Antony Blinken, the outgoing US secretary of state, paid his final visit to Nato headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday promising Joe Biden’s administration would keep seeking to funnel arms to Ukraine in the little time it has left in power. “This is a vital moment for the alliance to make sure we’re level set for the year ahead,” Blinken said. “Like it or not, you’ve got me and you’ve got us until the 20th of January, every minute, every day.” Donald Trump, soon to be president, has cast doubt on maintaining US support and vowed to cut a quick deal to end the war. The Nato head, Mark Rutte, told Blinken: “We wish you the best after January, but we need you until 20 January, every day, and we know we can count on you … You have been a staunch ally and people like you very much.”
It comes as the Biden administration rushes another $725m worth of military equipment to Ukraine in a last-ditch effort to shore up its defences against Russia invasion before Donald Trump assumes the US presidency. Andrew Roth writes from Washington that it includes Stinger anti-air missiles, anti-drone weapons, artillery shells and long-range Himars rocket munitions, and anti-armour missiles, as well as spare parts and other assistance to repair damaged equipment from US stocks.
Ukraine insisted on Tuesday that Nato membership was the only “real guarantee” for its security, but foreign ministers from the alliance sidestepped Kyiv’s push for an invitation ahead of Trump’s return to the US presidency. A dinner of foreign ministers from Ukraine and the alliance’s 32 member states ended without any concrete decision. “There was no progress,” said Lithuania’s Gabrielius Landsbergis.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, on Tuesday accused Ukrainian intelligence services of aiding rebels fighting the Kremlin-backed Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, saying some fighters were “openly flaunting” the association. “Ukrainian military instructors from the GUR are present … training HTS fighters for combat operations,” including against Russian troops in Syria, Nebenzia alleged. There have previously been claims of Ukrainian military specialists humiliating the Kremlin in Mali and Sudan by helping local forces to inflict defeats on Russia’s Wagner mercenaries.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Monday that Russia and Iran “bear the main responsibility” for the recent escalation in fighting in Syria. Kyiv hit out at Assad for recognising Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, and said Ukrainians were also being targeted on a nightly basis by Iranian-designed drones. “The Russian dictator Putin and his allies in Iran continue to make every effort not to lose control over the puppet Syrian regime, which is associated by the majority of Syrians with inhuman cruelty, tyranny and crimes.”
Russian presidential aircraft and funds were used in a programme that took children from occupied Ukrainian territories, stripped them of Ukrainian identity and placed them with Russian families, according to a report by Yale’s School of Public Health. The US state department-backed research, published on Tuesday, identified 314 Ukrainian children taken to Russia in the early months of the war in Ukraine as part of what it says was a systematic, Kremlin-funded programme to “Russify” them. In March 2023, the international criminal court issued arrest warrants for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his child rights’ commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the alleged war crime of deportation of Ukrainian children.