New developments:
- The Wagner Group founder is concerned about a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
- The United States will be training Ukrainian soldiers on Abrams tanks, while Germany will build a tank repair hub in Poland.
- Ukraine grain exports are still banned by European countries.
In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was readying for a counteroffensive.
"The front line is priority number one," he said Friday. “We are also actively preparing new brigades and units that will show themselves at the front."
Zelenskyy thanked the allies for their commitment to Ukraine's defense.
A U.S.-hosted meeting Friday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany focused on air defense and ammunition in Ukraine. The United States said it would soon start training Ukrainian troops to operate Abrams tanks, while Germany announced that it was building a tank repair hub in Poland for tanks deployed in Ukraine.
During the meeting, allies also reassured Kyiv of their unconditional support and backed Ukraine's bid to join NATO in the future.
Ukraine pressed its allies for long-range weapons, jets and ammunition ahead of the counteroffensive against Russian troops, which is expected in the coming weeks or months.
Prigozhin concerned
Following Zelenskyy's remarks Friday, Yevgeni Prigozhin, chief of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, expressed concerns about an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive with highly trained Ukrainian forces.
"Today we are killing those who were trained in Ukraine, but the ones coming from Germany will be technologically educated," he said in an audio recording released on his Telegram channel.
He was referring to those Ukrainian soldiers who will train in Germany to use U.S. Abrams tanks.
Prigozhin predicted that Ukraine would counterattack after the spring rains, when the ground is firm.
"They will attack ... they will come and try to tear us apart, and we must resist," he said.
Russia relies heavily on the Wagner forces in Bakhmut, where fighting is still raging.
Kyiv said Friday that while Russian forces had made some advances in the eastern city, the situation was still in play. "The situation is tense, but under control," Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Malyar made the comments after Russia's Defense Ministry said in a briefing Friday that assault troops were fighting in western parts of Bakhmut, the last part of the embattled Ukrainian city still held by Kyiv's forces.
EU-Ukraine grain
Four European Union member states have banned Ukraine’s food exports to protect their own markets. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria say that an influx of Ukrainian food imports is harming their own farmers, who can’t compete with Ukraine’s low prices. The Polish government approved $2.4 billion in aid for its agricultural sector, criticizing the European Commission on Friday for not doing enough to help resolve the problem.
"What the EU is offered with a delay, it is too little, a drop in the ocean of needs," Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told a news conference.
The European Commission has offered $110 million of aid for central European farmers, in addition to an earlier $61.5 million package. It has also said it will take emergency preventive measures for other products — like wheat, corn and sunflower seeds — but the central European states want this list to be broadened to include honey and some meats, Reuters reported.
Ukraine’s economy is heavily dependent upon agriculture, and the European ban will put a significant dent in its sales, Bloomberg reported, citing UkrAgroConsult.
Romania has for now decided not to participate in the ban, while allowing transit of Ukraine exports through its Black Sea port of Constanta.
Several central European countries became the gateway to a glut of Ukraine’s food exports after Ukrainian grain was stranded in Black Sea ports blockaded by Russia. The Black Sea Initiative brokered by the United Nations and Turkey has allowed safe transit of grain shipments through that corridor, though Russia is threatening not to renew after the deal expires on May 18.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that the renewal of the deal depended on whether the West would lift restrictions affecting Russia’s agricultural exports. The Kremlin said Friday that it was monitoring reports of a possible ban on Russian exports and that new Western sanctions would damage the global economy.
"We are aware that both the U.S. and the EU are actively considering new sanctions," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "We believe that both the current sanctions against the Russian Federation and the new additional steps that the U.S. and the EU may be thinking about now will, of course, also hit the global economy."
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
