President Joe Biden signed a $40 billion package of new military, economic and humanitarian aid for Ukraine on Saturday, less than 24 hours after Russia claimed victory in the months-long battle over Mariupol’s Asovstal steel plant.
The aid package, which will help Ukraine replenish US military equipment stocks, pay for difficult living conditions for troops and help refugees, was signed by the president on a visit to South Korea. where he met with his counterpart, President Yoon Suk-yeol.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, thanked Biden for the “additional support” in a tweet. “I look forward to powerful new defense assistance,” he wrote. “Today it is needed more than ever.”
It came as Russia continued its assault in eastern Ukraine on Saturday, having earlier claimed to have captured Mairupol’s Azovstal steel plant, the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in the southern city, which has been under siege for nearly three months.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday that the sprawling site had been “fully liberated”, adding that 2,439 defenders had surrendered in recent days, including 531 in the final group.
The dwindling group of outgunned fighters had held out, drawing Russian airstrikes, artillery, and tank fire. Although the Ukrainian government has not commented on the capture, it had previously ordered the remaining forces to abandon the defense of the plant and save themselves.
Russian authorities have threatened to investigate some of them for war crimes and put them on trial.
Paying tribute to the fighters, Zelenskyy called them “absolutely heroic people” in an interview with Ukrainian television. He added that the conflict could only be ended through diplomacy, but hinted that kyiv was prepared for a long war with Russia.
“The war will be bloody, there will be more battles,” he said. “But the end will definitely be in diplomacy, because there are some things that we will not be able to finish except at the negotiating table.
Mariupol has endured some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict so far, with some 100,000 people remaining out of a pre-war population of 450,000, many trapped without food, water or electricity for weeks.
Its loss deprives Ukraine of a vital seaport and ultimately completes a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which Ukraine seized in 2014.
It has also allowed Russia to move most of its troops away from the city and bolster its forces further north, where it continues its offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Lugansk region.
Kremlin-backed separatists have controlled parts of the region since 2014 and Moscow wants to expand the territory under its control to include the entire Donbas region, made up of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Serhiy Gaidai, the area’s regional governor, said in a social media post that Russia was trying to destroy the city of Severodonetsk and that fighting was taking place on its outskirts.
The head of the military administration of neighboring Kharkiv also said Russian forces had shelled several villages overnight, injuring 20 people and killing a 66-year-old woman.
Oleh Synehubov, the regional governor, said in a post on his Telegram channel that the fiercest battles occurred around the city of Izyum, which is located on a highway linking the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.
NBC News has been unable to verify his claims.
Meanwhile, Russia’s military told the Interfax news agency that it had destroyed a major arms shipment provided by Ukraine’s Western allies in the Zhytomyr region, west of kyiv.
Artem Grudinin, Associated Press Y Reuters contributed.
Reference-www.nbcnews.com