Ukraine’s president on Thursday wrapped up his US public relations blitz for military support and for his 10-point peace plan with meetings on Capitol Hill, at the Pentagon, and in the Oval Office with President Joe Biden. VOA’s Anita Powell looks at the diplomatic, performative aspect of the Ukraine conflict from the stage that is the White House.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was greeted by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa late Thursday after a whirlwind visit to Washington.
Zelenskyy will address Canada’s Parliament on Friday, his first time speaking to the assembly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau are also scheduled to sign an agreement designed to strengthen economic ties between the two countries.
Trudeau said in a statement before the Ukrainian leader’s arrival, “Canada remains unwavering in our support to the people of Ukraine as they fight for their sovereignty and their democracy, as well as our shared values, like respect for the rule of law, freedom, and self-determination.”
The two leaders will also travel to Toronto, where they will meet with Canadians, including business leaders and members of the Ukrainian-Canadian community.
Zelenskyy swept through Washington in a diplomatic blitz Thursday, winning a pledge of continued support from President Joe Biden and delivering a bold message: Without another tranche of U.S. funding to combat Russian aggression, Ukraine will lose the war.
“The United States is going to continue to stand with you,” Biden told Zelenskyy at the White House.
Biden on Thursday released another $325 million for weapons for Ukraine, which did not include the long-range missiles Ukraine has asked for.
“Today I’m in Washington to strengthen our position, to defend Ukraine, our children, our families and our homes, freedom and democracy in the world,” Zelenskyy said, seated in the Oval Office in his signature green fatigues. “And I started my day in the U.S. Congress to thank the members and the people of America for that big, huge support.”
Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy met with legislators on Capitol Hill to appeal for $24 billion in supplemental funding the White House requested earlier this year. There is growing Republican concern about providing U.S. aid to Ukraine, combined with broader difficulties passing either a short-term continuing resolution or a full 2024 budget funding the U.S. government past a Sept. 30 deadline.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer summed up the meeting with Zelenskyy, telling the members, “if we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war.”
Later, in a statement, Schumer emphasized the danger of not passing the supplemental funding request, saying, “It is very clear that if we were to have a government shutdown, or pass a CR [continuing resolution] without Ukrainian aid, the damage that would occur on Ukraine’s campaign would be devastating.”
The United Nations estimates that at least 27,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the 19-month conflict, including about 600 children but its human rights commission, which conducts such counts, “believes that the actual figures are considerably higher.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a major supporter in the Senate of U.S. aid to Ukraine, was tight-lipped afterward, telling reporters only that it was “a good meeting.”
On Wednesday, McConnell applauded the appointment of an inspector general for the oversight of Ukraine aid.
“Thanks in large part to the requirements Senate Republicans have attached to our aid since the beginning of Russia’s escalation, the United States has unprecedented visibility into how Ukraine is using American weapons,” McConnell said in a statement.
Zelenskyy also met with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Thursday ahead of a Pentagon announcement of a new security package of more air defense and artillery capabilities for Ukraine.
Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters Thursday “everything is on schedule” for the delivery of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. He added that if there is a government shutdown, F-16 aircraft training in the U.S. for Ukrainian pilots would still take place.
From the beginning of hostilities in February 2022 to May of this year, the U.S. has provided more than $76.8 billion in assistance, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The share of Americans who say the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine has steadily increased since the start of the war, according to a June Pew Research Center survey.
Just 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said the amount of U.S. aid to Ukraine was excessive, but more than 44% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said the amount of aid was too high. One-third of all Americans told Pew that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a threat to U.S. interests.
On the House side of the U.S. Capitol, where concerns are growing in the Republican majority about continuing U.S. aid to Ukraine, the reception for Zelenskyy was far more muted. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with the Ukrainian president behind closed doors, but the speaker’s office did not release any photographs of the meeting.
“It was a very candid, open, forward-looking discussion,” Jeffries said in his weekly press conference Thursday.
Jeffries said the war between Ukraine and Russia is “a struggle on the global stage between democracy and autocracy, between freedom and tyranny, between truth and propaganda, between good and evil.”
More conservative members of the Republican majority have objected to passing the Ukraine supplemental request along with funding for the U.S. government.
In an opinion piece published earlier this week by the Fox News network, Republican Representative Mike Waltz wrote that “while most Americans are sympathetic to Ukraine and understand that Russian President Vladimir Putin must be prevented from his goal of recreating the old Soviet Union, President Joe Biden has not been a good-faith partner. The Biden administration has neither explained the American objective in Ukraine nor his strategy to achieve it.”
Waltz went on to call for greater sharing of the burden of aid to Ukraine by European countries and said, “The United States must invest its savings in its own security. It should match the dollar value of any aid it gives to Ukraine with securing our southern border.”
