“Ukraine – Russia”

The U.S. defense secretary said any deal to end the fighting must come with international oversight of the boundary between Russian and Ukrainian forces — and no NATO membership for Kyiv.

BRUSSELS — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday called Ukraine’s desire to recover all of the territory it has lost to Russia since 2014 an “unrealistic objective,” pledging that the Trump administration will pursue peace negotiations to end the two nations’ war while pointedly shaping them at the outset.

“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more pain and suffering,” Hegseth said. Any peace deal, Hegseth added, must come with “robust security guarantees,” international oversight of the boundary between Russian and Ukrainian forces, and no NATO membership for Ukraine — something that would require other countries to defend Ukrainian territory in any future conflict.

In the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, the head of St. Petersburg’s prisons delivered a direct message to an elite unit of guards tasked with overseeing the influx of prisoners from the war: “Be cruel, don’t pity them.”

Maj. Gen. Igor Potapenko had gathered his service’s special forces at the regional headquarters to tell them about a new system that had been designed for captured Ukrainians.

Normal rules wouldn’t apply, he told them. There would be no restrictions against violence. The body cameras that were mandatory elsewhere in Russia’s prison system would be gone.

The guards would rotate through Russia’s prison system, serving a month at a time in prisons before other teams took their place. Across the country, other units—from Buryatia, Moscow, Pskov and elsewhere—received similar instructions.

Nearly three years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some Ukrainians in southwestern Ontario say they’re feeling uneasy about the future and whether they’ll be able to remain in Canada as the war continues.

Close to 300,000 Ukrainians arrived in Canada after Feb. 24, 2022. Ottawa offered them temporary resident status through the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program, until March 31.

But …

Zelensky Will Enter Peace Talks on Condition U.S. Agrees Total Support

Ukraine will enter into peace talks with President Putin as long as the U.S. and Europe give “more security guarantees” not to “abandon” the country in future, its President says.

President Volodymyr Zelensky told an interviewer he would agree to sit down to “any form of discussion” with Russia as long as his international partners first guaranteed their long-term support to deter future Russian aggression. This would be essential to prevent the Ukraine war simply becoming a frozen conflict that Russia could re-start when convenient to Moscow in the future, as it had been between 2014-2022, he said.

At a fashionable Moscow address a few blocks from the Russian prime minister’s office stands a gated office complex.

It is on the north bank of the Moskva, just across the river from Stalin’s towering Hotel Ukraine and a few minutes from one of Moscow’s best known Ukrainian restaurants. Those aren’t the only Ukrainian connections in the area.

Inside the complex at 12 Krasnopresnenskaya is the headquarters, secret until now, of an international spy network that infiltrated the highest ranks of President Zelensky’s government.

Volodymyr Zelensky unleashed a foul-mouthed verbal assault on Tucker Carlson who recently accused the Ukrainian President of ruling Ukraine as a dictator.

Zelensky did not hold back while furiously dismissing the political commentator’s claims, which included allegations of silencing Russian-speaking citizens and going so far as murdering political opponents.

Appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Zelensky called Carlson a mouthpiece for Russian President Vladimir Putin, with his frustration boiling over as he delivered an impassioned response, telling the controversial broadcaster to ‘stop working for Putin, stop licking his a**.’

'Regrettably this blogger… he works for Putin because he wants to lower me to the level of Putin.'

Watch more of President Zelensky discussing Tucker Carlson's comments about him and more

https://t.co/QARXnoDdi7@piersmorgan | @ZelenskyyUa | @TuckerCarlson pic.twitter.com/csXaMGiQpL

— Piers Morgan Uncensored (@PiersUncensored) February 4, 2025

A dictator is someone who ignores elections and rules by violence. Zelensky meets that definition but Piers Morgan loves him anyway.

(0:00) Why Is Piers Morgan Deeply in Love With Zelensky?
(20:58) Zelensky Is Getting Rich From War
(25:29) Should NATO Be Abolished?
(36:48)… pic.twitter.com/7YAjdOE9z6

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 31, 2025

A Russian drone attack killed a British teenager on his first combat mission after joining the Ukrainian army.

James Wilton, who had recently turned 18 and was from Huddersfield, is the youngest Briton to have died defending Ukraine from Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

While walking across a field with a group of international fighters delivering supplies to the front line on July 23 last year, he was spotted and chased by three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

About 90 Patriot missiles from Israel are being sent to Ukraine in a transfer facilitated by the United States, according to a US defense official.

The missiles had been in storage in Israel, which operated Patriot air defense systems for more than 30 years before retiring them in April. Discussions about transferring the missiles from Israel to Ukraine have been ongoing since last summer, when Biden administration officials were hopeful the effort might allow the unused missiles to be sent to Kyiv to aid in its war with Russia.

Iuliia Slabinska sent her son to study in Canada in 2021, months before Russia launched a war against their homeland, Ukraine. He was just turning 16.

In August 2022 — six months after the Russian invasion — she, her husband and younger daughter arrived in Langley, B.C., under the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel program. The CUAET program offered temporary refuge to almost 300,000 displaced Ukrainians with work and study permits, before it shut down last March.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization mounted its first coordinated response to the suspected sabotage campaign against critical infrastructure, after another underwater data cable was severed in the Baltic Sea.

NATO vessels raced to the site of a damaged fiber-optic cable in Swedish waters on Sunday morning, where a trio of ships carrying Russian cargo, including one recently sanctioned by the U.S., were nearby. All three vessels are now being investigated as part of a probe into suspected sabotage of the fiber optic cable, according to several European officials. One ship was detained Sunday.

Over the last decades, the representatives of left liberal movement, whether they are high-ranking officials, opposition, social activists or even ordinary citizens, are used to spreading and guiding everyone with “the only proper course” that serves faithfully to their own views and interests.

Any deviation from the imposed mainstream agenda results at least in a public shaming expressed by the internet army of liberals or even in full cancellation.

At the same time, the key leverages they use can vary.