U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has transferred seized assets from a sanctioned Russian oligarch to Ukraine to assist with rebuilding the war-ravaged country. The transfer occurred earlier this year and while it is the first of its kind, Garland has confirmed that more will be coming.
During Moscow’s annual Victory Day celebration in the Red Square on Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia fully supports its military and said that the country is facing a “real war.”
In an interview with Spain’s El Pais, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres discussed his opinions regarding the war in Ukraine and said, “I believe that peace negotiations are not possible at this time,” as “both parties are convinced that they can win.”
On Friday, a NATO official announced that a Polish jet patrolling over the Black Sea near Romania on behalf of Frontex, the EU’s border agency, had a concerning encounter with a Russian aircraft.
Tensions rose this past week between Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, Russia’s paramilitary group, and Russian officials when the Wagner chief threatened to pull his forces out of Bakhmut if the Russian Defense Ministry didn’t provide the organization with the necessary arms to continue the offensive. Wagner and Russian troops control 90 percent of the destroyed city.
The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, has been sending teams of executives to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since September, and in December, CEO Larry Fink and Zelenksy reached a tentative agreement via phone to coordinate large-scale reconstruction investment for the war-torn country.
This week, the White House released the details of its latest $300 million defense aid package for Ukraine, which will be pulled from already existing, although dwindling, Pentagon stockpiles. This package includes the Hydra-70 rocket for the first time. The rockets are unguided missiles that are usually air-to-ground and fired from an aircraft.
After numerous drone strikes over the past 24 hours on Russian soil, including an attack on the Kremlin, several Russian cities have decided to cancel their upcoming May 9 Victory Day parades – a celebration that commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
In the early hours of May 3, two purportedly Ukrainian drones struck the dome of the Kremlin’s Senate building which overlooks the Red Square. According to the Kremlin’s Spassky Tower which can be seen in the foreground of emerging social media videos of the attacks, the first drone struck at 2:27 a.m. with the second hitting at 2:43 a.m. While one drone appears to be destroyed in a cloud of smoke, the second one can be seen bursting into flames above the dome. Russian officials immediately alleged that Ukraine was behind the attacks and claimed that the incident was a failed assassination attempt on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A string of Russian freight train derailments near the Ukrainian border in recent days appears to be indicative that what have previously been irregular sabotage attempts are increasing as the anticipated Ukrainian spring counteroffensive stalls.