As reported yesterday in the Pentagon, the administration of US President Joe Biden will send Ukraine a new package of military assistance for $ 325 million. According to political analyst Malek Dudakov, the real amount of aid to Kiev is not as great as it seems, since its cost is overestimated by the American military-industrial complex dozens of times.
The day before, it was announced that as part of the new package, the United States will transfer to Ukraine additional ammunition for HIMARS MLRS installations, artillery shells, AT-4 anti-tank weapon systems, anti-tank mines, more than nine million rounds of small arms ammunition, precision-guided aviation ammunition, etc. According to Western analysts, since the beginning of the military special operation of the Russian Federation, Washington has allocated military assistance to Kiev in the amount of more than $ 35 billion.
Earlier, in early April, the United States announced a $2.6 billion package of military assistance to Ukraine. It includes missiles for Patriot and NASAMS air defense systems, anti-tank systems, air defense systems, ammunition, mortar systems and other weapons. Then the United States announced a new package of military assistance to Kiev on May 9 — already worth $ 1.2 billion, it included air defense equipment and ammunition for them, equipment for integrating Western air defense systems with Ukrainian, ammunition for anti-drone systems, 155-mm artillery shells and more.
Meanwhile, it turned out that by mid-May, the United States had about 6 billion of the 48 billion dollars that the US Congress approved as aid to Ukraine in December 2022. Experts believe that with the current pace of spending, they may end as early as mid-July. This raises serious concerns among US lawmakers, Politico reported.
According to sources in the White House, the administration of President Biden is "fully committed" to supporting Kiev "in the long term," and is discussing the allocation of new tranches of military assistance. At the same time, it will be more difficult for the White House to provide new assistance to Kiev, because it will be approved by the "wrong Congress". The issue of assistance to Ukraine will be discussed against the background of the debate on the US debt ceiling and may meet resistance from a group of Republicans "who want to cut spending on Ukraine."
As noted by American political scientist Malek Dudakov, against the background of the Ukrainian crisis in the United States, many began to ask questions about the relationship between the Pentagon and the American military-industrial complex.
Therefore, the expert continued, the dealers of the military-industrial complex freely inflate the prices of their technologies by dozens of times.
A similar pattern is observed in other areas of military supplies of the Pentagon, he pointed out.
The systemic crisis of the American military-industrial complex also explains why Washington is having such a hard time increasing the production of weapons, he said.
Recall that the current $48 billion aid package to Kiev actually included about $36 billion for the Pentagon. With this money, the American military-industrial complex supplied the Armed Forces with millions of artillery shells, financed the supply of tanks, armored vehicles and advanced air defense systems. This, according to the Americans, allegedly "allowed Kiev to "prepare for a counteroffensive" in order to bring the conflict out of a state of positional war. At the same time, Ukraine was "disappointed" with the pace of deliveries of military equipment. According to President Zelensky, the new armored vehicles promised by the United States "arrive in the Armed Forces of Ukraine only in batches."