Ukraine will receive new American and Franco-Italian aid. The United States promised, Friday, February 3, a military contribution of 2.2 billion dollars (2 billion euros) to Ukraine, including bombs fired from the ground which could double or almost double the range of the capacity of Ukrainian strike. These are GLSDB, small-diameter bombs manufactured by Boeing and Saab, which can travel up to 150 kilometers and thus threaten Russian positions behind the front lines.
“It gives them a longer range capability (…) which will enable them to carry out operations to defend their territory and to retake their sovereign territory”Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder told reporters. “The longer the range of our weapons and the more mobile our troops, the sooner Russia’s brutal aggression will end”reacted in the evening the Ukrainian head of state.
Ukraine asks the United States for ammunition that can go further than Himars rockets (80 km). These GLSDBs give Ukrainian forces the ability to reach positions in the Donbass, the vicinity of Kherson and Zaporizhia, northern Crimea, and to threaten Russian arms depots. Pat Ryder said he did not know how Ukraine intended to use this ammunition.
This security assistance also includes “crucial air defense capabilities to help Ukraine defend its people”, “armoured infantry vehicles” and ammunition for the Himars rocket launcher system, the Pentagon said in a communicated.
Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, US authorities have allocated more than $29.3 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, according to the Pentagon, which assured:
“The United States will continue to work with our allies and partners to provide Ukraine with the capabilities to meet its immediate battlefield and longer-term security assistance needs. »
Claimed by kyiv for months
At the same time, Paris announced on Friday that France and Italy would provide a medium-range SAMP/T Mamba surface-to-air defense system in the spring to help Ukraine “defend against attacks by drones, missiles and Russian aircraft”.
“The supply of such a system responds to the urgency expressed by Oleksiï Reznikov, Ukrainian Defense Minister, to his French and Italian counterparts, to protect civilian populations and infrastructure against Russian attacks from the air”underlined the Ministry of the Armed Forces in a communicated.
Sébastien Lecornu, Minister of the Armed Forces, and Guido Crosetto, Italian Minister of Defense, spoke by telephone on Friday to finalize this delivery which had been under discussion for several weeks and comes after Mr. Reznikov’s visit to Paris this week.
Ukraine has been ardently calling for the strengthening of its ground-to-air defense for months, in particular following a wave of Russian bombardments on its critical infrastructure using Iranian drones.
A Mamba – the equivalent of the American Patriot system – had already been deployed in Romania to protect the highly strategic region of the port of Constanta, on the Black Sea. With this system, its radar and its launchers armed with eight Aster missiles with a range of around 100 kilometres, it is possible to “counter a wide range of aerial threats: short-range ballistic missiles, fighter jets, helicopters, drones and even cruise missile salvoes with multiple shots”pointed out to Agence France-Presse in December in Romania a French soldier.
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France has already announced on Tuesday the delivery, in the coming weeks, of twelve additional 155 mm Caesar guns, which will bring to 49 the number of copies available to kyiv, a volume which has not “nothing insignificant”recalled Sébastien Lecornu.
She also promised a Ground Master 200 (GM200) radar, produced by the French Thales. This medium-range radar can detect an aircraft located 250 kilometers away, whether it is flying at low speed and low altitude like drones, or at high altitude like combat aircraft.
This radar also provides protection against rockets and artillery fire by alerting ground troops of enemy fire, assures its manufacturer, who has sold more than 60 copies worldwide.