Ambassador discusses US aid and American attitudes towards strikes on Crimea and Russia
On 20 April, the US House of Representatives approved a bill to provide about US$61 billion in military aid for Ukraine.
European Pravda has thoroughly analysed this document and can surely say that it exceeds optimistic expectations.
Read more about the supply of weapons, strategic partnership between Ukraine and the US and issues with Trump supporters in the article by Sergiy Sydorenko, European Pravda's editor, who spoke with Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Oksana Markarova – US weaponry, the right to strike Russia, and Americans' 'red lines'.
The procedure for passing the bill on assistance to Ukraine will be completed as quickly as possible and President Joe Biden will sign it immediately. The law will take effect immediately and so would the authorisation to provide weapons to Ukraine.
"Moreover, Ukraine and the United States are actively working on these packages, even when no such authorisation was in place. Therefore, I think everything will happen very quickly," the ambassador noted.
So, I believe we will receive weapons very quickly. We will not rule out the possibility of it arriving in April.
Priority number one is air defence. We need additional systems and interceptor missiles for all our existing systems.
As the president has said, we need a minimum of seven Patriot installations, and we are actively working on it.
We also have the task of producing Patriots in Ukraine."We're actively working on it. We... should start producing a lot ourselves, at least components, and ideally some finished products. We understand that even after our victory, Russia won't just disappear," she emphasised.
Priority number two is artillery, replenishing artillery stocks. And it's not just about ammunition but everything related to it – counter-battery systems, electronic warfare means, and so on. Special emphasis is on extending the range of artillery.
We are currently working actively to obtain ATACMS missiles with a range of 300 km. We need them very much, as well as German Taurus missiles.
The UN Charter gives us the right to defend ourselves, including by striking at the territory of the aggressor country.
Simply put, we have restrictions from our partners who wouldn't want their weapons to be used outside Ukraine. But across the Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and all other occupied territories, we must destroy both logistical hubs and the aggressor's forces.
I have not received any official signals that Ukraine should not strike with its weapons at oil refineries on Russian territory.
The administration, the president and Congress understand that we must win because this war is not just about Ukraine. It will be impossible to restore respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty in the world without it.
But at the same time, there is no understanding in the US of how to defeat an aggressive nuclear state, a permanent UN Security Council member, a G20 member, a state on which many other countries depend, and which still determines the state of many resource markets.
The US aid bill for Ukraine totaling $60.8 billion are allocated to specific programmes. Their validity does not expire until 1 October 2024. Many of these funds are "transitional," so we are not obligated to use them within these five months.
But I want to note that an unprecedentedly high amount is earmarked in it to cover potential "presidential allocations." All four previous bills in the past two years contained slightly more than $25 billion. And now we have $23.2 billion in one bill.
Equipment that is already prepared will be delivered soon. But does this mean that equipment for all US$23 billion (under the scheme of the president's authority to allocate weapons – ed.) is ready for delivery? Unfortunately, no.