Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview published Friday that if his country does not get promised U.S. military aid blocked by a divided Congress, its forces will have to retreat "in small steps."
Ukraine relies on financial aid from its Western partners, but foreign financing dwindled in the first two months of this year, while a robust U.S. aid package has been blocked for months by Republicans in Congress.
"If there is no U.S. support, it means that we have no air defense, no Patriot missiles, no jammers for electronic warfare, no 155 millimeter artillery rounds," Zelenskyy told The Washington Post.
"It means we will go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps," he added. "We are trying to find some way not to retreat."
In March, Kyiv managed to attract about $9 billion in total external financing, the Finance Ministry said. The European Union, Canada, Japan, the International Monetary Fund and Britain were among the donors.
Ukraine has received a $1.5 billion tranche of funding under a World Bank program, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Friday, helping it pay for its budget and social spending as it defends itself against invading Russia.
The new block of World Bank aid was funded by Britain ($516 million) and Japan ($984 million), Shmyhal said. "The funds will cover budget spending for social and humanitarian needs and reconstruction," he wrote on X.
Earlier in March, Ukraine received a $4.9 billion (4.5 billion-euro) first tranche of aid under a European Union bridging finance program.
"In 2024, external financing reached $10.2 billion, and since the beginning of the full-scale war – $83.8 billion. International assistance is directed to finance the priority social expenditures of the state budget of Ukraine," the ministry said.
More energy infrastructure hit
Russia fired dozens of missiles and 60 drones on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure Friday, damaging three power plants and causing massive blackouts, according to Ukrainian authorities.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy accused Russia of targeting two hydropower plants, threatening to cause an environmental disaster not only in Ukraine but also in neighboring Moldova, located down the flow of the Dniester River.
“There were strikes on the Dniester Power Plant, the Kaniv Power Plant, indicating Russia's intention to replicate the catastrophe they caused at the Kakhovka Power Plant. It must become a joint task — not only Ukraine's — to ensure that such environmental disasters no longer occur in our Europe,” he said.
Friday’s attack was the latest in an intensified series of strikes Moscow has unleashed on Ukraine in March. During the week of March 18, Russia launched more than 190 missiles and 140 Shahed drones, authorities said. The attacks caused $11.5 billion in damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, the country’s Energy Ministry estimated.
Ukraine's air force downed two Russian missiles in the southern port city of Odesa on Friday afternoon, officials said, but debris hit civilian infrastructure, injuring five people, including a 15-year-old boy, Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
"The enemy insidiously directs missile strikes on industrial and residential areas of Odesa," the southern military command said on Telegram.
Moscow denies deliberately attacking civilians in the invasion of Ukraine it launched in February 2022, although many have been killed in frequent Russian airstrikes across the country.
Some information for this report came from Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
