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.
Photo for illustrative purposes. Ukrainian servicemen of the 56th Motorized Brigade fire a machine gun during training in the eastern Donetsk Oblast on Oct. 22, 2024. (Yevhenii Vasyliev/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
Ukrainian troops have driven Russian units out of Novyi Komar village in Donetsk Oblast, Nazar Voloshyn, the spokesperson for the Khortytsia group of forces, told Suspilne media on Dec. 5.
Novyi Komar, a village with a pre-war population of less than 500 people, is located about 50 kilometers (31 miles) west of the Russian-occupied town of Vuhledar.
"The enemy was driven out of there," Voloshyn said. "The village of Novyi Komar is under the control of the (Ukrainian) Defense Forces."
A day before, crowd-sourced monitoring website DeepState reported that soldiers of the 48th Separate Assault Battalion regained control of the village. Russian forces suffered heavy losses, and some Russian soldiers fled to the highway near the village, according to DeepState.
At the same time, Ukraine's counteroffensive actions are not as significant as Russia's ongoing assaults in the country's east. Russia captured 234.79 square kilometers (90 square miles) in one week in mid-November, which is the highest number in 2024, according to the independent Russian outlet Agentstvo.
Ukrainian officials have also increasingly raised concerns about a possible new Russian push in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in the south, just as Russian forces continue to advance in the east, focusing their efforts near Pokrovsk and Kurakhove in Donetsk Oblast.
Russia's advance has picked up pace over the past months as Ukraine's military struggles to replenish its ranks, and Western arms are not flowing in as fast as Kyiv has hoped.
Kateryna Hodunova is a News Editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a sports journalist in several Ukrainian outlets and was the deputy chief editor at Suspilne Sport. Kateryna covered the 2022 Olympics in Beijing and was included in the Special Mentions list at the AIPS Sport Media Awards. She holds a bachelor's degree in political journalism from Taras Shevchenko University and a master's degree in political science from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Oleg Sukhov
