Ukraine Breaking News Today Live on 05-21-2024

Germany’s 2022 proposal for the European Sky Shield Initiative, the continent’s version of Israel’s Iron Dome, finally looks set to be revealed according to Donald Tusk.

Germany’s Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht announced at the NATO Ministers’ meeting in October 2022 that Berlin was to lead a 15-nation consortium to develop and eventually deploy the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) - a continent-wide, integrated air and missile defense system through the common acquisition of the necessary equipment, missiles and logistic infrastructure.

In his wide-ranging interview with Poland’s AVN24 on Monday, May 20, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the, now 21, members of ESSI were ready to present the €4 billion ($4.4 billion) proposal to the European Council and the Commission “in a few days.”

Moldova, sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, has angered former Soviet-era master Russia by pushing to join the EU in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The European Union on Tuesday signed a security and defense pact with Moldova to help the pro-Western country boost its ability to tackle threats from Russia. 

“Today Moldova has become the first country to sign a security and defense partnership with the European Union,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said at a meeting with Moldova's prime minister. 

EU gives the go-ahead to support Ukraine’s military self-defense and reconstruction from seized Russian assets.

The European Union on Tuesday formally approved using the profits from frozen Russian central bank assets to arm Ukraine, as the United States presses for a more ambitious plan.

The EU hopes the move will generate some €3 billion ($3.3 billion) a year to help Kyiv as it battles against Moscow's invasion.

On the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

On May 19, a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian crashed in the province of East Azerbaijan. Both men were pronounced dead after wreckage from the crash was spotted by a Turkish UAV.

Observers should view Raisi as the personification of the most conservative and hardline aspects of modern Iran. While serving as Deputy Prosecutor General in the 1980s, Raisi approved the execution of thousands of Iranian political prisoners. This led to him being granted the nickname “the Butcher of Tehran.”

The “Barns” are tanks covered in additional improvised armor to protect them from direct attack by drones, but as Ukraine adapts its tactics and technology their days are numbered.

Since early April, Russian forces have stepped up the use of so-called “barn tanks” – tanks covered in metal armored boxes to protect them from drone strikes, with an increasing range of new designs appearing on the front line.

In discussion with Kyiv Post, Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate (HUR), said that the systematic use of such tanks, which have also been called turtles, has been noticed during the latest Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region and near the town of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region, where fierce fighting is ongoing.

Washington’s policy on not allowing Ukraine to use US-made weapons to attack military targets on Russian territory is now jeopardizing all the aid given to date.

“This is insane.” Davyd Arakhamiya, a member of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, forcefully said out loud what most military experts and analysts have long thought – and we have argued repeatedly here in Kyiv Post and in Washington.

Arakhamiya, leading a Ukrainian delegation to Washington, DC last week to meet with Biden administration officials, rightly railed against the Pentagon prohibition against using weapons and munitions provided by the United States to target Russian forces and their equipment massing in assembly areas inside of Russia.

NBU pauses hryvnia devaluation

Last week, investors' interest in UAH bonds with longer maturities sharply increased as they tried to lock in current YTMs for longer. Taking advantage of high demand, the Ministry of Finance continued to lower interest rates on UAH instruments.

In the primary bond market, the MoF offered the usual maturities of UAH bonds (one-, two- and three-year securities) and a 12-month EUR-denominated paper. Demand for one-year bills was below the supply cap, while demand for three-year bills was four times larger than the cap. Such oversubscription allowed the MoF to lower rates on three-year notes by 30bp to 17.2%. See details in the auction review.

Ukraine’s largest cable internet company is investing another $25 million to protect its systems from cyber-attacks, replace copper cables with fiber optics and build new networks.

Ukrtelecom says it plans to build 8,300 kilometers of fiber-optic cables, in addition to to 11,000 kilometers of the cables already laid. The cost is estimated to be around Hr.1 billion ($25 million), according to the company’s public press release.

The business that is owned by Ukraine’s richest man, SCM Holdings owner Rinat Akhmetov, became popular after the first wave of blackouts in Ukraine in autumn 2023.

Moscow-friendly Bucharest may not approve.

Several EU countries on Tuesday called for the bloc to start membership negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova in June, but Hungary threatened to throw a wrench in the works.

The 27-nation EU took the landmark step in December of agreeing to open talks on its war-torn neighbor – and fellow ex-Soviet state Moldova – joining the club.

