 "US to send $800 mn of additional weapons aid to Ukraine to fight Russia")
On the final day of the NATO summit here on Thursday, US President Joe Biden says his administration will soon provide another USD 800 million in security assistance for Ukraine to fight Russia's invasion.
Biden said the new aid would include advanced air defense systems, counter battery radars, and additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, that the administration has already sent to Ukraine.
Biden said the package will be formally detailed by his administration in the coming days.
He spoke at a news conference at the end of the NATO summit in Madrid.
The latest round of aid is part of the USD 40 billion package of security and economic assistance passed last month by the US Congress and signed into law by Biden.
It is the 14th package of weapons and military equipment committed to Ukraine since the war began.
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With the latest tranche of assistance, the US has committed about USD 7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since late February when Russia invaded its neighbour.
Biden also said Americans should expect to pay higher gas prices as long as it takes so Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine.
Russia's invasion of its neighbour is blamed for driving up the oil price.
This is a critical, critical position for the world, Biden said at a news conference on Thursday on the final day of the NATO summit in Madrid.
Biden said Russia, Russia, Russia is the reason people are spending more at the pump. He's talking with US allies about setting a cap on the price of Russian oil, limiting how much money that Moscow can make from its exports.
Biden emphasised his long-term support for Ukraine as the war drags on, saying, We are going to stick with Ukraine.
I don't know what it how it's going to end, but it will not end with a Russian defeat of Ukraine in Ukraine, he said.
Although gas prices remain a political challenge for Biden, he said that he wouldn't use his scheduled trip to Saudi Arabia next month to request more oil production.
Biden said NATO had transformed itself by adapting to a rapidly changing security situation around the globe.
Closing the military alliance's summit in Madrid on Thursday, Biden described the meeting as historic.
The three-day summit included the Biden administration announcing plans to permanently bolster the US military presence in Europe, an agreement between Turkey, Finland and Sweden to pave the way for the accession of Nordic nations into NATO, and the alliance updating its strategic concept reflect that China's coercive policies are a challenge to the Western bloc's interests.
Biden noted the last time NATO updated its strategic concept Russia was characterised as a partner and the document didn't even mention China.
The world has changed, changed a great deal since then, Biden said told a press conference.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)