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United States President Donald Trump told his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky during their call earlier today that territorial exchanges between Russia and Ukraine will be needed to achieve a peace deal, Axios reported on Wednesday. On the other hand, the US president stressed that he cannot make final decisions on territorial issues because he's "not from the region." The alleged remark echoes similar statements previously made by Trump, stressing the importance of direct negotiations between Moscow and Kiev to achieve a lasting solution to the long-standing conflict. "Trump said it's Vladimir and Volodymyr who have to discuss territories with each...

Russia is importing butter from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkiye, in response to soaring butter prices, which have been attributed to rising demand for ice cream and cheese. The agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor announced that deliveries from the UAE began on October 18, marking the first shipments of butter from that country to Russia. Higher production costs, coupled with increased consumer interest in ice cream and cheese, have significantly impacted butter prices, according to dairy producers. Artyom Belov, chief of the national dairy producer association Soyuzmoloko, told a local news outlet that these product segments are major factors contributing...

Situated between Poland and Lithuania, both members of the European Union and NATO, Kaliningrad Oblast is a Russian exclave on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, as well as the westernmost region of the Russian Federation.Tactically, in the event of conflict, Russia could form a land bridge from Belarus to the Kaliningrad exclave along the so-called Suwałki Gap, severing the Baltic states, including Lithuania, from other members of the Atlantic Alliance. In this scenario, troops stationed in Lithuania as part of a German-led NATO brigade would be surrounded and cut off from Central Europe. In addition, the deployment of...

The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia supplied targeting intelligence to Yemen's Houthi forces for attacks on Western ships in the Red Sea. Yemen’s Houthi terrorists used targeting data provided by Russia to attack Western ships in the Red Sea earlier this year, an exclusive Thursday Wall Street Journal report disclosed. According to the report, the Houthis used Russian satellite data to destabilize the region as the Israel-Hamas war expanded throughout the past year. A person familiar with the matter and two European defense officials reportedly told the WSJ this information. Furthermore, the data was passed through Islamic Revolutionary Guard...

Any decision to send North Korean troops to Russia would be in line with international law, Pyongyang has said amid reports that its soldiers could reach the front lines of the war in Ukraine as early as this weekend. This is a developing story.

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday did not deny US claims that North Korea had sent troops to Russia but said that it was up to Moscow how to run its mutual defense clause with Pyongyang and accused the West of escalating the Ukraine war. Asked by a reporter about satellite imagery showing North Korean troop movements, Putin said: "Images are a serious thing. If there are images, then they reflect something." -snip- The Kremlin chief specifically mentioned Article 4 of the Russian partnership deal with North Korea that deals with mutual defense. "There is article 4. We have never doubted...

In Kherson, a frontline Ukrainian city, small Russian drones have been hunting civilians for months. Like birds of prey, they chase their targets and either drop explosives upon them or self-detonate in kamikaze strikes. Lacking effective countermeasures, locals say they are living in a “human safari” — nowhere is safe anymore. This is the dystopian future of war that may yet come to the West, should great power conflicts proliferate. Kherson sits on the Dnipro River in south Ukraine, by the Black Sea coast. Once home to almost 300,000 people, the port city was liberated after months of Russian occupation...

The US military’s top commander in Europe compiled a list of weapons systems the US possesses that could help Ukraine in its fight against Russia that the Biden administration has not yet provided, including air-to-surface missiles and a secure communications network used by NATO. In an annex attached to a classified report about the Biden administration’s Ukraine strategy that was delivered to Congress early last month, Gen. Chris Cavoli outlined a list of US capabilities that could help the Ukrainian military fight more effectively, according to people familiar with the report. The list included the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, a...

BREAKING: two sources confirm that the RNC has not provided any resources or assistance to Kari Lake in her Senate race in Arizona.

PRAGUE (AP) – The head of NATO’s military committee said Saturday that Ukraine has the solid legal and military right to strike deep inside Russia to gain combat advantage – reflecting the beliefs of a number of U.S. allies – even as the Biden administration balks at allowing Kyiv to do so using American-made weapons. “Every nation that is attacked has the right to defend itself. And that right doesn´t stop at the border of your own nation,” said Adm. Rob Bauer, speaking at the close of the committee’s annual meeting, also attended by U.S. Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of...

In July, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the country's low birth rate was "catastrophic" for Russia's future. Russia's birth rate is at its lowest since 1999 with the number of live births falling under 100,000 in June, causing concern in Moscow over what has been described as a severe population downswing. From January to June of 2024, 599,600 children were both in Russia — 16,000 less than the same period in 2023, according to data published by Russia's governmental statistic agency Rosstat. Over the same period, Russia's population decline accelerated by 18%, with 49,000 more deaths recorded in 2024 than...

