The US House of Representatives approved a $95 billion foreign aid package, nearly two-thirds of which would be spent on Ukraine-related programs. The Kremlin, however, does not seem alarmed in the least.
“Basically, this will not change the situation on the battlefield,” Peskov told reporters on Monday.
Noting continued Russian advances on the front, Peskov said the dynamics of the conflict are now “absolutely clear to everyone” and that the money and weapons the United States will allocate to Ukraine “will not lead to a change in this dynamic.”
“They will cause new casualties among Ukrainians, more Ukrainians will die and Ukraine will suffer significant losses,” the presidential spokesman added.
Plus, he noted, most of the aid money is supposed to stay in the United States, one form or another. The White House itself argued this before Congress as one of the sales pitches, saying that the package was a stimulus for the military-industrial complex and the US manufacturing base.
“In principle, nothing has changed,” Peskov added, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin fully expected the U.S. legislature to vote as it did.
Reacting to Saturday’s vote, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the United States was using Ukrainians as “cannon fodder” and hoped to keep Kiev on life support until after the U.S. presidential election. November. In the end, she said, the United States will end up facing a “loud, humiliating fiasco on par with Vietnam or Afghanistan.”
The new batch of American aid could help slow down the Russians, but it won’t stop them, several Ukrainian officials told the Financial Times. No amount of weapons and ammunition from the West can solve kyiv’s biggest problem: a lack of manpower, the outlet noted.
Kirill Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, also predicted “a rather difficult situation” on the battlefield for the kyiv government in the coming months.