People from Ukraine arrive at Beregsurany, eastern Hungary
WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (NNN-Xinhua) — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the United States is offering 350 million US dollars worth of “lethal defensive” weapons to Ukraine to help defend itself against the ongoing Russian military operations.
Blinken said in a statement that U.S. President Joe Biden authorized him to decide on such a move. As such, he has authorized the Department of Defense to carry out the presidential drawdown, which will help Ukraine cope with “the armored, airborne, and other threats it is now facing.”
The secretary said the latest sum was on top of the 60-million-dollar and 200-million-dollar immediate military aid to Ukraine that Biden delegated to him last year, bringing total U.S. security support to the Eastern European nation over the past year to more than 1 billion dollars.
Meanwhile in BEREGSURANY, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban checked a border station with Ukraine in east Hungary on Saturday and consulted with local authorities and border guards in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“The war is next door, so we have to be very disciplined,” Orban said to journalists a few hundred meters away from Ukraine on the side of the road.
Currently, the flux of people leaving Ukraine was nothing like the migration wave of 2015, but Orban warned this could change in the future: “For the moment, the war is further back in Ukraine, but if the worst case scenario is to happen, it could spread to our immediate vicinity, and we will have to be even more disciplined.”
Orban informed that he consulted with local mayors and officials, and promised the central government would provide them with everything they should need.
A white tent was set up on the curb of the road to provide the arriving Ukrainian women and children with water, food and blankets.
About a dozen people were entering Hungary following Russia’s special military operation in eastern Ukraine, many of them have relatives in Hungary, and many just transit through the country. Those on their own were seated in vans of the local authority and driven to a shelter provided by the city council of Beregsurany, a village in Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg county in eastern Hungary.
By Saturday morning, local authorities estimated that 1,600 people have crossed the border from Ukraine.
“When on Hungarian soil, we treat them as anyone else, they are also to be helped,” Orban added.
He also reaffirmed that Hungary’s position was completely in line with the Europe Union (EU)’s position about sanctions against Russia: “There is war: now is not the time to be ‘smart’, it is time to be united.”
“Our border with Ukraine is over 130 kilometers long. In this situation Hungary’s security must also be guaranteed, because for us that is the most important consideration. I made it clear that Hungary will not take part in this war, and it will not allow itself to be drawn into it,” he also said. — NNN-XINHUA
