With Washington's stance on Ukraine shifting, debates in Kyiv over Gaza continue to gain momentum. Kyiv, Ukraine At the start of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy voiced support for Israel, while First Lady Olena Zelenska said Ukrainians understand and share the pain of the Israeli people. Billboards across Kyiv lit up the capital with Israeli flags.
Anastasiya Buchkouska, a 20-year-old student from western Ukraine, gently brushes away layers of snow and ice from her father's grave. She pauses, looking up at the photograph fixed to the gravestone. His face bears a striking resemblance to hers. When her father was younger, he had served in the military. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he was called up almost immediately and sent to the front line.
Ukraine and its neighbor Moldova both experienced power outages on Saturday amid problems on Ukraine's grid, officials said. The grid emergency caused a halt to Kyiv's water supply and metro operations, while most districts in Moldova's capital, Chisinau, were without electricity, they said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed United States President Donald Trump's announcement that Russia will not attack Kyiv and various Ukrainian towns for seven days as civilians struggle with a lack of heating amid freezing winter temperatures. In a post on social media on Thursday, Zelenskyy said that Trump's comments earlier in the day were an important statement about the possibility of providing security for Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities during this extreme winter period.
This is the first article in a two-part Q&A series with San Francisco's major congressional candidates about foreign policy. Part one focuses on Congress and the military with questions about Israel and Gaza, Ukraine, Iran and Venezuela. Part two, which will be published Wednesday morning, focuses on trade, foreign aid and the relationship between the U.S, China, and Taiwan.
Beskrestnov, widely cited among Ukrainians as an expert on drones, runs a Telegram channel with some 156,000 followers, where he publicly analyzes Russian and Ukrainian battle drones and how they've performed. Fedorov named him an advisor in defense technology on Sunday, saying Beskrestnov would focus on helping Ukraine build counter-systems for Russian strike and reconnaissance drones. In his statement, Fedorov said that Beskrestnov would also support Ukraine's military in analyzing Russian tech, studying "logistics, study of enemy solutions, and leveraging this experience to our advantage."
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that a U.S. security guarantees document for Ukraine is 100% ready after two days of talks involving representatives from Ukraine, the U.S. and Russia. Speaking to journalists in Vilnius during a visit to Lithuania, Zelenskyy said Ukraine is waiting for its partners to set a signing date, after which the document would go to the U.S. Congress and Ukrainian parliament for ratification.
A Spirit of Dialogue: the theme for this year's World Economic Forum, the gathering of the global elite in the sparkling Alpine air of Davos, seems a heroic stretch, when star guest Donald Trump has spent the past year smashing up the world order. The president will touch down alongside the snowcapped Swiss mountains with the largest US delegation ever seen at the WEF.
Outside the main pumping station for Bucha, three engineers, bundled up in parkas, are working on the emergency generator keeping the Ukrainian city supplied with water. One holds a heat gun to the generator's filter in an effort to unfreeze it, his face reddened by blowing snow and a daytime temperature of -12C (10.4F). Watching attentively is the city's mayor, Anatolii Fedoruk. The generator in his office is also frozen when the Guardian visits and he apologises for the lack of coffee.
The main principle is that the technological capacity of our defense must save the lives of our warriors. Russia has one significant advantage in this war the ability to exert pressure through the scale of its strikes and assaults against Ukraine. We must respond with more active use of technology, faster development of new types of weapons, and new tactics,
On Friday the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has warned of a "potentially significant attack" across Ukraine over the next "several days." The British Foreign Office issued the warning on Friday and said, "Martial law is in place. Information has been received concerning a potentially significant air attack that may occur at any time over the next several days. "Follow the instructions of the Ukrainian authorities and check any measures in place in your location, as they will vary by region."
The current Government is about to take a billion pounds out of the Army this year, so I don't think we can sustain it and actually no one is fooled by it. We would be very stretched. We have a deployment in Estonia. We need to spend real money now, not in 2029, not in 2030, 2040. The OBR itself said that the British Government had not set out a path to 3.5% of GDP by 2035.
Ben Hodges said the proposed multinational force, discussed this week by the British and French leaders with Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris, had to be robust enough to deal with likely Kremlin-orchestrated provocations. The coalition of the willing has to have real force and rules of engagement that allow it to immediately react and respond to any violations, he said. Captains can't be having to call back to Paris or London to find out how to deal with a Russian drone.
The UK and France pledged boots on the ground once a peace deal is reached. On Tuesday, Ukraine got yet another push from its Western allies. A meeting of the coalition of the willing in Paris pledged full support for Kyiv in any future peace settlement to the ongoing war with Russia. The gathering stressed that Ukraine should be able to defend itself even after the fighting ends.
