• Joe Biden receives Democratic and Republican congressional leaders at the White House this Tuesday, hoping to release $60 billion in aid to Ukraine. In the House of Representatives, the shadow of Donald Trump, the Republican ultra-favorite for the November election, opposes the aid and calls for tightening immigration laws first.
• Emmanuel Macron “began” to ensure the “defeat” of Russia by convening a meeting of Ukraine’s allies in Paris yesterday, announcing new measures to supply more weapons to Kiev and refusing to rule out the option of sending Western troops in the future. . The conference, hastily organized by the French president in the presence of twenty-five other countries, comes at a crucial moment for Ukraine, which is waiting for the Western weapons it needs to survive.
• A drone attack blamed on Kiev killed three people and wounded three in the Russian border region of Belgorod, which is regularly bombed. “Three civilians died,” the local governor said on Telegram, adding that three others were hospitalized after being injured in the blast.
• The Ukrainian president says he “doesn’t understand” how former President Donald Trump could be “on the side” of Russia, in an interview with CNN. “I don’t understand how Donald Trump can be on Putin’s side. It’s unthinkable,” he said during the interview, which aired Monday evening. The former Republican president is pushing his supporters in Congress to block $60 billion in US military aid to Kiev.
• Ukraine received only 30% of the million artillery shells promised by the EU last year, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday, as Kyiv’s army struggles at the front and suffers from ammunition shortages.
• The Ukrainian army announced its withdrawal from Lastochkyné, a small village near the town of Evdivka, which fell more than a week ago, after Russian forces claimed its capture. The capture of this industrial city is the Russian military’s first real major territorial gain since the conquest of Bakhmut in May 2023.
• Danish police closed their investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022, believing they did not have “necessary grounds” for action. In addition to Denmark, two other investigations were opened in Germany and Sweden. The Swedish prosecutor’s office closed its investigation without further action in early February, while an investigation in Germany is still ongoing.
