This is his first public appearance since his hospitalization in early January. Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defense, spoke via videoconference during a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine on Tuesday, January 23.
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“The security of the entire international community is at stake in Ukraine’s struggle. “I am more committed than ever to working with our allies and partners to support Ukraine and get the job done,” Austin said in front of a Defense Department seal and small U.S. and Ukrainian flags.
He pointed to $250 million in military aid to Ukraine announced by Washington last month, but did not elaborate on new U.S. aid because the funds had dried up. The opposition in Congress, Republicans, is refusing to approve a new budget package until President Joe Biden meets their demands to reduce immigration at the border with Mexico.
Key national security official
Lloyd Austin, 70, was hospitalized for two weeks on Jan. 1 due to complications following surgery related to prostate cancer, which he was diagnosed with in early December. That diagnosis and the two subsequent hospitalizations were not reported to the country's top authorities, starting with Joe Biden, until several days later, prompting an outcry in the press and from his Republican opponents in the middle of an election year.
The Pentagon chief's hospitalization, which was not disclosed to the White House, has left a key United States national security official without news at a time when American forces in Iraq and Syria are being targeted by fire and Yemen's Houthis Rebels attack international shipping in the Red Sea. However, the White House assured that the Pentagon chief monitored the US-British attacks on the Houthi rebels in Yemen on January 12 “from his hospital bed.”