(Presidentialwire.com)- The United States will be sending more of its offensive weapons over to Ukraine in its efforts to fight back Russia.
This marks a “substantive” change in the aid that the United States is giving to Ukraine.
Two high-ranking government officials says this is being done because Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, believe there’s an opportunity for it to regain some territory that it initially lost to Russia early on in the war. One of the officials told CNN that these new vehicles and munitions would give Ukraine “much more capability.”
They’re being sent not just by the U.S. but also Germany.
Last week, President Joe Biden said the U.S. would be sending 50 Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine, in addition to some rocket systems that have a long range. This change in aid comes just about a month after the Ukrainian president visited Washington to beg members of Congress to send Ukraine additional aid.
After the announcement of the new aid package was handed down last week, Laura Cooper — who serves as the deputy assistant defense secretary — said:
“We are positioning Ukraine to be able to move forward and retake territory.”
The Biden administration, according to the U.S. officials that CNN sourced, is still focused on giving Ukraine aid and weapons that will help them follow the battle strategies that they are developing by themselves. In other words, the U.S. is not providing direct military guidance on how to attack Russia or how Ukraine should defend itself.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said recently that the vehicles and weapons that are a part of this aid package will allow Ukraine to shift its focus to warfare in the Donbas region’s open farmlands. This is the eastern part of Ukraine that Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, annexed back in September.
This additional aid comes at a time when Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives. The GOP has said multiple times in the past that it wants accountability for how Ukraine uses the aid that the U.S. sends to them.
In fact, Kevin McCarthy, who last week was elected House Speaker, said the GOP wouldn’t stand for just writing Ukraine what he called a “blank check.”
A Politico report last month obtained communications from the State Department that showed the federal government is having problems tracking all of the aid that is being sent to Ukraine. In total, the U.S. has sent more than $50 billion worth of aid to the country.
The Politico report said that U.S. officials are trying to rely on Ukrainian staffers and forces to keep an eye on how Ukraine is spending the money they are getting from America.
The cable that Politico obtained revealed that the Biden administration is relying on Ukrainian staffers to coordinate with senior officials at the embassy so they can oversee the aid. What’s worse, many of those staffers on whom the Biden administration is relying on aren’t even located in Ukraine.
