Russia-Ukraine live updates: Biden outlines new security assistance for Ukraine: ‘More will be coming’

President Biden on Wednesday detailed a new assistance package for Ukraine, which will include drones to defend against Russian air attacks.

Biden said he’s using his presidential authority again to “activate additional security assistance to continue to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s assault.”

He said the United States will send an additional $800 million in assistance to Ukraine, bringing the total new security assistance this week to $1 billion. These transfers are being made in the form of equipment sent from the Defense Department to Ukraine.

“This new package on its own is going to provide unprecedented assistance to Ukraine,” Biden said in remarks ahead of signing the new package. “It includes 800 antiaircraft systems to make sure the Ukrainian military can continue to stop the planes and helicopters that have been attacking their people and to defend Ukrainian airspace.”

Biden said that at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the United States will help Ukraine “acquire additional longer-range aircraft systems and the munitions for those systems.” The new assistance package, he said, also includes anti-armor systems, armored vehicles, machine guns, shotguns, ammunition and grenade launchers.

Finally, the package also includes drones, “which demonstrate our commitment to sending our most cutting-edge systems to Ukraine for its defense,” Biden said.

The president noted that the United States is “not doing this alone.”

“Our allies and partners have stepped up to provide significant shipments of security assistance, and we’ll continue to help facilitate these deliveries, as well,” Biden said.

There has never been a speech to Congress by a foreign leader quite like the one Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered on Wednesday. Short in duration, powerful in words, graphic in imagery, the address was a pointed challenge to President Biden to do more to help Zelensky’s beleaguered country.

What Zelensky asked for was not new — the establishment of a no-fly zone over his country to stop Russian attacks from the skies. But if the appeal was not new or unexpected, the forcefulness by which he made it, and the way he singled out the president, was a step beyond where he had been before.

Zelensky closed his speech by addressing Biden directly and switching to English for emphasis: “You are the leader of your great nation. I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.”

The young leader’s appearance highlighted the degree to which he and Biden are now inextricably entwined at a moment of great peril, not just to Ukraine but potentially to the wider world as a result of Russia launching the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. Each leader has responsibilities and roles to play. At times, those roles intersect. At other times they conflict.

Officials from Russia and Ukraine expressed cautious optimism Wednesday that peace talks were making progress toward ending almost three weeks of fighting across Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address overnight Tuesday that negotiations with Moscow were heading in a “more realistic” direction, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that there is “hope for reaching a compromise.”

However, both sides also stressed that the talks were difficult, with differences remaining over what neutrality, or security guarantees, for Ukraine would look like.

Lavrov, in an interview with the Russian television channel RBC, said he was basing his assessment on the view of the Russian negotiators. “They state that negotiations are not easy for obvious reasons, but nevertheless there is some hope for reaching a compromise,” Lavrov said.

The Post’s Sarah Ellison and Hoda Osman, president of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association, explain why some media coverage of the war in Ukraine has received backlash.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that his country’s attack on Ukraine is going according to plan and that the West is trying to “cancel Russia.”

“The special operation is developing successfully, in strict accordance with preapproved plans,” he said in a lengthy video address to government officials.

He claimed that Russian soldiers “do everything that depends on them to avoid losses among the civilian population of Ukrainian cities.” According to the United Nations, at least 726 civilians have been confirmed killed, including 52 children, while 1,174 have been injured — mostly as a result of shelling and airstrikes. The organization says its figures are incomplete and that the actual civilian toll is evidently much higher.

The meeting, which aired on Russian state television, came right after Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded with U.S. lawmakers for additional military aid and the creation of a “humanitarian no-fly zone” over Ukraine so that “Russia would not be able to terrorize [Ukrainian] free cities.”

Putin attempted to justify the presence of the Russian forces across all of Ukraine despite the initial stated goal of the “special operation” to help separatist-controlled “republics” in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas area, which Moscow recognized as last month as independent states.

“If our troops operated only on the territory of Donbas republics, helped them liberate their territory, this would not have been the final solution, would not have led to peace, and would not eliminate the threat to Russia,” he said.

He said a Donbas-limited operation would have created “a new front line” around the region and that “the armed conflict would drag on endlessly.”

The Russian leader also took the opportunity to directly address citizens of Western countries to tell them that their “ruling elites” are to blame for the economic ripples that the invasion of Ukraine has sent across markets.

“Now they are trying to convince you that all your difficulties are the result of some hostile actions by Russia and that from your wallet you need to pay for the fight against the mythical Russian threat,” Putin said. “All this is a lie!”

He also claimed that the West is trying to “cancel Russia” and doubled down on eyebrow-raising rhetoric likening international pressure on Russia to “antisemitic pogroms that the Nazis staged in Germany” before and during World War II.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said he would not support a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine, adding that although he understands why Ukraine is asking for one, he agrees with President Biden on the dangers of making such a call.

“When the president and his team indicate that that would be an escalation that would involve the potential conflict between NATO members and Russia, he’s right,” Graham said. “That calculation may change in my mind. … But as of right now I support the president’s decision not to go down that road.”

Multiple senators have been vocal about their opposition to a no-fly zone, with Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, saying there are “much more effective tools” to combat Russian airstrikes, including antitank and antiaircraft missiles.

Some lawmakers, however, have noted that Biden is running out of time.

“President Biden needs to make a decision TODAY: either give Ukraine access to the planes and anti-aircraft defense systems it needs to defend itself, or enforce a no-fly zone to close Ukrainian skies to Russian attacks,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in a statement.

During Graham’s news briefing, he also doubled down on his calls to have Putin assassinated.

“I hope that he will be taken out, one way or the other,” Graham said. “If John McCain were here, we would be saying the same thing, I think. It’s time for him to go. He’s a war criminal.”

Russia was ordered to halt its invasion of Ukraine by the United Nations’ top court on Wednesday, in a preliminary decision that appeared to have largely symbolic significance.

Ukraine initiated the case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague to contest President Vladimir Putin’s official explanation for entering the country as an effort to end a “genocide” of pro-Russian separatists.

Although the court’s preliminary order is in theory binding under international law, there were no signs that Moscow would comply. No Russian representatives showed up when Ukraine argued its case last week.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with his Russian counterpart, Nikolay Patrushev, on Wednesday, and emphasized that if the Kremlin is serious about diplomacy, it should “stop attacking Ukrainian cities and towns,” the White House said in a statement.

The discussion between the two top officials appears to be the highest-level engagement between Moscow and Washington since Russia’s invasion began more than two weeks ago. In recent days, the Biden administration has rejected suggestions that it engage directly with Moscow to negotiate an “off-ramp” to the conflict, saying the Kremlin isn’t serious about diplomacy.

“We have yet to find a Russian interlocutor that is either able or willing to negotiate in good faith, and certainly not in the context of de-escalation,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price on Tuesday.

The conversation between Sullivan and Patrushev comes as peace talks between Russia and Ukraine show some signs of progress, even as Russia continues to batter Ukraine’s population centers.

Patrushev, according to Moscow’s characterization of the call, accepted a proposal by Sullivan “on continuing their contacts” and called on Washington to “exert influence on Kyiv to achieve progress in settling the crisis in a diplomatic way as soon as possible,” according to Russian Security Council press service.

Russia accused Ukraine of dragging out the negotiating process and demanded that the United States stop sending arms to the leaders in Kyiv whom it called “neo-Nazis and terrorists.”

Sullivan, according to the White House, warned Moscow against launching a chemical or biological weapons attack in Ukraine.