Russian forces lost almost 1,400 fighters and 50 artillery systems in the past day as the Kremlin pushes forward to threaten a key Ukrainian city in the country's eastern Donetsk region and Kyiv holds its grip on swathes of Russia's southern Kursk region. Moscow sustained 1,380 casualties between Monday and Tuesday bringing the tally of total Russian casualties to 627,790. Updated figures on Tuesday put Russia's artillery losses at 50 over the past day—with a total of 17,880 systems lost during Russia's full-scale invasion of the country, which began in February 2022.

The surprise Ukrainian invasion of Russia's Kursk region is intended to create a "buffer zone" between the two countries and further complicate Moscow's cross-border offensive, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday. "It is now our primary task in defensive operations overall to destroy as much Russian war potential as possible and conduct maximum counteroffensive actions," Zelenskyy said in his nightly address, the first public acknowledgment of the offensive's true intent. "This includes creating a buffer zone on the aggressor’s territory – our operation in the Kursk region," Zelenskyy continued. Ukrainian forces destroyed one bridge in the region this weekend and...

Russell Bentley, the so-called "Donbass Cowboy" from Texas who fought for the 'Donetsk People's Republic' (DPR), is reported to have been tortured to death in an abandoned mine being used as a concentration camp for 'remotivating' Russian soldiers who refuse to fight. On 8 April 2024, Bentley was kidnapped by DPR soldiers outside the administration building of the Petrovsky district of Donetsk. He was driven away in an unknown direction. On 19 April, his former unit, the Vostok Battalion, confirmed his death. His body has not been found. ASTRA reports that he was electrocuted during torture by men from the...

LONDON (Reuters) - Russia and Ukraine should negotiate an end to their conflict to avoid the war spilling over into Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko, a key ally of Vladimir Putin, said in an interview with Russian state television. Lukashenko was speaking against the backdrop of a Ukrainian incursion into Russia that began on Aug. 6 when thousands of Kyiv's troops smashed through Russia's western border in a major embarrassment for Putin's top military brass. In a wide-ranging interview, Lukashenko said that only "high-ranking people of American origin" wanted the Ukraine-Russia war to continue. The West, he said, was encouraging Kyiv...

SUMY, Ukraine—Russia is withdrawing some of its military forces from Ukraine to respond to a Ukrainian offensive into Russian territory, U.S. officials said, the first sign that Kyiv’s incursion is forcing Moscow to rejigger its invasion force. The officials said the U.S. is still seeking to determine the significance of Russia’s move and didn’t say how many troops the U.S. assesses Russia is shifting. But the new U.S. assessment bolsters claims by Ukrainian officials who said last week’s surprise invasion of Kursk province had drawn Russian forces away from Ukraine, where Moscow’s advantage in manpower and equipment is allowing them...

Thousands of Ukrainian troops are taking part in an incursion aiming to destabilise Russia by showing up the country’s weaknesses, a top official from Ukraine has said as the assault entered its sixth day. “We are on the offensive. The aim is to stretch the positions of the enemy, to inflict maximum losses and to destabilise the situation in Russia as they are unable to protect their own border,” the security official said on condition of anonymity. Russia’s army had said about 1,000 Ukrainian troops were deployed in the cross-border incursion that began on Tuesday and appeared to catch the...

As the Ukrainian invasion of Russia grinds into its fifth day, Ukrainian troops have advanced as far as 10 miles into Kursk Oblast—and are beginning to mop up any Russian troops they bypassed in their hurry to extend their zone of control. The Russians, meanwhile, are finally bringing to bear their heaviest firepower—lobbing powerful glide bombs at Ukrainian columns rolling along Russian roads. For more than a year, these glide bombs—each ranging 25 miles or farther with hundreds of pounds of explosives—have been Russia’s most powerful offensive weapons, demolishing Ukrainian defenses ahead of Russian ground assaults. Now they’re defensive weapons—and...

Having gained a foothold in Russia’s southwestern Kursk region in the past few days, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are now fast approaching the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Kurchatov, the city’s mayor Igor Korpunkov warned on Friday. Reporting that fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops was taking place “a few dozen kilometres” from the city of Kurchatov, Korpunkov sought to assure residents that all services and business in the city were operating “normally” and urged them not to panic. “The enemy is not only employing military weapons against us, but also so-called ‘psychological special forces’....

Ukrainian forces are pushing further into the Kursk region of Russia, in a cross-border incursion that surprised even American officials, multiple US and Ukrainian officials tell CNN. Ukrainian forces are comprised of a mix of Ukrainian regular and special operations units, unlike previous Ukrainian operations inside Russia that often involved undercover units and local sympathizers. The intention, say US and Ukrainian officials, is multifaceted, in part to disrupt and demoralize Russian forces and in part to divert Russian forces away from other parts of the eastern front. Russia claimed on Thursday to have halted a Ukrainian incursion into its territory,...