The United States will send a new assistance package to Ukraine with 50 Bradley fighting tanks

Officials of the President of the United States, Joe Bidenconfirmed that Washington send to fifty bradley fighting vehicles Ukraine, which is fighting the biggest land conflict in Europe since 1945. Since the Russian invasion in February cities have been destroyed, millions of people displaced and tens of thousands killed.

This shipment will be part of the new security package which the United States will provide to kyiv and which will be formally unveiled this Friday. In this way, they already add up to about $21.3 billion in aid provided to Ukraine since the start of the invasion, which Zelensky remarked is not charity but a investment in global security.

The bradley armored carendowed with a powerful cannon, has been a staple of the us army to transport troops across battlefields since the mid-1980s. USA has thousands of Bradleys and they would give to Ukraine more firepower on the battlefield and bolster their ability in trench warfare.

Biden’s move, however, falls short in sending out the tanks Abrams that Ukraine has requested. kyiv has repeatedly asked its Western allies for heavier combat vehicles, such as the Abrams and the Leopards German made.

That is why, along with the White House announcement, this Thursday the German Chancellor Olaf Schölz He mentioned that he will also send these armored fighting vehicles light as well as Patriot air defense systems to help Ukraine repel Russian attacks.

“The United States intends to provide Ukraine with bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Germany intends to hand over to Ukraine marder fighting vehicles. Both countries plan train Ukrainian forces in the respective systems”, Washington summarized in a statement. For its part, the German government added that “it will join the initiative of the United States and to provide kyiv with an additional Patriot air defense battery”.

In a video address, the President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelensky thanked the French president Emmanuel Macron the announcement, saying it showed a need for other allies to provide heavier weapons.

“This is something that sends a clear signal to all of our partners. There is no rational reason why Ukraine has not yet received Western tanks,” she said.

Macron, he told Zelensky, that his government would send light armored fighting vehicles AMX-10 RC to help their war effort, a French official said Wednesday after a phone call between them.

Although the official said that these would be the first Western armored vehicles delivered to Ukraine, Australia has given kyiv 90 of its vehicles bushmasteran armored unit reinforced against land mines and other threats.

On Wednesday, a senior US government official made a troubling assessment of the fighting in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetskespecially around the city of bakhmut, largely in ruins and controlled by Ukraine. Fierce fighting is likely to persist for the foreseeable future, although Russian forces have made gradual progress, the official said.

“The fighting is still pretty intense. (…) I think that what we are seeing in Bakhmut we should expect to see in other places along the front that there will be continuous fighting in the coming months.

In his video speech, Zelensky said that the Ukrainian troops outside Bakhmut were inflicting heavy losses on the Russians and said that Moscow was building up its forces in the region.

Major General Kyrylo Budanovhead of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence, told ABC News that he expected more “deeper and deeper” attacks within Russiawithout saying whether Ukrainian forces would be responsible.

Budanov said he had been “glad to see” the December 26 attack on the Russian airbase in Engelshundreds of kilometers from the border with Ukraine.

Asked if the attacks in Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, Budanov said: “Crimea is part of Ukraine, it is part of our territory. We can use any weapon on our territory.”

The United States is preparing another arms aid package that could be announced in the coming days and that would add to the roughly $21.3 billion in security aid it has sent to Ukraine so far.

The United States has increased the capacity of the weapons it has sent, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles shot from the shoulder, as well as Javelin anti-tank missilesthe system of HIMARS missiles Y NASAMS surface-to-air missiles.

During Zelensky’s visit to Washington last month, the United States promised to send the sophisticated patriot missiles to repel Russian attacks with missiles and drones.

In a sign to West that Russia will not back down on Ukraine, the Russian president, Vladimir Putinsent a frigate into the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday armed with hypersonic cruise missiles of a new generation, which can travel at more than five times the speed of sound.

Ukraine claimed that Russia had launched seven missile strikes, 18 airstrikes and more than 85 multiple launch missile strikes in the past 24 hours against civilian infrastructure in the cities of Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyardeclared that Russia would continue to form additional assault units and would focus on taking Bakhmut and other cities north of Donetsk.

Malyar, citing the ministry’s main intelligence directorate, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that the significant Russian losses meant that Moscow would most likely have to announce a second partial mobilization in the first quarter of the year.

Russia launched what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, citing threats to its own security and the need to protect Russian-speakers. Ukraine and its allies accuse Russia of an unprovoked war to seize territory.

(With information from Reuters)

Keep reading: