The US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austinannounced on Tuesday that the United States will send new models of Ukraine to Ukraine Switchblade Droneas reported by Reuters.
“The Switchblade 600 and 300 will be delivered as soon as possible,” Austin said during a US House Armed Services Committee hearing.
The Switchblade 600 Drone specializes in fighting tanks They have an armor-piercing warhead According to California-based company AeroVironment, which makes the drones, they can stay over a target for more than 40 minutes.
This shipment, which includes 10 of the new Switchblade 600 Variant models, is part of a bundle of $300 million in military aid to Ukraine the Pentagon announced last Friday, the Bloomberg website reported.
On March 16, the White House had already announced the delivery of 100 Switchblade 300 models, a less advanced variant designed primarily for anti-personnel and light vehicle combat.
New sanctions expected against Russian companies and officials
The United States and its allies will impose a new sanctions package against Russia This Wednesday, Reuters reported from a source close to the announcement, who was not disclosed.
The sanctions will ban new Russian investments in the West, tighten restrictions on financial institutions and state-owned companies, and target government officials and their families, the source said.
“Tomorrow, the United States, in coordination with the G7 and the EU, will announce a comprehensive additional package of sanctions that will impose significant costs on Russia and send it further down the path of economic, financial and technological isolation,” the source said.
These sanctions “will weaken key instruments of Russian state power, inflict acute and immediate economic damage on Russia, and hold accountable the Russian kleptocracy that funds and supports Russia’s war. [Vladimir] Putin”.
The war and the Western sanctions imposed in response to the invasion of Ukraine affect the Russian economy, and experts predict a fall in GDP by up to 15%, concludes the Reuters report.
Late February, in response to the start of the invasion, President Biden, along with his allies, announced a first heavy sanctions package major Russian financial institutions, as well as oligarchic elites whose accounts and assets have been frozen in the West.
In this announcement on February 22, the US President had already threatened new and tougher sanctions if Russia continued to send military forces to the United States Donetsk and Lugansk separatist regionsin eastern Ukraine, which he had recognized a day earlier.
Zelenskyy calls on the UN Security Council to hold Russia accountable for “war crimes”.
the ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyytold the UN Security Council on Tuesday that Russia “must be held accountable” and accused the invading forces of “the war crimes most horrific” since World War II, Reuters reported.
Zelenskyy questioned the value of the Security Council, which until now could not approve of any Measure to Russian invasion of Ukraine because Moscow is a permanent member with veto powers on this UN body, as are the United States, France, the United Kingdom and China.
“We are dealing with a state that is turning its veto into a right in the UN Security Council [causar] Death,” Zelenskyy said in a videolink address from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, in which he called for reform of the world body.
These statements are made after the visit of the President of Ukraine to the Bucha region, northwest of Kyiv, where the massacre of hundreds of civilians was confirmed after the withdrawal of Russian troops. The shocking images of Bucha have outraged the international community, while the Kremlin claims it was a montage.
In response to Zelenskyy’s intervention, the Russian ambassador to the UN said, Wassily Nebenziatold the council: “Once again we have heard many lies about Russian soldiers and military figures.”
Meanwhile, a satellite image released March 19 by the New York Times denied the Kremlin’s version that the images of civilians killed and thrown onto the street were “a staging” after the Russian pullout.