US President Joe Biden will send “as much aid as possible” to Ukraine in its final few months in power, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday during a trip to Brussels.

“President Biden has committed to making sure that every dollar we have at our disposal will be pushed out the door between now and 20 January,” when Donald Trump is due to be sworn in to power, Blinken said.

The US will “adapt and adjust” what latest equipment it is sending, without providing details on what military equipment the US plans to provide the country, which is nearing its third year of war against neighbouring Russia.

He added that NATO countries should focus their efforts on ensuring Ukraine “has the money, munitions and mobilised forces” to either fight effectively in 2025, or negotiate peace from a position of strength.

There is a shadow of political uncertainty surrounding how the US will approach its policy on the war following the inaugaration of Trump.

The US is currently the largest provider of military aid to Ukraine, upon which it is heavily reliant. Trump has not given concrete details on what his administrations approach to the war would be, but has said multiple times that he would consider halting funds to the war war-torn country.

The war in Ukraine has shown no signs of slowing down, with Russia launching a huge attack on the country’s capital, Kyiv, on Wednesday with a combination of missile and drones.

Eight regions across Ukraine were attacked in total on Wednesday, with Russia firing six ballistic and cruise missiles and 90 drones, according to the Ukrainian air force.

North Korean troops have also been confirmed to be present in the war, with the US State Department saying that most of them are fighting to drive Ukraine’s army off Russian soil in the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a surprise incursion earlier this year.

Russia’s military has trained the North Korean soldiers in artillery, drone skills and basic infantry operations, including trench clearing, said State Department spokesman Vedant Patel on Tuesday.

Kyiv officials say that Russia has deployed around 50,000 troops in a bid to dislodge Ukrainian soldiers from the Kursk region.

Russia has in recent months been assembling forces for a counteroffensive in Kursk, according to the Institute for the Study of War think tank, though the timescale of the operation isn’t known.

Ukraine could develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump pulls US military aid, a briefing paper prepared for the country’s Ministry of Defence has revealed.

The weapon would be built from plutonium and use similar technology to the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the report stated.

Despite giving up its nuclear arsenal in 1996, Kyivis still in control of nine operational reactors and has significant expertise on how to build the weapons.

It comes after Trump reportedly backed the shock ultimatum President Volodymyr Zelensky gave NATO last month when he seemed to demand either Ukraine is granted membership of the bloc or they would become a nuclear power.

Zelensky later clarified he had meant there was no alternative security guarantee and Kyiv has since denied they are considering building a nuclear bomb.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meets Donald Trump in September in New York

President Donald Trump meets with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg in July 2017

According to The Times, the briefing paper prepared for the Ministry of Defence reads: ‘Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later.’

‘The weight of reactor plutonium available to Ukraine can be estimated at seven tons … A significant nuclear weapons arsenal would require much less material,’ it continued.

The bomb would be big enough to destroy an entire Russian airbase or concentrated military or industrial targets, the document’s authors concluded.

It comes as president-elect Trump has famously pledged to end the Russia-Ukraine war within a day of becoming president and has boasted of his ‘very good relationship’ with President Putin.

He has also said the invasion would never have happened if he had been in the White House and has criticised Biden’s level of support for Ukraine, despite President Zelensky being adamantly against relinquishing territory to Russia.

It comes after Zelensky last month reportedly told NATO to let his country join the group or it will get nuclear weapons in a shock ultimatum that was allegedly backed by Trump.

The leader, 46, declared his bombshell proposal at the EU summit in Brussels – stating either NATO quickly accepts Ukraine into its alliance, or it will once again become a nuclear power, German newspaper Bild reported.

Zelensky made a bombshell announcement at an EU summit in Brussels, claiming he wanted NATO to let his country join the military alliance, or Ukraine would become a nuclear power

The bomb would be big enough to destroy an entire Russian airbase or concentrated military or industrial targets, the document’s authors concluded (stock photo)

Ukraine ‘starts preparing to build a NUCLEAR bomb

Zelensky had reportedly planned to present what is being dubbed his ‘victory plan’ to the heads of state and government of the European Union, but instead made the dramatic announcement to stunned reporters.

