anti-air and anti-armor equipment. america has committed $1.35 billion to weapons and ammunition. and thanks to the courage and bravery of the ukrainian people, the equipment we have sent and our colleagues have sent have been used to devastating effect to defend ukrainian land and airspace. our allies and partners have stepped up as well. as i made clear, american forces are in europe, not in europe, to engage in conflict with russian forces. american forces are here to defend nato allies. i met with troops serving alongside our polish allies to bolster the front line defenses. the reason we want to make clear is their movement on ukraine. don t even think about moving on one single inch of nato territory. we have a sacred obligation.
anti-air and anti-armor equipment. since the invasion, america has committed another $1.35 billion in weapons and ammunition. and thanks to the courage and bravery of the ukrainian people, the equipment we ve sent and our colleagues have sent have been used to devastating effect to defend ukrainian land and air space. our allies and partners have stepped up as well. but as i ve made clear, america forces are in europe, not in europe to engage in conflict with russian forces, american forces are here to defend nato allies. yesterday i met with the troops that are serving alongside our polish allies to bolster nato s frontline defenses. the reason we want to make clear is their movement on ukraine, don t even think about moving on one single inch of nato terr
billion of lethal as assistance to ukraine. we or working with them each and every week to determine how we can continue to help them with anti air assets, anti armor. we ve offered stingers, provided javelins and many other members of the nato alliance are doing the same thing. i think about two-thirds of the nato alliance are now providing lethal assistance to ukraine. every ally is making a distribution. some are providing humanitarian support. some are providing lethal. most are doing both. you ve heard, i m sure, president zelenskyy say just this weekend that he wants from nato only 1% of what it has in tanks and planes to go to ukraine. he said you have thousands of fighter jets, but we have not been given one yet. so yes or no, will nato give ukraine what president zelenskyy is asking for? well, this is an evolving conversation. we ve spoken with president
ones that have begun they re the first ones to begin this movement north. i couldn t tell you where they are on the road right now or where exactly they re going to end up. tony. can you give a report of the latest tranche of stingers and switchblades that the president authorized? what i can tell you, material is getting in to the region every single day including over the last 24 hours. we are in the first half a dozen shipments of what will probably be around 30 or so of $800 million that the president signed out. so it s already moving in to the region. i don t have an inventory list for you about how many are on every flight. but we re doing the best we can to prioritize the kinds of material that we know the ukrainians need the most. so obviously that includes the anti-armor and anti-air defense
mainly 1,000-plus members san mercenariesbasically contractore russians coming from other places like africa and syria. that shows you how much the russians have been spread thin by some of the fighting in these different areas. but, large cities are still not in control. correspondent lucas tomlinson, who just returned from reporting in ukraine, shows us tonight how putin is looking outside of his own ranks to fight in eastern ukraine. ukraine forces russian onslaught the pentagon says russia now deploy mercenaries from the middle east and africa to make up for thousands of soldiers killed in the battlefield. plan to put a thousand or so of their contractors in donbas. they believe that they are going to prioritize that part of the country. on capitol hill the u.s. general in europe warns ukraine needs more weapons in order to defeat the russian army. anti-armor, anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles are very, very important.