“The United States is announcing today a significant new drawdown of weapons and equipment for Ukraine,” Blinken said in a statement.

“This $275 million package, which is part of our efforts to help Ukraine repel Russia’s assault near Kharkov, contains urgently needed capabilities including: ammunition for HIMARS; 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds.”

The new package also includes tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided missiles; Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems; precision aerial munitions; small arms and additional rounds of ammunition and grenades; demolitions munitions; anti-armor mines; tactical vehicles; body armor; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear protective equipment; and other equipment.

Blinken confirmed that US assistance from previous packages has already been delivered to the front lines in Ukraine.

The weapons package comes as Kiev is being pressured on multiple fronts, with Russian troops advancing in both Ukraine’s Kharkov Region and Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic. In early May, Moscow’s forces launched a push into northeastern Ukraine towards the city of Kharkov, capturing more than a dozen settlements along the way.

The goal of the operation is to create a buffer zone between Kiev-controlled territory and Russia’s Belgorod Region, in an effort to curb Ukrainian attacks on the local civilian population, President Vladimir Putin has said.

Over the past week, Moscow liberated Andreevka and Klescheevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, closing in on the Ukrainian-held city of Chasov Yar, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

The latest aid package comes amid a push among Kiev’s war sponsors to lift restrictions on using Western-supplied armaments to strike “internationally recognized” Russian territories.

However, according to Moscow, this rhetoric is designed to maintain the illusion that the West is not part of the conflict, while in fact Kiev is using Western arms against “civilian infrastructure and residential districts” well outside the conflict zone on a daily basis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed.

“Of course, we are aware that the legitimacy of the current head of state [of Ukraine] has ended,” Putin said at a press conference in Minsk on Friday after talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Putin recommended anyone looking for answers regarding Zelensky’s legal status to look to the Ukrainian Constitution – which does not authorize the artificial extension of his presidential term under the pretext of martial law.
Lukashenko echoed Putin’s assessment, stating that “there is no legal integrity, and cannot be any legal integrity” on this question.

“All the same, I believe that neither the current president nor the future one can resolve the big issues facing the state of Ukraine and the people of Ukraine. These issues will not be resolved by presidents. You know who will decide them. A lot has already been decided overseas, and what hasn’t, will be decided later,” Lukashenko added.

The Belarusian president added that there were plenty of people in Ukraine, both in the military and among civilians, who would like to lead the country, and “in a new way, [either] toward war or against war”.

A defiant Zelensky has rejected questions on his legitimacy from his critics in Ukraine, and from Kiev’s Western ‘partners’.

“My five-year term is not over yet. It is continuing due to martial law,” Zelensky told Reuters on Tuesday.

Ukrainian parliament speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk warned Wednesday that Kiev would consider anyone who doubts Zelensky’s legitimacy “enemies of Ukraine” and “political bottom-feeders”.

Putin emphasized at Friday’s press conference that Russia remains ready to resume peace negotiations with Ukraine, including based on the draft agreements inked during talks in Belarus and Turkey in the spring of 2022, but accounting for the current realities on the ground.

If and when such negotiations resume, “we must be completely confident that we are dealing with legitimate authorities. This question must be answered in Ukraine itself. First of all, I believe, from the position of the parliament, the Constitutional Court, some other government bodies”, Putin said.

As for the upcoming ‘peace talks’ in Switzerland scheduled for mid-June, which Russia has no plans to attend, Putin suggested that they constitute an effort by the Kiev regime’s sponsors to confer legitimacy on Zelensky now that his legal term as president is expired.

The Joe Biden administration has yet to comment on the issue of Zelensky’s status publicly. However, the European Commission and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock assured on Tuesday that he is legitimate.

“It’s impossible to organize elections in such a situation,” European Commission spokesman Peter Stano told reporters, adding, “We (in the EU) also have no doubts that the president of Ukraine is Volodymyr Zelensky.”

Russia’s involvement in the proxy war with NATO in Ukraine did not interfere with its ability to hold elections, with a presidential vote held this past March, and involving everyone eligible to vote, including soldiers at the front. Regional elections took place in September 2023.

Zelensky stepped into office as Ukraine’s president in May 2019 on a platform which included normalizing relations with Russia and ending the conflict in the Donbass. The former showbiz star and comedian scrapped those plans in December 2019 in the face of street protests threatening to overthrow his administration over his readiness to agree to implement the Minsk Accords. He made no additional steps toward a peaceful resolution to the crisis after that, and instead attempted to move Ukraine in the direction of joining NATO – one of the key planks of the February 2014 Euromaidan coup d’etat which triggered the current crisis.