WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Dozens injured in Kyiv in Russia's second missile assault this week -Ukraine

Russia's second missile assault on Kyiv this week injured at least 34 people and damaged homes and a children's hospital, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pleaded in Washington for more help for his country.

Ukraine's air defence systems downed all missiles targeting the capital about 3 a.m. (0100 GMT), Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv's military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app. The full scale of the attack was not immediately clear.

Falling debris caused injuries and destruction in three of Kyiv's districts on the eastern side of the Dnipro River that cuts through the capital, officials said.

Windows and entrances were shattered by debris at a children's hospital in Kyiv's Dniprovskyi district, but based on initial assessments, there were no casualties, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.

Debris also hit several residential buildings in the Dniprovskyi district, injuring at least 34 people, with 15 requiring hospitalisation, including two children, Klitschko added. The district's water supply was also damaged.

The specific weapons Russia used in the attack were not immediately known. It followed a salvo of ballistic missiles that targeted Kyiv early on Monday and injured four people.

On Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden warned Republicans that they would give Russia a "Christmas gift" if they failed to provide additional military aid to Zelenskiy, whose meeting with a top U.S. lawmaker concluded without a commitment for more support.

There was no comment from Russia about the attack on Wednesday, which also damaged buildings in Kyiv's Desnyanskyi and Darnitskyi districts.

Both Moscow and Kyiv deny targeting civilians in the nearly 22-month-long war that Russia launched against its neighbour in February 2022.

Popko said 15 people, including four children, were evacuated from a residential building in the Dniprovskyi district after debris hit a building and nearby cars, causing a fire.

He added that most injuries came from windows blown out by the blast wave.

"There are many injured," Popko said, suggesting that the number of wounded may rise.

** Zelenskiy meets Republican doubts in push for US aid to fight Russia

President Joe Biden warned Republicans on Tuesday that they would give Russia a "Christmas gift" if they failed to provide additional military aid to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose meeting with a top U.S. lawmaker concluded without a commitment for more support.

Zelenskiy traveled to Washington to plead for money to back Ukraine in its war with Russia, but he faced a skeptical reception from key Republican lawmakers. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, would not agree to support Biden's request to give Ukraine $61.4 billion.

"What the Biden administration seems to be asking for is billions of additional dollars with no appropriate oversight, no clear strategy to win and with none of the answers that I think the American people are owed," Johnson said after meeting with Zelenskiy.

Biden, who met with Zelenskiy later at the White House, said he would not walk away from Ukraine and neither would the American people. He warned lawmakers that they risked handing a victory to Russian President Vladimir Putin if they did not approve the request for aid.

"Putin is banking on the United States failing to deliver for Ukraine," he said during a press conference with the Ukrainian leader. "We must ... prove him wrong."

Earlier in the Oval Office, Biden told Zelenskiy, "We're gonna stay at your side," saying that Congress needed to pass legislation approving the aid "before they give Putin the greatest Christmas gift they could possibly give him."

Zelenskiy said he heard "great many things" during his talks with political leaders in Washington and was thankful for the support of the Biden administration and lawmakers, but time will tell if the U.S. will continue to help fund its defense against Russia.

"There were signals. They were more than positive. But we know that there are words and there are concrete results. We will count on a great result," Zelenskiy said.

He also rejected any calls to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia.

"How can Ukraine simply give away its territory? This is absolutely insane," Zelenskiy said. "Let’s be honest. … Our people live there…our children. It’s a part of our society. We’re talking about people who live there."

IMMIGRATION DEBATE

Heading into winter, with tens of thousands of Ukrainians dead, a yawning budget deficit and Russian advances in the east, Zelenskiy is asking Washington to provide badly needed support.

Wearing a black shirt and olive drab trousers, Zelenskiy was met with sustained applause in Congress as he entered a closed-door meeting with U.S. senators, and the chamber's Democratic and Republican leaders pledged their support.

But some Republicans, particularly those with the closest ties to former President Donald Trump, oppose more aid. They say any further money must be paired with changes to immigration policy at home — an exceptionally divisive issue in U.S. politics.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who is leading the talks, said he thought lawmakers could reach an immigration deal and pass the spending package before Congress recesses for the year on Friday.

