Biden to convene Ukraine allies in Germany, surge military aid

Jenny Leonard and Volodymyr Verbianyi, Bloomberg News on Sep 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden announced $2.4 billion in military assistance for Ukraine on Thursday and plans to convene a leader-level meeting of key allies to coordinate additional support when he visits Germany next month.

The announcement, which came ahead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House later in the day, said Biden was directing the Pentagon to allocate the full remainder of Ukraine assistance before the end of his term. The Defense Department is also unveiling an initial package that included additional air defense systems, drones, and munitions.

Biden is also providing Ukraine with a new long-range munition known as the Joint Standoff Weapon, and has asked the Pentagon to refurbish an additional Patriot air defense battery and expand the F-16 training program for Ukrainian pilots.

Additionally, the U.S. is moving to disrupt a cryptocurrency network it says has been helping Russia to evade sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. And Biden said he was working to ensure that restrictions on the drawdown of U.S. equipment didn’t prevent Ukraine from receiving assistance.

“There is more work to do,” Biden said in the statement. “That is why, today, I am announcing a surge in security assistance for Ukraine and a series of additional actions to help Ukraine win this war.”

The new steps are in addition to a new $375 million weapons package that included rocket systems and artillery announced Wednesday as leaders met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Still, the effort is likely to fall short of some of the security and economic guarantees Zelenskyy is expected to seek as part of his proposal, including NATO membership and promises of guaranteed access to certain advanced weapons systems.

Long-term prospects for Ukraine assistance have also been muddied this week amid a simmering dispute between Zelenskyy and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

While the Ukrainian leader will meet with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris during his trip to the White House, Trump declined Zelenskyy’s offer for a meeting.

The snub came after the New Yorker published an interview in which Zelenskyy called Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance “too radical.” Trump’s campaign was dismayed that that Zelenskyy visited the battleground state of Pennsylvania on his U.S. taxpayer-funded trip to the U.S., according to a person who requested anonymity to detail internal discussions.

At an event Wednesday, Trump said Zelenskyy was “making little nasty aspersions toward your favorite president” and criticized Ukraine for failing to broker a deal with Russia to end the war.

“The president of Ukraine is in our country, and he’s making little nasty aspersions toward your favorite president,” Trump said Wednesday. “Biden and Kamala allowed this to happen by feeding Zelenskyy money and munitions like no country has ever seen before. Every time he came to our country, he’d walk away with $60 billion.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson will also not meet Zelenskyy during his visit to Washington, and the Louisiana Republican said Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, should be fired over her president’s visit to a munitions plant in Pennsylvania.

“The facility was in a politically contested battleground state, was led by a top political surrogate for Kamala Harris, and failed to include a single Republican because – on purpose – no Republicans were invited,” Johnson said in a statement. “The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference.”