“Ukraine – Russia”

A surprise Ukrainian attack into Russia’s Kursk region raised questions about whether Kyiv’s forces violated U.S. restrictions on the use of donated fighting vehicles.

KYIV — Ukrainian troops battled Russian forces Thursday for a third day in Russia’s Kursk region, occupying villages and part of a town, in what has become Ukraine’s largest incursion into Russia since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have confirmed the cross-border Ukrainian attack, which stunned Moscow and appeared to involve the use of Western donated infantry fighting vehicles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed Wednesday that Ukrainian forces had crossed the border into the Kursk region of western Russia and carried out an attack, describing the operation as a large-scale “provocation.”

“The Kyiv regime has launched another major provocation,” Putin told members of the Russian government at a meeting, claiming that Ukraine was “firing indiscriminately” using various types of weapons, including rockets, “at civilian buildings, residential houses, ambulances.”

Putin’s statement followed a Russian Defense Ministry announcement late Tuesday night that up to “300 Ukrainian militants” launched a cross-border attack on Tuesday morning and had entered Russian territory along with “11 tanks and more than 200 armored vehicles.”

Ukraine has received its first batch of US-made F-16 fighter jets, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said on Sunday, adding that more are needed to beat back Russian forces.

For more than two years, Ukraine has pleaded with its Western partners for the aircraft – long considered the crown jewel in the sprawling list of military hardware Kyiv has sought.

As the United States and its European allies continue to provide Ukraine with the wherewithal to kill Russian soldiers and strike ever deeper in Russian territory, the potential for retaliatory escalation creeps higher. Kiev is of course entitled to respond harshly to Moscow’s invasion. As it is doing so with Western weapons, however, Russia has increasing reason to treat NATO countries as formal belligerents, with potentially catastrophic results.

In recent weeks, there has been increasing debate about whether Russia’s war in Ukraine could be ended at the negotiating table.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Russian President Vladimir Putin on what the former described as a “peace mission.” Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently claimed in his regular column for the British Daily Mail tabloid that he had presented former US president and current presidential contender Donald Trump with a “peace plan” that would require Putin to withdraw to “at least” the pre-invasion boundaries of 2022; Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and was already occupying parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine by 2022.

For his part, Trump has claimed on various past occasions, including during recent campaign events, that he would end the war immediately if reelected.

Germany plans to halve its military aid for Ukraine, cutting more than £3 billion next year as it struggles to fill a black hole in its finances with spending cuts.

The reduction from one of Ukraine’s most generous sponsors risks renewed accusations from the United States that Europe is not doing enough to pay for a war in its own backyard.

Donald Trump and JD Vance, his vice-presidential nominee, have both demanded that European Nato allies increase their defence spending and pay more to Kyiv.

Almost 44 per cent of Ukrainians now believe it is time for Kyiv to hold official peace negotiations with Russia

A Ukrainian army deserter has been shot dead, and a military recruitment centre has been bombed as tensions rise over the country’s aggressive mobilisation drive.

As pressure on the front line mounts, with Russia sending waves of soldiers to overwhelm Ukraine, Kyiv has launched a forceful recruitment campaign.

It has led to reports of Ukrainian men fleeing over borders to avoid service, while The Telegraph has been told that medically unfit men are being mobilised.

I can’t help but think we are being kept in the dark. When your people flee rather than fight something is wrong.

“Ukraine will stop Putin” declared America’s failing president whose uncertain political fate and cognitive issues loomed over NATO’s 75th annual conference hosted last week in Washington, where many participants took time on the side to meet with some of Donald Trump’s top advisors such as former ambassador to Germany, Rick Grennel, and ex-NSC chief of staff, general Keith Kellogg. The Europeans are now “paying” more for NATO as 23 members cross the 2 percent of GDP for defense threshold this year, long insisted by Trump , so they may be looking to get their money’s worth in advice.

American and German intelligence services have thwarted a Russian plot to assassinate the chief executive of Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, it has been claimed.

Armin Papperger, under whose leadership Rheinmetall has set up artillery shell factories and tank repair workshops in Ukraine, is said to have been the main target of a conspiracy to kill senior figures from the European defence industry who have been instrumental in supporting Kyiv.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office on Wednesday banned the online newspaper The Moscow Times.

The website was blocked in Russia for allegedly discrediting the country’s military shortly after the start of Kremlin-backed invasion of Ukraine.