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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia could increase its attacks in Ukraine's north east following its recent gains near the city of Kharkiv. Mr Zelensky admitted that there were issues with military staffing and morale, saying a number of existing brigades were empty. He also told the AFP news agency the country's air fleet was lacking and renewed calls for allies to send more air defence and fighter jets. "Today we have about 25% of what we need to defend Ukraine," Mr Zelensky said of Ukraine's air capabilities.

As you’ve probably heard, the populist Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot five times by a crazed pro-Ukrainian, radical left-wing activist in a foiled assassination attempt. ... In today’s era of violent, pro-war leftists, advocating for peace has become dangerous—and potentially deadly. Fico was vehemently against supporting Ukraine in the dustup with Russia. The Slovakia anti-Ukraine history runs long and deep, as this 2023 article explains. Politico: Slovakia’s new leader Robert Fico made waves during the country’s recent election campaign by warning that he would not send “another bullet” to help Ukraine fend off the Russian invasion. His dramatic...

They say one week is a long time in politics. Those same people have never been to war.Six days ago, Ukrainian forces were just about hanging on across the near-1,000 kilometre front. Recent territorial losses to Russia – most notably the town of Avdiivka – in addition to recent delays in both US and EU military aid packages, had caused mounting concern for Ukraine’s fate in 2024.Despite these recent battlefield set-backs, and delays in aid, it still felt as though Ukraine was buying time to rearm, reorganise, and redeploy an offensive counter-attack this summer.That was six days ago, before up...

In an unexpected moment, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov referred to his leader, Vladimir Putin, as Chinese President Xi Jinping's "donkey" and admitted that nothing now depends on Moscow. He made the eyebrow-raising comment in response to a question from a Russian propagandist about an informal meeting planned after the official talks during Putin’s visit to Beijing. “You know, as they say in the East, the guest is the master's donkey. Therefore, of course, all programs depend on the kind offers that the Chinese president and his team have made to our president,” Lavrov explained, offering a glimpse into the...

Kyiv says it has had some success pushing back against a renewed Russian offensive, but Ukraine's defences are in dire need of resupply. A massive Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea early Friday caused power cutoffs in the city of Sevastopol and set a refinery ablaze in southern Russia, Russian authorities said. The drone raids marked an attempt to strike back during Moscow's renewed offensive in northeastern Ukraine, which has added to the pressure on outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces as they await delayed deliveries of crucial Western weapons and ammunition. Ukraine has not commented on the attack nor claimed responsibility...

NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war. (snip) So far the United States has said no, but Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that a NATO deployment of trainers appeared inevitable. “We’ll get there eventually, over time,” he said. (snip) As a part of NATO, the United States would be obligated under the alliance’s treaty to aid in...

Russia’s new offensive across Ukraine’s northeastern border had been expected for months — yet it still surprised the Ukrainian soldiers stationed there to defend against it. Ukraine’s 125th Territorial Defense Brigade — stretched thin along a roughly 27-mile stretch of the Kharkiv region’s border with Russia — used reconnaissance drones to monitor, daily, how Moscow was steadily building up forces for a possible attack. But the morning it happened, May 10, the brigade lost all its video feeds due to Russian electronic jamming. Its Starlink devices — satellite internet the Ukrainian military relies on for basic communication — failed, the...

Russia: State Duma Committee on Defence recommends the nullification of the previously passed law which exempted from mobilization fathers of at least three children.

The situation in Ukraine is so serious that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had to cancel a planned trip to Spain and come straight to Kharkiv -- the country’s second largest city, which is again in real danger from the Russian advance. With exclusive access, ABC News joined Zelenskyy on a tour of a hospital in the city, with Zelenskyy, where he met soldiers injured in the northern defense, and presented them with medals of valor. “It’s really important for me to be here,” he told us, as we walked the corridors. In each ward, he stopped as an officer read out...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian units locked in street battles with the Kremlin´s forces in a key northeastern Ukraine town have halted the Russian advance, military officials in Kyiv claimed Thursday, though a senior Moscow official said the frontline push had enough resources to keep going. Russian attempts to establish a foothold in the town of Vovchansk, which is among the largest towns in Ukraine´s northeastern Kharkiv region with a prewar population of 17,000, “have been foiled,” Ukraine´s general staff said in a midday report. It was not possible to independently verify the claim.

