WASHINGTON — A network of people and virtual currency exchanges associated with harboring Russian cybercrime were hit with sanctions on Thursday, in a government-wide crackdown on cybercrime that could assist Russia ahead of President Joe Biden’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

U.S. Treasury sanctioned alleged Russian hacker Sergey Ivanov and Cryptex — a St. Vincent and Grenadines registered virtual currency exchange operating in Russia. Virtual currency exchanges allow people and businesses to trade cryptocurrencies for other assets, such as conventional dollars or other digital currencies. 

Treasury alleges that Ivanov has laundered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of virtual currency for cyber criminals and darknet marketplace vendors for the last 20 years, including for Timur Shakhmametov, who allegedly created an online marketplace for stolen credit card data and compromised IDs called Joker’s Stash. Ivanov laundered the proceeds from Joker’s Stash, Treasury says. 

The State Department is offering a $10 million reward for information that would lead to the arrest and possible conviction of the two men, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Virginia has unsealed an indictment against them. 

Biden said in a statement announcing the sanctions Thursday that the U.S. “will continue to raise the costs on Russia for its war in Ukraine and to deprive the Russian defense industrial base of resources.” 

He meets with Zelenskyy Thursday to announce a surge in security assistance for Ukraine and other actions meant to assist the war-torn country as Russia continues to invade. 

State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller said, “We will continue to use all our tools and authorities to deter and expose these money laundering networks and impose cost on the cyber criminals and support networks. We reiterate our call that Russia must take concrete steps to prevent cyber criminals from freely operating in its jurisdiction.” 

U.S officials have taken several actions against Russian cybercriminals since the start of the invasion in February 2022. 

Earlier this year, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 13 firms — five of which are owned by an already sanctioned person — and two people who have all either helped build or operate blockchain-based services for, or enabled virtual currency payments in, the Russian financial sector, “thus enabling potential sanctions evasion,” according to U.S. Treasury.
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White House — U.S. President Joe Biden is hosting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House Thursday, where the Ukrainian leader is set to discuss his plans for winning the war against Russia, as Republicans accuse him of “election interference.”

Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet separately with Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris following his meeting with Biden. However, no plans have been announced for a meeting with Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump, who has in recent days increased his criticism that the U.S. continues to “give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal” to end the war.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are demanding that the Ukrainian leader fire his ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, for organizing Zelenskyy’s visit Monday to an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania, a hotly contested battleground state in the November presidential election.

In a letter to Zelenskyy, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said the visit to the factory that made munitions for Ukraine was a “partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats” that amounts to “election interference.”

“Support for ending Russia’s war against Ukraine continues to be bipartisan, but our relationship is unnecessarily tested and needlessly tarnished when the candidates at the top of the Republican presidential ticket are targeted in the media by officials in your government,” Johnson said.

On Wednesday Trump suggested that Biden and Harris are at fault for prolonging the war that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“Biden and Kamala allowed this to happen by feeding Zelenskyy money and munitions like no country has ever seen before,” Trump said. He argued that Kyiv should have made concessions to Moscow before Russian troops attacked, asserting that Ukraine is now “in rubble” and in no position to negotiate the war’s end.

“Any deal — the worst deal — would’ve been better than what we have now,” Trump said.

New aid announced

Ahead of Zelenskyy’s visit, the U.S. administration announced $8 billion in new aid for Ukraine. In a statement, Biden said the aid includes a Patriot missile battery and missiles, as well as air-to-ground munitions and a precision-guided glide bomb with a range of up to 130 kilometers.

The administration is also expanding training for Ukrainian F-16 pilots to include an additional 18 pilots next year.

“For nearly three years, the United States has rallied the world to stand with the people of Ukraine as they defend their freedom from Russian aggression, and it has been a top priority of my administration to provide Ukraine with the support it needs to prevail,” Biden said.

Zelenskyy thanked the U.S., saying the new aid included “the items that are most critical to protecting our people.”

“We will use this assistance in the most efficient and transparent manner to achieve our major common goal: victory for Ukraine, just and lasting peace, and transatlantic security,” Zelenskyy said on social media platform X.

The pair spoke briefly on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, during which Zelenskyy thanked Biden for U.S. support for Ukraine and gave an update on the situation on the front lines.

