Summary
It’s nearly 2am in Kyiv. Here’s where things stand:
- A new statement from Europol announced that the organization has no records of weapons being smuggled out of Ukraine. The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation said that it has full confidence in Ukraine, especially because the country has started to implement new measures to monitor and track weapons, Euromaidan reports.
- Russia’s invasion of Ukriane has caused $5.5bn in damage to Ukraine’s environment, the Kyiv Independent reports. According to Ruslan Strelets, Ukraine’s minister of environmental protection and natural resources, there have been 2,000 recorded cases of damage to nature since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February.
- The US is exploring whether it can send American-made fighter jets to Ukraine, a White House spokesperson announced on Friday. Although Joe Biden’s administration has started making explorations into the possibility of providing the jets to Ukraine, the move is not something that would be done immediately, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters in a briefing.
- Emergency workers recovered three bodies from a school hit by a Russian strike in eastern Ukraine, officials said on Friday, one of a string of attacks on the nation as Russia claims that that its forces destroyed four Himars. The casualties in the city of Kramatorsk followed a barrage Thursday on a densely populated area of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, that killed at least three people and wounded 23.
- Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said Friday he has little confidence in Russia fulfilling its side of a bargain reached with Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations on resuming grain shipments from Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reports. “Canada’s confidence in Russia’s reliability is pretty much nil,” said Trudeau.
- Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Friday that Ukraine has about $10bn worth of grain available for sale in the wake of the deal. “This is another demonstration that Ukraine can withstand the war,” he said in a late-night address, Reuters reports. He said that Ukraine will also have a chance to sell the current harvest.
- Russian investigators on Friday launched a criminal investigation into a pregnant city councillor in Siberia who is one of the last allies of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny still in the country. The investigative committee said it has launched criminal proceedings against Helga Pirogova over spreading disinformation concerning Russia’s military. Pirogova is an independent member of the city council in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third-largest city.
- On Friday, the US signed off on an additional $270m in military aid to Ukraine including four new Himar (high mobility artillery rocket) precision rocket systems. Speaking to reporters, White House spokesman John Kirby said Russia has “launched deadly strikes across the country, striking malls, apartment buildings, killing innocent Ukrainian civilians”.
That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we close our blog for today. I’ll be back tomorrow, thank you.
Updated
A new statement from Europol announced that the organization has no records of weapons being smuggled out of Ukraine.
The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation said that it has full confidence in Ukraine, especially because the country has started to implement new measures to monitor and track weapons, Euromaidan reports.
“Europol is working closely with Ukrainian officials to mitigate the threat of arms trafficking into the European Union. We have full confidence in them as they implement new measures to monitor and track these firearms,” Europol stated in a statement on Friday.
“We continue to be in close contact as the situation on the ground in Ukraine changes, and we are grateful to our Ukrainian colleagues for this. They continue to follow leads and cooperate on cases of interest for EU internal security, in spite of the continued Russian military aggression,” it added.
