For months, the Americans have been launching various packages with arms deliveries for Ukraine on a large scale and in quick succession. Foreign Minister Blinken followed up on this during a surprise visit to Kyiv. He should also meet with President Selenskyj.
During a surprise visit to Kyiv, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced further billions in aid for Ukraine and its neighbors. The US government wants to militarily strengthen the country attacked by Russia and 18 states in Eastern and Southern Europe with 2.2 billion dollars (2.2 billion euros), the State Department said in Washington.
Blinken had just arrived in the Ukrainian capital for an unannounced visit. A meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is planned, his press secretary Serhiy Nikiforov told the Ukrajinska Pravda portal. US channel CNN, which accompanied Blinken, reported that the US chief diplomat met his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba and visited a children's hospital in the capital. It is Blinken's second visit to Kyiv since the Russian war of aggression began on February 24. He should demonstrate the solidarity of the United States with Ukraine, it said.
The US government recently announced new military aid for the country. Blinken is the most senior US official to have traveled to the war-torn country. Unlike many other heads of state and government, US President Joe Biden has not yet visited Ukraine. Just a few hours earlier, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had pledged further military aid for the Ukrainian defense against Russia. It is about a new weapons package with a volume of around 675 million dollars (about 676 million euros), said Austin at the US military base in Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate.
Austin had invited the members of the so-called Ukraine Contact Group to a conference that was also attended by German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The United States has provided Ukraine with more than $15 billion in combined support since Biden began his tenure. Most of the aid has been flowing since the beginning of the war at the end of February. At the end of August, the US government announced the largest military package to date for Ukraine, worth around three billion dollars for air defense and artillery systems, among other things. For a long time, the focus of American support was primarily on delivering weapons and ammunition to the front in Ukraine as quickly as possible, often from US stocks.
In recent months, the Americans have launched various packages with arms deliveries for Ukraine on a large scale and in quick succession. The US has plunked down massive sums of money in support of Ukraine. In May, the US Congress approved funds of almost 40 billion dollars (40 billion euros) for this purpose. About half of this was accounted for by the defense sector. Billions more were budgeted to, among other things, replenish US stockpiles of military equipment sent to Ukraine. Other funds were earmarked for humanitarian aid to refugees from Ukraine, among others.
