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Anti-corruption units have raided the home and office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, in an unwelcome distraction for Kyiv officials as they battle to defeat Russia’s invasion and persuade US officials to accommodate their concerns in peace proposals. Two national agencies fighting entrenched corruption in Ukraine said they searched Yermak’s office. Yermak, a powerful figure in Ukraine and a key participant in talks with the United States, confirmed they also searched his apartment. “The investigators are facing no obstacles,” Yermak wrote on the messaging app Telegram. He added that he was cooperating fully with them...

Things are very bad in Ukraine right now. The former spokeswoman for Ukraine’s clearly overmatched comedian leader says things could get a lot worse if Ukraine’s government walks away from peace this time. “Every subsequent deal for Ukraine will only be worse — because we are losing. We are losing people, territory, and the economy,” Iuliia Mendel, press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from 2019 to 2021, wrote in an X post this weekend as negotiators went back and forth in marathon peace talks. ‘Meaningful Progress’ U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday told multiple news outlets that...

Zelensky has been hit with an ugly corruption scandal in which some of his closest allies stand accused of war profiteering. His reaction was to sign a letter of intent to buy 100 French Rafale jets and 150 Swedish Gripen fighters. Kyiv doesn’t have enough to fill its $60bn budget black hole, let alone to buy billions in jets. Ukraine is going to run out of money by February unless the EU agrees to raise a €140bn loan secured against Russian assets held mostly in Belgium. It has no hope of repaying that loan unless the Kremlin is compelled to...

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is not “afraid” of Donald Trump unlike other western leaders and dismissed reports that their last meeting in Washington was volatile, adding that he had good relations with the US president. He also said in an exclusive interview with the Guardian that King Charles had helped build relations with Trump and described the British monarch as “very supportive” of Ukraine. The Ukrainian president denied claims Trump had tossed maps of the battlefield aside in a stormy exchange in October at the White House, where he had arrived hoping to secure supplies of US Tomahawk cruise...

The authoritarian behavior of Volodymyr Zelensky has become impossible to ignore. An article written by Pavel Lokshin for the German newspaper WELT sharply criticizes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his increasingly authoritarian tendencies.The report shows how the man lionized by the MSM as ‘a second Churchill’ is in fact consolidating his power through the suppression of political opponents.Welt reported (translated from the German):“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is consolidating his power. Anyone who stands in his way must give way – most recently the freely elected mayor of the city of Odessa. Zelensky is thus sending a clear signal to other...

Trump says he has faith in Putin, but Zelensky does notOne word sticks out in the Ukrainian leader's description of his latest high-stakes foray into the nerve-centre of American power.His White House conversation with President Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X, was "pointed".But we don't need to parse his semantic description of the exchange to know that this was not the meeting that the Ukrainian side had been expecting.If the old British adage holds true that a week is a long time in politics, then Zelensky appears to have set a new record.A short transatlantic flight, it seems, is...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is set to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks at the White House on Friday, with the U.S. leader signaling he's not ready to agree to sell Kyiv a long-range missile system that the Ukrainians say they desperately need.Zelenskyy gets his one-on-one with Trump a day after the U.S. president and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a lengthy phone call to discuss the conflict.In recent days, Trump had shown an openness to selling Ukraine long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, even as Putin warned that such a move would further strain the U.S.-Russian relationship.But following...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview published on Thursday that he would be ready to step down after the war with Russia is over. “If we finish the war with the Russians, yes, I am ready not to go [for elections] because it’s not my goal, elections,” Zelensky told the Axios website in a video interview. “I wanted very much, in a very difficult period of time, to be with my country, help my country. My goal is to finish the war.” Zelensky said he would ask Ukraine’s parliament to organise elections if a ceasefire was reached. A...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised his "productive meeting" with U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, after which Trump appeared to jettison his long-held skepticism of Kyiv's battlefield ambitions. Shortly after the meeting, Trump wrote on social media, "After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form." (snip) But on Tuesday, the...

A half-year ago in the Oval Office, President Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that “you don’t have the cards” in the war with Russia. On Tuesday at the United Nations, Trump lauded the performance of Ukraine’s army and poured scorn on Russia’s military efforts. “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump said on Truth Social after meeting with Zelensky. “Why not?” U.S. officials said that Trump issued the statement in part to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to make...