Among the expected topics to be discussed by the leaders Thursday include Ukraine’s request for weapons donors to allow Ukrainian forces to use the weapons to strike targets deeper inside Russia. Ukrainian leaders say such strikes are needed to degrade Russia’s ability to carry out its daily missile and drone attacks.
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VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is traveling to once-strong bastions of Christianity in the heart of Europe to try to reinvigorate a Catholic flock that is dwindling in the face of secular trends and abuse scandals that have largely emptied the continent’s magnificent cathedrals and village churches.

Francis stops first Thursday in Luxembourg, the European Union’s second-smallest country, with a population of some 650,000 people, and its richest per capita. Torrential downpours are expected, days after the 87-year-old pope canceled his audiences because of a slight flu.

He seemed in fine form at the Vatican on Wednesday, during his general audience on the eve of the trip, but his respiratory health is a constant concern and his medical team will be on hand.

After meeting with Luxembourg’s political leaders, Francis will speak to the country’s Catholic priests and nuns. The venue is the late-Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame, which was built in the early 1600s by Francis’ own Jesuit order and stands as a monument to Christianity’s long and central place in European history.

Francis is likely to dwell on Europe’s role past, present and future — particularly as war rages on European soil — during his visits to Luxembourg and Belgium, where he arrives later Thursday and stays through the weekend.

The trip is a much-truncated version of the 10-day, 1985 tour St. John Paul II made through Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands, during which the Polish pope delivered 59 speeches or homilies and was greeted by hundreds of thousands of adoring faithful.

In Luxembourg alone, John Paul drew a crowd of some 45,000 people to his Mass, or some 10% of the then-population, and officials had predicted a million people would welcome him in Belgium, according to news reports at the time.

But then as now, the head of the Catholic Church faced indifference and even hostility to core Vatican teachings on contraception and sexual morals, opposition that has only increased in the ensuing generation. Those secular trends and the crisis over clergy abuse have helped lead to the decline of the church in the region, with monthly Mass attendance in the single digits and plummeting ordinations of new priests.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said that by traveling to the two countries, Francis will likely want to offer “a word to the heart of Europe, of its history, the role it wants to play in the world in the future.”

Immigration, climate change and peace are likely to be themes during the four-day visit, which was organized primarily to mark the 600th anniversary of the founding of Belgium’s two main Catholic universities.

In Luxembourg, Francis has a top ally and friend in the lone cardinal from the country, Jean-Claude Hollerich, a Jesuit like the Argentine pope.

Hollerich, whom Francis made a cardinal in 2019, has taken on a leading role in the pope’s multi-year church reform effort as the “general rapporteur” of his big synod, or meeting, on the future of the Catholic Church.

In that capacity, Hollerich has helped oversee local, national and continental-wide consultations of rank-and-file Catholics and synthesized their views into working papers for bishops and other delegates to discuss at their Vatican meetings, the second session of which opens next week.

Last year, in another sign of his esteem for the progressive cardinal, Francis appointed Hollerich to serve on his kitchen cabinet, known as the Council of Cardinals. The group of nine prelates from around the globe meet several times a year at the Vatican to help Francis govern.
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The war in Ukraine, Sudan’s humanitarian crisis, and an escalation between Israel and Hezbollah dominated the second day of the United Nations General Assembly meetings. VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer reports.
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HELSINKI — A zoo in Finland has agreed with Chinese authorities to return two loaned giant pandas to China more than eight years ahead of schedule because they have become too expensive for the facility to maintain as the number of visitors has declined.

The private Ahtari Zoo in central Finland some 330 kilometers north of Helsinki said Wednesday on its Facebook page that the female panda Lumi, Finnish for “snow,” and the male panda Pyry, meaning “snowfall,” will return “prematurely” to China later this year.

The panda pair was China’s gift to mark the Nordic nation’s 100 years of independence in 2017, and they were supposed to be on loan until 2033.

But since then, the zoo has experienced several challenges, including a decline in visitors due to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine, as well as an increase in inflation and interest rates, the facility said in a statement.

The panda deal between Helsinki and Beijing, a 15-year loan agreement, had been finalized in April 2017 when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Finland for talks with then-Finnish President Sauli Niinisto. The pandas arrived in Finland in January 2018.

The Ahtari Zoo, which specializes in typical northern European animals such as bears, lynxes and wolverines, built a special annex at a cost of about $9 million in hopes of luring more tourists to the remote nature reserve.

