U.S. President Joe Biden said security assistance to Ukraine from Washington is topping $1 billion alone this week after announcing another package worth $800 million on March 16.
It includes 800 anti-aircraft systems as well as drones, he said, in response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s impassioned speech to the bicameral U.S. Congress earlier in the morning.
Kyiv will receive 9,000 anti-armor and additional anti-aircraft systems as well as munitions for them Biden said, along with 20 million rounds of ammunition.
“More will be coming as we continue to source our additional equipment to transfer,” he added.
Speaking to journalists, Biden said the Ukrainian president delivered a “convincing” speech during which he urged Congress for more aid to withstand Russia’s renewed invasion of the war-torn country.
“He [Zelensky] speaks for a people who’ve shown remarkable courage and strength in the face of brutal aggression,” Biden said.
What Russia is doing by indiscriminately shelling and bombing civilian infrastructure and targets “are atrocities,” he added.
Biden said assistance to Ukraine is “about freedom and making sure” the country “will never be a victory for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” who ordered the new invasion on Feb. 24 unprovoked.
Addressing Congress via video link, Zelensky said that “right now, the destiny of our country is being decided, the destiny of our people, whether Ukrainians will be free, whether they will be able to preserve their democracy.”
Repeating earlier requests, Zelensky pleaded for the U.S. to enforce a no-fly zone or provide fighter jets or other means to fend off Russia’s attack on his country, and impose harsher economic sanctions on Moscow, the Financial Times reported.
Relentless Russian bombardments have “turned the Ukrainian skies into a source of death for thousands of people,” Zelensky said.
He invoked the “I have a dream” speech by U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
“Those are words are known…but I have a need, the need to protect our sky,” Zelensky said.
The previous day on March 15, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution that condemned Putin as a war criminal and Biden in his first State of the Union address called the Kremlin leader a “dictator.”
Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky said on March 15 that invading Russian forces have destroyed 3,500 units of civilian infrastructure. Kyiv authorities say that more than 100 Ukrainian children have died from Russian shelling and rockets.
At least 2,500 civilians alone have died in the Azov Sea coastal city of Mariupol.
“Now I’m almost 45 years old. Today my age stopped, when the hearts of more than 100 children stopped beating,” Zelensky told the U.S. Congress. “I see no sense in life if it cannot stop the death. And this is my main mission as the leader of my people, great Ukrainians.”
Last year, Washington provided $650 million in security assistance before Russia invaded the country again.
“Once the war started [again], we immediately rushed $350 million in additional aid,” Biden said, adding that another $250 million was provided “to keep weapons flowing” on March 12.
At the end of his address to the U.S. Congress, Zelensky switched to English: “Today the Ukrainian people are defending not only Ukraine. We are fighting for the values of Europe and the world, sacrificing our lives in the name of the future.”
Russia’s latest invasion is part of war it has waged against Ukraine since 2014 when Moscow forces forcibly seized the Crimean Peninsula and occupied parts of the easternmost regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
