Eleven days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, American Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced new aid of $500 million for kyiv, estimating that “the fight in Ukraine concerns us all.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced this Thursday, January 9, new American military aid to Ukraine in the amount of approximately $500 million (485 million euros), a few days before the inauguration of Donald Trump.
“The fight in Ukraine concerns us all,” said Lloyd Austin, who is leading his last meeting of the “contact group” of kyiv’s partners at Ramstein, an American air base not far from Frankfurt.
The EU “ready to take over”
For its part, the EU is “ready to take over” to provide military support to Ukraine “if the United States does not want to do so”, declared the head of EU diplomacy this Thursday Kaja Kallas as Donald Trump could decide to stop American support for kyiv once in the White House.
But Kaja Kallas said she was “sure” that Washington would “continue its support for Ukraine”. “Whoever is the leader of the United States, I think it is not in America’s interest for Russia to be the strongest power in the world,” she said, before a meeting of the “contact group” of kyiv partners in Germany.
Under President Joe Biden, the United States has been kyiv’s biggest supporter in its defense against the Russian invasion, providing military aid worth more than $65 billion (€63 billion). since February 2022. Insufficient, however, to give a decisive advantage to Ukraine, which is struggling to repel the Russian army, particularly in the eastern part of the country.
And Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration makes Ukraine fear a drastic reduction in support from the United States and pressure from the elected American president for kyiv to make concessions to Vladimir Putin.
