Ukraine will receive new missiles and hundreds of armored vehicles as part of a fresh tranche of military aid announced by France, with the assistance announced as Kyiv contends with ammunition shortages and preparations for a Russian summer offensive.
"To hold such an extensive front line, the Ukrainian army needs, for example, our armored personnel carriers," French armed forces minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said in an interview with the Sunday edition of France's La Tribune newspaper.
Paris will send "hundreds" of its VAB armored personnel carriers to Ukraine by early 2025, Lecornu said. "This old equipment, still operational, is going directly to Ukraine in large quantities," the minister said. France is currently phasing out the VAB armored carriers.
France will also donate Aster 30 anti-aircraft missiles for ground-based air defense.
France is a significant provider of military aid to Ukraine, part of a European effort to step up assistance to Kyiv with future aid from Ukraine's single-largest provider, the U.S., hanging in the balance. A new wave of military aid, worth $60 billion, has languished in Congress for months.
The Pentagon announced a $300 million tranche of aid for Ukraine in mid-March but said this was merely a stop-gap measure for Kyiv's most pressing needs, not a long-term boost.
Earlier this week, Lecornu said France would soon be able to provide Ukraine with another 78 Caesar self-propelled 155 mm howitzers. Artillery and ammunition for the systems are consistently at the top of Kyiv's wish list.
"We are also developing remotely operated munitions in a very short timeframe, for delivery to the Ukrainians as early as this summer," Lecornu said on Sunday.
Kyiv has been attempting to restrain slow, but steady, Russian advances in eastern Ukraine, as well as Moscow's attacks to the north and the south of the current frontlines. The Kremlin took control of the strategic eastern city of Avdiivka in mid-February and has since claimed a handful of villages west of the settlement as Ukraine rushed to establish new defensive lines.
Ukraine has said it anticipates a renewed Russian offensive, possibly starting as early as May and lasting through the summer months. Kyiv officials and Western analysts have said shortages and delays in military aid have constrained Ukrainian operations and hampered their efforts to stave off Russian gains.
After Ukraine appeared to repel a large-scale Russian mechanized assault around Avdiivka on Saturday, the U.S. think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said the Ukrainian success around the city showed that "Ukrainian forces can achieve significant battlefield effects if they are properly equipped."
"If there is no U.S. support, it means that we have no air defense, no Patriot missiles, no jammers for electronic warfare, no 155-milimetre artillery rounds," Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, told The Washington Post earlier this month.
"It means we will go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps," he added. "We are trying to find some way not to retreat."
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Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more
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