KIEV, Ukraine: US Vice President Joe Biden assured Ukraine Monday of continuing US support and announced the release of an additional $190 million in US aid to help support reforms.

Biden, speaking Monday on a trip to the Ukrainian capital, also emphasized the need for Russia to fully meet its obligations under February’s Minsk agreement that was intended to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

“The United States stands firmly with the people of Ukraine in the face of continued — I emphasize, continued — aggression from Russia and Russian-backed separatists,” Biden said after his talks with Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko. Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of backing the rebels in eastern Ukraine with troops and weapons, accusations Moscow has denied.

Fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists has abated significantly since early September, after killing some 8,000 people since April 2014, but tensions remain high because of unresolved questions about the final political status of the rebel regions in the east.

“Moscow has to fully implement the Minsk agreement and work constructively with Ukraine to create the conditions for free, fair and safe local elections to occur in Donbass,” Biden said, referring to the collective name for the two rebel regions. Biden also underlined that the US will never accept Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. “Moscow eventually has to end its occupation of Ukraine’s sovereign territory,” he said.

Biden stressed the need for Ukraine to ramp up the fight against corruption and undertake critical reforms.

“It’s absolutely critical for Ukraine in order to be stable and prosperous and part of a secure Europe to definitely, thoroughly, completely root out the cancer of corruption,” he said.