Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went from meeting to meeting in Washington, D.C. on Thursday trying to gather support for more aid from the United States. He met with President Biden as well as senior defense officials and lawmakers as the U.S. Congress considers the White House’s request to add more than $20 billion in aid to the $113 billion the U.S. has already committed to Ukraine.
“60 Minutes” has been attempting to track where the billions of dollars in U.S. cash and weaponry provided to Ukraine has gone since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February of 2022. On assignment for this week’s “60 Minutes,” CBS News senior foreign correspondent Holly Williams went to Ukraine to see how all the American tax dollars are being spent — and to find out if the weapons and money already provided have gone where they were supposed to go.
Watch Williams’ full report this Sunday, Sept. 24, on “60 Minutes” from 7 p.m. Eastern. A preview is available at the top of this article.
Oleksandra Ustinova, an anti-corruption activist who became a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, chairs a government commission that tracks all of the military aid coming to Ukraine.
She shot video for “60 Minutes” inside what she called a top-secret warehouse storing American-made and supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles.
Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandra Ustinova stands inside a storage facility in her country housing U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles.
CBS News
“We have online databases with the serial numbers of every American piece of weapon that your embassy has access to. They can come, type in, let’s say, a Javelin or a HIMARS, and see in which brigade it is, and then go check it if they don’t believe.”
She said the Ukrainian government welcomes U.S. officials to go right to the front lines in the war to verify how American-supplied weaponry is being used.
It’s one way, Ustinova said, that her country is trying to combat “this cancer, which is corruption, because otherwise, we’re not gonna survive.”
As Russia ramps up its own production and sourcing of shells and ammunition, Zelenskyy’s government knows that convincing his partners in Washington of his own government’s trustworthiness may indeed be an existential challenge.
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Jericka Duncan reports on a deadly New York charter bus crash involving students heading to band camp, tensions between House Republicans over funding the government, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House.
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Vice President Han Zheng, a second-tier official, repeats familiar talking points in speech to 78th UNGA.
China has reiterated its position that a ceasefire and peace talks are the “only way” to end the war in Ukraine, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“Cessation of hostilities and the resumption of peace talks is the only way to settle the Ukraine crisis,” Vice President Han Zheng told the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at its annual meeting.
China has tried to position itself as a peacemaker and neutral arbiter in the conflict, although it has refused to condemn Moscow over the invasion.
In February, on the first anniversary of the war, it released a position paper on how to bring about an end to the fighting, but the proposals received a lukewarm response in Moscow and Kyiv.
China, one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, wants to “continue playing a constructive role”, Han added. He did not elaborate.
Visiting Moscow this week, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov that China would uphold an independent and impartial position on Ukraine as it tried to find a political settlement to the issue.
Beijing’s efforts at mediating a resolution to the conflict have made little progress amid scepticism about its professed neutrality given its deepening ties with Russia. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Moscow in March, where he met Vladimir Putin and toasted a “new era” of cooperation, while Putin has accepted an invitation to visit China next month.
Han, a second-tier official, also used his UNGA speech to reiterate China’s vision for an alternative world order free from what it has long called “Western hegemony”.
Appealing to the world’s developing nations, he said China, the world’s second-biggest economy, considered itself part of the Global South.
“As the largest developing country, China is a natural member of the Global South. It breathes the same breath with other developing countries and shares the same future with them,” Han said.
He also said China supports those nations’ development path “in keeping with their national conditions”.
The loosely defined term “Global South” has come up frequently at the UN this year and is usually used to refer to countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
China has cast itself as a leader for the developing world, stepping up its claim with the launch more than a decade ago of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative to drive Chinese development, infrastructure and influence mainly in developing economies.
China is the world’s second-largest economy after the United States with a GDP of $18 trillion.
Xi was one of four leaders from the permanent members of the Security Council who did not attend this year’s meeting.
French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Russia’s Putin also skipped the event, leaving US President Joe Biden the only leader of a permanent Security Council member to address the assembly.
In this episode of “Person to Person” with Norah O’Donnell, she speaks with Sean Penn about his new documentary about the invasion of Ukraine, “Superpower,” and his work as an activist.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Washington, D.C., on Thursday. He attempted to win support for more military aid in Ukraine’s war against Russia. Ed O’Keefe has the details.
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WARSAW — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to rebuild bridges with Poland late on Saturday, seeking to take the sting out of a political dispute with Warsaw by giving awards to two Polish humanitarian volunteers on his way back from a trip to the U.S. and Canada.
Although Poland was a die-hard ally of Ukraine in the early days of the Russian invasion, the conservative, nationalist government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party has taken an unexpectedly hard line against its war-torn neighbor in the past days, largely for reasons related to the impending election on October 15.
In order to protect Polish farmers — crucial to the ruling party’s electoral prospects next month — Warsaw has blocked agricultural imports from Ukraine, in a protectionist move that Kyiv says is illegal and has referred to the World Trade Organization. Amid this dispute over food products, Warsaw made the shock announcement it would no longer send arms to Ukrainian forces fighting the Russians.
