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    Zelenskyy to replace Ukraine’s envoy to US in diplomatic shuffle

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    Volodymyr Zelenskyy is replacing Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, who has been heavily criticised by leading Republicans, as part a diplomatic reshuffle designed to strengthen ties with the Trump administration.Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, confirmed on Wednesday that Oksana Markarova will be recalled from Washington after four years in the job. He described her as “extremely effective, charismatic and one of our most successful ambassadors”.He indicated that several top ambassadors to G7 and G20 countries would also be moved, telling Ukrainian radio “Every diplomat has a rotation cycle”.The diplomatic shake-up comes at a critical moment in the war. Russian troops have been attacking across the 600-mile frontline and in recent weeks the speed of their gains has increased, with the Kremlin spokesperson declaring: “We are advancing.”Russian combat units are for the first time close to crossing into Dnipropetrovsk oblast.Late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday, Russia carried out its biggest aerial attack since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It involved a record 728 Shahed-type drones, as well as 13 cruise and ballistic missiles. Most were shot down.The US House of Representatives speaker, Mike Johnson, is among the Republican figures who have criticised Markarova, accusing her of supporting the Democratic party and its candidate Kamala Harris in the run-up to last November’s presidential election.View image in fullscreenIn February she was pictured with her head in her hand during Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s disastrous meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office.There were calls for her dismissal after Zelenskyy visited a shell factory in Pennsylvania last September. Markarova organised the visit and did not invite a single Republican, Johnson said at the time.Ukrainian officials deny any bias but acknowledge the ambassador previously had good relations with the Biden administration and was close to Victoria Nuland, the then undersecretary of state for political affairs.Zelenskyy and Trump discussed Markarova’s departure during a phone call last Friday which Ukraine’s president hailed as their most constructive to date.On Tuesday, Trump expressed growing frustration with Vladimir Putin and announced US weapons deliveries to Kyiv would be restarted. His announcement followed a week-long pause, apparently ordered by Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defense.The shipment includes Patriot interceptor missiles and other precision munitions. It is unclear how many will be transferred. The US news website Axios reported 10 missiles would be delivered – a tiny amount at a time when Moscow has dramatically escalated its bombardment of Ukrainian cities.The overnight raid was directed at the northwestern city of Lutsk. At least six civilians were killed and 39 injured in several other regions of the country, including Kharkiv and Donetsk in the north-east and east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.A one-year-old boy, Dmytro, died in the village of Pravdyne in Kherson oblast when the Russians hit his house with drones, the local administration reported. The boy had been staying with his great-grandmother.One possible successor to Markarova in Washington is said to be Ihor Zhovkva, the deputy head of the office of Ukraine’s president. Zhovka’s immediate boss is Andriy Yermak, who is widely seen as the most influential person in Ukrainian politics after Zelenskyy.Other names include the finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, and Olha Stefanishyna, who is deputy prime minister for Europe and Euro-Atlantic integration, as well as minister of justice.There is growing optimism in Kyiv that Trump’s pivot earlier this year towards Russia has been halted, if not quite reversed. One former Ukrainian official credited Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser and a veteran negotiator, with the transformation.Powell has played an important role in repairing Zelenskyy’s fraught relations with Washington after the Oval Office bust-up.He advised Ukraine’s government to avoid confronting the US president and to take his words as truth. The approach – described as “strategic patience” – was beginning to pay off, the official suggested.Zelenskyy has agreed to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, repeatedly praised Trump’s leadership, and signed a deal giving American investors access to Ukraine’s valuable natural resources.On Wednesday he met Pope Leo in Rome before a two-day international conference, organised to help Ukraine’s postwar recovery. Zelenskyy said they had discussed the return of Ukrainian children and civilians who had been abducted by Russia and the Vatican’s offer to facilitate peace negotiations.Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is due to attend the conference. In a recent call with Trump, Merz reportedly offered to buy Patriot anti-defence batteries from the US and to send them to Ukraine.Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, is also due in Rome and is likely to hold talks on weapons deliveries with Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defence minister. More

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      Hegseth falsely cited weapon shortages in halting shipments to Ukraine, Democrats say

