U.S. sending small drones and armored Humvees to Ukraine
WASHINGTON -- Vice President Joe Biden told Ukraine's president Wednesday the U.S. will send more aid to the country, which U.S. officials said will include small drones and armored Humvees.
The White House said in a statement that Biden delivered the news in a call to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, while expressing concern that Russian-backed separatists are violating cease-fire agreements in eastern Ukraine and keeping out international monitors.
U.S. officials, speaking on a condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the aid on the record, said the aid includes some small Raven drones systems, which can be launched by hand. The U.S. will also send 30 heavily armored Humvees and 200 other regular Humvees, as well as radios, counter-mortar radars and other equipment. All of the aid is nonlethal, and the drones are not armed.
The drones and other equipment, not including the Humvees, are worth about $75 million. It's not clear how many drones would be sent or what the Humvees cost.
U.S. lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties have repeatedly urged Obama to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons to defend themselves against the Russian-backed rebels.
Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday that administration officials are still discussing lethal assistance and are watching whether the so-called Minsk agreements, which led to last month's cease-fire, are implemented. Nuland said that in the past few days, there have been new transfers of Russian tanks, armored vehicles, heavy artillery and rocket equipment over the border to the separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin denies arming rebels in the war in eastern Ukraine, which has killed more than 6,000 people and forced over a million to flee their homes. The fighting began in April, a month after Russia annexed the mostly Russian-speaking Crimean Peninsula.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is slapping new sanctions on several individuals and entities involved in supporting Russian-backed separatists seeking to destabilize eastern Ukraine.
The penalties target 14 Ukrainian and Russian individuals. Among them are the former prime minister of Ukraine and two others high-ranking officials who worked for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
The U.S. is also blocking the assets of a bank operating in Crimea, the strategically important peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine last year. The Eurasian Youth Union, which the U.S. says has been actively recruiting individuals with military and combat experience to fight in Ukraine, is also being sanctioned.
According to Reuters, Russian Deputy Foreign MinisterSergei Ryabkov called the new U.S. sanctions "unexplainable," Interfaxnews agency quoted him as saying.
President Barack Obama and European leaders have wielded sanctions as their main form of retaliation for Russia's threatening moves in Ukraine.