Latest news with #militaryaid
Al Jazeera
20 hours ago
- Business
- Al Jazeera
Putin confirms he wants all of Ukraine, as Europe steps up military aid
Ukraine's European allies pledged increased levels of military aid to Ukraine this year, making up for a United States aid freeze, as Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his ambition to absorb all of Ukraine into the Russian Federation. 'At this moment, the Europeans and the Canadians have pledged, for this year, $35bn in military support to Ukraine,' said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte ahead of the alliance's annual summit, which took place in The Hague on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 24-25. 'Last year, it was just over $50bn for the full year. Now, before we reach half year, it is already at $35bn. And there are even others saying it's already close to $40bn,' he added. The increase in European aid partly made up for the absence of any military aid offers so far from the Trump administration. In April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered to buy the US Patriot air defence systems Ukraine needs to fend off daily missile and drone attacks. The Trump administration made its first sale of weapons to Ukraine the following month, but only of F-16 aircraft parts. At The Hague this week, Zelenskyy said he discussed those Patriot systems with Trump. At a news conference on Wednesday, Trump said: 'We're going to see if we can make some available,' referring to interceptors for existing Patriot systems in Ukraine. 'They're very hard to get. We need them too, and we've been supplying them to Israel,' he said. Russia has repeatedly made a ceasefire conditional on Ukraine's allies stopping the flow of weapons to it. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated that condition on Saturday. Days earlier, Vladimir Putin revealed that his ambition to annex all of Ukraine had not abated. 'I have said many times that the Russian and Ukrainian people are one nation, in fact. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours,' he declared at a media conference to mark the opening of the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum on Friday, June 20. 'But you know we have an old parable, an old rule: wherever a Russian soldier steps, it is ours.' 'Wherever a Russian soldier steps, he brings only death, destruction, and devastation,' Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the next day. In a post on the Telegram messaging platform on June 21, Zelenskyy wrote that Putin had 'spoken completely openly'. 'Yes, he wants all of Ukraine,' he said. 'He is also speaking about Belarus, the Baltic states, Moldova, the Caucasus, countries like Kazakhstan.' German army planners agreed about Putin's expansionism, deeming Russia an 'existential threat' in a new strategy paper 18 months in the making, leaked to Der Spiegel news magazine last week. Moscow was preparing its military leadership and defence industries 'specifically to meet the requirements for a large-scale conflict against NATO by the end of this decade', the paper said. 'We in Germany ignored the warnings of our Baltic neighbours about Russia for too long. We have recognised this mistake,' said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday, an about-turn from his two predecessors' refusal to spend more on defence. 'There is no going back from this realisation. We cannot expect the world around us to return to calmer times in the near future,' he added. Germany, along with other European NATO allies, agreed on Wednesday to raise defence spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035. It was a sign of the increasingly common threat perception from Russia, but also a big win for Trump, who had demanded that level of spending shortly after winning re-election as US president last year. Of that, 1.5 percent is for military-related spending like dual-purpose infrastructure, emergency healthcare, cybersecurity and civic resilience. Even Trump, who has previously expressed admiration for Putin, seemed to be souring on him. 'I consider him a person that's, I think, been misguided,' he said after a moment's thought at his NATO news conference. 'I'm very surprised actually. I thought we would have had that settled easy,' referring to the conflict in Ukraine. 'Vladimir Putin really has to end that war,' he said. Putin continued his ground war during the week of the NATO summit, launching approximately 200 assaults each day, according to Ukraine's General Staff – a high average. Ukraine, itself, was fighting 695,000 Russian troops on its territory, said Zelenskyy on Saturday, with another 52,000 attempting to create a new front in Sumy, northeast Ukraine. 'This week they advanced 200 metres towards Sumy, and we pushed them back 200–400 metres,' he said, a battle description typical of the stagnation Russian troops face along the thousand-kilometre front. Terror from the air Russia continued its campaign of demoralisation among Ukrainian civilians, sending drones and missiles into Ukraine's cities. Russian drones and missiles killed 30 civilians and injured 172 in Kyiv on June 19. 'This morning I was at the scene of a Russian missile hitting a house in Kyiv,' said Zelenskyy. 'An ordinary apartment building. The missile went through all the floors to the basement. Twenty-three people were killed by just one Russian strike.' 'There was no military sense in this strike, it added absolutely nothing to Russia militarily,' he said. Overnight, Russia attacked Odesa, Kharkiv and their suburbs with more than 20 strike drones. At least 10 of the drones struck Odesa. A four-storey building engulfed in flames partly collapsed on top of rescue workers, injuring three firefighters. A drone attack on Kyiv killed at least seven people on Monday this week. 'There were 352 drones in total, and 16 missiles,' said Zelenskyy, including 'ballistics from North Korea'. A Russian drone strike on the Dnipropetrovsk region on Tuesday killed 20 people and injured nearly 300, according to the regional military administration. Ukraine focused on drone production Ukraine, too, is focused on long-range weapons production. Five of its drones attacked the Shipunov Instrument Design Bureau in Tula on June 18 and 20. Shipunov is a key developer of high-precision weapons for the Russian armed forces, said Ukraine, and the strikes damaged the plant's warehouses and administration building, causing it to halt production. 'Thousands of drones have been launched toward Moscow in recent months,' revealed Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin last week, adding that air defences had shot almost all of them down. But Ukraine is constantly improving designs and increasing production. On Monday, the United Kingdom announced that Ukraine would be providing its drone manufacturers with 'technology datasets from Ukraine's front line' to improve the design of British-made drones that would be shipped to Ukraine. 'Ukraine is the world leader in drone design and execution, with drone technology evolving, on average, every six weeks,' the announcement from Downing Street said. On the same day, Norway said it would invert that relationship, to produce surface drones in Ukraine using Norwegian technology. Zelenskyy said this Build with Ukraine programme, in which Ukraine and its allies share financing, technology and production capacity, would ultimately work for missile production in Ukraine as well. His goal is ambitious. 'We want 0.25 percent of the GDP of a particular partner state to be allocated for our defence industry for domestic production next year,' he said. Among Ukraine's projects is a domestically produced ballistic missile, the Sapsan, which can carry a 480kg warhead for a distance of 500km – enough to reach halfway to Moscow from Ukraine's front line. Asked whether the Sapsan could reach Moscow, Zelenskyy's office director, Andriy Yermak, told the UK's Times newspaper: 'Things are moving very well. I think we will be able to surprise our enemies on many occasions.' Trouble with club membership Ukraine's ambition to join NATO and the European Union, leaving Russian orbit, is what triggered this war, and Russia has said that giving up both those clubs is a condition of peace. NATO first invited Ukraine to its 2008 Summit in Bucharest. But in February, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said NATO membership for Ukraine was not a 'realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement', and a 'final' ceasefire offer from the White House on April 17 included a ban on NATO membership for Ukraine. Despite this, on Wednesday, Rutte told Reuters: 'The whole of NATO, including the United States, is totally committed to keep Ukraine in the fight.' On June 9, Rutte had told a discussion at the Chatham House think tank in London that a political commitment to Ukraine's future membership of NATO remained unchanged, even if it was not explicitly mentioned in the final communique of the NATO summit. 'The irreversible path of Ukraine into NATO is there, and it is my assumption that it is still there after the summit,' Rutte said. If that gave Ukrainians renewed hope, this was perhaps dashed by the European Union's inability last week to open new chapters in its own membership negotiations. That was because Slovakia decided to veto the move to do so in the European Council, the EU's governing body. Slovakia also blocked an 18th sanctions package the EU was set to approve this week, because it would completely cut the EU off from Russian oil and gas imports. Slovakia and Hungary have argued they need Russian energy because they are landlocked. Their leaders, Robert Fico and Viktor Orban, have been the only EU leaders to visit Moscow during the war in Ukraine. Zelenskyy has openly accused Fico of benefiting personally from energy imports from Russia. In a week of disruptive politics from Bratislava, Slovakia also intimated it could leave NATO. 'In these nonsensical times of arms buildup, when arms companies are rubbing their hands … neutrality would benefit Slovakia very much,' Fico told a media conference shown online on June 17. He pointed out that this would require parliamentary approval. Three days later, the independent Slovak newspaper Dennik N published an interview with Austria's former defence minister, Werner Fasslabend, in which he said Slovakia's departure from NATO might trigger Austria's entry into the alliance. 'If Slovakia were to withdraw from NATO, it would worsen the security situation for Austria as well. It would certainly spark a major debate about Austria's NATO membership and possible NATO accession,' Fasslabend said.
