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Russia said Sunday that trains carrying more bodies of Ukrainian soldiers were due to depart toward the Ukrainian border, escalating a spat with Kyiv over a prisoner of war swap. “I can tell you that in just an hour, repatriation trains carrying the bodies of military personnel will also begin to move,” Lieutenant General Aleksandr Zorin said on Sunday, according to TASS news agency. The transfer of “more than 6,000 bodies” was agreed earlier this week during peace talks in Istanbul, Zorin said, blaming Ukraine for failing to “confirm receipt” of other bodies of Ukrainian soldiers which Russia claims it...

An audacious Ukrainian drone attack against multiple airbases across Russia is a humiliating security breach for Vladimir Putin that will doubtless trigger a furious response. Pro-Kremlin bloggers have described the drone assault - which Ukrainian security sources said hit more than 40 Russian warplanes - as "Russia's Pearl Harbor" in reference to the Japanese attack against the US in 1941 that prompted Washington to enter the Second World War. The Ukrainian operation - which used small drones smuggled into Russia, hidden in mobile sheds and launched off the back of trucks - also demonstrated how technology and imagination have transformed...

US President Donald Trump has appeared to set a two-week deadline for Vladimir Putin, threatening a different response if the Russian counterpart was still stringing him along. As the Kremlin escalated its attacks on Ukraine, Trump was asked in the Oval Office on Wednesday if he thought Putin wanted to end the war. "I can't tell you that, but I'll let you know in about two weeks," Trump told reporters, the latest amid a string of critical public remarks made by Trump about Putin. Since Sunday, Trump has written multiple posts on social media saying that Putin has gone "absolutely...

Satellite images have revealed how Moscow is bulking up its military presence on the Finnish border - in a chilling echo of pictures taken of Russian bases before Putin launched his war in Ukraine. Moscow is building troop accommodation, aircraft deployment infrastructure and refurbishing old facilities at key military bases, analysts have said, in a sign it is seeking to reinforce its capabilities in the border region. The pictures, which were obtained by Swedish broadcaster SVT from Planet Labs, suggest there has been activity at four locations inside Russia - Kamenka, Petrozavodsk, Severomorsk-2, and Olenya. In Kamenka, which is around...

President Trump in a new post on Truth Social on Sunday night accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of having gone “absolutely” crazy and said if he did not stop what he was doing, it would lead to the downfall of his country. The social media comments came after Trump had issued some of his toughest comments about Putin earlier in remarks to reporters in New Jersey. “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!,” Trump wrote. “He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and...

Ukraine’s former top general warns against false hopes of restoring 1991 borders and says only tech-driven warfare can overcome Russia’s war resources. Ukraine’s Ambassador to the UK and former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (AFU), retired Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, has cautioned against hoping for a return to Ukraine’s 1991 borders, warning that Russia still possesses the resources to continue the war. Speaking at the “Export of Security: Ukrainian Weapons in the World” forum, Zaluzhny said, as quoted by Ukrainian media: “I hope that there are no people in this hall who still hope for some miracle or wonder, for some...

Vladimir Putin's forces are massing next to Russia's border with Ukraine's Sumy oblast, it has been reported, following evacuations from the region and a threat that Moscow has identified further territorial targets in its full-scale invasion. Sumy governor Oleh Hryhorov said thousands had been evacuated from the region on Ukraine's northeast border and next to the Kharkiv oblast, according to the Kyiv Independent. On the other side of the frontier Russian troops numbers are said to be increasing. It comes Putin is trying to justify the renewal of Russian plans to seize Sumy City—16 miles from the border—and illegally annex...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the "way forward for a ceasefire" in Ukraine with European counterparts, including the foreign ministers of Britain and France, and the EU's foreign policy chief, the State Department said on Monday. Ukraine's foreign minister Andrii Sybiha and his German and Polish counterparts were also on the call, according to the readout.

A pro-war Russian TV star has been killed on the front line just hours after sharing a social media post mocking Ukraine. Anna Prokofyeva, 35, died in the Demidovka border area of Belgorod, Russia, where Volodomyr Zelensky's forces have been making incursions. Her death was reported by other Kremlin-backed war correspondents and later by the state-run TV station Channel One, where she worked. Just a day before, she said she was "somewhere on the border with country 404", a reference to a common web page error - suggesting she believed Ukraine was a country that does not exist. Multiple other...

