President Joe Biden is planning to hold phone calls with allies possibly as early as Tuesday, with an aim of reassuring them his administration will remain committed to supporting Ukraine, Bloomberg reports.

On Monday German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock issued an ultra-provocative statement which Moscow is sure to take as "fighting words". What's more is that the statement came while she was in Ukraine's capital for an unprecedented meeting of EU foreign ministers, who have newly committed themselves to supporting Kiev for as long as it takes, even as Washington appears to be stepping back. She said that the EU bloc will soon encompass lands "from Lisbon to Luhansk." 

Just read this “Institute for the Study of War” Tweet several times. It will take you a second.

Tucker Carlson reports that the U.S. government prevented him from interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Carlson told the Swiss magazine Die Weltwoche that he had sought to arrange an interview with Putin, but U.S. officials blocked him. “I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, but the U.S. government prevented me from doing so.

The White House has been in touch with allies and partners about continued funding for Ukraine and those conversations will continue, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday.

Congress passed a stopgap bill on Saturday that extended government funding for more than a month and avoided a government shutdown but didn't contain any new aid for Ukraine.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy backtracked on his pledge to remove U.S. aid to Ukraine from House Republicans’ defense spending measure on Saturday, telling reporters that such funds will be included in the legislation after all.

On Friday, McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol that U.S. aid to Ukraine would not be included in House Republicans’ defense appropriations bill and would instead be voted on separately by the lower chamber.

The Russian Ministry of Defense reported on the ongoing military operations in Ukraine. According to the Russian military, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost about 400 servicemen over the past day.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense:

The root narrative around the next government funding bill is slowly taking shape and it is uglier than many people suspected - Neo-cons within the GOP are determined to oppose the majority of Americans and will continue funding the war in Ukraine, and they are planning on using the border security issue as leverage. 

The cases of suspicious infections in the Ukrainian army that are difficult to treat are most probably connected with the operation of US biolaboratories in Ukraine, the deputy speaker of the State Duma, Irina Yarovaya, has said.

"The Pentagon’s bio-laboratories in Ukraine are with a high degree of probability the source of infection of Ukrainian soldiers," said Yarovaya, a co-chair of the parliamentary commission for investigating the activities of US laboratories in Ukraine.