US and Allies Working to Give Anti-Ship Missiles to Ukraine

The US has pledged over $1 billion in new military aid for Ukraine since the invasion began

The US and its allies are working on providing Ukraine with anti-ship missiles as the Western push to flood weapons into the country continues.

“We have started consulting with allies on providing anti-ship missiles to Ukraine,” a senior Biden administration official said on the sidelines of a NATO conference in Brussels on Thursday, according to Reuters.

“There may be some technical challenges with making that happen but that is something that we are consulting with allies and starting to work on,” the official added.

Since Russia’s invasion started, the US has pledged over $1 billion in new military aid for Ukraine. Last week, Biden announced an $800 million weapons package that includes anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank missiles, and armed drones.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the NATO summit via video link on Thursday and pleaded with the military alliance to send more weapons, including warplanes and tanks. Ukraine is also seeking more advanced air missile defense systems than the shoulder-fired weapons the US and NATO have been providing.

Ukraine’s forces are only trained to use older Russian-made weapons systems, such as the S-300, Zelensky asked Congress for last week. The Wall Street Journal reported that the US is sending Ukraine Soviet air defense systems it secretly acquired but said the S-300s weren’t included. The report said the US is sending the SA-8, also known as the 9K33 OSA, a mobile surface-to-air missile system that the Soviet Union developed in the 1960s.

Author: Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.