Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in Kiev on Monday for an unannounced visit to reaffirm US support for Ukraine and provide another tranche of economic aid.Yellen met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other key officials and reaffirmed US assurances made by President Joe Biden a week ago in Kiev.”America will support Ukraine for as long as it takes,” Yellen told Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal.Shmygal said that during the conversation, new US sanctions against Russia were discussed, aimed at weakening its economy and its military, as well as “the confiscation of frozen Russian assets and asking them to solve the problems of restoring Ukraine”.However, Yellen told reporters on a conference call that there are still legal hurdles to a full confiscation of the $300 billion in Russian central bank assets frozen by sanctions.Yellen also announced the transfer of the first $1.25 billion of the final $9.9 billion in economic and fiscal aid from Washington.The Treasury said it welcomed Zelenskyyy’s efforts to strengthen governance and fight corruption to ensure that US economic aid is spent responsibly.The visit was not reported until he left Kiev.Yellen visited the Ukrainian capital on her way back to Washington after meeting with G20 finance ministers in Bangalore, India, where she urged her foreign counterparts to increase economic aid to Ukraine and insisted that the G20 ministers strongly condemn the Russian invasion of that country. .Recall that since the beginning of the war, the United States has allocated more than 13 billion dollars in economic and budgetary support to Ukraine, and the final payments will amount to more than 14 billion dollars, and 8.65 billions more are expected by September 30.The latest tranche is part of a new $45 billion military, economic, and humanitarian appropriation approved by Congress in December as part of general budget legislation.
