US to pump Ukraine with $275mn more in military aid

The United States is preparing a new $275 million package of military aid for Ukraine as it continues to bolster Kiev's forces amid Russia's ongoing military operation, a report says.

The latest package is likely to include ammunition and more High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, Reuters reported.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said that the flow of weapons to Ukraine will continue as he claimed the added arms “have made such a difference on the battlefield.”

In the meantime, Russia has repeatedly warned that supplying Kiev with more and more weapons will only exacerbate the conflict, which is now in its ninth month.

US supply of advanced weapons to exacerbate Ukraine war: Russia

Russia warns the United States against supplying advanced air defense systems to Ukraine, saying the move will only exacerbate the conflict, which is now in its eighth month.

Continuously flooding Ukraine with weapons "will only drag the conflict out and make it more painful for the Ukrainian side, but it will not change our goals and the end result," the Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said earlier this month.

Peskov insisted that the US was in reality engaged in the Ukraine conflict. "The US de facto has become deeply involved," he said.

His remarks echoed those of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said that Washington had "been participating de facto in this war for a long time."

"This war is being controlled by the Anglo-Saxons," Lavrov said.

Meanwhile, Russia revealed last week that a large portion of the weapons provided to the Kiev regime by the US and its allies was headed to the black market and then into the hands of extremist and criminal groups in the Middle East, central Africa and Asia.

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Russia claims Western-supplied arms to Ukraine 'spreading across Middle East'

Many of Western arms in Ukraine will end up in black market: Interpol

In this regard, the International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol, has also sounded the alarm.

Interpol Secretary General Juergen Stock said that the flooding of arms from the United States and its European allies into the ex-Soviet country was a mistake.

He warned that a large share of the weapons sent by the West to Ukraine will eventually end up in criminal hands in Europe and beyond.

“The high availability of weapons during the current conflict will result in the proliferation in illicit arms in the post-conflict phase,” he insisted, urging countries to start scrutinizing arms-tracking databases.

Interpol fears that such a huge flow of arms to Ukraine will only empower organized criminal gangs that have become increasingly involved in global operations, capable of exploiting the chaos created after the onset of the war in Ukraine.

France, Germany, and a number of other European countries, alongside the United States, have so far shipped tens of billions of dollars of weapons and ammunition with a declared aim of helping Kiev forces fight Russian troops.

“This will come, I have no doubts... Criminals are already now, here as we speak, focusing on that,” Stock said in Paris visiting from Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, southeast France.

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