Recently the government of Britain put pressure on the local governments of Scottish and Wales to provide local funds for weapons in Ukraine. Many in Scotland and Wales accused the British federal government of raiding their local coffers.
Scottish Finance Minister Kate Forbes says that no more Scottish money will be used to pay for weapons in Ukraine. She says that Scotland gave £65 million “under heavy pressure,” but “this must not be seen as any kind of precedent.” The finance minister says there will be no repeat. Forbes represents the SNP, the Left-socialist Scottish Independence party.
Rebecca Evans, the finance minister of the Local Government of Wales, repeated the sentiment. She said Wales gave £30 million, and that is enough.
Evans had protested the expenditure as “worrying and potentially divisive.” She says Wales has already spent generously on humanitarian efforts and should play no role in funding the defense of Ukraine. Evans is part of the Welsh branch of the Labour party.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden unilaterally pledged another $880 million weapons package to Ukraine.
Biden’s new weapons package includes:
Additional ammunition for M142/M270 MLRS systems
Two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS)
“Up to 150,000” rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition (America has already pledged nearly 300k)
Four additional counter-artillery radars (some of these have already been captured partially intact by Russia)
So far, only four M142s have actually arrived in Ukraine. These four were already in active use by the US military in Poland. Britain and Germany were supposed to provide four M270s each. Nothing has been delivered so far. Germany has now said that it could take until next winter to get them ready for deployment in Ukraine.
Now, the USA has pledged four more M142s and Norway has pledged four M270s. It is unclear when any of these will actually arrive.
The M142 is the newer “high mobility” version of the M270, but it only carries half as many rockets.
