“Ukraine – Russia”

Germany will do “everything in our power” to ensure that the Nord Stream gas pipelines from Russia are not brought back into service, a cabinet minister has said.

The 760-mile route along the floor of the Baltic Sea, previously a symbol of Europe’s dependence on Moscow for fossil fuels, was rendered largely inoperable in September 2022 by a series of underwater explosions, which Berlin attributed to a team of Ukrainian saboteurs.

Volodymyr Zelensky has scrapped open-ended military contracts to attract new recruits.

Ukraine’s army has consistently struggled with severe manpower shortages, with troops spending months at a time on the front line and recruiters dragging civilian men off the street to force them into service.

In an attempt to make the military more attractive, the Ukrainian president on Friday promised to increase soldiers’ pay and make it possible for them to be discharged after a set period.

(more…)

TRUMP TO PUTIN: ‘I WANT TO END YOUR WAR’: In a phone conversation that lasted more than 90 minutes, Russian President Vladimir Putin told President Donald Trump that he’d like to help the U.S. get Iran’s enriched uranium out of the country, but Trump said he replied, “I’d much rather have you be involved with ending the war with Ukraine.”

Despite Russia’s overt support for Iran, and intelligence that suggests Moscow has provided Iran both with drone and targeting information to kill Americans, an aide to Putin said “the conversation ended on a warm note, wishing each other all the best.”

On September 26, 2022, several underwater explosions disabled three of the four Nord Stream pipeline lines in the Baltic Sea. The facts are well known: it was a deliberate act of sabotage against one of the key energy infrastructures linking Russia and Germany.

What remains unresolved, nearly four years later, is responsibility. Or at least officially unresolved.

That vacuum is now being filled by new narratives. The latest comes from journalist Bojan Pancevski, who in his book The Nord Stream Explosion introduces a particularly striking element: the involvement of a Ukrainian woman, a former adult model identified under the pseudonym “Freya,” in the sabotage operation.

Ukraine has found itself in a paradoxical situation: while its “Army of Drones” has achieved unprecedented technical feats—including capturing Russian positions using only autonomous robots—the human foundation of the military is fracturing.

A sobering report from Dutch military intelligence warns that the casualty ratio, once heavily skewed against Russia, has leveled out. For a nation with a significantly smaller population, this parity is a slow-motion disaster.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he considered visits by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow but not Kyiv “disrespectful”.

The pair visited the Russian capital late last year as ceasefire talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine gained pace, and again in January.

Witkoff, who has been to Moscow eight times, met Vladimir Putin on many occasions.

Neither he nor Kushner, however, has ever visited Kyiv in an official capacity.

Russia said on Monday that it had arrested a German woman found with a homemade bomb in her backpack in an alleged Ukrainian plot to blow up a security services facility in southern Russia.

In a statement published by state media, the FSB security agency said that the woman, born in 1969, was to be used as an unwilling suicide bomber in the plot and had been dragged into it by a citizen from a Central Asian country, who was alleged to be working on orders from Ukraine.

Reporting on the Nord Stream gas pipeline attack has picked up again over recent weeks, long after it first hit the headlines in September 2022—especially following revelations about Kyiv’s involvement in the blast.

According to Bojan Pancevski, an investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky knew in advance about—and, indeed, authorised—the operation, from “early on,” and only told military officials not to go ahead due to resistance from the U.S., which was also in the know. Pancevski this week explained that “the command went ahead with the operation anyway.”

Ukraine has been able to retake territory seized by Russia in an operation using only robots and drones for the first time during the war, President Zelensky has said.

Russian soldiers surrendered when confronted by the army of unmanned vehicles and there were no losses on the Ukrainian side, Zelensky said in an address to the workers of Ukraine’s defence-industrial complex on Monday.

Kiev has become one of the strongest Bentley markets in Europe, according to Richard Leopold, Bentley regional director for Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa.

During the European Scorecard Awards 2025 held in Marbella, Spain, Bentley announced the results of its internal Business Performance Matrix, a system evaluating 61 dealerships worldwide. Bentley Kiev received recognition in sales, marketing and best improved.

Thousands of Asian, African and Middle Eastern migrants have come to Britain under the Government’s Ukrainian free visa scheme, The Telegraph can reveal.

Nearly 3,500 visas have been granted to migrants from 112 countries – including Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq, Iran, India and the Palestinian territories – under the two schemes offering sanctuary to Ukrainians fleeing Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

(more…)