#Ukraine

#Ukraine

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.

"We hope that during your presidency a lot of steps [can be taken] forward, closer to membership in the EU," Zelenskyy told Christodoulides in televised remarks.

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, has praised his troops fighting abroad as forging an invincible alliance with Russia in a new year's message, state media said on Thursday. Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops to support Russia's nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine, according to South Korean and western intelligence agencies. At least 600 have died and thousands more have sustained injuries, according to South Korean estimates.

It's the ... Art of the Deal! Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed. It sounds a little strange, but President Putin was very generous in his feeling toward Ukraine succeeding, including supplying energy, electricity, and other things at very low prices. Trump actually said this over the weekend, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy standing right next to him, stifling what must have been a rueful guffaw that would have been audible in Guam.

Zelenskyy said Ukrainian intelligence had observed that Belarus was deploying equipment in Belarusian settlements near the border, including on residential buildings to assist Russian forces in carrying out their attacks. Antennae and other equipment are located on the roofs of ordinary five-storey apartment buildings, which help guide Shaheds' [Russian drones] to targets in our western regions, he said. This is an absolute disregard for human lives, and it is important that Minsk stops playing with this, he added.

Turner, a career Foreign Office official with nearly three decades of experience across Whitehall and overseas postings, will take up one of Britain's most senior diplomatic roles at a pivotal moment in the transatlantic relationship. His appointment follows the departure of Mandelson, who was removed by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer after evidence emerged of his continued association with the late Jeffrey Epstein.

A U.S. government that defends the free expression of the far right. That is obsequious to Russia and appeases China. A government for whom the villains are the soft liberal democracies of Europe, and an invaded country, Ukraine, is as guilty of its occupation as the aggressor, Moscow. This is not a dystopia created by George Orwell in 1984 or Philip K. Dick in The Man in the High Castle.

Warsaw could send Ukraine between 6 to 8 MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to "help destroy" Russian forces.