Tue 19 April 2022:
The first shipments of a new US military aid package have arrived at Ukraine’s borders to be handed over in its fight against the Russian invasion, a senior Pentagon official said Monday.
The United States on April 13 unveiled a $800-million tranche of equipment for Ukraine, including helicopters, howitzers and armored personnel carriers.
“There have been four flights from the United States arriving into the theater just yesterday,” a senior Pentagon official said Monday, with a fifth flight due shortly.
The package includes 18 155mm howitzers for the first time, as well as 40,000 artillery rounds, 200 M113 armored personnel carriers, 11 Mi-17 helicopters and 100 armored multi-purpose vehicles.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the first shipment had arrived 48 hours after President Joe Biden authorised the aid delivery, an “unprecedented speed.”
Kirby also said that soldiers deployed on the eastern flank of NATO territory since the start of Moscow’s invasion will begin “in the next several days” to train Ukrainian soldiers to handle the howitzers, which are the latest generation of that weapon.
The training will be done outside Ukraine, Kirby stressed. “It’ll be a small number of Ukrainians that will be trained on the howitzers, and then they’ll be reintroduced back into their country to train their colleagues.”
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