US to approve Ukraine aid including arms after Zelenskiy visit

US lawmakers were expected to approve a $45 billion aid package for Ukraine on Friday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy returned from Washington with the promise of Patriot missiles to help fend off Russia's invasion.

The military and economic assistance, part of a wider government spending bill, follows US aid worth around $50 billion sent to Ukraine this year as well as sweeping sanctions imposed on Russia by the West that include a cap on Russian oil prices.

In response to the cap, Russia may cut oil output by 5%-7% early next year by halting sales to the countries that support it, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday.

Russia said Ukraine acquiring the US Patriot system, announced during Zelenskiy's visit, would not help settle the conflict.

On Friday the Kremlin said "significant progress" had been achieved towards its stated goal of "demilitarising" Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies say Moscow is fighting an illegal war of conquest.

Zelenskiy has long sought Patriot missiles to help counter relentless Russian air strikes, which have razed cities towns and villages during 10 months of brutal conflict and knocked out power and water across the country over the past three months.

US officials however say that the single Patriot battery that President Joe Biden earlier said would be supplied to Ukraine would not change the course of the war.

On Thursday, the US Senate approved the $44.9 billion in new aid for Ukraine as part of a bill funding the US government through Sept. 30 that the Democratic-led House of Representatives was set to vote through on Friday.

It is unclear whether US Congressional support to Ukraine will endure after Republicans take a narrow majority in the House of Representatives early next year.

President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would find a way to counter the Patriots while also seeking to end the fighting. "Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war," he said.

In response, White House spokesman John Kirby said Russia's actions showed Putin was clearly set on escalating its invasion.

Russia has repeatedly said it is open to negotiations, but Kyiv and its allies suspect a ploy to buy time after a series of battlefield defeats and retreats that have swung the momentum of the war in Ukraine's favour.

"We are coming back from Washington with ...something that will really help," Zelenskiy said on his Telegram channel, adding later: "I am in my office. We are working toward victory."

WAGNER GROUP

The White House said on Thursday that a private Russian military company, the Wagner Group, took delivery last month of infantry rockets and missiles from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine.

Britain said it reached the same conclusion and condemned the move.

Wagner's head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, dismissed the talk as "gossip and speculation", while North Korea's foreign ministry issued a denial, blaming Washington for "bringing bloodshed and destruction to Ukraine", the official KCNA news agency reported.

The Russian mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to a request for comment.

HEAVY SHELLING

Russian forces shelled Ukraine's southern Kherson region 61 times over the past 24 hours, half of those within Kherson city, killing one person, governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said on Friday. Russia withdrew from the city last month in a major setback to its invasion.

In the neighbouring Zaporizhzhia region, a governor installed by Russia, Yevgeny Balitsky, said shelling of the nuclear power plant there had "almost stopped" but Russian troops would not leave.

Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of risking nuclear disaster in fighting near the plant, Europe's largest, and the United Nations has called for a safe zone to be established around it.

Ukraine's General Staff said on Facebook on Thursday that fighting in the eastern Donetsk region, one of four Russia claims to have absorbed despite not fully controlling them, remained focused on the area around Bakhmut and nearby Avdiivka, where the Kremlin's forces shelled around a dozen towns.

Reuters was not able to confirm the battlefield reports.

Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov said on Thursday the frontline in Ukraine was stable, and that Moscow's forces had concentrated on "completing the liberation of the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic".