President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that the latest in a series of meetings with Kyiv’s Western allies in Germany had resulted in pledges of an additional $2 billion in military assistance to help it fight the war against Russia.
Zelenskyy, speaking to the My-Ukraina television channel after Thursday’s meeting, gave few details of the assistance but said 34 countries had pledged support in different aspects of the 34-month-old war.
“We had a very good meeting, a very good result. There was $2 billion in additional packages of support to Ukraine,” he said in a video posted on the television channel’s Telegram account.
The aid covered air defence, information technology, demining, naval forces, air forces and artillery.
“And all this will strengthen Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said.
The President of Ukraine gave no details on which countries had made the pledges.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had earlier said that Washington would provide Ukraine with an additional $500 million in military aid, including air defence missiles, air-to-ground munitions and support equipment for F-16 fighter jets.
Zelenskyy attended the meeting at Ramstein and then met Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome, where he said he discussed upgrading Ukraine’s air defences against Russian attacks and efforts to form a united position on moving forward to a resolution of the war.
NATO has taken over coordination of Western military aid to Ukraine from the United States as planned, a source said late on Tuesday. The widely anticipated move aims to safeguard the support mechanism against NATO sceptic U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
The step, coming after a delay of several months, gives NATO a more direct role in the war against Russia’s invasion while stopping well short of committing its own forces.
Diplomats, however, acknowledge that the handover to NATO may have a limited effect given that the U.S. under Trump could still deal a major setback to Ukraine by slashing its support, as it is the alliance’s dominant power and provides the majority of arms to Kyiv.
Trump, who will take office on January 20, has said he wants to end the war in Ukraine swiftly but not how he aims to do so. He has long criticised the U.S. financial and military aid scale to Ukraine.
Team Bharatshakti
(With inputs from Reuters)
