The United States announced this Friday another 400 million dollars in aid to Ukraine during a visit to Washington by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with whom Joe Biden conveyed a message of unity against Russia.
Western military aid has been essential for kyiv to resist attacks by Russian troops and regain ground, but the Kremlin estimates that only "will prolong the conflict and have sad consequences for the Ukrainian people".
The United States ignored the warning and announced a new $400 million aid package that includes ammunition, primarily for the Himars rocket system, used by Ukrainian forces, with devastating effect against Russian troops and logistics lines. .
Biden received Scholz at the White House, in what has been his first trip to Washington since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
When they last met, in February 2022, "Russia was amassing troops" at the border, Biden told reporters. The West promised to respond and "together we keep that promise"he added.
In response, Scholz considered it important to send a message to Ukraine that they will support it. "all the time it takes".
In another show of support for kyiv, US Attorney General and Attorney General Merrick Garland made a surprise visit to the country on Friday to participate in a conference on war crimes.
"He reiterated our determination to hold Russia accountable for the crimes committed during its unjust and unprovoked invasion of its sovereign neighbor."said a Justice Department official.
At this conference held in Lviv, in western Ukraine, the Ukrainian prosecutor also announced the upcoming opening in kyiv of an office of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
– Battle of Bakhmut –
On the ground, the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, on the front line in Ukraine, claimed this Friday to have "practically surrounded" the city of Bakhmut, in the east of the country, and asked President Volodimir Zelensky to withdraw his troops.
The battle in this industrial city, of questionable strategic importance, has been going on since last summer and caused heavy losses on both sides.
The city has become a symbol of war, for being the epicenter of fighting between Russians and Ukrainians for months.
In recent weeks, Russian forces have advanced north and south of Bakhmut, cutting off three of the four supply roads for Ukrainian forces.
"Wagner’s units have practically surrounded Bajmut, only one road remains" to leave the city, declared the founder and head of the paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in a video posted on Telegram.
Prigozhin asked Zelensky – who had promised to defend Bakhmut "the necessary time"- to order Ukrainian troops to withdraw from the largely destroyed city.
"If before we were faced with a professional Ukrainian army, which was fighting against us, today we see more and more elderly people and children. They fight, but their life in Bakhmut is short, a day or two."warned Prigozhin.
In the video of Wagner’s boss, an older man and two young men are seen asking Zelensky, on camera, to let them leave.
– Intense combat –
The Ukrainian military command acknowledged on Tuesday that the situation was "extremely tense" in Bakhmut.
On the same day, Zelensky noted an increase in "the intensity of the fighting" around the city, which had some 70,000 inhabitants before the conflict. Now about 4,500 remain, according to local authorities.
The Ukrainian General Staff did not give details on Friday about the situation in Bakhmut, and limited itself to noting that the army had repelled 85 Russian attacks on the entire front in the last 24 hours.
– Foray into Russia –
Russia for its part described as an incursion of "saboteurs" Ukrainians an incident that occurred on Thursday in the Russian region of Briansk, bordering Ukraine.
According to Russian security services, the group fired on a car, killing two civilians and injuring a child in the town of Lyubechane, right on the border with Ukraine. The Kremlin asserted that Moscow "will take action" to prevent future Ukrainian incursions.
Russian security forces (FSB) said they found a "large amount of explosives" in the zone.
The Ukrainian presidency denied the claims and branded him as "deliberate provocation" by Russia to justify its invasion.
Russian authorities this week reported several strikes by Ukrainian drones in Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
For the first time, a drone crashed in the Moscow region, causing no damage and no casualties.
On Friday, several law enforcement sources, quoted by the TASS agency, reported the explosion of a drone in the Kolomna region, about 100 km southeast of Moscow.
