The president of the United States, Joe Biden, announced this Tuesday during a meeting at the White House with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, which has approved the disbursement of another $200 million in military aid to Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion.
“I just signed a disbursement of $200 million from the Department of Defense for Ukraine”explained the American president to the press at the beginning of the meeting with the Ukrainian in the Oval Office.
Biden told Zelensky that he does not want Ukrainians to give up and warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to attack Ukrainian power plants again to aggravate the situation during the winter.
Zelensky met with Biden in Washington for the third time since the beginning of the war and at a very delicate moment because the Republican opposition has blocked the approval in the United States Congress of new funds for Ukraine.
ItThe 200 million announced today are part of a budget that is about to be exhausted and Biden has so far unsuccessfully asked Congress to approve a new package of 106 billion dollarswhich includes a batch of 61,000 for Ukraine and another of 15,000 for Israel.
For this reason, Biden sent a message to Republicans in Congress to approve the new budget for Ukraine before going on vacation. Otherwise, he said, they would be giving “the best Christmas gift” to Putin.
For its part, Zelensky thanked Biden for the support shown so far and assured that his country “can win” the war, but said that to do so it needs more air defense systems.
Zelensky arrived at the White House around 1:40 p.m. local time (6:40 p.m. GMT) after having previously been in Congress, where he met with legislators from both sides.
As leaked after the closed-door meeting in Congress, Zelensky told senators that he cannot conceive that Congress would not approve the money for Ukraine and answered questions from legislators about how US aid is being used.
After the meeting, The president of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, demanded from the White House “clarity” on what the United States is doing in Ukraine and reiterated that his condition for approving the package is that the asylum policy at the border be restricted. south.