Biden Rushing Aid to Ukraine           12/10 06:09

   The grinding war between Ukraine and its Russian invaders has escalated 
ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration, with President Joe Biden rushing out 
billions of dollars more in military aid before U.S. support for Kyiv's 
defenses is thrown into question under the new administration.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The grinding war between Ukraine and its Russian invaders 
has escalated ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration, with President Joe Biden 
rushing out billions of dollars more in military aid before U.S. support for 
Kyiv's defenses is thrown into question under the new administration.

   Russia, Ukraine and their global allies are scrambling to put their side in 
the best possible position for any changes that Trump may bring to American 
policy in the nearly 3-year-old war. The president-elect insisted in recent 
days that Russia and Ukraine immediately reach a ceasefire and said Ukraine 
should likely prepare to receive less U.S. military aid.

   On the war's front lines, Ukraine's forces are mindful of Trump's 
fast-approaching presidency and the risk of losing their biggest backer.

   If that happens, "those people who are with me, my unit, we are not going to 
retreat," a Ukrainian strike-drone company commander, fighting in Russia's 
Kursk region with the 47th Brigade, told The Associated Press by phone.

   "As long as we have ammunition, as long as we have weapons, as long as we 
have some means to defeat the enemy, we will fight," said the commander, who 
goes by his military call sign, Hummer. He spoke on condition he not be 
identified by name, citing Ukrainian military rules and security concerns.

   "But, when all means run out, you must understand, we will be destroyed very 
quickly," he said.

   The Biden administration is pushing every available dollar out the door to 
shore up Ukraine's defenses before leaving office in six weeks, announcing more 
than $2 billion in additional support since Trump won the presidential election 
last month.

   The U.S. has sent a total of $62 billion in military aid since Russia 
invaded Ukraine in February 2022. And more help is on the way.

   The administration is on track to disperse the U.S. portion of a $50 billion 
loan to Ukraine, backed by frozen Russian assets, before Biden leaves the White 
House, U.S. officials said. They said the U.S. and Ukraine are in "advanced 
stages" of discussing terms of the loan and close to executing the $20 billion 
of the larger loan that the U.S. is backing.

   Biden also has eased limits on Ukraine using American longer-range missiles 
against military targets deeper inside Russia, following months of refusing 
those appeals over fears of provoking Russia into nuclear war or attacks on the 
West. He's also newly allowed Ukraine to employ antipersonnel mines, which are 
banned by many countries.

   Biden and his senior advisers, however, are skeptical that allowing freer 
use of the longer-range missiles will change the broader trajectory of the war, 
according to two senior administration officials who spoke on condition of 
anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

   But the administration has at least a measure of confidence that its 
scramble, combined with continued strong European support, means it will leave 
office having given Ukraine the tools it needs to sustain its fight against 
Russia for some time, the officials said.

   Enough to hold on, but not enough to defeat Russian President Vladimir 
Putin's forces, according to Ukraine and some of its allies.

   Even now, "the Biden administration has been very careful not to run up 
against the possibility of a defeated Putin or a defeated Russia" for fear of 
the tumult that could bring, said retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, a former 
supreme allied commander of NATO. He is critical of Biden's cautious pace of 
military support for Ukraine.

   Events far from the front lines this past weekend demonstrated the war's 
impact on Russia's military.

   In Syria, rebels seized the country's capital and toppled Russia-allied 
President Bashar Assad. Russian forces in Syria had propped up Assad for years, 
but they moved out of the way of the rebels' assault, unwilling to take losses 
to defend their ally.

   Biden said it was further evidence that U.S. support for Ukrainian President 
Volodymyr Zelenskyy was wearing down Russia's military.

   Trump, who has long spoken favorably of Putin and described Zelenskyy as a 
"showman" wheedling money from the U.S., used that moment to call for an 
immediate ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.

   And asked in a TV interview -- taped before he met with Zelenskyy over the 
weekend in Paris -- if Ukraine should prepare for the possibility of reduced 
aid, Trump said, "Yeah. Probably. Sure."

   Trump's supporters call that pre-negotiation maneuvering by an avowed 
deal-maker. His critics say they fear it shows he is in Putin's sway.

   Zelenskyy said Monday that Russian forces' retrenchment from outposts 
worldwide demonstrates that "the entire army of this great pseudo-empire is 
fighting against the Ukrainian people today."

   "Forcing Putin to end the war requires Ukraine to be strong on the 
battlefield before it can be strong diplomatically," Zelenskyy wrote on social 
media, repeating near-daily appeals for more longer-range missiles from the 
U.S. and Europe.

   In Kursk, Hummer, the Ukrainian commander, said he notices Russian artillery 
strikes and shelling easing up since the U.S. and its European allies loosened 
limits on use of longer-range missiles.

   But Moscow has been escalating its offensives in other ways in the past six 
months, burning through men and materiel in infantry assaults and other attacks 
far faster than it can replace them, according to the Institute for the Study 
of War.

   In Kursk, that includes Russia sending waves of soldiers on motorcycles and 
golf carts to storm Ukrainian positions, Hummer said. The Ukrainian drone 
commander and his comrades defend the ground they have seized from Russia with 
firearms, tanks and armored vehicles provided by the U.S. and other allies.

   Ukraine's supporters fear that the kind of immediate ceasefire Trump is 
urging would be mostly on Putin's terms and allow the Russian leader to resume 
the war when his military has recovered.

   "Putin is sacrificing his own soldiers at a grotesque rate to take whatever 
territory he can on the assumption that the U.S. will tell Ukraine that U.S. 
aid is over unless Russia gets to keep what it has taken," Phillips O'Brien, a 
professor of strategic studies at Scotland's University of St. Andrews, wrote 
on his Substack channel.

   Putin's need for troops led him to bring in North Korean forces. Biden's 
decision to allow Ukraine to use longer-range missiles more broadly in Russia 
was partly in response, intended to discourage North Korea from deeper 
involvement in the war, one of the senior administration officials said.

   Since 2022, Russia already had been pulling forces and other military assets 
from Syria, Central Asia and elsewhere to throw into the Ukraine fight, said 
George Burros, an expert on the Russia-Ukraine conflict at the Institute for 
the Study of War.

   Any combat power that Russia has left in Syria that it could deploy to 
Ukraine is unlikely to change battlefield momentum, Burros said.

   "The Kremlin has prioritized Ukraine as much as it can," he said.