The agreement, signed on April 30, establishes a joint investment fund between Kyiv and Washington and grants the U.S. special access to projects developing Ukraine's natural resources.
Ukraine is considering moving away from the U.S. dollar and closer to the euro as a benchmark for the hryvnia, National Bank Governor Andrii Pyshnyi told Reuters.
The Atesh partisan group claims it disabled communication at several Russian military facilities when it allegedly destroyed equipment at a transformer substation in the village of Mogiltsy in Russia's Moscow Oblast.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock speaks at a meeting with young people at the Council of the Baltic Sea States meeting on June 2, 2023. (Photo by Jens Büttner/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that "international law is clear" regarding war criminals and called on South Africa to adhere to it if Russian dictator Vladimir Putin attended the upcoming BRICS summit, Zeit reported on June 2.
"International law is clear on this point. War criminals and those responsible for waging aggressive wars will eventually be held accountable," Baerbock said, adding that Russia's war was not only a "European matter" but one that affected the whole world.
South African officials sparked fierce criticism on May 29 when they announced that diplomatic immunity would be granted to the participants of the upcoming BRICS summit, which includes officials from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
The South African Foreign Ministry released a statement on May 30 claiming that it was a "standard" procedure meant "for the conference and not for specific individuals."
Following the announcement there has been speculation as to whether or not Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will attend despite the International Criminal Court's (ICC) warrant for his arrest.
The ICC issued arrest warrants on March 17 for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian official who is allegedly managing the forced deportations of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russian territory.
South Africa is one of the 123 countries party to the Rome Statute which established the ICC, meaning that it is obliged by international law to arrest Putin if he enters its territory.
Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent. The U.S. publisher Deep Vellum published her co-translation of Ukrainian author Oleh Sentsov’s Diary of a Hunger Striker in 2024. Some of her other writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine.
Anastasiia Lapatina
