Brindisi, Italy.- US President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy will sign a bilateral security agreement on Thursday when they meet in Italy on the sidelines of the G7 summit.
The group’s negotiators have also reached an agreement on how to provide Ukraine with up to $50 billion backed by frozen Russian assets.
The international group of wealthy democracies has been debating ways to use the more than $260 billion in frozen Russian assets, most of them outside the country, to help Ukraine fight Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine.
European authorities have resisted seizing the assets, citing legal and financial stability concerns, but the plan would use interest earned on the assets to help Ukraine in its war effort. A French presidential official confirmed the deal on Wednesday, saying most of the money would flow to Ukraine in the form of a U.S. government loan backed by proceeds from frozen Russian assets in the European Union. Two other people familiar with the matter confirmed the agreement.
Before the summit, the final technical negotiations were taking place to finalize the legal terms of the agreement.
The announcement of the agreement occurs when Biden landed in Italy with the urgency of achieving great things. Thursday’s security agreement was intended to send a signal to Russia of American determination to support kyiv, the White House said.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the security deal would not commit US troops directly to defending Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, a red line drawn by Biden, who fears being drawn into a direct conflict between the two powers. .
“We want to show that the United States stands with the people of Ukraine, that we stand with them and that we will continue to help address their security needs,” Sullivan said, adding that “this agreement will show our resolve.”
Sullivan said aboard Air Force One (the US president’s official plane) that the objective of the financing plan was to have a loan that “would allow the profits of the assets seized” to be leveraged from Russia, giving Ukraine a “substantial source of financing” to meet their immediate needs.
The national security adviser said he had a specific sum of money in mind, but declined to say whether that figure was $50 billion. He stressed the urgency of securing financial resources for Ukraine as soon as possible and for several countries to support the agreement.
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