#ukraine-war

#ukraine-war

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.

Despite losing slivers of territory, Ukraine is confident about its long-term prospects in the war and its military and diplomatic successes against Russian energy will only strengthen that belief. The European Union is preparing to adopt a new round of sweeping sanctions against Russian energy exports on Thursday, a day after United States President Donald Trump imposed similar measures against Moscow amid setbacks to his efforts at diplomacy with Vladimir Putin.

Last month the US president declared that Ukraine could regain all the land lost since the 2022 invasion (Why not?) adding that Russia had been fighting aimlessly and was in BIG economic trouble. But after a two-and-a-half hour phone call with Vladimir Putin, Trump swung back to Moscow-friendly talking points. Let it be cut the way it is, he said, referring to Ukrainian territory.

Putin's potential flight plans were to travel to Budapest, Hungary to meet with President Donald Trump regarding the war in Ukraine a meeting that seems to be on hold after comments by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov falsely claiming Ukraine was under Nazi rule and Russia's insistence on claiming Ukrainian territory it has never held throughout this war.

Plans to hold a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Budapest have been put on hold as Ukraine and its European allies rallied behind the US in pushing for a ceasefire without territorial concessions from Kyiv. The White House said there were now no plans for the US president to meet his Russian counterpart in the immediate future as a round of diplomacy at the end of last week failed to yield any significant progress towards ending the war.

More than a year later, Tim is in his barracks in southern Ukraine, engineering drones for the military's ground force. He is one of a small number of Chinese people who have defied their government and mainstream public opinion to risk their lives to fight against an invasion by Beijing's most important geopolitical partner, Russia. Tim arrived in Ukraine in July 2023. He had been watching with concern from China for months, occasionally donating money to online fundraisers for relief efforts.

"So I was not happy that India was buying oil, and he (Modi) assured me today that they will not be buying oil from Russia. That's a big step. Now we're going to get China to do the same thing," Trump told reporters on October 15 at the White House. India has continued to buy Russian oil, helping to fund Moscow's war effort in Ukraine, all while Western nations ramp up sanctions against such purchases.