Biden announces more US aid for Ukraine

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has assured Ukraine of continuing U.S. support and announced the release of an additional $190 million in U.S. aid to help support Ukrainian reforms.

Biden’s visit is his fourth to Kiev since Russian Federation annexed Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula in March 2014 and then watched with approval as pro-Kremlin insurgents carved out their own region in the eastern industrial heart of the ex-Soviet state.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk arrives for an European Union…

People queue at a checkpoint in Zaytseve, Donetsk region to cross the demarcation line between terri …

Washington has accused Putin of trying to prop up Assad by targeting Syria’s western-backed rebels instead of extremist groups.

Yet IS’s claim that it downed a Russian airliner carrying 224 holidaymakers and crew from Egypt on October 31 appears to have prompted Moscow to focus more on bombing oil infrastructure and other jihadist targets.

The key topics of the meeting were an unsatisfactory level of the fight against corruption and the prospect of a reshuffle of the government, as well as Minsk (international community acting on Russia), Constitution and the electoral law, she said.

“I assume that’s going to be a serious theme of the journey – that nothing that is occurring within the Middle East has modified one iota of our dedication to the Ukrainian individuals and to their safety”, the United States official stated.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko talks with French President Francois Hollande (R) at the CO …

Biden also took the opportunity to urge Ukrainian authorities to do more to tackle the rampant graft that has plagued the county for much of its recent history, amid growing discontent among Ukrainians over Poroshenko’s seeming inability to end the scourge. The “Heavenly Hundred” is what Ukrainians in Kiev call those who died during months of anti-government protests in 2013-14. Officials have also said that Biden will press the Ukrainian government on economic reforms and anti-corruption efforts that the White House says aren’t moving fast enough.

Some analysts said the problem rested in Kiev’s ineffective bid to break the grip a handful of tycoons have enjoyed over the state’s politics by indirectly controlling its main firms. “To root out the cancer of corruption”, the U.S. vice president said.