Over recent days, Zelenskyy has been keen to avoid venturing into Polish electoral politics, but has instead tried to play up the importance of direct relations between ordinary Poles and Ukrainians. In that vein, Marcin Przydacz, head of the office of international policy at the presidency, told the Onet news platform that Zelenskyy had simply visited Poland in transit on his way home to Kyiv and had not met politicians.
Instead, Zelenskyy presented decorations to two Poles involved in helping Ukraine. Zelenskyy said journalist Bianka Zalewska from the U.S.-owned television network TVN had helped provide humanitarian aid to Ukrainians and transport wounded children to Polish hospitals. Combat medic Damian Duda had gathered teams to treat wounded soldiers near the front line and set up a fund to assist medics and provide them with training, he said.
“I would like to thank all of Poland for their invaluable support and solidarity, which helps to defend the freedom of our entire Europe!” Zelenskyy said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Duda explained to Onet that he was awarded the presidential order “For Meritorious Service” Third Class for his work since 2014 as a battlefield medic.
“I work in the Ukrainian trenches, saving Ukrainian soldiers,” he said. “I was there until the end [of the Ukrainian defense] in Bakhmut, in Soledar, in Zaporizhzhia,” he said. “Our work is voluntary, our work is cost-free and I am glad that risking our lives to help another human being has been noticed by President Zelenskyy,” the medic said.
Kamil Turecki is a journalist with Poland’s Onet, a sister publication of POLITICO, also owned by Axel Springer.
WARSAW — Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is in the fight of its political life ahead of next month’s general election — and in its scramble for votes it’s taking aim at the country’s alliance with Ukraine.
The latest blow came from Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who on Wednesday said that Poland has halted shipments of its own armaments to Ukraine.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki told Poland’s Polsat television.
It’s true that Poland has sent most of its Soviet-era tanks, fighters and other weapons to Ukraine and doesn’t have much left in its stocks. Warsaw will also continue allowing arms shipments from other allies to pass through its territory.
“Poland still functions as a hub for international aid,” said government spokesperson Piotr Müller, adding that the country is fulfilling its existing military supply contracts with Ukraine.
But Morawiecki’s comments come at a time when relations between Warsaw and Kyiv are the frostiest since Russia’s invasion a year and a half ago, and add to the impression that the nationalist party is undermining its alliance with Ukraine for electoral gain.
“Morawiecki wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t obvious … but to say such a thing at such a time escalates the conflict,” said Marcin Zaborowski, a director with the Globsec think tank.
The catalyst is grain.
Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have closed their markets to Ukrainian grain imports, in violation of the rules of the European Union’s single market, arguing they need to protect their farmers from price drops.
Ukraine has retaliated by filing a lawsuit against them at the World Trade Organization. It has also threatened to block some Polish agricultural exports to Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took a swipe at those countries at the United Nations this week, saying: “Alarmingly, some in Europe play out solidarity in a political theater — turning grain into a thriller … they’re helping set the stage for a Moscow actor.”
Polish President Andrzej Duda scrapped a meeting with Zelenskyy in New York due to a scheduling conflict, and the Ukrainian ambassador to Warsaw was summoned to the foreign ministry to explain. Morawiecki characterized relations with Kyiv as “difficult.”
Political calculation
In Poland, the core reason for the move is PiS’s need to shore up its support among rural voters and also to peel away supporters from the far-right Confederation party, many of whose backers are skeptical about helping Ukraine.
The Polish government sent tanks and jet fighters to Ukraine at a time when many other countries were balking at sending such equipment to Kyiv | Omar Marques/Getty Images
“Ukrainians ruthlessly took advantage of the Polish government being a sucker, emphasized their sympathy, which of course was not there, took the cash, and now they will declare a trade war on us,” Confederation leader Sławomir Mentzen told the Polish press.
Jacek Kucharczyk, head of the Institute for Public Affairs, a Warsaw-based think tank, characterized the shift in tone by the ruling party as “a desperate electoral ploy.”
In POLITICO’s poll of polls, PiS has the support of 38 percent of voters while Civic Coalition, the leading opposition party, is at 29 percent. If that holds, Law and Justice won’t have enough seats in parliament to rule on its own and so will have to try to form a coalition; Confederation is the likeliest target, although the party says it won’t join forces with PiS.
But the trends look worrying for PiS.
The government has been hit with a growing visas-for-bribes scandal that now has the European Commission asking for explanations. A new poll by United Surveys shows that if the main opposition parties join together, they would be able to cobble together a majority government after the October 15 election.
Shifting narrative
The U-turn on Ukraine may help shore up some of PiS’s electoral base. But it could cause other problems.
It undermines the government’s main foreign policy win. After years of bitter conflicts with the European Union and other key allies over rule of law, media freedom and backsliding on democratic standards, Poland’s strong support for Ukraine changed the narrative in Brussels and in Washington.
Millions of ordinary Poles helped Ukrainian refugees fleeing across the border in the immediate aftermath of the Russian attack. The Polish government sent tanks and jet fighters to Ukraine at a time when many other countries were balking at sending such equipment to Kyiv, fearing Russian retaliation. Warsaw also took delight in pointing out the shortcomings of European countries like Germany and France.
