The U.S. Senate passed on Sept. 18 the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018, authorizing the provision to Ukraine of $500 million worth of military aid, including lethal defensive weapons.
The bill was approved 89 to 8 votes, and will now go to the president’s desk for signing. The document was approved by the lower chamber of the U.S. Congress, the House of Representatives, on July 14.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, writing on his Facebook page on Sept. 19, said that Congress’s bill would authorize U.S. defense budget funds for the medical treatment of Ukrainian servicemen in the United States, as well as funds to develop Ukraine’s navy.
“For the first time, defensive weapons, such as air defense radar and underwater surveillance facilities, seaborne countermine equipment, and coastguard ships, have been proposed in U.S. legislation,” Poroshenko’s Facebook post read.
Speaking on Sept. 18 at the West Point military academy during his working visit to the United States, ahead of his speech at the United Nations General Assembly meeting on Sept. 20, Poroshenko said several myths about the provision of Ukraine with weapons had prompted fierce debate in the United States.
“The first (myth) is that American weapons will urge Russia to send its own weapons to the Donbas,” the president’s press service quoted Poroshenko as saying.
“But Russia has never ceased doing so. The second one is that American weapons will not help resolve the situation in general. But they would surely help in combination with sanctions and diplomatic pressure.
“And third one is that delivering American weapons will increase tension. Rather, it would increase cost of Russian aggression. In the face of such strong deterrence, Moscow would think twice before starting a new offensive.”
The Ukrainian leader is expected to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on Sept. 21.
The executive summary for the Senate bill reads that half of the $500 million allocated to Ukraine will be withheld until the U.S. Secretary of Defense “certifies that Ukraine has taken substantial action to make defense institutional reforms critical to sustaining capabilities developed using security assistance.”
The document also states that Russia has been continuing to spread “disinformation or propaganda, through social media applications or related Internet-based means, to members of the Armed Forces, with probable intent to cause injury to the United States or advantage to the Government of the Russian Federation.”
According to the bill, the U.S. Department of Defense is also to present annual reports to the U.S. Congress on Russia’s hybrid warfare, military and security developments, cyberwar activities and coercive economic tools.
The U.S. military will also be prohibited from using Kaspersky anti-virus software due to intelligence reports that the company has links with the Russian secret services.