The Independent
2 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
The myriad of countries arming Russia and Ukraine – and the billions it costs
Donald Trump has suggested that the US could send more Patriot missile systems to Ukraine, and has not ruled out providing the war-torn country with a new military support package. Speaking at the Nato summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, the president said 'we'll see what happens' when asked whether Washington would add to the $8 billion pledged by Nato allies. "They do want to have the anti-missile missiles, OK, as they call them, the Patriots," the US president said. "And we're going to see if we can make some available. We need them, too. We're supplying them to Israel, and they're very effective, 100 per cent effective. Hard to believe how effective. They do want that more than any other thing.' Click here for the latest updates on the Ukraine war It would be a major boost for Kyiv to receive direct military assistance from the Trump administration, which has been highly resistant to sending the levels of weaponry provided to Ukraine during the Biden era. Here, The Independent takes a look at what weapons the US and other countries have been sending to Ukraine and Russia as the war show no signs of ending soon. Who is arming Ukraine? Kyiv's most significant military support comes from the US. The Kiel Institute, which runs a database tracking the level of military support to Ukraine since the war began, says Washington has provided more 64 billion euros (£55 billion) in military support. Since November, the US-made ATACMS missiles have been used by Ukraine in crucial strikes on targets deep inside Russia, with a range of around 190 miles (300 kilometres). The US has also provided hundreds of Howitzer artillery weapons, more than 20 tanks, alongside anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile systems and multiple rocket launch systems. US aid has totaled 114.6 billion euros of financial, humanitarian and military donations to Ukraine since the war began. Of military aid, it has provided 64.5 per cent of the support Ukraine has received. This is followed by the UK at 14.5 per cent, then Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and a host of further European countries. While the EU has provided huge tranches of humanitarian and financial support, as an economic bloc it does not provide direct military support. Ukraine has been supplied with British Storm Shadow missiles, F-16 fighter jets built in the US, Leopard 2 tanks from Germany - despite years of hesitation from Berlin - British challenger tanks, and Polish drones. The UK has committed to spending £18 billion on Ukraine, including £13bn on military support and £5bn on non-military. Separately, European leaders in Nato announced on Wednesday that they have agreed to Mr Trump's demands to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP. Who is arming Russia? Russia too has received a host of support from a number of its allies who are pitched alongside Moscow against Western interests - although the exact picture is a little more blurred. Iran and North Korea are two of Moscow's clearest military supporters. Tehran has provided crucial support for Russia's air capabilities, providing it with thousands of the Shahed drones which have brought huge destruction to Ukraine since the war began in February 2022. Russia regularly fires hundreds of the mass-produced drones at Ukraine overnight, in a modern style of warfare which has transformed how a conventional conflict is carried out. But Moscow believes Tehran's importance as a supplier has declined as Russia has localised production of the drones - a move which Iran has provided significant support for. North Korea, meanwhile, has sent thousands of troops to Russia to help fight Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk region. After signing a treaty which includes a mutual defence pact, Kim Jong-un is said to have sent around 12,000 North Korean troops, who assisted Russian forces in driving the Ukrainian military out of the region. South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) believes Russia may be readying to mount a large-scale assault against Ukraine in July or August, after noting a new round up of troops by the military and the visit of a top Russian presidential security official, lawmakers said this week. Western countries have also claimed China is militarily supporting the war effort in Ukraine, something which Beijing has repeatedly denied. Russia and China have built an increasingly close bond since the war began. Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin signed a 'no-limits' partnership and have repeatedly hailed each other as'dear friends'. Beijing has been sending so-called dual-use technology which can be used for both civilian and military purposes, leaving plausible deniability for China to avoid Western sanctions. According to Politico, Russian imports of drones and ceramics - which is a component used in body armor - has significantly increased since the war has begun. The Wall Street Journal reports that dual-use navigation equipment, jamming technology, and fighter jet parts were sold to Russian state-owned companies. In April, Mr Zelensky said Ukrainian intelligence had found that gunpowder and artillery had been supplied by Chinese enterprises. "We talked with the Chinese leader and he gave me his word that he won't sell or give weapons to Russia. Unfortunately, we have facts and see the opposite information,' Mr Zelensky said at the time. On Thursday, China's foreign ministry denied it was supplying weapons to parties in the Ukraine war, and accused "relevant NATO personnel" of slandering China's "normal military build-up". Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry, was responding to Nato chief Mark Rutte saying there was a "massive build-up" of the military in China.
