President Joe Biden on Wednesday approved a new military aid package for Ukraine totaling US$300 million and including additional drone ammunition and a range of other weapons. It comes as Russia continues to strike the Ukrainian capital and unmanned planes have targeted Moscow.
US officials said there was no evidence to suggest US-made drones or ammunition were used in the strikes on Moscow and the region — strikes the Kremlin has blamed on Ukraine, but which Kiev does not did not claim responsibility. The Biden administration said it has made it clear to Ukraine that US-made weapons should not be used for attacks on Russian territory.
“We don’t tell them where to hit. We don’t tell them where not to hit. At the end of the day, President Zelensky and his military commanders decide what they’re going to do from a military perspective,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday. But he added that the United States had been “very clear with the Ukrainians privately, we’ve certainly been clear publicly, that we don’t support attacks inside Russia.”
He said Mr. Zelensky had assured the United States that the Ukrainians would respect those concerns.
The new US aid program includes ammunition to bolster Ukraine’s air defense capabilities to repel Russian air assaults on kyiv. It provides ammunition for Patriot missile batteries and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), as well as Avenger and Stinger air defense systems, mine clearance equipment, anti-armour shells, rockets unguided Zuni aircraft, night vision goggles and approximately 30 million small arms shells and an undisclosed amount of other artillery shells.
Moscow was the target on Tuesday of a rare drone attack, which caused minor damage to residential buildings. Russian officials believe that the West, which throughout the war has sought to prevent the conflict from spreading beyond Ukraine, has not sufficiently condemned the attack on Russian soil.
Asked about Moscow’s criticism that the West quietly supports attacks inside Russian territory, Mr Kirby scoffed that the Russians, anyway, “won’t believe anything [’il a] to say” about it.
He said the United States had made it clear that it would not change its policy of not allowing or encouraging strikes inside Russia, but he added: “I don’t think we’re going to take on us as a burden to communicate this privately to the Russians”.
Ukrainian officials welcomed Tuesday’s drone attack but avoided claiming responsibility, a response similar to what they had said after previous attacks on Russian territory.
Including the latest aid package, the United States has so far provided more than US$37.6 billion in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine since the invasion of Russia on February 24, 2022. This last segment will be carried out under presidential authority, which allows the Pentagon to take weapons from its own stockpiles and quickly ship them to Ukraine, officials said.