‘These Medals Are for the Whole Country’ – Ukraine at War Update for Aug. 5

World champion high-jumper and world record holder Yaroslava Mahuchikh won Ukraine’s second gold medal of the Paris Olympics, clearing the 2.00-meter bar, enough to put her past Australia's Nicola Olyslagers, but shy of the record she set at 2.10 meters last month.

Another Ukrainian, Iryna Gerashchenko, shared the bronze medal with another Australian, Eleanor Patterson, who marked 1.95 meters.

That gold was Mahuchikh’s crowning piece in her trophy case, having already earned a bronze Olympic medal, plus two silvers and her record-setting gold medal in several world championships. (Her high jump record in Budapest last month broke a record set in 1987 by Bulgaria’s Stefka Kostadinova.)

On Saturday, Ukraine earned its first gold medal in the Paris Olympics, with the women’s fencing team beating South Korea in the saber category. After the victory, President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a photo of the gold medal to social media, saying it showed “that Ukrainians are winning!”

After her on-field celebration with Gerashenko, 29, and an ecstatic group of Ukrainians trackside, the 22-year-old Mahuchikh shouted into the camera, “Ukraine, I’m bringing the gold home!”

“I want to thank the Armed Forces of Ukraine and all the military, volunteers, and people who support us,” she said later. “These are medals for the whole country.”

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Mahuchikh became something of a Western media darling in blue-and-yellow eyeliner in the lead-up to the Games, with outlets latching onto her story of leaving her bombarded hometown of Dnipro at the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and moving into her coach’s home in the countryside where they would hide in the cellar every time they heard air-raid sirens. 

She would make long trips in the car, sometimes up to six days long, to European capitals to compete in championships.

Former Trump campaign manager becomes lobbyist for Ukrainian billionaire

Kellyanne Conway,  once former US president Donald Trump’s campaign manager and then senior counsel, has registered as a foreign agent, ABC News reported Sunday, and now represents Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk’s foundation.

Pinchuk, whose wealth derives from steel interests and later the ownership of media outlets in Ukraine, was a $150,000 donor to Trump’s charitable organization (as a non-American he couldn’t legally contribute to his presidential campaigns) which was reportedly part of the US Department of Justice’s special investigation into Kremlin meddling in the 2016 presidential elections, which Trump won.

In 2004, Pinchuk founded the Yalta European Strategy (YES), devoted to promoting Ukrainian membership in the European Union. In exchange for his $150,000 donation, Pinchuk asked Trump to attend a YES conference, which the President did virtually in 2015.

That year, Pinchuk was a member of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s legislature, embroiled in a bribery scandal. He allegedly pressed fellow oligarch Igor Kolomoisky for millions of dollars in exchange for a private stake in a state-owned energy company.

Pinchuk is married to the daughter of former president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, who was also implicated in that scandal.

ABC reported that Conway is representing the UK office of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, described by the foreign-agent filings as a “registered, private, nonpartisan, philanthropic company limited by guarantee in the United Kingdom primarily focused on advancing artistic, scientific, charitable, benevolent, and philanthropic purposes in Ukraine or related to Ukraine.”

Documents filed on Conway’s behalf state that her lobbyist role is to persuade US leaders to “attend the annual YES meeting in Kyiv on September 13 – 14” and influence policymakers on other Ukraine-related matters.

Her salary from Pinchuk’s organization was listed at $50,000 per month.

This position puts her at policy odds with Trump’s running mate JD Vance, who has repeatedly voiced his opposition to US aid for Ukraine. Indeed, many voices surfaced on Sunday saying that Conway has been using her PR connections to promote negative coverage of the isolationist VP candidate.

After embarrassing rebel victories, Mali cuts ties with Ukraine

A government spokesperson for Mali, Col. Abdoulaye Maiga, said on Sunday that Bamako will cut off relations with Kyiv “with immediate effect,” after Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) admitted its role in defeating Russian mercenary troops who were helping to defend Mali’s murderous military junta, by providing intelligence to the rebel Tuaregs.

On Ukrainian television on July 29, HUR spokesperson Andriy Yusov said it was obvious that the rebels “had received the necessary data that allowed them to carry out their operation against the Russian war criminals.”

The same day, Kyiv Post published an exclusive photo of Tuareg rebels posing with a Ukrainian flag after having just dealt a major defeat to Russian state-funded Wagner mercenaries in Mali.

Wagner mercenaries have helped the Russian government extract natural resources in Africa, including, according to The Blood Gold Report, an estimated $2.5 billion worth of gold in the past two years, which Russian leader Vladimir Putin has used to help fund his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, ongoing since February 2022.

Tuareg-led separatists said on July 26 that they had killed some 20 Wagner troops, and last Thursday they announced they had killed 84 Wagner fighters and 47 Malian soldiers, AFP reported.

The Kremlin-allied junta specified that Kyiv’s actions had violated Malian sovereignty and amounted to “support for international terrorism,” Col. Maiga’s statement read.