August 31, 2021 | By Dave DeCamp | AntiWar.com |
“The Biden administration has pledged to provide Ukraine with an additional $60 million in military aid ahead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s first face-to-face meeting with Biden, which is scheduled for Wednesday.
The weapons package includes Javelin anti-tank missiles, small arms, ammunition, and first aid kits. Earlier this year, the Pentagon approved a $125 million aid package for Ukraine that included two armed Mark VI patrol boats.
Congress approved a total of $275 million in lethal aid for Ukraine for the 2021 fiscal year, so more packages could be approved this year. Since the US-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, the US has provided Kyiv with over $2 billion in military aid, stoking tensions with Moscow.
In a notification on the new $60 million aid package, the Biden administration said it was necessary due to “Russia’s buildup along the Ukrainian border.” Russia’s military movements in the region are in part due to the increase in US and NATO naval activity in the Black Sea, but to Washington, Russia is always viewed as the “aggressor.”
Tensions were high in the region earlier in the year due to a flare-up of violence in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, a war that was sparked by the 2014 coup, in which some members of the Biden administration played an integral role.”
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“At a Council on Foreign Relations event in January 2018, the former vice president recounted an official visit he took to Ukraine in March 2016 during which he spoke about how he pressured President Petro Poroshenko to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin or not receive $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in,’ I think it was, ‘about six hours.’ I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.
“Well, son of a b—-, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” he said.”
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“The Obama administration let a Democratic p.r. company that worked for Ukrainian energy firm Burisma take part in a conference call about an upcoming visit to Ukraine by then-Vice President Joe Biden, emails obtained by The Post show.
An associate at Blue Star Strategies then emailed a memo with minutes of the conference call hosted by the White House to a top Burisma executive, Vadym Pozharskyi, as well as to Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, both of whom sat on Burisma’s board.
The trip, in December 2015, turned out to be the one during which Biden later bragged about forcing Ukrainian officials to fire a state prosecutor who was investigating Burisma by threatening to withhold a $1 billion US loan guarantee.
The memo, sent shortly after the Dec. 2, 2015, call, also “outlined the trip’s agenda and addressed several questions regarding US policy toward Ukraine.”