WSJ What’s News - Russia Launches Major Assault on Kyiv

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

A.M. Edition for April 24. Moscow has renewed its attacks on Ukraine, after U.S.-mediated peace talks fizzled out. Ukrainian energy minister German Galushchenko describes how Russian strikes have impacted the country’s energy supply and how Ukrainian minerals could play a part in securing future peace. Plus, President Trump takes aim at universities, targeting their funding and accreditation. And new data reveals the richest Americans are wealthier than ever before. Kate Bullivant hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. Russia strikes Kiev, killing a large number of civilians as peace talks stall. Plus, it's a bumper earnings day with some tech companies already warning of the tariff impact. And President Trump rebuffs plans for a millionaire tax, even as new data shows the wealthiest Americans just keep getting richer. So if you're looking at the wealthiest, the top 0.1% of American households got richer by an average 3.4 million a year.

It's Thursday, April 24th. I'm Kate Bulevant for the Wall Street Journal filling in for Luke Vargas. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Russia has killed nine and injured 70 people in its biggest aerial bombardment of Ukraine's capital this year. The assault came just hours after the US pulled out of talks to end the war, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said US recognition of Crimea as Russian territory was a non-starter. President Trump yesterday hit out at Zelensky for failing to accept the peace proposal.

He has largely refrained from criticising Russia. Ukraine agreed to a full ceasefire proposal by the US in March, but Russia declined, with Moscow having intensified mass killings of civilians in recent weeks. Zelensky has said a ceasefire should be implemented before further talks on a peace deal can take place. Meanwhile, a day after the scheduled London talks, representatives from more than 60 countries are gathering in the British capital this morning for a major energy security summit. Among them is Ukrainian Energy Minister Gaimon Galushchenko. He sat down with our Luke Vargas to discuss the country's vision for using energy to

try and guarantee its future security. A prospect that would have seemed highly unlikely when the war first got underway. Of course the beginning of the full-scale invasion was a challenge for us because three hours before this full-scale war started, we were disconnected from Russian Belorussian grids. And the energy system was in isolation mode, like an island, and it was a challenge,

especially in the conditions of war. But of course, a lot of changed from that time. Each winter, Russians only strengthened the attacks to the energy infrastructure. That is one of the main targets still for them. And just to say that from 22, we already had more than 70 massive attacks to the energy infrastructure. What I mean by massive, that is something around 300 missiles and drones at once,

at one day, which are attacking only energy infrastructure. But that is not saying about everyday attacks, which we are not calling massive, but it happens every day. How do you see energy factoring into efforts to end the war? It's a core component. I mean, energy is a key infrastructure for the economy in each country. What is happened with this massive attacks, that is, of course, in this situation with

the restriction of supply for the people, or let's say blackouts or everything, that's have like direct impact to the growth of economy and to the, let's say, way of living of the people. But in our case, for instance, last year, they started attacks to the energy from March 22, and all year they attacking the energy infrastructure, not only in winter time.

In the winter, they only strengthen these attacks. Even some international organization said that this would be very difficult winter, like 18 to 20 hours without electricity supply. But in fact, we withstood and we do not have any restriction for our people from December. Tell us about minerals. This is a key component of current peace talks, but also vital for your country's economic future. How do you ensure growth there, given the fact that these minerals have been, it's difficult

to extract them in the current context? No, I think I know that the negotiation is going on on that. But of course, that is first of all a question of investment and money to extract you're absolutely right and another point is why we need additional generation in Ukraine to provide supply of electricity for extraction of these minerals so because I could hardly imagine we would restrict supply to our households and to extract the minerals. So that's why it's a lot of things which are very very connected

in line of this mineral deal or agreement with that word. Do you view deals that Ukraine can make for critical minerals, for other energy resources to be in some ways protection for the country in the future and how so? In fact, I think that that that is a really, really good story. I mean, if we are talking about that the investments would would go to this extraction or the production or whatever. Because that is huge money.

And the more private business or foreign companies would come to invest in Ukraine and would be present in Ukraine, I think of course it would bring more, let's say, security. Are you seeing a change in outside interest from the private sector in particular since critical minerals in Ukraine have been in the news? I think a lot of depends on the world. At least in the energy, what I see for many years already, from the beginning of full scale innovation, we had a lot of projects with a lot of big companies who wants to be in Ukraine.

We have the biggest storage in Europe, in Ukraine. So we could use this storage for security of supply for the region, for instance. We could increase generation in peace condition, especially again. So we will see what happens with the Parisia, but we could increase generation in the country and supply electricity to Europe, which we did in 2022. I think that's one of the reasons why Russians starting some massive attacks to the energy infrastructure, because in 2022, I mentioned that three hours before the war, the big war started, we were disconnected and we were connected to European Greece on 21 days after.

