Ukraine’s Zelensky says US diverted military aid promised to Kiev to West Asia

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the United States gave the military aid promised to Kiev instead to West Asia.

The administration of US President Donald Trump diverted tens of thousands of anti-drone missiles promised to Ukraine by the Biden administration to American forces based in West Asia, Zelensky said in an interview with ABC News published on Sunday.

Trump has told Zelensky that he needs to act quickly to reach a peace deal between Kiev and Moscow.

When asked by Martha Raddatz about the importance of the US backing Ukraine in the interview with ABC News, Zelensky admitted that the Ukrainian forces were failing to stop Russian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The Ukrainian president said Kiev had not received a major US military aid package it was “counting on.” Zelensky said the military aid package promised to Ukraine by the previous administration, particularly the anti-drone missiles, were desperately needed by the Kiev forces to ward off long-range UAVs launched by Russian troops.

“We have a lot of problems with these Shaheds,” he explained, referring to Russian Geran-2 long-range drones, which Kiev claims to be Shahed-family UAVs, reportedly supplied to Moscow by Tehran. Both Russia and Iran have previously denied allegations in this regard.

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Zelensky said the former Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin had promised to send Kiev 20,000 anti-drone missiles with “special technology” featured in them. “[This] morning, my minister of defense told me that the United States moved them to [West Asia].”

He confessed that without the advanced US military aid including American-supplied weapons and munitions, the Russian side had “more chances” of gaining victory in the war and Ukraine would have “much more losses.”

Trump has repeatedly said that he is against the Ukraine war resulting in American taxpayers’ shouldering the cost of continued US military support for Kiev.

However, he also said that it might be better to let Russia and Ukraine continue fighting “for a while” before “pulling them apart.”

Trump likened Kiev and Moscow to “two young people fighting like crazy” and said, “Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has frequently voiced his opposition to the US-led West sending arms and ammunition to Kiev, saying flooding Ukriane with guns and bullets will not change the definite course of the conflict, which is Russian victory, and would only lead to more human loss and damage.

A study published last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank in Washington, DC, said Ukraine has sustained nearly 400,000 casualties till now. It is estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the war started in February 2022, the CSIS reported.

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