U.S. To Provide $2.3 Billion In New Security Aid For Ukraine

The United States will soon announce more than $2.3 billion in new security assistance for Ukraine, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on July 2 during a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart at the Pentagon.

Ukrainian officials have been urging their allies for months to supply more air-defense systems to defend against frequent missile and drone attacks from Russian forces following Moscow's 2022 invasion.

Austin said the latest weapons package for Ukraine would include arms like anti-tank weapons and air-defense interceptors and will allow accelerated procurement of NASAMS and Patriot air defense interceptors.

Russian strikes killed at least four people and wounded more than two dozen others around Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, while more than a dozen people were killed in Russian attacks in the southern city of Kherson, officials said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, claimed it destroyed up to five Ukrainian fighter jets in a ballistic missile strike on an air base in central Ukraine. A former Ukrainian military official confirmed the attack on the Myrhorod air base, but said the Russian claim was exaggerated.

In a post on Telegram, Vadym Filashkin, the head of the Ukrainian military administration for Donetsk, said that four people were killed in three separate villages on July 1. Another 27 people were wounded in the strikes, he said.

In Kherson, a southern city recaptured by Ukrainian forces in late 2022, Russian shelling wounded at least five people, the head of the local military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, said.

After withdrawing to the eastern, opposite bank of the Dnieper River in late 2022, Russian forces have continued to bombard Kherson and outlying districts, terrorizing the populace and leaving the city in limbo.

After Ukraine's counteroffensive sputtered out earlier this year, Russia has been waging its own, more localized offensive effort in several locations across the 1,200-kilometer front line, including near the towns of Chasiv Yar and Pokrovsk.

In early May, Russian forces launched a new effort north of the city of Kharkiv. That has slowed in recent weeks, as Ukrainian troops redeployed and pushed back the advances, though Russian forces have been digging trenches and making more permanent defenses.

Still, Russia’s air superiority has allowed its planes to use heavy munitions like glide bombs to devastate Ukrainian positions.

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On July 2, the Russian Defense Ministry said it fired Iskander-M missiles at the Myrhorod air base, around 150 kilometers from the Russian border, a day earlier.

"As a result of the Russian military strike, five operational Su-27 multirole fighters were destroyed, and two that were under repair were damaged," the ministry said in a statement on Telegram.

The ministry also published video of what it said was the strike and its aftermath. The video showed gray smoke billowing at the airfield, where some parked planes were visible.

The claim about the planes being damaged could not be immediately verified, though both Russian and Ukrainian war bloggers reported extensively on the strike.

Ukraine’s military made no statement on the claim. Yuriy Ihnat, who served as a spokesman for the air force until March, confirmed that the air base was hit but downplayed the damage.

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"There was an attack. There are some losses, but not the ones the enemy claims," Ihnat said in a post to Facebook.

Ukraine’s top air force commander, meanwhile, claimed military jets had hit a Russian ammunition depot on the occupied Crimean Peninsula on July 1.

In a post to Telegram, General Mykola Oleshchuk did not specify the exact location but posted a video from a local Telegram channel that purportedly showed the strike on Balaklava, a location near the major naval port of Sevastopol.

In recent months, Ukraine has stepped up aerial and maritime attacks on facilities and equipment in Crimea and its surrounding waters.

Maritime drones have damaged or sunk more than two dozen Black Sea Fleet warships, and Ukraine has used Western-supplied cruise missiles and kamikaze to hit naval repair facilities and even the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.