Ukraine

Ukraine’s Zelensky urged both the European Union and the United States for unity on Thursday ahead of Trump’s return to the White House, stressing that “European guarantees won’t be sufficient for Ukraine” and the importance to secure a durable peace. 

A new NATO command in the German city of Wiesbaden has taken up its work to coordinate Western military aid for Ukraine, the alliance's Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday. The command takes over coordination of the aid from the United States, in a move widely seen as aiming to safeguard the support mechanism against NATO sceptic U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

NATO's secretary-general said he wants to discuss ways to put Ukraine in a position of strength for any future peace talks with Russia during a meeting Wednesday with Ukraine’s president and a small number of European leaders.

Donald Trump said Monday that he would speak to Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia's Vladimir Putin to end the "carnage" of almost three years of war, as the Kremlin leader lauded Russian army successes on the ground. 

Billions of Russian state funds frozen in the European Union should be used to aid Ukraine, the EU’s top diplomat has said. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security, told the Guardian and four other European newspapers that Ukraine had a legitimate claim for compensation and that Russian assets held in the EU were “a tool to pressure Russia”.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk will discuss the deployment of a postwar peacekeeping force in Ukraine when the two meet in Warsaw on December 12, according to two media outlets, the latest sign of a surge in diplomacy to end Europe's biggest war in decades.

Ukraine's foreign minister called Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov a "war criminal" Thursday as they both attended an international summit in Malta, the latter's first visit to an EU member since the 2022 invasion. … Summit host Ian Borg, Malta's foreign minister, opened proceedings Thursday with a call for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine.

Russia’s army on Thursday launched a massive attack on Ukraine’s energy sector, forcing emergency power outages as temperatures dropped to freezing across the country.

Russia is deploying Chinese and Iranian combat drones in its full-scale war against Ukraine. It is also fielding North Korean soldiers and ballistic missiles. Soon, Russia might send Yemeni fighters into battle, according to reporting from the Financial Times newspaper.

Warning comes as President Vladimir Putin lowers threshold for using Russia nuclear arsenal in move decried as ‘irresponsible’ by the West.