Joe Biden is asking Congress for 33 billion dollars, 20 of which must go to the supply of armaments to Ukraine.
The United States cannot afford to remain passive in the face of the conflict in Ukraine, Joe Biden explained Thursday to justify his request to Congress for a colossal budget extension of 33 billion dollars mainly to deliver more military aid to kyiv.
Of this total, 20 billion must go to the supply of armaments, nearly seven times more than the impressive quantities of arms and ammunition already supplied to Ukraine since the Russian invasion, launched on February 24.
kyiv has already received 10 anti-tank weapons for each Russian tank, boasted the American president during his speech at the White House.
To have : Guterres meets Zelensky in kyiv, targeted by Russian strikes
But the United States “does not attack” Russia, he assured, it “helps Ukraine to defend itself” against Russian “atrocities and aggression”. The Kremlin had earlier warned against arms deliveries to Ukraine which “threaten European security”.
These 33 billion additional aid must now be released by the US Parliament.
But the discussions between elected officials, whose support for kyiv is nevertheless unanimous, stumble for the moment on the content of the law supposed to extend military aid: the Democrats want to insert an amendment therein to increase the budget for the fight at the same time anti-Covid in the United States, which the Republicans categorically refuse.
If Democratic Senator Leader Chuck Schumer tries to tie the two together, “it will likely doom both” of failure, a Republican Senate leadership has warned.
For Ukraine, this aid is nevertheless urgent: more than two months after the start of the conflict, Russia has redoubled its assaults on the south and east of the country, which suffered heavy fire from bombs on Thursday.
And, after being confined to weapons seen as defensive, Washington is now sending artillery, helicopters and drones to the Ukrainian army, whose soldiers are trained in the use of these weapons in the United States or in third countries before returning at the forehead.
More than 30 billion dollars of Russian assets frozen by the EU
Joe Biden also castigated Thursday the “irresponsible” threats of Vladimir Putin of a possible recourse to nuclear weapons. “It shows the sense of despair felt by Russia faced with its miserable failure in terms of its initial objectives,” he judged.
His administration wants to increase the pressure on the Russian president and his entourage by proposing to liquidate the “kleptocratic” assets seized from Russian oligarchs and to transfer the proceeds to kyiv “to compensate for the damage caused by Russian aggression”, the White House said in a statement.
These assets seized amount to date, for the countries of the European Union (EU) alone, to more than 30 billion dollars in Russian assets, including nearly 7 billion in luxury goods belonging to the oligarchs (yachts, works of art, real estate and helicopters), indicates this press release.
The United States has “sanctioned and blocked ships and planes worth more than a billion, as well as freezing hundreds of millions of dollars of assets of Russian elites in American accounts”.
And this month Spain granted a US request to seize a $90 million superyacht owned by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.
Punitive measures that should not weaken, the White House promising Thursday to continue to “crack down” against the maneuvers “to avoid sanctions” by strengthening the American capacities of investigations and prosecutions against the oligarchs tempted to evade them .