KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine expects there will be around US$3.5 billion by next month in a fund to buy weapons from the United States and help sustain its more than three-year fight against Russia’s all-out invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday. The financial arrangement known as the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, pools contributions from NATO members, except the United States, to purchase American weapons, munitions and equipment. “We received more than $2 billion from our partners specifically for the PURL program,” Zelenskyy said at a joint news conference in Kyiv with visiting European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. ”We will receive additional money in October. I think we will have somewhere around $3.5-3.6 billion.” Zelenskyy declined to provide details of what weapons the first shipments would include, but said that they would definitely contain missiles for Patriot air defense missile systems and munitions for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS. An end to the war appears no closer, despite months of U.S.-led peace efforts. The Patriot systems are vital to defend against Russian missile attacks. The HIMARS systems have significantly bolstered the Ukrainian military’s precision-strike capability. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reaffirmed Russia’s readiness for peace talks, telling reporters on Wednesday that “we remain open for negotiations and prefer to settle the Ukrainian crisis by political and diplomatic means.” However, Moscow has raised objections about key proposals and negotiations haven’t moved forward. The latest Russian overnight aerial attacks caused disruption to Ukrainian rail and power services, officials said Wednesday. In addition, a Russian glide bomb struck a town in the southern Kherson region of Ukraine, wounding three women and a 3-year-old girl, regional head Oleksandr Prokudin said. Meanwhile, a U.S.-Ukraine fund devised to spur investments in the Ukrainian mineral sector is set to launch with $150 million of seed capital, senior Ukrainian officials said Wednesday. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation agency will commit $75 million to the fund, with Ukraine matching that contribution, Ukrainian Economy Minister Oleksii Sobolev said. “This is enough to launch the first significant investments,” Sobolev said, describing the fund as a “beacon” that could draw additional support from other international institutions. The U.S.-Ukraine deal on developing the Ukrainian mineral sector was signed in April. It gives the U.S. preferential access to new Ukrainian mining projects and is meant to spur reconstruction and enable continued military aid to Ukraine from the U.S. Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said that the fund would initially focus on energy, infrastructure and critical mineral projects, with a goal of financing three projects by the end of 2026. ___ Samya Kullab, The Associated Press Hanna Arhirova and Illia Novikov contributed to this report.
