(Washington) The United States announced a new round of military aid to Ukraine on Friday, including for the first time satellite dishes taken from US military stocks, for a total value of some $275 million .
Posted at 1:25 p.m.
This 24e tranche of direct military assistance to Ukraine is intended to “meet Ukraine’s urgent security and defense needs”, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Defense said during a press briefing. Sabrina Singh.
Washington will thus send precision missiles for the Himars artillery systems already delivered to Kyiv, as well as shells compatible with the other systems available to the Ukrainian forces, and a variety of ammunition and anti-tank weapons.
While the whimsical CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk threatened to stop funding his Starlink satellite network, which plays a major role in the communications of the Ukrainian armed forces in the face of the Russian invasion, the Pentagon will for the first time deliver four satellite antennas in Kyiv.
These satellite antennas “are not Starlink antennas”, specified Mr.me Singh. They will “grant additional communication capabilities to Ukrainians at a crucial time, but they are different from what Starlink provides”.
The spokeswoman assured that the satellite antennas of the American army were not intended to “substitute” those of SpaceX.
“We see Ukrainian infrastructure and power grids being targeted by the Russians, and these antennas bring additional capacity to the ground at a crucial time when Ukraine’s infrastructure is hit,” she added.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, SpaceX has delivered thousands of terminals there which provide an Internet connection through a constellation of satellites forming the Starlink network.
Elon Musk had warned in mid-October that SpaceX “does not [pouvait] not continue to fund the existing system indefinitely and send thousands of additional terminals” before retracting, assuring that he would “continue to fund the Ukrainian government”.
This new tranche brings total US aid to Ukraine to some $17.9 billion since the start of the Russian offensive on February 24 and $18.5 billion since Joe Biden arrived in the White House in January 2021.