Kyiv
Kyiv prepares for worst winter with no heat, water or power
The mayor of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, is warning residents that they must prepare for the worst this winter if Russia keeps striking the country's energy infrastructure — and that means having no electricity, water or heat in the freezing cold cannot be ruled out.
“We are doing everything to avoid this. But let’s be frank, our enemies are doing everything for the city to be without heat, without electricity, without water supply, in general, so we all die. And the future of the country and the future of each of us depends on how prepared we are for different situations," Mayor Vitali Klitschko told state media.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation Sunday that about 4.5 million people were without electricity. He called on Ukrainians to endure the hardships and “we must get through this winter and be even stronger in the spring than now.”
Read more: Russia rejoins key deal on wartime Ukrainian grain exports
Russia has focused on striking Ukraine's energy infrastructure over the last month, causing power shortages and rolling outages across the country. Kyiv was having hourly rotating blackouts Sunday in parts of the city and the surrounding region.
Rolling blackouts also were planned in the Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava regions, Ukraine’s state-owned energy operator, Ukrenergo, said.
Kyiv plans to deploy about 1,000 heating points, but it's unclear if that would be enough for a city of 3 million people.
As Russia intensifies its attacks on the capital, Ukrainian forces are pushing forward in the south. Residents of Ukraine's Russian-occupied city of Kherson received warning messages on their phones urging them to evacuate as soon as possible, Ukraine's military said Sunday. Russian soldiers warned civilians that Ukraine's army was preparing for a massive attack and told people to leave for the city's right bank immediately.
Russian forces are preparing for a Ukrainian counteroffensive to seize back the southern city of Kherson, which was captured during the early days of the invasion. In September, Russia illegally annexed Kherson as well as three other regions and subsequently declared martial law in the four provinces.
The Kremlin-installed administration in Kherson already has moved tens of thousands of civilians out of the city.
Russia has been “occupying and evacuating” Kherson simultaneously, trying to convince Ukrainians that they're leaving when in fact they're digging in, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's Southern Forces, told state television.
“There are defense units that have dug in there quite powerfully, a certain amount of equipment has been left, firing positions have been set up,” she said.
Read more: As winter approaches, Ukraine struggles with power outage
Russian forces are also digging in in a fiercely contested region in the east, worsening the already tough conditions for residents and the defending Ukrainian army following Moscow's illegal annexation and declaration of martial law in Donetsk province.
The attacks have almost completely destroyed the power plants that serve the city of Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the region's Ukrainian governor, said. Shelling killed one civilian and wounded three, he reported late Saturday.
“The destruction is daily, if not hourly,” Kyrylenko told state television.
Moscow-backed separatists have controlled part of Donetsk for nearly eight years before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. Protecting the separatists' self-proclaimed republic there was one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's justifications for the invasion, and his troops have spent months trying to capture the entire province.
Between Saturday and Sunday, Russia's launched four missiles and 19 airstrikes hitting more than 35 villages in nine regions, from Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the northeast to Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south, according to Zelenskyy's office. The strikes killed two people and wounded six.
In the Donetsk city of Bakhmut, 15,000 remaining residents were living under daily shelling and without water or power, according to local media. The city has been under attack for months, but the bombardment picked up after Russian forces experienced setbacks during Ukrainian counteroffensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
The front line is now on Bakhmut's outskirts, where mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian military company, are reported to be leading the charge.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the group who has typically remained under the radar, is taking a more visible role in the war. In a statement Sunday he announced the funding and creation of “militia training centers” in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions in the southwest, saying that locals were best placed to “fight against sabotage” on Russian soil. The training centers are in addition to a military technology center the group said it was opening in St. Petersburg.
In Kharkiv, officials were working to identify bodies found in mass graves after the Russians withdrew, Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesperson for the regional prosecutor's office, told local media.
DNA samples have been collected from 450 bodies discovered in a mass grave in the city of Izium, but the samples need to be matched with relatives and so far only 80 people have participated, he said.
In one sliver of good news, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was reconnected to Ukraine’s power grid, local media reported Sunday. Europe’s largest nuclear plant needs electricity to maintain vital cooling systems, but it had been running on emergency diesel generators since Russian shelling severed its outside connections.
Ukraine marks Independence Day six months after start of war
Residents of Kyiv woke up to air raid sirens as Ukraine observed its Independence Day on Wednesday, which also marked exactly six months since the start of Russia's military invasion.
Authorities in the capital banned large-scale gatherings until Thursday, fearing the national holiday might bring particularly heavy Russian missile attacks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the public to be vigilant.
“Russian provocations and brutal strikes are a possibility,” Zelenskyy said in a statement. “Please strictly follow the safety rules. Please observe the curfew. Pay attention to the air sirens. Pay attention to official announcements. And remember: We must all achieve victory together.”
A small number of residents gathered at Kyiv's central square, where destroyed Russian tanks and mobile artillery were put on display over the weekend, and the national anthem is played every day at 7 a.m. local time.
“I can’t sleep at night because of what I see and hear about what is being done in Ukraine," a retiree who identified herself only by her first name, Tetyana, said, her voice shaking with emotion.
“This is not a war. It is the destruction of the Ukrainian people," she said.
Wednesday’s holiday commemorates Ukraine’s 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.
“Six months ago, Russia declared war on us. On February 24, all of Ukraine heard explosions and gunshots. ... On February 24, we were told: You have no chance. On August 24, we say: Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!” Zelenskyy said in an Independence Day message.
A car bombing outside Moscow that killed the 29-year-old daughter of right-wing Russian political theorist Alexander Dugin on Saturday heightened fears that Russia might intensify attacks on Ukraine this week.
