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BBC is calculating options for Kyiv and admit that the only question is how much territory Ukraine will lose. "In eastern Ukraine, Moscow's war machine is steadily advancing kilometer by kilometer across the vast fields of Donbas. Russia is gaining momentum faster than at any time since February 2022. Ukraine appears to be losing.” - “There is a lot of talk about negotiations, but this is an illusion,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of President Zelensky’s office. “No negotiation process can take place because Russia has not been forced to pay a high enough price for this...

Russian President Vladimir Putin seemingly took a page out of President Biden’s book and is offering to write off debts for new recruits enlisting in the country’s military for one year. In November, Putin signed a law allowing anyone who joined the Russian military after Dec. 1, 2024, to have debs of up to 10 million rubles, or about $96,000, written off. -snip- The move appears to be similar to one from Biden’s own playbook, though the latter does not connect loan handouts to military recruitment. Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced $4.28 billion in student loan handouts as...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejected proposals Monday floated by President-elect Trump’s allies to end the war in Ukraine, dealing a major setback for the incoming president’s hopes to freeze the conflict. In an interview with Russian state-run media outlet TASS, Lavrov said Moscow has “not received any official signals regarding a settlement in Ukraine” but the Kremlin was resistant to those unofficial ideas. “We are not happy, of course, with the proposals made by members of the Trump team to postpone Ukraine’s admission to NATO for 20 years and to station British and European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine,” he...