Donald Trump’s USAID cuts damaging humanitarian operations on Ukraine’s front line
Oleksiy Kliuiev has had to get used to working under fire. He leads a group of volunteers helping civilians caught in the fighting on Ukraine’s frontline.
Last September, he and his team were nearly hit in a drone strike as they rushed to help residents under bombardment in the Sumy region, close to Ukraine’s northeastern border with Russia.
“By the time we volunteers arrived, there had already been two hits on the hospital by Shahed drones,” Mr Kliuiev, who filmed the strike, tells Sky News.
With the air-raid warning still sounding, he sought shelter in a neighbouring building.
“When we came out, we saw a horrible picture. There were bodies everywhere – wounded or killed. Cars were on fire. Everything was burning.”
A total of 11 people were killed in the attack.
Mr Kliuiev has been working on the frontline of Ukraine’s war since 2022.
In recent days, this border region has become the focal point of Russia’s war effort, as the Kremlin tries to take control and cut off supplies to the Ukrainian military.
Under Russian assault, support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had been more essential than ever.
Oleksiy Kliuiev runs the Sumy branch of volunteer organisation Dobrobat
“Sumy is under shelling all the time. It’s under attack from drones, from ballistic missiles, from supersonic missiles,” Mr Kliuiev says.
“It is probably the hardest moment since 2022, because even back in 2022, when we had convoys of occupiers marching through our city, the scale of destruction was not what we are seeing now.”
Russian forces are approaching Sumy from Kursk Oblast
Mr Kliuiev heads up the Sumy branch of Dobrobat, a volunteer organisation that helps civilians and does urgent reconstruction in areas hit by Russian shelling.
He and his team are aware of the risks. “Ours is a rescue mission,” he says. “So, every time we go to such scenes, we go to help people.”
Last year, Dobrobat received 2 million Ukrainian hryvnia, worth around £38,000, from USAID towards building repair projects. It was supposed to be the first in a series of ongoing payments.
Instead, USAID’s funding was frozen by US President Donald Trump on his first day in office.
Mr Kliuiev sent Sky News a video he took this week of apartment blocks in Sumy, with boarded-up windows that his group had planned to replace using USAID funding.
On Monday, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said in a statement on X that 83% of contracts funded by USAID would be cancelled.
In a war where equipment like drones and tanks are talked about most, unassuming items are also essential – ladders, construction foam and tools for repairing the damage.
The aid freeze has had an immediate impact on Dobrobat’s work.
“We haven’t been able to install window units as quickly. Residents have been living through a very harsh winter with temperatures of 15C below freezing,” Mr Kliuiev says.
USAID provided billions worldwide
USAID gave $32bn in aid to 165 countries in 2024. Ukraine was by far the top recipient country, receiving $5.4bn.
Mr Kliuiev is one of thousands of Ukrainians working on projects funded by USAID near the frontlines, many of whom have spoken to Sky News.
“Unfortunately, due to the suspension of USAID funding, more than half of our projects were stopped,” says Yuriy Antoshchuk, co-founder of Unity Foundation, a group working to rebuild communities in Kherson.
“The population’s faith in the fact that there is a reliable partner who is not only ready to help resist Russian aggression, but also will support in the restoration and help rebuild a democratic society, is fading every day.”
The impact of the cuts on the ground is immense but programme organisers have been working in a state of confusion too.
They are having to untangle a complicated web of projects affecting many different areas of work in Ukraine, from subsidising school employee salaries to assisting internally displaced people.
“I am in the process of terminating nearly 100 staff. People who have worked tirelessly to serve the frontlines of Russia’s war against Ukraine,” a senior American aid worker in Ukraine, whose work was funded by USAID, tells Sky News.
“I never thought I would see the day when the American government would be both reckless and dishonest at this magnitude.
“The shame I feel as an American is completely overwhelming.”
Job losses
According to an analysis by Molloy Consultants, a global health consultancy tracking aid job losses, over 14,000 Americans have been made redundant so far. They expect that number to rise to 52,000.
Almost 60,000 non-Americans have also lost their jobs, with the figure expected to rise to more than 100,000.
Most USAID funding is managed through a series of US-based intermediary companies. Since 2005, a quarter has gone via one firm, Chemonics.
It is now one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the US government, seeking payment for outstanding work that has already been done. In an initial court filing, the company said it was owed $110.3m in outstanding invoices for work performed in 2024.
A judge had ordered the invoices to be paid by 10 March, but a source familiar with USAID’s programmes told Sky News only a small fraction of this had been given to Chemonics before the deadline – about $6m.
Sky News asked the State Department when it planned to pay, but it declined to comment on the ongoing legal dispute.
Without funding from USAID, Chemonics is unable to pay local contractors and staff. The company has taken drastic cost-cutting measures, including laying off many of their staff both in the US and abroad, the source familiar with USAID’s programmes told Sky News.
Chemonics received the most USAID funding for Ukraine contracts.
Ropack, an equipment company in Odessa, is one of the vendors owed money.
