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President Joe Biden signed a much-anticipated $95 billion foreign aid bill into law on Wednesday, triggering a Pentagon decision to send Kiev $1 billion in new weapons from U.S. stockpiles, including interceptors air defense and essential artillery shells.
The U.S. military had prepositioned much of the weaponry, which also includes armored vehicles and anti-tank weapons, so it could be sent quickly to Ukrainian frontline troops, who have struggled to repel Russian attacks since as US aid dried up earlier this year. year.
“I’m making sure the shipments begin immediately,” Biden said in a speech from the White House. “We must act quickly.”
The package signed by Biden, which includes nearly $61 billion in military aid to kyiv, marks a major shift for Ukraine policy in Washington, after a small group of isolationist Republicans loyal to former President Donald Trump blocked aid for months.
Trump loyalists had vowed to oust Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, if he allowed a vote on the bill. But Johnson defied party rebels this weekend, and their efforts to remove him failed.
Biden said the bill’s passage — despite months of delay — was a sign that a political consensus on U.S. national security interests was still in place.
“We are not distancing ourselves from our allies, we are standing with them,” Biden said. “We don’t let tyrants win, we oppose them. We don’t just watch world events unfold, we shape them. »
Biden added: “This is what it means to be the ‘indispensable nation.’ This is what it means to be the world’s superpower and the world’s first democracy.”
The Pentagon’s new aid package includes Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, 155mm artillery shells, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, TOW missiles, Javelins and other weapons and munitions, according to the Pentagon.
“It will take us some time to dig out the hole created by a six-month delay before Congress passes the bill. [aid package]” said US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, adding that investing $1 billion in new US weapons was essential to start closing these gaps.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said he discussed the $1 billion package with Biden in a phone call Monday.
“Over the past few days, we have already been actively working with our American friends at all levels to include in this package the exact types of weapons our warriors need,” Zelenskyy said.
The Kremlin immediately denounced the US decision, with Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, saying that Western military aid to Ukraine “will be burned by the Russian armed forces.”
In a statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Antonov added: “American aid will not save Zelensky. New weapons will be destroyed. And the tasks and objectives of the [invasion] will be satisfied. »
In addition to aid to Ukraine, the $95 billion package also includes aid to Israel and Taiwan. Congress attached a provision to the aid legislation that requires the Chinese group ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to divest the popular video application.
TikTok said it would take legal action against what it described as an “unconstitutional law” that amounted to a “ban” that would “devastate 7 million businesses and silence 170 million Americans.”
“We believe that the facts and the law are clearly on our side and that we will ultimately prevail. The fact is that we have invested billions of dollars to protect American data and protect our platform from outside influence and manipulation,” TikTok said.
Biden and his top aides are issuing increasingly stark warnings about the implications of failing aid to Ukraine, with the lack of funding so far this year already leading to setbacks on the battlefield.
“If we had failed to step up our efforts, God only knows what would happen to NATO cohesion,” Biden said. He added that if Russian leader Vladimir Putin “wins in Ukraine, the next action by Russian forces could very well be a direct attack on a NATO ally” and the United States “would have no choice but to to help them.”
Zelenskyy said he was “grateful to President Biden, Congress and all Americans who recognize that we must cut the ground from under Putin’s feet rather than obeying him, because that is the only way to truly reduce threats against freedom “.
Additional reporting by Demetri Sebastopulo in Washington and Christopher Miller in Kyiv