Zelenskyy even called Poland a “sister.”
In an address to the Polish nation made last year in Polish, he said: “I will remember how you welcomed us, how you help us. Poles are our allies, your country is our sister. Your friendship forever. Our friendship forever. Our love forever. Together we will be victors.”
Opinion polls show there is still strong support for helping Ukraine, with about three-quarters of Poles wanting to accept refugees.
Millions of ordinary Poles helped Ukrainian refugees fleeing across the border in the immediate aftermath of the Russian attack | Omar Marques/Getty Images
“The risk is that PiS voters broadly support the pro-Ukraine policy, and such a rapid policy change could be difficult to explain,” said Kucharczyk.
PiS has toyed with skepticism about Ukraine in the past — raising the issue of wartime massacres of Poles by Ukrainian nationalist guerrillas — but the overarching message was that Poland is Ukraine’s firmest friend.
The narrative shift is being welcomed in Moscow.
In New York, Duda compared Ukraine to a desperate, drowning person.
“A drowning person is extremely dangerous, he can pull you down to the depths … simply drown the rescuer,” Duda said.
That got a thumbs-up from the Kremlin.
“Never before did I agree with Duda as strongly as I did after this statement. Everything he said is correct,” said Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
The Polish opposition is also going on the attack.
Radosław Sikorski, a former Polish foreign minister and now a member of the European Parliament for the Civic Coalition, called Morawiecki’s comments “criminally stupid.”
“Even if we don’t have much more to give then why is he saying this in public! Does he really want [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to calculate that one or two more pushes and Ukraine will fall?” he tweeted.
Kyiv is now trying to downplay any rift with Warsaw.
Oleksandr Merezhko, head of Ukraine’s parliament committee on foreign relations, said he felt Morawiecki’s weapons comments weren’t linked to the growing trade fight.
“Like every politician, I know that during an election campaign, rhetoric can be quite emotional,” he said.
Bartosz Brzeziński and Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting.
Warsaw has stopped supplying weapons to Kyiv and is focusing on arming itself instead, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Wednesday, amid a dispute over Ukraine’s agricultural exports.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said in an appearance on Polish television channel Polsat, according to European Pravda. “If you don’t want to be on the defensive, you have to have something to defend yourself with,” he added, insisting, though, that the move wouldn’t endanger Ukraine’s security.
Morawiecki’s terse comments came as tensions escalated between Kyiv and the EU over the past week, after the European Commission moved to allow Ukrainian grain sales across the bloc, ending restrictions on grain imports which five eastern EU countries originally sought to protect their farmers from competition.
Poland, Hungary and Slovakia responded to the Commission’s move by imposing unilateral bans on Ukrainian grain imports, in apparent violation of the EU’s internal market rules. Kyiv struck back by filing lawsuits against the three countries at the World Trade Organization.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday took a thinly veiled swipe at those imposing grain bans, telling the U.N. General Assembly: “It is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater — making a thriller from the grain. They may seem to play their own role but in fact they are helping set the stage to a Moscow actor.”
While Zelenskyy didn’t specifically name-check Poland, Warsaw summoned Kyiv’s ambassador to the foreign ministry in response.
Morawiecki also delivered a “warning” to “Ukraine’s authorities,” earlier telling Polsat, “if they are to escalate the conflict like that, we will add additional products to the ban on imports into Poland. Ukrainian authorities do not understand the degree to which Poland’s farming industry has been destabilized.”
Poland is in the midst of a high-stakes campaign ahead of an election next month, with the right-wing Law and Justice government battling for reelection. While Warsaw initially threw its weight behind the campaign to help Kyiv fend off Russia’s attempted invasion, that full-throated support has waned as the consequences of supporting Ukraine for its own farmers have become more evident.
What César really wanted was to get out of Cuba. A bartender struggling to make ends meet in Havana, he tried last year to reach Miami in a rickety boat but was forced to abandon the attempt when he was intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard.
He’s now preparing a second escape attempt: with a direct flight to Moscow. His ticket has been paid for by a Russian recruiter but it comes with a hefty price tag nonetheless: As part of the deal, he will have to join the Russian army and fight in Ukraine.
“If this is the sacrifice I have to make for my family to get ahead, I’ll do it,” said César, who turned 19 this year and whose name has been changed to protect his identity.
“You can be a nuclear physicist and still die of hunger here,” he said. “With my current salary I can barely buy basic things like toilet paper or milk.” He said he hoped he would be allowed to work as a paramedic.
The news of Cuban fighters in Ukraine splashed across global headlines earlier this month when Havana announced it had arrested 17 people for involvement in a human trafficking ring recruiting young men to fight for Russia.
The news raised questions about the extent of cooperation between the two Cold War allies, and whether cracks were beginning to show in Havana’s support for Russia’s invasion.
Conversations with Cubans in Cuba and Russia reveal a different side of the story: of desperate young men who see enlistment in the Russian army as their best shot at a better life — even if not all of them seem to know what they were getting themselves into.
