More below on the Ukraine President’s day in Washington D.C. and the Pentagon. aftet his visit to the ‘Big Apple’ and the UN……..
Abrams tanks, something Ukraine has requested for months, will be delivered to Ukraine next week, Biden says.
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As the White House forecast earlier in the week, the administration announced another military aid package for Ukraine on Thursday evening. Valued at $325 million, it includes additional air defense systems and munitions, plus an unspecified number of .50-caliber machine guns intended to target and take down drones that have terrorized the besieged country’s civilian centers. The new tranche of military aid, including additional artillery ammunition, anti-armor systems and dozens of tactical vehicles, will be culled from Pentagon stockpiles.
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At the White House for a bilateral meeting with President Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sidestepped a question from a reporter about whether Ukraine was worried about losing the support of Poland.
“I want to thank the Polish people, Polish society, for their support. That’s it,” Zelensky said in response to the question, which was posited by a reporter from Polish radio, according to pool reports.
Poland, which has been one of Ukraine’s strongest backers since Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, announced Wednesday that it would no longer send weapons to Ukraine as a battle over grain exportsescalated.
Zelensky also said he had frank conversations earlier in the day with members of Congress. He said he was looking forward to further discussions with Biden on military support from the United States, “with a special emphasis on air.”
Ukraine’s armed forces said they successfully targeted a Russian air base in Crimea overnight, the latest in a series of similar claims publicly acknowledging that the peninsula — which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 — is directly in Kyiv’s crosshairs.
“On the night of the 21st of September the Defense Forces of Ukraine carried out a combined attack on the military airfield of the occupiers near the city of Saka in the temporarily occupied Crimea,” the armed forces said in a Telegram post around midday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it foiled an attempted attack against Russian territory overnight, claiming to have destroyed 19 Ukrainian drones over the Black Sea and Crimea. Oleg Kryuchkov, an adviser to the Russian-installed head of Crimea, denied reports that the air base was destroyed. “Our air defense shot down everything,” he said.
Unnamed sources in the Ukrainian Security Services told CNN that at least 12 Su-24 and Su-30 combat aircraft, as well as Pantsir missile systems, were being held at Saki air base on Crimea’s western coast when it was targeted by a “massive fire strike.” The unnamed sources told CNN that the base was also used to train operators of Iranian-made drones and said the attack “caused serious damage to the occupiers’ equipment.” The Washington Post could not independently verify the reports, and it was not immediately clear if any Russian military assets were damaged….