Read:On eve of Ukraine's national day, fears Russia will pounce
Russian officials have blamed Ukraine for the death of Darya Dugina, a nationalist Russian TV commentator. The car bomb exploded after she had attended a patriotic festival with her father, whom was widely believed to have been the intended target.
The Ukrainian government has denied any involvement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24. Moscow's military encountered unexpectedly stiff Ukrainian resistance, and the six months of fighting has upended life in Ukraine and sent shock waves through the world economy.
As the war reached its 182nd day, there was no sign of a quick end to the conflict, which NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday described as “ a grinding war of attrition.” Russia now holds large swaths of the country’s east and south, but its gains accumulated slowly. Neither country has revealed how many troops it has lost during the six-month conflict.
The United States is expected on Wednesday to announce roughly $3 billion in additional aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces to fight for years to come, U.S. officials said.
The officials told The Associated Press the package would fund contracts for as many as three types of drones and other weapons, ammunition and equipment that may not see the battlefront for a year or two.
The new funding is largely aimed at helping Ukraine secure its medium- to long-term defense posture, according to officials familiar with the matter. Earlier shipments focused on Ukraine’s more immediate needs for weapons and ammunition and involved materiel the Pentagon already had in stock that could be shipped quickly.
Several officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the aid package before a public announcement.
On the forefront of the Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine, the conflict ground on. Russian forces struck several towns and villages in Donetsk province over 24 hours, killing one person and injuring another two, according to the regional administration.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region on the southern front, Russian forces again shelled the cities of Nikopol and Marhanets, damaging several buildings and injuring two people, according to Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko. Russian troops also shelled the city of Zaporizhzhia, damaging several buildings and infrastructure but inflicting no casualties.
On eve of Ukraine's national day, fears Russia will pounce
On the eve of Ukraine's independence day and the half-year mark of Russia's invasion of its neighbor, there was increasing unease in the country on Tuesday that Moscow could be centering on specific government and civilian targets during the holiday.
The United States reinforced those concerns when its embassy in Kyiv issued a security alert, saying it “has information that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days.”
Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy already sensed a threat coming when he said in his daily address that “we should be aware that this week Russia may try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel.”
The warnings come on the heels of Russia's claim that Ukrainian intelligence was responsible for the car bombing that killed the daughter of a leading right-wing Russian political thinker over the weekend. Ukraine denied involvement.
Darya Dugina, a 29-year-old commentator with a nationalist Russian TV channel, died when a remotely controlled explosive device planted in her SUV blew up on Saturday night as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow.
The sense of dread pervading the war centers in part on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, at Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, where continued shelling and fighting in the area has raised fears of a nuclear catastrophe.
Read:Six months on, Ukraine fights war, faces painful aftermath
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres late Monday warned about the nuclear threat in general, particularly since Russia alluded to its massive nuclear arsenal early in the war.
Guterres demanded a halt to “nuclear saber-rattling” on Monday, saying the world is at a “maximum moment of danger” and all countries with nuclear weapons must make a commitment to “no first-use."
That didn't prevent shelling close to Zaporizhzhia early Tuesday. Regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said Russian forces fired on nearby Marhanets and Nikopol on the right bank of the Dnieper River, continuing weeks of relentless overnight shelling.
Amid the death and destruction, there was one small point of light. All professional soccer was stopped in February, but a new league season starts Tuesday in Kyiv.
The Olympic Stadium will see the the opening-day meeting of Shakhtar Donetsk and Metalist 1925 from Kharkiv — teams from eastern cities that are fighting for their very existence.
No fans will be allowed in the 65,000-capacity downtown stadium for the kickoff at 1 p.m. local time, and the players must be rushed to bomb shelters if air-raid sirens sound.
"The teams, the players will be proud of this event,” Shakhtar captain Taras Stepanenko said Monday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
Russia attacks Kyiv area for the first time in weeks
Russian forces launched a missile attack on the Kyiv area for the first time in weeks Thursday and pounded the northern Chernihiv region as well, in what Ukraine said was revenge for standing up to the Kremlin.
Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, announced a counteroffensive to take back the occupied Kherson region in the country’s south, territory seized by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces early in the war.
Russia attacked the Kyiv region with six missiles launched from the Black Sea, hitting a military unit in the village of Liutizh on the outskirts of the capital, according to Oleksii Hromov, a senior official with Ukraine’s General Staff.
He said that the attack ruined one building and damaged two others, and that Ukrainian forces also shot down one of the missiles in the town of Bucha.
Fifteen people were wounded in the Russian strikes, five of them civilians, Kyiv regional Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Kuleba linked the assaults to the Day of Statehood, a commemoration that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instituted last year and Ukraine marked for the time on Thursday.
“Russia, with the help of missiles, is mounting revenge for the widespread popular resistance, which the Ukrainians were able to organize precisely because of their statehood,” Kuleba told Ukrainian television. “Ukraine has already broken Russia’s plans and will continue to defend itself.”
Chernihiv regional Gov. Vyacheslav Chaus reported that the Russians also fired missiles from the territory of Belarus at the village of Honcharivska. The Chernihiv region had not been targeted in weeks.
Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions months ago after failing to capture either. The renewed strikes come a day after the leader of pro-Kremlin separatists in the east, Denis Pushilin, urged Russian forces to “liberate Russian cities founded by the Russian people — Kyiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lutsk.”
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, also came under a barrage of shelling overnight, according to the mayor. Authorities said a police officer was killed in Russian shelling of a power plant in the Kharkiv region.
The southern city of Mykolaiv was fired on as well, with one person reported injured.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military kept up a counterattack in the Kherson region, knocking out of commission a key bridge over the Dnieper River on Wednesday.
Read: Ukraine forces strike key bridge in Russian-occupied south
Ukrainian media quoted Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich as saying the operation to liberate Kherson is underway, with Kyiv’s forces planning to isolate Russian troops and leave them with three options — “retreat, if possible, surrender or be destroyed.”
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said the Russians are concentrating maximum forces in the direction of Kherson, warning: “A very large-scale movement of their troops has begun.”
The British military said Ukraine has used its new, Western-supplied long-range artillery to damage at least three of the bridges across the Dnieper that Russia relies on to supply its forces.
Ukraine’s presidential office said Thursday morning that Russian shelling of cities and villages over the past 24 hours killed at least five civilians, all of them in the eastern Donetsk province, and wounded nine.
Fighting in recent weeks has focused on Donetsk province. It has intensified in recent days as Russian forces appeared to emerge from a reported “operational pause” after capturing neighboring Luhansk province.
Ukrainian emergency authorities said two civilians were killed in a Russian bombardment of the town of Toretsk. A missile struck a residential building there early Thursday morning, destroying two floors, officials said.
“Missile terror again. We will not give up. ... We will not be intimidated,” Donetsk regional Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram.
Military analysts believe Russian forces are focusing their efforts on capturing the cities of Bakhmut and Siversk in Donetsk province.
Zelenskyy instituted the Day of Statehood to remind Ukrainians about the country’s history as an independent state. The commemoration honors Prince Vladimir, who made Christianity the official religion of the medieval state of Kyivan Rus more than 1,000 years ago.
“You could say that for us, every day is a statehood day,” the president said in a Day of Statehood address.
“We fight every day so that everyone on the planet can finally understand: We are not a colony or enclave or protectorate, not a province, an eyalet, or a crown land, not a part of foreign empires, not a part of a country, not a federal republic, not an autonomy, not a province, but a free, independent, sovereign, indivisible and independent state,” Zelenskyy said.
The Kremlin also lays claim to the heritage of the Kyivan Rus. In 2016, Putin erected a monument to Prince Vladimir near the Kremlin.
Russia strikes Kyiv as Western leaders meet in Europe
Russia shattered weeks of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital with long-range missiles fired toward Kyiv early Sunday, an apparent Kremlin show-of-force as Western leaders meet in Europe to strengthen their military and economic support of Ukraine.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the missiles hit at least two residential buildings, and President Volodymr Zelenskyy said a 37-year-old man was killed and his 7-year-old daughter and wife injured. Associated Press journalists saw emergency workers battling flames and rescuing civilians.
Read:G-7 to ban Russian gold in response to Ukraine war: Biden
The strikes also damaged a nearby kindergarten, where a crater pocked the courtyard. U.S. President Joe Biden called the attacks “barbarism” after he arrived in Germany for a Group of Seven summit.
Later Sunday, a local official reported a second death, telling the Unian news agency that a railroad worker was killed and several others were injured in the attacks while servicing rail infrastructure.
Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said the first air-launched weapons successfully to target the capital since June 5 were Kh-101 cruise missiles fired from warplanes over the Caspian Sea, more than 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) away.
Kyiv's mayor told journalists he thought the airstrikes were “maybe a symbolic attack” ahead of a NATO summit in Madrid that starts Tuesday. A former commander of U.S. forces in Europe said the strikes also were a signal to the leaders of G-7 nations meeting Sunday in Germany.
“Russia is saying, ‘We can do this all day long. You guys are powerless to stop us,’” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, said. “The Russians are humiliating the leaders of the West.”
The G-7 leaders were set to announce the latest in a long series of international economic steps to pressure and isolate Russia over its war in Ukraine: new bans on imports of Russian gold. Standing with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the three-day meeting's host, Biden said of the missile strikes on Kyiv: “It’s more of their barbarism.”
Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, appealed to the G-7 leaders for more help, saying stopping Russian aggression “is possible only if we get everything we ask for, and in the time we need it - weapons, financial support and sanctions against Russia.”
A Ukrainian parliament member, Oleksiy Goncharenko, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that preliminary information indicated that Russia launched 14 missiles toward the capital region and Kyiv itself. Zelenskyy said some were intercepted, and he vowed revenge against “all pilots, dispatchers, technicians and other people who ensure the launch of missiles in Ukraine.”
“We will find you all. Each of you will be responsible for these blows,” Zelenskyy vowed. “And if someone thinks he will evade responsibility by saying that this was an order, you are wrong. When your missiles hit homes, it’s a war crime. The court is what awaits you all. And you will not hide anywhere - neither on the shores of the Caspian Sea, over which your missiles are launched, nor in Belarus ... Nowhere.”
In a phone interview, retired U.S. general Hodges told The Associated Press that Russia has a limited stock of precision missiles and “if they are using them, it’s going to be for a special purpose,”
Russia has denied targeting civilians during the 4-month-old war, and Hodges said it was hard to know if the missiles launched Sunday were intended to strike the apartments buildings.
Russian forces tried to seize control of Kyiv early in the war. After Ukrainian troops repelled them, the Kremlin largely shifted its focus to southern and eastern Ukraine.
Russian rocket strikes in the city of Cherkasy, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Kyiv, killed one person and injured five, regional governor Ihor Taburets said Sunday.
In the east, Russian troops fought to consolidate their gains by battling to swallow up the last remaining Ukrainian stronghold in Luhansk province. Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said Sunday that Russia was conducting intense airstrikes on the city of Lysychansk, destroying its television tower and seriously damaging a road bridge.
“There’s very much destruction. Lysychansk is almost unrecognizable,” he wrote on Facebook.
For weeks, Lysychansk and the nearby city of Sievierodonetsk have been subject to a bloody and destructive offensive by Russian forces and their separatist allies aimed at capturing all of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.
Read:Russia fires missiles across Ukraine, cements gains in east
They have made steady and slow progress, with Haidai confirming Saturday that Sievierodonetsk, including a chemical plant where hundreds of Ukrainian troops and civilians were holed up, had fallen.
Commenting on the battle for Sievierodonetsk, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said late Saturday that Russian and Moscow-backed separatist forces now control not only the city but the villages surrounding it. He said the Russian military had thwarted Ukrainian forces' attempt to turn the Azot chemical plant into a “stubborn center of resistance.”
Capturing Lysychansk would give Russian and separatist forces control of every major settlement in Luhansk. At last report, they controlled about half of Donetsk, the second province in the Donbas.
On Saturday, Russia launched dozens of missiles on several areas across the country far from the heart of the eastern battles. Some of the missiles were fired from Russian long-range Tu-22 bombers deployed from Belarus for the first time, Ukraine’s air command said.
Reacting to the shelling from the Russian bombers, Zelenskyy appealed to the people of Belarus to resist cooperation with the Russian military. “The Russian leadership wants to draw you - all Belarusians - into the war, wants to sow hatred between us,” he said in his video address Sunday. “You can refuse to participate in this war. Your lives belong only to you, not to someone in the Kremlin.”
Belarus hosts Russian military units and was used as a staging ground before Russia invaded Ukraine, but its own troops have not crossed the border. In a meeting Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that Russia planned to supply Belarus with the Iskander-M missile system.
On the economic front, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said banning imports of Russian gold would represent a significant escalation of sanctions.
“That is the second-most lucrative export that Russia has after energy.” Blinken told American news channel CNN. “It’s about $19 billion a year. And most of that is within the G-7 countries. So cutting that off, denying access to about $19 billion of revenues a year, that’s significant.”
Russia is poised to default on its foreign debt for the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, further alienating the country from the global financial system following international sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine.
The country faces a Sunday night deadline to meet a 30-day grace period on interest payments originally due May 27. But it could take time to confirm a default.
Russia calls any default artificial because it has the money to pay its debts but says sanctions have frozen its foreign currency reserves held abroad.
Russians, Ukrainians fight block by block in eastern city
Russian troops pushed deeper into a key eastern Ukrainian city Monday, fighting street by street with Kyiv's forces in a battle that has left Sievierodonetsk in ruins. In a bid to pressure Moscow to end the war, the European Union agreed to embargo most Russian oil imports by the end of the year.
As Moscow's advance on Sievierodonetsk increased in intensity, Russian forces also shelled parts of Ukraine's northeast, and a struggle continued for control of a southern region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said Russia has prevented the export of 22 million tons of Ukrainian grain, contributing to a growing global food crisis.
Military analysts described the fight for Sievierodonetsk as part of a race against time for the Kremlin. The city is important to Russian efforts to quickly complete the capture of the eastern industrial region of the Donbas before more Western arms arrive to bolster Ukraine’s defense. Moscow-backed separatists already held territory in the region and have been fighting Ukrainian troops for eight years.
“The Kremlin has reckoned that it can’t afford to waste time and should use the last chance to extend the separatist-controlled territory because the arrival of Western weapons in Ukraine could make it impossible," Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said.
Also read: War in Ukraine adds to food price hikes, hunger in Africa
In a potential setback for Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden appeared to dismiss reports that the U.S. was considering sending long-range rocket systems to the country.
But the European Union approved additional sanctions on Russia. As part of a long-delayed financial support package to help Ukraine, EU leaders agreed Monday to embargo most Russian oil imports into the 27-nation bloc by year-end. The agreement came after Zelenskyy asked the EU to target Russian oil exports so Moscow “feels the price for what it is doing against Ukraine.”
The embargo covers Russian oil brought in by sea, allowing a temporary exemption for imports delivered by pipeline. EU Council President Charles Michel said the agreement covers more than two-thirds of oil imports from Russia. Ursula Von der Leyen, the head of the EU’s executive branch, said the move will “effectively cut around 90% of oil imports from Russia to the EU by the end of the year.”
In an effort to punish and divide the West over its support for Ukraine, Russia has cut off natural gas to a handful of European countries. In its latest move, Russian state gas giant Gazrpom said it will halt gas supplies to Dutch gas trader GasTerra starting Tuesday.
Russia also ramped up its actions on the battlefield. In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said the situation in the Donbas remains “extremely difficult” as Russia has put its army’s “maximum combat power” there.
The Ukrainian military said Russian forces reinforced their positions outside Sievierodonetsk, a city 145 kilometers (90 miles) south of the Russian border in an area that is the last pocket of Ukrainian government control in Luhansk.
Sievierodonetsk Mayor Oleksandr Striuk said the city has been “completely ruined.” Artillery fire has destroyed critical infrastructure and damaged 90% of the buildings, and power and communications have been largely cut to a city that was once home to 100,000 people, he said.
“The number of victims is rising every hour, but we are unable to count the dead and the wounded amid the street fighting,” Striuk told The Associated Press in a phone interview, adding that Moscow’s troops advanced a few more blocks toward the city center.
He said that only about 12,000 to 13,000 residents remain, sheltering in basements and bunkers to escape the Russian bombardment. The situation recalls the siege of Mariupol, which trapped residents and led to some of the worst suffering of the war. More than 20,000 are feared dead in Mariupol.
Striuk estimated that 1,500 civilians have died in Sievierodonetsk since the war began from Russian attacks and from dire conditions that include a lack of medicine and medical treatment.
A 32-year-old French journalist, Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, died Monday near Sievierodonetsk when he was hit by shrapnel from shelling while covering Ukrainian evacuations, according to his employer, French broadcaster BFM TV.
Zelenskyy said Leclerc-Imhoff was the 32nd media worker to die in Ukraine since Russia invaded on Feb. 24.
Also read: Ukraine, Russia battle in the east as Zelenskyy visits front
Governors of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions — which make up the Donbas — said six civilians, including the journalist, were killed in shelling. Authorities in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, also reported one person died in shelling there.
Zelenskyy said Russian troops also shelled the Sumy region near the Russian border, and the struggle continued for the southern Kherson region, which has been largely controlled by Russian troops since the early days of the war. Russia-installed officials there said they would ask the Kremlin to annex it, while Kyiv, in turn, has vowed to liberate the region.
The Russian advance in Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk on either side of the strategically important Siverskiy Donetsk River is part of an all-out push, said Zhdanov, the Ukrainian military analyst. He said the intensity of the latest fighting and the influx of Russian troops have surprised Ukrainians, who are trying to hold out until more weapons arrive.
On Monday, Biden told reporters that there are no plans for the United States to send long-range rocket systems to Ukraine, amid reports that the move is being considered.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, called it a “reasonable” decision. He said that “otherwise, if our cities come under attack, the Russian armed forces would fulfill their threat and strike the centers where such criminal decisions are made.”
Medvedev added that “some of them aren’t in Kyiv.”
In the Kherson region, the Russia-installed deputy head of the regional administration, Kirill Stremousov, told Russia’s Tass state news agency that grain from last year’s harvest is being delivered to Russian buyers, adding that “obviously there is a lot of grain here.”
Russia has pressed the West to lift sanctions against it as it seeks to shift the blame for the growing food crisis, which has led to skyrocketing prices in Africa.
Zelenskyy accused Moscow of “deliberately creating this problem” and said Russia’s claim that sanctions are to blame is a lie. He said sanctions haven’t blocked Russian food, and he accused Russia of stealing at least a half million tons of Ukrainian grain.
Russia presses Donbas attacks as Polish leader praises Kyiv
Russia pressed its offensive in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as Poland's president traveled to Kyiv to support the country's European Union aspirations, becoming the first foreign leader to address the Ukrainian parliament since the start of the war.
Lawmakers gave a standing ovation to President Andrzej Duda, who thanked them for the honor of speaking where “the heart of a free, independent and democratic Ukraine beats." Duda said that to end the conflict, Ukraine did not need to submit to conditions given by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Unfortunately, in Europe there have also been disturbing voices in recent times demanding that Ukraine yield to Putin’s demands,” he said. "I want to say clearly: Only Ukraine has the right to decide about its future. Only Ukraine has the right to decide for itself.”
Duda's visit, his second to Kyiv since April, came as Russian and Ukrainian forces battled along a 551-kilometer (342-mile) wedge of the country's eastern industrial heartland.
Also read:Fate of 2,500 Ukrainian POWs from steel plant stirs concern
After declaring full control of a sprawling seaside steel plant that was the last defensive holdout in the port city of Mariupol, Russia launched artillery and missile attacks to expand the territory that Moscow-backed separatists have held since 2014 in the region known as the Donbas.
To bolster its defenses, Ukraine’s parliament voted Sunday to extend martial law and the mobilization of armed forces for a third time, until Aug. 23.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stressed that the 27-member EU should expedite his country’s request to join the bloc. Ukraine’s potential candidacy is set to be discussed at a Brussels summit in late June.
France’s European Affairs minister Clement Beaune on Sunday told Radio J it would be a “long time” before Ukraine gains EU membership, perhaps up to two decades.
“We have to be honest,” he said. “If you say Ukraine is going to join the EU in six months, or a year or two, you’re lying.”
But Poland is ramping up efforts to win over EU members who are more hesitant about accepting Ukraine into the bloc. Zelenskyy said Duda’s visit represented a “historic union” between Ukraine, which declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, and Poland, which ended communist rule two years earlier.
“This is really a historic opportunity not to lose such strong relations, built through blood, through Russian aggression,” Zelenskyy said. “All this not to lose our state, not to lose our people.”
Poland has welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees and become a gateway for Western humanitarian aid and weapons into Ukraine. It is also a transit point for some foreign fighters who have volunteered to fight the Russian forces.
Duda credited the U.S. and President Joe Biden for unifying the West in supporting Ukraine and imposing sanctions against Moscow.
“Kyiv is the place from which one clearly sees that we need more America in Europe, both in the military and in this economic dimension," said Duda, a right-wing populist leader who clearly preferred former President Donald Trump over Biden in the 2020 election.
On the battlefield, Russia appeared to have made slow, grinding moves forward in the Donbas in recent days. It intensified efforts to capture Sievierodonetsk, the main city under Ukrainian control in Luhansk province, which together with Donetsk province makes up the Donbas. The Ukrainian military said Sunday that Russian forces had mounted an unsuccessful attack on Oleksandrivka, a village outside of Sievierodonetsk.
Sievierodonetsk came under heavy shelling, and Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai said the Russians were “simply intentionally trying to destroy the city... engaging in a scorched-earth approach.”
Haidai said Moscow was concentrating forces and weaponry there to try to win control of Luhansk, bringing in forces from Kharkiv to the northwest, Mariupol to the south, and from inside Russia.
The sole working hospital in the city has only three doctors and supplies for 10 days, he said.
Ukrainian officials have said little since the war began about the extent of their country’s casualties, but Zelenskyy said at a news conference Sunday that 50 to 100 Ukrainian fighters were being killed, apparently each day, in the east.
In a general staff morning report, Russia said it was also preparing to resume its offensive on Slovyansk, a city in Donetsk province that saw fierce fighting last month after Moscow’s troops backed away from Kyiv.
In Enerhodar, a Russian-held city 281 kilometers (174 miles) northwest of Mariupol, an explosion Sunday injured the Moscow-appointed mayor at his residence, Ukrainian and Russian news agencies reported. Ukraine’s Unian news agency said a bomb planted by “local partisans” wounded 48-year-old Andrei Shevchuk, whose lives near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe's largest.
With Russia claiming to have taken prisoner nearly 2,500 Ukrainian fighters from the Mariupol steel plant, concerns grew about their fate and that of the remaining residents of the city, now in ruins with more than 20,000 feared dead.
Relatives of the fighters have pleaded for them to be given rights as prisoners of war and eventually returned to Ukraine. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukraine “will fight for the return" of every one of them.
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Denis Pushilin, the pro-Kremlin head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, vowed that the Ukrainian fighters from the plant would face tribunals.
The complete seizure of the Azovstal steel plant, a symbol of Ukrainian tenacity, gave Putin a badly wanted victory in the war he began nearly three months ago, on Feb. 24. Ukraine's military had told the fighters their mission was complete and they could come out. It described their extraction as an evacuation, not a mass surrender.
Mariupol Mayor Vadim Boychenko warned that the city faces a health and sanitation “catastrophe” from mass burials in shallow pits and the breakdown of sewage systems. An estimated 100,000 of the 450,000 people who lived in Mariupol before the war remain.
Ukrainian authorities have alleged Russian atrocities there, including the bombings of a maternity hospital and a theater where hundreds of civilians had taken cover.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian court was expected to reach a verdict Monday for a Russian soldier who was the first to go on trial for an alleged war crime. The 21-year-old sergeant, who has admitted to shooting a Ukrainian man in the head in a village in the northeastern Sumy region on Feb. 28, could get life in prison if convicted.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova has said her office was prosecuting war crimes cases against 41 Russian soldiers for offenses that included bombing civilian infrastructure, killing civilians, rape and looting.
In other developments, Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, gave a rare interview to national broadcaster ICTV alongside her husband and said she has hardly seen him since the war began.
“Our family, like all Ukrainian families, is now separated,” she said, adding that she speaks to him mostly by phone.
“Unfortunately, we cannot sit together, have dinner with the whole family, talk about everything,” she said.
Zelenskyy called the interview itself “a date on air,” and the couple, who have two children, joked in front of the journalists.
“We are joking, but we are really waiting, like everyone else, to be reunited, like all families in Ukraine who are separated now, waiting for their relatives and friends who want to be together again,” he said.
Pelosi leads delegation to Kyiv and Poland; vows US support
A U.S. congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the courage of the Ukrainian people during a visit to Poland on Sunday, a day after the American lawmakers made a surprise trip to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The U.S. legislators assessed Ukraine's needs for the next phase of the war, with Pelosi vowing that Washington would stand with the country until it defeats Russia's invasion of its territory.
Pelosi, a California Democrat who is second in line to the presidency after the vice president, was the most senior American lawmaker to visit Ukraine since Russia’s war began more than two months ago. Her previously unannounced visit came just days after Moscow bombed the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv while the U.N. secretary-general was there.
Pelosi and a half-dozen U.S. lawmakers met for three hours late Saturday with Zelenskyy and his top aides to get a first-hand assessment of the war effort to date. Speaking to reporters Sunday in Poland, the delegation members were unanimous in praising Ukraine’s defenses so far, in painting the battle of one as good against evil and in assuring continued long-term U.S. military, humanitarian and economic support.
“We were proud to convey to him the message of unity from the Congress of the United States, a message of appreciation from the American people for his leadership and admiration for the people of Ukraine for their courage,” Pelosi said.
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Their visit came two days after U.S. President Joe Biden asked Congress for $33 billion to bolster Ukraine’s fight against Russia, more than twice the size of the initial $13.6 billion aid measure that Congress enacted early last month and now is almost drained. With the war dragging into its third month, the measure was designed to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that U.S. weaponry and other forms of assistance weren't going away.
“This is a time we stand up for democracy or we allow autocracy to rule the day,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York.
“This is a struggle of freedom against tyranny,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California. “And in that struggle, Ukraine is on the front lines.”
Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat from Colorado, a veteran and a member of the House intelligence and armed services committee, said he came to Ukraine with three areas of focus: “Weapons, weapons and weapons.”
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“We have to make sure the Ukrainians have what they need to win. What we have seen in the last two months is their ferocity, their intense pride, their ability to fight and their ability to win if they have the support to do so.”
“The United States of America is in this to win, and we will stand with Ukraine until victory is won,” he added.
The full congressional delegation included Meeks, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee; Jim McGovern of Massachusetts who chairs the House Rules Committee; Crow, Barbara Lee of California; and Bill Keating of Massachusetts.
“You all are welcome,” Zelenskyy told the delegation, according to a video of the encounter.
Pelosi told Zelenskyy: “We believe that we are visiting you to say thank you for your fight for freedom."
“We are on a frontier of freedom and your fight is a fight for everyone. Our commitment is to be there for you until the fight is done,” Pelosi added.
The delegation continued its trip in southeast Poland and visited the capital, Warsaw, to meet with President Andrzej Duda and other senior officials. Poland has received more than 3 million refugees from Ukraine since Russia launched its war on Feb. 24.
“We look forward to thanking our Polish allies for their dedication and humanitarian efforts,” Pelosi said.
Speaking at a news conference in Poland, Pelosi said she and others in the delegation applauded the courage of the Ukrainian people. She added that the delegation brought Zelenskyy “a message of appreciation from the American people for his leadership.”
McGovern said Russia's war had repercussions far beyond Ukraine, saying it was exacerbating a world food crisis that would be disastrous for poor people across the globe.