Fox News
3 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Joe Rogan asks Bernie Sanders if he will run for president again, what he would do on day one
Podcaster Joe Rogan asked Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Tuesday about whether he will run for president again, and Sanders revealed the key issue he would prioritize. Sanders spoke about how he has called to pause military aid to Israel until they show more leniency toward starving citizens in Gaza by ending their blockade. Sanders went on to note the difficulty of passing such policy, criticizing Israel's influence on American politics. He singled out AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) as a key example, noting they "have already knocked off good members of Congress, and they will do it again." "So all I'm saying is you got a corrupt campaign finance system, on both sides, which is rejecting the will of the American people and end up supporting powerful special interests," Sanders said. "And if we do not get a handle on that issue, I worry very much about the future of American democracy." "Are you gonna run for president again?" Rogan asked in response. "I am 83 years of age," Sanders replied. "I'm not sure the American people would be too enthusiastic -" Rogan complimented Sanders for still being very "with it" and observed, "I mean, you're a couple of years older than Biden, right? Think of that. You could be off a lot worse." Sanders went on to speak about his "Fight Oligarchy" tour across the country, noting he has attained a wide variety of support from Americans across the political spectrum, and arguing that "there is growing dissatisfaction with the current politics in America, both parties, and people want a new vision, and people want a new vision for America." Later in the conversation, Rogan appeared to allude to the 2016 election and encouraged Sanders to imagine an alternate future where "you hadn't gotten derailed, and they hadn't conspired against you, and you actually became the Democratic candidate for president, and you won, what would you have done differently?" Sanders took a moment and asked, "How many hours do we have?" Rogan assured him they have "all the time in the world" and proceeded to ask, "What would you have done the first day in office?" "Well, it's not just the first day in office," Sanders replied. "I would have dealt with this campaign finance reform issue." Sanders argued it would be better for elections to be funded by the government, so that every candidate gets the same amount of money to spend to make their case to the American public. While some might be concerned about taxpayers footing the bill for campaigns, he argued it "makes a lot more sense than having billionaires fund elections, which is what you got right now."
