Today at 20:12
Europe has asked the United States to provide Ukraine with more weapons and impose additional sanctions on Russia before Donald Trump’s inauguration.
This is according to Bloomberg, Ukrinform reports.
European leaders and officials have asked the U.S. to provide Ukraine with more weapons and artillery, impose additional sanctions on key Russian revenue streams and target Moscow’s ability to acquire banned technologies used in weapons, according to people familiar with the matter.
Many of the European requests have been informal in nature, the people said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a hastily arranged trip to Brussels on Wednesday to reassure NATO and European Union allies that the U.S. will intensify its efforts to send resources to Ukraine ahead of the inauguration of Trump.
The resources he mentioned — money, ammunition, weapons — mainly come from a $61 billion package passed by the U.S. Congress earlier this year.
He added that “every dollar at our disposal” will be rushed through.
Even though time is running short for Biden to act on the requests, the U.S. is already working on adopting new sanctions against Russia’s oil fleet and North Korea — which has sent troops to aid Moscow’s war effort – by the end of November, said the people familiar with the matter.
“The next few weeks will be critical to put Ukraine in a strong position,” Mark Leonard, co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, told Bloomberg.
He said a deal negotiated by Trump “may try to freeze the conflict on the lines where Russia now occupies 20% of Ukrainian territory.”
