NORTH DAKOTA (KXNET) — As the war against Ukraine and Russia continues, the United States is getting more involved.

America has already allocated over $60 billion in funding and equipment to Ukraine.

Now, the Department of Defense announced additional security assistance via a package to meet Ukraine’s critical security and defense needs. 

This package includes additional air defense capabilities, anti-tank weapons, and other equipment to help Ukraine counter Russia’s ongoing war of aggression.

It utilizes assistance previously authorized for Ukraine during prior fiscal years under the Presidential Drawdown Authority that remained after the PDA revaluation process concluded in June.

But right now, many Americans are asking: Why are we helping Ukraine in this big way? What about the issues that lie within our own Nation?

U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer says this support is critical.

“I’d argue that it’s important funding, and the reason I say this, is the cost of Ukraine not beating Russia and pushing Vladimir Putin out of Ukraine would be much, much greater than the cost of us helping them succeed at maintaining their independence and maintaining their current borders. You know, we have a moral and a contractual obligation to Ukraine. We, as we being the United States, along with the United Kingdom, signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 that created Ukraine. And Russia and Ukraine also signed that memorandum determining what the borders of Ukraine would be. The promise that the United States made to Ukraine in that memorandum was that we would always have their back, that we would help defend their country, particularly underneath our nuclear umbrella, if Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. It did,” said Senator Kevin Cramer.

Senator Cramer goes on to express that Ukraine was the third-largest nuclear superpower in the world, once upon a time.

They gave up their weapons so that we would have their back.

“For us to abandon them now would send a very strong message, not only to our NATO allies in Europe, it would send a strong message to Xi Jinping in China that, hey, go ahead and take over the Pacific, go ahead, the United States can’t be counted on as a reasonable ally. It’d say to South Korea and it’d say to North Korea, go ahead and invade South Korea. The United States isn’t going to be there to help defend them. It says to Australia, China is going to take over the Pacific. We’re not going to be there to help you. And worse than all of that is that all of those allies, which is our advantage over other superpowers and near-peer adversaries like China and Russia, North Korea and Iran, it lets them know that our advantage over them has always been that we have a lot of allies. They do not. And if we lose our allies because we abandon our allies, we’re just putting Americans in danger,” said Cramer. 

The capabilities of this Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine is valued at up to $200 million.

The funds are towards warfare equipment, ammunition, and much more.