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Starmer to give missiles to Ukraine paid for with £70m interest on Russian assets
Keir Starmer has announced a fresh package of military aid for Ukraine – this time paid for using the UK's interest haul from frozen Russian assets. The UK will send 350 advanced air defence missiles, built in Britain and adapted in record time for ground launch, using £70m of interest raised through the government's extraordinary revenue acceleration (ERA) scheme. The move marks the first time the UK has used Russia-linked funds to directly bankroll weaponry for Kyiv. The missiles will be deployed through UK-supplied Raven systems – five more of which are en route to Ukraine, taking the total to 13. Originally designed as air-to-air missiles, ASRAAMs have been retrofitted by RAF engineers and MBDA UK to fire from the back of a British-made truck. The conversion took just three months. Starmer, speaking before Nato's annual summit in The Hague, said: 'Russia, not Ukraine, should pay the price for Putin's barbaric and illegal war. It is only right we use seized Russian assets to strengthen Ukraine's air defences. The security of Ukraine is vital to our own.' The defence secretary, John Healey, said the missiles would save lives and were proof that the UK's military and industrial base could adapt to the needs of modern war. He accused Moscow of continuing indiscriminate missile attacks and made clear that 'Putin is not serious about peace'. The new package is part of the UK's largest-ever yearly commitment to Ukraine – £4.5bn in military aid. It follows a £1.6bn deal in March for more than 5,000 air defence missiles and a separate £350m investment to ramp up drone deliveries tenfold. Ministers are also using the Nato summit to discuss escalation in the Middle East and to push allies on long-term defence spending. Ahead of the Nato summit, the prime minister had agreed with Volodymyr Zelenskyy to work closely together on military production between the UK and Ukraine. After meeting in No 10 on Monday, the pair announced a new military partnership in front of soldiers from Britain, Ukraine and other western allies. The Ukrainian president has been invited to the summit but will not take part in its main discussions, which will be highly focused on defence spending.
CBC
4 days ago
- Politics
- CBC
Russian attacks on Ukraine kill 18 as Zelenskyy meets Western leaders
Russian drones, missiles and artillery killed at least 18 civilians and injured more than 100 others in Ukraine, officials said Tuesday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought guarantees of further Western military aid for his country's efforts to repel Russia's invasion. Russian forces have relentlessly blasted civilian areas of Ukraine throughout the war, which is now in its fourth year. More than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, according to the United Nations. Ukraine has also launched long-range drones against Russia, hitting residential areas. Zelenskyy was set to meet Tuesday with Western leaders attending a NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands. He is keen to lock in additional military support for Ukraine's fight against Russia's bigger army, as recent direct peace talks have delivered no progress on a possible settlement. Key U.S. military commitments to Ukraine left over from the Biden administration are expected to run out within months, according to analysts, and there is uncertainty over whether U.S. President Donald Trump is willing to provide more. Russian barrage hits 19 schools, 10 kindergartens A Russian ballistic missile attack on Dnipro hit multiple civilian sites in the central Ukrainian city around midday on Tuesday, killing nine people and injuring more than 100, local officials said. In the nearby town of Samar, an attack killed two people and injured 11, Dnipro's regional administration head Serhii Lysak wrote on Telegram. The barrage damaged 19 schools, 10 kindergartens, a vocational school, a music school and a social welfare office, as well as eight medical facilities, according to Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov. One of the blasts blew out the windows of a passenger train. WATCH | Kyiv among places attacked: 'I woke up in the rubble,' Kyiv resident says after Russian strike 1 hour ago Duration 0:29 Valeriy Mankuta, a construction worker in Ukraine's capital, told journalists he was sleeping when he felt a blast, waking up in rubble with a giant slab overhead. The blast was one of many overnight, as Russia launched another barrage of strikes on Ukraine. Russia also shelled residential neighbourhoods and critical infrastructure across Ukraine's southern Kherson region, killing four civilians and wounding at least 11 others, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the regional military administration. In the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine, a drone attack late Monday killed three civilians, including a five-year-old boy, and injured six others, local authorities said. Among the injured were two 17-year-old girls and a 12-year-old boy, according to officials. Ukraine attack with 20 drones mostly repelled Russian air defence forces overnight shot down 20 Ukrainian drones, the Russian Defence Ministry reported on Tuesday morning. It said 14 were downed over the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, while two had been flying over the Moscow province. One drone slammed into a tower block on the outskirts of the Russian capital, sparking a fire on its 17th floor, local Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said Tuesday. He said a 34-year-old resident suffered shrapnel wounds to his arm and leg. Two other drones were shot down on the approach to Moscow, according to Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Air traffic was briefly halted as a precaution at two major Moscow airports, Vnukovo and Sheremetyevo, a representative of Russia's aviation authority Rosaviatsiya said.
