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September 8 saw Germany’s Ramstein airbase host the fifth meeting of military representatives from over 50 countries that provide assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as initiated by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
NATO’s official website says participants in the meeting have initially agreed to abstain from addressing the press in the follow-up.
However, even before the gathering of Nazi collaborators began, US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl said his boss Austin would announce another package of military assistance to Ukraine at Ramstein. A pretty obvious thing, you know; otherwise, why should they arrange another anti-Russian coven?
In turn, CNN reported that head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces Mark Milley is preparing detailed analysis and working out how to support Ukraine's military in the medium and long term (up to 5 years). The TV channel is sure that once the plan is approved by President Joe Biden, “it could lead to years of future arms sales and the establishment of a long-term military training program by the US." That is, we are actually talking about a long-term transformation of Ukraine into a source of war in Europe, and a NATO (for which read American) armed outpost next to the Russian borders. Without any alternative for Kiev.
And the existence of such an outpost bodes for huge profits, primarily to the American arms industry. The US is apparently rebuilding it to meet the needs of long-term hostilities in Ukraine, which should bring it much profit. Suffice it to recall that since the turn of the year, Washington has announced the supply of weapons to Ukraine worth over $13 billion, with the one to “implement” the sum being the American arms industry.
And just before Ramstein 5, President Biden approved a new aid tranche to Kiev accounting for $675 million, as announced by Lloyd Austin during a Thursday press conference at the airbase. The new package includes HARM anti-radar missiles, 105 mm M101 howitzers, shells for them and HIMARS systems. Moreover, Ukraine will obtain Humvee vehicles, anti-tank systems, small arms and relevant ammunition. The same meeting last Thursday also discussed providing winter equipment to the Ukrainian army. In late July, Ukraine applied to NATO with a request to provide warm clothes, shoes and winter tents for 200,000 soldiers. The Alliance offered using a special-purpose trust fund.
Notably, the US fiscal year ends in September, along with the $40 billion (so-called lend-lease) approved by the Congress in May to assist Ukraine, of which about a half is meant for military purposes. Besides, the White House has requested $11.7 billion from the Congress for the next fiscal year. The sums are huge. White House Press Secretary Karin Jean-Pierre stressed that since January 2021, the United States has provided Kiev with military assistance three times bigger than Ukraine’s annual defense budget. But the Kiev regime can't get enough of it, and President Vladimir Zelensky constantly asks the West for more arms supplies to resist the Armed Forces of Russia.
By the way, Kiev stays watchful itself. Zelensky recently announced that the 2023 state budget of Ukraine will include one trillion hryvnias (about $27 billion) for the defense sector and security, which will amount to nearly 10% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). The same amount and even more is awaited from the United States and its NATO allies. The expenses are huge, and the "friends of Ukraine" are apparently ready to provide those, as demonstrated by the Ramstein 5 meeting.
It stands to reason that Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance Jens Stoltenberg published an article titled "NATO will pay a price but we must stay the course on Ukraine" in Britain’s The Financial Times newspaper. Which means further pumping of weapons into Ukraine to resist the Russian army to the last Ukrainian soldier. The number of casualties among them is prodigious. As above-mentioned Gen. Milley stated at a Ramstein press conference, "they paid a high price for the losses of thousands, tens of thousands [of people] killed and wounded." And sky is not the limit, we emphasize…
On September 8, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrived with a surprise visit in Kiev, where, according to France’s Le Monde, he intends to inform President Zelensky about the allocation of $2 billion in long-term foreign military financing to Ukraine and 18 of its neighbors, including NATO members and development partners. This assistance is the follow-up to the $675 million of direct arms supplies support to Ukraine, which Austin is in charge of.
Last Thursday, it became known that the new package was stealthily supplemented with NATO’s most accurate GPS-guided Excalibur projectiles. More precisely, as unnamed sources told Bloomberg, Excalibur shells have been used in Ukraine for a long time, and might have been used to strike the bridges at Novaya Kakhovka and Kherson.
So far, Western arms supplies to Ukraine are limited to systems with a range of some 100 to 120 km. But if NATO (namely the US) decides to send heavy and high-precision weapons sought by Ukrainian generals, active hostilities may begin in the territory of Russia, either. Which is an entirely different thing, and Moscow cannot ignore this fact during its further action planning for the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine.
