Russia-Ukraine Crisis: Ukraine said Tuesday its forces had recaptured villages from Russian troops north and northeast of the city of Kharkiv, pressing a counter-offensive that could signal a shift in the war’s momentum and jeopardise Russia’s main advance. Ukrainian troops in recent days recaptured four settlements north of Ukraine’s second-largest city, said Tetiana Apatchenko, a press officer with the main Ukrainian force in the area. In Washington, top US intelligence officials said the war was at a stalemate.
Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives approved more than $40 billion more aid for Ukraine Tuesday, as Congress races to keep military aid flowing and boost the government in Kyiv as it grapples with the Russian invasion. In other news, as the European Union tries to impose sanctions on Russian oil over the war in Ukraine, Hungary has emerged as one of the biggest obstacles to unanimous support needed from the bloc’s 27 member nations.
Hungary’s nationalist government insists it will not support any sanctions that target Russian energy exports, and not without reason. China’s Shandong Port International Trade Group, a provincial government-backed commodities and oil trader, has secured a rare shipment of Russian crude oil for arrival in east China this month, according to traders and a company statement. Luhansk governor Serhiy Gaidai said the region was attacked 22 times over the previous 24 hours.
Russia pummeled the vital port of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday, in an apparent effort to disrupt supply lines and Western weapons shipments as Ukraine’s foreign minister appeared to suggest the country could expand its war aims. Russia was behind a massive cyberattack against a satellite internet network that took tens of thousands of modems offline at the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war, the United States, Britain, Canada, Estonia and the European Union said on Tuesday.