Ukraine updates: UK pledges largest military aid to Kyiv

The European Parliament has voted for a one-year extension of duty-free trade for Ukrainian agricultural products. At the same time, new import limits were introduced to appease protesting EU farmers.

The lawmakers voted 428 to 131 with 44 abstentions in favor of the extension, which will take effect on June 6 after clearing the final procedural hurdle.

The tariff liberalization, which will take effect from June 2022, is intended to help keep Ukraine's economy afloat as it battles Russia's full-scale invasion.

The curbs mean Ukraine will earn €331 million ($353.2 million) less from exports to the EU than in 2023, compared with €240 million in an initial European Commission proposal, according to EU diplomats.

The volume of Russian assets that were frozen in Switzerland as a result of sanctions imposed after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine has shrunk, according to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). 

The value of the assets fell from 7.5 billion Swiss francs (€7.7 billion or $8.2 billion) to 5.8 billion Swiss francs at the end of 2023.

SECO said most of the reduction was because previously frozen assets were now worth less.

Switzerland has been criticized because experts suspect that much more money is held there by Russian oligarchs close to the government in Moscow. 

The country has however adopted all of the European Union's sanctions packages.despite its neutrality.

 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a 500 million pounds (almost €580 million) military aid package to Ukraine, the largest ever from the United Kingdom.

The package includes 400 military vehicles, 60 boats, 1,600 munitions, and 4 million rounds of ammunition at a time when Ukraine is struggling to hold off advancing Russian forces.

Sunak also announced the UK will raise defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030, investing an extra 75 billion pounds in defense over the next six years. It is well above NATO's target of spending 2% of GDP on defense.

"In a world that is the most dangerous it has been since the end of the Cold War, we cannot be complacent," Sunak told reporters in Warsaw.

The prime minister met NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw to talk about Ukraine and the security situation in Europe. 

He added that he would put the British defense industry on a war footing, announcing 10 billion pounds of extra long-term funding for munitions in light of the war in Ukraine.

"We will put the UK's own defence industry on a war footing. One of the central lessons of the war in Ukraine is that we need deeper stockpiles of munitions and for industry to be able to replenish them more quickly," Sunak said.

Russian drone and rocket attacks on Ukraine injured more than a dozen people on Tuesday, according to Ukrainian officials.

Nine people, including four children, were wounded by falling debris from an overnight drone strike in the southern city of Odesa, emergency services said. Two of the four children injured there were under a year old.

The emergency services posted photos and videos showing a building in flames, rescuers sifting through the rubble and comforting residents.

The Black Sea port city has been targeted by Russian rocket and drone attacks since the start of the two-year war.

Later in the day, a rocket attack on the Dnipropetrovsk region injured four people, Governor Sergiy Kysak said in a post on Telegram.

Another person was injured by falling drone debris in the Mykolaiv region, the governor said.

The air force said it shot down 15 or 16 Russian drones fired into Ukrainian territory overnight. 

Ukraine's government says that it will soon provide an explanation on future consular treatment for male citizens of military age.

The statement comes following Ukrainian media reports that consular services will be suspended for men between the ages of 18 and 60, except in the cases related to citizens returning to Ukraine.

"How it looks like now: a man of conscription age went abroad, showed his state that he does not care about its survival, and then comes and wants to receive services from this state," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"It does not work this way. Our country is at war."

"Staying abroad does not relieve a citizen of his or her duties to the homeland. That is why yesterday I ordered measures to restore fair attitudes toward men of conscription age in Ukraine and abroad. This will be fair," the minister stressed.

Ukraine's Dzerkalo Tyzhnia weekly newspaper reported on Monday that it had seen a document signed by Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga that ordered the "temporary suspension of consular activity for applications by Ukrainian citizens of male gender between the age of 18 and 60" starting from April 23.

Ukrainian officials have long pointed to the need to draft additional troops.

Earlier this month, Ukraine's parliament adopted new legislation lowering the age of conscription from 27 to 25 and tightening penalties for draft evasion.

The speaker of the Russian upper house of parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, has warned that Moscow has prepared a response if Western countries go ahead with plans to seize nearly $300 billion (€280.9 billion) in frozen Russian assets and repurpose it for Ukraine aid.

"We also have a prepared answer," state news agency RIA cited the Federation Council speaker as saying.

"We have a draft law, which we are ready to consider immediately, on retaliatory measures," she said.

"The Europeans will lose more than we do," Matviyenko declared.

