PARIS, June 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Paris on Friday to apologize for delays in congressional approval of the latest U.S. aid package and announced a new $225 million in aid during the D-Day events.The meeting was the first face-to-face talks between the two since Zelenskiy visited Washington in December, when both urged Republicans to overcome opposition within their own party and provide more support for Ukraine.
They will meet again next week at a G7 summit in Italy, where wealthy Western nations will discuss providing Ukraine with $50 billion using Russian assets frozen after the country's invasion. Zelenskiy told Reuters last month that Western countries were taking too long to make decisions on aid. "You haven't surrendered, you haven't surrendered at all, you continue to fight in a ... extraordinary way. We are not going to abandon you," Biden told the Ukrainian leader at the start of their meeting on Friday.
Biden apologized to Zelenskiy for delays in getting the last round of U.S. aid through Congress in April. He confirmed he would sign an additional $225 million in aid on Friday to help Ukraine rebuild its power grid. "I'm sorry ... for those weeks when we didn't know what was going to happen" in terms of funding, Biden said. "We had some very conservative members (of Congress) who kept stalling on this. But we got it done."
"We are still very much in this together," Biden said. Zelensky thanked Biden for the military, financial and humanitarian support the United States has provided.
"It's so important that you stand with us. It's so important that we have bipartisan support in Congress, that America is united, that all Americans stand with Ukraine, just as we helped save lives and saved Europe during World War II," he said in English. Biden, speaking in Normandy, France, on Thursday linked the World War II fight against tyranny to Ukraine's war with Russia and called Russian President Vladimir Putin a tyrant. Ukraine has struggled to defend the Kharkiv region since Moscow launched an offensive on May 10 that captured some villages in the region. The new security package, which includes air defense interceptors, artillery systems and ammunition, armored vehicles, anti-tank weapons and other capabilities, will also help bolster Ukraine's air defenses and increase Ukraine's capabilities on the front lines, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. Biden reversed course last week, deciding that Ukraine could fire U.S.-supplied weapons at military targets in Russia supporting the Kharkiv offensive. Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finner said in Washington on Thursday that the United States was working to meet Ukraine's weapons needs. "If there are two things we can give the Ukrainians in unlimited quantities to try to turn the tide of this war, it's artillery shells and air defense interceptors," but the United States lacks supply, Feiner told a forum at the Center for a New American Security. Beyond the physical battlefield, the Russia-Ukraine war "is also a competition that's going on in our factories, in European factories and in Ukrainian factories," he said. Dalip Singh, the U.S. government's deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, told the group that reaching a consensus on freezing assets was very complicated. "We are working flat out to try to get a deal," Singh said, adding that he would return to Italy on Friday to continue negotiations.
Reporting by Jeff Mason in Paris and Steve Holland and Andrea Shalal in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons and Leslie Adler
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-meet-zelenskiy-france-with-225-million-military-aid-2024-06-07/
$BTC $ETH $BNB
