Live: Ukraine’s first lady meets Blinken, kicking off US trip

Issued on: 19/07/2022 – 06:34

6:24am: Kyiv prepares southern counteroffensive

Kyiv hopes the war is at a turning point, with Moscow having exhausted its offensive capabilities in seizing a few small cities in the east, while Ukraine now fields long-range Western weapons that can strike behind Russian lines.

Kyiv cites a string of successful strikes on 30 Russian logistics and ammunition hubs, which it says are crippling Russia’s artillery-dominated forces that need to transport thousands of shells to the front each day.

In a Facebook post on Monday, Ukraine’s top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, credited US-supplied advanced long-range rocket systems known as HIMARS with helping to “stabilize the situation” through “major strikes at enemy command points, ammunition and fuel storage warehouses.”

Russia said on Monday that Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had ordered the military to concentrate on destroying Ukraine’s Western-supplied rockets and artillery.

In the south, Ukraine is preparing a counterattack to recapture the biggest swath of territory taken since the invasion. Ukraine reported destroying Russian missile systems, communications, radar, ammunition depots and armoured vehicles in strikes in the southern Kherson region.

6:12am: Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska on high-profile US trip

Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday as she began a series of high-profile appearances in Washington that will include a session with US counterpart Jill Biden.

Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags flew alongside American ones on Pennsylvania Avenue as Zelenska headed for her first announced event in the United States, the meeting with Blinken.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the secretary of state assured Zelenska of the United States’ commitment to Ukraine. Blinken also commended her for her work with civilians dealing with trauma and other damage from the war.

The first lady also met Monday with Samantha Power, head of the US Agency for International Development. Power’s agency has given billions of dollars to support Ukraine’s government and to humanitarian needs, and is working to ease a global food shortage aggravated by Russia’s war.

The State Department announced and then canceled a planned brief appearance by Blinken and Zelenska before photographers there. The low-key arrival reflects that Zelenska is not traveling as an official representative of the government of her husband, President Volodymyr Zelensky.

5:23am: Ukrainian couples on edge as men head to front lines

Soon after Russia invaded, Ukraine banned most men ages 18 to 60 from leaving the country. That has left many couples facing difficult choices: some have been split across continents as women and children seek refuge abroad, while others have stuck together near the front lines as bombs rain down.

FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg, Ludovic de Foucaud and Denys Denysov report from Kramatorsk:

02:29

4:32am: Yellen says US will impose harsh consequences on countries abusing global economic order

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday that the United States will impose harsh consequences on those countries that abuse or break international economic order.

“Economic integration has been weaponized by Russia,” she said, calling for all responsible countries to unite in opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

She said she was heartened by conversations with Korean counterparts on a proposed cap on Russian oil price while visiting South Korea, the final leg of her 11-day visit to the Indo-Pacific region.

3:15am: Russia continues to pummel cities across Ukraine

Russian forces kept up their bombardment of cities across Ukraine, with intense shelling of Sumy in the north, cluster bombs targeting Mykolaiv and a missile strike in Odesa in the south, authorities said on Tuesday.

After failing to capture the capital Kyiv at the outset of the invasion on February 24, Russia has shifted to a campaign of devastating bombardments to cement and extend its control of Ukraine’s south and east.

In Odesa, a Russian missile strike injured at least four people, burned houses to the ground and set other homes on fire, Oleksii Matsulevych, a spokesman for the regional administration, said on his Telegram channel.

Russian forces targeted Mykolaiv with cluster shells Monday, injuring at least two people and damaging windows and roofs of private houses, the Ukrainian city’s mayor Oleksandr Senkevich said in a social media post.

More than 150 mines and shells had been fired on the Sumy region, Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, the head of the Sumy regional military administration, said on Telegram.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP and REUTERS)