According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the U.S. is in the top tier of countries providing aid to Ukraine, giving between 0.25% and 0.45% of its annual gross domestic product to aiding Ukraine, while Scandinavian countries such as Sweden provide slightly more, at 0.75%.
Most Republicans recognize the need for more aid.
“They need it and they’re going to get it,” Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters after Zelenskyy’s meeting Thursday morning with lawmakers.
“The majority support this. I know there’s some dissension on both sides, but as I said, war of attrition is not going to win. That’s what Putin wants because he wants to break the will of the American people and the Europeans. We can’t afford a war of attrition. We need a plan for victory.”
McCaul went on to say that lawmakers pressed Zelenskyy on several issues, including “accountability, speed of weapons [delivery] and a plan for victory.”
But after a full day of meetings, Biden and Zelenskyy took to the the White House in what appeared to be a visceral appeal to the public.
“The people of Ukraine have shown enormous bravery and enormous bravery has inspired the world, really inspired the world with their determination to defend these principles,” Biden said. “And together with our partners and allies, the American people are determined to see to it that we do all we can to ensure the world stands with you.”
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A Russian attack on a town west of Donetsk close to Ukraine’s eastern front injured 13 people, a local official said early Friday in Ukraine.
Two airstrikes on the town caused a fire, Roman Padun, administrative head of the town of Kurakhove, told public broadcaster Suspilne.
On Thursday, the Ukrainian military said its forces had hit a Russian air base in Crimea, which a Russian-installed official on the annexed peninsula disputed.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said Thursday that Russian forces carried out aerial attacks on multiple cities overnight, killing at least two people.
Ukraine’s military described the Russian action as a “massive missile attack on the civilian infrastructure of a number of regions.”
Oleksandr Prokudin, the regional governor of Kherson, said a Russian strike hit a residential building, killing two people and injuring five others.
Sergiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said on Telegram that debris fell on the Ukrainian capital after air defenses shot down Russian missiles.
Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said seven people were injured and several buildings were damaged.
In northeastern Ukraine, the regional governor of Kharkiv, Oleh Syniehubov, said at least six Russian strikes hit the city of Kharkiv and damaged civilian infrastructure.
Russia said Thursday it destroyed 19 Ukrainian drones over the annexed Crimean Peninsula and nearby Black Sea.
The Russian defense ministry said it also downed three Ukrainian drones over the Kursk, Belgorod and Orlov regions of Russia.
Poland aid
Poland said Thursday it will only supply Ukraine with previously agreed to deliveries of ammunition and armaments.
The statement from a government spokesman came a day after Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced an end to weapons transfers to Ukraine as Poland works to arm itself “with the most modern weapons.”
There have been tensions between Poland and Ukraine since Poland instituted a temporary ban on imports of grain from Ukraine to protect Polish farmers.
Ukraine on Thursday pushed for a deal with Poland to end the grain restrictions.
“There is no person in Ukraine who would be interested in creating any problems for Polish farmers,” Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Zvarych, told Poland’s state-run news agency PAP.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an urgent plea Thursday to U.S. lawmakers on Capitol Hill, telling them that without a new tranche of funding to combat Russian aggression, Ukraine will lose the war.
The White House requested $24 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine earlier this year. But there is growing Republican concern about providing U.S. aid to Ukraine, combined with broader difficulties passing either a short-term continuing resolution or a full 2024 budget funding the U.S. government past a September 30 deadline.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer summed up the meeting with Zelenskyy, telling the members, “If we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war.”
Later in a statement, Schumer emphasized the danger of not passing the supplemental funding request, saying, “It is very clear that if we were to have a government shutdown, or pass a CR without Ukrainian aid, the damage that would occur on Ukraine’s campaign would be devastating.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a major supporter of U.S. aid to Ukraine in the Senate, was tight-lipped afterwards, only telling reporters it was “a good meeting.”
On Wednesday, McConnell applauded the appointment of an inspector general for the oversight of Ukraine aid.
“Thanks in large part to the requirements Senate Republicans have attached to our aid since the beginning of Russia’s escalation, the United States has unprecedented visibility into how Ukraine is using American weapons,” McConnell said in a statement.
Zelenskyy also met with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Thursday ahead of a Pentagon announcement of a new security package of more air defense and artillery capabilities for Ukraine.
Pentagon press secretary, Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, told reporters Thursday that “everything is on schedule” with the delivery of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine and that if there is a government shutdown, F-16 training in the U.S. for Ukrainian pilots would still take place.
From the beginning of hostilities in February 2022 to May 2023, the U.S. has provided more than $76.8 billion in assistance, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The share of Americans who say the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine has steadily increased since the start of the war in February 2022, according to a June 2023 Pew Research Center survey.
