kyiv (Reuters) – New U.S. weapons program will impact Ukraine battlefield, Secretary of State says Anthony Blinken ” said Tuesday, visiting Kiev at a time when Ukrainian forces are facing setbacks on the front after a long delay in U.S. aid.
Washington finally passed a bill at the end of April providing military aid to Ukraine, delayed for months by opposition from some Republicans in the US Congress while Russian forces took advantage of their superior firepower to launch an offensive.
“…In the short term, help is now on the way, some of it has already arrived and more will arrive,” Blinken said during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “And it’s going to make a real difference to ongoing Russian aggression on the battlefield.”
Zelenskiy praised the “crucial” U.S. aid and thanked Washington for its bipartisan support.
He said Ukraine’s biggest deficit so far was in air defense, saying Blinken kyiv needed two Patriot air defense batteries for the airstrikes-hit northeastern Kharkiv region. Russians.
“Civilians, warriors, everyone, they are under Russian missiles,” Zelenskiy said.
The Ukrainian president said he also wanted to discuss security guarantees with the United States, in addition to asking Blinken to bring more countries on board at the next high-level peace summit to be held in Switzerland in June.
Ukraine has pushed Russian troops back from the outskirts of kyiv and reclaimed swathes of occupied land in the first year after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
But a counter-offensive launched in 2023 failed, and recent months have seen Moscow make slow but steady progress on the front. kyiv says it hopes that the renewed commitments of Western arms will allow it to regain the initiative on the battlefield and reconquer part of the fifth of its territory still occupied by Russia.
“We are also determined that, over time, Ukraine will be robustly self-sufficient: militarily, economically and democratically,” Blinken said. “A free, strong, prosperous and prosperous Ukraine is the best possible rebuke to Putin.”
(Reporting by Simon Lewis; writing by Anastasiia Malenko; editing by Peter Graff)
yahoo
