A package of nearly $40 billion in additional aid for Ukraine was overwhelmingly approved by the House on Tuesday as the country battles Russia’s brutal invasion, now midway through its third month. The Senate is expected to follow suit this week, taking total U.S. military, economic and humanitarian support provided during the conflict to more than $50 billion.
A top U.S. intelligence official is warning of a “prolonged” and “potentially escalatory” conflict as Russian President Vladimir Putin readjusts his goals to go beyond capturing the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and consolidate control of a land bridge between Russia, Donbas and Russian-held Crimea to the south. The next month or two will be significant, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. She also predicted Putin could retaliate against Western economic sanctions with cybersecurity attacks and nuclear weapons exercises.
On the ground in Ukraine, fighters holed up at a steel plant in the shattered port city of Mariupol made a plea Tuesday for help evacuating their wounded, as heavy Russian airstrikes and shelling continued, hitting a field hospital at the complex. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his government had tried “all possible diplomatic tools” to rescue the soldiers but that Russia had not agreed to any plans. Kremlin forces are attempting to “consolidate their control of the ruins of Mariupol,” the Institute for the Study of War, a D.C. think tank, said in its latest assessment, and may be attempting to reopen steel plants to produce military equipment.
Here’s what else to know
Russian, separatist forces may use a Mariupol steel plant for repairs
Return to menuKremlin troops and Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk are consolidating their control over bombed-out Mariupol and laying the groundwork to reopen a captured steel plant in the southern port city, the Institute for the Study of War wrote Tuesday in its battlefield assessment.
According to the Washington-based think tank, Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, wrote on his Telegram channel that separatist fighters are asking workers to return to the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works plant, which will be used to repair military equipment for Russia and its proxy forces.
Before the war, Ilyich and the Azovstal steel plant produced about one-third of Ukraine’s crude steel, a major contributor to the country’s national economy. The move to fashion Ilyich into a repair site marks Russia’s latest effort to leverage the strategic benefits that Mariupol offers after an intense bombing campaign that has decimated the city’s defenses.
In recent days, Russian air and artillery strikes have continued to rain down on Mariupol. A field hospital in the Azovstal steel plant, where over 100 civilians and more than 1,000 soldiers reportedly remain, was struck on Tuesday. A police chief inside the Azovstal plant disputed the civilian figure and told The Washington Post that there are at least 500 wounded people, a number that increases every day. Kyiv’s diplomatic attempts to secure safe passage for the last holdouts have not been successful.
Paulina Villegas and David L. Stern contributed to this report.
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Russia-Ukraine war news: Live updates - The Washington Post
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