Pentagon chief makes surprise visit to Kiev

As Lloyd Austin arrived, the US announced another $400 million in military aid

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made an unannounced trip to Ukraine’s capital as Washington announced another $400 million draw-down of ammunition from Pentagon stocks for Vladimir Zelensky’s war effort.

Austin arrived by train with “no major announcements,” the Wall Street Journal reported, noting that Ukraine had hoped for NATO membership or permission to use US-supplied long-range weapons against Russia.

The US “will get Ukraine what it needs to fight for its survival and security,” Austin said in a speech after meeting Zelensky and his counterpart Rustem Umerov. 

“For anyone who thinks that American leadership is expensive — well, consider the price of American retreat,” he added, noting that “the price of principle is always dwarfed by the cost of capitulation.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said it would release $400 million worth of US stockpiles – mainly  ammunition for HIMARS, mortars and artillery, along with some M113 armored vehicles – to Ukraine. This is on top of the $425 million batch of military aid the US announced just last week. 

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By the Pentagon’s own accounting, the US has given Kiev 68 tranches of aid since August 2021. The WSJ put the value of the aid at over $64 billion, not counting the additional “tens of billions” from Canada and the European members of NATO.

Austin’s visit to Kiev will likely be his last as the Pentagon head, the Journal noted, citing current and former US officials who thought the retired general’s “cautious approach” may have “hobbled Ukraine’s war effort.” Heather Conley, senior adviser at the German Marshall Fund, told the paper that the US should have “been clear and upfront and given them full capabilities” from the start.

Such a notion is “one of the greatest myths in Washington,” Colin Kahl, Austin’s deputy for policy who left in July, told the Journal.

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“It engages in a series of magical thinking, where you can move things instantaneously, give Ukrainians things they are not trained on, have them appear out of thin air, and it assumes there is no trade-offs,” Kahl said.

One anonymous Pentagon official told the Journal that Austin deserves credit for helping Kiev “defeat Russia’s strategic objective” of conquering Ukraine. 

Moscow never declared such an objective. Russia’s stated goals in the conflict include making Ukraine a neutral nation with caps on its military strength, the reversal of discriminatory policies against ethnic Russians by Kiev, and the removal of radical Ukrainian nationalists from positions of authority. Russia has also demanded that Kiev relinquish its claim of sovereignty to five formerly-Ukrainian regions.