The upkeep of Lumi and Pyry, including a preservation fee to China, cost the zoo $1.7 million annually. The bamboo that giant pandas eat was flown in from the Netherlands.

The Chinese Embassy in Helsinki noted to Finnish media that Beijing had tried to help Ahtari solve its financial difficulties by urging Chinese companies operating in Finland to make donations to the zoo and supporting its debt arrangements.

However, declining visitor numbers combined with drastic changes in the economic environment proved too high a burden for the smallish Finnish zoo. The panda pair will enter a monthlong quarantine in late October before being shipped back to China.

Finland, a country of 5.6 million people, was among the first Western nations to establish political ties with China, doing so in 1950. China has presented giant pandas to countries as a sign of goodwill and closer political ties, and Finland was the first Nordic nation to receive them.
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VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis took the unusual decision Wednesday to expel 10 people — a bishop, priests and laypeople — from a troubled Catholic movement in Peru after a Vatican investigation uncovered “sadistic” abuses of power, authority and spirituality.

The move against the leadership of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium of Christian Life, followed Francis’ decision last month to expel the group’s founder, Luis Figari, after he was found to have sodomized his recruits.

The decision was announced by the Peruvian Bishops Conference, which posted a statement from the Vatican embassy on its website.

The statement was astonishing because it listed the abuses uncovered by the Vatican investigation that have rarely been punished canonically with such measures, and the people responsible. According to the statement, the Vatican investigators uncovered physical abuses “including with sadism and violence,” sect-like abuses of conscience, spiritual abuse, abuses of authority, economic abuses in administering church money and the “abuse in the exercise of the apostolate of journalism.”

The latter was presumably aimed at a Sodalitium-linked journalist who has attacked critics of the movement on social media.

Figari founded the movement in 1971 as a lay community to recruit “soldiers for God,” one of several Catholic societies born as a conservative reaction to the left-leaning liberation theology movement that swept through Latin America, starting in the 1960s. At its height, the group counted about 20,000 members across South America and the United States. It was enormously influential in Peru.

Victims of Figari’s abuses complained to the Lima archdiocese in 2011, although other claims against him reportedly date to 2000. But neither the local church nor the Holy See took concrete action until one of the victims, Pedro Salinas, wrote a book along with journalist Paola Ugaz detailing the twisted practices of the Sodalitium in 2015, entitled “Half Monks, Half Soldiers.”

An outside investigation ordered by Sodalitium determined that Figari was “narcissistic, paranoid, demeaning, vulgar, vindictive, manipulative, racist, sexist, elitist and obsessed with sexual issues and the sexual orientation” of Sodalitium’s members.

The investigation, published in 2017, found that Figari sodomized his recruits and forced them to fondle him and one another. He liked to watch them “experience pain, discomfort and fear” and humiliated them in front of others to enhance his control over them, the report found.

Still, the Holy See declined to expel Figari from the movement in 2017 and merely ordered him to live apart from the Sodalitium community in Rome and cease all contact with it. The Vatican was seemingly tied in knots by canon law that did not foresee such punishments for founders of religious communities who weren’t priests.

But according to the findings of the latest Vatican investigation, the abuses went beyond Figari and included harassing and hacking the communications of their victims all the while covering up crimes committed as part of their official duties.

The highest-ranking person ordered expelled was Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren, whom Francis already forced to resign as bishop of Piura in April over his record, after he sued Salinas and Ugaz for their reporting.

The Vatican, in the statement, said the Peruvian bishops join Pope Francis in “seeking the forgiveness of the victims” while calling on the troubled movement to initiate a journey of justice and reparation.
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HELSINKI — Finland will return two giant pandas to China in November, more than eight years ahead of time, as the zoo where they live can no longer afford their upkeep, the chair of the zoo’s board told Reuters on Tuesday. 

The pandas, named Lumi and Pyry, were brought to Finland in January 2018, months after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Nordic country and signed a joint agreement on protecting the animals. 

Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has sent pandas to foreign zoos to strengthen trading ties, cement foreign relations and boost its international image. 

The Finnish agreement was for a stay of 15 years, but instead the pandas will soon go into a month-long quarantine before they are shipped back to China, according to Ahtari Zoo, the pandas’ current home. 

