BRUSSELS (Dispatches) --
European Union nations on Tuesday approved fresh aid for Ukraine as the country faces growing economic damage from the war with Russia.
Finance ministers from the 27-nation EU gave the go-ahead on Tuesday to 1 billion euros ($1 billion) in loans to the Ukrainian government.
The sum brings to 2.2 billion euros the total amount of EU macro-financial assistance to Kyiv this year. An initial 1.2 billion-euro EU loan package got the green light from the bloc’s finance chiefs days before Russia’s Feb. 24 attack.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, in mid-May proposed extra assistance of up to 9 billion euros to Ukraine. The planned 1 billion-euro payout is part of this initiative, which comes as Russia makes advances in eastern Ukraine and casualties mount on both sides.
“This will give Ukraine the necessary funds to cover urgent needs and ensure the operation of critical infrastructure,” said Zbynek Stanjura, finance minister of the Czech Republic, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, in a statement.
EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said Tuesday the European Union has frozen Russian assets worth $13.8 billion.
“For the moment, we have frozen — coming from oligarchs and other entities — €13.8 billion, so it’s quite huge,” Reynders told reporters in Prague.
“But I must say that a very large part of it is more than 12 billion... coming from five member states,” he added ahead of an informal meeting of EU justice ministers held by the Czech presidency of the EU.
He refused to name the five countries, but added he expected the other countries in the 27-member bloc to step up their efforts soon.
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner put the value of assets frozen by Germany alone at 4.48 billion euros in mid-June.
At the end of June, an international sanctions task force said its
members, including several EU countries, had blocked $30 billion in assets belonging to Russian oligarchs and officials.
The Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task Force (REPO) said its members, who also include the U.S., Canada, Britain, Japan and other allies, had immobilized $300 billion owned by the Russian central bank.
The EU has so far adopted six sanction packages against Russia, including a ban on most Russian oil imports approved in early June.
A total of 98 companies and 1,158 individuals, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have seen their property frozen and been banned from entering the EU.
On the frontlines, Ukrainian authorities said their forces targeted a Russian ammunition depot in southern Ukraine overnight, resulting in a massive explosion captured on social media.
The Ukrainian military’s southern command said a rocket strike targeted the depot in Russian-held Nova Kakhovka, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) east of the Black Sea port city of Kherson, which is also occupied by Russian forces.
The precision of the strike suggested Ukrainian forces used U.S-supplied multiple-launch High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, to hit the area. Ukraine indicated in recent days that it might launch a counteroffensive to reclaim territory in the country’s south as Russia devotes resources to capturing all of the eastern Donbas region.
Russia’s Tass news agency offered a different account of the blast in Nova Kakhovka, saying a mineral fertilizer storage facility exploded, and that a market, hospital and houses were damaged in the strike. Some of the ingredients in fertilizer can be used for ammunition.
Ukraine now has eight of the HIMAR systems, a truck-mounted missile launcher with high accuracy, and Washington has promised to send another four.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian shelling over the past 24 hours killed at least 16 civilians and wounded 48 more, Ukraine’s presidential office said in its Tuesday morning update. Cities and towns in five southeast regions came under Russian fire, the office said.
Nine civilians were killed and two more wounded in Donetsk province, which makes up half of the Donbas. Russian rocket attacks targeted the cities of Sloviansk and Toretsk, where a kindergarten was hit, the presidential office said.
Ukrainian authorities said that Russian fire struck the southern city of Mykolaiv on Tuesday morning, hitting residential buildings. Twelve people were wounded as the result of the Russian shelling, with some of the rockets hitting two medical facilities, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram.
Air raid sirens sounded Tuesday in the western city of Lviv — the first daytime sirens there in over a week — and in other areas of Ukraine as Russian forces continued to make advances.
In eastern Luhansk, “fighting continues near the villages” on the administrative border with neighboring Donetsk, Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
The British Defense Ministry’s intelligence briefing said Russia had seized the Ukrainian town of Hryhorivka and continued to push toward the Donetsk province cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.