Just 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said the amount of U.S. aid to Ukraine was excessive but more than 44% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said the amount of aid was too high. One-third of all Americans told Pew that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a threat to U.S. interests.
On the House side of the U.S. Capitol, where concerns are growing in the Republican majority about continuing U.S. aid to Ukraine, the reception for Zelenskyy was far more muted. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with the Ukrainian president behind closed doors, but the speaker’s office did not release any photographs of the meeting.
“It was a very candid, open, forward-looking discussion,” Jeffries said in his weekly press conference Thursday.
Jeffries said the war between Ukraine and Russia is “a struggle on the global stage between democracy and autocracy, between freedom and tyranny, between truth and propaganda, between good and evil.”
More-conservative members of the Republican majority have objected to passing the Ukraine supplemental request along with funding for the U.S. government.
In an opinion piece published earlier this week by news network Fox, Republican Representative Mike Waltz wrote that “while most Americans are sympathetic to Ukraine and understand that Russian President Vladimir Putin must be prevented from his goal of recreating the old Soviet Union, President Joe Biden has not been a good-faith partner. The Biden administration has neither explained the American objective in Ukraine nor his strategy to achieve it.”
Waltz went on to call for greater burden sharing of aid to Ukraine by European countries and said “the United States must invest its savings in its own security. It should match the dollar value of any aid it gives to Ukraine with securing our southern border.”
According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the U.S. is in the top tier of countries providing aid to Ukraine, giving from 0.25% to 0.45% of its annual gross domestic product to aiding Ukraine, while Scandinavian countries such as Sweden provide slightly more at 0.75%.
But most Republicans recognize the need to include more aid.
“They need it and they’re going to get it,” Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters after Zelenskyy’s meeting Thursday morning with lawmakers.
“The majority support this. I know there’s some dissension on both sides, but as I said, war of attrition is not going to win. That’s what Putin wants because he wants to break the will of the American people and the Europeans. We can’t afford a war of attrition. We need a plan for victory.”
McCaul went on to say that lawmakers pressed Zelenskyy on several issues, including “accountability, speed of weapons [delivery] and a plan for victory.”
Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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Washington said Thursday that Poland remained a close ally of Ukraine, after Warsaw said it would no longer provide Kyiv with weapons amid an escalating dispute over food imports.
At a press briefing Thursday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan played down the dispute.
“When I read the headlines this morning, I was of course concerned and had questions. But I’ve subsequently seen the Polish government spokesman come out to clarify that in fact Poland’s provision of equipment, including things like Polish-manufactured Howitzers, is continuing and that Poland continues to stand behind Ukraine,” Sullivan said.
Weapons transfers
Questioned about his country’s support for Kyiv on Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that no new weapons would be sent to Ukraine.
“We are no longer transferring any weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming ourselves with the most modern weapons,” he told Poland’s Polsat News.
Warsaw later clarified that it was continuing to supply arms and ammunition that were part of previously agreed upon deliveries.
Poland has until now been one of Ukraine’s closest allies since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. The country has taken in an estimated 1.6 million refugees and has provided Kyiv with significant military support, including German-made Leopard 2 and Soviet-era T-72 tanks, along with MiG-29 fighter jets.
“Poland has been one of the biggest supporters of Ukraine in terms of generating support to give the more risky weapon platforms — pushing the Germans and saying it was going to give tanks to sort of push the Germans and the U.K., and a similar way with fighter jets,” said Patrick Bury, a security analyst at Britain’s University of Bath.
Escalation
The timing and tone of Morawiecki’s words surprised many of Poland’s allies, said Marcin Zaborowski, policy director of the Future of Security Program at GLOBSEC, a Bratislava research group.
“I see a high level of escalation. The statement about stopping to send new arms to Ukraine was, in my opinion, completely unnecessary, and it echoed in a very negative way in the world,” Zaborowski told Reuters, adding that Polish elections set for October 15 were exacerbating the tensions.
“What an average Ukrainian citizen would hear is that Poles stop helping. Of course, there is hope that this rhetoric will be reversed after the elections, but some kind of capital of common trust, which has been built in the recent months, will be seriously tarnished.”
Grain imports
The dispute began after Poland, Hungary and Slovakia imposed unilateral bans on the import of some Ukrainian food products last week, after temporary European Union restrictions expired.
European states bordering Ukraine have provided a key alternative route to global markets for Ukraine, as Russia’s invasion cut off many routes through the Black Sea. However, several neighboring states claimed the Ukrainian imports were not transiting through Europe but were instead being sold on local markets and undercutting their own farmers.
