In the midst of severe tensions with Russia, the United States has sent new military aid to Ukraine.
A US cargo plane landed at an airport in the capital Kiev during the night, the US embassy there announced on Twitter on Saturday.
On board was 90 tons "of lethal aid, including ammunition for the front line defenders of Ukraine." This support had been ordered by US President Joe Biden.
The embassy published pictures showing the plane being unloaded. It was the first of several deliveries, it said.
"The shipment - and 2.7 billion [dollars] since 2014 - demonstrates US commitment to helping Ukraine bolster its defenses in the face of growing Russian aggression," the embassy tweeted.
Russia had repeatedly called on Ukraine not to arm itself further because this would fuel military tensions and could encourage the country to attack, for example, the Donbass region in the east of the former Soviet republic in order to take back the pro-Russian breakaway provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk there.
Blinken-Lavrov meeting
Only on Friday, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his US counterpart Antony Blinken met for crisis talks in Geneva.
Most recently, the Kremlin had sharply criticized the delivery of light anti-tank weapons from Britain to Ukraine.
The Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania now also want to send US-made anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine.
The background to this is the severe tensions in the Ukraine conflict and the West's fears that Russia could invade the neighbouring country. Moscow has already rejected this several times.
