Image source, Reuters
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- Author, James CATER
- Author's title, BBC News
The United States suspended some arms shipments to kyiv, according to the White House, as the Russian war against Ukraine intensifies.
The decision was made “to prioritize the interests of the United States” after a review of the Department of Defense on “US support and military assistance to other countries,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Tuesday.
The United States has sent tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its large -scale invasion in February 2022, which has taken some members of the Trump administration to express concern about the shortage of US reserves.
The authorities in Washington did not immediately report which shipments were being suspended.
The Ukrainian government has not commented on the announcement, although Fedir Venislavskyi, deputy of the ruling party, said that the decision was “undoubtedly very unpleasant for us.”
“It is painful, and in the context of the terrorist attacks that Russia commits against Ukraine … it is a very unpleasant situation,” said Veinslavskyi to the Reuters news agency.
Among the affected weapons are air defense missiles and precision ammunition, according to the Reuters news agency. American officials informed local media that the Pause affected Patriot Air Defense Missile Deliveries, precision artillery ammunition and other missile systems used by Ukraine.
The decision arrives at a difficult time for Ukraine, who claimed to have suffered its largest air attack since the beginning of the Russian -scale invasion on the weekend, with more than 500 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles.
Image source, EPA
The Pentagon measure is based on the concern that US military reserves are decreasing too much, according to an official to CBS News, although Anna Kelly emphasized that “the power of the United States armed forces remains unquestionable; it is enough to ask Iran.”
On the other hand, Undersecretary Elbridge Colby declared that the Department of Defense “continues to offer the president solid options to continue military aid to Ukraine.”
However, he added that “the department is examining and rigorously adapting its approach to achieve this objective, while preserving the preparation of US forces for administration's defense priorities.”
Negotiations, called and reproaches
The pause occurs less than a week after President Donald Trump talk about aerial defenses with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the NATO summit in The Hague
When the BBC asked Trump about the supply of additional patriot antimisile systems to Ukraine, the president said that US officials “will see if we can provide some of them.”
In reference to his conversation with Zelensky, Trump said: “We had a bit difficult moments sometimes, but he couldn't have been friendlier.”
Both had a heated confrontation in the Oval Office in March this year. Subsequently, Trump announced the suspension of military aid to Ukraine approved by the previous administration of Joe Biden. Intelligence exchange with Ukraine was also suspended.
However, both measures were subsequently lifted.
At the end of April, the United States and Ukraine signed an agreement that would grant the United States access to Ukraine mineral reserves in exchange for military assistance.
Meanwhile, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, spoke on Tuesday with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for the first time in more than two and a half years.
Both leaders talked on the phone for more than two hours, according to Macron's office, adding that the French president had urged the fire in Ukraine and initiate conversations for a “solid and lasting solution of the conflict.”
The Kremlin said that Putin had “remembered Macron” that the policy of Western countries was the guilty of war, since “for many years he had ignored Russia's security interests.”
The Russian leader declared in June in a forum in St. Petersburg that considered Russians and Ukrainians as a single town and that “in that sense, all Ukraine is ours.”
Moscow currently controls around 20% of the Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean Peninsula, which it attached in 2014.
Russia has made slow and forceful advances in Ukraine in recent months and this week said it has total control of the Eastern region of Luhansk. He also said he seized territory in the southeast region of Dnipropetrovsk.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian attack caused the death of three people in a Russian weapons factory for the manufacture of drones and radars in Izhevsk, more than 1,000 km from the border with Ukraine.
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