But Republicans said that was not likely.

"I'm becoming increasingly pessimistic," Senator Susan Collins told reporters.

Speaker Johnson said he would not act until the Senate passed legislation. "I implore them to do their job because the time is urgent and we do want to do the right thing," he told reporters.

Both the war and immigration issues are expected to be lightning-rod issues ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential and congressional elections. Trump and Biden are both seeking the presidency.

DEADLOCK STRATEGY

Biden said the U.S. wanted Ukraine to win the war, but one Republican lawmaker questioned whether additional aid would help Ukraine defeat Russia after a summer offensive that has failed to yield clear gains.

"I know everyone wants Ukraine to win. I just don't see it in the cards," Republican Senator Ron Johnson said.

Democrats in Congress accused their political opposition of aiding Putin. "He is delighting in the fact that Donald Trump's border policies are sabotaging military aid to Ukraine," Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer said.

Newly declassified U.S. intelligence shows that "Russia seems to believe that a military deadlock through the winter will drain Western support for Ukraine" and ultimately give Russia the advantage, said Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.

The White House told Congress on Dec. 4 the government will no longer have funding to provide more weapons for Ukraine after the end of the year. Congress has approved more than $110 billion for Ukraine since Russia's February 2022 invasion, but no new funds since Republicans took control of the House from Democrats in January.

Biden told Zelenskiy during the press conference that Ukraine's continued existence as an independent nation was a sign of success. "For you to be here today - again today - nearly two years later and for Ukraine to be staying strong and free is an enormous victory already," he said.

The United States cannot turn the tide of war in Ukraine by pumping tens of billions more dollars into the country, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

The war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, nearly 90% of the personnel it had before the conflict began, according to a source familiar with a declassified U.S. intelligence report.

** Ukraine's top mobile operator hit by biggest cyberattack of war

Ukraine's biggest mobile network operator said it hoped to restore operations by Wednesday after coming under what appeared to be the largest cyberattack since Russia launched its war on the country in February 2022.

Tuesday's attack on Kyivstar, which has more than half of Ukraine's population as mobile subscribers, knocked out services, damaged IT infrastructure and put millions of people in danger of not receiving alerts of potential Russian air assaults.

It also disrupted the air raid alert systems themselves in parts of Kyiv.

The company's Chief Executive Officer Oleksandr Komarov said the attack was "a result of" the war with Russia.

"War is also happening in cyberspace. Unfortunately, we have been hit as a result of this war," he told national television.

"(The attack) significantly damaged (our) infrastructure, limited access, we could not counter it at the virtual level, so we shut down Kyivstar physically to limit the enemy's access."

Komarov did not say which Russian body he believed to be responsible, but said personal data of users had not been compromised.

Russian hacktivist group Killnet claimed responsibility for the attack via a statement on the Telegram messaging app, but did not provide evidence.

A source close to Kyivstar said the Ukrainian military was not affected by the outage.

Ukraine's SBU intelligence agency told Reuters one of the possibilities it was investigating was that of a cyber-attack conducted by Russian security services.

Russia's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kyivstar, which has 24.3 million mobile subscribers, as well as more than 1.1 million home internet subscribers, said late on Tuesday that fixed-line services were partially restored and it was working to restore other services by Wednesday.

"This isn't the first attempt to breach the perimeter of the country's telecom operator, but unfortunately, this attempt has been successful," Komarov told Forbes Ukraine.

STATE ACTOR

A source close to Ukraine's cyber defence agency also said that Russia was suspected to be the source of the attack, but no specific group had been identified.

"It's definitely a state actor," said the source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, adding that data cable interception showed "a lot of Russian controlled traffic directed at these networks".

"There's no ransom. It's all destruction. So it's not a financially motivated attack," said the source.

Komarov told Forbes Ukraine that Kyivstar's "working hypothesis" was that the goal of the attack was destruction and disruption.

"Perhaps it was aimed at disrupting the president's visit to the United States, perhaps to aggravate energy blackouts, or impact the morale of Ukrainians," he said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was in Washington on Tuesday, pleading for more U.S. military support to fight Russia.

