Washington offers more military support to Ukraine, Putin: “Rock-bottom ties with US” | Abroad

John Kirby, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense, said military aid, which includes radars, drones and secure communications, had already surpassed the $ 125 million (over 10 103 million) already released in March. With the new military aid blockade, the Biden administration has released all the resources allocated to Ukraine in the 2021 budget.

The purpose of military assistance, among other things, is to help the Ukrainian armed forces better protect the country’s borders, Kirby said.

The EU and NATO have supported Ukraine since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and began a conflict with pro-Russian separatists in the east. They call on Kiev to do more to implement political and economic reforms.

Tensions continue to rise in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists on Friday accused the Ukrainian armed forces of killing five rebel fighters, while Kiev announced that a soldier had been killed by shelling.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his first interview with an American news agency over the years that Russia-US relations have deteriorated all the time since Democrat Joe Biden lived in the White House. The NBC News interview with Putin airs in full on Monday.

The president gave an interview to the NBC ahead of a meeting with Pita next week. “Our bilateral relations have deteriorated to a very low level in recent years,” said Putin, who is best known for his support for Biden’s Republican leader Donald Trump. Despite this, Putin said in an interview that he hopes Biden will be less emotional than Trump, whom he described as “colorful.”

Biden previously called Putin a “murderer,” citing assassination attempts by several of Putin’s opponents since his escape from the KGB agent’s Kremlin. Putin said in an NBC interview that he had heard dozens of such allegations and did not care about them. Putin has dismissed allegations of Biden’s assassination as “luxury behavior” from Hollywood movies, and said Biden’s rhetoric was “part of American political culture, considered normal.”

In the interview, Putin also discussed the large-scale cyber-attack on US governments and companies last year. He denied that he had any knowledge of the attack. U.S. intelligence services have repeatedly said a Russian hacker was behind the joint computer crash. Putin also denied knowing anything about Russian satellite technology being provided to Iran.

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