#ukraine

#ukraine

Outside the main pumping station for Bucha, three engineers, bundled up in parkas, are working on the emergency generator keeping the Ukrainian city supplied with water. One holds a heat gun to the generator's filter in an effort to unfreeze it, his face reddened by blowing snow and a daytime temperature of -12C (10.4F). Watching attentively is the city's mayor, Anatolii Fedoruk. The generator in his office is also frozen when the Guardian visits and he apologises for the lack of coffee.

The main principle is that the technological capacity of our defense must save the lives of our warriors. Russia has one significant advantage in this war the ability to exert pressure through the scale of its strikes and assaults against Ukraine. We must respond with more active use of technology, faster development of new types of weapons, and new tactics,

On Friday the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has warned of a "potentially significant attack" across Ukraine over the next "several days." The British Foreign Office issued the warning on Friday and said, "Martial law is in place. Information has been received concerning a potentially significant air attack that may occur at any time over the next several days. "Follow the instructions of the Ukrainian authorities and check any measures in place in your location, as they will vary by region."

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.

The UK and France pledged boots on the ground once a peace deal is reached. On Tuesday, Ukraine got yet another push from its Western allies. A meeting of the coalition of the willing in Paris pledged full support for Kyiv in any future peace settlement to the ongoing war with Russia. The gathering stressed that Ukraine should be able to defend itself even after the fighting ends.

"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 announcement came after a summit in Paris hosted by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and attended by more than two dozen leaders of the states that make up the coalition of the willing of Ukrainian allies, plus the US envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who said the US president strongly stands behind the security protocols.

Ukrainian forces used long-range, deep-strike drones to hit a Russian missile arsenal and oil depot supporting the invasion, a security official told Business Insider on Tuesday. The attacks mark Ukraine's latest deep strikes as it continues to target Russian weapons and the country's vast energy sector, a major revenue source for the state as it wages war. A source in the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, said that drones hit Russia's 100th Main Missile and Artillery Directorate (GRAU) in the western Kostroma region.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has named Canada's former finance minister Chrystia Freeland as an adviser on economic development, a move he says will help strengthen the internal resilience of the war-torn nation. Chrystia is highly skilled in these matters and has extensive experience in attracting investment and implementing economic transformations, he wrote on social media. Right now, Ukraine needs to strengthen its internal resilience both for the sake of Ukraine's recovery if diplomacy delivers results as swiftly as possible,

In a social media post released on January 2, just hours after his nomination first appeared publicly, Budanov -- who heads the military intelligence agency known as HUR -- said he would accept the new position."It is an honor and a responsibility, at a historic time for Ukraine, to focus on critically important issues of the strategic security of our state," he said in a Telegram post .

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.

He's headed to villages where, owing to increasing exposure to Russian fire, only a fraction of residents remain. The war has cut them off from regular services. They no longer receive mail, and Russian transmitters often overpower or interfere with their Ukrainian mobile-phone signals. Before large-scale signal jamming was introduced to counter drones, Russian television and radio channels were accessible on televisions and radios in border-area communities.