Hundreds of millions of dollars went into keeping Ukraine’s lights on. This week the State Department ended the program that spent them.
The department terminated a US Agency for International Development initiative that helped restore the country’s energy grid after attacks by the Russian military, according to two USAID officials working on the agency’s Ukraine mission who spoke to NBC News. USAID is also sharply reducing its presence in the country, NBC reported. The Gateway Pundit, in its account of the news, credited Secretary of State Marco Rubio with the decision.
Ukraine has dealt with outages for years because of Russian strikes on its power system. Some regions were put on overnight outages after fresh attacks on energy facilities, and the country’s networks have taken near-constant damage across the three-year war.
One of the USAID officials told NBC the move works against the White House’s own interests. “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,” the official said.
The official described how the agency saw its role. Russia, the official said, is fighting “a two-pronged war in Ukraine: A military one but also an economic one.” The aim is to crush the Ukrainian economy, the official argued, and USAID had helped it hold up, including by shoring up the energy grid and providing support meant to head off a macroeconomic crisis.
A day of bad news for Kyiv
The same Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky went to the White House to present his rare earth mineral rights proposal to President Trump. The meeting turned explosive in the Oval Office. Trump canceled the joint press conference planned for that afternoon, and Zelensky was told to leave after the talks failed.
In the exchange, Trump told him: “You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards … You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people! You’re gambling with World War III!” Vice President JD Vance asked whether it was respectful to come to the Oval Office and attack the administration that was trying to prevent the destruction of Ukraine.
