US President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday the granting of a billion dollars in additional military aid to Ukraine, Washington also calling on its allies to “intensify” arms deliveries to kyiv, in difficulty in the face of the Russians in the Donbass.
The United States at the same time declared itself “concerned about China’s alignment with Russia”, asking Beijing to stop supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine to avoid placing itself “on the wrong side of the story “.
The new US military aid was announced by the US President in a telephone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, who expressed his “gratitude for this support”.
“The United States has announced a new reinforcement of our defense, a new tranche of aid of one billion dollars,” confirmed Mr. Zelensky in his evening video message. “He is particularly important for our defense in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine which is the epicenter of the current Russian attacks.
The Pentagon specified that the aid included in particular 18 howitzers with their transport vehicles and 36,000 shells, as well as two Harpoon anti-ship missile launchers, intended for the coastal defense of Ukraine on the Black Sea.
“Ukraine is living at a pivotal moment on the battlefield,” US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said earlier today during a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels. countries of the “contact group” created by the United States to help Ukraine. “We must therefore intensify our common commitment” and “redouble our efforts so that it can defend itself”, he added.
Nearly 50 Defense Ministers – including the Ukrainian Minister, Oleksiï Reznikov – took part in this meeting, on the sidelines of a NATO ministerial meeting. A meeting eagerly awaited by kyiv, which has been calling for heavy weapons in quantity for weeks to repel Russian forces in the Donbass basin.
After this meeting, the American Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, assured that, in some cases, Ukraine had received more tanks and artillery pieces than requested.
And the first 10 long-range artillery systems will be “on the frontlines” in the coming weeks, once the first Ukrainian troops are trained to use them, he said. “If they use this weaponry correctly […]they should be able to hit a significant amount of targets, and that will be a game-changer,” General Milley added.
Since their abortive offensive on kyiv in March, Russian and pro-Russian separatist forces, which have partially controlled this industrial region since 2014, have set themselves the goal of taking full control.
“Ukraine must obtain everything necessary to achieve victory,” President Zelensky repeated in a teleconference with Czech MPs. He reiterated that the invasion of Ukraine was only a first step for Moscow, which intends to take back its former Soviet-era satellites.
Beijing in support of Moscow
Faced with this Western call for an intensification of military aid to Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin obtained a mark of support from his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on Wednesday.
“China is willing to pursue mutual support with Russia on issues of sovereignty, security, as well as other issues of fundamental interests and major concerns,” Xi was quoted as saying by the agency. New China press, which did not link these remarks to any specific example such as Ukraine or Taiwan.
The Kremlin indicated for its part that the two leaders had agreed to “expand cooperation in the energy, financial, industrial, transport and other fields, taking into account the world economic situation which has become complicated due to the sanctions. illegitimate of the West”. They also discussed the “development of military and military-technical relations”, according to the Russian presidency, describing the exchange as “warm and friendly”.
This exchange of courtesies was very little appreciated by Washington. “More than three months after the brutal invasion by Russia, China is still at Russia’s side,” said a spokesman for American diplomacy.
“It continues to protect Russia in international organizations, shirking its responsibilities as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. And she still denies the existence of the atrocities perpetrated by Russia in Ukraine, suggesting instead that they were staged,” the official added.
He again warned China against any “military aid” to Russia or any “systematic support for it to evade sanctions” from the West.
This American warning comes at a time when, in the face of Western sanctions, the Russian giant Gazprom announced a further drop of a third of the gas delivered to Europe by the Nord Stream gas pipeline, the day after an initial drastic reduction.
Continuous bombings
On the military front, the Russians continue their assault on the city of Severodonetsk and its neighbor Lyssytchansk, two key cities in Donbass, and on other localities in the region, according to kyiv.
The Ukrainian authorities have admitted in recent days that their troops have been driven out of downtown Severodonetsk, and admitted that they only have “complicated communication channels” with them after the destruction of all the bridges to Lysytchansk.
The Ukrainian forces are notably entrenched in the Azot chemical plant, emblematic of this city with some 100,000 inhabitants before the war, with more than 500 civilians inside, according to the mayor of Severodonetsk, Oleksandre Striouk.
Moscow proposed on Tuesday a “humanitarian corridor” that would allow the evacuation of these civilians to territories controlled by the Russians, but kyiv did not confirm it. Russia on Wednesday accused kyiv forces of having prevented the operation.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Ukrainian forces had “repeatedly violated the ceasefire” and “used the humanitarian pause to redeploy to positions [de combat] more advantageous”. It was not possible to independently verify these claims.