiev, the removal of radical Ukrainian nationalists from positions of authority, and the relinquishment by Kiev of its claim of sovereignty over five formerly-Ukrainian regions.