President Joe Biden’s administration has provided more than $50 billion in military aid to Ukraine since 2022.
 "Ukrainian defense minister to hold talks with Austin: Pentagon")
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin | Photo: wikimediaReuters
The Pentagon said on Monday that Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov will meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Washington on Tuesday to discuss strengthening military cooperation between the two countries.
“Secretary Austin and Minister Umerov will discuss bilateral defense cooperation, regional security issues, and ways to strengthen the U.S.-Ukraine defense partnership,” Deputy Spokesperson Sabrina Singh said at a press conference, according to a transcript posted on the Pentagon’s website.
Click here to connect with us on WhatsApp
The meeting came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his call over the weekend for Kiev’s allies to provide more arms after a Russian airstrike killed seven people in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region.
The United States is the largest provider of military aid to Ukraine in the war that Russia launched against the country with a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
President Joe Biden’s administration has provided more than $50 billion in military aid to Ukraine since 2022.
The administration announced last week that it would provide Ukraine with $150 million worth of weapons and ammunition, including Hawk air defense interceptors and 155mm artillery shells. “The more the world cooperates to counter Russian fighter jets that fire these bombs, the more we will be able to launch ‘legitimate attacks’ on Russian military infrastructure and military airfields, and the closer we will be to peace,” Zelenskiy said in a video address over the weekend evening.
But two years after Kiev asked its allies to provide F-16 fighter jets to fight Russian forces, the jets have yet to arrive.
Speaking at the news conference, Singh declined to say when Ukraine would start receiving the fighter jets, but said training of Ukrainian pilots to fly the planes was “ongoing.”
(Only the headline and photo of this report may have been modified by Business Standard staff. The rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
