The Secretary of State to the United States, Antony Blinken on Thursday announced a new aid for Ukraine totalling more than $1bn in a visit to Kyiv, including about $665m in new military and civilian security assistance, as he hailed the months-long counteroffensive against the Russian forces in the country’s southeast.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the new US aid would include HIMARS missile launch systems, Javelin antitank weapons, Abrams tanks and other weapons systems, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday.
The Pentagon said it would also send depleted uranium ammunition, which is highly effective at piercing armour plates, but their use is controversial.
‘In the ongoing counteroffensive, progress has accelerated in the past few weeks. This new assistance will help sustain it and build further momentum,’ Blinken told reporters at a news conference with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday that coincided with a Russian attack in eastern Ukraine that killed at least 16 people.
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‘The $175m that the US is providing in direct military aid is to support the Ukrainian military counteroffensive namely by providing among other things depleted uranium munitions that would be fired from Abrams tanks, 10 of which will be arriving in Ukraine mid-September,’ she said.
Blinken also met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who thanked the US for support but warned that Ukraine expected difficult months ahead as winter approached.
‘We’re happy that we’re not alone through this winter, we will do it together with our partners,’ he told Blinken.
Asked about Blinken’s visit, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow believed Washington planned to continue funding Ukraine’s military ‘to wage this war to the last Ukrainian’.
He said US aid to Kyiv would not affect the course of what he called Russia’s special military operation.