Pelosi meets Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other U.S. lawmakers met Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw on Monday. Standing against a backdrop of U.S. and Polish flags, Pelosi and Duda shook hands and chatted as they posed for photos.
“I’m very grateful that we can sit here and talk about our relations, about Euro-Atlantic ties and especially about the situation in Ukraine,” Duda said at the meeting. “How to help them, what kind of support they need. This is very important, and I can say this is crucial moment in politics for us.”
The visit comes after Pelosi and U.S. lawmakers made a surprise trip over the weekend to the Ukrainian capital where they met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Pelosi is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Ukraine during the war.
More than 5.5 million people have now fled the war in Ukraine
49m ago / 8:42 AM UTC
The number of people who have fled Russia’s war in Ukraine has now surpassed 5.5 million, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
The number stood at 5,563,959 as of Sunday, according to a daily tracker on the U.N. website.
The exodus of refugees leaving the country for neighbors like Poland and Hungary has also been joined by millions more Ukrainians who have been internally displaced by the fighting.
Israel calls Russian foreign minister’s Nazi comments “unforgiveable”
Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has called remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “unforgiveable and outrageous,” as the foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador to Israel for a “clarification meeting.” according to Lapid’s office.
In an interview on an Italian TV, Lavrov on Sunday defended Russia’s goal of Ukraine’s “denazification,” and said that he believed Hitler had Jewish heritage. “The wise Jewish people say that the worst anti-Semites are Jews,” he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has Jewish heritage.
Lapid called Lavrov’s comments historically inaccurate. “Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust,” he wrote on Twitter. “The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of anti-Semitism.”
Russian attacks on Ukraine grain network a move to cut competition, German minister says
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s grain infrastructure look like attempts to reduce the competition in Russia’s export markets, German Agriculture Minister Cem Oezdemir was reported as saying on Monday.
Ukraine could lose tens of millions of tonnes of grain due to Russia’s blockade of its Black Sea ports, triggering a food crisis that will hit Europe, Asia and Africa, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday.
“We are repeatedly receiving reports about targeted Russian attacks on grain silos, fertilizer stores, farming areas and infrastructure,” Oezdemir was quoted as telling the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland, a cooperation network of German regional newspapers.
Russia denies targeting civilian areas.
The suspicion is growing that Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking “in the long term to remove Ukraine as a competitor,” Oezdemir was quoted as saying.
One quarter of Russia’s ground combat units sent to Ukraine now ‘combat ineffective,’ U.K. military says
A quarter of the 120 battalion tactical groups sent by Russia to Ukraine are now “combat ineffective,” according to Britain’s Defense Ministry.
These groups made up around 65 percent of Russia’s entire ground combat strength, the ministray said iits daily intelligence assessment.
The assessment also said that Russia’s most elite units have had the highest levels of attrition and that “it will probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces.”
From the first days of the invasion, Russia’s military struggled as it met fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces. Supply lines inside Ukraine were stretched, tanks got stuck and moral dipped.
First lady to travel to Romania, Slovakia and meet with Ukrainian refugee families
2h ago / 7:09 AM UTC
Jill Biden will become the latest U.S. political figure to visit eastern Europe amid the war in Ukraine this week.
The first lady will travel to Romania and Slovakia, two NATO members that share a border with Ukraine, during the five-day trip that starts Thursday.
She will meet with U.S. service members, embassy staff, humanitarian aid workers and educators in Romania before heading to Slovakia, where she will spend Mother’s Day — Sunday May 8 — meeting with Ukrainian moms and their children who fled Russia’s war.
Zelenskyy says Russian strikes on nonmilitary targets are ‘war of extermination’
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of waging “a war of extermination,” citing strikes against nonmilitary targets Sunday.
Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that Russian shelling had hit food, grain and fertilizer warehouses and residential neighborhoods in the Kharkiv, Donbas and other regions.
“The targets they choose prove once again that the war against Ukraine is a war of extermination for the Russian army,” he said.
He said Russia will gain nothing from the damage but will further isolate itself from the rest of the world.
“What could be Russia’s strategic success in this war?” Zelenskyy said. “Honestly, I do not know.”
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