White House says U.S. Ukraine assistance has ‘ground to a halt’; Zelenskyy says ‘global freedom’ is at stake

U.S. military assistance to Ukraine has “ground to a halt,” with Congress yet to authorize the emergency spending requested by President Joe Biden’s administration in late October.

In a White House press briefing on Thursday, National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby said Washington had “issued the last drawdown package that we had funding to support.”

“And that’s why it’s critical that Congress move on that national security supplemental request and we get more funding. The assistance that we provided has now ground to a halt,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday thanked Estonia and Latvia after meeting with leaders of the two Baltic nations to discuss further military aid and Ukraine’s path toward EU and NATO membership.

“We must win this battle, not only because the fate of our country and all nations that border Russia is at stake. What is at stake is how global freedom will be treated now and in the future, for our children and grandchildren,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X.

The Ukrainian leader on Thursday rejected the idea of a cease-fire with Russia, saying it would benefit Moscow, giving it time to replenish its weapons stocks.

Ukraine’s armed forces said on Telegram Friday that 64 combat clashes took place the previous day, with Russian forces launching three airstrikes and 16 attacks from rocket salvo systems on Ukrainian positions.

More than 130 settlements in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Mykolaiv regions came under artillery fire.

“As a result of Russian terrorist attacks, unfortunately, there are dead and wounded among the civilian population,” the Armed Forces of Ukraine added, according to a translation.