The European Union (EU) is moving towards approval of Ukraine’s reform plan in May, which would unlock an additional €1.9bn as part of a total €15.9bn that the bloc has planned in financial aid this year for Kyiv.

Russia’s missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, the bombardment of its second-largest city and advances along the front are stoking worries that Kyiv’s military effort is nearing breaking point.

The EU should tap Russia’s frozen assets to help Ukraine as using just the windfall profits is not enough, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday.

The United Nations atomic watchdog held an emergency meeting in Vienna to discuss the increasing risk of an accident at a Russian-occupied atomic power plant in Ukraine. 

Putin says Russia forced to respond to Ukraine energy attacks

Russian President Vladimir Putin said his forces launched an attack that destroyed the largest power-generating plant in the Kyiv region in retaliation for assaults against his own country’s energy sector.

The Russian Defence Ministry said earlier on Thursday that it had conducted a “massive strike” in response to Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s oil and gas facilities. The overnight bombings targeted power plants and underground gas storage facilities in five regions across Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian military.

“Unfortunately, we recently witnessed a series of strikes on our energy facilities and were forced to respond,” Putin said in televised remarks during a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. 

While talking to his long-term ally, Putin said Moscow was ready for dialogue on Ukraine, but wouldn’t have any positions “foisted” upon it. He also criticised the idea of a conference being held in Switzerland without Russia’s participation. 

EU eyes Ukraine reform approval in May in bid to unlock aid

The European Union is moving toward approval of Ukraine’s reform plan in May, which would unlock an additional €1.9-billion as part of a total €15.9-billion that the bloc has planned in financial aid this year for Kyiv.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is examining the plan, but no major issues have been raised and member states could proceed to their approval as early as next month, a person familiar with the matter said.

The go-ahead for the Ukraine plan would pave the way for future payments once the framework agreement with Kyiv was signed and the audit board established, which was expected to happen by May, a commission spokesperson said.

The nearly €16-billion planned for 2024 is part of the €50-billion Ukraine Facility that the bloc put together to support Kyiv financially for the 2024-2027 period. Kyiv submitted a plan last month containing investment and reform proposals that would gradually unlock most of the EU aid by 2027, once a series of milestones and targets were met.

As part of the plan, the commission would also disburse €1.5-billion as bridge financing in the second half of this month.

The remaining funding planned for this year would be disbursed in two payment requests once the Ukrainian government met the agreed reforms. 

Some of the changes agreed to for the second half of the year are the adoption of the medium-term state debt management strategy and spending reviews of the state budget or increasing the workforce of the specialised anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, according to the plan. 

The EU finance ministers were expected to discuss Ukraine’s recovery plan on Friday in Luxembourg. 

Russian attacks on Ukraine stoke fears army near breaking point

Russia’s missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, the bombardment of its second-largest city and advances along the front are stoking worries that Kyiv’s military effort is nearing breaking point. 

A dire shortage of ammunition and manpower along the 1,200km front and gaps in air defence show that Ukraine is at its most fragile moment in more than two years of war, according to Western officials with knowledge of the situation. 

The risk is a collapse of Ukrainian defences, an event that would give the Kremlin an opening to make a major advance for the first time since the initial stages of the conflict, at least one official said.

The next few months will amount to Ukraine’s toughest test, with a public growing exhausted of war, especially in the city of Kharkiv in the country’s east, which has been particularly targeted.  

Russian forces are benefiting from a widening gap in ammunition supplies, with Moscow set to secure six million shells this year with ramped-up production and supplies from North Korea and Iran, according to one official.

Hanging above it all is the stalled $60-billion US aid package, a victim of infighting as House Republicans demand concessions on immigration from President Joe Biden. Should those funds not come through, there is no alternative for Ukraine at its darkest moment, the officials said. 

Far from being able to seize back occupied territory, which was last year’s objective, Kyiv’s forces are struggling to hold the line on Russia’s advance. President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week that Russia may be able to mobilise as many as 300,000 new troops by 1 June. 

Congress needs to act to approve the military aid and there is no way around that, a White House National Security Council spokesperson said. 

The US doesn’t see any signs of an imminent breakthrough by Russian forces, a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But Ukraine’s morale is low and the possibility of a collapse in its army can’t be ruled out, another official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity. 

