Summary of the day
Ukrainian officials said the repeated failure of the Biden administration to get a funding package for Ukraine approved by the Senate will have real consequences in terms of lives on the battlefield and Kyiv’s ability to hold off Russian forces on the frontline.
Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, sent an unusually blunt message to US Senate Republicans, writing that “Ronald Reagan, who helped millions of us to win back our freedom and independence, must be turning in his grave today. Shame on you.”
Senior European officials said Tusk’s rhetoric echoes concerns in the region.
Johan Van Overtveldt, chair of the European parliament’s budgets committee, argued that a newly agreed 50bn euro EU aid package for Kyiv is insufficient.
A volcano erupted in Iceland once again.
The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, flew to Mauritania to sign a series of deals on migration and energy, as data revealed there has been a surge in people-smuggling operations to the Canary Islands.
Sánchez said he arrived in Mauritania with von der Leyen “to strengthen our cooperation on migration and security.”
Farmers continued demonstrating in different parts of Europe, including Spain and Italy.
Members of the European parliament voted in favour of a resolution declaring that Serbia’s December parliamentary and local elections fell “below the expected standards for an EU candidate country” and calling for an independent investigation.
US funding failure will have serious battlefield consequences, says Ukraine
The repeated failure of the Biden administration to get a funding package for Ukraine approved by the Senate will have real consequences in terms of lives on the battlefield and Kyiv’s ability to hold off Russian forces on the frontline, say Ukrainian officials.
As the two-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine approaches, Ukrainian officials say the delay in US support has already had a clear impact on the battlefield, where Kyiv’s exhausted troops have a severe hardware deficit in comparison to the Russians.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s aide Mykhailo Podolyak said Russian troops were using about 10,000 artillery shells a day along the length of the frontline while Ukrainian troops were restricted to using between 1,500 and 2,500 in response. He said the shortage of equipment made long-term planning impossible.
In an interview in Kyiv, he said:
If you have a clear understanding that in the next three to six months you’ll have a particular number of long-distance missiles, for example, you can plan for which infrastructure targets to hit on the occupied territories. And when you sit here today with a deficit, and with uncertainty, you can only fight a defensive war, and this is a stimulant for Russia.
The US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, expressed thinly veiled frustration with the stalling of the support package on Wednesday, noting there was a massive Russian missile attack on Ukraine overnight.
“There is no time to lose. Ukraine needs our security assistance now,” she wrote on X.
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