Speaking to the former American President Donald Trump, 78, some weeks ago, the Ukrainian leader declared: ‘Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and then they will be our defence.

‘Or we will have to enter into some kind of alliance. Apart from NATO, we do not know of any effective alliances today.’

He said Trump had agreed with his proposal before he made the statement at the summit, insisting that a membership to NATO would provide his country with the ultimate security guarantee to protect it from Russia.

Last week it emerged that Trump could propose a 800-mile demilitarised zone between Russia and Ukraine as part of a plan to end the war early.

The plans, which were outlined by three Trump staffers, would involve the zone being policed by British and European troops.

It would mean that Russia would keep its territorial gains made in Ukraine with the current border frozen in place. Kyiv would also have to assure that it would not join NATO for 20 years.

Ukrainian servicemen of the 26th artillery brigade fire an AHS Krab self-propelled howitzer toward Russian positions near the front line in the Chasiv Yar area

Ukraine ‘starts preparing to build a NUCLEAR bomb

Under the plans the US would arm Ukraine in return for preventing Russia from restarting the war. However, responsibility for manning and financing the buffer zone would fall solely on Ukraine’s European allies.

‘We can do training and other support but the barrel of the gun is going to be European,’ a member of Trump’s team told the Wall Street Journal.

‘We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine. And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it.’

Many analysts have warned that Trump is indeed likely to reduce US military aid to Ukraine and force Kyiv’s European partners to shoulder a huge burden to maintain an adequate supply of arms – a move that would certainly pile pressure on Zelensky to consider a negotiated settlement.

‘Trump does have a legitimate point about European allies having underperformed in defence and over-relied on Uncle Sam to protect them for too long, and this is a huge wake-up call to the West,’ Dr Russell Foster, Senior Lecturer in British and International Politics at King’s College London, told MailOnline.

‘But Europe, Canada, and Australasia have let their defence spending stagnate for so long, they have nowhere near the industrial base and military infrastructure to help defend Ukraine and themselves from further aggression without American help.

‘We are likely to see major calls for defence spending and investment across NATO – but this will take years to build up and be hugely expensive at a time of economic stagnation. The future of Western defence is now looking very bleak.’

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The Biden administration said on Tuesday that Israel made good but limited progress in increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and that it therefore would not limit arms transfers to Israel as it threatened to do a month ago.

However, relief groups say conditions are worse than at any point in the 13-month-old war.

State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said on Tuesday the progress to date must be supplemented and sustained but that “we at this time have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of US law.”

This law requires recipients of military assistance to adhere to international humanitarian law and not impede the provision of such aid.

“We are not giving Israel a pass,” Patel said, adding that “we want to see the totality of the humanitarian situation improve, and we think some of these steps will allow the conditions for that to continue progress.”

The decision from the U.S. — Israel’s key ally and largest provider of arms and other military aid — comes despite international aid organizations declaring that Israel has failed to meet U.S. demands to allow greater humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip. Hunger experts have warned that the north may already be experiencing famine.

The Biden administration last month set a deadline expiring Tuesday for Israel to “surge” more food and other emergency aid into the Palestinian territory or risk the possibility of scaled-back military support as Israel wages offensives against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

 The obstacles facing aid distribution were on this display this week. Even after the Israeli military gave permission for a delivery to the northernmost part of Gaza — virtually cut off from food for more than a month by an Israeli siege — the United Nations said it couldn’t deliver most of it because of turmoil and restrictions from Israeli troops on the ground.

In the south, hundreds of truckloads of aid are sitting on the Gaza side of the border because the U.N. says it cannot reach them to distribute the aid — again because of the threat of lawlessness, theft and Israeli military restrictions.

Israel has announced a series of steps — though their effect was unclear. On Tuesday, it opened a new crossing in central Gaza, outside the city of Deir al-Balah, for aid to enter.

It also announced a small expansion of its coastal “humanitarian zone,” where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in tent camps. It connected electricity for a desalination plant in Deir al-Balah.

Eight international aid organizations, meanwhile, said in a report Tuesday that “Israel not only failed to meet the U.S. criteria” but also took actions “that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in Northern Gaza. … That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago.”