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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused China on Sunday of helping Russia to disrupt an upcoming Swiss-organized peace conference on the war in Ukraine. Speaking at Asia’s premier security conference, Zelenskyy said that China is pressuring other countries and their leaders not to attend the upcoming talks. He did not say which ones. ... The Swiss had been hoping China would attend the peace conference in mid-June, but Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning signaled on Friday that that was unlikely. China has been calling for a peace conference with equal participation of all sides, including Russia, which has not been...

Europe has only a fraction of the air defence capabilities needed to protect its eastern flank, according to Nato’s own internal calculations, laying bare the scale of the continent’s vulnerabilities. Russia’s war against Ukraine has underscored the importance of air defence, as Kyiv begs the west for additional systems and rockets to protect its cities, troops and energy grid against daily bombing raids. But according to people familiar with confidential defence plans drawn up last year, Nato states are able to provide less than 5 per cent of air defence capacities deemed necessary to protect its members in central and...

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán led thousands of his citizens in a peace rally in Central Budapest on Saturday, demanding an end to the war in Ukraine and to stop the escalation between the West and Russia. The emergency break needs to be pulled to prevent the “European train hurtling toward war”, Prime Minister Orbán warned as he addressed thousands gathered in the Hungarian capital to protest against the war in Ukraine and the refusal of Europe to push for peace talks.

Estonia considers itself a front-line state, a Nato member where its border guards stare across the Narva River at the Russian fortress of Ivangorod. This tiny Baltic state, once a part of the Soviet Union, is convinced that once the fighting stops in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin will turn his attention to the Baltics, looking to bring countries like Estonia back under Moscow’s control. To help stave off that possibility, Estonia’s government has poured money and weapons into Ukraine’s war effort, donating more than 1% of its GDP to Kyiv. "If every Nato country did this," says Estonia’s steely Prime...

Slovak PM Robert Fico’s independent stance earned him the wrath of NATO and the EU. Did a Western-directed plot to remove his troublesome government from office trigger his assassination attempt? On May 15, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was almost murdered in broad daylight. While shaking hands with supporters during a public appearance, a gunman shot him twice in the abdomen and once in the shoulder. The attack left him fighting for his life while authorities raced for clues, and many observers at home and abroad puzzled about the would-be assassin’s motives and whether foreign actors were in some way...

Russia is expected to significantly increase the size of its military presence in Ukraine, with an additional 200-300 thousand troops set to join their ranks, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov in an interview with Reuters. The minister added that the current number of Russian forces stationed in Ukraine and along its borders stands at 500 thousand troops. Umerov emphasized the urgency of mobilizing fresh recruits to facilitate the rotation of military personnel in response to the anticipated surge in Russian troop numbers. "At this stage, we are focused on training our personnel ... pilots, we are focused on...

US President Joe Biden has given Ukraine permission to use American-supplied weapons to strike targets in Russia, but only near the Kharkiv region, US officials say. One told BBC News his team had been directed to ensure Ukraine was able to use US weapons for "counter-fire purposes" to "hit back at Russian forces hitting them or preparing to hit them". Russian forces have made gains in the Kharkiv region in recent weeks after a surprise offensive in the area, close to the border with Russia. On Friday, Ukrainian officials said three people had been killed and 16 injured in Russian...

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday assailed Russian attempts to sow discord in democracies with misinformation after hinting the Biden administration may soon allow Ukraine to use American-supplied munitions to strike inside Russia. In Prague for a NATO foreign ministers meeting, Blinken hit out at Moscow’s use of misinformation and disinformation, calling it a “poison” and signing an agreement with the Czech government to combat it. He also toured a Czech military base, where he saw armored vehicles that Prague is sending to Kyiv to help fight Russia’s invasion and received a briefing on a Czech initiative to...

Russian leader Vladimir Putin says European countries should rethink their calls to let Ukraine use Western arms to strike his country. "So, these officials from NATO countries, especially the ones based in Europe, particularly in small European countries, should be fully aware of what is at stake," Putin told reporters on Tuesday. "They should keep in mind that theirs are small and densely populated countries, which is a factor to reckon with before they start talking about striking deep into the Russian territory," he continued. Putin's warnings come after several European leaders said that Ukraine should be allowed to attack...

Gen. Serhii Golubtsov, the commander of the Ukrainian air force, has said all along he needed four operational squadrons of Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters to have any chance of controlling the air over a single sector of the 700-mile front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. It’s taken more than a year of intensive diplomacy between Ukrainian, Norwegian, Dutch, Danish and Belgian officials, but Golubtsov is finally getting his four squadrons. On Tuesday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky announced Belgium would donate 30 surplus F-16s—boosting to 85 the total number of the nimble, supersonic fighters Ukraine should receive starting this...

