President Biden Makes MASSIVE Pledge To Help Ukraine & It's Millions Of Refugees
By MLC on March 24, 2022 at 1:30 PM EDT
The USA will be opening its “doors” to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war-torn country.
On Thursday, March 24, President Joe Biden announced the news during his trip to Europe.
Biden is meeting with members of NATO, the G7 and the European Union.
These meetings will be held back-to-back to discuss ways to deal with Russia’s continued invasion and attacks on Ukraine.
Joe Biden Announces The US Will Accept 100k Ukrainian Refugees
According to reports, nearly 3.5 million Ukrainians have fled the country making it one of the biggest refugee crises since WWII.
The Biden administration also announced it would give more than $1 billion in new funding toward humanitarian assistance.
The funding will assist in providing food, shelter, clean water, medical supplies and other forms of assistance, according to the White House.
During Biden’s upcoming visit to Poland, one country many refugees have fled to, he will discuss the crisis and refugee situation.
Despite his recent efforts, the President of the United States has been criticized for not doing more to aid Ukraine and its citizens.
Biden Was Criticized For Not Doing Enough To Help Ukraine
On March 11, he said, “I will welcome the Ukrainian refugees.”
A senior administration official said the U.S. will focus on Ukrainian refugees who already have families in America.
In a briefing call with reporters the US official said, “We're working in particular to expand and develop new programs with a focus on welcoming Ukrainians who have family members in the United States.”
However, the official explained that they expect most Ukrainians will want to stay in Eastern Europe in the hopes they will be able to return to their homes.
According to the Daily Mail, the US has a 125,000-refugee gap, but is figuring out ways to work around it.
The outlet reported, “the U.S. will go through the full range of legal pathways, including the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, others will come on family-based visas or another process known as humanitarian parole.”
Refugee relief efforts will focus mainly on the vulnerable populations including women, children, LGBTQI+ persons, and the disabled.
The war on Ukraine has been a massive topic of discussion not only in print and on TV, but digitally as well.
The social media chatter about Ukraine has actually helped the war-torn country, according to former Ukrainian advisor Igor Novikov.
The Blast recently interviewed Novikov, a former advisor to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hear his unique perspective on the current crisis in Ukraine.
Novikov, who has a degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science, brings a unique set of technological, entrepreneurial, and policy perspectives to the dialogue of innovation in Eastern Europe
In the fifth article in our series about Ukraine, Novikov discussed how the world is watching the war play out on social media and Ukraine’s Internet access.
The Ukraine Crisis Is The First "Social Media War"
Fortunately, Internet access in Kyiv has been pretty consistent since the Russian invasion of Ukraine started in late February. Novikov said that he was thankful that the Russian military forces did not have the technology to “mute” phone or Internet services, although some regions in Ukraine have been cut off from the Internet, phone services, electricity, and heating.
“At the moment, we have broadband Internet,” he said. “When they move into a city or a town, they blow up the cell reception towers and use some sort of Soviet tech equipment to cut off the telephone lines, but that’s pretty much it. Most of the country has Internet. So does Kyiv.” He added that it’s “unlikely” that Russian forces will be able to cut off Kyiv from the rest of the world.
Igor Novikov says that people around the world are watching “the first social media war” play out in real-time.
“I did an experiment,” he said. “I heard an explosion nearby in Kyiv. I went on Twitter and it was reportedly literally ten seconds later. Social media in that sense is incredible and it shines that spotlight on everything that’s going on, so it’s also incredibly useful. You can plan for your safety on social media.”
“It’s also really scary because Russians are executing Ukrainian civilians based on their digital footprint as well, so Russian soldiers capture a town, the first thing they do is they ask you to show your phone and if you said anything bad about Russia, they see you as a threat and they just shoot your point-blank. Unfortunately, that’s what’s happening,” Novikov told us.
