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U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday told reporters he had a "very good call" with ​Russian President Vladimir Putin about Ukraine ​and the conflict in the Middle East. "There's ⁠tremendous hatred between President Putin and (Ukraine's) ​President Zelenskiy. They can't seem to ​get it together, but I think it was a positive call on that subject," Trump said. Trump ​added that Putin "wants to be helpful" ​with the Iran conflict. "I said, 'You could be more helpful ‌by ⁠getting the Ukraine-Russia war over with. That will be more helpful,'" Trump told reporters in a press conference at ​his Florida ​golf...

Ukraine has received only about 600 advanced interceptor missiles for the MIM-104 Patriot air defense system during the entire course of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian officials told The New York Times. Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Kyiv had received roughly that number of interceptor missiles over four years of war. Ukraine has repeatedly urged Western partners to provide additional Patriot systems and interceptor missiles as Russia continues to launch large-scale missile strikes targeting cities and critical infrastructure. The Patriot system remains among the few air defense platforms capable of reliably intercepting advanced ballistic missiles, including...

Russia has a question for the European countries that have shunned its energy exports: Do you miss us now? The Kremlin is enjoying a sudden resurgence of its importance as a global supplier of oil and gas, as the conflict in Iran disrupts energy production and shipment across the Middle East and sends global energy prices soaring. “Now other markets are opening up, and perhaps it’s more advantageous for us to stop supplying the European market right now,” Mr. Putin said on Wednesday to a state television reporter, Pavel Zarubin, who chronicles the Russian leader. “We are seeing an increase...

Russia is one of the biggest winners in the early days of the largest U.S. military confrontation in decades, as Iranian missiles deplete stocks of Patriot interceptors that Ukraine needs for its defense. Even before the Iran campaign, production bottlenecks in the U.S.-made Patriot system had drained Ukraine’s reserves and left European allies on yearslong waiting lists. Those shortfalls have allowed Russia to punch through gaps in Ukraine’s air defenses, devastating its power infrastructure and casting Ukrainian cities into blackouts.

CAIRO (AP) — A Russian-flagged tanker carrying liquefied natural gas exploded and erupted in flames before sinking in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya, authorities in the North African country said Wednesday. No casualties were reported.The tanker was under Western sanctions, suspected to be part of Russia’s shadow fleet of energy tankers trying to bypass sanctions imposed on Moscow over its war in Ukraine. The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. According to the Libyan Maritime Authority, there was a “sudden explosions, followed by a massive fire” on the Arctic Metagaz on Tuesday while the LNG...

Today, the most important developments come from the Huliaipole direction. Here, north of the main stronghold, Ukrainian forces have broken through Russian positions and are expanding their advance. Russian defenses began to fall apart more quickly than anticipated, allowing even deeper penetration by Ukrainian forces. Recently, the Ukrainian command reported restoring control over more than 400 square kilometers through counterattacks, while daily combat intensity in the direction has reached roughly fifty engagements per day. As Ukrainian forces regain control over key terrain, they improve their ability to observe Russian movement, making it harder for Russian forces to reposition without being...

As events in the Middle East and the Gulf region unfold “extremely rapidly,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine knows “all too well” what such escalation means, pointing to Iran’s role in supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. “Although Ukrainians never threatened Iran, the Iranian regime chose to become Putin’s accomplice,” Zelensky said in a statement on Saturday. He said Iran supplied Russia not only with Shahed drones but also with technologies to produce them, as well as other weapons. According to Zelensky, Russia has used more than 57,000 Shahed-type attack drones during the full-scale war, targeting Ukrainian civilians, cities and...

Russian forces unleashed a devastating overnight assault on Ukraine, hitting military-industrial sites, energy infrastructure, and UAV launch areas with precision strikes. Over 1,100 Ukrainian troops were killed in just 24 hours, alongside dozens of armoured vehicles, artillery pieces, and electronic warfare systems. From Sumy to Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia, Russian battlegroups advanced relentlessly, crumbling defensive lines and crippling logistics. Air defences were overwhelmed, morale is under siege, and Kyiv’s ability to resist is being systematically dismantled as Russia claims victory after victory.

Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Trump administration is pressing Kyiv to agree to painful territorial concessions as the price for peace. In a draft peace agreement first reported by Axios in November, the administration proposed that the entire regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk be recognized as de facto Russian territory and that Russia retain control of the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia its forces now occupy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing back, refusing to do anything that would violate his country’s territorial integrity. Yet the realities of the battlefield are not on his side....

