Russia-Ukraine Crisis: Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and a delegation of GOP senators met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv during an unannounced visit Saturday, delivering the latest show of American solidarity with the country at war with Russia. “Our delegation reaffirmed to President Zelenskyy that the United States stands squarely behind Ukraine and will sustain our support until Ukraine wins this war,” McConnell said.
Ukrainian forces have launched a counteroffensive near the Russian-held town of Izium in eastern Ukraine, reported on Saturday. This could prove a serious setback for Moscow’s plans to capture the entire Donbas region. Russian forces have focused much of their firepower on the Donbas in a “second phase” of their invasion that was announced on April 19th, after they failed to reach the capital Kyiv from the north in the early weeks of the war.
Meanwhile, Group of Seven foreign ministers vowed on Saturday to reinforce Russia’s economic and political isolation, continue supplying weapons to Ukraine and tackle what Germany’s foreign minister described as a “wheat war” being waged by Moscow.
In another news a strike hit Ukraine’s military infrastructure in Lviv region early Sunday. There is no information on casualties yet. Russian troops were withdrawing from around Ukraine’s second-largest city after bombarding it for weeks, the Ukrainian military said Saturday, as Kyiv and Moscow’s forces engaged in a grinding battle for the country’s eastern industrial heartland.