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President Donald Trump, appearing on the red carpet at the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night, said he was "a little bit disappointed" in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not yet reading the text of Washington's latest proposed peace plan for the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump said Zelenskyy's top Ukrainian officials "love it," and "Russia is fine with it," but stressed that Zelenskyy himself had not reviewed the document as of several hours before the event. "We've been speaking to President [Vladimir] Putin, and we've been speaking to Ukrainian leaders, including President Zelenskyy, and I have to say that I'm a...

Donald Trump Jr. made some not so surprising allegations against Ukraine at the Doha Forum in December. Donald Trump, Jr. recently made some noise about the ongoing Ukrainian War with Russia. Earlier this month Don Jr. unloaded on Ukrainian aid, telling fitness trainer and author, Jillian Michaels, that when he went to Monaco with his girlfriend, half of the super cars he saw on the street had Ukrainian plates. Via Chief Nerd. 🚨 Don Jr Goes Off on the Ukraine War“I was actually in Monaco earlier this summer … and every other car there was an Italian supercar, like a...

Luxury mansions, duffel bags stacked full of cash, and a golden toilet. These are just some of the excesses that members of Volodymyr Zelensky's inner circle enjoyed as Russian missiles rained down on civilians, according to Ukraine's top anticorruption agencies. The scandal had old-school elements: its co-conspirators are accused of employing code names for each other such as 'Professor', 'Sugarman', 'Karlson', and 'Rocket' as they lined their pockets amid Moscow's years-long invasion. The corruption crisis sweeping Zelensky's government could not have occurred at a more pivotal moment in the country's history, as it thrashes out a peace proposal that will...

With the War in Ukraine now approaching its fifth year and possibly reaching a climatic stage, it’s timely to offer an overview of the situation. This overview has three vectors – the situation on the battlefield, the corruption scandal rocking Kyiv, and the prospects for the success of the Trump peace plan. The thread that connects these three vectors is the role of the Russian Federation and specter of Vladimir Putin. Let’s look at these vectors separately and then unify them in the end. On The Ground The situation on the battlefield is straightforward. Russia is winning the war decisively...

Donald Trump may walk away from the Ukrainian war, the US president’s oldest son has said in comments to a Middle East conference. In a lengthy tirade against the purpose of continued fighting in Ukraine, Donald Trump Jr also said Ukraine’s “corrupt” rich had fled their country leaving “what they believed to be the peasant class” to fight the war. Trump Jr has no formal role inside his father’s administration, but is a key figure in the Maga movement. His intervention reflects the antipathy among some inside the Trump team towards the Ukrainian government, and comes as Trump’s negotiating team...

Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, will meet the European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, and Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, for emergency talks on Friday as the EU races to save its sorely needed financing plan for Ukraine. The three leaders will dine in private in Brussels, a German government spokesperson said on Thursday, as Belgian officials continued to express strong opposition to the scheme, which involves the unprecedented use of frozen Russian assets. With Russia’s attacks intensifying, Washington pushing for a peace deal that favours Moscow and Kyiv fast running out of money and Europe struggling for influence...

Coming in the other direction, the soldiers looked exactly like the Ukrainian unit walking out of Pokrovsk after a 15-day deployment.They wore the same blue armbands and carried the same equipment. One of the four men said “hello”.But minutes later, a warning came over the radio: “Be careful, there is a group of Russian infiltrators in your area.”“We passed right by them,” says Ivan, a 21-year-old machine gunner in an unmanned systems unit from the Da Vinci Wolves. “The men I saw matched the description exactly.”Inside Pokrovsk, the dividing lines of urban warfare have faded. In their place is a...

It was a clear attempt to project Russian power. Hours before meeting U.S. officials in Moscow this past week about their plan to end the war, President Vladimir V. Putin claimed that Russia’s forces had seized the strategic Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk after a monthslong fight. The reality was murkier. Slivers of the city were still contested, according to battlefield maps and the Ukrainian military. But Mr. Putin’s claim, even if premature, reflected a trend shaping his unbending approach to negotiations: Russian forces are on the march. “The Russians do have the upper hand,” said Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst...

EU leaders warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a closed-door call that the United States might betray both Ukraine and Europe by conceding territory without firm security guarantees, Spiegel reported on Dec. 4. According to the outlet, European heads of state and government expressed deep mistrust toward Washington’s role in peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Spiegel published what it claims is a transcript of the call — involving German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, several other European leaders, and Zelenskyy — in which the Americans were portrayed as unreliable. “There is a possibility that the United States...

