US President Joe Biden announced $2.5 billion in additional security assistance for Ukraine on Monday as he uses his final weeks in office to surge military aid to Kyiv before President-elect Donald Trump takes power. \u201cAt my direction, the United States will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen Ukraine\u2019s position in this war over the remainder of my time in office,\u201d Biden said in a statement. Biden\u2019s announcement includes $1.25bn in military aid drawn from US stockpiles and a $1.22bn Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) package, the final USAI package of Biden\u2019s time in office. Under USAI, military equipment is procured from the defence industry or partners, rather than drawn from American stocks, meaning it can take months or years to arrive on the battlefield. Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine is approaching the three-year mark and recently the Russians have used North Korean troops to bolster their fighting position. North Korean forces are experiencing mass casualties on the front lines of Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine, with 1,000 of their troops killed or wounded in the last week alone in Russia\u2019s Kursk region, White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday. In a statement, Biden said the new assistance will provide Ukraine with \u201can immediate influx of capabilities that it continues to use to great effect on the battlefield and longer-term supplies of air defence, artillery, and other critical weapons systems\u201d. Nearly three years into the war, Washington has committed $175bn in total aid for Ukraine, but it is uncertain if the aid will continue at that pace under Trump, who replaces Biden on January 20. Trump has said he wants to bring the war to a swift end. During the presidential election campaign, Trump questioned the level of US involvement in the conflict, suggesting European allies should bear more of the financial burden. Some of his fellow Republicans \u2014 who will control both the House of Representatives and Senate starting next month \u2014 have also cooled on sending more aid to Kyiv. Biden said the Defence Department is in the process of delivering hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets, and hundreds of armoured vehicles \u201cwhich will strengthen Ukraine\u2019s hand as it heads into the winter\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Joe Biden announced $2.5 billion in additional security assistance for Ukraine on Monday as he uses his final weeks in office to surge…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22029,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}