The United States is preparing another military aid package for Ukraine that is expected to be announced by the end of the week, as the country’s president on Wednesday called on Western nations to “outpace” Russian brutality with assistance.
The new aid package from the U.S. would follow a particularly deadly week for Ukraine – after the interior minister and other top officials died in a helicopter crash Wednesday and a Russian strike on an apartment building this weekend killed at least 45 people, including six children.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the U.S. plans to supply Ukraine with a variety of defense capabilities – short-, medium- and long-range.
“In other words, you have a mix of capabilities that provide you opportunities to intercept a target at the greatest range possible,” he said. “You have fallback options at medium range and then close range. That's how air defense optimally can work.”
“You'll see that this Friday,” he added, implying an aid announcement could come after a meeting of defense leaders from about 50 nations in Germany this Thursday, led by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
So far, the U.S. has promised Ukraine a long-range Patriot air defense system, one of the most significant tools offered yet. Germany then agreed to supply a second Patriot battery, and the Netherlands’ prime minister on Tuesday implied they may join in the effort.
But, Kirby noted, training on that system will take months. Dozens of Ukrainian soldiers began that instruction last week at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
In the meantime, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged NATO members to send modernized tanks to his country, something the United Kingdom and Poland have said they are willing to do but the U.S. has resisted so far.
In a video address Wednesday to the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, Zelenskyy stood and asked for a moment of silence for victims of a helicopter crash in Ukraine, who included his interior minister.
While a cause is not yet known, he said that “every individual, every death is a result of war.”
He says that the world needs to react quicker to challenges like global security, climate change and hunger, saying there’s a “time crisis.” He says that Russia started the war, and the world needed days to react with the first sanctions, with “the time the free world uses to think is used by the terrorist state to kill.”
He said the world must not hesitate: “The supplying of Ukraine with air defense systems must outpace Russia’s vast missile attacks. The supplies of Western tanks must outpace another invasion of Russian tanks.”
While he did not say whether the U.S. is considering sending tanks to Ukraine, Kirby on Wednesday acknowledged that “modern tanks will significantly help and improve the Ukrainians ability to fight where they're fighting now.”
“They'll be more modern, they'll be more capable. They will however, require a little bit of training,” he added.
Kirby said fighting in the Ukrainian Donbas region is “vicious” as Russia tries to take over two towns there, despite heavy losses among the Russian military.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.