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European confidence in an American “security guarantee” has hit a historic low, a survey suggests, with only one in 10 people across 15 countries seeing the US as an ally and majorities in all doubting it would come to their aid if they were attacked. The survey, published on Wednesday by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank before critical G7 and Nato summits in France and Turkey over the coming weeks, revealed “deep European distrust in the US”, the authors said. It also showed that, while many Europeans felt relations with Washington would improve once Donald Trump leaves...

A car exploded in the city of Balashikha, which borders the Russian capital Moscow, in the early morning of June 9, killing the driver at the scene. According to the Telegram channel Two Majors, the man killed in the explosion has been identified as a Russian major general. The channel, however, did not reveal his name. Earlier, witnesses and Russia’s Investigative Committee confirmed that a 62-year-old man died after an explosive device detonated inside a vehicle in the Aviatorov district of Balashikha. The explosion occurred shortly after the car began moving. Russia’s Investigative Committee said the blast occurred at around...

North Korea is the world’s most unlikely growth story. Its economy is flourishing in ways not seen in years, aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia, supplies and financing from China, and the ability to flout international sanctions to import more energy, components and materials. Chinese leader Xi Jinping traveled to North Korea this week for his first foreign trip of the year. The Kim regime slammed its borders shut during the Covid-19 pandemic. It has since reopened to only a select few outsiders, including Russian and Western travelers and diplomats. Those visitors describe a North Korea unrecognizable...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday he had a "positive" conversation with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and praised what he called their readiness to work on a settlement of the Ukraine war in the coming weeks. "A very positive conversation," Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app about the conversation during a stopover in the Moldovan capital, Chisinau. "Grateful for the readiness to work as actively as possible already in the weeks to come to give a boost to diplomacy for ending Russia's war against Ukraine," he wrote.

This applies to tankers described by Brussels as "shadow fleet"NICOSIA, June 8. /TASS/. EU member states have authorized their warships operating in the Mediterranean as part of Operation IRINI to detain foreign tankers suspected of transporting Russian oil as part of what Brussels describes as the "shadow fleet," EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. TASS has summed up what is known to this moment. Kallas’ statementEU member countries have authorized their warships to detain foreign tankers suspected of shipping Russian oil, Kallas said. This applies to tankers described by Brussels as "shadow fleet." According to Kallas, the main objective...

"I test the Army’s new 30×42mm Precision Grenade Rifle and break down how it’s changing infantry combat. The Squad Support Rifle System or SSRS 30mm grenade launcher. It fires ammunition from airburst rounds to counter-drone and anti-armor munitions, this weapon delivers insane accuracy and firepower. Here’s why it might replace traditional grenade launchers like the M203 and M320 and M32 and become the squad’s most lethal system." Cappy Army

A Kingdom and a Village. By Simon Morrison. Knopf; 528 pages; “Do you love Moscow?” Not long after this reviewer moved there in 2004, he was asked that question by his grizzled landlord. A bit early to know, was his cautious response. “Good,” replied the landlord. “Foreigners who say they love it here soon run back to the airport—with no luggage.” Simon Morrison of Princeton University, a devotee of the carnivorous city since the last days of the Soviet Union, is less equivocal. “Moscow is hard to love,” he acknowledges, “but I love it.” His is a love without illusions,...

The leaders of Ukraine and its close European allies - the UK, France and Germany - have set out out five conditions for reaching a "just and lasting" deal to end the war with Russia. In a joint statement after talks in London, Volodymyr Zelensky, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said they would "stand firmly with Ukraine". The five conditions include a stop to the fighting, starting negotiations from the current position in the field as well as "robust" security guarantees for Ukraine. The leaders reiterated the need for the...

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine arrived on Sunday afternoon in London for talks with the leaders of Britain, Germany and France as Europe considers taking a more active role in peace talks with Russia after more than a year of unsuccessful U.S. mediation. Ukraine and its European allies see a new opening to revive talks that have stalled as Moscow made uncompromising territorial demands and Washington shifted its focus to the war with Iran. They note that Russia’s recent battlefield setbacks and mounting economic strains could make a peace settlement more appealing to the Kremlin, a scenario that is also...

The hall at St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Calgary is packed. Three gigantic, artistically painted wooden Easter eggs dominate the stage. Heavily accented voices rise and fall amid the chatter as attendees nibble on poppyseed cake and other Ukrainian delicacies. No one wears the bright blue-and-yellow of the war's early days, but embroidered vyshyvanky peek from under sweaters and jackets. These are the faithful still committed to Ukraine's cause. They came to hear Michael Bociurkiw — a Canadian journalist of Ukrainian heritage now based in Odesa — deliver a sobering assessment of a war grinding into its fifth year....

Russia has a problem it cannot bomb its way out of. For months, Ukraine has been quietly dismantling the one road that keeps Russia's southern war machine alive — a highway so critical that without it, Crimea starves, and the front line goes cold. On May 27th, Kyiv stopped being quiet about it. Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov formalized what had been a covert campaign into a declared strategic program, announcing a $113 million initiative he calls a "logistics lockdown." The target is the R-280 highway — also known as the M-14, renamed by Russian occupation authorities the "Novorossiya" route....

Vladimir Putin has rejected an offer from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hold a face-to-face meeting, insisting instead that Russia will achieve its war goals in Ukraine, including seizing all of the eastern Donbas region. Speaking at the St Petersburg economic forum, the Russian president described the open letter from his Ukrainian counterpart containing the offer as rude. He refused to use Zelenskyy’s name, referring to him only as its author. Asked if they could meet to discuss an end to the conflict, Putin replied: “So far I see no point.” Zelenskyy’s letter, which was published on Thursday, proposed a meeting in...

King Charles reportedly raised concerns about hosting President Donald Trump during his state visit to the U.K. following Trump's public attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Last September, Trump paid a state visit to the U.K., during which he stayed at Windsor Castle with King Charles and Queen Camilla. According to an iPaper report, King Charles was “reticent” about hosting Trump. One source told the outlet he “did not want to do it.” Per the report, the concerns stemmed from how Trump treated Zelensky during his visit to the White House in February 2025.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy said the country and the U.S. will sign an agreement to design an underwater tunnel connecting Russia’s Chukotka region to Alaska across the Bering Strait. Kirill Dmitriev, who is also head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, made the announcement Thursday at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “As regards, the tunnel, we have a piece of news for tomorrow that we will continue tunnel engineering. The tunnel will take place,” he told Russian TV channel Zvezda, according to a translation by state-owned news agency TASS. He added that this will be one of...

Keir Starmer will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz for talks in Downing Street on Sunday to discuss support for Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader will visit the UK with the French president and German chancellor after a week of heightened hostilities and Vladimir Putin’s rejection of his proposal of face-to-face talks on Moscow’s war. The three countries meeting the Ukrainian leader are some of Kyiv’s staunchest allies. The UK and France are leading the “coalition of the willing” initiative to provide security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a peace process. A large-scale Ukrainian drone attack targeted St...

The European Union could reduce the refugee status protections it grants to military age Ukrainian men because “the war needs to be fought and won”, and should crack down on Russians coming to the bloc for luxury shopping trips and beach holidays, ministers were told. A European Union Justice and Home Affairs summit in Luxembourg has discussed the need to reform the bloc’s open borders approach to the Ukraine War, with crackdowns on both Ukrainians and Russians proposed. While preventing Russians from enjoying their summer holidays in Europe is already widespread, a further proposal came from the Swedish government, with...

The Republican-led House on Thursday passed a sweeping security package providing new military aid to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia, delivering a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration, who opposed the measure. Eighteen Republicans crossed party lines to support the Democrat-authored legislation in a vote of 226-195. California Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent who caucuses with Republicans, also supported the legislation. Meanwhile, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was the lone Democratic lawmaker to vote against the bill. House GOP leadership and the vast majority of Republicans opposed the legislation aimed at bolstering Ukraine's defenses amid a surge in Russian missile...

Russian military vehicles are being painted with vivid stripes to baffle AI systems of Ukrainian-launched drones, experts say. Now the "cloaking" tactic has apparently launched a high-stakes game of hide and seek on the highways of Russian-held territory in Ukraine. Todd E. Humphreys, an aerospace and AI expert at the University of Texas at Austin, agrees the paint tactic may be more effective than many realize. "Dazzle paint pushes the vehicles 'out of distribution' -- they no longer look, to the AI classifier, like the images it was trained on," he told RFE/RL. But any specific paint job would have...

Russia's oil and gas tax revenue, which accounts for around a fifth of ​total budget income, increased by 32.4% year-on-year in May ​to 678.9 billion roubles ($9.3 billion), Finance Ministry data showed ⁠on Wednesday, thanks to a global oil price rally fuelled ​by the Middle East war. Revenue declined by 20.7% from April, when ​the budget received additional payments from profit-based tax, paid cyclically. Russia, the world's third-largest oil producer and exporter after the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, ​has been one of the main beneficiaries of the rise in ​oil prices after the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran began at the...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lamented during a Wednesday press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte that his country’s war with Russia is no longer top of mind for U.S. officials. “Iran is the No. 1 issue for the United States, and only after that comes Ukraine,” Zelensky said in Kyiv. “Unfortunately, we are in the queue of these wars.” Rutte arrived in Ukraine on an unannounced visit one day after a Russian drone and missile attack killed at least 13 people and injured more than 100. In the United States, members of the House of Representatives are forcing a...