The zoo, a private company, had invested over 8 million euros ($8.92 million) in the facility where the animals live and faced annual costs of 1.5 million euros for their upkeep, including a preservation fee paid to China, Ahtari Chair Risto Sivonen said. 

The zoo had hoped the pandas would attract visitors to the central Finland location but last year said it had instead accumulated mounting debts as the pandemic curbed travel, and that it was discussing a return. 

Rising inflation had added to the costs, the zoo said, and Finland’s government in 2023 rejected pleas for state funding. 

In all, negotiations to return the animals had lasted three years, Sivonen said. 

“Now we reached a point where the Chinese said it could be done,” Sivonen said. 

The return of the pandas was a business decision made by the zoo which did not involve Finland’s government and should not impact relations between the two countries, a spokesperson for Finland’s foreign ministry said. 

Despite efforts by China to aid the zoo, the two countries in the end jointly concluded after friendly consultations to return the pandas, the Chinese embassy in Helsinki said in a statement to Reuters. 
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Athens — Greece and Turkey will explore whether they can start talks aimed at demarcating their maritime zones, Greece’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

Neighbors Greece and Turkey, both NATO allies but historic foes, have been at odds for decades over a range of issues from airspace to maritime jurisdiction in the eastern Mediterranean and ethnically split Cyprus.

An agreement on where their maritime zones begin and end is important for determining rights over possible gas reserves and power infrastructure schemes.

Tensions have eased in recent years and both countries agreed last year to reboot their relations, pledging to keep open channels of communication and work on the issues that have kept them apart.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan met on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday and discussed bilateral ties, according to statements from the Turkish presidency and the Greek foreign ministry.

“The two leaders tasked the foreign ministers to explore whether conditions are favorable to initiate discussions on the demarcation of the continental shelf and exclusive economic zone,” Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said.

Foreign ministers from the two countries will start preparations for a high-level meeting to take place in Ankara in January, the Greek prime minister’s office said.
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WARSAW, Poland — Climate change has made downpours like the one that caused devastating floods in central Europe this month twice as likely to occur, a report said on Wednesday, as its scientific authors urged policymakers to act to stop global warming.

The worst flooding to hit central Europe in at least two decades has left 24 people dead, with towns strewn with mud and debris, buildings damaged, bridges collapsed and authorities left with a bill for repairs that runs into billions of dollars.

The report from World Weather Attribution, an international group of scientists that studies the effects of climate change on extreme weather events, found that the four days of rainfall brought by Storm Boris were the heaviest ever recorded in central Europe.

It said that climate change had made such downpours at least twice as likely and 7% heavier.

“Yet again, these floods highlight the devastating results of fossil fuel-driven warming,” Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

“Until oil, gas and coal are replaced with renewable energy, storms like Boris will unleash even heavier rainfall, driving economy-crippling floods.”

The report said that while the combination of weather patterns that caused the storm – including cold air moving over the Alps and very warm air over the Mediterranean and the Black Seas – was unusual, climate change made such storms more intense and more likely.

According to the report, such a storm is expected to occur on average about once every 100 to 300 years in today’s climate with 1.3 degrees Celsius of warming from pre-industrial levels.

However, it said that such storms will result in at least 5% more rain and occur about 50% more frequently than now if warming from pre-industrial levels reaches 2 C, which is expected to happen in the 2050s.
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Joe Biden used his final presidential address before the U.N. General Assembly to urge unity in the face of challenges that include conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from New York.
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A new school year begins in Russia, the third that is starting with Moscow’s war in Ukraine as a backdrop. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina on what critics say are Russia’s moves to militarize education by introducing new subjects that explain and justify its full-scale assault on Ukraine.
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GENEVA — Police in northern Switzerland said Tuesday that several people have been detained and a criminal case opened in connection with the suspected death of a person in a “suicide capsule.”

The “Sarco” capsule is presumably designed to allow a person sitting in a reclining seat inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die by suffocation in a few minutes.

Exit International, an assisted suicide group based in the Netherlands, said it is behind the 3D-printed device that cost over $1 million to develop.

Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance” and those who help the person die do not do so for “any self-serving motive,” according to a government website.

A law firm informed prosecutors in Schaffhausen canton that an assisted suicide involving the Sarco had taken place Monday near a forest cabin in Merishausen, regional police said in a statement. They said that “several people” were taken into custody and that prosecutors opened an investigation on suspicion of incitement and accessory to suicide.

