The USAID initiative had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in helping Ukraine's energy grid recover from attacks from Russia.

Summary

The State Department has ended a major USAID initiative to restore Ukraine’s energy grid, which has suffered continuous Russian attacks.

The move, seen as a signal of declining U.S. support, also includes downsizing USAID’s presence in Ukraine from 64 to just 8 personnel.

Officials warn this could leave Ukraine vulnerable, especially during winter, and reduce oversight of financial aid.

Additionally, a financial sector reform program has been terminated. The decision is part of the broader Trump administration policies shifting away from strong U.S. involvement in Ukraine.

      • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        16 hours ago

        To add, if you didn’t know that, Zelensky and Putin are both Vovas, but the start of their names are spelled a bit different, Volodymyr vs Vladimir, volo vs vla, following ukrainian and russian takes at the same root name. The thing that doesn’t make sense tho is that the end of their names, dymyr\dimir is spelled exactly the same, and is not a marker of dialects, but rather Putin having an old soviet-like transliteration of a slavic name while Zelensky has a more modern one that follows the actual way it’s spelled. A probable reason for why the old version is like that is that russian and ukrainian have their У sounding very different to English Y, like ‘ugh’, and using ‘I’ avoided such association. I’m not a linguist at all, so take it with a grain of salt.