On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken disclosed in Kyiv that Ukraine will receive $2 billion in additional financing to facilitate the delivery of armaments and support future investments in the country’s defense industrial base.
As per the State Department, the funding will be derived from unallocated foreign military financing funds, which were previously authorized at $400 million, and $60 billion in supplemental security funding that Congress recently approved.
Blinken, who acknowledged that this was his fourth visit to Kyiv and his fifth to Ukraine in total, assured Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba during a press conference that the United States would persist in its support for Ukraine until it achieved “strategic triumph.” This would be achieved by enabling Ukrainians to shape their own future and by supporting Ukrainian forces in their pursuit of victory on the battlefield.
He arrived during a period of deteriorating battlefield conditions in the eastern and northern regions of Ukraine, where Russian forces have recently escalated their attacks on the Kharkiv region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared that he would suspend all upcoming international journeys as military forces withdrew from a number of neighboring villages.
Blinken stated that the air defenses that Ukraine has requested from its supporters were a “top priority” in order to protect soldiers and civilians. He also stated that ammunition, armored vehicles, missiles, and air defenses were being rushed to the front lines.
Blinken posits that the United States is one of 32 countries that are currently engaged in the negotiation of a bilateral security agreement with Kiev. It is expected that the agreement’s provisions will be finalized within the next few weeks.
Blinken responded that the United States had “not encouraged or enabled” strikes outside of Ukraine, but that Ukraine “ultimately must determine for itself how it will conduct this war” when asked whether Kyiv was restrained in advance of Russia’s assault on Kharkiv by the Biden administration’s conditions limiting the use of American weapons to defensive rather than offensive purposes.
