Wednesday Briefing

The Senate passed the aid bill on a vote of 79 to 18.Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times

U.S. Senate passed foreign aid bill

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly last night to approve a long-stalled $95.3 billion package of aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, sending it to President Biden for his signature and ending months of uncertainty about whether the U.S. would continue to back Kyiv against Russian aggression.

The legislation had nearly been derailed because of right-wing opposition. The vast majority of senators in both parties supported the package, and Senate leaders regarded its passage as a triumph, particularly given the opposition to aid for Ukraine that had built up in the House.

Ukraine is running short of the munitions it needs to fight and had grown desperate for the aid to pass. My colleague Marc Santora, who has been reporting from Ukraine since the start of the war, told me that “what this aid means, in the most simple terms, is guns and bullets.”

“But beyond that,” he continued, “what this has done is provided a much-needed boost for the morale of both Ukrainian soldiers on the front and civilians living under the threat of near-nightly Russian drone and missile bombardments.”

What’s next: The much-needed weaponry still has to get to Ukraine. Santora said that “most military analysts think that it will take a month or two before we see it really change the dynamic on the front.”

High tech combat: The war in Ukraine has served as a laboratory for new battlefield technologies, with mixed results.