2024-09-06 09:51:18
The US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, announced this Friday at the Ramstein air base in Germany that President Joe Biden will announce a $250 million package of military support for Ukraine.
Ukraine urges allies to cross another ‘red line’: use long-range weapons to attack Russia
“We have to hurry, especially with winter on the way,” Austin said when he opened the meeting of the contact group for the defense of Ukraine (known as the Ramstein format), which the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr, attended for the first time. Zelensky.
The announcement comes at a difficult time for Kyiv, which is trying to maintain its position in Russia’s Kursk region as Russian forces threaten the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.
The US Secretary of Defense has listed the most recent contributions in military support from allies and recalled that, since the last meeting of the group in June, Washington has made $4 billion in aid to kyiv. “This team continues to help Ukraine reject Russia’s aggression today and prevent Russia’s aggression tomorrow,” he said.
Austin has said, however, that Ukraine must continue to strengthen its own weapons production, for which it will also receive support from the US and other allies. In this sense, he has cited as an example the cooperation that his country provides to Kyiv to develop its own replacements for the S-300 and R-27 missiles or the supply of components for the production of drones and electronic warfare systems. The Secretary of Defense said: “An outrage continues if not stopped.”
Zelensky called for input on Putin
Zelensky has asked Kyiv’s allies for more weapons and to allow him to attack targets throughout Russian territory with long-range weapons to force Russia to end the war. “We need more weapons to remove the Russian forces from our territory, especially in the Donetsk region,” the Ukrainian president said this Friday, referring to the situation in the front axes of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, where Russia be the best focus to go forward. “Russian efforts to draw red lines are not working.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has said that Berlin has not changed its stance on long-range attacks far into Russian territory.
Zelensky has confirmed that Moscow has suffered some 6,000 casualties among the dead and wounded in one month of the Ukrainian operation in Kursk, where the kyiv forces controlled more than 1,300 square kilometers and a hundred cities.
“Let’s make this autumn the time when the anger of Russia falls, in a way that ends the war and restores the reliable international security system,” the Ukrainian president said at the beginning of the meeting. Zelensky said: “We want to end this war, we want peace, who emphasized that it is the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, “who does not want peace, and who is focused on the victory of our country.”
The visit of the Ukrainian leader to the US Air Force base in Ramstein was unusual and gave a political dimension to this meeting of defense ministers who have met periodically since the beginning of the war in a rather operational atmosphere to discuss joint efforts to equip Ukraine with war materiel.
#send #package #million #dollars #military #aid #Ukraine