Ukraine

NBC - After months of requests from Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is leaning toward providing Ukraine with powerful new long-range ballistic missiles, according to two U.S. officials. After only providing medium-range missiles, the U.S. is leaning toward sending the longer-range version of the missile, the officials said, which would allow Ukraine to strike farther inside the Russian-held Crimean Peninsula. But U.S. funding for arms shipments to Ukraine remains uncertain because of opposition from former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress.

A Ukrainian lawmaker tells NPR's Joanna Kakissis that Ukraine is being held hostage by election-year politics in the U.S. Republicans in Congress have been blocking a military aid package for Ukraine. Kakissis reports on Up First that Zelenskyy was at the annual Munich Security Conference this weekend, where he once again asked the West not to see this conflict as only Ukraine's war but one that will grow much larger if Russia keeps winning.

NPR - As funding for Ukraine faces an uncertain future in Congress, the US Army has been left to foot the bill for hundreds of millions of dollars in support for Ukraine's war effort against Russia over the last few months. Since October 2023, the beginning of the fiscal year, the Army has spent over $430 million on various operations, including training Ukrainian troops, transporting equipment, and US troop deployments to Europe. Army officials are concerned that without new funding, they will have to begin pulling money from other critical projects to continue supporting Kyiv.