One recruit in his late 40s in the Russian city of Tula, whom we will call Pedro, said he was promised a job as a driver “for workers and construction material” but on arrival in Russia was being prepared for combat, weapon in hand.
“We signed a contract with the devil,” he said, recalling the moment he enlisted. “And the devil does not hand out sweets.”
Cold-war allies
Until recently, Havana — though formally neutral on Ukraine — made no secret of siding with Moscow in what it called its clash with the “Yankee empire.” The Castro regime is dependent on Russia for cheap fuel and other aid. But unlike, say, North Korea, it has little to offer in return other than diplomatic loyalty.
Since the Kremlin launched its full-scale assault last year, the countries have exchanged visits by top brass.
Critics have warned that, keeping with Soviet tradition, Cuba could send troops to help fight Moscow’s cause. They point to a May visit to Belarus by Cuba’s military attaché, where the “training of Cuban military personnel” was top of the agenda, and a trip to Moscow by Cuba’s defense minister several weeks later to discuss “a number of technical military projects.” But there has been no evidence of direct involvement.
Havana’s crackdown on the recruitment network followed the publication of an interview on YouTube in late August, in which two 19-year-old Cubans claimed they had been lured to Russia for lucrative construction jobs, only to be sent to the trenches in Ukraine. They said they had suffered beatings, been scammed out of their money and were being kept captive.
Cuba’s foreign ministry vowed to act “energetically” against efforts to entice Cubans to join Russia’s war effort, adding: “Cuba is not part of the conflict in Ukraine.”
The change in tone in Havana suggests that the recruitment of Cubans through informal backchannels has “hit a nerve,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
“Cuba and the Soviet Union fought side by side in Angola and other places, but for ideological reasons,” he said. “Now it’s boiled down to the ugliest, most mercenary terms, giving it a transactional quality that goes against decades of friendship.”
In November 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree offering fast-tracked naturalization to foreigners who signed up as contract soldiers. “We are all getting Russian citizenship,” one recruit texted this reporter. That week, he and others told POLITICO, some 15 recruits, some of whom had been in Russia for only a couple of months, had been personally handed their passports by the local governor.
With heavy losses in Ukraine, Russia “needs the cannon fodder,” said Pavel Luzin, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He added most foreign recruits come from Central Asian and African countries, Syria and Afghanistan.
It is unclear exactly how many foreign citizens have joined Russia’s ranks. But Luzin says their limited numbers mainly serve to boost Russia’s narrative that it has international support for its war.
“Without speaking the language, knowing the local terrain, or the right training for modern warfare, they’ll be swiftly killed and that’s it,” he said.
Joining the 106th
For most of the Cubans with whom POLITICO spoke, their involvement with the Russian army began in late 2022, when somebody using the name Elena Shuvalova began posting on social media pages targeting Cubans looking to go abroad or already in Russia.
One post showed a woman in a long skirt in front of a car decorated with a Cuban flag and a “Z,” Russia’s pro-war symbol. In the accompanying text, Shuvalova offered a one-year contract with the Russian army, “help” with the required language exams and medical tests, and “express legalization within two days.”
Pay consisted of a one-off handout of 195,000 rubles (about $2,000) followed by a monthly salary of 204,000 rubles ($2,100). By comparison, Cuba’s average GDP per capita in 2020 was $9,500 per year.
Of the four recruits currently in Russia who shared their stories with POLITICO, three said they had been flown in from Cuba this summer. At home, they worked in hospitality, teaching and construction. One said he had a professional military background. Two others had completed two years of standard compulsory military service.
While they knew they would be employed by Russia’s military, they were reassured that they would be working far from the front line as drivers or construction workers. “To dig fortifications or help rebuild cities,” one recruit’s exasperated wife told POLITICO.
Because they could face charges of joining a mercenary group in Cuba or of treason or espionage in Russia for talking to a reporter, POLITICO changed the names of the recruits quoted in this story.
Each of them said they were flown in from Varadero along with several dozen other men. They said their passports were not stamped on departure, and that upon entering Russia their migration cards were marked “tourism” as their purpose of stay.
On landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, the recruits were met by a woman who introduced herself as Diana, who said she was a Cuban with Russian ties. They were then loaded onto a bus and brought to what one recruit described as “an empty school building” near Ryazan, a city in western Russia 200 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
There, they underwent a cursory medical check and were subject to a mountain of red tape, including the signing of a contract with the Russian defense ministry. One recruit said a Spanish version of the text was made available to those who specifically requested it, but others said that a translator simply summarized its content verbally.
The recruits said that some of the new arrivals remained behind at a military unit in Ryazan. But most were transferred to the 106th Guards Airborne, a division based in the city of Tula near Moscow that has been deployed into some of the fiercest fighting in Ukraine.
Kyiv claims the 106th was largely “reduced to fertilizer” in the early days of the invasion when it tried to capture Kyiv. In recent months, it has been stationed around Soledar and Bakhmut, hotspots in eastern Ukraine.