Dutch newspaper Volkskrant reported Tuesday that police had detained one of its photographers who wanted to take pictures of the use of the Sarco. It said Schaffhausen police had indicated the photographer was being held at a police station but declined to give a further explanation.

The newspaper declined to comment further when contacted by the Associated Press. 

In an email, the Dutch Foreign Ministry told the AP that it was in contact with the newspaper and Swiss officials. 

“As always, we cannot interfere in the legal process of another country. At the same time, the Netherlands stands firmly for press freedom. It is very important that journalists worldwide can do their work freely,” it said. 

Exit International, the group behind the Sarco, said in a statement a 64-year-old woman from the U.S. Midwest — it did not specify further — who had suffered from “severe immune compromise” had died Monday afternoon near the German border using the Sarco device.

It said Florian Willet, co-president of The Last Resort, a Swiss affiliate of Exit International, was the only person present and described her death as “peaceful, fast and dignified.”

Dr. Philip Nitschke, an Australian-born trained doctor behind Exit International, has previously told the AP that his organization received advice from lawyers in Switzerland that the use of the Sarco would be legal in the country.

In the Exit International statement on Tuesday, Nitschke said he was “pleased that the Sarco had performed exactly as it had been designed … to provide an elective, non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person’s choosing.”

The claims of Nitschke and Exit International could not be independently verified.

On Monday, Health Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider was asked in Swiss parliament about the legal conditions for the use of the Sarco capsule. She suggested its use would not be legal.

“On one hand, it does not fulfill the demands of the product safety law, and as such, must not be brought into circulation,” she said. “On the other hand, the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the article on purpose in the chemicals law.”

In July, Swiss newspaper Blick reported that Peter Sticher, a state prosecutor in Schaffhausen, wrote to Exit International’s lawyers saying any operator of the suicide capsule could face criminal proceedings if it was used there — and any conviction could bring up to five years in prison.

Prosecutors in other Swiss regions have also indicated that the use of the suicide capsule could lead to prosecution.

Over the summer, a 54-year-old U.S. woman with multiple health ailments had planned to be the first person to use the device, but those plans were abandoned.

Switzerland is among the only countries in the world where foreigners can travel to legally end their lives and has organizations that are dedicated to helping people kill themselves. But unlike others, including the Netherlands, Switzerland does not allow euthanasia, which involves health care practitioners killing patients with a lethal injection at their request and in specific circumstances.

Some lawmakers in Switzerland have argued that the law is unclear and have sought to close what they call legal loopholes.
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Berlin — Germany’s leading economic institutes have downgraded their forecast for 2024 and now see Europe’s largest economy shrinking by 0.1%, people familiar with the figures from the autumn joint economic forecast told Reuters on Tuesday. 

Germany’s economy was the weakest among its large euro zone peers last year with a 0.3% contraction.  

Even with inflation on a downward trend, consumption remains weak and high energy costs, feeble global orders and high interest rates are still taking their toll.  

The latest economic data paint a gloomy picture. German business morale fell for a fourth straight month in September and by more than expected, a survey showed on Tuesday. 

Data earlier this week showed German business activity contracted in September at the sharpest pace in seven months, putting the economy on track to notch up a second consecutive quarter of falling output. 

The economic institutes have also slashed their forecasts for the coming years, according to the sources. The growth forecast for 2025 has been cut to 0.8% from 1.4%, and for 2026, the institutes envisage growth of 1.3%, the sources said. 

The institutes’ joint economic forecast is due to be published on Thursday, meaning the figures could still change slightly before then. 

The economy ministry incorporates the combined estimates from the institutes — Ifo, DIW, IWH, IfW and RWI — into its own predictions. 

According to its latest forecast, the German government expects the economy to grow 0.3% this year. An update is due in October.  
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STOCKHOLM — Swedish authorities said on Tuesday that Iran hacked into a text messaging service last year and sent thousands of messages urging Swedes to take revenge against Koran burners.  

In 2023, individuals in Sweden on several occasions set fire to Islam’s holy book in public, prompting outrage in the Muslim world and raising fears of attacks by jihadists. 

“The security police is able to establish that a cyber group acted on behalf of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to carry out an influence campaign,” the Swedish Security Service said in a statement.  