Polling shows Zelensky trailing rivals, mired in corruption woes, and stalling peace talks—his halo fading fast at home and abroad. You won’t hear this from the mainstream press, but you’ll hear it here first: Volodymyr Zelensky, the Western media’s darling, is in real political trouble at home. I just commissioned credible polling from inside Ukraine. The war-weary population there wants a new president and a negotiated peace. This reality makes Zelensky less a heroic statesman and more a vulnerable incumbent with a perverse incentive: to keep slow-walking peace, continue milking Western taxpayers, and delay the elections he’s almost certain to...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rowed back on a threat to dismiss commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi after the top general refused to resign and potential replacements declined to take on the role, according to media reports in the United Kingdom. According to British newspaper The Times, quoting high-ranking Ukrainian officers, Zaluzhnyi was summoned to a meeting with Zelenskyy on Monday, where he reportedly told presidential advisers that their assessment of the military situation was more positive than is really the case. The Guardian newspaper then quoted a Ukrainian opposition lawmaker's understanding that "yesterday the president asked Zaluzhnyi to resign but he...

By nature’s curious design, I was born an optimist — though in some obscure recess of my soul a cynic curls and whispers his dry, inconvenient truths. I believe neither in immaculate conceptions nor second comings, and certainly not in the benevolence of Russian rulers. The fragile hope entertained by some, that they might one day act with reason, springs from a naïve faith in miracles, and miracles stand at odds with both nature and common sense. At all times, under all tsars, commissars, and the latest Kremlin grotesques, Russian rulers, with rare exceptions, have acted not for the benefit...

Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a masterful charm offensive to win over President Donald Trump and set up a potential meeting with Vladimir Putin to end the years long war in Ukraine. Trump hyped a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelensky after he called the Russian leader following a dramatic summit in the White House with European leaders. The potential peace deal immediately drew skeptics, as French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not ‘see President Putin very willing to get peace now.’ Zelensky laid the groundwork by offering a $100 billion weapons deal as an olive branch to Trump. The Ukrainian...

Pope Leo XIV acknowledges that the faith of Ukrainian Greek Catholics is being put to a severe test, "amid this senseless war," but stresses that the Lord will have the final word and life will triumph over death. The Holy Father also greeted and blessed some mothers of soldiers who had fallen at the front who were participating in the pilgrimage.

A documentary about the suffering of evangelical Christians in Ukraine shows how one objective of the Russian invasion is to degrade Christianity, including allowing Chechen Muslims to partially Islamize occupied areas. Steven Moore, founder of Ukraine Freedom Project and co-producer of A Faith Under Siege, said from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv that the country was surprisingly “highly functioning” despite the challenges of consistent attacks against the population – a drone-and-missile attack reported on Thursday night (July 30) resulted in 16 people dead, including a 6-year-old boy and another child. “It’s understandable if people outside Ukraine think that Kyiv could...

-snip- During an opening exchange, Trump and Zelensky struck a warmer tone than their last Oval Office encounter in February, which devolved into a televised showdown that alarmed European allies. Zelensky, who was chided last time for not sufficiently thanking American officials for their support, expressed his gratitude repeatedly at the start of the meeting. He also received compliments on the outfit he wore—after being criticized last time for not wearing a suit to the White House. Trump sounded optimistic notes at the start of Monday’s meeting and said he would work with both sides on a permanent resolution to...

An Offer He Can't Refuse “This is not our war. The US is not in a war. Ukraine is in a war. . .” — Sec’y of State Marco Rubio Volodymyr Zelenskyy is dropping in at the White House today so that Mr. Trump can read him the riot act. It’s that simple. Somewhere to or from Alaska, Mr. Trump concluded that a ceasefire would not work, for the excellent reason that seven previous ceasefires in Ukraine failed, and only reinforced distrust and disappointment between the warring parties. Instead, the goal is a peace settlement, an end to the war....

President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put on friendly faces in front of the world’s media in the Oval Office Monday — avoiding a replay of their ugly spat from February — as the American leader attempts to hammer out a peace deal in eastern Europe. Trump, 79, reflected approvingly on the fact that Zelensky, 47, chose to wear a military-style suit in a sign of respect — ditching his usual camoflauge wardrobe, and both leaders handled occasionally hostile press questions without clashing. Zelensky said there were “two parts” that Kyiv needs as part of any peace deal, including...

US President Donald Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House on Monday, calling it "an honor to have Zelensky with us" ahead of joint talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Trump also noted there was a "reasonable chance" for progress following his recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the same time, Zelensky thanked Trump for his help regarding the meeting and for the letter First Lady Melania Trump sent to Putin about abducted children.