U.S. Foreign and Defense Chiefs Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in kyiv on Sunday, Washington confirmed Monday (April 25), announcing additional military aid to Ukraine. direct and indirect $713 million. This trip was also marked by the announcement of the return of American diplomats to the country. “We want our diplomats to return to our embassy in Kyiv as soon as possible”, commented a senior American official. Follow our live.
New United States Ambassador to Ukraine. Anthony Blinken also announced the appointment in the coming days of a new US Ambassador to Ukraine. It will be Bridget Brink, current ambassador to Slovakia. The position in Ukraine had been occupied since 2019 by project managers. The United States is much more cautious than several European countries which have already reopened their embassies in kyiv.
UN calls for truce “immediate” in Mariupol. This should allow the evacuation of some 100,000 civilians still stuck in the strategic port of the Sea of Azoz, almost entirely controlled by the Russian army. The shelling and fighting claimed the lives of more than 20,000 civilians in Mariupol, according to Mayor Vadym Boychenko, who denounced on the Ukraine 24 channel that “Russian occupation forces prevent evacuations”.
The OSCE said on Sunday “extremely worried” following the arrest, in the pro-Russian separatist eastern Ukrainian territories, of four members of its 2014 ceasefire observation mission, installed after the conflict which had broken out between these regions and kyiv after the Russian annexation of Crimea (south).
“It will take fifty years to demine” Ukraine, said Perrine Benoist, director of armed violence reduction for the NGO Handicap International. According to an official of the demining services of the Ukrainian Civil Security, explosive devices still active are present on almost half of the country’s territory.