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.
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.
Farmers, firefighters, and others joined Union workers as they marched peacefully in protest against the authoritarian regime of President Emmanuel Macron. In addition to protesting the retirement law that the government imposed by dictate, bypassing parliament, the demonstrators called for France to exit the European Union and to end French support for the war in Ukraine. The marchers also condemned police violence, which the Macron regime has escalated against its own people throughout the Spring.
On Saturday, Ukrainian forces aggressively shelled a Russian village in the Bryansk region close to the Ukrainian border, with initial reports indicating that 2 people had been killed in the attack. However, the number of casualties has risen as emergency responders have continued to search the rubble for survivors. According to governor Aleksandr Bogomaz, 4 civilians have been killed, with another two wounded in what he said was “as a result of the actions by Ukrainian nationalists.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the governing African National Congress party has decided that South Africa should exit the International Criminal Court after it issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges last month, accusing him of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children to Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has approved 2 new laws that are designed to remove remnants of Ukraine’s Russian culture and will rename places across the country that carry Russian influence. Local authorities will also be required to “free public space from the symbols of the Russian world.”
Former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is currently Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, told reporters on Tuesday that a ‘quiet partition’ of Ukraine among its neighbors “would be better than Ukraine in NATO or a World War.”
Beijing is backpedaling and referring to comments made by its ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, as personal views after his statements regarding former Soviet states erupted in controversy and fury across Europe and resulted in the summoning of ambassadors.