E.U. Foreign Ministers Meet in Kyiv for Summit (2024)

E.U. foreign ministers met outside the borders of the bloc.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine roused the European Union into an run of unified action that was extraordinary for the often fractious bloc. Over 18 months, the nations imposed 11 rounds of economic sanctions on Russia, provided training for the Ukrainian military and, for the first time in the bloc’s history, gave funding for lethal weapons among its billions of euros in support.

Addressing the foreign ministers, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine acknowledged that his country relies heavily on aid from abroad. He said that Ukraine would prevail against Russia, but that “our victory explicitly depends on our cooperation.”

He later said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the meeting had “proved unity in support for Ukraine.”

But the West’s sustained backing for Ukraine has not come without strains, as member nations have struggled to reckon with the war’s economic consequences and to maintain political unity at home. In Slovakia, a Russia-friendly party, whose leader vowed “not to send a single cartridge” of ammunition to Ukraine, won in a national election over the weekend.

In Poland, the government is embroiled in a dispute with Ukraine over grain exports, and the ruling party, facing a knife-edge vote later this month, is trying to reassure voters it will not put Ukraine’s interests above those of Polish citizens. Poland said last month that it would not send any additional weapons once it fulfills its current commitments.

Even in the United States, the E.U. ally that has sent the most aid to Ukraine, Congress passed a stopgap government funding bill over the weekend without more aid for Ukraine, after some Republicans contested its inclusion.

Mr. Borrell on Monday said that E.U. diplomats were keen to keep Ukraine’s backers unified, including in Washington.

“Maybe it’s not being seen like this for everybody around the world, but for us Europeans, it’s an existential threat,” he said of Russian aggression. “And that’s why we have to continue supporting Ukraine, and discussing with our American allies and friends, for them, too, to continue supporting.”

The timing of continued aid could prove important for Kyiv, which is facing difficult months ahead: It is waging a grueling counteroffensive to retake land in its south and east, and defending against long-range Russian shelling near and far from the front.

A Russian bombardment in the eastern Kherson region killed at least one person and injured six others, including two children, local officials said on Monday. Russian forces fired nearly 400 shells into Ukrainian-controlled areas of the region, damaging buildings including a kindergarten, a church and an ambulance station, a local Ukrainian military official, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram.

“Another difficult night and morning for the Kherson region,” Mr. Prokudin said. “The enemy covers the peaceful settlements of the region with fire.”

Though E.U. members have taken extraordinary steps to help Ukraine on the battlefield — including sending tanks and fighter jets — they have resisted Ukraine’s calls to accelerate or ease the long and demanding process for any country to join the bloc itself. Mr. Borrell acknowledged on Monday that the “strongest security commitment” the bloc could give would be E.U. membership.

He, like other European officials, has welcomed Ukraine broadly but without concrete details. “Ukraine’s future lies within the E.U.,” he said on social media ahead of the meeting.

The European Union gave Ukraine a path to membership last year, but a candidate country has to fulfill numerous detailed criteria and align its laws with the bloc’s regulations, a process that usually takes several years.

The bloc is expected to decide in December whether to allow Ukraine to open negotiations with the European Union, the next step in the process and one which would require the unanimous backing of all 27 member states.

Mr. Borrell also expressed hope that member nations would, before the end of the year, approve a further 5 billion euros, or $5.3 billion, in military support for Ukraine, with “more to come.”

Similarly, Ukraine’s supporters in Washington — which include members of both parties in Congress — have also expressed hope that they can secure more money in the weeks ahead.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters that President Biden has repeatedly talked to the leaders of other countries in the past about supporting Ukraine.

“The president as you know, was able to bring more than 50 countries to continue to show their support for Ukraine as our partners and allies,” she said Monday. “That alliance is as strong as it’s ever been and so that commitment is going to continue.

And in a rare moment of agreement, Ukrainian and Russian officials said they do not expect American support to dry up soon.

“America will continue its involvement in this conflict,” the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said on Monday, adding that “exhaustion” over the conflict would eventually mount in the United States and other countries.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, called the congressional negotiations “nonsense” and “just a performance for the public.”

“Interparty squabbles are one thing, and support is another thing,” he told reporters. “They will find the money.”

Vivek Shankar contributed reporting from Seoul, and Michael D. Shear from Washington.

Both Russian and Ukrainian officials predict that U.S. support for Kyiv will not change.

“Interparty squabbles are one thing, and support is another thing,” he told reporters. “They will find the money.”

The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that he expected that “America will continue its involvement in this conflict,” but predicted that “exhaustion” over the conflict would mount in the United States and other countries.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, suggested that the lack of Ukraine funding in the bill was an “individual case” as a shutdown loomed, not a “systemic” change in the level of U.S. aid.

“We do not believe that U.S. support has faltered,” Mr. Kuleba said at a news conference in Kyiv, according to local news media reports. He added that the Ukrainian government was in “deep discussions” with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

The stopgap bill continues Ukraine funding at current levels for 45 days and will not immediately affect the pipeline of already committed U.S. military aid. The Pentagon still has the authority to draw about $5.6 billion in arms and equipment from existing stockpiles.

Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, told reporters on Monday that another such drawdown of weapons, ammunition and equipment is expected in the coming days.

But he said that two programs that provide longer-term military support for Ukraine — the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and Foreign Military Financing program — have been suspended and cannot be extended without further action by Congress.

Mr. Miller said that the Biden administration was “calling on Congress to to fully fund our request to support Ukraine’s short- and long-term security assistance, and also to allow the Pentagon to refill depleted Pentagon stocks, which is something that they’re not able to do without further action.”

Members of both U.S. political parties have expressed confidence that agreements on further financial commitments for Ukraine will come in the weeks ahead. The Biden administration has also been in touch with allies abroad to reassure them that the United States remains committed to supporting Ukraine, according to a senior official, who requested anonymity to discuss private diplomatic conversations.

White House officials declined to say whether President Biden himself intended to make calls to his counterparts in other countries, but a second senior administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said such calls from the president were likely.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Monday that Mr. Biden had repeatedly talked to the leaders of other countries in the past about supporting Ukraine.

“The president, as you know, was able to bring more than 50 countries together to show their support for Ukraine as our partners and allies,” she told reporters, adding that the NATO alliance “is as strong as it’s ever been, and so that commitment is going to continue.”

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Support for taking in refugees has dropped in Poland and Hungary, a new survey shows.

Last month, Poland and Hungary joined Slovakia in declaring they would defy a decision by Brussels to lift a temporary ban on Ukrainian agricultural imports. Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party has also shifted its rhetoric on Ukraine ahead of a contentious general election in two weeks, frustrating some of Ukraine’s allies with statements that suggested possible cracks in Warsaw’s support for Kyiv.

While Hungary is a member of both NATO and the European Union, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s position on the war has often been at odds with the rest of Europe. He has opposed sending military aid to Ukraine and imposing international sanctions against Russia.

In the months following the full-scale invasion that began in February 2022, support for taking in refugees skyrocketed, said Moira fa*gan, a research associate at Pew Research Center and one of the authors of the report. The share of Poles and Hungarians supporting refugees had both jumped by about 30 percentage points compared with levels recorded in 2018. But more than 19 months later, that enthusiasm appears to have waned.

Poland and Hungary are both governed by parties that once campaigned on keeping foreigners out, but opened themselves to Ukrainian refugees. Poland has taken in nearly 1.7 million Ukrainian refugees since the full-scale invasion began — the most of any European nations — while Hungary has accepted about 37,500 refugees.

But in the latest survey, the percentage of Poles opposing taking in refugees has jumped to nearly 40 percent from 13 percent last year; in Hungary, opposition rose to 46 percent from 30 percent.

Favorable views of Russia in both Poland and Hungary plummeted after the full-scale invasion, and those views have remained largely stable in the past year, Ms. fa*gan said. But the level of disapproval was much higher in Poland.

Ninety percent of Poles expressed “very unfavorable” views on Russia — the highest share of any of the 24 countries Pew surveyed this spring — compared to 39 percent of Hungarians.

A Ukrainian group works to encourage reporting Russian abuses beyond physical violence.

UA Experts is arguing that it is not just rape that is gender-based violence — and hopes to get the laws changed to make sexual violence related to conflict its own specific crime. Documenting such cases along with instances of rape, says UA Experts, also will show a fuller picture of gender-based abuses under Russian occupation.

The organization is trying to compile resources for victims, including hotlines for support, and is lobbying to create a government office where those who suffered all types of gender-based violence can be registered. It is supported by the United Nations and the Ukrainian office responsible for relations with the European Union.

“People are shy to go to police, they don’t want to show their names and documents many times,” Serhiy Nizhynsky, the director, said. “It has to be done as discreetly as possible. They also don’t know what can be qualified as a crime in wartime and we want to change that.”

Andriy Yaromenko, who works for the organization, said that his family and neighbors in the village of Peremoha, north of Kyiv, had suffered such abuses by Russian soldiers in the war. He was coming forward, he said, only after working with UA Experts for six months.

He feared that police would laugh at him, he said, but after “hearing about problems similar to mine I decided to share my story.”

Mr. Yaromenko and his family described days of harassment and humiliation as Russian soldiers held them, their neighbors and relatives — a total of 18 people. The men and women were separated; they were forced to urinate in their garden as soldiers heckled; and one soldier insinuated threats of rape, they said.

After two harrowing weeks, the family was allowed to evacuate to Ukrainian-controlled territory. They were not physically harmed, but Mr. Yaromenko’s daughter, who was 11 at the time, has since seen a psychologist and taken sedatives. She can’t stay home alone for even five minutes, her mother, Alyona, said.

“It was a feeling beyond fear,” Mr. Yaromenko said of being forced by the Russian soldiers to lay on icy ground. “I could hardly could hear everything around me, I just felt as if I was falling somewhere very deep in my mind.”

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Kyiv.

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More cargo vessels use Ukraine’s new Black Sea shipping corridor amid Russian threats.

Ukraine’s exports of grain and other food crops are vital for its economy and in the months that followed, the government in Kyiv has been working to establish a new shipping corridor from its sea ports.

Under the new route, ships hug the coast before entering the waters of Romania and then Bulgaria — both members of NATO. At least six cargo vessels have used the temporary corridor in recent weeks, apparently without incident.

Amid the strikes on Odesa, Ukrainian farmers have stepped up their use of the country’s smaller Danube River ports for export, though those also have been targeted by Russian attacks. At the same time, overland export routes have been fraught with delays and opposition from Poland, as well as some of Ukraine’s other European Union neighbors, who say an influx of cheap Ukrainian grain hit prices for domestic produce.

Russian shelling leaves one dead and six injured in Kherson.

“Another difficult night and morning for the Kherson region,” Mr. Prokudin said. “The enemy covers the peaceful settlements of the region with fire.”

The regional capital of Kherson and neighboring communities on the west bank of the Dnipro have remained in Russia’s cross hairs since the city was reclaimed by Ukraine almost a year ago and Moscow’s troops retreated to the eastern side of the river.

The latest attacks continued into the early morning on Monday, when the center of the city of Kherson was hit, local officials said. No casualties were reported there immediately.