“When they handed us the uniform and told us to go train I realized this was not about construction at all,” one recruit said. By then, however, he was locked in.
A legal adviser who is well-known within Russia’s Cuban community told POLITICO he has delivered the same tough message to scores of Cuban recruits who have appealed to him for help: “Once you’ve signed the contract, defecting is tantamount to treason.”
When POLITICO spoke to Pedro in Tula, he said he felt trapped by his decision.
“I came here to give my children a better life, not to kill,” he said, breaking down into tears. “I won’t fire a single bullet.”
He added he had considered trying to escape. “But where do I go?”
On landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, the recruits were met by a woman who introduced herself as Diana, who said she was a Cuban with Russian ties | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
Willing participants
POLITICO could not determine whether Shuvalova or Diana were working for Russian or Cuban authorities. Neither woman responded to requests for comment — though Shuvalova told journalists at the Russian-language Moscow Times that she worked pro-bono.
While the Cuban Embassy in Moscow did not respond to multiple requests for comment, the government itself has sent mixed messages. Shortly after Cuba’s announcement that it had broken up the human trafficking ring, Havana’s ambassador to Moscow told the state-run RIA agency that “we have nothing against Cubans who just want to sign a contract and legally take part in this operation.”
Russia’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s not easy to tell just how many Cuban citizens have joined the Russian military.
In conversations with POLITICO, the recruits said roughly 140 Cubans were currently in Tula. And a caller to a Miami-based Spanish-language television channel in early September said that he had some 90 Cubans under his command in Ryazan.
A trove of 198 hacked documents, allegedly belonging to recent Cuban recruits and published online by the Ukrainian website Informnapalm, showed the ages of those who joined the Russian army ranged between 19 to 69 years old. More than 50 of the passports were issued in June and July this year.
Not all Cubans POLITICO spoke to said they had been tricked into joining the war. In photos shared online and in messenger apps, many pose proudly in military gear, some carrying weapons.
“No one put a gun to their heads,” Yoenni Vega Gonzalez, 36, a Cuban migrant in Russia, said of his acquaintances in Ukraine. “The contract makes it clear that you’re going to war, not to play ball or camping.”
He said he had been refused the opportunity to join because he does not speak Russian. “Otherwise, I would have gone [to the front] with pride and my head held high.”
During the reporting of this article, several Cubans still on the island reached out saying they wanted to enlist. All cited economic, and not political, reasons as their core motivation.
Accounts of daily life behind the fences of the training sites differed greatly.
Some recruits described their interaction with the Russians as friendly and the atmosphere as relaxed. In their free time they smoked cigarettes and sipped on Coca-Cola (officially not available in either Cuba or Russia). On the weekends they went sightseeing and reveled in the city’s bars.
But those who say they were tricked into service, seemingly a minority, complain about payment delays and said they are threatened with incarceration for resisting orders.
When asked about the moral implications of his decision, one recruit in Tula said it wasn’t his primary concern.
“This is the way we found to get out of Cuba,” he said. “No one here wants to kill anyone. But neither do we want to die ourselves.”
BRUSSELS — Russian President Vladimir Putin has made little secret of his plan to keep up the pressure on Ukraine until Western resolve breaks. More than 500 days into his war of aggression, he now has reason to believe things are working out the way he hoped, even if events are not playing out how he might have imagined.
Governments in Poland, Estonia, Slovakia and others in Central and Eastern Europe have been among Kyiv’s staunchest allies since the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Beyond sending weapons and welcoming millions of Ukrainian refugees, they have been Ukraine’s loudest advocates in the West, pushing for a tough line against Moscow in the face of reluctance from countries like France and Germany.
But as the leaders of some of these ride-or-die allies face reelection battles or other domestic challenges, and governments get nervous about the impact of Ukraine one day joining the European Union, that support is starting to waver.
The most striking example is Poland, whose Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced on Wednesday that he would stop delivering new weapons to Ukraine. The statement marked a stunning escalation in a dispute between Kyiv and its closest EU neighbor over grain shipments Warsaw claims are undercutting production from Polish farmers ahead of a parliamentary election on October 15.
“Ukraine realizes that in the last months, they’re not bordering Poland, they’re bordering Polish elections,” said Ivan Krastev, chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria. So for now, “the votes of a hundred thousand Polish farmers are more important for the government than what is going to be the cost for Ukraine. And we’re going to see this happening in many places,” he added.
Morawiecki is facing a tough challenge from Donald Tusk, a former prime minister who has also served as president of the European Council. As part of his electoral strategy, the prime minister is courting supporters of the far-right Confederation Party, which opposes aid for Ukraine.
“We are no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming Poland with more modern weapons,” Morawiecki said in an appearance on Polish television channel Polsat.
While it’s tempting to write off the tensions as electoral fireworks, there are reasons to believe they could persist beyond the campaign. As a Western diplomat who asked not to be named pointed out, the grain dispute between Warsaw and Kyiv reveals deeper misgivings about Ukraine joining the EU. “For 18 months, Poland has badgered any member state that would utter the slightest hesitation towards Ukraine,” the diplomat said. “Now they’re showing their true colors.”
