President Joe Biden on Thursday asked Congress to approve $33 billion in security, economic and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, the latest move suggesting the US would provide long-term support to the country.
Within the past weekUS diplomats have begun returning to Ukraine, Biden nominated the first US ambassador to Ukraine in three years, and two high-ranking officials visited Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the first time since Russia’s invasion: all signs of continued and sustained American assistance to Ukraine.
The funding request, if approved, would more than double the $13.6 billion package of defense and economic aid for Ukraine and Western allies that Congress passed last month. Biden has nearly exhausted that aid.
“The cost of this fight is not cheap, but caving to aggression is going to be more costly if we let it happen,” Biden said in remarks from the White House. “We either back the Ukrainian people as they defend their country, or we stand by as the Russians continue their atrocities and aggressions in Ukraine.”
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Latest developments:
►At least one person was killed and several were injured Thursday evening when Russian missiles struck Kyiv, shortly after a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
►Ukrainian prosecutor on Thursday identified 10 Russian soldiers she accused of atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, one of the war’s major flashpoints that helped galvanize Western support of Ukraine.
Russia is using dolphins to protect naval base, satellite photos suggest
Russia has placed trained dolphins at the entrance to a key Black Sea port to help protect a Kremlin naval base there, suggest satellite photos analyzed by a naval analyst.
Around the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two pens of dolphins were placed at the entrance to Sevastopol harbor, the most significant naval base in the Black Sea, according to the imagery.
The dolphins could be trained to perform tasks such as preventing divers from infiltrating a military base undetected. Both the US and Russian military have trained marine mammals to complete such tasks.
“This could prevent Ukrainian special operations forces from infiltrating the harbor underwater to sabotage warships,” HI Sutton, a submarine analyst wrote in an article published by the US Naval Institute on Wednesday.
— Maria Jimenez Moya
As horror unfolds in Ukraine, most of the world isn’t punishing Putin
the horrors of war are rampant in Ukraine, and the US and its allies say Moscow needs to pay. But most of the world isn’t joining the plan to punish Putin.
When global leaders voted in early April to punish Russia for human rights violations in Ukraine, diplomats representing the majority of the world’s population either sided with Moscow or refused to choose a side.
According to a USA TODAY analysis of the vote, about three-quarters of the global population lives in a country that did not support the US-initiated measure that suspended Russia from a top human rights group. Each country received one vote, regardless of its population, land mass or wealth. Read more here.
—Joel Shannon
Contributing: The Associated Press
www.usatoday.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism