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The Kremlin said on Friday that Donald Trump's guilty verdict showed that all legal and illegal means were being used in the United States to get rid of political rivals. Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime on Thursday when a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election. "If we speak about Trump, the fact that there is simply the elimination, in effect, of political rivals by all possible means, legal and illegal, is obvious", Kremlin spokesman...

Russia has accused Nato and the US of "provoking a new level of tension" after the US and Germany became the latest allies to let Ukraine's military to use Western-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Nato countries, especially the US and several European countries, had "entered a new round of escalating tension and they are doing this deliberately", in remarks quoted by the Tass news agency. The UK and France had already signalled they were open to easing restrictions on Ukraine striking military sites on Russian territory, before US President Joe Biden said on...

The German government said Friday that Ukraine can use German-supplied weapons against Russian attacks from positions just over their joint border, in a significant policy change that came a day after U.S. President Joe Biden gave Kyiv a green light to strike back with American weapons at Russian military assets targeting the country’s second-largest city. A German government statement noted that, in recent weeks, Russia has prepared, coordinated and carried out attacks on Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, in particular from areas just over the border in Russia. "Together we are convinced that Ukraine has the right under international law to...

US President Joe Biden has given Ukraine permission to use American-supplied weapons to strike targets in Russia, but only near the Kharkiv region, US officials say. One told BBC News his team had been directed to ensure Ukraine was able to use US weapons for "counter-fire purposes" to "hit back at Russian forces hitting them or preparing to hit them". Russian forces have made gains in the Kharkiv region in recent weeks after a surprise offensive in the area, close to the border with Russia. On Friday, Ukrainian officials said three people had been killed and 16 injured in Russian...

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday assailed Russian attempts to sow discord in democracies with misinformation after hinting the Biden administration may soon allow Ukraine to use American-supplied munitions to strike inside Russia. In Prague for a NATO foreign ministers meeting, Blinken hit out at Moscow’s use of misinformation and disinformation, calling it a “poison” and signing an agreement with the Czech government to combat it. He also toured a Czech military base, where he saw armored vehicles that Prague is sending to Kyiv to help fight Russia’s invasion and received a briefing on a Czech initiative to...

The Belgian prosecutor says the employee played a 'significant role' in a suspected Russian propaganda operation which infiltrated the European Parliament. Brussels and French police carried out a series of simultaneous raids at European Parliament offices in Brussels and Strasbourg as well as at the home of a parliamentary staffer in the Belgian neighbourhood of Schaerbeek on Wednesday morning. Dutch EU lawmaker Marcel de Graaff confirmed on social media platform X that the staffer in question was his parliamentary assistant, Guillaume Pradoura, but distanced himself from the accusations. "I have no involvement whatsoever in any so-called Russian disinformation operation. I...

War drives innovation. Weapons systems that were cutting edge at the beginning of a great power war often are obsolete by the end because the enemy learns how to counter them. A little-appreciated challenge of the Ukraine war is that it is making many of the United States’ best weapons systems obsolete. As a result, the next president and Congress need to do a major push in defense weapons innovation. For example, according to a confidential Ukrainian weapons assessment that was leaked to the Washington Post and summarized by Yahoo news:The assessment said that Ukraine stopped using the Excalibur shells...

Western countries should let Ukraine strike military bases inside Russia with the sophisticated long-range weapons they are providing to Kyiv, French President Emmanuel Macron said, pressuring his allies in the most recent sign of a potentially significant policy shift that could help change the complexion of the war. The question of whether to allow Ukraine to hit targets on Russian soil with Western-supplied weaponry has been a delicate issue since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022. Western leaders have mostly shrunk from taking the step because it runs the risk of provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin,...

Poland's foreign minister said the US had told Russia that it would strike Russian targets in Ukraine if Putin were to use nuclear weapons.In an interview with the Guardian, Radosław Sikorski seemed doubtful of Russia's threats about using nuclear weapons, saying: "The Americans have told the Russians that if you explode a nuke, even if it doesn't kill anybody, we will hit all your targets [positions] in Ukraine with conventional weapons, we'll destroy all of them.""I think that's a credible threat," he said. "Also, the Chinese and the Indians have read Russia the riot act. And it's no child's play...

With six months to go until the presidential election, America's NATO allies are planning to boost their defense spending ahead of the potential disruption of a second Donald Trump presidency. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is preparing a funding plan to try to insulate the 75-year-old military partnership from any changing political realities that might affect the alliance, according to Oana Lungescu, who until last year was the longtime lead NATO spokesperson for Stoltenberg. "It is important to have predictability both for allies and for Ukraine," Lungescu told CBS News. "This [plan] relieves the U.S. of some of its organizational...

