(Washington) The United States announced Tuesday new military aid of $300 million to Ukraine, far from the large envelope requested by President Biden, still blocked in Congress.
The aid includes anti-aircraft missiles, ammunition and artillery shells and responds to “certain urgent needs of Ukraine”, underlined Jake Sullivan, advisor to US President Joe Biden.
“This is relatively modest aid, intended to give Ukraine the minimum necessary for a short period of time,” a senior US official said.
It is financed thanks to an accounting revaluation from the Pentagon.
“We have made savings which will allow us to finance this new aid,” explained the official, specifying that the situation was “rather exceptional”, and did not replace the validation of funds by the American Congress.
By far the first military support for Ukraine, the United States has been struggling for months to send a new envelope of 60 billion dollars to Kyiv, blocked by Republican parliamentarians.
The text requested by President Biden, which also includes funds for Israel and Taiwan, was approved in mid-February by the Senate.
But its final adoption is still dependent on the goodwill of Donald Trump’s supporters in the House – who refuse to examine the text as it stands.
Standoff between Biden and Trump
The former president, candidate in the November election, is in fact opposed to the validation of new funds for Kyiv, believing that the United States should “stop giving money without hoping to be reimbursed”. He claims that if re-elected in November, he would resolve the war between Russia and Ukraine “in 24 hours” – without really explaining how.
Democratic President Joe Biden, candidate for re-election, once again asked the American Congress, during a solemn speech last week, to release this envelope. His Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington in September and December to try to increase the pressure.
So far in vain.
In the middle of an election year, the issue turned into a standoff between Joe Biden and his predecessor.
These negotiations between Democrats and Republicans are taking place even as the American intelligence community, in a report to the Senate released Monday, warns that “the dynamic is changing increasingly in favor of Moscow.”
“Ukraine is not short of courage and tenacity, it is short of ammunition. And we are running out of time to help them,” warned CIA Director Bill Burns.
Russian forces have been gaining ground for weeks in eastern Ukraine, notably with the fall of the fortress town of Avdiivka, taken by Moscow in mid-February. And the Ukrainian army is faced with slow Western aid.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, wanted to be optimistic, assuring Monday that his soldiers have “stopped” the Russian advance, and that the situation was currently “much better” on the front than three months ago.