Ukraine will receive coveted long-range missiles from the U.S. after the House of Representatives gave Kyiv more than $60 billion in aid.
“Today we have a result: everything has been decided in the ATACMS negotiations for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday. Newsweek has reached out to the Pentagon for comment via email.
ATACMS, or Army Tactical Missile Systems, are surface-to-surface artillery weapon systems able to fire missiles striking targets up to around 186 miles away. Ukraine debuted its ATACMS in October 2023, using a cluster variant of the missiles to strike two Russian bases in Moscow-controlled Ukraine and damage a slew of helicopters.
Kyiv has used ATACMS missiles with a range of around 100 miles, able to fire on Russian targets using the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) it also received from the U.S.
South Korean Defense Ministry via Getty Images
On Saturday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine after the potentially game-changing assistance for Kyiv languished in Congress for months, mired down by political infighting.
The White House said on Monday that President Joe Biden had spoken with Zelensky, assuring him that the Biden administration “will quickly provide significant new security assistance packages” for Kyiv’s urgent air defense and battlefield needs, once the aid passed through the Senate for presidential sign-off.
It is not clear exactly when the new military aid will make its way to the frontlines, but Senate Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), told CBS on Sunday that parts of the aid package “will be in transit by the end of the week.”
The Biden administration has been preparing to provide ATACMS to Ukraine over the last few months, he added. It was reported in mid-February that the U.S. favored sending longer-range ATACMS to Ukraine to enable strikes on the Russian-held Crimean peninsula.
Long-range strike capabilities have long been a priority for Kyiv, along with the ammunition to keep Ukraine’s artillery systems running, and air defense systems to shield Ukraine’s population centers and critical infrastructure.
Zelensky said earlier this month that Russia was able to fire ten times the number of shells than Ukrainian troops, meaning Moscow will “be pushing us back every day.”
He told PBS that air defense systems had not been able to intercept all the Russian missiles fired at the Trypilska power plant in mid-April because Ukraine “had zero missiles.”
Russian attacks destroyed the Trypilska facility earlier this month. It was one of Ukraine’s largest power plants, and had supplied energy to several regions, including Kyiv.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.