‘It’s Time for the World to Wake up’ – Ukraine at War Update for May 23

On Wednesday, the UK’s defense minister, Grant Shapps, had sharp criticism for China’s supplying Moscow with lethal aid in its invasion of Ukraine, while Washington was more delicate in its comments about its rivals in Beijing.

“US and British defense intelligence can reveal that lethal aid is now flowing from China to Russia and into Ukraine,” Shapps told a press gathering in London. “It’s time for the world to wake up… And that starts with laying the foundations for an alliance-wide increase in spending on our collective deterrent.”

When pressed on that subject at a White House press briefing later that day, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan took a more diplomatic tone.

He conceded the possibility that China might “provide weapons directly, lethal assistance, to Russia” and that this had always been a concern for the US and its partners, but that “we have not seen [evidence of] that to date.”

Sullivan clarified that the White House indeed harbored worries “about what China is doing to fuel Russia’s war machine, not giving weapons directly, but providing inputs to Russia’s defense industrial base.”

Agence France Presse noted that the booming trade between the two nations in the past year has critically supported Russia’s embattled economy. (Russia’s largest energy company, Gazprom, posted its first loss in history this spring). AFP cited Chinese figures claiming $240 billion in trade with Russia in 2023.

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New Lego sets feature Ukrainian landmarks to raise money for destroyed school

The Denmark-based toy company, Lego, has introduced a series of building-block sets designed around Ukrainian landmarks, offering the new releases not for direct sales, but rather as sweepstake prizes to a group of winners among entrants who contribute $24 or more to a charity that is helping rebuild a school.

The initiative is in partnership with United24, a charity founded by President Volodymyr Zelensky and headed by dozens of international celebrity ambassadors, from Ukrainian soccer star Andriy Shevchenko to American country music singer Brad Paisley to British adventurer Bear Grylls.

The new Lego sets feature such Ukrainian landmarks as the Golden Gate of Kyiv, the Khan’s Palace in Bakhchysarai, the Mykolaiv Astronomical Observatory and the Odesa Opera House. 

All proceeds will go towards rebuilding a high school in the town of Velyka Kostromka (in the Dnipropetrovsk region) which was severely damaged by a Russian missile strike on October 11, 2022. The fundraising campaign will run from May 20 to June 20.

Ukraine strikes back in Belgorod and Luhansk, killing civilians

Russian authorities claimed that Ukrainian forces launched aerial assaults on a number of border villages in Russia and in the occupied Luhansk region on Wednesday, killing three people.

“Several air targets were shot down as they approached the village of Belenkoye [in Russia’s Belgorod region]. To our great sorrow, one civilian was killed,” the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said.

He also reported that a civilian in the Russian village of Belenkoye was injured, while another was wounded in an attack near the town of Shebekino, close to the border.

Meanwhile, in the Luhansk region, shelling from the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) was said to have killed two other civilians and injured four more, according to the Moscow-installed regional government there.

Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have traded air attacks along the border between their respective Kharkiv and Belgorod regions ever since Moscow launched a ground invasion of that northeastern part of Ukraine on May 10.

In wake of Russian nuclear drills, France holds its own

A day after the Kremlin announced the first stages of a planned exercise involving “non-strategic” nuclear weapons in southern Russia, Paris held its own nuclear tests on Wednesday.

AFP reported that France carried out its “first test firing of an updated nuclear-capable missile designed to be launched by a Rafale fighter jet,” quoting Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu.

The ASMPA-R missile was fired without a warhead by a plane in an exercise “above national territory... at the end of a flight representing a nuclear air raid,” Lecornu said in a statement.