“whatever Israel needs, those requests will run headlong into the dysfunction and uncertainty enveloping Capitol Hill, as the House grapples with selecting a new leader and both chambers race to avoid a government shutdown just weeks away.
Those priorities will also need to compete with rush orders for Ukraine, which is already straining the capacity of companies in the U.S. and Europe to send arms to Kyiv and resupply inventories back home.
“One thing that is really important in terms of the munitions in particular, and our ability to support both potentially the Israelis and the Ukrainians simultaneously, is additional funding from Congress to be able to increase our capacity,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters at the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington Monday.”
“Kim had met President Vladimir Putin and visited key military and technology sites, underscoring the countries’ deepening defense cooperation in the face of separate, intensifying confrontations with the West. U.S. and South Korean officials have said North Korea could provide badly needed munitions for Moscow’s war on Ukraine in exchange for sophisticated Russian weapons technology that would advance Kim’s nuclear ambitions.”
“Although depleted uranium is a byproduct of uranium enrichment, U.S. officials say the munitions are common and do not present a radioactive threat. They cite studies by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, showing “the existence of depleted uranium residues dispersed in the environment does not pose a radiological hazard to the population of the affected regions.”
However, opponents such as the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons say there are dangerous health risks, including cancer, from touching or ingesting depleted-uranium dust.”
…
“U.S. officials ultimately decided to send the munitions because they are considered the most effective way of arming U.S.-made Abrams tanks, according to a Defense Department official familiar with the plans. The first tranche of 10 Abrams will arrive in Ukraine in mid-September, after a group of Ukrainian soldiers finished a training program to use them last month, POLITICO first reported.”
“If Russia hadn’t invaded, Ukraine was meant to hold parliamentary elections next month and a presidential vote in March 2024.
Whether elections could or should happen is once again a lively topic of discussion in Kyiv, after U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham in late August called for Kyiv to organize “free and fair” elections even when it is under all-out assault from Russian attacks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is strongly suggesting he wants to run for a second term. “In 2024, if the war continues and if elections are held, I will never in my life abandon my country. Because I am the guarantor of the Constitution, and I will defend it in any case,” he said in a recent interview with the Portuguese public broadcaster RTP.
Zelenskyy responded to Graham by saying he is ready — if parliament agrees — to overturn the martial law that bans the country from holding elections in time of war, but it’s a topic that raises major questions about democratic legitimacy: most TV channels are heavily controlled by the government, soldiers would have to vote in frontline trenches and millions of Ukrainians have fled abroad.”