Russia says it has handed over the remains of 1,000 soldiers to Ukraine and has received the bodies of 35 Russian soldiers in return. Vladimir Medinsky, a top aide of Russian President Vladimir Putin, announced the exchange of bodies in a short announcement on Telegram. He gave no details, but included an image showing bodies being unloaded from a truck. Hours later, Ukraine said it had received 1,000 bodies which, "according to prior information from the Russian side, may belong to Ukrainian defenders".

Russia accused Ukraine on Tuesday of trying to obtain a nuclear weapon with help from Britain and France, an allegation Kyiv called an absurd lie. A French foreign ministry spokesperson said the allegation was "blatant disinformation". A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: "There's no truth to this." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has previously criticised Kyiv's decision to give up its former Soviet nuclear arsenal in the 1990s without obtaining proper, binding security guarantees. But Kyiv has said it does not seek to re-acquire nuclear weapons, and respects all international treaties. NUCLEAR THREATSIn a statement published on the...

KYIV, Ukraine, and MOSCOW — When the Kremlin launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the assumption in Moscow, and much of the West, was that Russian forces would take the country in a matter of days. Instead, what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" has become the biggest land war in Europe since World War II and has lasted longer than the Soviet army's fight against Nazi Germany. Russia's war on Ukraine is a grinding war of attrition. Ukraine has managed to hold a much larger army to minimal gains while adjusting to a life under constant...

Ukraine has regained control of 400 square kilometres of territory, including eight settlements, along a section of the southern frontline since the end of January, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has said. Syrskyi's statement on Monday did not make clear how much of the newly secured territory had previously been under Russian control and how much lay in "grey zone" areas not firmly held by either side. The rare battlefield gains in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region stand in contrast to the broader trend of slow and costly Russian advances across the frontlines over the past two and a half years, as the...

Ukraine is outmatched by Russian forces and requires significantly more infantry and weapons if it hopes to win the war, according to military intelligence and independent battlefield monitors. Although Moscow is paying an extraordinary price for comparatively minimal gains, western officials believe the country can sustain at least another year of war at the current rate of attrition. On Tuesday it will be four years since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. After months of incremental advances, it appears to be on the verge of capturing a series of strategic locations in Ukraine’s so-called “fortress belt” and is expanding...

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson says that the UK and its allies should deploy non-combat troops to Ukraine right now, to "flip a switch" in Russian President Vladimir Putin's head. Speaking exclusively to Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg alongside the former head of the military, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, Johnson said troops should be sent to peaceful regions in non-fighting roles. He said: "If we can have a plan for boots on the ground after the war, after Putin has condescended to have a ceasefire, then why not do it now?" The UK government is currently working with its allies to...

Drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries, this exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade, and why most of Europe – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dismissed them. As the fourth anniversary of the invasion approaches and the world enters a new period of geopolitical uncertainty, Europe’s politicians and spy services continue to draw lessons from the failures of 2022. The phone call William Burns had travelled halfway around the world to speak with Vladimir Putin, but in the end he had...

US-mediated peace talks on Ukraine collapsed in less than two hours after Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky claimed it was unfair that Donald Trump was placing more pressure on his country than on Russia.The second day of talks concluded on Wednesday, though neither side signalled they were any closer to ending Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II.The talks wrapped up after just two hours, much shorter than the six hours of meetings on Tuesday, according to the head of Russia's delegation.

The Ukrainian public would not accept Kyiv simply handing over the country’s Donbas region to Russia in a peace deal, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday — advising US envoys against continually pushing a version of peace the war’s victims would see as an “unsuccessful story.” “Emotionally, people will never forgive this. Never. They will not forgive … me, they will not forgive [the US],” Zelensky told Axios, speaking as US, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met in Geneva. “This is part of our country, all these citizens, the flag, the land.” The president said it was “not fair” that President Trump...

Ukrainian forces managed to liberate over 200 square kilometers of territory from the Russian troops last week, marking their most successful breakthrough in 2.5 years, AFP reports. According to the outlet, these gains are confirmed by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Between February 11 and 15, Ukrainian troops recaptured 201 square kilometers from Russian forces. AFP reports that Ukrainian soldiers took advantage of disruptions in Russian access to Starlink terminals.

An elite British Army battalion is going all in on drones after working closely with Ukrainian soldiers and seeing how central these systems have become in modern warfare. The 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards now has 78 of its 300 members qualified as drone operators, its commanding officer, Lt. Col. Ben Irwin-Clark, told Business Insider. The unit has big plans to increase its training and work with drones further."That just gives you an idea of how important this is," he said.The battalion has built a training facility with drone warfare in mind, and its soldiers are heavily invested, he...