Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that U.S. deliveries of long-range missiles will be en route to Ukraine next week if President Biden signs the foreign aid bill.
“Once the President signs, we’ve been told that these materials will be on their way by the end of the week,” Warner stated on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
“The morale of the Ukrainians has been great, but it has been weakened over the past few months when they have only been given a limited number of bullets per day,” Warner added. “And on artillery shells, Russians have a ten to one advantage, you can't underestimate the determination of the Ukrainians, but they need the materials to fight the Russians.”
Warner mentioned that the legislation states that long-range ATACMS missiles will be provided to Kyiv if the bill passes in the Senate and heads to Biden’s desk.
“The ATACMS- I believe the administration was prepared over the last couple of months to provide ATACMS. It is written into this legislation,” Warner said.
On Saturday, the House passed a long-sought-after foreign aid package that includes about $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, and $8 billion for allies in the Indo-Pacific. It also encompasses a range of other national security measures, including a potential ban on the TikTok app.
The package is now heading to the Senate, which is expected to pass it in the middle of next week.
The package comes after months of warnings from the Biden administration that Ukraine will struggle against Russian forces without supplemental aid passed by Congress. Divisions among lawmakers have held up aid from passing for over a year, with mostly far-right lawmakers expressing concern about continuing to fund Ukraine.
Congress has not passed a Ukraine aid package since the end of 2022, and all available funds dried up around the end of 2023, leaving Kyiv in a precarious position with diminishing air defenses and artillery, both crucial in the war.
Russia has made advances on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, seizing the town of Avdiivka in February and threatening to seize Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region.
Warner on Sunday argued that the U.S. needs to be “prepared” for its own national security interests and pointed to Russia’s connections to China, Iran, and potentially North Korea.
“I know the terminology used to be Axis of Evil, this may be the 2024 Axis of Evil combination of nations,” he said.
