‘It Was an Honor to Offer Ukraine Our Unwavering Support’ – Ukraine at War Update for Aug. 7

The presumed Democratic nominee for US president, Kamala Harris, selected a Midwestern governor as her running mate on Tuesday. This is likely a good sign for Ukraine and those in America who worry about her opponent’s isolationist tendencies and pro-Kremlin rhetoric.

Harris announced that the vice president candidate on her November ticket would be Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a jovial former high school teacher and football coach from a state with a large Ukrainian diaspora population, who honeymooned in mainland China and has visited President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine.

Unless they have also served in Washington, US governors have no voting record on foreign policy, but they sometimes speak out on such matters. Before becoming a popular second-term governor in Minnesota, Walz served 12 years in the US House of Representatives.

Walz also served for 24 years in the National Guard, specializing in heavy artillery and reaching the rank of command sergeant major, the US Army’s highest rank for enlisted personnel.

Walz met with Zelensky last year and called it “an honor”. While not directly representing US foreign policy, he offered Kyiv “our unwavering support.” He tweeted earlier this year that “Minnesota will continue to support Ukraine as they defend freedom and democracy” and has backed local legislation to divest any state investment in Russia.

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In February, Walz set up an agricultural partnership between Minnesota and the Chernihiv region, which share similar climates and farm produce.

The move by Harris, who is ethnically half Jamaican and half South Asian, to pick a middle-aged white man, has been seen by pundits as a way to pull in more white male voters to the Democratic ticket, especially from the northern Midwest. Walz, however, does not represent any of the nearby “purple” swing states that have been crucial in recent presidential elections: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, especially.

President Joe Biden won all of those “Rust Belt” states in 2020, and needed every one of them to do so, and even his home state of Pennsylvania was a close race. Pennsylvania, with 13 million residents, is the nation’s fifth-largest state by population and carries 19 electoral votes, the same as fourth-placed Illinois.

Harris bypassed Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor Joe Shapiro, once seen as a frontrunner, and Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer who asked not to be considered and took herself out of the running. 

It could be argued that, of all the potential selections for the Democratic vice presidential slot, Walz provided the strongest voice for Ukraine, standing in stark contrast to Republican pick JD Vance, the senator from Ohio who has railed against US support for Ukraine at every turn.

“It was an honor to hear from President Zelensky firsthand and offer him our unwavering support,” Walz said after his April meeting in Kyiv. “Minnesota is a proud home to many Ukrainian families, and we will continue to welcome and support Ukrainian refugees in our state.”

EU defense official asks Germany and others to add Taurus missiles to armament sent to Kyiv

On Tuesday, the head of the European Parliament’s Defense Committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, asked military aid donors to Ukraine to provide Taurus missiles to load onto the freshly provided US-made F-16 fighters.

As relayed by Ukrainian state-owned media outlet Ukrinform, she called on the German government and other EU countries to take further measures to improve the effectiveness of the multirole F-16, some of which have arrived in Ukraine over the past week.

Speaking to Rheinische Post, she said, “All states, not just Germany, must do everything in their power to protect Ukraine and enable it to continue to defend itself. This also includes air defense units and, whether the Chancellery wants to hear it or not, the Taurus cruise missile.”

Berlin has long balked at supplying Ukraine with German Taurus missiles, fearing that the long-range weapons could reach targets well within Russia, leading to further escalation with Germany’s NATO partners. At the same time, Strack-Zimmerman said that the arrival of F-16s in Kyiv was a good sign.

When Strack-Zimmerman served as the chief of the German parliament’s defense committee, she had lobbied legislators to deliver Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz had consistently rejected the proposal, fearing escalation with Germany.

AFU brings raids to areas along Russia’s border

According to reports by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), the Russian Ministry of Defense and Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed on Tuesday that Russian border troops and FSB personnel repelled several raids by Ukrainian forces “equipped with roughly a battalion’s worth of tanks and armored vehicles against Russian positions near Nikolayevo-Darino and Oleshnya (northwest of Sumy City and along the border with the Kursk region)” ISW analysts reported.

Geolocated footage from Tuesday shows damaged and abandoned armored vehicles roughly seven kilometers north of the international border west of Lyubimovka in the Kursk region. (The ISW wrote that it cannot confirm whether these armored vehicles are Russian, Ukrainian, or both.)

Russian bloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked from two directions: from the Sudzha checkpoint (along the H-07/R-200 highways) in the direction of Sudzha and from Novehke, Sumy Oblast (northeast of the Sudzha checkpoint and the Ukrainian city of Sumy) toward Nikolayevo-Darino.

Following Mali’s move, Niger cuts off diplomatic relations with Kyiv

A day after West African neighbor Mali cut off diplomatic ties with Ukraine due to Kyiv’s intelligence services providing rebels with important information that led to embarrassing defeats, Niger said Tuesday it would do the same, “with immediate effect.”

Niger, similarly controlled by a Kremlin-backed military dictatorship, accused Kyiv of supporting “terrorist groups,” using the same language as Mali’s colonels, who were humiliated by rebel defeats fueled by Kyiv’s intel.

According to AFP, Niger said it would ask the UN Security Council to debate Ukraine’s “aggression,” government spokesperson Amadou Abdramane said in a televised statement. Niger and Mali are both run by military governments that took power in recent coups.