"Andrzej Duda told the BBC that the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which have not been used since 2022, "should be dismantled". This, he said, would mean the likes of Germany would not be tempted to restore Russian supplies to boost its own struggling economy. "I can only hope that European leaders will learn lessons from Russia's aggression against Ukraine and that they will push through a decision to never restore the pumping of gas through this pipeline," he said. The Polish president, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, insisted that economic sanctions against Russia were working and European...

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called on members of the alliance to either increase their defense spending targets or start taking "Russian language courses." NATO's current target for members' defense spending is 2 percent of their country's GDP. Trump said in 2018 during his first administration that the defense spending goal for NATO should be doubled to 4 percent. While on the campaign trail in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump also accused NATO of relying too much on U.S. contributions. During a December appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, he even suggested the U.S. could look at leaving...

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...

The Russian-occupied port of Sevastopol, Crimea has come under renewed attack by Ukraine's drone forces after a monthslong lull. Three loud and heavy explosions were reported in Kozacha Bay late Monday night, and citizen journalists said that a large fire was burning in the area. Both aerial and maritime drone attacks were reported. Sevastopol's Russian-backed governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev, told state media that two Ukrainian aerial drones had been shot down over the Black Sea. He did not confirm local reports of large blasts. Kozacha Bay is located five miles southwest of the main harbor, which is more heavily protected by...

I will never forget New Year's Eve 1999. I was working as a producer in the BBC's Moscow bureau. Suddenly there was breaking news: Russia's President Boris Yeltsin had stepped down. His decision to resign took everyone by surprise, including the British press corps in Moscow. When the news broke there was no correspondent in the office. That meant I had to step in to write and broadcast my first BBC dispatch. "Boris Yeltsin always said he would see out his full term in office," I wrote. "Today he told Russians he'd changed his mind." It was the start of...

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico held one-on-one talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin late Sunday evening as part of a bid to secure continued access to cheap Russian fossil fuels. Fico's decision to travel to Russia for trade talks will prove controversial among his fellow EU leaders, and defies the bloc's public commitments to end its reliance on Moscow for gas imports. The leftist-populist Slovak politician arrived in the country for what Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov called a "working visit," posed for pictures and shook hands with Putin.

“Operation Destabilise has exposed billion-dollar money laundering networks operating in a way previously unknown to international law enforcement or regulators. “For the first time, we have been able to map out a link between Russian elites, crypto-rich cyber criminals, and drugs gangs on the streets of the UK. The thread that tied them together – the combined force of Smart and TGR – was invisible until now. “The NCA and partners have disrupted this criminal service at every level. We have identified and acted against the Russians pulling the strings at the very top, removing the air of legitimacy that...

DONALD Trump could "face a JFK-style assassination" if he tries to end the brutal war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin's crackpot crony has warned. -snip- Mad Vlad's puppet Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday claimed Trump may face the same fate as John F Kennedy in 1963 should he win the presidential race. On his Russian Telegram Channel, the ex-Russian president and longest-serving Prime Minister, said: “A tired Trump, issuing platitudes like ‘I'll offer a deal’ and 'I have a great relationship with…’ will also be forced to follow all the system's rules. “He won't be able to stop the war. “Not in...

Speaking at a meeting with his top officials in the Kremlin, Mr. Putin announced proposed amendments to the Russian military doctrine, the policy document that regulates the use of nuclear weapons. “It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any nonnuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation,” said Mr. Putin. The Russian leader said that the policy needed to be amended because “military-political circumstances is changing dynamically.” “The conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly fixed,” Mr. Putin said,...

Huge plumes of smoke and fierce fires erupted into the skies above the Russian city of Voronezh last night. Local residents in the southwestern Russian city recorded the devastating aftermath of an overnight Ukrainian drone strike. Videos showing a large fire in which explosions can clearly be heard were shared across Telegram. The explosive attack reportedly blew up an ammunition depot - the second time a drone strike has hit an ammunition depot in Voronezh in just two weeks. At the end of August, Ukrainian drones managed to blow up almost 5,000 tonnes of Russian weapons. Following this attack, explosions...

❕ "Bermuda Triangle" for the Ukrainian Armed Forces: Malaya Loknya - Cherkasskoye Porechnoye - Nechayev In their attempts to break through to Lgov and Kurchatov, the Kiev regime's forces have been disappearing without a trace for the third week in a row in three settlements. Elite Ukrainian Armed Forces brigades, such as the 95th and 80th Air Assault Brigades, along with Western equipment, are being ground down in this "Bermuda Triangle." At one point, the Ukrainian forces even managed to enter Nechayev, but this only led to huge losses and a forced retreat. The Ukrainian command's primary objective was to...