Latest developments:
- Former Vice President Mike Pence made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Thursday, during which he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and toured three cities ravaged by Russia.
- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is set to visit Ukraine this weekend.
- The visits came just after a devastating Russian attack on a pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk, Ukraine.
Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Thursday and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Pence is the first Republican presidential candidate to meet with the Ukrainian president during the campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“I believe America’s the leader of the free world,” Pence told NBC News, which first reported his trip. “But coming here just as a private citizen — being able to really see firsthand the heroism of the Ukrainian soldiers holding the line in those woods, see the heroism of the people here in Irpin that held back the Russian army, to see families whose homes were literally shelled in the midst of an unconscionable and unprovoked Russian invasion — just steels my resolve to do my part, to continue to call for strong American support for our Ukrainian friends and allies.”
In addition to meeting Zelenskyy, Pence reportedly visited Moshchun, Bucha and Irpin, three communities that Russia severely damaged.
Also Thursday, the International Monetary Fund’s executive board completed its first review of Ukraine’s $15.6 billion loan program, allowing Kyiv to immediately withdraw $890 million for budget support.
That brings Ukraine’s withdrawals under the program, which launched at the end of March, to about $3.6 billion.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to have a severe impact on human and physical capital, and the environment, with loss of life, drop in living standards and rise in poverty, as well as damage to infrastructure,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez plans to visit Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Saturday as Spain takes over the European Union’s six-month rotating presidency.
Sanchez wants the trip to be the Spanish presidency's first act "to show with his presence the EU's undivided support to Ukraine in all fields: military, humanitarian and economic," his office said.
Pence’s visit to Ukraine came just after a deadly Russian missile strike on a pizza restaurant in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk.
Crews in Ukraine found a body Thursday in the rubble of the restaurant, bringing the death toll from the attack to 12. Ukrainian authorities said the dead included three children, and that the attack injured an additional 60 people.
Ukraine’s counterintelligence service said Wednesday that it had arrested a man it accused of helping Russia direct the attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said those who help Russia “destroy life” deserve maximum punishment.
“Anyone in the world who does not understand that one cannot be an accomplice of a terrorist state must be held accountable by the entire international community,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.
“The spotter is being charged with treason. The possible punishment is life imprisonment. Accomplices of a terrorist state must be treated as betrayers of humanity,” he added.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday that his Foreign Ministry would send a note of protest to Russia after the strike in Kramatorsk injured “three defenseless Colombian civilians.”
Petro tweeted that Russia “violated the protocols of war.”
The restaurant was frequented by journalists, aid workers and soldiers as well as local residents. The Security Service of Ukraine provided no evidence for its claim that the arrested man had filmed the restaurant and had told the Russians about it.
Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov repeated Russia’s claim that it does not target civilians.
The strike during dinnertime on Tuesday was one of several that Russia launched on Ukrainian cities throughout the evening and into early Wednesday.
Kramatorsk is west of the front lines where fighting is taking place in Donetsk province in eastern Ukraine.
A Russian airstrike on the city’s railway station in April 2022 killed 63 people.
Ukraine also reported a Russian missile strike Tuesday in Kremenchuk, which came exactly a year after a Russian attack there killed at least 20 people at a shopping mall.
“Each such manifestation of terror proves over and over again to us and to the whole world that Russia deserves only one thing as a result of everything it has done: defeat and a tribunal, fair and legal trials against all Russian murderers and terrorists,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Tuesday.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
