US Administration Denies Holding Back Aid to Ukraine Ahead of Biden-Putin Summit

By Staff, Agencies

The White House denied freezing aid package to Ukraine ahead of US President Joe Biden’s meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

When Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, held up a similar package, he was impeached by Democrats.

Amid military tension between Ukraine and Russia, the US National Security Council instructed officials to put together a $100 million military aid package earlier this spring, Politico reported on Friday, citing government sources. The package, put together by the State Department and the Pentagon, included “short-range air defense systems, small arms and… anti-tank weapons.”

However, shortly before Biden’s meeting in Geneva this week with Putin, the White House put the package on hold. Politico’s sources said that the stakes of the meeting, plus Russia’s military drawdown near Ukraine’s borders, led to the package being frozen.

“The idea that we have held back security assistance to Ukraine is nonsense,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, adding that the US has “now provided the entire amount appropriated by Congress through the Ukraine security assistance initiative.”

She did not, however, directly address Politico’s claim about the $100 million additional aid package. Sandwiched between declarations of Biden’s commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, Psaki said that the administration had “also prepared contingency funds in the event of a further [sic] Russian incursion into Ukraine.”

The offering and withholding of military aid are valuable tools in Washington’s diplomatic arsenal. They allow the US to achieve its foreign policy aims without sending troops of its own abroad, and to dictate terms to the politicians receiving the aid. Before the Biden-Putin summit, two other aid packages to Ukraine – totalling $275 million and including patrol boats and heavy 30mm cannons – were approved, out of a total of around $2.5 billion since 2014.

When US President Donald Trump froze aid to Ukraine in 2019, all hell broke loose. Democrats claimed that Trump did it to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into reopening a corruption investigation into then-candidate Joe Biden’s family’s business dealings in Ukraine.