Germany’s Ministry of Defense announced an additional $100 million in military aid for Ukraine as Berlin ramps up its support of Kyiv’s armed forces against Russia’s invasion.
During a recent meeting with Ukraine’s newly appointed commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, Berlin’s highest-ranking military officer General Carsten Breuer pledged a new defense package to provide Ukraine with “short-term support,” including mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, explosives to arm small drones, medical supplies, 77 multi 1A1 trucks and spare parts for a variety of weapon systems.
The package in total is worth around $107 million.
“Overall, we are very close to what is happening in Ukraine and what Ukraine needs,” German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said in a statement Thursday.
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Newsweek reached out to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry for comment.
The new deal follows a day after Pistorius pledged to increase Ukraine’s artillery supplies “by three to four times” in 2024 during a meeting in Brussels for the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. The defense minister added that Germany is planning on spending $3.75 billion on ammunition production in the year to come, an “unprecedented” amount for the country.
Berlin’s government has doubled its budget for military assistance for Ukraine this year, a lifeline for Kyiv as support from its largest ally, the United States, is held up in Congress. The Bundestag, or Germany’s parliament, approved the country’s 2024 budget on February 2, which included an allocated $8.2 billion in funding for Ukraine—the country’s budget a year prior allocated $4 billion in military aid.
According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, as of January 15, Germany is the second-largest supporter of Ukraine behind the U.S., pledging over $19 billion in total in military assistance since the start of the war in February 2022. Washington has pledged $42.2 billion to Kyiv in military aid in nearly two years.
President Joe Biden has requested U.S. lawmakers to pass a $95 billion foreign aid package for emergency defense spending, which includes $61 billion in aid to Kyiv. House Republicans, however, have refused to take up the deal unless the federal administration takes action to address what they describe as a “crisis” along the U.S. southern border.
The Senate passed Biden’s spending bill, which also includes aid for Israel and Taiwan, in a 70-29 vote on Tuesday. White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby warned earlier this week that withholding the additional military assistance could impact American troops down the line, claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine poses a threat to the NATO alliance.
“So, we got to take this seriously because I’ll tell you if you think it costs a lot right now to support Ukraine, think about the cost to American blood and treasure if, in fact, [Putin] goes after our NATO ally and then you got American troops on the ground involved in combat,” Kirby said while appearing on CNN This Morning on Wednesday.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.