‘We Will Spend Every Dollar Appropriated’ – Ukraine at War Update for Dec. 3

The administration of US President Joe Biden unveiled the latest $725 million military aid package for Kyiv on Monday, with seven weeks to go in its term and about $9 billion left in funds earmarked for Ukraine.

“At the president’s direction, we will spend every dollar that Congress has appropriated for Ukraine, and to replenish our stockpiles,” Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Monday.

Ryder estimated the total aid left from Congress’ appropriations package last spring at roughly $9 billion: $6.8 billion that can still be drawn from US stockpiles, and more than $2.2 billion to buy weapons and equipment from the US defense industry.

The latest tranche includes ammunition for HIMARS precision rocket launchers, Stinger missiles, counter-drone systems, anti-armor weapons, and artillery ammunition, as well as another shipment of the controversial anti-personnel landmines that Biden recently approved. The Pentagon noted that Russian tactics have changed to involve more soldiers on foot comprising the advance parties.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the package was part of efforts “to ensure Ukraine has the capabilities it needs to defend itself against Russian aggression” before Donald Trump takes office in the third week of January 2025.

Trump and many of his fellow Republicans, who are assuming control of both houses of the legislature, have expressed that brokering a peace deal will be their priority over approving more aid for Ukraine.

Other Topics of Interest

Zelensky: November-December Sees Record Russian Losses in Combat

The Ukrainian military regularly reports that Russian forces are resorting to ‘meat assaults,’ sending wounded or poorly trained fighters into battle as cannon fodder.

On Monday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov, providing “an update on the continued surge of US security assistance to Ukraine to provide the capabilities it needs to defend against Russian aggression,” the Pentagon said.

Russia’s military budget to soar to a record 13.5 trillion rubles in 2025

About 33 percent of the Russian federal budget posted on a government website Sunday has been earmarked for defense, amounting to 13.5 trillion rubles (approximately $130 billion at Monday’s exchange rates), up from a reported 28.3 percent of the 2024 budget.

Both houses of the country’s legislature, the Duma and the Federation Council, had passed the budget and its line items about a week ago, and President Vladimir Putin formally approved the measures over the weekend.

The three-year budget, however, calls for a slight contraction of military spending for 2026 and 2027. Moscow is likely to struggle to keep up with military spending increases as inflation hovers around 8.5 percent, the Central Bank has raised the prime rate to a staggering 21 percent, and the ruble is plummeting against the US dollar. In June of 2022, before Western financial sanctions took hold, a dollar bought about 54 rubles. Now it buys about 106 rubles.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Kyiv on Monday, the first time since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, and highlighted €650 million in military aid that had been approved by Berlin.

According to the US special office for Ukraine-funding oversight, Washington’s total funding for Kyiv is nearly $183 billion, as of Sept. 30, 2024.

ISW: Moscow launches 100-plus drones at Ukraine per day, but Kyiv’s EW systems are knocking down nearly all of them

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported on Monday that, as Russia is able to ramp up its domestic production of Shahed-type drones thanks to components imported from China and/or Iran, Ukraine’s advances in electronic warfare (EW) innovations have resulted in the percentage of those drones that do not reach their target to “increase significantly over the course of October and November 2024.”

The ISW highlighted that Ukrainian military expert Petro Chernyk told Ukrainian military news outlet ArmyInform that Russia has increased the production of Shahed drone airframes, statements that, the ISW analysts said, align with the think-tank’s October 2024 assessment of those numbers.

“This dynamic is reflected in the composition of the strike packages that Russia launched at Ukraine between October and November 2024, as it has become more common for Russian forces to launch between 80 to 100 (or more) Shahed and decoy drones as part of their larger strike packages,” the analysts wrote. “Russian forces launched 110 Shahed drones and other unspecified drones, likely decoys, at Ukraine on the night of December 1 to 2, for example.”

They added that Moscow frequently launches Shahed drones alongside “more limited numbers” of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, the analysts wrote, the number of Shahed drones or decoys thereof that do not reach their intended targets due to Ukrainian electronic warfare (EW) interference has increased significantly: Russia launched 105 Shahed-type drones at Ukraine on Monday, they reported, 78 of which Ukrainian forces directly shot down, and 23 of which were “lost” due to EW interference, the Ukrainian Air Force reported.

The night before, they added, Russian forces launched 110 Shaheds and decoys at Ukraine, 50 of which veered off course due to EW interference and 52 of which Ukrainian forces reportedly shot down directly.

All of this is adding an “increased burden on the joint Russian-Belarusian air defense umbrella,” the ISW concluded.

“Independent Belarusian monitoring group Hajun Project reported on November 25 that 38 Russian Shahed drones entered Belarusian airspace on November 24 and 25 – a record number of Russian drones violating Belarusian airspace. Belarus scrambled jets to respond to the airspace violation – suggesting that Belarus was unprepared to receive errant Russian drones and that Russia had not anticipated the impacts of Ukrainian interference or communicated them to Belarus in advance,” the analysts wrote.