Month: May 2022

Ukraine received $6.5 billion in pledges at an international donors’ conference in Warsaw Thursday.  VOA Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze discussed the conference and other issues with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in the Polish capital.  The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.  VOA: Donors pledged nearly $7 billion for Ukraine today. Are you satisfied with this pledge? UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER DENYS SHMYHAL: This is not the first and is not the last donors’ conference. So, we are so very grateful to our Polish and Swedish partners, to the European Commission, the European Union, because they …

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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that a third evacuation operation is underway to assist civilians in Ukraine’s southern city of Mariupol and the Azovstal steel plant. “We must continue to do all we can to get people out of these hellscapes,” he told the U.N. Security Council, refusing to go into details about the sensitive mission. The U.N. chief met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on April 26 and then traveled to Kyiv to see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on April 28. During his meeting in Moscow, the Russian president agreed to allow some evacuations from the besieged …

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Former Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich died this week at the age of 87. He took a part of the Soviet Union’s history with him.  Shrewd and wise, he was the one who put the last nail in the Soviet Union’s coffin. Together with Ukrainian and Russian leaders Leonid Kravchuk and Boris Yeltsin, in the cold winter of 1991 in Belarus’ Belavezha forest, he signed the document that became the death certificate for the USSR. A physicist by profession, soft-spoken and accompanied everywhere by his wife, Shushkevich never regretted the collapse of the USSR, and he called the signing of historical …

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Another Russian oligarch’s yacht was seized Thursday as part of efforts to punish Russia over its war in Ukraine.  At the request of the United States, Fijian officials took a $300 million yacht belonging to Suleiman Kerimov, the Justice Department said. Officials say the yacht is in Lautoka, Fiji.  Kerimov’s yacht, the Cayman Island-flagged Amadea, reportedly has been in Fiji since last month, arriving from Mexico. Defense lawyers claimed the vessel belonged to another oligarch.  Kerimov had already been sanctioned by the U.S. in 2014 and 2018 for Russia’s activities in Syria and Ukraine. The European Union also sanctioned him.  …

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Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, at least 23 journalists have been killed in the country, according to a journalists’ union. And at least seven of those deaths took place while the journalists were on assignment, says the Committee to Protect Journalists. Oleksii Kovalenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Kostiantyn Golubchyk. …

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Russia has announced the expulsion of seven people from the Danish Embassy in Moscow in response to a similar move announced by Copenhagen four weeks earlier. “They must leave the country within two weeks,” the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said in a statement Thursday. The move came exactly one month after Denmark expelled 15 employees from the Russian Embassy in Copenhagen, accusing them of being intelligence agents. Denmark said it wanted to send “a clear signal to Moscow that we will not accept that Russian intelligence officers are spying on Danish soil.” In its statement Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry …

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For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine. The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT: 3:35 a.m.: VOA’s Eastern Europe bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze tweets that donors are gathering in Warsaw to generate support for Ukraine.   3:30 a.m.: Reuters reported that two villages in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine have been shelled by Ukraine, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Thursday, adding that there were no civilian casualties. “There is shelling from the Ukrainian side on Zhuravlyovka and Nekhoteevka,” he said. 3:10 a.m.: VOA’s Eastern Europe bureau chief Myroslava Gongadze tweets …

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