BY Claire Mom
The United States has given Ukraine 1.1 million rounds of rifle ammunition to help in its war with Russia.
In an X post on Wednesday evening, the US Central Command (Centcom), which oversees operations in the Middle East, said the rounds were confiscated from a ship bound for Yemen in December.
According to the command, the 1.1 million 7.62mm rounds were transferred to the Ukrainian armed forces on Monday.
The US government added that it obtained ownership of these munitions on July 20 through the department of justice’s civil forfeiture claims against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian armed forces tasked with preserving the country’s government.
Iran backs the Houthi rebels in Yemen’s ongoing civil war, but arms transfers to the group are barred under a 2015 resolution by the United Nations (UN) Security Council.
Since the second half of last year, Iran has also repeatedly been accused of supplying Russia with arms, most notably drones, for use in the war in Ukraine.
The latest transfer of arms comes a day after Ukraine’s Western allies warned that their production lines were struggling to keep up with the rate at which Ukraine was using ammunition.
Ukraine, which fires thousands of shells everyday, now gets most of its ammunition from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
However, Adm Rob Bauer, NATO’s most senior military official, had warned that “the bottom of the barrel is now visible”.
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