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Two Patriot missile defense systems, one from the U.S. and one as part of a combined effort from Germany and the Netherlands, arrived in Ukraine on Wednesday, after a group of Ukrainian air defenders completed training to use the weapons.
Austin is in Europe as questions continue to swirl over the leak of classified documents online, many of which were based on slides developed by the Joint Staff to brief senior Pentagon leaders on the situation in Ukraine. Some of those documents reflected U.S. concerns about the state of Kyiv’s inventories ahead of the spring fighting, including a detailed accounting of Ukraine’s dwindling supply of munitions and air defense missiles. Other intelligence documents reportedly included pessimistic U.S. assessments over Ukraine’s ability to win the war this year.
But a second Defense Department official said the Pentagon would not allow “any kind of spinning of negative information” to undermine its continued support for Ukraine and cooperation with other Western countries.
“Well, [Ukraine] could run out of artillery ammunition — if we didn’t do anything,” the official said. “But we are absolutely going to provide them with the ammunition, the artillery, the spare parts, the maintenance, the sustainment, the platforms that they need.”
The package includes additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems; 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds; tube-launched, optically-tracked wire-guided missiles for the U.S.-provided Bradley armored fighting vehicles; AT-4 anti-armor weapon systems; anti-tank mines; demolition munitions for obstacle clearing; over 9 million rounds of small arms ammunition; four logistics support vehicles; and precision aerial munitions.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
