New US weapons for Ukraine will help for a while

The $300 million in new weapons the United States has spent ships to UkraineThe first US military aid package in months will help the Ukrainian army hold off Russian forces for a few weeks, analysts say, but it will not change the overall situation on the battlefield, where Moscow currently has the advantage.

Ukraine has long said it would lose more ground to Russia unless it gets more weapons and ammunition, but a robust $60 billion aid package has been bottled up in the House of Representatives for months by conservative Republican lawmakers. That has left Ukrainian troops on the front line vulnerable to long-range glide bombs dropped by Russian aircraft and intense artillery attacks.

Here’s a look at the current situation.

What has the US promised, and will it make a difference?

US military support for Ukraine dried up in late December, and the White House has since been looking for ways to circumvent the impasse in the House of Representatives. The new package, announced Tuesday, does that by taking advantage of cost savings in Pentagon contracts.

The package will supply Ukraine with a range of much-needed weapons. These include Stinger missiles to target aircraft, which Russia has increasingly used in support of ground attacksartillery rounds to keep Russian forces at bay and anti-tank weapons to repel mechanized attacks.

“These munitions will keep Ukrainian weapons firing for a period of time, but only for a short period of time,” said Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser. “It is not nearly enough to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs, and it will not prevent Ukraine from running out of ammunition.”

The $300 million in military aid announced on Tuesday pales in comparison to that of the US previous billion-dollar packages sent by the United States.

“These are amounts that will be spent within a few weeks,” said Serhii Kuzan, chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a non-governmental research group. He added that the impact of the new package would be “minimal.”

Recently, the Czech Republic launched an initiative to search the world for available shells, buy them and send them to Ukraine. Prague has located 800,000 artillery shells said last week that it had raised enough money from European allies to purchase an initial batch of 300,000.

Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, said Wednesday that the first batch would arrive “in the near future.” He added that Ukraine was working with allies on two similar initiatives.

Other European countries have recently pledged military aid that is larger than the latest US package. Denmark for example announced on Tuesday that it would send $340 million worth of Caesar long-range guns, mortars and ammunition.

Still, Europe is unlikely to be able to replace the United States as the guarantor of Ukraine’s warfighting capabilities, especially as the country has struggled to ramp up weapons production.

The European Union promised to deliver a million artillery shells to Ukraine last year by this month. But so far it has produced only half that number due to a lack of production capacity.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a research organization, said that as of mid-January, military aid allocated by EU members and institutions totaled $36 billion, about $10 billion less than the United States. To fully replace U.S. military aid this year, the institute said, Europe would need to “double its current level and pace of arms assistance.”

How does the Ukrainian army deal with the limited aid?

Ukraine is struggling to keep the situation under control Russian attacks along the more than 900 kilometer long front linelargely due to a shortage of ammunition.

Military analysts Franz-Stefan Gady and Michael Kofman wrote in one research paper last month that “Kiev will need about 75,000 to 90,000 artillery shells per month to support the war defensively, and more than double that – 200,000 to 250,000 – for a major offensive.”

But Ukraine is currently unable to fire more than 2,000 shells a day, or about 60,000 a month, according to Jack Watling, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Ukrainian soldiers and commanders have said so forced to ration shellsmaking it more difficult to push back the Russian advance.

“We have had problems due to the lack of artillery ammunition, anti-aircraft defenses, long-range weapons and the density of Russian drones,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. The French news media said this on Monday.

The Ukrainian army said last week that it aims to regain the initiative on the battlefield and launch a counter-offensive this year. But much will depend on the weapons the country receives from its Western partners.

Seth G. Jones, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the latest U.S. military aid package would be helpful for Ukraine’s defense operations. But he added that “if the Ukrainian goals are to actually regain territory, this is not what the Ukrainians need.”

Instead, Mr. Jones said, Ukraine will need more weapons to provide air support to its troops on the ground — something it lacked during its failed counteroffensive last summer — including F-16 fighter jetsbut also advanced surveillance and attack drones.

“If the Ukrainians are going to take the offense seriously, that’s what they’re going to need, not the kind of equipment they just got,” Mr. Jones said.