The destruction early on Thursday of a thermal power plant some 45km south of Kyiv — the biggest producer in the region around the capital — drove home the country’s vulnerability to missile strikes. Zelensky called the military’s lack of air defence “the biggest challenge” in the hours after the attack. 

The demise of the Trypilska power plant was part of a nationwide missile and drone barrage that hit targets, including plants and gas storage facilities, in five regions. European natural gas futures rose to their highest level in more than two weeks, with benchmark futures jumping by as much as 7.1%.

Russian forces have also unleashed their firepower all along the frontline and made marginal gains since capturing the eastern city of Avdiivka in February. Kremlin troops were seeking to close in strategically key spots, such as the town of Chasiv Yar, west of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

A key worry is Kharkiv, which Russian forces tried and failed to seize in the opening campaign of the war. The proximity of the city to the Russian border makes it vulnerable to Russian shelling. Kremlin forces have pelted it with S-300 ballistic missiles and glide bombs, laying waste to swathes of residential areas and destroying nearly all local power-generating capacity. 

For the first time since the invasion began, fewer than half of Ukrainians believe the country can recover all territory seized by Russia, a February survey by the Kyiv-based Rating Group found. And while most Ukrainians still believe in victory, they are increasingly questioning what it may entail.  

Poland’s Tusk urges EU to tap frozen Russian assets for Ukraine

The EU should tap Russia’s frozen assets to help Ukraine as using just the windfall profits is not enough, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday. 

About $280-billion in Russian assets have been frozen by Kyiv’s Western allies, with more than two-thirds of those blocked in the EU. The vast majority of the Russian funds have been immobilised through the Belgium-based clearing house Euroclear where they generated about €4.4-billion in profits last year.

“Using the profits from those assets alone is already something, but it’s certainly not enough,” Tusk said, speaking alongside his Estonian counterpart Kaja Kallas at a news conference in Warsaw. 

Attacks on Ukraine nuclear plant prompt emergency watchdog meeting

The United Nations atomic watchdog held an emergency meeting in Vienna to discuss the increasing risk of an accident at a Russian-occupied atomic power plant in Ukraine. 

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) diplomats convened on Thursday to discuss safety at Europe’s biggest nuclear facility. The discussions followed a string of armed drone assaults on the site just south of the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia.

“It indicates an apparent readiness to continue these attacks, despite the grave dangers they pose to nuclear safety and security and our repeated calls for military restraint” IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said. “Whoever is behind them, they are playing with fire.”

Though the attacks didn’t seriously compromise reactor safety, they represent a “new and gravely dangerous front of the war,” Grossi told Thursday’s extraordinary meeting, adding that he would travel next week to New York to convey his rising concern to the UN Security Council. 

Russia’s state-owned Rosatom took control of Zaporizhzhia — home to six reactors built to supply a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity — in September 2022, seven months into Moscow’s ongoing invasion. The IAEA formally demanded Russia return the plant to Ukraine a month ago, citing concern over deteriorating safety.  

Russia is seeking a formal IAEA finding that Ukraine is behind the strikes. Kyiv says its forces are innocent and blames the Kremlin for staging a provocation. No formal resolutions of censure were tabled before the meeting began.

Poland may donate more post-Soviet missiles to Ukraine

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has discussed donating more post-Soviet air defence missiles to Ukraine with Zelensky as his country comes under intense aerial assault. 

Vladimir Putin’s forces have exploited gaps in the war-battered nation’s air defence with Ukraine’s military stretched as the war heads into its third year with no end in sight.

US frustration mounts as Ukrainian weapon stocks run out

The Biden administration is growing even more frustrated with congressional Republicans and allies in Europe over delays in funding Ukraine’s fight against Russia, people familiar with the matter said, as concerns mount that Russian forces could make major gains in the coming weeks.

There is no “Plan B” for the US to help Ukraine aside from the $60-billion in military aid that remains tied up in Congress, according to US officials who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. European leaders needed to get over delays and use profits from blocked sovereign Russian assets to help Zelensky’s government, one of the people said.

European nations should also urgently respond to Ukrainian requests to provide the country with more Patriot air defence systems from their stocks, another person said.