“Since 2022, despite fear, panic, and uncertainty, we have kept working because we knew if we stopped, factories that cannot afford to stop would grind to a halt,” said Oksana Chumachenko, the company’s director, in a letter to Sky News.
“We keep going even when Shahed drones rain down at night, and in the morning – if we are lucky and another substation has not been bombed – we drink our coffee, thank God we are still alive, and get back to work.
“But sometimes, we hit a dead end.” Now, with USAID money coming to a halt, “today is one of those days,” she says.
“We fully acknowledge that this is a sovereign decision by the US administration, and we do not question it. But we ask – we plead – that commitments already made under existing contracts be fulfilled.”
The frustration was also palpable in an interview Sky News conducted with a senior American aid worker in Ukraine, who spoke under the condition of anonymity.
“You do not stop paying your bills because you don’t like what the person before you approved,” they said.
“I have vendors who have not been paid for generators they delivered and installed so frontline communities in Ukraine have access to water, light, and heat.
“These suppliers are going to need to go back to these communities and remove this lifesaving equipment – take it back – because a few decision makers in [Washington] DC did not spend the time or energy to understand the whole picture.”
Examples of vital USAID-funded projects on Ukraine’s frontline range from underground schools in Kharkiv to transit centres for evacuees in Pavlohrad.
Andrew Mitchell, a former foreign office minister, says the impact of the USAID cuts is wide-ranging.
“If you want to tackle things like migration, climate change, pandemics, you need to do it on an international basis,” he says.
“If you have a situation like you have today in Ukraine, the scale of human needs, the scale of humanitarian resource and help that is required is immense,” he adds.
“I’m afraid the result of these cuts will be going backwards and not forwards in the way that we had hoped.”
Back in Sumy, USAID cuts have delivered a significant hit to Mr Kliuiev’s operations. But he says this is not the end for Dobrobat.
“We will continue our work because we’ve been around since 2022. But the support from USAID was a step forward for us that now won’t happen.”
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World
Former president of Philippines Rodrigo Duterte appears in court accused of running death squads
Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, has appeared at the International Criminal Court, accused of crimes against humanity.
The 79-year-old appeared in the Netherlands via video link on Friday.
His lawyer said he was suffering from “debilitating medical issues” but the judge in The Hague, Iulia Motoc, said the court doctor had found him to be “fully mentally aware and fit”.
She said he was allowed to appear remotely because he had taken a long flight.
Wearing a jacket and tie, Duterte spoke briefly to confirm his name and date of birth.
He was read his rights and formally informed of the charges. His supporters contest his arrest and say the court does not have jurisdiction.
If convicted, he faces life in prison.
His daughter Sara Duterte, the current vice president of the Philippines, said she was hoping to visit her father and have the hearing moved after meeting supporters outside the court.
Back home in the Philippine capital region, large screens were set up to allow families of suspects killed in the crackdowns to watch the proceedings.
Police protested over the killings when Mr Duterte was still in charge in 2021. Pic: AP
Prosecutors accuse Duterte of forming and arming death squads said to have killed thousands of drug dealers and users during a brutal crackdown on illegal drugs.
Police say more than 6,200 people were killed in what they describe as shootouts while he was president from 2016 to 2022.
They claim he was an “indirect co-perpetrator” in multiple murders, allegedly overseeing killings between November 2011 and March 2019.
Before becoming president, Duterte was the mayor of the southern city of Davao.
According to the prosecution, he issued orders to police and other “hitmen” who formed the so-called “Davao Death Squads” or DDS.
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Why was Duterte arrested?
Estimates of the death toll during his six-year presidential term vary, from more than 6,000 reported by national police, to 30,000 claimed by human rights groups.
The warrant for his arrest said there were “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Duterte bears criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of murder”.
Duterte has said he takes full responsibility for the “war on drugs”.
He was arrested on Tuesday amid chaotic scenes in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, after returning from a visit to Hong Kong.
He told officers “you have to kill me to bring me to The Hague” during a 12-hour standoff, a Philippine police general said.
He also refused to have his fingerprints taken and threatened Police Major General Nicolas Torre with lawsuits before he was bundled onto a government-chartered jet at a Philippine air base and taken to The Hague, Maj Gen Torre told the Associated Press.
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Steve Witkoff didn’t stay long in the Russian capital.
According to footage posted of his motorcade leaving and returning to Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, he was here for little more than 12 hours.
And for most of that, it seems, he was left waiting.
Trump’s fixer leaves Moscow – peace talks latest
US special envoy Steve Witkoff talking to reporters at the White House. Pic: AP
Mr Witkoff, a former property mogul who has become Donald Trump’s chief negotiator, and is often referred to as the president’s ‘fixer’, had been dispatched to Moscow to deliver the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire to Vladimir Putin.
His visit had been scheduled near the start of the week, following the US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia.
But after arriving around lunchtime on Thursday, he was left twiddling his thumbs for at least eight hours before being called into the Kremlin.
Mr Putin was apparently too busy meeting someone else – Belarusian leader Aleksander Lukashenko – for a hastily arranged state visit that had been announced the day before.
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Is a ceasefire in Ukraine still viable?
Was ally’s visit a classic Putin power play?