The Russians may launch an offensive in this sector to distract Ukrainian forces from other areas of the front.

An assault by Russian forces on the Sumy region should not be ruled out, Ukraine’s Border Guard spokesperson Andriy Demchenko said.

“The enemy can at any moment, even if he does not have sufficient forces, try to do something similar to what is currently happening in the Kharkiv region,” he told Radio Svoboda.

Thousands of people who survived the bombing of their villages and cities have managed to escape from the war zone, but thousands more remain at risk since Russia opened its new front.

The Russian offensive in the Kharkiv sector, which began on May 10 and has continued for more than a week, has led to a humanitarian disaster in the region. Unable to overcome the Ukrainian defenses to make an effective breakthrough and go beyond the border villages, the Russian army is destroying all the infrastructure in its path.

As a result, border villages and towns are suffering, and many people have become refugees. This week alone, thousands of people have been left homeless, and hundreds more remain in the zone of active hostilities without food, electricity, communication, and assistance. The government and local authorities announced an emergency evacuation of the population.

Spain said the package, including 155mm artillery shells or missiles for the Patriot system alongside other modern equipment, will arrive by the end of June.

Spain said crucial equipment like – Patriot missiles, a batch of Leopard tanks, 155mm artillery shells, and more – should arrive by the end of June.

Speaking at the latest Contact Group for the Defense of Ukraine meeting – commonly known as the Ramstein format – Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles updated the group on her country’s military contribution to Ukraine, which she said will arrive by the end of June.

A Russian-drafted UN Security Council resolution that called on all countries to prevent “for all time” the placement, threat or use of any weapons in space failed on Monday, May 20.

A Russian-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution that called on all countries to prevent “for all time” the placement, threat or use of any weapons in outer space failed on Monday (20 May) with the 15-member body split over the move.

The draft failed to get the minimum nine votes needed: seven members voted in favor and seven against, while one abstained. A veto can only be cast by the United States, Russia, China, Britain or France if a draft gets at least nine votes.

British historian Timothy Garton Ash has used the prize money from his book to help provide the Ukrainian Armed Forces with badly needed drones. He spoke to Kyiv Post's Chief Editor, Bohdan Nahaylo.

It will take years and billions to de-mine the country, and until that’s accomplished, hundreds of thousands of people and animals will be injured or killed, the author writes.

The biggest “ecocide” in history unfolds as Russia rolls out diabolical weapons and measures specifically designed to destroy Ukraine’s environment. Where are the world’s environmentalists, or climate change politicians who cloak themselves in “green causes” to win votes?

Where is the outrage at the fact that Russian planes, or artillery, scatter landmines called “little petals” that have contaminated nearly one-third of Ukraine’s land and forests, equivalent in size to Austria and Hungary.

The UNHCR voiced concerns that conditions in Kharkiv -- already home to 200,000 internally displaced people -- could become even more difficult if the ground assault and aerial attacks continue.

More than 14,000 people have been displaced in recent days from Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region, where Russia launched a ground offensive on May 10, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The assault has seen Russian forces achieve their largest territorial gains in Ukraine in the last 18 months.

New scientific study shows rare European birds, some in danger of extinction, have changed their usual migration routes to avoid areas in Ukraine where fighting is taking place.

A study by scientists from the University of East Anglia, the British Trust for Ornithology and the Estonian University of Life Sciences, which was published in the scientific journal Current Biology on Monday, May 20, underlines the impact of the war in Ukraine on migratory birds.

The study focused on migrating raptors, birds of prey, and more specifically the Greater Spotted Eagle which is included as one of over 44,000 vulnerable species on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List.

The world in focus, as seen by a Canadian leading global affairs analyst, writer and speaker, in his review of international media.

The Biden administration on Monday forcefully denounced efforts by the International Criminal Court to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli officials and Hamas leaders, saying the court’s efforts put the terrorist organization and a top US ally on equivalent footing. ICC prosecutor Karim Khan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview on Monday that the international tribunal is seeking arrest warrants for officials including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their respective roles in the October 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war that has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead. The prosecution team is also seeking warrants for Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, along with top Hamas leaders, Khan said. In a statement Monday, Biden called the ICC’s efforts “outrageous.” “Let me be clear,” the president said in the statement, “whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.” - CNN

Four people were wounded and a transport infrastructure facility was damaged in a series of drone strikes on Ukraine's northeastern city of Kharkiv early on May 21, regional officials reported. “Regarding the morning attack, the target was a transport infrastructure facility,” Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram. Governor Oleh Synyehubov also saidon Telegram that an infrastructure facility had been damaged, and added that debris from fallen drones damaged several private houses in Ukraine's second-largest city. Earlier a general air-raid alert was declared for the whole territory of Ukraine -RFE/RL

According to a Ukrainian aerial scout, the destruction of such launchers is called a “fat target” by Ukrainian servicemen because it is a crucial part of the Russian logistics for ammunition delivery.

