October 4, 2023 at 4:27 a.m. EDT
Additional aid for Ukraine was blocked from a short-term funding bill last week amid opposition from far-right members of the Republican-controlled House. Lawmakers passed the bill late Saturday, just hours before the deadline, to avoid an imminent government shutdown.
Earlier on Tuesday, before McCarthy’s removal as House speaker, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that President Biden had “every expectation” that McCarthy would “keep his public commitment to secure the passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment.”
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Biden warned that a lapse in U.S. funding for Ukraine “could make all the difference on the battlefield” during a call with allies and partners on Tuesday, Kirby told journalists at a news briefing. “A lapse in support will make Putin believe he can wait us out, and that he can continue the conflict,” Biden said, according to Kirby.
Without additional funding, the Pentagon has access to just a few months of support funding for Ukraine, Kirby said Tuesday. Since the war began in February 2022, Washington has pledged more than $46 billion in military, humanitarian and financial assistance to Ukraine. “But absent additional funding by Congress, eventually you run into a hard stop,” Kirby said.
Western allies are running low on ammunition to give to Ukraine, senior military leaders warned in a push for increased defense spending in Europe. At the Warsaw Security Forum on Tuesday, Adm. Rob Bauer, chair of NATO’s military committee, said that defense manufacturers and governments must “ramp up production in a much higher tempo” to cope with “peak demand.” He added that “the bottom of the barrel is now visible” in terms of military stockpiles. British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey echoed that sentiment, saying Western stockpiles were “looking a bit thin.”
Ukraine says its troops have made advances in the south, a target region in their counteroffensive against Russian occupation. Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of the Tavria Joint Forces Operation, announced the inroads in a Telegram post on Tuesday but offered few details. The Washington Post could not independently verify his claims.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that more than 335,000 Russians have signed up to fight in the armed forces or in volunteer units since the start of the year, Reuters reported, citing Russian state TV. However, Russia has no plans for an additional mobilization of troops to fight in Ukraine, Shoigu said.
Armenia on Tuesday voted to join the International Criminal Court, further straining ties with its Russian ally, which last month called Armenia’s efforts to join an “unfriendly step,” according to the Associated Press. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in March on charges related to the detention and transfer of Ukrainian children. ICC member states are obliged to arrest him if he enters their territory.
Danish beer giant Carlsberg Group said Tuesday that it had ended licensing agreements for its brands in Russia after Moscow transferred the management of Baltika Breweries — which had been producing and selling Carlsberg products — to government authorities in July. “We refuse to be forced into a deal on unacceptable terms, justifying the illegitimate takeover of our business in Russia,” the Carlsberg Group said in a news release.
In Ukraine, explosive DIY drones give an intimate view of killing: The predominant attack drones in Ukraine are now equipped with a first-person view, with an operator receiving the drone’s video feed in real time. They are fast, highly maneuverable, and relatively cheap — and filling a gap left by a shortage of Western artillery rounds, Alex Horton and Serhii Korolchuk report.
These first-person view (FPV) drones are fashioned by hand from a few hundred bucks of material and can annihilate million-dollar equipment.
“It’s a revolution in terms of placing this precision guided capacity in the hands of regular people for a tiny fraction of the cost of the destroyed target,” said Samuel Bendett, a drone expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, a policy institute based in Arlington, Va. “We’re seeing FPV drones strike a very precise spot, which before was really the domain of very expensive, high precision guided weapons. And now it’s a $400 drone piloted by a teenager.”
Kelly Kasulis Cho, Adela Suliman and Miriam Berger contributed to this report.