that democrats want to offset that defense aid for ukraine from the u.s. defense budget and they want to just add as a supplemental additional spending, the humanitarian aid. well, democrats say that is not the case. that i have promised it would be both the defense spending and the humanitarian spending would not be offset. it would be additional spending. so i am not sure what the whole story is at this point. two different sides are saying different things. but there is an issue that is a major hangup on being able to pass this crucial spending for ukraine that virtually everyone agrees is necessary. meanwhile, you are getting some passionate pleas up here from capitol hill on, that things need to be done immediately and so we ll see how this works out, once again, there is republican versus democratic challenges on coming to ukraine s aid at this point. halle. thank you for that.
thank you so much for that. we have some more breaking news to share. today, the president authorized more than $200 million in military aid for ukraine. let s go to nbc s lauren egan in washington for us. so, lauren, welcome. what kind of help are we talking about? yeah, those $200 million can go towards things such as military training programs, weapons, or other assistance that ukraine needs. this now brings the total amount of defense aid that the u.s. has given to ukraine in the past year to $1.2 billion, and it also comes just a day after congress on friday approved an additional $13.6 billion in emergency aid to ukraine. in the past few minutes, we ve also heard from vice president harris. she was speaking earlier today to the winter conference, a meeting of the democratic party, and in those remarks, she addressed the crisis in ukraine. listen to what she had to say. russia s invasion threatens
yesterday. you were in the room as i was yesterday, you know, the president, the staff, this $800 million in additional defense aid, talking about javelins, stingers, drones going to ukraine, it is more than they ve sent before, especially with the drones, but it was passed bipartisan. congress passed it a week ago and it was very deliberate obviously by the white house to come out and have the president sign that into law and begin to ship the weapons right after zelenskyy spoke because they re clearly aware of the potential that he could create even more political pressure on them to do things. they ve not been totally impervious to political pressure in terms of putting the oil ban on russia after congress was obviously working on it. so this is a president that tried to walk in lock step with the allies. domestically there s a swell of support for ukraine in the united states, the white house is aware of it, and wanting to make it clear to everybody that
election night and hungry, ukrainian president vladimir zelenskyy issued a blistering rebuke of orban s failure to help his ukrainian neighbor. or even to admit what has happened to him. here is a portion of what s wilenski said that grab me. quote, i want to turn to another person who does not seem to fully understand what is happening. not only in ukraine, but throughout europe. to the prime ministry of hungary. he is virtually the only one in europe to openly support mr. putin. we did not ask for anything special from official budapest. we didn t even get whatever one else is doing! doing for the sake of peace. we did not receive the vital transit of defense aid, we did not see more leadership. we saw no effort to stop the war! why so? the whole of europe wants peace. the whole of europe does not want the benefit to be moved from mariupol to budapest, or from kharkiv to krakow, or from chernihiv to vilnius. the whole of europe is trying to stop the war, to restore
US President Joe Biden authorized Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday to provide an additional $200 million in defense aid to Ukraine amid Russia's war against that country, according to Anadolu Agency. Biden instructed Blinken to provide the funds under the "Foreign Assistance Act," the