Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that “at least 200,000” allied troops would be needed to enforce any peace deal in Ukraine as he urged Europe to “take care of itself” as Donald Trump returns to power in the US.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's mid-January press conference “on the performance of Russian diplomacy in 2024” was filled with false and misleading claims, many previously debunked, highlighting the Kremlin's broader disinformation tactics.

Shortly before the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Kyiv as the latest among European politicians highlighting their solidarity with Ukraine.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s designated envoy for Ukraine and Russia said Trump will take Ukraine’s interests into account when he starts working on a settlement to end the war in Ukraine and will aim to make sure the solution is equitable.

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.