logo
Trump envoy arrives in Kyiv as U.S. pledges Patriot missiles to Ukraine

Trump envoy arrives in Kyiv as U.S. pledges Patriot missiles to Ukraine

CTV News14-07-2025
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine's Presidential Office, left, meets with United States Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Joseph Keith Kellogg, at a train station in Kyiv, Ukraine, July 14, 2025. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine — U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, arrived in Kyiv on Monday, a senior Ukrainian official said, as anticipation grew over a possible shift in the Trump administration's policy on the more than three-year war.
Trump last week teased that he would make a 'major statement' on Russia on Monday. Trump made quickly stopping the war one of his diplomatic priorities, and he has increasingly expressed frustration about Russian President Vladimir Putin's unbudging stance on U.S-led peace efforts.
Trump has long boasted of his friendly relationship with Putin and after taking office in January repeatedly said that Russia was more willing than Ukraine to reach a peace deal. At the same time, Trump accused Zelenskyy of prolonging the war and called him a 'dictator without elections.'
But Russia's relentless onslaught against civilian areas of Ukraine wore down Trump's patience. In April, Trump urged Putin to 'STOP!' launching deadly barrages on Kyiv, and the following month said in a social media post that the Russian leader ' has gone absolutely CRAZY!' as the bombardments continued.
'I am very disappointed with President Putin, I thought he was somebody that meant what he said,' Trump said late Sunday. 'He'll talk so beautifully and then he'll bomb people at night. We don't like that.'
The European Union can't buy weapons
Trump confirmed the U.S. is sending Ukraine badly needed U.S.-made Patriot air defense missiles to help it fend off Russia's intensifying aerial attacks.
Trump said that the European Union will pay the U.S. for the 'various pieces of very sophisticated' weaponry it is sending.
However, the EU is not allowed under its treaties to buy weapons. EU member countries are buying and sending weapons to Ukraine, just as NATO member countries are buying and sending weapons. EU countries set up the European Peace Facility so that countries which supply arms to Ukraine could be refunded to backfill their own stocks.
Russia has pounded Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, with hundreds of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles that Ukraine's air defenses are struggling to counter. June brought the highest monthly civilian casualties of the past three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded, the UN human rights mission in Ukraine said Thursday. Russia launched 10 times more drones and missiles in June than in the same month last year, it said.
That has happened at the same time as Russia's bigger army is making a new effort to drive back Ukrainian defenders on parts of the 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front line.
Trump ally says war at inflection point
A top ally of Trump, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said Sunday that the conflict is nearing an inflection point as Trump shows growing interest in helping Ukraine fight back against Russia's full-scale invasion. It's a cause that Trump had previously dismissed as being a waste of U.S. taxpayer money.
'In the coming days, you'll see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves,' Graham said on CBS' 'Face the Nation.' He added: 'One of the biggest miscalculations (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has made is to play Trump. And you just watch, in the coming days and weeks, there's going to be a massive effort to get Putin to the table.'
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's envoy for international investment who took part in talks with U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia in February, dismissed what he said were efforts to drive a wedge between Moscow and Washington.
'Constructive dialogue between Russia and the United States is more effective than doomed-to-fail attempts at pressure,' Dmitriev said in a post on Telegram. 'This dialogue will continue, despite titanic efforts to disrupt it by all possible means.'
'Equal dialogue, mutual respect, realism and economic cooperation are the foundations of global security,' he added, echoing comments by Putin.
NATO chief visits Washington
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was due in Washington on Monday and Tuesday. He planned to hold talks with Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as members of Congress.
Talks during Kellogg's visit to Kyiv will cover 'defense, strengthening security, weapons, sanctions, protection of our people and enhancing cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,' said the head of Ukraine's presidential office, Andrii Yermak.
'Russia does not want a cease fire. Peace through strength is President Donald Trump's principle, and we support this approach,' Yermak said.
Russian troops conducted a combined aerial strike at Shostka, in the northern Sumy region of Ukraine, using glide bombs and drones early Monday morning, killing two people, the regional prosecutor's office said. Four others were injured, including a 7-year-old, it said.
Overnight from Sunday to Monday, Russia fired four S-300/400 missiles and 136 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine, the air force said. It said that 61 drones were intercepted and 47 more were either jammed or lost from radars mid-flight.
The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its air defenses downed 11 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions on the border with Ukraine, as well as over the annexed Crimea and the Black Sea.
___
Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.
___
Illia Novikov, The Associated Press
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Ukrainian defenders face fierce fighting in eastern city of Pokrovsk, Zelenskyy says
Ukrainian defenders face fierce fighting in eastern city of Pokrovsk, Zelenskyy says

CBC

time12 minutes ago

  • CBC

Ukrainian defenders face fierce fighting in eastern city of Pokrovsk, Zelenskyy says

