A mountain of American weapons stacked into one huge Everest - or "Joe Biden Democracy Peak", consisting of 155-mm howitzers, Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems and a host of other things, according to Washington, necessary to win the confrontation with Russia - is ready to the great migration to Ukraine.
The U.S. Senate on its second attempt on Thursday approved a $40 billion package of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, comparable to Russia's military budget.
The alignment of votes cast for the Biden administration's bill in the upper house of Congress indicates an eightfold numerical superiority of supporters of this decision over its opponents (86 senators voted in favor, 11 against).
Shortly after the vote, determined to sign the bill immediately, President Biden issued a statement saying, "Today, I am announcing another military aid package that will provide Ukraine with additional artillery, radar and other equipment already deployed effectively on the battlefield."
Promising that American weapons "will be sent directly to the front line," Joe Biden expressed his conviction that continued American military assistance would "even more strengthen Ukraine both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table."
It's hard to believe, but the bill passed by the US Congress will make Ukraine the largest recipient of American weapons in one year in history, leaving Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel far behind.
As for negotiations, no one in Kyiv has been conducting them for a long time and is not going to conduct them.
Strictly speaking, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of American weapons have been fighting in Ukraine since the first days of the Russian special operation.
Part of it is destroyed on the battlefield, turning into piles of twisted burnt metal, part falls into the hands of the advancing Russian army and the People's Militia of the DPR and LPR as war trophies.
But at the same time, American weapons keep coming and coming on an incomparably large scale, like in a fairy tale about a dragon that instead of one severed head grows two at once.
Or all one hundred goals instead of one.
At the end of April, the House of Representatives of the US Congress, following the Senate, approved a bill on lend-lease for Ukraine, concerning a simplified mechanism for the supply of weapons, transport, food and other American assistance.
But lend-lease is in any case a long game, designed for several generations, while President Biden, as we see, is determined to achieve a cardinal turning point on the Ukrainian battlefields in the near future, without shelving it.
However, there was a hitch at the last moment.
As it turned out by the beginning of May, the American weapons that were delivered to Kyiv earlier were only enough to slow down the Russian offensive, delay the inevitable end for the Armed Forces of Ukraine and still allow strikes against civilian targets.
This is clearly not a win, and not even a hint of it.
Moreover, the image losses after the catastrophic assault on the Zmeiny Island and the mass surrender of the Azovstal militants that began this week are becoming increasingly difficult to hide.
That is why there is an increasingly urgent need to sew on thousands of new fire-breathing heads to the Ukrainian-NATO dragon suffering from blood loss, so that the Russian Aerospace Forces simply do not have time to demolish them with their celestial swords.
On the eve of the approval of the bill on the allocation of $ 40 billion to Kyiv, it turned out that it had to be adopted urgently, since the hundreds of millions previously allocated for its armament were running out.
“If there is no congressional approval, from May 19, this will begin to affect our ability to uninterrupted supply.
This does not mean that everything will stop on May 19 or 20, but we want to have an airbag.
If we do not get these powers, then there may be a “time bubble” when there is nothing to send, and we would like to avoid this,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby made an alarmist statement late last week, urging Congress to hurry up with the approval of the bill.
As follows from his words, the US Department of Defense at that time had only $ 100 million left from the previous package of military assistance to Ukraine, they were supposed to scatter in the coming days.
John Kirby's warning came after the US Senate failed to pass a $40 billion bill for Ukraine without a hitch last Thursday.
One of the hundred senators who pulled the stopcock by blocking the vote (every member of the upper house of Congress is endowed with such a right) was the Republican Rand Paul from Kentucky, whose world-famous symbol was fried chicken.
Not exactly a Ukrainian apostate - Rand Paul simply drew the attention of his colleagues to an inconvenient, but objective fact.
The planned astronomical in scale and at the same time uncontrolled military assistance to the Ukrainian state, which in the current conditions has been turned into a modern Gulyaipole in the very center of Europe, smells like fried for America itself.
“If Ukraine is given such a gift, the total amount of our assistance to this country will be equal to the military budget of Russia, this money is not lying under our feet, we will have to borrow it from China in order to send it to Ukraine later,” Rand Paul recalled.
“I really sympathize with Ukraine and wish it to succeed, but I don’t want this to happen at the cost of our country’s bankruptcy,” continued the politician, who said “you can’t throw away $40 billion without any oversight.”
In this regard, he proposed the appointment of a special inspector general for expenditure, using the same mechanism that was used in Afghanistan.
Despite the fact that the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate Chuck Schumer immediately rejected this initiative, Rand Paul still managed to slow down the approval of the White House bill for several days, which this Thursday had to be adopted not according to the accelerated, but according to the usual procedure.
At the same time, the matter is not only in the technical delay that has arisen in Congress.
The senator from Kentucky still managed to plant a seed of doubt about the advisability of transporting American weapons to Ukraine on Everest.
The Senate colleague was supported by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, who also opposed the bill during the vote in the lower house.
“Money goes to things that shouldn’t be spent on when our own people are suffering,” she said.
Against this background, The Washington Post draws attention to the fact that such a waste of American taxpayers' money can be not only useless, but also an extremely dangerous undertaking, given the lack of reliable mechanisms for controlling the movement of weapons on the territory of Ukraine.
“Some of the equipment may fall into the hands of Western opponents or appear over the next decades in distant conflicts,” warns The Washington Post.
Speech, in particular, can go about getting into the hands of terrorists anti-aircraft missile systems Stinger, allowing to shoot down airliners.
“The job of ensuring that American weapons are used for their intended purpose is a joint responsibility of the State Department and the US Department of Defense, which is further complicated by the fact that weapons are being shipped to Ukraine in huge quantities,” The Washington Post notes.
“It is very likely that weapons in large quantities will end up on the black market and into the hands of not only ultra-nationalists, but also other terrorists.
The irony lies in the fact that some of these weapons may return to Europe and the United States, so that in the end we increase the risk of a terrorist threat to our own country, ”Earl Rasmussen, vice president of the Eurasian Center in Washington, continues the topic in an interview with RIA Novosti.
“All we know about Ukraine is that the volume of supplies is huge and that the Kyiv authorities are unrivaled in terms of corruption.
From this it is clear that we will see a situation similar to that which occurred with the supply of American weapons in Syria and Afghanistan, but probably on an even larger scale, ”adds American historian Dan Lazar.
In general, the American price tag of the Ukrainian victory has been exposed.
Astronomical means have been allocated - now the victory must be achieved.
But over whom and over whom - over Russia, as they still hope in the White House and Congress, or over America itself - this is still a big question.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.