It was 16th of March. And then we started exporting electricity to Europe, even at war in 2022. What it means for Russians? Just reduced of using Russian gas in Europe because they could buy Ukrainian electricity and I think that's also shows that potential is really huge and very much in Europe. There's a debate about whether security of supply means Decoupling from Russian energy sources not just now but in the future. I See this message is now that there is discussion so the war would be over someday and so let's go back to Russia. I think that would be the biggest

mistake of Europe and I think a lot of countries understand that you know because unfortunately even when we are talking about the gas that is always used not only as commodity, but also as a tool to manipulate the government, to manipulate the prices. And you remember situation in 2022 when the biggest the big war started, how Russia manipulate European prices, how it was increased prices on gas in Europe, and it was like totally shocked for everyone and then they have to provide some emergency measures to let's say to put some caps on that and I mean the

dependence always dangerous, always dangerous dependence. We could say about Russia or some other, but no matter if you are dependent on one side or one country, it's always dangerous. German Galushchenko is Ukraine's Minister of Energy. Thank you so much for being with us on What's News. Thank you. Thank you very much. Coming up, the rest of today's news, including Trump's latest orders targeting US universities and why there are more super rich people in America than

ever before. Those stories and more after the break. Hey, wouldn't it be great if life came with remote control? You know, you could hit pause when you needed to or hit rewind, like that time you knocked down that wasps nest. Uh oh. Well life doesn't always give you time to change the outcome, but pre-diabetes does. With early diagnosis and a few healthy changes, you can stop pre-diabetes before it leads to type 2 diabetes. To learn your risk, take the one-minute test today at doihabprediabetes.org.

Brought to you by the Ad Council and its pre-diabetes awareness partners. Tesla's sales in the European Union plunged for a third consecutive month in March, slumping 36 percent. The drop follows a halving of sales in January and February. Tesla's latest decline stands in contrast with growing demand for electric vehicles across the EU in March and comes amid fierce competition from Chinese EV makers. The picture is also gloomy for tech companies ST Micro and Nokia, who both flagged a tariff hit to earnings this morning, forecasting lower than expected sales in the coming quarter. That said, consumer giants Nestle and Unilever reported stronger than expected sales. We'll get more clues on just how Trump's economic policies

are affecting different sectors with a further raft of earnings due out later. The likes of Alphabet, Procter & Gamble and Southwest Airlines are among the companies reporting. Check out wsj.com for more coverage throughout the day. President Trump is continuing his efforts to remake higher education by signing two executive orders related to foreign funding and the college accreditation system. College accreditation sets standards that must be met by universities and colleges to access federal financial aid. And as higher education reporter Sarah Randazzo explains,

that covers everything from their mission and admissions policies to the quality of their faculty and programming. He's trying to get rid of what he calls discriminatory practices and ideological overreach on college campuses and he's doing that by directing accreditors to get rid of some DEI-related requirements that he perceived that they had and to focus more on student outcomes and kind of tangible aspects of what makes a degree useful in Trump's eyes. And he's also said he's going to make it easier for more creditors to enter the playing field and for universities to switch creditors if they're

unhappy with the one they have. The other executive order is cracking down on foreign funding at universities, a key point of contention with Harvard. The US government can revoke federal funding from universities that fail to meet transparency requirements around money coming from outside the country. White House Staff Secretary Will Schaaf said certain universities, including Harvard, have

quote routinely violated this law and this law has not been effectively enforced, end quote. The administration hasn't provided evidence Harvard violated the law. A Harvard spokesman said the university has filed the appropriate reports for decades as part of its ongoing compliance with the law. Meanwhile, President Trump has tossed cold water on the idea of raising tax rates on high-income Americans, calling the potential millionaires' tax very disruptive. Trump's comments end for now,

a Republican flirtation with higher taxes at the top to help pay for his broader agenda. The idea, which cuts against long-standing GOP views on taxes, could have countered Democrats' argument that Republicans are simultaneously trying to take money from Medicaid and lower taxes for the richest Americans. Trump said he feared a millionaires tax would mean wealthy Americans would leave the country. And speaking of the richest Americans, they now control a record slice of the nation's

wealth. New data from the Federal Reserve suggests one trillion dollars of wealth was created for the 19 richest American households alone in 2024, more than the value of Switzerland's entire economy. The journal's Juliet Chung says Americans have generally gotten richer, in part thanks to strong U.S. growth. But the rise in wealth for the richest has far outpaced that of everyone else. Rising concentration of wealth is a global phenomenon. It's pronounced in the U.S. and

the wealthier a person was in the third quarter of 1990, the faster they accumulated wealth in the decades following. The top 0.1% of American households got richer by an average $3.4 million a year. Now you contrast that with the bottom 50% and they saw their net worth grow by an average $800 a year per household, which is pretty negligible and barely keeps up with the rise in GDP per capita. And that's it for What's News for this Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach, Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff and I'm Kate Boulevent for The Wall Street Journal filling in for Luke Vargas.

We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.