A National Security Council spokesperson said Congress had to act. Last month, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said “I don’t think we need to speak today about plan B” and that congressional approval had already taken too long.

Ukraine has been rationing its artillery shells in anticipation it might run out, General Christopher Cavoli, the head of European Command, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. Ukrainians are “outshot” by the Russian side 5:1 and that ratio will go to 10:1 in a “matter of weeks”, Cavoli said.

“Based on my experience in 37-plus years in the US military, if one side can shoot and the other side can’t shoot back, the side that can’t shoot back loses,” he said. “So the stakes are very high.”

Russia attacks Ukraine gas storage sites, driving prices higher

Russia attacked two Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities on Thursday, propelling Europe’s prices higher and providing a reminder of the threats to the country’s energy infrastructure. 

The facilities were still operating while specialists assessed the impact of the shelling, according to Oleksiy Chernyshov, chief executive officer of state-run Naftogaz Ukrainy.  

The attacks marked the fourth assault on Ukraine’s gas storage sites, which so far haven’t affected operations. Workers and facilities on the ground remain vulnerable and would benefit from air defence, Chernyshov said in an interview earlier this month. 

German defence chief compares Putin to Hitler at Churchill event

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius compared Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine to Adolf Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakian territory in 1938 and said Europe should prepare for a large-scale Russian attack.

“Putin will not stop once the war against Ukraine is over,” Pistorius said late on Wednesday at the presentation of a new book about Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill.

“He has also said that clearly,” added Pistorius, who is a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party and Germany’s most popular politician. “Just as clearly as Hitler, who also always said that he would not stop.”

Pistorius made the remarks during the presentation of a new biography of Churchill, whom he lauded as a strong leader with a clear vision in difficult times.

The defence minister, seen as a possible successor to Scholz, last week called for a loosening of Germany’s borrowing restrictions to help bolster the country’s military once a special off-budget fund worth €100-billion is exhausted in 2027. 

Moldova’s president faces protests as new pro-Russia front opens

Moldovan President Maia Sandu is facing rising domestic tensions ahead of key elections this year as protests in another Russia-friendly region — besides the breakaway Transnistria enclave — fuel concerns that Moscow is intensifying pressure to derail the nation’s pro-European path.

Sandu, who is seeking another term later this year, was met with several hundred demonstrators backed by a pro-Russia party during a visit to the small autonomous region of Gagauzia on Wednesday. The protesters briefly clashed with police in the city of Comrat as Sandu met students and mayors to denounce “cheap propaganda” against her government and lay out EU-funded projects aimed at improving Gagauzia’s living standards. 

Last week, Sandu also faced protests in the region at the start of work on a new power line to EU member Romania and members of the government have also been targeted by demonstrators, prompting police to bolster security.

Sandu has been subject to threats by pro-Moscow contenders as she tries to keep Moldova, a former Soviet republic that lies between Ukraine and Romania, on a path toward EU accession by the end of the decade.  

The most recent challenge comes from the small region of Gagauzia, home to about 150,000 Turkic- and Russian-speaking Christians who fled the Ottomans in Bulgaria at the start of the 19th century, and which is becoming a new front used by Russia in its efforts to undermine Sandu’s government. 

At the forefront is the region’s governor, Evghenia Gutul, who won the post last year with support from fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor and who has since received direct backing from Russia to continue her opposition to the authorities in Moldova’s capital, Chisinau. She visited Russia twice this year, met President Vladimir Putin and called for Moscow to protect Gagauzia’s people, alleging that the Moldovan government is limiting her region’s budget and breaching democratic rights. 

After her most recent visit to Moscow this week, Gutul said that pensioners and state workers in Gagauzia would receive support of €100 from Russia from 1 May by opening accounts at Russia’s Promsvyazbank. Moldova’s government said the accounts could not operate in the country.

The state-controlled lender is the key bank for the military-industrial sector and was sanctioned by the US, UK and EU days before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine after Moscow recognised the sovereignty of the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics.

Sandu and her allies have repeatedly warned of Russian attempts to destabilise Moldova and halt its pro-European path. The pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria recently reported incidents at its military bases that Chisinau said were meant to sow fear and panic. DM