The United States announced this Wednesday a new consignment of military aid to Ukraine, valued at some 1.3 billion dollars and made up of demining equipment, air defense systems, drones and ammunition.
This package will be funded by the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), a program that allows President Joe Biden’s administration to purchase weapons instead of removing them from stocks of its funds.
“This announcement represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine,” the US Department of Defense said in a statement. release.
The White House added, for its part, that the inclusion of unmanned aerial systems and equipment -or drones- “will help Ukraine to better protect its exports.”
“These latest capabilities will become increasingly important, especially now that Russia he has retired of the Black Sea Grain Initiative and has renewed attacks on port cities as we have seen in the last two days,” Biden Administration Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday.
The Pentagon announced the new military aid to Kiev a day after a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a group of more than 40 countries including the US, Spain, Germany, Colombia and Japan. These nations support the Ukrainian forces, while they advance a counteroffensive against the Russian army in occupied territory.
The Pentagon has already provided more than $10.8 billion in assistance to Ukraine under the USAI initiative in fiscal year 2023, in seven separate shipments. This would be the eighth package that the US has sent to Ukraine under the program.
In the fiscal year ending September 30, 2022, Washington invested $6.3 billion in USAI funds to buy weapons, ammunition, and defense equipment for Ukraine.
Earlier this July, Washington reported that it would provide kyiv with a shipment of controversial cluster bombsthe use of which is prohibited in more than 120 countries.
In total, the US has sent more than $40 billion in military and security assistance to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
[Con información de Reuters]
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