KYIV, Ukraine: Numerous Ukraine-based humanitarian projects have had their financing suspended due to the US freeze on foreign aid, several sources told AFP on Monday, prompting alarm in the war-battered country.
Almost three years after Russia’s invasion, Ukraine has become extremely dependent on foreign aid for humanitarian work, with the United States providing billions of dollars of that help.
Organizations that support veterans, local media and health care are among those to have had their funding curtailed by Washington, with many small local press outlets and aid groups announcing on social networks that they would have to close as a result.
“Most of the projects have received an order to stop,” a source at the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) mission in Ukraine told AFP.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday ordered a halt to virtually all US foreign aid except for funding to Israel and Egypt, according to an internal memo.
It came after US President Donald Trump signed an order last Monday temporarily suspending foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending reviews of their funding.
A number of Ukrainian and international NGOs wrote on social media that they were affected by the freeze.
Olga Kucher of Veteran Hub told AFP the Ukrainian NGO on Monday had to pause the work of its branch in the central city of Vinnytsia.
The organization offers legal consultations and psychological support to veterans and their loved ones.
“We do not know how long this will last,” she said, adding that the group had launched an appeal asking Ukrainian companies to help fund its operations.
Maria Vorotylo, a soldier’s wife who had been receiving help from Veteran Hub, wrote on Facebook that its closure was “a very severe blow.”
She called Veteran Hub “one of the threads that keep many people in good mental health now,” adding that she had received help with understanding the mental toll that fighting took on her husband.
A humanitarian worker at an American NGO in Ukraine that is partly funded by USAID said that a project to assist Ukrainian aid groups that was about to launch has now been “put on hold.”
“We don’t know if it will be completely canceled or reduced,” they said on condition of anonymity.
The worker explained that his organization was supposed to provide support totalling several million dollars to half a dozen Ukrainian NGOs, some of which are now at of risk closing.
Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, USAID has provided Ukraine with $2.6 billion in humanitarian aid, $5 billion in development assistance and more than $30 billion in direct budget support, according to its website.
Alarm in Ukraine as US aid freeze halts humanitarian projects
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Alarm in Ukraine as US aid freeze halts humanitarian projects
- A humanitarian worker at an American NGO in Ukraine that is partly funded by USAID said that a project to assist Ukrainian aid groups that was about to launch has now been “put on hold”
Interim Venezuela leader to visit US
DAVOS: Venezuela’s interim president will soon visit the United States, a senior US official said Wednesday, further signaling President Donald Trump’s willingness to embrace the oil-rich country’s new leader.
Delcy Rodriguez would be the first sitting Venezuelan president to visit the United States in more than a quarter century — aside from presidents attending United Nations meetings in New York.
She said Wednesday that she approached any dialogue with the United States “without fear.”
“We are in a process of dialogue, of working with the United States, without any fear, to confront our differences and difficulties... and to address them through diplomacy,” said Rodriguez.
The invitation reflects a head-snapping shift in relations between Washington and Caracas since US Delta Force operatives swooped into Caracas, seized president Nicolas Maduro and spirited him to a US jail to face narcotrafficking charges.
Rodriguez was a former vice president and long-time insider in Venezuela’s authoritarian and anti-American government, before changing tack as interim president.
She is still the subject of US sanctions, including an asset freeze.
But with a flotilla of US warships still amassed off the Venezuelan coast, she has allowed the United States to broker the sale of Venezuelan oil, facilitated foreign investment and released dozens of political prisoners.
A senior White House official said Rodriguez would visit soon, but no date has been set.
The last bilateral visit by a sitting Venezuelan president came in the 1990s — before populist leader Hugo Chavez took power.
Since then, successive Venezuelan governments have made a point of thumbing their nose at Washington and building close ties with US foes in China, Cuba, Iran and Russia.
The US trip, which has yet to be confirmed by Venezuelan authorities, could pose problems for Rodriguez inside the government — where some hard-liners still detest what they see as Washington’s hemispheric imperialism.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez remain powerful forces in the country, and analysts say their support for Rodriguez is not a given.
Trump has so far appeared happy to allow Rodriguez and much of the repressive government to remain in power, so long as the United States has access to Venezuelan oil — the largest proven reserves in the world.
Trump hosted Venezuela’s exiled opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Maria Corina Machado at the White House earlier this month.
After initially dismissing Machado and her ability to control the country’s powerful armed forces and intelligence services, he said Tuesday that he would “love” to have her “involved in some way.”
Machado’s party is widely considered to have won 2024 elections that Washington said were stolen by Maduro.
Analysts say Trump’s embrace of Rodriguez and avoidance of wholesale regime change can be explained by an unwillingness to repeat mistakes made in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
“Those kinds of intervention operations — and the deployment of troops for stabilization — have always ended very badly,” said Benigno Alarcon, a politics expert at the Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas.
Trump’s stance has however angered democracy activists who argue that all political prisoners must be freed and granted amnesty, and Venezuela must hold fresh elections.
