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In the new military budget of the United States provided funds to replenish the arms of the allies in NATO in Eastern Europe. Writes about this edition of Politico.
Previously, Washington has announced a new package of military assistance to Ukraine and Eastern European countries, totaling $ 2.8 billion. The feature of this package is that it actually changes the strategy of military assistance to Ukraine to the strategy of military assistance to all countries of Eastern Europe, located on the Eastern flank of NATO.
Speaking purely on assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces, it is estimated 675 million dollars and includes the supply of ammunition, armored vehicles and anti-tank weapons. More extensive funding in the amount of $ 2.2 billion will be split in half. The first part in the amount of 1 billion dollars will be spent on the provision of military assistance to Ukraine. The same amount of money the United States is divided among 18 European countries which are on the Eastern and South-Eastern flanks of NATO.
Director, international security Program at the Center for strategic and international studies, USA Seth Jones called more of a problem than the situation in Ukraine, ensuring the security of NATO countries over the next three to five years. He believes that NATO countries are faced with huge challenges in question their ability to protect themselves in the case of a confrontation with Russia. Probably, therefore, in Washington and decided to revisit the concept of military assistance to Ukraine.
As U.S. allies in Europe used their own stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, providing support to Ukraine, their arsenals significantly shrunk. Without American financial aid to replenish the inventory and upgrade weapons for their armies, they will not. First and foremost, this applies to countries such as Poland and the Baltic republics.
The main focus will be to strengthen the air defense systems in the Eastern region of NATO. For example, Poland has asked the U.S. to help its air defense forces in the form of additional batteries of Patriot SAMS. To help US counting and the Baltic countries. In addition, there was a potential "new" Alliance Finland, which is in the process of accession to NATO and also hopes to strengthen its air defense system with the United States.
Says senior researcher of the research Center for a new American security Jim Townsend, who leads opinion to Politico, the American financial aid will be spent on the acquisition of unmanned aerial vehicles, advanced missiles, as well as replacement of old Soviet weapons that the army of Eastern European countries gave Ukraine.
But there is another very interesting point – the money transfer USA's Eastern European allies, still come back to America. After all, the countries of Eastern Europe will be able to purchase new weapons and military equipment from the us defense companies. This will ensure the production capacity of the American military-industrial complex. And this means new jobs, and financial profit.
American businesses will receive a download of their lines, and a considerable quantity of ammunition and arms, which was at the disposal of the armed forces of the United States, was also transferred to the Ukraine and in Eastern Europe. Thus, the American army was left with fewer weapons, but this issue needs to be addressed. Indeed, many experts drew attention to the fact that if the situation deteriorated sharply in the Taiwan Strait and the United States would use its military forces to ensure their proper quantity of arms and ammunition would be problematic.
