US transfers seized Russian funds and directs them to Ukraine’s reconstruction

What there is to know

The American Minister of Justice announced on Wednesday May 10 that he had finalized the first transfer of confiscated Russian funds. In February, Merrick Garland authorized the allocation of 5.3 million dollars seized from the accounts of the Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeïev for the reconstruction of Ukraine. “I had authorized the transfer of these funds (…) to remedy the evils of the unjust war” led by Moscow, he recalled. The sum “has now been transferred to the State Department and will be dedicated to this cause”. “This is the first transfer by the United States of seized Russian funds in order to rebuild Ukraine, but not the last”, he said. Follow our live.

kyiv claims to be carrying out counter-offensives in Bakhmout. “We are carrying out effective counterattacks. In some areas of the front, the enemy could not resist the onslaught of the Ukrainian defenders and retreated to a distance of up to two kilometers,” said the commander of the ground forces of the Ukrainian army on Wednesday. According to him, Wagner’s fighters on the spot have been replaced in some places by units of the Russian regular army, which are less well prepared. These assertions were immediately unverifiable from an independent source.

The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office is opening an investigation into the death of Arman Soldin. The Pnat opened investigations in France, for war crimes, after the French journalist of the AFP was killed during a Russian strike near Bakhmout. The investigation, entrusted to the gendarmes of the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crimes, aims to determine the circumstances of his death.

The war in Ukraine contributes to a new record of internally displaced persons. In 2022, 71.1 million people were registered as internally displaced, a 20% jump from the previous year, according to a joint report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). ). This record is partly due to the mass exodus after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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