A video circulating on social media shows an American High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) strike on a Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) for the Russian BM-27 “Uragan” (“Hurricane”) multiple rocket launcher.

The BM-27 “Uragan” is a Soviet self-propelled 220mm multiple rocket launcher primarily used for deploying cluster munitions, boasting a maximum range of 500 kilometers.

The SBU accuses a Zaporizhzhia-based informant of passing data to the FSB after tracking the intensity of equipment traffic and approximate number of AFU troops heading for the front lines.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) detained an alleged informant in Zaporizhzhia, they say was passing information to the Russian FSB about the supply of heavy equipment to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) on the southern front, The agency reported on Facebook.

The alleged FSB informant was detained in Zaporizhzhia

Polish PM told TVN24 on Monday, May 20, that the nine, citizens of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus, were suspected of committing acts of sabotage ordered by Russian intelligence services.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that nine people arrested in Poland were suspected to be part of a group carrying out sabotage attacks, not only in Poland, but also in Lithuania, Latvia and Sweden.

Speaking to the commercial broadcaster TVN24 he said: “We currently have nine suspects detained and indicted, who have been directly implicated in the name of Russian [intelligence] services in acts of sabotage in Poland.”

The two superpowers have traded multiple accusations of seeking to weaponise space in recent months.

Russia on Tuesday, May 21, said the United States was seeking to place weapons in space, the latest accusation in an ongoing row that comes a day after Washington vetoed a Russian non-proliferation motion at the United Nations.

"They have once again demonstrated that their true priorities in the area of outer space are aimed not at keeping space free from weapons of any kind, but at placing weapons in space and turning it into an arena for military confrontation," Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.

Baerbock's arrival in Kyiv coincided with a wave of over two dozen Russian drone strikes, which left several people injured in the eastern Kharkiv region.

Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said there was an urgent need for Ukraine to bolster its air defense amid escalating Russian assaults, AFP reported.

Her comments came during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, May 21, where she highlighted the critical situation following a night of intensive drone attacks.

G7 allies are warming to a US plan that can raise around $50 billion for Ukraine, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

It is "vital and urgent" for the United States and allies to find a way to tap immobilized Russian assets in helping Ukraine, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in prepared remarks released Monday.

The excerpts of her speech, to be delivered Tuesday in Frankfurt, come as finance leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations are due to gather later this week.

Landsbergis supported Macron's proposal to send military trainers to Ukraine, stressing the importance of allowing Ukraine to fully utilize the provided equipment.

Lithuania's foreign minister has called for greater freedom for Ukraine to strike Russian targets, urging Western allies to remove restrictions on the weapons they supply.

In an interview with French TV station LC1 on Monday, May 20, Gabrielius Landsbergis said that current limitations were based on an overblown fear of escalating the war with Russia.

The UN representative also warned that if the numbers of displaced went on rising then receiving and helping them would pose a huge logistical challenge.

Humanitarian aid to Ukraine is falling back even as the country's needs rise more than two years after it was invaded by neighbouring Russia, the UN refugee agency UNHCR warned Monday.

Karolina Lindholm Billing, the UN agency's representative in Ukraine, warned the situation was degenerating, with some four million people already displaced including "some very, very vulnerable people".

Russian state takeover of more than 13,000 empty houses and apartments is even understood to be happening without the rightful owners even being informed.

Russia is planning to nationalize 13,000 houses and apartments in the temporarily occupied territories following local administrations badging them as "ownerless property," Novaya Gazeta Europe reports.

Where the rightful owners do not make an appearance within a month, the properties are understood to be expropriated.

The Olenya air base, which has been one of the main bases from which Russian aerospace forces initiated massive missile strikes on Ukraine, has become strategically more important.

Satellite images published on X / Twitter by OSINT analyst MT Anderson has revealed that 12 Tu-95MS and 13 Tu-22M3 strategic bombers, along with one Tu-160, and two An-12 military transport aircraft were located at the Olenya airfield on May 15.