Since the start of the war, Western allies have asked Ukraine to refrain from using their donated weapons to strike deep inside Russia. Ukraine urgently needs the West's go-ahead to launch attacks on Russian territory with donated weapons, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday after signing a long-term security deal with Belgium that includes the provision of 30 F-16s fighter jets by 2028. The deal, however, prohibits Ukraine from deploying the sought-after aircraft to strike targets located on Russian soil. This follows a long-held policy by Western allies that compels Kyiv to use donated weapons and ammunition strictly within its...

Poland’s Minister of National Defense, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, has signed a contract with the United States for the acquisition of several hundred AGM-158 JASSM-ER air-to-ground missiles. This agreement on Tuesday marks another major procurement by the Ministry of National Defense. Just last week, Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz signed a $960 million contract for the delivery of four reconnaissance aerostats, equipped with advanced radar systems, under the “Barbara” program. “A $735 million contract is being signed today. Another multi-million-dollar contract for the purchase of JASSM-ER air-to-ground missiles, which will be in the equipment of the Polish army,” said the Minister of National Defense. “We...

Poland has signed a $735 million contract with the U.S. for the supply of JASSM-ER missiles, Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Tuesday. The country is spending heavily to bolster its armed forces since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Warsaw is spending around 4% of its gross domestic product on defense this year and last week announced an agreement with the U.S. The missiles have a range of around 621 miles, according to the defense ministry.

Ukraine urgently needs new soldiers, but some — left uneasy by brutal fighting and intensifying conscription efforts — are desperately trying to avoid being called up. “When you see people in uniform, you panic. You start thinking someone will mobilize you now against your will,” a lawyer based in Kyiv told NBC News. He did not want his identity known, fearful, like a growing number of men across the country, of being drafted into the army... “I love my country,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month. “I donate to the Ukrainian army. But unfortunately, I am not...

KYIV (Reuters) -A Ukrainian drone targeted a long-range radar deep inside Russia on Sunday, the second such strike in a week on infrastructure used by Moscow to monitor Ukraine’s military activities, a Kyiv intelligence source said. The source said the strike was aimed at a “Voronezh M” radar near the city of Orsk in the Orenburg region some 1,500 km from the closest territory held by Kyiv’s forces. The source, who declined to be named, did not say if there was any damage, but the move would make it one of the deepest attempted drone strikes in Russian territory since...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged Western leaders to pressure Russia into peace using "all means" necessary. ... Mr Zelensky has long said he will not negotiate with Russia directly until Moscow's forces leave all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. ... The Ukrainian president rejected the idea of inviting Russia to a planned peace summit in Switzerland next month. ... Delegates will "try and chart a course for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine" based on 10 demands set forth by Kyiv calling for the return of all invaded territory, reparation payments for war-related damages and the creation of a...

Who is Your Enemy? One of the most fundamental differences between the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and the proposed Georgian foreign agents law is the historical context in which the two laws originated, and who they were directed against. The US Congress adopted FARA in 1938 specifically to target lobbying and consulting firms acting on behalf of the Nazi German government. Concern about Soviet Communist agents also motivated the law. Of course, by 1938, the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt was already well aware that Nazi Germany presented a direct military and security threat to the country....

Designated airbase for hoped-for F16s clobbered by hypersonics...This is a conflict betwewen Christians and Nazis, and the nazis are losing...

The US has been outclassed by its rivals, such as Russia, in its capacity to remotely take out enemy weapons using jamming technology, according to former US military officials. Mike Nagata, a retired US Army lieutenant general who led special operations in the Middle East, said that the US is "still falling behind" in its electronic warfare capabilities, reported Defense One. Electronic warfare units, which use electronic signals to remotely scramble the GPS coordinates used to guide weapons, have played a key role in Russia's war in Ukraine. "The gap between where the United States should be and where we...

Russia is managing to produce artillery shells at triple the speed of Ukraine’s allies for a quarter of the price, Sky News reported on May 26, referencing analysis from management consulting firm Bain & Company. Using publicly available data, the firm claims that Russian factories can produce or refurbish 4.5 million 152 mm shells this year for $1,000 per round. European countries and the U.S. are only expected to produce 1.3 million 155 mm shells combined, at an average cost of $4,000 per unit. Slow artillery production has hindered Ukraine’s progress on the battlefield. Soldiers claim that for every round...