Chernihiv, Ukraine – Tamara was pregnant when she had to hide for three weeks in the ice-cold basement of her house in Chernihiv, a northern Ukrainian city.
“When [Russian bomber] planes were above us, the only thing we could do was to pray,” she told Al Jazeera, recalling the war’s beginning in February 2022 that devastated her city and forced two-thirds of its 300,000 residents to leave.
On April 17, she relived this horror when Russian missile strikes here killed 18 people and wounded dozens.
“Why can’t the West understand that every day of the delay means more deaths?” she said on Saturday outside a golden-domed, 17th-century church where a remembrance service for the victims was about to begin.
She was referring to United States military aid that had been stalled in the US House of Representatives since October because of objections from House Republicans allied with former President Donald Trump.
Later on Saturday, the House finally approved the $61bn package – and millions of Ukrainians sighed with relief.
The bill includes $23bn to replenish stockpiles of US-made weaponry and widen future military transfers.
Another $14bn will be used to buy advanced arms directly from US military contractors, and $11bn will fund the US military operations in the region, train the Ukrainian military and boost intelligence cooperation between Kyiv and Washington.
Non-military assistance of $8bn will go to such things as helping President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government pay salaries.
A symbolic ‘handout’?
One of Ukraine’s top military experts said the package will not turn the tide of war.
The aid can “improve the situation” on the 1,000km-long (620-mile-long) front line, said Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces.
But the aid looks like “a handout to show that we haven’t been forgotten, no more than that”, he told Al Jazeera.
“They’re always late, they hit the brakes, they’re afraid,” he said. “All of that is done to catch up [with Russia], but wars are won by those who act ahead of time.”
The package includes antitank guided missiles and 155mm shells for NATO-standard artillery, which may put an end to the desperate “shell hunger” of outgunned Ukrainian troops.
There are also missiles, armoured vehicles and air defence munitions.
But to advance…