Secretary of State Marco Rubio terminated the US’s support for Ukraine’s power grid.
The State Department ended a USAID initiative that has given hundreds of millions of dollars to the restoration of Ukraine’s power grid.
Ukraine has been struggling with power outages because of Russia’s attacks on its power grid over the last few years.
USAID will also drastically reduce its presence in Ukraine, according to NBC News.
NBC News reported:
The State Department this week terminated a U.S. Agency for International Development initiative that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to help restore Ukraine’s energy grid from attacks by the Russian military, according to two USAID officials working on the agency’s Ukraine mission.
Power outages have been applied overnight in some regions of Ukraine due to the attacks on energy facilities. The country’s systems have sustained near-constant impact throughout the course of the three-year war.
“It significantly undercuts this administration’s abilities to negotiate on the ceasefire, and it’d signal to Russia that we don’t care about Ukraine or our past investments,” one USAID official involved in the Ukraine mission told NBC News.
The official continued: “Russia is fighting a two-pronged war in Ukraine: A military one but also an economic one. They’re trying to crush the economy, but USAID has played a central role in helping it be resilient, [including] shoring up the energy grid…We’ve provided vast amount of support to the Ukrainian government to avoid a macro economic crisis.”
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