Norway will allocate $7 billion dollars to Ukraine for defense needs next year. Additionally, Ukraine and Norway will launch joint defense production on Ukrainian territory, according to a post by Ukraine’s Minister of Defense, Denys Shmyhal. Shmyhal reported that during his working visit to Norway, he met with his counterpart, Tore Sandvik, and received an invitation to a meeting of the defense ministers of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF). Ukraine will participate in this format for the first time.

Emmanuel Macron has reportedly warned Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “there is a chance that the US will betray Ukraine on territory, without clarity on security guarantees”, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported, quoting a leaked note from a recent call with several European leaders. Der Spiegel said it had obtained an English summary of Monday’s call, featuring what it said were direct quotations from European heads of government in which they expressed fundamental doubts about Washington’s approach to the talks. The French president described the current tense phase of the negotiations as harbouring “a big danger” for Ukraine’s embattled president, according...

hen Vladimir Putin declared this week that Russia was ‘ready’ to fight a war in Europe, the remark barely seems to have rippled the surface of Britain’s political consciousness. It should have sent a shockwave...Yet Britain continues to behave as though danger is tidily scheduled for years in the future, safely beyond the horizon of any present responsibility. It is a comforting delusion, but a very dangerous one. Britain cannot lead Europe if it cannot defend itselfWhat Putin understands – and what Britain refuses to face – is that Europe is vulnerable in ways that matter more than tanks or...

"You know, when I was in this office and I talked about no cards. I said: 'you have no cards.' That was the time to settle. I thought that would've been a much better time to settle. But they, in their wisdom, decided not to do that. They have a lot of things against them right now."

It has been a rough week for everyone in Kiev.Electricity is available only intermittently. Most nights there is a drone or missile strike. And the weather is gloomy and overcast.For president Volodymyr Zelensky, it has been particularly unpleasant. In the past seven days he has lost his chief of staff, the Russians claimed to have taken the strategic city of Pokrovsk, and the Americans have stepped up demands that he make humiliating territorial concessions to buy peace.On Tuesday morning, opposition MPs in Ukraine’s parliament mobbed the speaker’s chair to block Zelensky’s proposed budget and demand the government resign.The reality is...

Adding thousands of metal "hairs" to a tank helps to protect the tank from first-person-view drones The Russians first fielded these hairy "hedgehog" tanks this fall Now the Ukrainians are building their own hedgehogs, hoping to reduce the impact of Russian FPVs In their never-ending effort to protect armored vehicles from the tiny first-person-view drones that are everywhere all the time all along the 1,100-km front line of Russia's wider war on Ukraine, Russian forces have introduced a number of bizarre innovations. The resulting "cope cages" and "turtle," "porcupine" and "hedgehog" tanks are ungainly and, frankly, ugly. But they work....

A Russian military victory in Ukraine would cost Europe twice as much as a Ukrainian victory, according to a new study by Corisk and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs published on Nov. 25. Under the first scenario proposed by the researchers, Moscow's forces would continue their incremental advance and push westward toward the Dnipro River. As a result of their military victories, the Kremlin would force Ukraine to accept a negotiated settlement on terms beneficial to Moscow. According to the report, such an outcome would amount to a Russian partial victory, giving the Kremlin influence over Ukraine's political and...

The Russian military has more armored vehicles than it did on the eve of Russia's wider war on Ukraine in February 2022. And for one main reason. Despite losing as many as 16,100 vehicles in action in Ukraine, the Russians have more than compensated for these losses by pulling nearly 13,000 old vehicles out of long-term storage—and complementing these older vehicles with around 4,000 brand-new vehicles.

Without Iraq-style lies about Russia, the collusion hoax, the impeachment farce, and the 51 intel officials laundering deception for political gain, there likely would have been no Russia-Ukraine war. The proposed Ukraine peace deal has shaken the political class that insisted escalation with Moscow was the only acceptable course. How, they ask, can Russia possibly walk away with concessions? Part of this is simply material: Russia has ground out battlefield gains and retains the manpower and resources to sustain the war indefinitely. But that is only one dimension of it. The fuller answer reaches back long before the first tanks...

NATO is weighing a more "proactive" and "aggressive" posture in countering Russia's hybrid-warfare campaign — potentially including "preemptive" actions, said Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone. Dragone, NATO's most senior officer and chair of the alliance's Military Committee, made the remarks in response to myriad attacks at the hands of Russia, including sabotage, cyberattacks, and airspace violations. "We are studying everything. ... On cyber, we are kind of reactive," Dragone said. "Being more aggressive or being proactive instead of reactive is something that we are thinking about." Dragone added that a "preemptive" strike could be considered a "defensive action," adding that...

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said he is ready to go to war with Europe, accusing EU leaders of sabotaging peace talks with the US. “We are not planning to go to war with Europe, but if Europe wants to and starts, we are ready right now,” Putin warned.