US approves Patriot missiles and new $45 billion Ukraine aid package

The House of Representatives of the United States gave its approval to a $45 billion aid package for Ukraine on Friday. The proposal, which was a component of a $1.66 trillion government budget plan that cleared the Senate the day before, will now be signed into law by President Joe Biden. This aid package comes after the United States sent Ukraine money totaling roughly $50 billion earlier this year.

The action follows this week’s wartime visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington.

When Zelenskyy got back to Kyiv, he was proud to say that Ukrainian soldiers “are trying to win” in spite of Russia’s constant artillery, rocket, mortar, and airstrikes on Ukraine.

Zelenskyy promised on Telegram that “we will succeed in everything.” “We’re bringing something back from Washington that will truly help,”

In order to aid Ukraine in defending itself against the Russian invasion, the US promised Patriot missiles. Zelenskyy has been requesting Patriot missiles for a long time to help combat Russian airstrikes that have destroyed cities, towns, and villages throughout the course of the conflict’s ten months and cut off power and water to the whole nation for the previous three months.

Zelenskyy thanked Biden and the US Congress for helping Ukraine when it was at war with Russia.

However, according to American sources, the single Patriot battery that Biden agreed to give Ukraine will not alter the direction of the conflict.

On December 23, 2022, lawmakers debate a $1.7 trillion federal budget bill at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., while stacks of the Congressional Record are passed around.

Washington and its allies have kept modern battle tanks and ATACMS long-range missiles, which can hit far behind enemy lines and even inside Russia, from Kyiv.

Both Kiev and the Biden administration are concerned that after Republicans win a narrow majority in the House in the coming year, maintaining U.S. congressional support for aid may become more challenging. A few conservative Republicans are against helping, while other legislators have demanded stricter financial supervision.

During a visit to Tula, Russia, a center for arms manufacturing, on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the country’s defense industry leaders to do more to ensure that the Russian army promptly receives all the weapons, equipment, and military hardware it needs to fight in Ukraine.

“The most important job of our military-industrial complex is to make sure that our units and front-line forces have all the weapons, equipment, ammunition, and gear they need, in the right amounts and in the shortest amount of time,” he said.

Putin has been “offered plans to grow the Russian military by roughly 30% to 1.5 million soldiers,” according to the British Defense Ministry’s Friday intelligence update on Ukraine.

The request, according to the ministry, was made on Wednesday. “Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu noted that the increase would involve at least two brigades in northern Russia increasing to divisional level,” the ministry stated.

The British defense minister cited “the alleged threat from Finland and Sweden’s admission to NATO” to support Russia’s action.

According to the ministry update, this is one of the first indications of how Russia intends to modify its military in response to the long-term strategic difficulties brought on by its invasion of Ukraine. “It’s not clear where Russia will get the people it needs to finish such an expansion at a time when its forces are being pushed to their limits in Ukraine,” the article says.

On Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on December 21, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walks away after addressing a joint session of Congress while holding an American flag that was a gift from U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

On Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on December 21, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walks away after addressing a joint session of Congress while holding an American flag that was a gift from U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Zelenskyy pays a visit to Washington.

Zelenskyy’s trip to the U.S. Capitol was viewed as symbolic in Western Europe, sending a signal to the rest of the world that the U.S. will continue to help Ukraine in its struggle for existence.

Observers in the area were happy that Biden stressed the need to “keep NATO united” when it came to supplying weapons.

The Polish historian Lukasz Adamski of the Mieroszewski Center in Warsaw told VOA that “this definitely shows that it is not the U.S. but other influential NATO members that are not convinced of the need to support Ukraine even more intensely.”

Zelenskyy’s visit, according to Putin, did nothing but escalate the tension.

“They say they can deploy Patriot there, okay.”We’ll also break the Patriot Act,” Putin assured reporters. The battery delivery, he claimed, “just prolongs the battle.”

On December 22, 2022, a guy is seen passing a school that was severely damaged by a Russian attack in Kramatorsk, Donetsk area, Ukraine.

In Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington represented the forged ties between the two nations.

Mykola Davydiuk, a Ukrainian political analyst and the director of Think Tank Politics, says that it was important for Ukrainians and Zelenskyy to thank the United States for the steady help it has given their country.

Putin stated that, despite his belief that the U.S. delivery of a Patriot missile battery would prolong the crisis, Russia is prepared for discussions with Ukraine to end it.

Every armed confrontation ends with negotiations, according to Putin. The sooner this idea is shared with our adversaries, the better. We never turned down a discussion.

He continued, “We will work to put an end to this, and the sooner the better, of course.”

The White House swiftly responded to Putin’s remarks.

According to Reuters, Kirby told reporters, “Everything he [Putin] is doing on the ground and in the air bespeaks a man who intends to continue inflicting brutality against the Ukrainian people [and] extend the battle.”

Also on Thursday, Kirby stated that U.S. intelligence agents had discovered that North Korea had sent a first shipment of weapons, including rockets and missiles, to the for-profit Russian military firm Wagner Group last month. The event was seen as a sign that the group’s power in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine was growing.

The British government also denounced the shipment.

Reuters says that Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin called the talk “rumors and speculation” and said that no one had tried to get North Korea to send weapons to Russia.

A request for comment was not immediately answered by the Russian representation at the UN in New York. The reports were refuted as untrue by the foreign ministry of North Korea.

Myroslava Gongadze, the Eastern Europe Bureau Chief, contributed to this article. The Associated Press and Reuters provided some of the information for this story.