Biden announces ‘surge’ in military aid for Ukraine

US president unveils aid worth nearly $8bn, including ‘long-range’ missiles, ahead of talks with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy.

United States President Joe Biden has said that he will provide Ukraine with military aid totalling nearly $8bn ahead of a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Biden announced the “surge in security assistance” for Ukraine on Thursday, saying that the aid would be provided in two tranches of $5.5bn and $2.4bn, the package including the provision of Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) munitions to “enhance Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities”.

Zelenskyy, who is scheduled to meet Biden in Washington, DC, at midday (16:00 GMT) on Thursday, thanked the US president and both parties in the US Congress for the “long-range missiles” and other military hardware, including an “additional Patriot air defence battery”, interceptors, drones and air-to-ground munitions.

“We will use this assistance in the most efficient and transparent manner to achieve our major common goal: victory for Ukraine, just and lasting peace, and transatlantic security,” said Zelenskyy on social media platform X.

Biden said assisting Ukraine had been “a top priority” of his term in office, announcing that $5.5bn in aid would be allocated before Monday’s end of the US fiscal year when his administration’s funding authority is set to expire.

He also announced another $2.4bn in aid under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which allows the administration to buy weapons for Ukraine from companies rather than pull them from US stocks.

However, his statement stopped short of greenlighting Ukraine’s longstanding request to fire US-made long-range missiles into Russia.

Additional assistance announced by the US president included an expansion of training provided by the Department of Defense to Ukrainian F-16 pilots, with plans to support an additional 18 pilots next year.

Biden said the US would act to combat Russian sanctions evasion and money laundering, disrupting what he called “a global cryptocurrency network, in coordination with international partners”.

He also said he would convene a leader-level meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Germany next month to coordinate the efforts of more than 50 countries supporting Ukraine.

Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee for presidential elections in November, at the White House on Thursday.

Republican presidential contender Donald Trump has already turned down a request from the Ukrainian president for a meeting, having criticised the billions in aid granted “to a man who refused to make a deal”, at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday.

Zelenskyy’s visit to the US comes after Ukraine’s air defence forces battled an overnight Russian aerial attack on the capital, Kyiv, for five hours, missiles and drones again hammering the Ukrainian power grid, the attacks leaving at least two people injured.

A Russian BM-21 Grad self-propelled 122mm multiple rocket launcher fires on an undisclosed location in Ukraine [Handout/Russian Defence Ministry Press Service via AP]

In the south, a missile killed a 62-year-old woman in the Odesa region, where homes and cars were damaged, according to regional governor Oleh Kiper. While in the city of Zaporizhzhia, at least eight people were injured in overnight attacks.

Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Defence said its troops had “liberated” the Ukrainian town of Ukrainsk in the eastern Donetsk region, the latest in a series of territorial gains for Moscow’s advancing forces.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies