Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Biden slammed the bill’s omission of financial aid for Ukraine: “We cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted,” he said, according to a White House statement. “I fully expect the Speaker will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment.”
Ukraine’s envoy to Washington expressed optimism that funding guarantees for Kyiv would still be secured. There is time, there are resources, and there is bipartisan support for Ukraine in Washington, Ambassador Oksana Markarova said in a Facebook post.
Aid for Ukraine had been a key issue as the United States headed toward a narrowly missed government shutdown. House Republicans, with late help from Democrats, pushed through a short-term bill to fund the government and avert a shutdown. Though the Senate ultimately approved the bill, the vote was at first delayed by Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), who expressed concern over the lack of additional aid to Ukraine.
A bipartisan group of Senate leadership members pledged to work in coming weeks on legislation that further funds Ukraine’s war effort. The group, led by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said in a statement Saturday that it supports “Ukraine’s efforts to defend its sovereignty against [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s brazen aggression” and that it will continue “to provide critical and sustained security and economic support for Ukraine.”
Slovakia’s parliamentary election has the potential to complicate the Western response to Ukraine. Nearly complete results early Sunday showed that Robert Fico, a populist former prime minister whose campaign has been laced with pro-Russian and anti-American discourse, defeated his progressive rival.
Drones were spotted above Russian regions overnight into Sunday morning, local authorities said. Flights into Sochi International Airport were temporarily redirected as a result, the Black Sea resort city’s mayor, Alexei Kopaigorodsky, said early Sunday — adding in a Telegram post that a drone was shot down. Farther north, the governor of Smolensk region — bordering Belarus — said three drones were suppressed.
The Romanian army’s radar system detected “a possible unauthorized” breach of the country’s airspace, the Defense Ministry said. It added that the radar detected the possible breach after registering “groups of drones heading toward Ukrainian territory” near the border, and as Russia conducted “a new series of attacks on some targets in Ukraine.”
The Romanian Defense Ministry said police were deployed near the border where the potential breach was detected. The statement said residents there received warning alerts that were lifted later in the night. Romania began building some air-raid shelters near the Ukraine border after finding the suspected war debris earlier this month.
Ukrainian officials accused Russia of attacking civilian infrastructure overnight. In Ukraine’s central Cherkasy region, regional governor Ihor Taburets said a drone attack ignited a fire in a grain warehouse in the city of Uman and injured one person. In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a drone targeted civilian infrastructure in the city of Kryvyi Rih, and a power line and gas pipeline were shelled by artillery in Nikopol, local military administrator Serhiy Lysak said.
Three missiles hit civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv, starting a fire, regional administration head Oleg Sinegubov said on Telegram on Sunday. Ukrainian state media also reported the sound of explosions over Zaporizhzhia, as the country prepared to hold a national moment of silence Sunday morning to commemorate military members who died in the war.
A new round of Russian military conscription is slated to start Sunday, and it is expected to call up about 130,000 people, the country’s Defense Ministry said. It claimed that the conscription was not connected to the war in Ukraine. All men in Russia are required to serve in the military or perform equivalent training in higher education for at least one year between the ages of 18 and 27.
Ukraine said it held its first Defense Industries Forum alongside companies from 19 countries, including the United States, Britain, Germany, Australia, Canada, Denmark and others. In a speech late Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the forum produced several agreements on joint production, technology exchange and defense industry training with foreign companies. “Separately, and very thoroughly, we are developing the Ukrainian manufacturing of drones,” he said.
British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps told the Telegraph that he is considering allowing British trainers “into Ukraine” rather than relegating them to NATO bases outside the country. So far, NATO members have avoided deploying trainers into Ukraine for fear of escalating the conflict. “Particularly in the west of the country, I think the opportunity now is to bring more things ‘in country’ — not just training,” Shapps added. “But also we’re seeing BAE [a British defense firm], for example, move into manufacturing in country.”
The United States is the biggest financial supporter of Kyiv’s fight against Russia: Washington has committed more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, including more than $43 billion in military aid, Ruby Mellen and Artur Galocha report in a visual look at U.S. spending during the war.
“These are off-the-charts numbers,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He likened the figures to U.S. commitments to European countries at the end of World War II. The Marshall Plan, when adjusted for inflation, came to about $150 billion over three years.
More than a year and a half into the conflict, U.S. public support for Ukraine funding is wavering, particularly among Republicans. Lately, some hard-right GOP members of the House have opposed sending more aid to Ukraine and made it a central issue in negotiations over a U.S. government spending bill.
David Stern, Kostiantyn Khudov, Natalia Abbakumova, Jeff Stein, John Hudson, Ellen Francis, Serhiy Morgunov, Justine McDaniel, Jacob Bogage and Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.
Kelly Kasulis Cho, Leo Sands
Source link