#ukraine-war

#ukraine-war

Vladimir Putin's war has upended security and defence across the continent, and as the European Union and Nato dig in for a fourth year of fighting, senior officials have a message for countries around the globe. Almost everyone who spoke to Guardian Australia during a recent visit agrees: war in Europe has made conflict in the Indo-Pacific more likely and countries including Australia need to be better prepared.

Putin is ready to talk with France's Emmanuel Macron over the war in Ukraine, the Russian president's spokesman said in an interview published Sunday. Putin has "expressed readiness to engage in dialogue with Macron", Dmitry Peskov told state news agency RIA Novosti. "Therefore, if there is mutual political will, then this can only be assessed positively."

In the quiet village of Kozubivka in Ukraine's Poltava region, Nelia and her husband Oleksandr open their home to people displaced from Kharkiv, where bombing and shelling have forced thousands to flee. But rebuilding a life in rural Ukraine is not easy. City people must learn to navigate unfamiliar routines on the farm, endure physical labour and bear the emotional weight of displacement.

The European political elite still holds onto the belief that Ukraine can somehow prevail on the battlefield if funded. This week is shaping up to be crucial for the European Union's policy on Ukraine. EU foreign ministers met in Brussels on Monday; EU heads of state will gather on Thursday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is meeting United States envoy Steve Witkoff. At the top of the agenda is the peace plan put forward by US President Donald Trump and continuing funding for Ukraine's war effort.

Across the country, drone schools are training new operators for what has become one of the most important roles in Ukraine's fight against the Russian invasion - flying the drones that scout Russian positions, find targets, and blow up tanks and troops. Three leaders working at two schools told Business Insider that younger students with gaming or tech experience tend to consistently pick up skills the fastest. These students often are already comfortable with controllers, joysticks, and staring at a screen for a long time.

Italy's President Sergio Mattarella on Friday called for an Olympic truce to be respected during the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Games as conflicts in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip continue. Speaking in Rome at the Olympic torch lighting ceremony, Mattarella urged that hostilities stop for the duration of the sprawling winter sport showcase which opens on February 6. "Peace is coded into the DNA of the Olympics... Italy has asked that the truce be renewed and we hope that it is possible," Mattarella said.

The US President recognising the Ukrainian territory as Russia will mean victory for Vladimir Putin and could escalate the war into a dangerous position, as the Russian dictator lowered the nuclear threshold for any attack on the Russian Federation. Putin set the current nuclear doctrine which means if his red line of a conventional attack on Russia n territory, a threat against the state or in the event of a nuclear attack Moscow will respond with nuclear weapons, this also includes the occupied Ukrainian regions that Trump will recognise as being Russian.

Europe breathed a deep collective sigh of relief on Monday, as the crisis triggered by Washington's presentation of a new 28-point plan for ending the war appeared briefly to have been stabilised. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, spoke of substantial progress after Ukraine-US talks in Geneva. On Monday night, Vladimir Putin made his countermove: another massive barrage of missile and drone strikes on Kyiv. The sequence of contrasting events captured the grim essence of the outgoing year.

The Ukrainian soldiers sat huddled in their dark dugout, all focus and nerve - Viktoriia's eyes shifting frantically between two screens, Tetiana's hands clutching a drone controller. In the fields beyond, a Russian howitzer was firing shells at Ukrainian positions. The women steered their explosive-packed drone toward it and dived. Their screens blurred. The room went quiet. Then came the voice of their commander, Daria, from the trench outside: "There was a hit!"

There is little sign of peace in Ukraine, but transatlantic diplomatic efforts to end the war are intensifying.

Russia has continued to attack residential buildings, civilian infrastructure and energy facilities across Ukraine over the past week, launching over 1,050 drones and nearly 1,000 glide bombs. Announcing the end of a search and rescue mission, he said six children were among 33 people killed in a Russian attack on blocks of flats in the western city of Ternopil on Wednesday morning.

OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, DeepSeek, and xAI's Grok are pushing Russian state propaganda from sanctioned entities-including citations from Russian state media, sites tied to Russian intelligence or pro-Kremlin narratives-when asked about the war against Ukraine, according to a new report. Researchers from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD) claim that Russian propaganda has targeted and exploited data voids -where searches for real-time data provide few results from legitimate sources-to promote false and misleading information.

CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: Yeah, sure, A, these sanctions target two of Russia's top oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, which jointly make up nearly half of Russian oil exports, and they're significant because they mark the first time Trump has followed through on threats to make Russia pay a price for its war in Ukraine.