Social Sharing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that Ukrainian forces were facing fierce fighting around the city of Pokrovsk in the east. Russia has been announcing the purported capture of villages near the town that acts as a logistics hub on an almost daily basis. Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, said Ukraine's top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, told a meeting of senior officials that the situation around Pokrovsk was the current focal point of its attention in the war, which began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. "All operational directions were covered, with particular focus on Pokrovsk. It receives the most attention," Zelenskyy said. Ukrainian forces, he said, were also "continuing to act" in border areas in the northern Sumy region, where Russian troops have gained a foothold in recent weeks. Syrskyi, in a separate report on the Telegram messaging app, described Pokrovsk and five other sectors as among the most difficult theatres along the 1,000-kilometre front. "The Russian Federation is paying the maximum price for attempting a 'summer offensive,' " Syrskyi wrote. A Russian focus for months Russian forces have been trying to close in on Pokrovsk for months. The road and rail hub with a pre-war population of about 60,000 has been all but evacuated. Serhii Dobriak, the head of the city's military administration, has said less than 1,500 residents remain. Syrskyi in May reported that Kyiv's troops had stabilized the situation around the town, also the site of the only facility in Ukraine producing coking coal for the country's steel industry. WATCH | Evolving drone threats in the war in Ukraine: Why Russian drones are getting harder to shoot down 3 days ago Russia's Defence Ministry on Thursday announced the capture of two villages on either side of Pokrovsk — Zvirove to the west and Novoekonomichne to the east. Earlier in the week, Moscow declared that it had "liberated" a third village near the city, Novotoretske. Ukrainian officials have made no acknowledgement that the villages have changed hands. The General Staff of Ukraine's military said in an evening report that two of them — Zvirove and Novoekonomichne — were in areas where Russian troops were trying to penetrate Ukrainian defences. In the Sumy region, where Russian troops are trying to establish what Russian leader Vladimir Putin calls a "buffer zone," the popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said Kyiv's forces had retaken a previously lost village.

Trump's NASA cuts will 'compromise human safety,' hundreds of employees say in letter
Trump's NASA cuts will 'compromise human safety,' hundreds of employees say in letter

CBC

timean hour ago

  • CBC

Trump's NASA cuts will 'compromise human safety,' hundreds of employees say in letter

NASA scientists say pending cuts to the space agency could compromise mission safety and pave the way for another tragedy like the 1986 Challenger disaster. "When you're talking about cuts that appear unstrategic and unthoroughly researched and not motivated by actual improvements in mission safety, then you start to get people worried," Kyle Helson, a research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland, told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams. Helson is one of 362 current and former NASA employees who have signed an open letter sounding the alarm about "recent policies that have or threaten to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security, and undermine the core NASA mission." In an email to CBC, NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens dismissed those concerns. "NASA will never compromise on safety. Any reductions — including our current voluntary reduction — will be designed to protect safety-critical roles," she said. $6B US in proposed cuts U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking a 25 per cent, or roughly $6 billion US ($8.22 billion Cdn), budget cut for NASA as a whole, and 50 per cent cut for the scientific research division. "President Trump has proposed billions of dollars for NASA science, demonstrating an ongoing commitment to communicating our scientific achievements," Stevens said. Helson says that's technically true, but wildly disingenuous. "That's like saying your bicycle is missing one wheel, but don't worry, you've still got another wheel," he said. Trump's cuts have yet to be approved by Congress, which holds NASA's purse strings. But in leaked audio from a NASA town hall meeting last month, several high-ranking officials said they will be moving ahead with them anyway. Zoe Lofgren and Valerie P. Foushee, the top Democrats on a House committee overseeing NASA's budget, have said implementing the cuts prematurely would be "flatly illegal" and "offensive to our constitutional system." The bipartisan committee has called on NASA not to implement the cuts. Fears of reprisal The open letter, called The Voyager Declaration, is addressed to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who Trump appointed interim NASA administrator earlier this month. Duffy's office directed calls for comment to NASA. The declaration specifically cites concerns that, if NASA continues along this path, existing missions will be cancelled, valuable scientific data will be lost, international partners will be abandoned, development programs will be nixed, staffing will be gutted and safety measures will be scaled back. It follows similar open letters by workers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the latter of which suspended 144 employees who signed. NASA workers fear a similar retribution. Roughly half of those who signed the letter did so anonymously, and only four signatories who currently work with NASA are willing to speak out on record, according to Stand Up For Science, the organization that helped organize this letter, and those at NIH and EPA. Helson is one of those four, and says he's only comfortable speaking because his work with NASA is in co-operation with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a position he says gives him more academic freedom than those employed directly by NASA. "A lot of my coworkers who are civil servants are very afraid right now, and so I want to use what I perceive to be my advantages in my position to speak out on their behalf," he said. "People are afraid that they're going to lose their job." NASA did not respond to questions from CBC about whether it would retaliate against the letter's signatories. The letter is framed an act of "Formal Dissent," a reference to a NASA policy that empowers employees to speak up against decisions they believe are "not in the best interest of NASA." According to the New York Times, the policy was put in place after the deadly 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia space shuttle disasters, when the concerns of some engineers were brushed aside. The Challenger broke up seconds into its flight on Jan. 28, 1986, killing all seven astronauts on board. The Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing its crew of seven. The letter's signatories say they're worried that other policies designed to prevent those kinds of tragedies will be impacted by the cuts. "The culture of organizational silence promoted at NASA over the last six months already represents a dangerous turn away from the lessons learned following the Columbia disaster," the letter reads.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store