Ukrainian officials said air raid alert systems in more than 75 settlements in Kyiv region, which surrounds the capital, were affected by the cyberattack and they would announce aerial danger through loudspeakers until repair works done.

Millions of Ukrainians depend also on phone alerts to warn them of possible Russian air attacks.

In Kyiv, some people rushed to connect to other network providers and a small queue of customers formed at a store for Vodafone, Kyivstar's largest competitor.

One man who bought a new SIM was 25-year-old PR consultant Dmytro. "My connection has completely disappeared, my internet and my satellite navigation aren't working, I can't move around the city," he said.

Kyivstar, owned by Amsterdam-listed mobile telecoms operator Veon (VON.AS), said in a statement on Facebook it was cooperating with law enforcement bodies.

Veon said it was also investigating the attack and it could not yet quantify the financial impact.

Separately, the co-founder of Monobank, a major Ukrainian payment system, said in a social media post that his company was currently suffering a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, but that everything was "under control". He subsequently said that attack had been fought off.

Representatives of PrivatBank and Oschadbank, two major Ukrainian financial institutions, told media outlet Hromadske that some of their ATMs and card terminals had been affected by the Kyivstar outage.

Ukrainian state bodies and companies have often accused Russia of orchestrating cyberattacks against them in the past.

At the war's outset, a cyberattack hit Viasat Inc (VSAT.O), disabling thousands of satellite internet modems across Europe and causing a huge loss in communications for Ukraine.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

US lawmakers demand answers on Ukraine

Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky has failed to provide any new arguments in defense of his cause during his talks in Washington with American lawmakers, several senators and representatives, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have told the media in the wake of the meeting on Tuesday.

Zelensky arrived in the capital to hold a series of meetings with top US officials to save a $61-billion aid package for Kiev that remains in limbo. Last week, GOP senators blocked the Biden administration’s major $111-billion supplemental funding request, which included aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, citing the Democrats’ reluctance to address the tense situation on the US-Mexico border.

Some Republicans have also repeatedly pointed to the lack of accountability in terms of the funds Washington had spent on helping Ukraine.

According to senior GOP senator Lindsey Graham, Tuesday’s meeting has failed to bring about any changes in the lawmakers’ stance. “Nothing has changed,” he told journalists. The South Carolina senator, who emerged as a staunch supporter of Kiev amid its conflict with Moscow, explained that, although he would like to aid Ukraine, border security comes first.

“I admire him, but he didn’t change my mind at all about what we need to do,” Graham said, referring to Zelensky and adding that the Democrats were supposedly trying to “use” the Ukrainian leader “in a way that I think wasn’t helpful.” “I want to secure the border,” the senator said, adding that the number of people supposedly linked to various terrorist groups that were crossing America’s southern border was “just chilling.”

Another Republican Senator, Missouri’s Eric Schmitt, also said that the meeting was effectively reduced to “the same old stuff.” “There’s nothing new,” he told journalists, adding that the questions for the Ukrainian president “were very scripted.”

Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who also met Zelensky on Tuesday, pointed to the fact that the White House and Kiev were asking for billions of dollars with no oversight and no clear strategy that would allow Ukraine to prevail in the ongoing conflict.

“Their responses have been insufficient,” Johnson said, referring to the Biden administration and adding that he had been requesting details on Washington’s strategy for Ukraine “over and over since literally 24 hours after I was handed the gavel as Speaker of the House.”

Lindsey Graham also told journalists that he’d told Zelensky to be thankful to the House Speaker for even being willing to place military aid for Ukraine on the agenda. “I said you need to thank Mike Johnson for being willing to pass a package if border security is in it, because half his conference probably doesn’t agree with that,” the senator said.

The US has already provided Kiev with $111 billion in military and economic assistance since military confrontation between Moscow and Kiev began in February 2022. Washington has recently warned that funds for the government of Vladimir Zelensky have almost run out.

Last week, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Kiev can’t expect additional funding until the gridlock in Congress is resolved. Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, then warned that delays in US assistance could lead to Ukraine’s defeat by Russia.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that any further assistance Washington decides to provide to Kiev is doomed to fail from the start. No amount of money can change the situation on the front lines, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Reuters/RT