On April 6, the US Senate passed the bill for the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022” – unanimously. The vote on the “new edition” of the 1941 lend-lease agreement is still pending in the House of Representatives, but anything other than approval would be a huge sensation. Even now the bill is already being described in the US media as a turning point and the “most significant bill” of the 21st century.
The President is thus authorized, regardless of legal and judicial restrictions, to quickly meet all requirements for all existing US equipment (probably no F-35s and submarines – but Ukraine couldn’t do anything with them now anyway) by Ukraine and all Ukrainian NATO states. The return of the systems and any payments will then only become an issue in five years’ time at the earliest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slarv_ZEc8A
Decisive for Allied victory in the Second World War
While the historic Land-Lease Act the opponents, i.e. Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan, were not mentioned by name, this is now very much the case with Russia as the aggressor. At that time, the USA supplied the Soviet Union and Great Britain with gigantic quantities of war material from 1941 onwards – starting even before its entry into the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. This included around 200,000 GMC Studebaker trucks alone to boost the Russian army’s logistics, which were already inefficient at the time.
The entire volume that went to Russia (including almost 15,000 aircraft, more than 7,000 tanks and almost 200 torpedo boats) can be seen in a few display cases dedicated to the “Lend-Lease” in the large Moscow Victory Museum “Poklonnaya Gora”, albeit in a rather marginal location. However, the deliveries were not made free of charge; the Soviet Union had to pay off the costs of around 160 billion US dollars (just under 150 billion euros) over decades. Moscow made its last payment in August 2006, almost 60 years after the end of the war. Great Britain, which had received around three times as much material as the Soviet Union, paid off its last debt of originally around 700 billion US dollars (just under 650 billion euros) in December of the same year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfychZ5p2g Most Western historians are certain that the US material was probably decisive for the Soviet Union in the war, but was in any case a significant factor in the fight against the German Wehrmacht. This impression was also confirmed by Marshal Josef Stalin in December 1943 during the Tehran Conference, when he said to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Without US material, we would not be able to fight against the German Wehrmacht. Roosevelt: “Without the use of those machines, through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war.” However, this statement is missing from the Russian part of the conference minutes. As late as 1963, the conqueror of Berlin, Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, complained in a private conversation with the author Konstantin Simonov: “It is currently said that the allies did not help us at all. But you can’t deny that we received a lot of goods from the Americans, without which we wouldn’t have been able to continue the war.” It should also be mentioned that tons of ammunition and fuel were consumed during the sea transport of all the material and that many thousands of Allied sailors lost their lives due to ship losses caused by attacking German submarines and aircraft. While the material deliveries were intended to support Russia at the time, the g
The exact opposite is the case. The only question is when the new aid structure will be “fully on track” and whether Ukraine will be able to hold out long enough. In any case, the USA will do everything in its power to ensure that the aid deliveries start as soon as possible – the continued existence of Ukraine is described in the act as “essential for the security of the USA”.
