< p>The United States will provide Ukraine with an additional $2 billion in foreign military funding, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Wednesday, as quoted by Reuters.
He spoke at a joint press conference in Kyiv with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, adding that the support would be aimed at investing in Ukraine's industrial base.
Blinken said Washington and Kiev will sign a bilateral agreement on security guarantees in the coming weeks.
According to him "the hard work" on the preparation of the agreement has already been completed.
"I think we will finish drafting the text of the agreement very soon. (...) I believe that we will be able to sign this agreement in a few weeks", Blinken said at a press conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba in Kyiv.
According to the US Secretary of State, the agreement will provide aid to Ukraine for the next decade.
Blinken also reiterated that the United States is focused on sending Patriot missile systems and other critical air defense assets to Ukraine.
Earlier Bloomberg wrote, citing sources, that the US is considering sending another Patriot battery to Kiev along with radars.
Blinken also noted that the US is not calling on Ukraine to strike targets on Russian territory with weapons supplied by Washington, but believes that Kiev should make its own decision on this.
On Tuesday, Blinken gave a speech at Kyiv Polytechnic University in which he said the US will stand by Ukraine until its security sovereignty is guaranteed. He also said that Russia must pay for what it destroyed, and the US intends to seize frozen Russian assets to do so.
He recalled that a year ago in Helsinki he gave a speech in which he said that Vladimir Putin's aggression against Ukraine was a strategic failure. He raised the topic again in his new speech and praised the "strategic success" of Ukraine.
Blinken listed such successes as signed bilateral agreements with guarantees of aid to Ukraine from a dozen countries, the deepening of its cooperation with NATO and the opening of a shipping route for the export of grain through Black Sea ports. All this, according to Blinken, suggests that Ukraine will ultimately win, and the proponents of the popular thesis that time is on Putin's side are wrong.