Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a decree on the country’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, which bans the production and use of anti-personnel mines, the presidential website said on Sunday.
Ukraine ratified the convention in 2005.
There was a particularly telling moment at a bygone NATO summit about four years ago, which perfectly captured the sometimes capricious way the Western military alliance regards Ukraine.
The secretary general of the day, the often unflappable Jens Stoltenberg, was asked about the Eastern European country’s long-standing bid to join the allies.
At that point, Ukraine had been waiting more than a dozen years for admission.
Since the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, there has hardly been a more pressing issue for NATO than the defense of its eastern borders.
Over the past three years, five of the six NATO countries that share a border with Russia or Belarus — Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland— have already made significant investments to better secure these borders, for example with fences and surveillance systems.
But now, a new plan is in the works: land mines.
Kyiv has resisted drafting young men, anxious to protect the country’s long-term future. That means there is a lot of gray hair on the battlefield.
The call sign “Did” or “Grandpa” is so common in Ukraine’s army that two artillerymen in a four-man howitzer team on the eastern front use it. “I may be of age, but I like to keep moving—sitting at home or in a headquarters isn’t for me,” one of the two, Andriy Kukhar, said on a recent day hunched down in a small dugout near Chasiv Yar, in the country’s east.
Now 46, he listens carefully to the radio, awaiting his next instructions as he keeps an eye on his phone for news about his granddaughter back home. The other Did is his 53-year-old comrade Mykola Voskres, who has five grandchildren, most of whom now live abroad. He left his job working construction in Poland and signed up as a volunteer the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. He thinks the sacrifice is worth it. “The younger generation of Ukrainians should focus on building their lives and preparing to rebuild the country after the war,” he said.
Ottawa is considering whether to follow in the footsteps of several European nations by forging a new defence co-production deal with Ukraine for military equipment, Defence Minister David McGuinty said Thursday.
McGuinty said the idea is under “active consideration” by the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces, and the government is looking at Denmark and France as potential models.
In 2019, Oleksandr Zahrebelnyn came to Canada from Ukraine on a work permit and opened a meat processing plant in North Bay with the financial backing of the Canadian and Ontario governments.
The entrepreneur has spent more than six years in the country, receiving multiple renewals of his visas and work authorization. But now immigration officials have told him that he and his family should be barred from Canada because he had previously worked for the main Ukrainian security agency.
The Kremlin is using nuns at a remote convent in the Baltic region to spread pro-Russian propaganda for its hybrid war on Europe, Estonia’s government has warned.
Estonian officials say the Pühtitsa Convent in eastern Estonia, which claims it has renounced all worldly affairs, is promoting a pro-Putin narrative that claims religious freedoms are under threat in the West.
Nuns at the Russian Orthodox convent are in an ongoing dispute with the Estonian government over a new law that requires them to sever ties with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the church’s spiritual leader and an ardent supporter of the war on Ukraine.
In a classroom in western Ukraine, a group of teenagers are thinking about their futures.
Seventeen-year-old Kira Yukhymenko had always planned to go to university in her home country, but in between sitting her final exams this month, she has been dreaming of leaving to study abroad.
“The war has helped us understand who we are,” she said during a discussion in an English lesson at her school, Lyceum 88, in Lviv. “It has broadened our horizons and also made us more independent.”
BANFF — Prime Minister Mark Carney, in an attempt to “use maximum pressure against Russia,” has pledged $2 billion in spending, and an additional $2 billion in frozen Russian assets.
Carney also promised President Volodymyr Zelensky sanctions “against a number of individuals in Russia,” sanctions against over 40 entities “in Russia and beyond that are trying to contribute to the evasion of these sanctions,” and “the sanctioning of over 200 vessels in the shadow fleet that Russia is using to evade these sanctions.
He’s as bad as Junior.
h/t XC
After 300 drones killed civilians overnight, President Zelensky called for ‘concrete action’ amid speculation that Putin will announce a new mass mobilisation
President Zelensky has urged the United States to “force Russia into peace” after the Kremlin launched one of its heaviest drone attacks on Ukraine overnight.
At least two people were killed and ten injured in Odesa, the Black Sea port city, as drones targeted residential buildings, a maternity ward, medical facilities and railway infrastructure, officials said.
Donald Trump has threatened to impose sanctions on Ukraine as well as Russia if the two sides fail to reach a peace agreement.
In an Oval Office meeting with Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, Mr Trump likened the war in Ukraine to a fight between two young children in a park.
“Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart,” Mr Trump said.
President Putin “very strongly” set out his intention to retaliate against Ukraine for its devastating attacks on Russian airfields, President Trump said after they held a 75-minute phone call.
Putin’s determination to respond to Sunday’s drone assault signals an escalation of the war, which Trump vowed to end on his first day. Trump admitted that it was “not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace”.
The pair had last spoken on May 19, in a discussion Trump said went “very well” and would lead to immediate face-to-face Russia-Ukraine talks. Since then the fighting has only intensified.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy silently planned Drone attacks on Russia for 18 months
Yesterday Ukraine destroyed 40+ Bomber aircrafts capable of carrying nuclear warheads & extensively damaged Russia's Pearl Harbour.
Zelenskyy never sold ukraine to the US pic.twitter.com/zlxGiK6WhW
— Ravinder Kapur. (@RavinderKapur2) June 3, 2025
Russia is projected to surpass the grim milestone of one million soldiers killed or wounded in action within the coming weeks amid a mounting summer offensive in Ukraine.
Despite continuing peace talks, Moscow has intensified its offensive action on the eastern front in Donbas and along the northern border in the Sumy region, capturing more territory in May than in any month since the end of 2024.
Russian forces are now taking an average of 14 sq km per day, twice as much as in April, according to Ukraine’s Deep State website, which monitors frontline movements.
On May 9, Russian troops paraded their tanks, armoured vehicles and missiles through Red Square, past the man who sent them to war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin.
The Victory Day procession in Moscow also showcased, for the first time, the military drones that have proven indispensable to Putin’s invasion. But Russian drones are not really Russian on the inside.
They are built out of electronics purchased around the world by a global procurement network that allegedly relies on suppliers in several countries, including Canada.
Russia offered Ukraine a limited ceasefire to collect the bodies of soldiers from the battlefield, Moscow’s lead negotiator said after today’s peace talks in Istanbul.
Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Vladimir Putin, said the truce would be for “two to three days in certain areas of the front line…so that commanders can collect the bodies”.
It is not yet clear if Ukraine has agreed to the proposal. Russia has previously announced limited ceasefires, but Kyiv is pushing for a full and unconditional truce.
