PARIS — Ukraine’s Western allies pledged an
additional 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in emergency winter aid on Tuesday,
responding to pleas from President
Volodymyr Zelensky to help the country
withstand Russia’s onslaught against its energy grid.
اضافة اعلان
Around seventy countries and international
organizations gathered in Paris for a meeting aimed at enabling Ukrainians “to
get through this winter”, said French President Emmanuel Macron.
In a video message, Zelensky said Ukraine needed
assistance worth around 800 million euros in the short term for its battered
energy sector.
“Of course it is a very high amount, but the cost is
less than the cost of a potential blackout,” Zelensky told the conference via
video link.
Pledges for the energy sector comprised 400 million
euros of the funds raised on Tuesday, France’s
Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said.
Ukraine needs spare parts for repairs, high-capacity
generators, extra gas as well as increased electricity imports, Zelensky said.
“Generators have become as necessary as armored
vehicles and bullet-proof jackets,” he said.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said 40 to 50
percent of the country’s grid was out of action because of Russia’s strikes.
Many areas of the country have power for only a few
hours a day.
Another 1.5 million people were left without power
in southern Odessa over the weekend after Russian drone attacks.
“They want to put us into darkness and it will fail,
thanks to our partners all over the world,” Shmygal told delegates.
Bridge attack
On the battlefield Tuesday,
local authorities in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol said pro-Kyiv
forces had used explosives to damage a strategic bridge.
Melitopol is an important transport hub for
Russia forces in the region of Zaporizhzhia and is key for Ukraine’s hopes of
liberating the south of the country.
The bridge in the eastern suburbs “was damaged by
terrorists”, Vladimir Rogov, a Moscow-installed regional official, said on the
Telegram messaging app.
He did not specify the extent of the damage, but
images on his social media accounts showed that a middle section of the bridge
had collapsed.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, Belarus held a surprise
inspection of its armed forces, raising fears of a possible escalation in the
conflict.
Belarus is a close ally of
Moscow, but Belarusian
leader Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly said he does not plan to send
Belarusian troops to Ukraine.
Ukrainian PM Shmygal also said Tuesday that the UN
nuclear watchdog IAEA had agreed to dispatch permanent teams to monitor the
country’s nuclear plants.
They are expected to take up positions in the
Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia plant, a hotspot of fighting, which has been a
source of global concern in recent months.
A deal to demilitarize the site, which would see
both sides withdraw forces, has proved impossible so far despite international
diplomatic efforts.
Aid mechanism
Tuesday’s conference in
Paris, titled “Standing with the
Ukraine People”, also saw the launch of a new
so-called Paris Mechanism to coordinate civilian aid to Ukraine.
The digital platform, announced by G7 leaders on
Monday, will enable Ukraine to list its requirements and allow international
donors to coordinate their responses in real-time.
“A large number of countries will use this mechanism
— all the members to the EU, but it will go beyond to other partners, including
non-European partners,” Colonna told reporters.
She underlined that Bahrain, Cambodia, India,
Indonesia, and Qatar were represented at Tuesday’s meeting — “countries that
you rarely see at international conferences for Ukraine,” she said.
A similar platform exists for military aid, which is
coordinated via meetings of Ukraine’s Western allies at the US-run Ramstein
military base in
Germany.
‘War crimes’
Macron hosted Tuesday’s conference alongside
Zelensky’s wife Olena, giving the French leader an opportunity to reaffirm his
support for Kyiv.
He has riled some of his allies in
Kyiv in the past,
most notably in June when he said “we must not humiliate Russia”.
On December 3, he also called for Russia to be
offered “security guarantees” at the end of the war, drawing criticism from
some Ukrainian and eastern European politicians.
Although a diplomatic settlement to the war is seen
as a likely conclusion, critics believe the focus should remain solely on
pushing back Russia’s forces militarily.
Macron condemned Russia’s “cynical” and “cowardly”
attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
“These strikes ... which Russia openly admits are
designed to break the resistance of the Ukrainian people, are war crimes,” he
said in his opening address.
“They violate without any doubt the most basic
principles of humanitarian law. These acts are intolerable and will not go
unpunished,” he said.
In Russia, the Kremlin has announced that Putin will
not hold his annual end-of-year press conference before the end of the year.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry said np date had been set event
Putin has hosted almost every year since he came into office in 2000.
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