“Putin’s brutal war is no longer only a war against the people of Ukraine,” McGovern said. “It’s also a war against the world’s most vulnerable.”
He added that Ukraine is a “breadbasket of the world.”
“I don’t think that Putin cares if he starves the world,” McGovern said.
Explosions rock Kyiv again as Russians rain fire on Ukraine
Russia pounded targets from practically one end of Ukraine to the other Thursday, including Kyiv, bombarding the city while the head of the United Nations was visiting in the boldest attack on the capital since Moscow’s forces retreated weeks ago.
Nearly a dozen people were wounded in the attack on Kyiv, including one who lost a leg and others who were trapped in the rubble when two buildings were hit, rescue officials said.
The bombardment came barely an hour after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a news conference with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who said Ukraine has become “an epicenter of unbearable heartache and pain.” A spokesperson said Guterres and his team were safe.
Meanwhile, explosions were reported across the country, in Polonne in the west, Chernihiv near the border with Belarus, and Fastiv, a large railway hub southwest of the capital. The mayor of Odesa, in southern Ukraine, said rockets were intercepted by air defenses.
Ukrainian authorities also reported intense Russian fire in the Donbas — the eastern industrial heartland that the Kremlin says is its main objective — and near Kharkiv, a northeastern city outside the Donbas that is seen as key to the offensive.
In the ruined southern port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian fighters holed up in the steel plant that represents the last pocket of resistance said concentrated bombing overnight killed and wounded more people. And authorities warned that a lack of safe drinking water inside the city could lead to outbreaks of deadly diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
In Zaporizhzhia, a crucial way station for tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Mariupol, an 11-year-old boy was among at least three people wounded in a rocket attack that authorities said was the first to hit a residential area in the southern city since the war began. Shards of glass cut the boy’s leg to the bone.
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Vadym Vodostoyev, the boy’s father, said: “It just takes one second and you’re left with nothing.”
The fresh attacks came as Guterres surveyed the destruction in small towns outside the capital that saw some of the worst horrors of the first onslaught of the war. He condemned the atrocities committed in towns like Bucha, where evidence of mass killings of civilians was found after Russia withdrew in early April in the face of unexpectedly stiff resistance.
“Wherever there is a war, the highest price is paid by civilians,” the U.N. chief lamented.
Separately, Ukraine’s prosecutor accused 10 Russian soldiers of being “involved in the torture of peaceful people” in Bucha. Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova did not say her office had filed criminal charges, and she appealed to the public for help in gathering evidence. Russia denies it targets civilians.
During his nightly video address, Zelenskyy renewed his pledge to hold Russian soldiers accountable for crimes they commit and said about the 10 identified earlier Thursday: “Some of them may not, after all, live until a trial and fair punishment. But only for one reason: This Russian brigade has been transferred to the Kharkiv region. There they’ll receive retribution from our military.”
In the attack on Kyiv, explosions shook the city and flames poured out of windows in at least two buildings — including a residential one — in the capital, which has been relatively unscathed in recent weeks. Ukrainian emergency services said 10 people were wounded in the attack, which sent plumes of smoke billowing over the city.
The explosions in northwestern Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky district came as residents have been increasingly returning to the city. Cafes and other businesses have reopened, and a growing numbers of people have been out and about, enjoying the spring weather.
It was not immediately clear how far away the attack was from Guterres.
Getting a full picture of the unfolding battle in the east has been difficult because airstrikes and artillery barrages have made it extremely dangerous for reporters to move around. Several journalists have been killed in the war, now in its third month.
Also, both Ukraine and the Moscow-backed rebels fighting in the east have introduced tight restrictions on reporting from the combat zone.
Western officials say the Kremlin’s apparent goal is to take the Donbas by encircling and crushing Ukrainian forces from the north, south and east.
But so far, Russia’s troops and their allied separatist forces appear to have made only minor gains, taking several small towns as they try to advance in relatively small groups against staunch Ukrainian resistance.
Russian military units were mauled in the abortive bid to storm Kyiv and had to regroup and refit. Some analysts say the delay in launching a full-fledged offensive may reflect a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to wait until his forces are ready for a decisive battle, instead of rushing in and risking another failure that could shake his rule amid worsening economic conditions at home because of Western sanctions.
Many observers suspect Putin wants to be able to claim a big victory in the east by Victory Day, on May 9, one of the proudest holidays on the Russian calendar, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II.
As Russia presses its offensive, civilians again bear the brunt.
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“It’s not just scary. It’s when your stomach contracts from pain,” said Kharkiv resident Tatiana Pirogova. “When they shoot during the day, it’s still OK, but when the evening comes, I can’t describe how scary it is.”
Ukraine’s military said that Russian troops were subjecting several places in the Donbas to “intense fire” and that over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces had repelled six attacks in the region.
Four civilians were killed in heavy shelling of residential areas in the Luhansk region of the Donbas, according to the regional governor.
Columns of smoke could be seen rising at different points across the Donetsk region of the Donbas, and artillery and sirens were heard on and off.
Many of the Russian troops who were in Mariupol have been leaving and moving to the northwest, a senior U.S. defense official said Thursday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. military assessment, didn’t have exact numbers but said a “significant number” of the roughly one dozen battalion tactical groups that were in the city were moving out.
Russian forces are making slow, incremental progress in the Donbas — gaining only several kilometers on any given day, the official said. As of Thursday, Russia had launched about 1,900 missiles into Ukraine – the vast majority fired from outside Ukraine’s borders. Most are strikes on Mariupol and the Donbas.