Pressure is mounting to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons on military targets within Russian territory. The big picture: After the Biden administration instituted the ban in an attempt to keep the conflict from escalating, calls to remove the embargo have been growing from U.S. lawmakers, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The criticism from many is that the ban is hindering the country's ability to effectively defend itself. Context: Ukraine has been provided with a large arsenal of Western weapons, including long-range missiles, but it is not allowed to use them to strike targets in Russian...

As thousands fled Kyiv in the first days of Russia’s 2022 invasion, one 57-year-old grandmother hurried in the opposite direction. Liudmyla Menyuk was going to sign up for the army to avenge her son who’d been killed fighting the Russians almost a decade before. Many Ukrainians of Menyuk’s age have volunteered, sometimes motivated — like she was — by the explicit wish to stand in for a youth who might otherwise die in their place. “I performed my duties well,” she told Bloomberg in an interview, “so I could save the life of a young Ukrainian.” But the enthusiasm of...

Poland's foreign minister said the US had told Russia that it would strike Russian targets in Ukraine if Putin were to use nuclear weapons.In an interview with the Guardian, Radosław Sikorski seemed doubtful of Russia's threats about using nuclear weapons, saying: "The Americans have told the Russians that if you explode a nuke, even if it doesn't kill anybody, we will hit all your targets [positions] in Ukraine with conventional weapons, we'll destroy all of them.""I think that's a credible threat," he said. "Also, the Chinese and the Indians have read Russia the riot act. And it's no child's play...

With six months to go until the presidential election, America's NATO allies are planning to boost their defense spending ahead of the potential disruption of a second Donald Trump presidency. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is preparing a funding plan to try to insulate the 75-year-old military partnership from any changing political realities that might affect the alliance, according to Oana Lungescu, who until last year was the longtime lead NATO spokesperson for Stoltenberg. "It is important to have predictability both for allies and for Ukraine," Lungescu told CBS News. "This [plan] relieves the U.S. of some of its organizational...

Since the start of the war, Western allies have asked Ukraine to refrain from using their donated weapons to strike deep inside Russia. Ukraine urgently needs the West's go-ahead to launch attacks on Russian territory with donated weapons, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday after signing a long-term security deal with Belgium that includes the provision of 30 F-16s fighter jets by 2028. The deal, however, prohibits Ukraine from deploying the sought-after aircraft to strike targets located on Russian soil. This follows a long-held policy by Western allies that compels Kyiv to use donated weapons and ammunition strictly within its...

Over the last few weeks, a Russian blitz has claimed more than a dozen villages in northeast Ukraine, near the country’s second-largest city. This summer, Russia will likely continue its offensive push... Russia’s ability to carry out these attacks is in some ways surprising. War is expensive...Yet Moscow has managed to keep paying for its war machine.... to China, the benefits of a Russian victory in Ukraine may outweigh the costs. Among those benefits: The war has entangled the U.S. and its allies in a faraway conflict, straining the U.S. military’s ammunition stockpiles. It has made Russia, a big military...

Poland’s foreign minister says the NATO nation should not exclude the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine and should keep Russian President Vladimir Putin in suspense over whether such a decision would ever be made. Radek Sikorski made the comments in an interview published Tuesday in the Gazeta Wyborcza daily. “We should not exclude any option. Let Putin be guessing as to what we will do,” Sikorski said when asked whether he would send Polish troops to Ukraine. But a spokesperson for Poland’s Defense Ministry, Janusz Sejmej, told Polish media on Tuesday he had “no knowledge of that”

Ukraine urgently needs new soldiers, but some — left uneasy by brutal fighting and intensifying conscription efforts — are desperately trying to avoid being called up. “When you see people in uniform, you panic. You start thinking someone will mobilize you now against your will,” a lawyer based in Kyiv told NBC News. He did not want his identity known, fearful, like a growing number of men across the country, of being drafted into the army... “I love my country,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month. “I donate to the Ukrainian army. But unfortunately, I am not...

Justice Sonia Sotomayor reflected Friday on her time on the Supreme Court, admitting that some of the high court’s decisions have driven her to tears. “There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried,” Sotomayor said Friday at an event honoring her at Harvard University. “There have been those days. And there likely will be more,” she added in the speech, per the The New York Times. The Harvard event was held as the Supreme Court heads toward the last several weeks of the term. The court is...

Russian forces have advanced along the front line in Ukraine, battlefield maps published by a U.S. think tank show, as Ukraine warns that Moscow is preparing for a major offensive in the east. Maps released by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank, on Sunday, show that Russian forces have made progress in Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which together comprise the Donbas. The Kremlin has been pushing for the total capture of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since Russia's initial invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by...