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US announces new $700-mln package of weapons for Ukraine

It will also include HIMARS

WASHINGTON, June 2. /TASS/. Washington will provide Ukraine with a new package of military aid worth $700 million, which includes HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) with battlefield munitions, US President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in their statements on Wednesday.

The US president announced "a significant new security assistance package to provide timely and critical aid to the Ukrainian military."

Biden pledged that "this new package will arm them with new capabilities and advanced weaponry, including HIMARS with battlefield munitions" and assured that the US would continue to provide assistance to support Kiev in the military area.

Blinken added that since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine, it has been the eleventh "drawdown of arms and equipment from US Department of Defense inventories." The US Secretary of State says that it "will bring total US military assistance to Ukraine to approximately $4.6 billion." The package is part of more than $40 billion in new funding to support Kiev, which was recently approved by Congress.

The Pentagon said that Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, had discussed the new aid package with their Ukrainian counterparts - Andrey Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential office, and Commander-in-Chief of Ukrainian Armed Forces Gen. Valery Zaluzny - in a telephone call on Wednesday.

Russia’s special military operation

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in Ukraine following a request for help from the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but the goals are demilitarization and denazification of that country. In response, the United States and its allies slapped sweeping sanctions on Russia and started supplying Kiev with weapons and military equipment worth billions of dollars at this stage.

Russia’s Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov warned earlier that Ukraine’s militarization by the West poses an immediate threat to European and global security. The diplomat stressed that Moscow urges the sponsors of the Kiev regime to stop inciting bloodshed and to give serious consideration to repercussions of their actions.