President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed the law authorizing $95 billion in military aid that includes supplies for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and also contains a provision that would force the social media site TikTok to be sold or banned in the United States.
“Today is a good day for the United States, a good day for Europe and a good day for world peace,” the president said in statements to the press after signing the law at the White House.
Biden approved the immediate sending of $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine and said the shipment would begin to arrive in the “next few hours,” the first tranche of the nearly $61 billion allocated to Ukraine.
The Pentagon quickly announced a $1 billion package for kyiv with the new funding that includes air defense batteries and munitions, dozens of HIMARS precision rocket launchers and hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery ammunition.
The announcement ends the long and painful battle with Republicans in Congress over urgent aid to Ukraine.
“We rose to the moment, we came together and we achieved it,” he added. “Now we have to move quickly, and we are doing it.”
The United States has several military warehouses with weapons that are ready to be supplied to Ukraine in European NATO member countries such as Poland and Germany, close to war. Some of these weapons could reach the battlefield in the east of the country in less than a week, US officials told The Washington Post on condition of anonymity.
The shipment of American weapons to Ukraine has been coordinated since the start of the war in 2022 from facilities that the Pentagon has in Germany.
Among the weapons most needed by Ukrainian forces resisting Russia’s advance and that could most quickly be distributed are artillery ammunition and 155mm projectiles, as well as air defenses.
The president attacked Republicans for having been blocking aid to Ukraine while “friends” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, referring to Iran, China and North Korea, supplied drones, ammunition and missiles for Russia.
He also assured that if Western countries had not closed ranks with Ukraine, NATO cohesion would have been weakened and the national security of the United States would be at risk.
“As I have argued for months, this directly affects the national security interests of the United States. If Putin triumphs in Ukraine, the next move by Russian forces could be an attack against a NATO ally,” he warned.
Iran’s attack on Israel this month prompted Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to lift the blockade on the foreign aid package.
TikTok
Included in the measure signed today by Biden is a provision that gives TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, nine months to sell it or face a national ban in the United States. The president can grant a one-time extension of 90 days, which would make the deadline for the sale one year, if he certifies that there is a path for divestment and “significant progress” toward its execution.
The Administration and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have called the social network a growing national security concern.
TikTok said it will launch a legal challenge against what it called an “unconstitutional” effort by Congress.
“We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail,” the company said in a statement.
Aid for Gaza
In addition to aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, the package includes humanitarian aid for Gaza. Biden called on Israel to ensure that it “reaches without delay to the Palestinians” in this territory.
“We are going to immediately guarantee that aid and get it there,” including “food, medical supplies, drinking water,” Biden said in a press conference in which he stated that the population of Gaza “suffers cruelly.”
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