The phone call comes as Moscow once again rejected a 30-day ceasefire, with Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova claiming that a ceasefire would give "Kyiv a break to restore its military potential and continue its confrontation with Russia."
Flight MH17 departed from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport en-route to Kuala Lumpur International Airport on July 17, 2014. Three hours into the flight, the Boeing-777 was shot down by Russian proxy forces using a Buk surface-to-air missile above Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
"I am grateful for the support and the readiness at the highest level to promote diplomacy," President Volodymyr Zelensky said of the phone conservation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "We share the same view on the need for a ceasefire."
The convictions mark a significant development in Britain's efforts to counter Russian intelligence operations amid heightened tensions stemming from Moscow's war against Ukraine and repeated Kremlin threats toward Kyiv's allies.
According to the Verkhovna Rada's website, Ukraine completed the ratification of the U.S.-Ukraine minerals agreement on May 12. President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the deal.
"I myself have heard relatives talking: our village is being attacked, let's roll the car out of the garage, maybe they will shell it — at least we will get money. The car is old, we can't sell it," Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
The new tranche brings total recent EU defense support for Ukraine to 3.3 billion euros ($3.6 billion), marking a significant expansion of European efforts to boost Kyiv's defense industry.
Newly elected Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks in the chamber after his election at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 25, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
U.S. Speaker Mike Johnson expressed confidence and optimism in Congress' ability to secure additional funding for both Israel and Ukraine, he said in Florida on Nov. 27.
The Speaker has consistently maintained the stance that funding for Israel and Ukraine should be kept separate. He has urged the U.S. Senate to consider a bill passed by the House, which linked aid to Israel with cuts in funding to the Internal Revenue Service.
Johnson emphasized that support for Ukraine should be contingent upon implementing changes to U.S. border policies.
“Ukraine is another priority. Of course, we can’t allow Vladimir Putin to march through Europe," Johnson said.
"If there is to be additional assistance to Ukraine — which most members of Congress believe is important — we have to also work on changing our own border policy,” Johnson said.
“There’s been a lot of thoughtful negotiation ongoing with that. I think most of our Senate colleagues recognize that those two things need to move together because we owe that to the American people.”
To date, the U.S. has provided approximately $44.2 billion in military assistance since Russia launched its full-scale invasion against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and more than $47 billion in military assistance since Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.
Francis Farrell
