WAR IN UKRAINE: June 17, 2022
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, left, and French President Emmanuel Macron, middle, observe debris left by hostilities in Irpin, a city northwest of Kyiv, on June 16, 2022. Macron, Draghi, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis visited Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky on June 16. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP via Getty Images.)
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 117
Ukraine's bid to join the European Union has been given a major boost with a recommendation that it be granted candidate status. The European Commission says its recommendation is made on understanding Ukraine must make reforms - so still long road ahead. A key measure of progress will likely be judicial reform. Economic performance will be much more difficult to measure due to the ongoing war. Still, as I said on CBS News Morning, psychologically it’s a huge boost for the Ukrainian people. French President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday in Kyiv that Europe did not expect a quick, negotiated end to the war, even if that gave territorial gains to Russia. “What I’m saying today is that Ukraine must win this war.”
Two, possibly three Americans, who came to Ukraine to fight on the side of Kyiv have not been heard from for several days and are feared captured by the Russian side. A State Department spokesperson said the US Government has no information on their whereabouts and hence has held off engaging with Moscow on the matter. If indeed the Americans are in Russian hands they will be seen as high-value bargaining chips in any negotiations.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has disrupted Africa’s promising recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic by raising food and fuel prices, disrupting trade of goods and services, tightening the fiscal space, constraining green transitions and reducing the flow of development finance in the continent, said United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Ahunna Eziakonwa.
Fighting will continue in the main hotspots in Ukraine in the coming weeks, but probably with little dramatic change and no end to the current near-stalemate, predicted Oxford Analytica. Conflict dynamics will be affected by the scale, timing and consistency of Western supplies of weapons and ammunition. Even if Russian forces were forced to abandon their offensive, the Ukrainian army would struggle to drive them out of territories seized this year.
Defense Ministry: Russia moves its citizens to occupied territories in Ukraine. According to Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar, Russian soldiers are bringing their relatives to the occupied territories, including Kherson, and they settle in houses that belong to Ukrainians. The official said that Russia is also stepping up measures to distribute Russian passports in the occupied settlements and still plans to annex the territories - Kyiv Independent
Diplomatic sources say that, despite the diplomatic isolation of Russia, many voting exercises on United Nations fora end up generating 100-plus votes for Moscow. I’m told that in votes on non-war issues, somehow delegations at the UN maintain a split screen approach, treating Russia as if it were business-as-usual. Meanwhile, Ukrainian diplomats at the UN Mission often find themselves outnumbered in meetings or negotiations by the Russian side as much as 10-1.
This morning, live from New York, I was on CBS News Morning. I spoke to anchor Anne Marie Greene about the impact of the Ukraine war on the global economy, the fate of Americans missing in the war zone, the struggle ahead for media entities in Ukraine - and much more. View the entire interview here