Around the clock, giant military transport planes land several times at a local airport in Poland, unloading weapons destined for Ukrainian forces repelling an invasion by the Russian army. Then, convoys of trucks roam the quiet Polish border towns and villages.
newspaper says The Wall Street Journal The United States and its NATO allies have already shipped an arms package to Ukraine worth hundreds of millions of dollars, in one of the largest international arms transfers since World War II.
The military shipments include anti-tank missiles, air defense batteries and other weapons.
According to the newspaper, pressure is now building to speed up the dispatch of military supplies, with Ukraine saying it is running out of weapons and ammunition as it struggles to block the Russian advance and counterattack.
Ukrainian defense officials speak of a significant shortage of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.
US officials expected that President Joe Biden, this week, at the NATO summit and the European Union meeting, will press allies to give Ukraine more, especially air defense systems, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In a television interview, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, Vadim Prystaiko, said on Wednesday that stocks of some major weapons may soon run out and that Ukrainian forces urgently need long-range weapons.
“We originally did not have enough. We will run out of weapons next week,” Prystaiko added. “Tomorrow, President Volodymyr Zelensky will speak to NATO to see how we can replenish our stocks.”
According to security officials, the West was initially apprehensive regarding the military supply of an emerging Ukrainian resistance that used guerrilla tactics once morest the Russians, recalling what happened following the transfer of arms to the “Mujahideen” who defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
However, the success of the Ukrainian army in keeping Moscow’s forces at bay in most of the country made the West interested in equipping a regular army that would engage in large-scale conventional warfare.
A Western security official said, “The Ukrainians use a lot of munitions, and this is more than we expected. We are trying to increase the flow of weapons to meet this new requirement and to meet the ongoing shortage.”
And a senior US defense official said, on Wednesday, that the first shipment of a new package of weapons worth 800 million dollars to Ukraine, approved by Biden last week, will begin to be transferred from the United States within a day or so, and it will not take long to reach Ukraine.
The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, did not specify what weapons systems the first shipments would include, but said priority would be the types of defensive weapons already used by Ukrainian forces.
