Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $2 billion in new financing in Kiev on Wednesday Ukraine are used to facilitate the supply of weapons and fuel future investments in Ukraine's defense industrial base.
The funding will come from the $60 billion in additional security funding recently passed by Congress, as well as from $400 million in previously approved foreign military financing funds that have not yet been appropriated, the State Department said.
Blinken, who noted that it was his fifth trip to Ukraine and fourth to Kiev, pledged during a news conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba that the US would support Ukraine until it achieves “strategic success,” both by Ukrainian forces helping to deliver results on the battlefield as well as positioning Ukrainians to determine their own future.
His visit came amid deteriorating battlefield conditions in the country's north and east, where Russian forces have made recent advances and intensified attacks on Ukraine's Kharkiv region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced he would cancel all upcoming foreign trips as the country's armed forces withdrew from several neighboring villages.
“We are rushing with munitions, armored vehicles, missiles and air defenses, rushing to get to the front lines, to protect soldiers and to protect civilians,” Blinken said, noting that the air defense that Ukraine has implored its supporters for is a “top priority” used to be. .”
Blinken said the US was one of 32 countries actively negotiating a bilateral security treaty with Kiev and expects its terms to be finalized in the coming weeks.
Blinken questioned whether the Biden administration's terms, which specified American weapons could only be used for defensive and not offensive purposes, had crippled Kiev in the run-up to the Russian attack on Kharkov. Blinken said the US had “neither encouraged nor enabled” attacks outside Ukraine, but that Ukraine ultimately “has to make its own decisions about how to fight this war.”
