Blinken promises Ukraine help is "on the way" amid " brutal Russian onslaught"

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced successful Kyiv connected Wednesday $2 cardinal successful caller financing for Ukraine to beryllium utilized to facilitate the transportation of weapons and to substance aboriginal investments successful Ukraine's defence concern base. 

The financing volition travel from the $60 cardinal successful supplemental information backing that was precocious passed by Congress, arsenic good arsenic $400 cardinal successful antecedently approved overseas subject financing funds that person not yet been allocated, the State Department said.

Blinken, noting it was his 5th travel to Ukraine and 4th to Kyiv, vowed successful a property league with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba that the U.S. would enactment Ukraine until it achieved "strategic success," some by helping Ukraine's forces present connected the battlefield and successful positioning Ukrainians to beryllium capable to find their ain future. 

His sojourn came amid deteriorating battlefield conditions successful the country's northbound and east, wherever Russian forces person made caller advances and intensified attacks connected Ukraine's Kharkiv region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced helium would cancel each upcoming overseas trips arsenic the country's subject forces withdrew from respective neighboring villages.

"We are rushing ammunition, armored vehicles, missiles, aerial defenses, rushing them to get to the beforehand lines, to support soldiers, support civilians," Blinken said, noting the aerial defenses for which Ukraine has implored its supporters were a "top priority."

Blinken said the U.S. was 1 of 32 countries actively negotiating a bilateral information statement with Kyiv and expects its presumption to beryllium finalized successful the coming weeks.

Pressed connected whether the Biden administration's conditions specifying American weapons could lone beryllium utilized for defensive, not offensive, purposes had hamstrung Kyiv up of Russia's onslaught connected Kharkiv, Blinken said the U.S. had "not encouraged oregon enabled" strikes extracurricular of Ukraine but that yet Ukraine "has to marque decisions for itself astir however it's going to behaviour this war."

In:
• Antony Blinken
• Ukraine
• Russia