In Mariupol, video posted online by Ukraine’s Azov Regiment inside the steel plant showed people combing through the rubble to remove the dead and help the wounded. The regiment said the Russians hit an improvised underground hospital and its surgery room, killing an unspecified number of people. The video couldn’t be independently verified.
An estimated 100,000 people remained trapped in Mariupol.
“Deadly epidemics may break out in the city due to the lack of centralized water supply and sewers,” the city council said on the messaging app Telegram. It reported bodies decaying under the rubble and a “catastrophic” shortage of drinking water and food.
Ukraine has urged its allies to send even more military equipment to fend off the Russians. U.S. President Joe Biden asked Congress for an additional $33 billion to help Ukraine.
Russia pounds eastern Ukraine as West promises Kyiv new arms
Russia pounded eastern Ukraine on Tuesday as the U.S. defense secretary promised to “keep moving heaven and earth” to get Kyiv the weapons it needs to repel the new offensive even as Moscow warned such support risked widening the war.
Two months into the devastating conflict, Western arms have already helped Ukraine stall Russia’s invasion — but its leaders have said they need more support fast.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that help was on the way, as he convened a meeting of officials from around 40 countries at the United States’ Ramstein Air Base in Germany to pledge more weapons. Germany announced it cleared the way for delivery of Gepard anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine.
“This gathering reflects the galvanized world,” Austin said in his opening remarks. He added that he wanted officials to leave the meeting “with a common and transparent understanding of Ukraine’s near-term security requirements because we’re going to keep moving heaven and earth so that we can meet them.”
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After fierce defense by Ukrainian forces thwarted Russia's attempt to take Ukraine's capital early in the war, Moscow now says its focus is the Donbas, the mostly Russian-speaking industrial region in eastern Ukraine. That move is already having a devastating effect on civilians trapped in the conflict.
In the small city of Toretsk, residents are struggling to survive, collecting rainwater for cleaning and washing up and fervently hoping for an end to the fighting.
“It’s bad. Very bad. Hopeless,” said Andriy Cheromushkin. “You feel so helpless that you don’t know what you should do or shouldn’t do. Because if you want to do something, you need some money; and there is no money now.”
With the potentially pivotal battle for the Donbas underway, the U.S. and its NATO allies are scrambling to get artillery and other heavy weaponry to that area in time to make a difference.
German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said her government decided on Monday to clear the delivery of Gepard self-propelled armored anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine, though she didn’t give details. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has faced mounting pressure, including from within his governing coalition, to approve sending heavy weapons such as tanks and other armored vehicles to Ukraine.
Austin also noted Tuesday that more than 30 allies and partners have joined the U.S. in sending security assistance to Ukraine and more than $5 billion worth of equipment committed.
The meeting in Germany comes after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking on Russian television, warned weapons supplied by Western countries “will be a legitimate target,” and accused NATO of “pouring oil on the fire” with its support for Ukraine, according to a transcript on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
Lavrov also warned against provoking World War III and said the threat of a nuclear conflict “should not be underestimated.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has cited NATO's expansion and the risk that Kyiv could join the alliance as reasons for his invasion.
U.K. Armed Forces Minister James Heappey rejected Lavrov's accusations of NATO aggression as “utter nonsense.”
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He said “the reason there is a war in Ukraine right now is because Russia rolled over the borders of a sovereign country and started to invade their territory.”
Heappey also said Russia was making “unsound” military decisions and giving away tactical advantages because of Putin’s desire to secure some kind of victory by May 9, when Russia marks its victory in World War II.
Amid the talk of arms shipments, diplomatic efforts to seek an end to the fighting also continued. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres met Lavrov on Tuesday and called again for a cease-fire. The U.N. chief is scheduled to meet Putin later.
Elsewhere, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi visited the Chernobyl nuclear plant to deliver equipment, conduct radiological assessments and restore safeguards monitoring systems after tanks and troops churned up highly contaminated soil there in the early hours of Russia's invasion in February. His visit comes on the anniversary of the disaster at the plant in 1986, the world’s worst nuclear accident.
In its latest assessment of the fighting, the British Defense Ministry reported Russian advances and heavy fighting in the Donbas region, with one town, Kreminna, reportedly falling after days of street-to-street fighting.
Ukraine's General Staff said Russian forces shelled Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city that lies outside the Donbas but has seen significant attacks as Moscow seeks full control of the region. Ukrainian forces struck back in the Kherson region in the south.
A senior Russian military official has said that Russia's goal is full control of Ukraine's east and south, which would give it a swath of land that lies between Russia and Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.
Four people died and nine more were wounded on Monday in the Russian shelling of the Donetsk region of the Donbas, its governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram. He said a 9-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy were among those killed.
The city council and mayor of Mariupol said a new mass grave was identified about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the port city, which is key to the battle of the Donbas. Mayor Vadym Boychenko said authorities were trying to estimate the number of victims. It was at least the third new mass grave discovered in Russian-controlled areas near Mariupol in the last week.
Mariupol has been gutted by bombardment and fierce street fighting over the past two months. Russia’s capture of the city, where an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian troops and some 1,000 civilians are reportedly sheltering in a sprawling steel works, would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, help complete the land corridor to Crimea and free up troops to redeploy elsewhere in the Donbas.
Britain said it believes 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began — far above the 1,351 deaths acknowledged by Moscow. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said 25% of the Russian combat units sent to Ukraine “have been rendered not combat effective.”
Ukrainian officials have said about 2,500 to 3,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed as of mid-April.
The West hopes that boosting arms supplies will help remaining fighters repel Russia's invasion.
As he opened the meeting in Germany, Austin sought to reassure Kyiv: “We know, and you should know, that all of us have your back and that’s why we’re here today — to strengthen the arsenal of Ukrainian democracy.”