“Ukraine – Russia”

A diplomatic rift has erupted between Kyiv and Budapest after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that Ukrainian soldiers could “call and speak” to those blocking a €90 billion EU loan—widely understood to mean Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán.

Speaking after a government meeting on Thursday, March 5th, Zelensky said the contact details of those responsible for blocking the funds could be handed to Ukrainian soldiers so they could “call and speak to him in their own language.” The comments quickly triggered condemnation from Hungarian officials and political figures across Europe.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the war in Ukraine has developed into a high-tech conflict.

Swarms of spy and killer drones have set the skies of Ukraine abuzz, and uncrewed boats have crippled the Russian navy in the Black Sea.

Now, Ukraine has embarked on a massive programme to deploy armed robots on the ground.

Getting really crappy for the infantry.

President Volodymyr Zelensky is worried America and the European Union will forget about Ukraine as focus turns to the Middle East, and that the deliveries of advanced Western missiles will dry up as they’re needed to fight Iran, he told an Italian newspaper.

Russia has said it would accept proposals for Ukraine’s postwar security guarantees, according to President Zelensky’s chief of staff.

Kyrylo Budanov said in an interview aired on Ukrainian television: “At the last talks, the Russian side said, for example, that they would accept the security guarantees offered to Ukraine by the United States.”

The agreement has not yet been confirmed by the Kremlin, but it could signal the biggest breakthrough in ceasefire negotiations since the start of the full-scale invasion four years ago.

Yesterday, Russia, Ukraine and the US met for yet another round of peace talks in Geneva. At around the same time, scores of missiles and hundreds of drones pummeled Ukrainian infrastructure, causing chaos across eight regions and injuring dozens of people. And, in a sense, both these events are connected: as the war in Eastern Europe enters its fifth year, a peaceful resolution seems no closer than it did a year ago, when Trump began his second term promising a swift end to the conflict. If anything, in fact, peace seems to be receding ever further from reach.

Russian warships are becoming increasingly hostile amid concerns that the Kremlin is seeing how far it can push the alliance’s Article 5 mutual defence clause

Germany is preparing for Russia to escalate its aggression against Nato on the Baltic Sea, the head of its navy has said.

Russian warships have become increasingly hostile, while combat jets have flown recklessly low over Nato vessels and German shipyards and naval bases have been sabotaged, Vice-Admiral Jan Christian Kaack told The Times.

There is significant concern in Europe that the Kremlin might seize on uncertainty around the US commitment to Nato to see how far it can push the alliance’s Article 5 mutual defence clause before it elicits a military response.

Soldiers spend weeks or even months in a cramped shelter in a so-called “kill zone,” a stretch as long as 20 kilometers (12 miles) that is largely controlled by enemy drones. There is no way to reach a position by vehicle or evacuate the wounded. Ammunition and food supplies are constantly interrupted.

All of this has become everyday life along the front line during four years of Russia’s full‑scale war against Ukraine. Ukrainian military personnel tell DW how the war has changed.

When soldiers think back to the start of the invasion, they remember the many volunteers and long lines at recruitment offices. That seems unimaginable today.

The phone call

William Burns had travelled halfway around the world to speak with Vladimir Putin, but in the end he had to make do with a phone call. It was November 2021, and US intelligence agencies had been picking up signals in the preceding weeks that Putin could be planning to invade Ukraine. President Joe Biden dispatched Burns, his CIA director, to warn Putin that the economic and political consequences if he did so would be disastrous.

Fifteen years earlier, when Burns was US ambassador in Moscow, Putin had been relatively accessible. The intervening years had concentrated the Russian leader’s power and deepened his paranoia. Since Covid had emerged, few had been granted face time. Putin was squirrelled away at his lavish residence on the Black Sea coast, Burns and his delegation learned, and only phone contact would be possible.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to send out a firm message of defiance.

When we met this weekend in the government headquarters in Kyiv, he said that far from losing, Ukraine would end the war victorious. He was firmly against paying the price for a ceasefire deal demanded by President Vladimir Putin, which is withdrawing from strategic ground that Russia has failed to capture despite sacrificing tens of thousands of soldiers.

Putin, Zelensky told me, has already started World War Three, and the only answer was intense military and economic pressure to force him to step back.

There was a time when Ukrainian diplomats would quietly excuse Valerii Zaluzhny’s lack of willingness to speak in public in London, whispering concerns about him overshadowing President Zelensky.

But now the ambassador to Britain, widely seen as the top political rival to the Ukrainian leader, has indicated a possible desire to run for the presidency.

In a rare interview, Zaluzhny, 52, refused to explicitly discuss his political ambitions, saying he did not want to risk harming national unity during a war with Russia that is approaching its fourth anniversary.

Evidence is mounting that Elon Musk’s decision to deny Russian forces access to his Starlink satellite-based internet service has blunted Moscow’s advance, caused confusion among Russian soldiers and handed an advantage to Ukraine’s defenders.

But for how long? And what can Ukraine’s military achieve in the meantime?

“The Russians… lost their ability to control the field,” a Ukrainian drone operator who goes by the callsign Giovanni told us.

The latest round of US-mediated peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Geneva on Wednesday ended without a major breakthrough, as fighting continues in a war that will enter its fifth year next week.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said no agreement had been reached on the thorniest questions at the negotiations in Switzerland, accusing Moscow of “trying to drag out” the process.

“We can see that some groundwork has been done, but for now the positions differ, because the negotiations were not easy,” he told reporters after the talks.

When the soldier codenamed Blackbird was bundled into the back of the rescue robot, wrapped in a sleeping bag and bound with bloodied tourniquets, his life hung in the balance.

One leg was gone and the other was shattered, looking more like a burned branch than flesh and bone. His right arm, too, was smashed.

If his wounds did not kill him, the cold might have done so. It was minus 10C on the front line south of Kostiantynivka in the darkness of Sunday evening, even without the windchill. From time to time, gusts of snow blew across the robot’s camera.