Matviyenko is a member of Russia's Security Council made up of top officials that advise President Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky as been named as a suspect in investigations into corruption, according to Ukrainian media.

It comes after the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine said that it had uncovered a scheme led by a current minister by a current minister to illegally acquire state-owned land worth the equivalent of $7.35 million (€6.8 million). The statement did not name Solsky.

If confirmed, Solsky would be the first government minister under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to be named as a suspect in a corruption case.

Solsky served as the chairman of the parliamentary agrarian committee before becoming agriculture minister in March 2022.

Ukraine's grain industry has grappled with a Russian blockade and opposition to imports from farmers in some EU countries.

The governor of Russia's western Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, says that 120 civilians have been killed in Ukrainian strikes since the start of the war Kyiv in February 2022.

651 people have been injured, he said.

Belgorod borders the northeastern Kharkiv and Sumy regions of Ukraine, as well as the eastern Luhansk region, which is largely under Russian occupation.

Ukraine has repeatedly hit the Belgorod region with artillery and drone attacks over the past year. The area has also been attacked by pro-Kyiv militias.

"The situation is extremely difficult. The attacks continue. People continue to die," Gladkov said in a video message on the Telegram messaging service.

China has criticized the US for allegations Beijing is supporting Russia's war in Ukraine.

"The United States has unveiled a large-scale aid bill for Ukraine while also making groundless accusations against normal trade between China and Russia," foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said.

"This kind of approach is extremely hypocritical and utterly irresponsible, and China is firmly opposed to it," he said.

China and Russia have intensified economic cooperation in recent years.

While Beijing has not provided Russia with direct military assistance, the US says China has provided dual-use equipment that has allowed Moscow's forces to regroup.

The statement comes after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused China of helping Russia ramp up its defense industry.

"When it comes to Russia's defense industrial base, the primary contributor in this moment to that is China," Blinken said after a meeting of ministers of the G7 group of countries in Capri, Italy.

He said that this support was "allowing Russia to continue the aggression of Ukraine."

A Russian airstrike on the southwestern Ukrainian port city of Odesa has injured nine people, according to Ukrainian officials.

Four of those injured were children.

Ukrainian emergency services said that residential buildings were damaged in the strike.

Army command for southern Ukraine said that a Russian drone that had been shot down by Ukrainian air defenses was the cause of the damage.

The Ukrainian air force said it downed 15 out of 16 Russian drones overnight.

Another man was injured by falling debris in the southern Mykolaiv region, Governor Vitaliy Kim said.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is expected to pledge a record package of military aid for Ukraine, in another boost toward Kyiv's efforts to defend itself against Russia.

Sunak is traveling to Warsaw and Berlin to meet the leaders of Poland, Germany and NATO.

There, he will announce £500 million ($617 million/€579.4 million) in extra military funding and the UK's largest ever donation of key equipment.

The announcement comes with a warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin "will not stop at the Polish border" if his assault on Ukraine is not foiled, Sunak said in a statement.  

The British prime minister will first stop in Ukraine-neighboring Poland, where he will meet with new Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. Sunak will then travel to Germany for a one-on-one meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday. 

The US Senate is set to vote on a major aid package for Ukraine.

Its passage is highly likely after the House of Representatives approved the assistance with broad bipartisan support, albeit after months of wrangling.

The package outlines a massive $95 billion (€89 billion) in total military assistance to US allies. Of this, $61 billion (€57.2 billion) has been earmarked for Ukraine. The bill is expected to land on President Joe Biden's desk by the end of the week. 

In a phone call on Monday, Biden vowed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Kyiv could expect the assistance to arrive "quickly." 

Zelenskyy later said he was counting on the speedy delivery of a "powerful" aid shipment to strengthen Ukraine's air defense as well as "long-range and artillery capabilities."

Ukraine's military is facing a shortage of weapons and new recruits as Moscow exerts constant pressure from the east.

Western military experts expect an increase in attacks from Russia. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said it expected a spike in Russian missile and drone attacks after the US House of Representatives approved more aid for Ukraine. 

Ukraine is scrambling to strengthen both its northern border with Russia and Belarus and its front-line defenses in the east and south ahead of a looming Russian summer offensive. In this video report, DW's Anna Pshemyska went to look at the new fortifications in the north.

Without US support, Ukraine's defenses would crumble. The situation on Ukraine's front line is dramatic, an artillery officer told DW.  

mk,dh/fb,lo (AFP, AP, Reuters)