Ukraine to ‘run out of ammunition in weeks’ without more US aid – Washington Examiner

Ukrainian forces will run “out of ammunition in the weeks to come,” a top White House official warned while unveiling an “emergency package” of military equipment for Ukraine.

“This ammunition will keep Ukrainians’ guns firing for a period, but only a short period,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday. “It is nowhere near enough to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs, and it will not prevent Ukraine from running out of ammunition in the weeks to come.”

Sullivan unveiled that aid package as U.S. intelligence community officials aired an assessment that an apparent “deadlock” of war in Ukraine “is increasingly shifting the momentum in Moscow’s favor.” That analysis arises in part from the lack of U.S. aid to Ukraine in recent months, as a political dispute in Congress has stalled the passage of legislation that would give President Joe Biden the supplemental funding authority to provide billions of dollars worth of ammunition to Ukraine over the coming year.

“It’s our assessment that with supplemental assistance, Ukraine can hold its own on the front lines through 2024 and into early 2025, that Ukraine can continue to exact costs against Russia, not only with deep penetration strikes in Crimea but also against Russia’s Black Sea fleet, continuing the success, which has resulted in 15 Russian ships sunk over the course of the last six months,” CIA Director Bill Burns told the Senate Intelligence Committee during a Monday hearing. “Down another road, however, without supplemental assistance, it seems to me lies a much grimmer future. Ukraine is likely to lose ground and probably significant ground in 2024.”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during a press briefing on Tuesday, March 12, 2024, at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

That blockage of U.S. support has put pressure on European powers to fill the gap, which they are attempting to do, although they lack the sheer quantity of munitions available in U.S. arsenals. Denmark announced Tuesday that it would donate $337 million to buy artillery ammunition for Ukraine, amid a wider effort coordinated by the Czech Republic to identify stockpiles of ammunition in non-Western countries and purchase them for Ukraine.

“Artillery systems and mortars are highly sought after by Ukraine,” Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said Tuesday. “These donations are being made in cooperation with our allies and are an important signal that on a broad front, we are supporting Ukraine.”

European officials have argued in recent months that they will be able to provide a larger share of the military assistance next year if the United States can open its larger stockpiles in the interim.

“Obviously, in this period we are lacking in resupply in different domains,” a European official said Tuesday. “But the actual situation — it’s a temporary situation. [Weapons] are coming … European industry is working on reducing times of production and to increase the rates of ammunition. We are progressing, and that’s the case in all European countries that have defense industries.”

U.S. officials financed the new package through what they called cost savings from other arms deals that came in under budget.

“What drove this of course in the near term, just look at what’s happening on the battlefield today around Avdiivka and other places,” a senior defense official told reporters Tuesday on condition of anonymity.  “Ukrainians are struggling without ammunition. I think everybody knows that. So there was an imperative to act, and we had on our side … a way to at least cover the cost of this one package, but that’s this one package. It’s not a fountain of money that is going to sustain us.”

If Ukrainian forces can survive the current shortage, the official added, the battlefield dynamics would shift back in their favor as more Western weaponry, such as F-16 fighter jets, enters the war zone.

“I would be very cautious [about drawing] … conclusions too quickly as to the ability or the inability of the Ukrainian to reach their goals,” the European official added. “One day you will have the F16s operating in Ukrainian air space with weapons, medium- to long-range weapons that will also have an impact on the battlefield, [with an] ability to strike some logistic and [command-and-control] nodes behind the lines. The situation that some could assess as a defensive one of Ukrainian [forces] now with initiative being on the Russian side is not a definitive position at all.”

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The emergency U.S. aid will provide only a very brief stopgap, according to Biden’s team.

“Absolutely not months — weeks, maybe even just a couple of weeks,” Sullivan said. “It’s not going to be for a long time. And that’s why we so urgently need them to act on the supplemental.”

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