The problem for Kyiv is that it’s not just Poland where support seems to be slipping. Since the start of the war, the Baltic states have led the pro-Ukraine charge in Brussels and Washington, perhaps nobody as loudly or effectively as Estonia’s liberal prime minister, Kaja Kallas.
As the daughter of a former prime minister and European commissioner, Kallas was widely seen as the emblem of a newly emboldened Eastern Europe that would ride the Ukraine crisis to positions of greater power in Brussels. But Kallas’ credibility took a hit over a scandal involving her husband, who was revealed to own a stake in a company that kept doing business in Russia after the February 2022 invasion, even as his wife was advocating for ending all trade with Moscow.
Asked about Kallas’ troubles, Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said that no amount of political upheaval would change the country’s course: “We constantly have elections, and we constantly have domestic issues, but it doesn’t change our policy,” Tsahkna said. “One thing Estonia has had in all these 32 years is the same continuous foreign policy.”
That said, Kallas has been a lot less vocal since the scandal broke in late August, depriving Kyiv of one of its strongest advocates in Western capitals.
Poland’s PM Mateusz Morawiecki announced on Wednesday that he would stop delivering new weapons to Ukraine | Omar Marques/Getty Images
Then there’s Slovakia. The Central European country has been among Europe’s biggest backers of Ukraine, but elections on September 30 could turn it into a skeptic overnight.
“If you have a society where only 40 percent support arms delivery to Ukraine and your government offers support almost at the level of the Baltics, that creates a backlash,” said Milan Nič, a fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Robert Fico, the country’s populist former prime minister, is campaigning on a pro-Russian, anti-American platform that opposes sanctions against Russian individuals and further arms deliveries to Kyiv. He’s on course to win the election, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls.
A victory for Fico would give Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — one of Kyiv’s biggest European skeptics — an ally on the EU stage. If his party gets enough support to be part of the government, Fico told the Associated Press earlier this month, “we won’t send any arms or ammunition to Ukraine anymore.”
To be sure, Ukraine still has plenty of strong backers in Europe. Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Sweden, Finland and others remain strongly committed, and French President Emmanuel Macron has recently swung strongly behind Kyiv. Some analysts also downplay the importance of Poland and Slovakia’s role at the moment, pointing out that there aren’t many weapons left to deliver in the countries’ armories.
Kyiv, for now, seems relaxed. Speaking at a press conference after an event in Brussels last Friday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Olha Stefanishyna downplayed the static between Kyiv and some of its erstwhile friends: “We have a strong commitment and a political confirmation that none of the political processes will affect the ongoing support,” she said.
It’s hard to imagine, however, that somewhere Putin isn’t rubbing his hands, and watching.
A Ukrainian missile attack on the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet headquarters on Friday killed and injured “dozens” of Russian troops, including a number of senior officials, Ukraine’s armed forces claimed on Saturday.
The claim, which couldn’t be verified, came as another rocket attack was launched on the Crimean city of Sevastopol, where the fleet is based, on Saturday. The Russia-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said on Telegram that debris from intercepted missiles fell near a pier during the latest assault.
Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said on Telegram that more details of Friday’s missile attack would be communicated “when possible.”
Ukraine’s intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov told U.S. broadcaster Voice of America that at least nine people were killed and another 16 were injured in Friday’s attack.
According to Budanov, Russian Colonel-General Alexander Romanchuk was in “very serious condition,” while chief of staff Lieutenant General Oleg Tsekov was unconscious, Voice of America reported. Budanov didn’t, however, confirm reports that the Black Sea Admiral Viktor Sokolov had been killed in the attack, the broadcaster said. The claims could not be verified.
Crimea, which extends into the Black Sea, was occupied illegally by Russia in 2014.
The Sevastopol governor confirmed that the fleet’s headquarters had been attacked, according to a message on Telegram Friday.
Russia’s defense ministry initially said one servicemember was killed in the assault on Friday but then changed his status to missing, the Associated Press reported.
The world must learn from the mistakes made after the war in Bosnia to avoid putting Ukrainian victims of rape and conflict-related sexual violence through decades of trauma, a new expert report has warned.
Ukrainian prosecutors and independent investigators from the United Nations and other international organizations have said there is mounting evidence that Russian troops are using rape and sexual violence as part of their campaign of terror in Ukraine – similar to the systematic use of rape by the Bosnian Serb army during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s. Russia has denied the allegations.
The report by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a US-based think tank, is set to be released and discussed in a debate in the UK Parliament on Thursday.
It says that if the world wants to avoid the repeat of the trauma faced by the victims in Bosnia, it needs to focus on the victims first in Ukraine. Many in Bosnia have waited for decades before coming forward and the vast majority of sexual crimes committed there have gone unpunished.
“Rape was one of the main aspects of the war in Bosnia and yet when we look at the Dayton Peace Accords, there were no women around the table, there were no survivors of conflict-related sexual violence,” said Emily Prey, one of the report’s lead authors, referring to the 1995 agreement that ended the Bosnian war.
