In a stark warning Friday, President Joe Biden’s top budget official said time is running out for lawmakers to replenish U.S. aid for Ukraine, with the decision bogged down in Congress over budget negotiations on immigration, where a deal has so far been out of reach.
Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said there is no avenue to help Ukraine aside from Congress approving more funding for Kyiv as it tries to repel Russia in a war that is now nearly 2 years old.
While the Pentagon has some limited authority to help Kyiv, without new funding from Capitol Hill, “that is not going to get big tranches of equipment into Ukraine,” Young said Friday.
The U.S. sent a $250 million weapons package to Ukraine late last month, but without additional U.S. aid, Young said, Kyiv may have difficulty paying its civil servants and functioning amid Russia’s barrage.
“I’m very concerned that it’s not just the United States’ resources that are necessary for Kyiv to stop Putin. It is: What message does that send to the rest of the world? And what will their decisions be if they see the United States not step up to the plate?” Young said Friday to a group of journalists.
Missile and drone attacks
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Russian air defense units intercepted and destroyed Ukrainian guided missiles over Crimea early Saturday.
It also reported that air defense units had downed drones from a series of Friday night attacks over the Crimean Peninsula and the western part of the Black Sea.
Air raid sirens blared Friday in Sevastopol, Crimea’s largest city. Traffic was interrupted for a second day on a bridge connecting the peninsula, which Moscow seized illegally a decade ago, with Russia’s southern Krasnodar region. The bridge is a key route for Russia’s military supplies.
In the southern Russian border city of Belgorod, officials offered to evacuate residents who were seeking greater safety.
Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a video message Friday that officials have moved several families.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pledged to hit more targets on the Crimean Peninsula and inside Russian border regions this year, alarming Russians as President Vladimir Putin seeks reelection in March.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, officials said Friday that military defenses downed 21 of 29 Shahed drones launched by Russia in an attack overnight Thursday.
The drones were shot down across six regions on southern, central and western Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s air force.
North Korean missiles
Russia hit Ukraine with short-range ballistic missiles sourced from North Korea, senior Kyiv official Mykhailo Podolyak said Friday on the social media platform X, supporting an earlier such assertion by the White House.
“There is no longer any disguise … as part of its outright genocidal war, the Russian Federation for the first time struck at the territory of Ukraine with missiles received from … North Korea,” Podolyak wrote.
He did not provide evidence for the missiles being from North Korea, but the governor of the northeastern region of Kharkiv said the region had been struck by missiles fired by Russia that were not Russian made.
In a statement Thursday, Washington cited declassified intelligence affirming Podolyak’s claims.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby called it a “significant and concerning escalation” relating to Pyongyang’s support for Russia. He said the U.S. would raise the matter at the U.N. Security Council and impose additional sanctions on those collaborating to facilitate arms transfers.
Moscow has denied the accusations.
The U.S. has previously blamed Pyongyang for supplying Russia with weapons, though this is the first time U.S. intelligence has shared details about ballistic missiles — self-guided rockets that can reach targets 900 kilometers away.
Static front line
Ground combat over the past week has maintained a static front line for Ukraine but has also included some loss, the British Defense Ministry said Friday in its daily intelligence report on Ukraine. In central Donetsk, Avdiivka is “still heavily contested,” the ministry said, but Russian forces in Marinka have finally advanced to the western edge of town “after nine years of combat in the area.” Russian troops have been trying to take the town since seizing Crimea in 2014.
Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine, Russian airborne forces have “highly likely made minimal progress” in dislodging the Ukrainian Bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnipro, near the village of Krynky, according to the ministry.
VOA
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