The US is "rushing ammunition, armoured vehicles, missiles [and] air defences" to Ukraine's front line, Anthony Blinken has said.During a trip to Ukraine, the US secretary of state announced that $2bn would be spent to speed up delivery. His comments came as Russian advances forced Ukrainian to retreat from several villages in the Kharkiv region. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has cancelled all his foreign trips to concentrate on the new incursion. Speaking in Kyiv on Wednesday, Mr Blinken said weapons would be rushed to the front lines to "protect soldier, to protect citizens". He said that the air defence systems,...

The Prime Minister, in his “state of the nation” speech this week, accurately stated that the world is a very dangerous place, and we must ensure that our defence capabilities are up to the task. He is right on the threat but has yet to grasp that one way to meet it is by investing heavily in our physical and psychological military conventional deterrence. The signs coming out of Moscow are far from encouraging, with Putin sacking his combat generals to replace them with “bean counters”. Presumably to ensure the economy is on a total war footing and capable of...

UKRAINE’S generals warned they have run out of reserves to halt Russia’s shock assault on Kharkiv. It comes as Vladimir Putin masses more than half a million troops on the frontline in a bid to overpower Ukraine's forces. Ukraine's military has admitted it is struggling to contain the advance in the north east of the country. General Kyrylo Budanov, boss of Kyiv’s military intelligence said: “I’ve used everything we have. “Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone else in the reserves.” Putin’s troops have seized miles of ground in their fastest advances in months.

For a long time, the US Army assumed the US Air Force would protect it from enemy aircraft. Which is why, in the 1990s, the Army shuttered many of its short-range air-defence, or SHORAD, units. This process only accelerated during the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Army was fighting an enemy with no aircraft. By the time Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the Army was down to just 300 or so aging Avenger air-defence vehicles, each firing infrared-guided Stinger missiles out to a distance of three miles. This to protect a million troops, if you count active...

Estonia has been "seriously" discussing sending troops to Ukraine in roles positioned away from the front lines, per a national security official. Madis Roll, national security advisor to Estonia's president, told military news outlet Breaking Defense that his country's leaders were assessing the viability of sending Estonian soldiers to "rear" roles that wouldn't see direct combat in Ukraine. Such a move would help relieve Ukraine's manpower crunch and allow it to send more soldiers to the front lines. And while Estonia, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization country, prefers to act together with the alliance's major members, it's also not closed...

The expected delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine may come too late to have a significant impact on Russia's ongoing offensive in Kharkiv, experts have told Newsweek. Ukrainian pilots, who for most of the more than two-year war have flown Soviet-era MiG aircraft, have recently been finishing up training on the U.S.-made jets in anticipation of receiving deliveries from Western allies including Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday that Ukraine could expect to receive the first batch of F-16s from Denmark "within the next month," before revising her comment on Tuesday...

Is it just me, or do “Germany” and “socialism” not belong in the same sentence? Frankly, socialism doesn’t belong anywhere except an encyclopedia, to serve as an example of an “idiot plot” (along with communism). Useful terminology for your every day life: pic.twitter.com/aPUnXgyJTI — Moose (@LitMoose) April 27, 2024 Yet, it seems like if history were any consideration, Germany would make a concerted effort to distance itself from the political ideology—but alas, too many in this “information age” don’t really know much about anything. (In George Santayana’s purported words, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”)...

Head of the Mezha Anti-Corruption Center, Martyna Bohuslavets, has written a report in Pravda asking "Where are the fortifications?" She reports that millions of dollars that were intended for the construction of fortifications in Ukraine were instead "transferred to Kharkiv OVA to front companies of avatars." Bohuslavets said the Ukrainian Kharkiv Regional Military Administration (Kharkiv OVA) paid out funds to fictitious companies during the construction and fortification of the Kharkiv region. The report comes as Russian forces have broken into the northern region of Ukraine and the US continues funding the war. According to Ukranian Pravda reports, the Russian military...

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday visited Ukraine, telling the country that soon-to-arrive U.S. military aid will make a “real difference” in its effort to fend off Russia's war. Blinken's trip comes amid a fierce new Russian offensive, according to the Associated Press. “We know this is a challenging time,” Blinken said in the Ukrainian capital on Kiev where he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Ukraine as weapons from a new American aid package begin arriving at the front line. His visit comes as the country struggles to hold back a major Russian incursion near its second biggest city of Kharkiv. Ahead of Mr Blinken's arrival in Kyiv, a senior US official said the American-funded weapons now arriving at the front line included air defence interceptors, artillery and ATACMS long-range precision guided missiles. "We have already started to flow in artillery [and] long-range ATACMS that can range any part of Ukraine, and also other air defence...