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Biden Rushing Aid to Ukraine 12/10 06:09
The grinding war between Ukraine and its Russian invaders has escalated
ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration, with President Joe Biden rushing out
billions of dollars more in military aid before U.S. support for Kyiv's
defenses is thrown into question under the new administration.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The grinding war between Ukraine and its Russian invaders
has escalated ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration, with President Joe Biden
rushing out billions of dollars more in military aid before U.S. support for
Kyiv's defenses is thrown into question under the new administration.
Russia, Ukraine and their global allies are scrambling to put their side in
the best possible position for any changes that Trump may bring to American
policy in the nearly 3-year-old war. The president-elect insisted in recent
days that Russia and Ukraine immediately reach a ceasefire and said Ukraine
should likely prepare to receive less U.S. military aid.
On the war's front lines, Ukraine's forces are mindful of Trump's
fast-approaching presidency and the risk of losing their biggest backer.
If that happens, "those people who are with me, my unit, we are not going to
retreat," a Ukrainian strike-drone company commander, fighting in Russia's
Kursk region with the 47th Brigade, told The Associated Press by phone.
"As long as we have ammunition, as long as we have weapons, as long as we
have some means to defeat the enemy, we will fight," said the commander, who
goes by his military call sign, Hummer. He spoke on condition he not be
identified by name, citing Ukrainian military rules and security concerns.
"But, when all means run out, you must understand, we will be destroyed very
quickly," he said.
The Biden administration is pushing every available dollar out the door to
shore up Ukraine's defenses before leaving office in six weeks, announcing more
than $2 billion in additional support since Trump won the presidential election
last month.
The U.S. has sent a total of $62 billion in military aid since Russia
invaded Ukraine in February 2022. And more help is on the way.
The administration is on track to disperse the U.S. portion of a $50 billion
loan to Ukraine, backed by frozen Russian assets, before Biden leaves the White
House, U.S. officials said. They said the U.S. and Ukraine are in "advanced
stages" of discussing terms of the loan and close to executing the $20 billion
of the larger loan that the U.S. is backing.
Biden also has eased limits on Ukraine using American longer-range missiles
against military targets deeper inside Russia, following months of refusing
those appeals over fears of provoking Russia into nuclear war or attacks on the
West. He's also newly allowed Ukraine to employ antipersonnel mines, which are
banned by many countries.
Biden and his senior advisers, however, are skeptical that allowing freer
use of the longer-range missiles will change the broader trajectory of the war,
according to two senior administration officials who spoke on condition of
anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
But the administration has at least a measure of confidence that its
scramble, combined with continued strong European support, means it will leave
office having given Ukraine the tools it needs to sustain its fight against
Russia for some time, the officials said.
Enough to hold on, but not enough to defeat Russian President Vladimir
Putin's forces, according to Ukraine and some of its allies.
Even now, "the Biden administration has been very careful not to run up
against the possibility of a defeated Putin or a defeated Russia" for fear of
the tumult that could bring, said retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, a former
supreme allied commander of NATO. He is critical of Biden's cautious pace of
military support for Ukraine.
Events far from the front lines this past weekend demonstrated the war's
impact on Russia's military.
In Syria, rebels seized the country's capital and toppled Russia-allied
President Bashar Assad. Russian forces in Syria had propped up Assad for years,
but they moved out of the way of the rebels' assault, unwilling to take losses
to defend their ally.
Biden said it was further evidence that U.S. support for Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy was wearing down Russia's military.
Trump, who has long spoken favorably of Putin and described Zelenskyy as a
"showman" wheedling money from the U.S., used that moment to call for an
immediate ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
And asked in a TV interview -- taped before he met with Zelenskyy over the
weekend in Paris -- if Ukraine should prepare for the possibility of reduced
aid, Trump said, "Yeah. Probably. Sure."
Trump's supporters call that pre-negotiation maneuvering by an avowed
deal-maker. His critics say they fear it shows he is in Putin's sway.
Zelenskyy said Monday that Russian forces' retrenchment from outposts
worldwide demonstrates that "the entire army of this great pseudo-empire is
fighting against the Ukrainian people today."
"Forcing Putin to end the war requires Ukraine to be strong on the
battlefield before it can be strong diplomatically," Zelenskyy wrote on social
media, repeating near-daily appeals for more longer-range missiles from the
U.S. and Europe.
In Kursk, Hummer, the Ukrainian commander, said he notices Russian artillery
strikes and shelling easing up since the U.S. and its European allies loosened
limits on use of longer-range missiles.
But Moscow has been escalating its offensives in other ways in the past six
months, burning through men and materiel in infantry assaults and other attacks
far faster than it can replace them, according to the Institute for the Study
of War.
In Kursk, that includes Russia sending waves of soldiers on motorcycles and
golf carts to storm Ukrainian positions, Hummer said. The Ukrainian drone
commander and his comrades defend the ground they have seized from Russia with
firearms, tanks and armored vehicles provided by the U.S. and other allies.
Ukraine's supporters fear that the kind of immediate ceasefire Trump is
urging would be mostly on Putin's terms and allow the Russian leader to resume
the war when his military has recovered.
"Putin is sacrificing his own soldiers at a grotesque rate to take whatever
territory he can on the assumption that the U.S. will tell Ukraine that U.S.
aid is over unless Russia gets to keep what it has taken," Phillips O'Brien, a
professor of strategic studies at Scotland's University of St. Andrews, wrote
on his Substack channel.
Putin's need for troops led him to bring in North Korean forces. Biden's
decision to allow Ukraine to use longer-range missiles more broadly in Russia
was partly in response, intended to discourage North Korea from deeper
involvement in the war, one of the senior administration officials said.
Since 2022, Russia already had been pulling forces and other military assets
from Syria, Central Asia and elsewhere to throw into the Ukraine fight, said
George Burros, an expert on the Russia-Ukraine conflict at the Institute for
the Study of War.
Any combat power that Russia has left in Syria that it could deploy to
Ukraine is unlikely to change battlefield momentum, Burros said.
"The Kremlin has prioritized Ukraine as much as it can," he said.
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