We don’t know for sure if the timing of Mr Lukashenko’s visit was deliberate, but it certainly didn’t feel like a coincidence.
Instead, it felt like a classic Putin power play.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko. Pic: Reuters
The Kremlin leader doesn’t like to be backed into a corner and told what to do, especially on his own turf.
This felt like a message to the Americans – “I’m the boss, I set the schedule, and I’m not beholden to anyone”.
He did eventually grant Mr Witkoff that all-important face time, once night had fallen and behind closed-doors.
We don’t know how long they spoke for, nor the exact details of their discussion, but I think we can make a pretty good guess given Mr Putin’s comments earlier in the evening.
At a press conference alongside Mr Lukashenko, he made it abundantly clear that he’ll only sign up to a ceasefire if he gets something in return.
And it’s not just one thing he wants.
All Russia’s red lines remain
By the sounds of things, he still wants everything.
His comment regarding the “root causes” of the conflict suggests all of Russia’s red lines remain – no NATO membership for Ukraine, no NATO troops as peacekeepers, and for Russia to keep all the territory it has seized.
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According to Russian media outlet Radio Mayak, Mr Putin’s meetings in the Kremlin finished at 1.30am.
Around half an hour later, Mr Witkoff was back at the airport – leaving Russia, it seems – not with Mr Putin’s agreement but with a list of demands.
It’s now up to Mr Trump to decide what to do next.
World
What we learnt flying over the world’s largest iceberg A23a – and why it’s not long for this world
One thousand feet above the world’s largest iceberg, it’s hard to believe what you’re seeing.
It stretches all the way to the horizon – a field of white as far as the eye can see.
Its edge looks thin in comparison, until you make out a bird flying alongside and realise it is, in fact, a cliff of ice hundreds of feet high.
Scientists who have used satellites to track the iceberg’s decades-long meanderings north from Antarctica have codenamed the iceberg A23a.
But up close, numbers and letters don’t do it justice.
The massive iceberg has run aground around 50 miles off the small island of South Georgia
It’s a seemingly endless slab of white, fringed by an aquamarine glow – the ocean at its base backlit by a sill of reflective ice below.
Monotonous yet magnificent; we’re flying along the coastline of a nation of ice.
And it’s also hard to believe you’re seeing it at all.
Where it has run aground – 50 miles off the small island of South Georgia – seems impossibly remote.
We’re 800 miles from the Falkland Islands and 900 miles from the icy wastes of Antarctica.
With no runway on South Georgia, there’s only one aircraft that ever flies here.
The iceberg is around 50 miles from these dramatic peaks in South Georgia
Large chunks of ice have broken off
The view over South Georgia
Once a month or so, a Royal Air Force A400 transport plane based in the Falklands carries out Operation Cold Stare – a maritime surveillance and enforcement flight over the British Overseas Territory that includes the neighbouring South Sandwich Islands.
It’s a smooth, albeit noisy, two-hour flight to South Georgia.
But as the dramatic peaks of the island come into view, the ride – for us inexperienced passengers at least – gets scary.
Gusts off the mountains and steep terrain throw the plane and its occupants around.
Not that that stops the pilots completing their circuit of the island.
We fly over some of its 500,000 square mile marine protected zone designed to protect the greatest concentration of marine mammals and birds on the planet that is found on South Georgia.
Cracks are appearing along the edges of A23a
Only then do we head out to the iceberg, and even though it’s only a few minutes flying from South Georgia it’s at first hard to see. It’s so big and white it’s indistinguishable from the horizon through the haze.
Until suddenly, its edge comes into view.
The warmer ocean is undercutting the ice, weakening it further
Arches have formed at its base and are being eroded away
It’s immediately apparent the A23a is not too long for this world. Large icebergs hundreds of metres across have already broken off and are drifting closer to South Georgia.
All along its edges, cracks are appearing and arches at its base caverns are being eroded by the warmer ocean here, undercutting the ice, weakening it further.
The iceberg might present a problem for some of South Georgia’s super-abundant penguins, seals and seabirds. A jumble of rapidly fragmenting ice could choke up certain bays and beaches in which colonies of the animals breed.
The trillion tonnes of fresh water melting out of the iceberg could also interfere with the food webs that sustain marine life.
However, the breeding season is coming to an end and icebergs are also known to fertilise oceans with sediment carried from the Antarctic continent.
The impact on shipping is more relevant. There’s not much of it down here. But fishing vessels, cruise ships and research teams ply these waters and smaller lumps of ice called “growlers” are a regular risk.
A23a will create many.
Icebergs this big are too few for scientists to know if they are becoming more frequent or not.
But they are symptomatic of a clearly emerging trend. As our climate warms, Antarctica is slowly melting.
It’s losing around 150 billion tonnes of ice a year – half of it breaking off the continent in the form of icebergs calving from glaciers, the rest melting directly from its vast ice sheets as temperatures gradually rise.
The pace of A23a’s disintegration is far, far faster. It will disappear in months, not millennia.
But watching its edges crumble and slide into the South Atlantic, you can’t help seeing it as the fate of a whole continent in miniature.
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