Could the strike have been avoided? After the deadly attack on Wednesday April 17 in Chernihiv, which left at least eleven dead and around twenty injured, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is stepping up to the plate. “This would not have happened if Ukraine had received enough air defense equipment and if the world’s determination to resist Russian terror had been sufficient”, he lamented on Telegram, while Western aid dried up, particularly from the United States. Follow our live stream.
American aid on hold. Monday evening, the Republican President of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, announced that he would submit a text to help Ukraine to a vote within the week. A package of $60 billion in military and economic assistance for Ukraine was adopted in the Senate, with a Democratic majority, in February. But Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to examine this text, due, among other things, to a dispute over the issue of immigration.
Debates about mobilization. Ukrainian society remains divided after the national parliament’s vote on conscription. If the text is controversial, it is because it lowers the minimum age of conscripts (from 27 to 25 years) and above all does not provide for a demobilization period for soldiers. The authorities have assured that the issue of demobilization will be regulated by a separate law, but no date for its preparation or adoption has been set.
Fragile support for the international conference on Ukraine. Switzerland announced last week that it wanted to organize a meeting on peace in Ukraine on June 15 and 16, but without the presence of Russia. Moscow reacted by considering that these talks had not “any sense”. “A peace process cannot be done without Russia, even if it will not be there during the first meeting”, the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs then commented. On Wednesday, China, which has been moving closer to Russia for a decade, said “there is still a lot of work left” before holding such a conference.