“The purpose was, among other things, to paint the image of Sweden as an Islamophobic country and create division in society,” it said. 

Sweden last year raised its terrorism alert following the Koran burnings.  

In a separate statement, the Swedish Prosecution Authority said the investigation showed it was the Iranian state via the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that carried out the data breach. 

The Swedish agency said it had identified the individual hackers carrying out the breach but would not press charges.  

“Since the perpetrators are acting for a foreign power, in this case Iran, we make the assessment that the conditions for prosecution abroad or extradition to Sweden are lacking,” it said. 

Iran’s embassy in Stockholm could not immediately be reached for comment. Iran’s foreign ministry had no immediate comment.  
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ROME — Pope Francis has called for the liberation of Myanmar’s detained former leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and offered the Vatican as a safe haven, the pontiff said in a recent conversation with Jesuits in Asia.

“I asked for the Ms Aung San Suu Kyi’s release and received her son in Rome. I offered the Vatican to receive her in our territory,” he said in a private conversation during a recent 12-day tour across Southeast Asia.

The 87-year old pontiff visited Myanmar in December 2017.

Italian daily Corriere della Sera published the comments on Tuesday in an article by Father Antonio Spadaro, a Rome-based Jesuit priest who attends the meetings and writes about them afterwards with the pope’s permission.

“The future of the (Myanmar) must be peace based on respect for the dignity and rights of all, on respect for a democratic order that allows everyone to contribute to the common good,” Pope Francis added.

Myanmar’s military government has ramped up killings and arrests in an apparent bid to silence opponents and recruit soldiers in an escalating conflict, a U.N. report said last week.

Suu Kyi, 78, has been detained by the military since it overthrew her government in a 2021 coup. She faces 27 years in prison for crimes ranging from treason and bribery to violations of the telecommunications law, charges she denies. In April she was moved from prison to house arrest.
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Pentagon — The U.S. military is expected to announce a new military aid package for Ukraine this week valued at up to $375 million, the largest aid sent to Kyiv since May.

According to several U.S. officials, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity to discuss the package ahead of the announcement, the aid for Kyiv is expected to be announced as soon as Wednesday.

One official told VOA the package is likely to include air-to-ground munitions for F-16 fighter jets, which would allow Ukrainian pilots to operate away from the front lines and Russia’s air defenses. 

The package also includes ammunition for HIMARS, patrol boats and armored vehicles, along with 155mm rounds, 105 mm rounds and TOW missiles, the official added.

The package, which is still being finalized and could change, according to the U.S. officials, is being sent under the presidential drawdown authority that allows the Pentagon to send Ukraine aid directly from its American military stockpiles. 

The Pentagon has more than $5 billion left of the $61 billion in funding for Ukraine that was signed into law by President Joe Biden in April and could expire at the end of this month. The Pentagon says it is working with Congress to roll the remaining funding over to the next U.S. fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The officials tell VOA they are working on contingency plans should Congress not approve the extension before the end of the fiscal year.

The package is expected to be announced as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet with President Biden and Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris this Friday at the White House. Officials say Zelenskyy will lay out his plan to end the war with Russia and push for restrictions on U.S.-provided missiles to be lifted.

U.S. policy does not allow Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied weapons to fire on targets deep within Russian territory. The White House has expressed concerns that these strikes could draw the United States into direct conflict with Russia.

Earlier this month, Zelenskyy told military allies meeting in Germany that his country needs the long-range capability to strike deep inside Russian territory “so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.”

The U.S. says that Russia has moved most of its aircraft and weapons out of range of Ukraine’s weapons, but Ukrainian officials are still interested in targeting supply lines and command centers closer to its border.

Air Force General James Hecker, the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa, warned reporters last week that Russia’s military is now bigger and stronger than it was before invading Ukraine in February 2022.

Despite Russian improvements on the battlefield, Ukraine has continued to put chinks in Russia’s armor, shooting down more than 100 Russian aircraft, which is dozens more aircraft than Russia has been able to down on the Ukrainian side, according to Hecker.

“So what we see is the aircraft are kind of staying on their own side of the line, if you will, and when that happens, you have a war like we’re seeing today, with massive attrition, cities just being demolished, a lot of civilian casualties,” he said.

The U.S. and Denmark have been training a small number of Ukrainian pilots on the F-16, but qualified Ukrainian pilots and open training slots have been limited.
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