US Secretary of State Makes Unannounced Visit to Ukraine
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unscheduled visit to Kiev on Thursday as the Biden administration announced major new military aid worth more than $2 billion for Ukraine.
In meetings with senior Ukrainian officials, Blinken said the Biden administration had notified Congress of its intent to provide $2 billion in long-term Foreign Military Financing to Ukraine and 18 of its neighbors, including NATO members and regional security partners.
Pending expected congressional approval, about $1 billion of that will go to Ukraine and the rest will be divided among Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, the State Department said.
It will go to help those countries “deter and defend against emergent threats to their sovereignty and territorial integrity” by enhancing their military integration with NATO and countering “Russian influence and aggression,” the department said, according to AP.
Foreign Military Financing, or FMF, allows recipients to purchase US-made defense equipment, often depending on their specific needs.
The financing comes on top of a $675 million package of heavy weaponry, ammunition and armored vehicles for Ukraine alone that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced earlier Thursday at a conference in Ramstein, Germany.
That package includes howitzers, artillery munitions, Humvees, armored ambulances, anti-tank systems and more.
Thursday’s contributions bring total US aid to Ukraine to $15.2 billion since Biden took office.
On Wednesday, the US accused Moscow of interrogating, detaining and forcibly deporting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia. Russian officials immediately rejected the claim as “fantasy.”
