SIMI VALLEY, Calif, Dec 8, (AP): The United States will provide nearly $1 billion more in longer-term weapons support to Ukraine, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Saturday as the Biden administration rushes to spend all the congressionally approved money it has left to bolster Kyiv before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month. The latest package will include more drones and munitions for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, that the US has provided.

While these weapons are critically needed now, they will be funded through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which pays for longer-term systems to be put on contract. The weapon systems purchased are often intended to support Ukraine's future military capabilities, not make an immediate difference on the battlefield.

The $988 million package is on top of an additional $725 million in US military assistance, including counter-drone systems and HIMARS munitions, announced Monday that would be drawn from the Pentagon’s stockpiles to more quickly get to the front lines. The US has provided Ukraine with more than $62 billion in military aid since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. "The baton will soon be passed,” Austin said. "Others will decide the course ahead. And I hope that they will build on the strength that we have forged over the past four years.”

Ukraine is facing an intensified onslaught by Russia, which is now using thousands of North Korean troops to augment its fight to take back the Kursk region. Moscow also has launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile and regularly strikes Kyiv's civilian infrastructure. With questions about whether Trump will maintain military support to Ukraine, the Biden administration has been trying to spend every dollar remaining from a massive foreign aid bill passed earlier this year to put Ukraine in the strongest position possible.

"This administration has made its choice. So has a bipartisan coalition in Congress. The next administration must make its own choice,” Austin said in a speech at an annual gathering of national security officials, defense firms and lawmakers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Trump had a hastily arranged meeting Saturday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and France's Emmanuel Macron while in Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral. Macron and other European leaders are trying to persuade Trump to maintain support for Ukraine.