“They didn’t have a say in the peace (negotiations), and so instead of a real, sustainable, lasting peace, the Dayton Accords actually only froze the conflict,” she told CNN.
Prey said that when considering survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, it is crucial to put aside biases and stigma and make sure everyone who is impacted is included.
“We often think sexual violence is a crime that only happens to women, but it’s a crime that happens to everyone. Women and girls, men, boys, people with diverse gender identities,” Prey said.
“Men who were victims of conflict-related sexual violence in the Bosnian war are only just coming forward to say that they survived this crime, and so they have gone decades without receiving the support that they need. And we’re seeing this in Ukraine as well.”
Prey added that children born of wartime rape are often forgotten as well. Between 2,000 and 4,000 children were born just from the documented cases of wartime rapes in Bosnia, although the real number is likely much higher.
“If we don’t really think about conflict-related sexual violence enough, then we especially don’t think about children born of wartime rape. In Bosnia, they were called the ‘Invisible Children’… and they have been fighting for years to get recognition because they’ve faced barriers and difficulties throughout their lives,” she added.
The report also says it will be crucial for Ukraine’s allies to be ready to prosecute perpetrators on behalf of Ukraine. This can happen either under the UN’s Genocide Convention or in national courts under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows national or international courts to prosecute individuals for crimes against international law committed in other territories.
Prey said a recent case of a Bosnian Serb soldier charged with murder and rape that was transferred from Bosnia to Montenegro, where the accused was living, was a good example of this mechanism working well.
The International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and launched an investigation into alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Several countries including Lithuania, Germany, Sweden, and Spain have all opened their own investigations into alleged Russian atrocities.
However, Prey said these cases could be costly and lengthy, which means there needs to be an extra focus on providing immediate help to the victims, including psychological and social support, free health care and free legal aid.
“They might not see any conclusion to a court case for 10 or 20 years,” she said. “And survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, they deserve more than that. They deserve justice for themselves, accountability, but they also need to live, they need to take care of their families, they need to pay their bills and they need the support for this.”
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy tells special Security Council meeting that the only way to lasting peace is the full withdrawal of Russian troops.
In Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first in-person appearance at a UN Security Council meeting on Moscow’s invasion of his country, he told a special meeting that the Russian veto has rendered the world body “ineffective”.
Zelenskyy said that the United Nations was at a dead end regarding aggressions and suggested Russia be stripped of its veto right as one of five permanent members of the post-World War II Security Council as punishment for attacking Ukraine.
“Everyone in the world can see what exactly makes the UN ineffective. In this seat in the Security Council, which Russia occupies illegally due to behind-the-scenes manipulations after the collapse of the Soviet Union, sit liars whose job it is to justify the aggression and genocide committed by Russia,” he said.
“The veto in the hands of the aggressor is what drove the UN into a dead end. No matter who you are, the existing UN system still makes you less than the veto power that only a few have and that is used by one – Russia – to the detriment of all other UN members,” he said.
“Many years of talks and projects on reforming the UN should become a process of reforming the UN. The use of the veto is what needs reform, and this could be a key reform,” he noted.
He added that the only way to a lasting peace was a full withdrawal of Russian troops and restoration of Kyiv’s control over its territory within the 1991 borders following the fall of the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Russian forces on Wednesday shelled the city of Toretsk in eastern Ukraine, killing four people, the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office has said.
Zelenskyy’s visit to the United Nations coincided with a pivotal moment for Ukraine’s military campaign to eject Russian forces from Ukraine.
‘Stop the war’
Public enthusiasm for the war effort is waning in many NATO countries, Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive has hit stubborn Russian defenses and soon colder, wetter weather will make many rural roads impassable for heavy vehicles.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council on Wednesday that Russia’s war in Ukraine “is aggravating geopolitical tensions and divisions, threatening regional stability, increasing the nuclear threat, and creating deep fissures in our increasingly multipolar world”.
Before the meeting started, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia objected to Zelenskyy addressing the council, which is chaired by Albania for September, before the 15 members.
“I want to assure our Russian colleagues and everyone here that this is not a special operation by the Albanian presidency,” Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama told Nebenzia. “There is a solution for this. If you agree, you stop the war and President Zelenskyy will not take the floor.”
Russia has said it is carrying out a “special military operation” in Ukraine because that country’s ambitions to integrate with the West – including NATO – pose a threat to Russia’s national security.
On Thursday, Zelenskyy heads to Washington to meet with US President Joe Biden, members of Congress and military officials to urge continued support for his country’s war effort.
While a majority in Congress still support supplying military aid to Ukraine, sceptical voices among Republicans are growing louder as the war’s cost rises.
Biden plans to announce a new military aid package during Zelenskyy’s visit. In a speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Biden appealed to world leaders to stand with Ukraine against Russia, saying only Moscow has the power to end the war.
