KYIV

The United States intends to provide $60 million in financial assistance to Ukraine for defence spending and services of the ex-Soviet country’s Defence Ministry as well as military education and training.

The decision was made by U.S. President Joe Biden and reported in a statement on the White House website.

The White House has also confirmed the meeting between the Presidents of the United States and Ukraine Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky that is expected to take place on Tuesday in Washington.

Leaders are expected to discuss the main aspects of the strategic partnership between the two countries and to sign three bilateral agreements on defence partnership, projects in the field of research, development, testing, evaluation, and cooperation in space.

Prior to Zelensky’s visit to the United States, Biden’s office released a roadmap with the expected results of the meeting.

The roadmap contains specific proposals for Ukraine’s cooperation with the United States for the next two years. It concerns the spheres of security, defence, politics, diplomacy, energy and economy. The document also concerns the issue of entry and exit of Ukrainians and Americans to partner countries. In addition, it raises the issue of the rule of law and domestic reforms with which the United States is helping Ukraine.

It’s not clear whether Biden and Zelensky would discuss the controversial “Nord Stream 2” pipeline to bring Russian natural gas to Germany that has been opposed by Kyiv.

Until now, Russia was dependent on pipelines crossing Ukraine to pump natural gas to Europe. Ukraine had derived $2 billion annually in transit fees for the use of the Soviet-era lines.

As a commercial project, the pipeline, which crosses under the Baltic Sea, involves Germany and Russia, not the United States.

But Zelensky had pleaded with U.S. President to somehow stop the project, which is already 95 percent complete.

Biden repeatedly said that while he saw the pipeline as a geopolitical project to ensure dependence and thus political leverage over European countries, he had no power or role to stop it.

“While we remain opposed to the pipeline, we reached the judgment that sanctions would not stop its construction and risked undermining a critical alliance with Germany, as well as with the EU and other European allies,” a senior State Department official said in July.

Biden made clear that he was dropping sanctions against it – an admission that although he opposed the $11 billion project, there was nothing he could do about it.