Biden Admin To Rush Last-Minute Aid To Ukraine, As U.S. Policy Uncertain After Trump Win (Video)

The United States said on Thursday it plans to rush billions of dollars in security assistance to Ukraine by the end of President Joe Biden's term in office to ensure that Ukraine is 'in the best position possible for success' before President-elect Donald Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

"The President [Biden] has already made clear that the funding that Congress has made available, we are working to get all of it out of the door — all of the drawdown authority out of the door to Ukraine, before the end of his term," State Department's spokesperson Matthew Miller told a daily briefing when responding to TURAN's questions.

The Republican-controlled U.S. Congress last approved aid for Ukraine in April and the money remaining from the package is tied up in two buckets: There is $4.3 billion to pull existing stocks and some $2.8 billion worth of transfers lawmakers approved in previous spending measures and $2 billion in funding for the purchase of new weapons from industry. In total, that $9 billion in military assistance would be a significant boost to Ukraine’s stores.

In the meantime, TURAN also asked Miller about seized Russian sovereign assets and whether the administration was willing to transfer them all to Ukraine. "We have also made clear that we’re trying to operationalize that money as well before the end of the term," the spokesperson said.

Miller also said that Blinken intends to use his remaining time in office to make tangible progress on a number of critical issues, including Ukraine to ensure that Kyiv "is in the best position possible for success."

"We have a number of upcoming multilateral meetings where we will be talking about the issue of Ukraine with the coalition of countries that we have put together, and we’ll be talking about work that we can do and we’ll be talking about work that they can do to continue to ensure Ukraine’s success," he added.

During his campaign trail, President-elect Trump repeatedly raised the issue of how much the U.S. had committed to Ukraine compared to Kyiv's other Western backers.