In his Tuesday speech to the United Nations, President Biden argued Russia is counting on the world growing weary of the war and said he supports continuing to back Ukraine. Meanwhile, some congressional Republicans are questioning another $24 billion aid package for Ukraine. CBS News’ Nancy Cordes reports from New York.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly to unite against Russia’s aggression. He warned Moscow is “pushing the world to the final war” and urged action to restrain the Kremlin’s nuclear abilities. Luke Coffey, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, joins CBS News to break down Zelenskyy’s address.
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President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy both spoke at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, urging continued support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Nancy Cordes reports.
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Washington — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington this week comes at a critical juncture for his alliance with the United States as Republican leaders in Congress diverge on how to send more military and humanitarian aid to the country.
President Biden is seeking an additional $24 billion in security and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, in line with his promise to help the country for “as long as it takes” to oust Russia from its borders.
But ratification of Mr. Biden’s request is deeply uncertain thanks to a growing partisan divide in Congress about how to proceed.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has told reporters that he wants more Ukraine aid to be debated on its own merits as a standalone bill, rather than attaching it to other priorities like government funding.
But the Senate has other ideas. Leaders in the chamber would like to combine the Ukraine aid with other priorities, such as a short-term spending bill that will likely be needed to avoid a shutdown at the end of September.
The differing approaches threaten to become a stalemate that could easily delay future rounds of American assistance to Ukraine, raising the stakes for Zelenskyy as he makes his first visit to the United States since his surprise address to Congress at the end of 2022. In that speech, Zelenskyy thanked “every American” for support as then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat of California, and Vice President Kamala Harris dramatically unfurled a Ukrainian flag behind him.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses Congress as Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hold a Ukrainian national flag that Zelensky gave them at the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 21, 2022.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Nine months later, with Republicans now in control of the House majority, there is growing wariness among voters about continued support for Ukraine as Russia turns its invasion into a costly war of attrition. In Congress that skepticism is concentrated among House Republicans, where many share former President Donald Trump’s “America First” approach and want to halt the aid entirely.
The U.S. has approved four rounds of aid to Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion so far, totaling about $113 billion, with some of that money going toward replenishing U.S. military equipment sent to the frontlines. Most members of the House and Senate support the aid, viewing defense of Ukraine and its democracy as a global imperative.
McCarthy has stressed the need for oversight of Ukrainian assistance but has also been critical of Russia, criticizing the country’s “killing of children” in a speech this summer. But he is juggling a desire to help Ukraine with the political realities at home, which include a demand from many in his party to slash government spending.
In some ways, attaching Ukraine aid to other pressing matters could improve the odds of passing it quickly. Some lawmakers will be more inclined to vote for Ukraine assistance if it gets included with say, disaster relief for their home state.
But the maneuver would also deeply divide House Republicans and is sure to inflame critics of McCarthy who are threatening to oust him from the speakership.
“I don’t know why they would want to put that onto a CR,” McCarthy said, using Washington parlance for a short-term continuing resolution that keeps agencies funded. “I think it should be discussed on its own.”
Meanwhile, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has put Ukraine aid at the top of his to-do list, and has been speaking from the Senate floor for weeks about the urgency he sees to act.
He brought in inspectors general last week to brief GOP senators on how U.S. aid is being tracked to address concerns about waste and fraud. And in one of his speeches on the Senate floor, McConnell responded to critics who say that the U.S. has borne too much of the burden on Ukraine by pointing to the assistance also flowing from European nations.
“In fact, when it comes to security assistance to Ukraine as a share of GDP, 14 of our European allies are actually giving more,” McConnell said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and McConnell have called for senators to meet with Zelenskyy on Thursday morning.
GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said he believes aid should be provided as soon as possible, and the legislative vehicle for that is unlikely to be a stand-alone bill.
“I for one think we ought to go ahead and get it done,” Tillis said. “We have to get the Ukraine funding done in a time that doesn’t produce a lapse, at least a perceived lapse, because I think that’s a strategic win for Putin and I don’t ever want Putin to have a strategic win.”
But Republican Rep. Ken Calvert of California warned against adding Ukraine aid to the short-term spending bill. He said the focus needs to be on first passing an overall defense spending bill as well as the other spending bills.
“We can’t divert attention outside of that,” Calvert said. “There’s significant munitions within Ukraine right now I think to get through the end of the year.”
Rep. Mike Garcia, a Republican of California, said he’s not necessarily opposed to more Ukrainian assistance, but he said the average American doesn’t know how the war is going, and the average member of Congress can’t say either.
“Tell us what you’re doing with the money, and let’s have a debate on the floor about this funding and not ramming it down our throats,” Garcia said.
House Republicans hope to bring up for a vote this week a stopgap spending bill that doesn’t include Mr. Biden’s aid package for Ukraine.
“I cannot think of a worse welcome for President Zelenskyy who visits us this week than this House proposal, which ignores Ukraine entirely,” Schumer said.
Still, Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, voiced confidence that Ukraine aid will continue.
“It has to pass. What I hear from our NATO allies … is that if the United States is not in, the whole thing falls apart,” McCaul said.
Actor Sean Penn, the co-director of the new documentary “Superpower,” has personally witnessed the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. He sat down with “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell to discuss the war.
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