Ukraine immediately lodged a complaint at the World Trade Organization. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told delegates at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that it was “alarming to see how some in Europe … are helping set the stage for a Moscow actor.”
Ambassador summoned
Poland summoned the Ukrainian ambassador following Zelenskyy’s comments. Polish President Andrzej Duda likened Ukraine to a drowning man.
“Of course, we have to act in a way to protect ourselves from being harmed by the drowning one, because once the drowning man hurts us, it will not get help from us,” Duda told reporters Tuesday.
Both sides appeared to try to de-escalate the dispute Thursday. Ukraine’s agriculture minister said he had agreed with his Polish counterpart to work out a solution to the trade dispute. Kyiv also agreed to license its grain exports to Slovakia.
Russia likely sees splits in Western unity, Bury said.
“It’s not a good look, and of course that is how Russia will view it. Now the question is, do we give them any more evidence of it, or is that just a line drawn under it?” he told VOA.
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British prosecutors said on Thursday they had authorized charges to be brought against five Bulgarian nationals accused of spying for Russia for almost three years.
The three men and two women are accused of “conspiring to collect information intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy” between Aug. 30, 2020 and Feb. 8, 2023, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.
The alleged spies were named as Orlin Roussev, 45, Bizer Dzhambazov, 41, Katrin Ivanova, 31, Ivan Stoyanov, 31, and Vanya Gaberova, 29, all Bulgarian nationals who lived in London and Norfolk.
They are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Sept. 26.
“The charges follow an investigation by the Metropolitan Police,” said Nick Price, head of the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division. “Criminal proceedings against the five individuals are active and they each have the right to a fair trial.”
Roussev, Dzhambazov, and Ivanova had already been charged in February with identity document offenses, the CPS said.
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The Bank of England has paused nearly two years of interest rate increases after a surprising fall in U.K. inflation eased concerns about the pace of price rises.
In a development Thursday that few predicted just two days ago, the central bank kept its main interest rate unchanged at a 15-year high of 5.25%. It comes to the relief of millions of homeowners who are facing higher mortgage rates.
The decision was split, with four of the nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee voting for a hike.
Central banks worldwide appear to be near the end of an aggressive rate-hiking cycle meant to curb an outburst of inflation triggered by the bounceback from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The U.S. Federal Reserve left rates unchanged Wednesday.
Clearly influencing the bank’s decision was news Wednesday that inflation unexpectedly fell to 6.7% in August, its lowest level since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Inflation, however, is still way above the bank’s target rate of 2% and higher than in any other Group of Seven major economy.
Higher interest rates, which cool the economy by making it more expensive to borrow, have contributed to bringing down inflation worldwide.
But for many homeowners, the pain has yet to hit. Unlike in the U.S., for example, most homeowners in Britain lock in mortgage rates for only a few years, so those whose deals expire soon know that they face much higher borrowing costs in light of the sharp rise in interest rates over the past couple of years.
Like other central banks around the world, the Bank of England has raised interest rates aggressively from near zero as it sought to counter price rises first stoked by supply chain issues during the coronavirus pandemic and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which pushed up food and energy costs. U.K. inflation hit a peak of 11.1% in October 2022.
As inflation has eased, the hiking cycle looks to be nearing an end.
The Swiss National Bank joined the Fed in holding rates steady on Thursday, but in a busy day for central bank action in Europe, Sweden’s and Norway’s central banks pushed ahead with quarter-point hikes.
The European Central Bank, which sets interest rates for the 20 European Union countries that use the euro currency, last week hinted that its 10th straight hike could be its last.
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Representatives for ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh met Thursday with the Azerbaijan government to discuss the future of the breakaway region.
The talks in Yevlakh, Azerbaijan come a day after local fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh agreed to lay down their arms to end an offensive by Azerbaijan’s forces.
The U.N. Security Council is due to hold its own talks Thursday about the situation.
Gunfire was reported Thursday in the main city in Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenians call Stepanakert and Azeris call Khankendi. Ethnic Armenians accused Azerbaijan of violating the cease-fire, which Azerbaijan’s defense ministry denied.
Russia, which has peacekeepers in the region, said Thursday it had evacuated 5,000 civilians from the area.
Thousands of protesters gathered Wednesday in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, to call on the government to protect Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to resign.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev used a televised address Wednesday to claim victory, saying Azerbaijan had restored the region’s sovereignty.
Azerbaijan said it launched its operation Tuesday in response to landmine explosions that killed four soldiers and two civilians in the region.
The Nagorno-Karabakh region is entirely within Azerbaijan but is populated largely by ethnic Armenians and had been under ethnic Armenian control since 1994. Parts of it were reclaimed by Azerbaijan after a war in 2020.
Some information for this story provided by the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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