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      Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, unilaterally halted an agreed shipment of military aid to Ukraine due to baseless concerns that US stockpiles of weapons have run too low, it has been reported.A batch of air defense missiles and other precision munitions were due to be sent to Ukraine to aid it in its ongoing war with Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022. The aid was promised by the US during Joe Biden’s administration last year.But the Pentagon halted the shipment, with NBC reporting that a decision to do so was made solely by Hegseth, Donald Trump’s top defense official and a former Fox News weekend host who has previously come under pressure for sharing plans of a military strike in two group chats on the messaging app Signal, one of which accidentally included a journalist.Hegseth has now halted US military supplies to Ukraine on three occasions, NBC said, with the latest intervention purportedly coming due to concerns that the US’s own weapons stockpile is running too low.When the president was asked about the pause in shipments to Ukraine by a reporter on Thursday, he claimed that it was necessary because “Biden emptied out our whole country, giving them weapons, and we have to make sure we have enough for ourselves”.A White House spokesperson said last week that the decision “was made to put America’s interests first following a [defense department] review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe. The strength of the United States armed forces remains unquestioned – just ask Iran.”“This capability review,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told reporters on Wednesday, “is being conducted to ensure US military aid aligns with our defense priorities.”“We see this as a commonsense, pragmatic step towards having a framework to evaluate what munitions are sent and where,” Parnell added. He also seemed to confirm that there is no current shortage of arms for US forces. “Let it be known that our military has everything that it needs to conduct any mission, anywhere, anytime, all around the world,” he said.The decision surprised members of Congress, as well as Ukraine and the US’s European allies. Democrats said there is no evidence that American weapon stocks are in decline.“We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the three-and-a-half years of the Ukraine conflict,” Adam Smith, a Democrat and ranking member of the House armed services committee, told NBC. Smith said that his staff had “seen the numbers” on weapon supplies and that there is no justification to suspend aid to Ukraine.The weapons being delayed include dozens of Patriot interceptor missiles that can defend against Russian missile attacks, as well as howitzers and other missile systems.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRussia has recently stepped up its bombardment of Ukrainian cities, using missiles and drones to wreak havoc and terror among Ukrainian civilians. The delay in getting help to fend off these attacks is “painful”, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker said last week.“This decision is certainly very unpleasant for us,” said Fedir Venislavskyi, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s defense committee, according to Reuters.“It’s painful, and against the background of the terrorist attacks which Russia commits against Ukraine.”The Department of Defense did not reply to a request for comment on the aid pause. More

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      Trump has ‘good conversation’ with Zelenskyy after heavy bombardment of Ukraine by Russia

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      Donald Trump spoke with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Friday as the US president appears increasingly disheartened over his chances of fulfilling a campaign pledge to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.The call with Zelenskyy comes as Washington has halted its latest shipment of military aid to Ukraine including Patriot air defense missiles and other crucial munitions meant to support the country’s defenses, and hours after Russia launched a devastating air attack on Kyiv using a record number of drones and ballistic missiles.Zelenskyy called the conversation “important and useful” and said in a post said that he and Trump had discussed Ukraine’s air defense capabilities, joint defense production and “mutual purchases and investments”, all potentially avenues for Ukraine to restart aid from the United States by providing incentives for the Trump administration to rush crucial munitions to Kyiv.He said that the two sides had also agreed to “increase aerial protection”, a particular focus for Kyiv as Russia has increased bombardments of Ukrainian cities despite outrage from Trump and other world leaders.Yet it was not immediately clear if Zelenskyy had achieved any concrete progress with Trump and in his statement he did not mention the halt of aid shipments from the US or announce their resumption. Axios reported that a source described the call as a “good conversation”.Trump said he was “very disappointed” after a telephone call with Vladimir Putin on Thursday. A Putin aide told reporters that the Russian president was not willing to make concessions on what the Kremlin has called the “root causes” of the war with Ukraine, a list of grievances that includes Nato expansion and Ukraine’s desire to join western economic and security blocs.“I’m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don’t think he’s there,” Trump told reporters after holding a rally in Iowa on Thursday evening. “I don’t think he’s there, and I’m very disappointed. I’m just saying, I don’t think he’s looking to stop, and that’s too bad.”The US has said that it halted the shipments, some of which were already in Poland, due to a review of US military stockpiles that suggested that the country is running low on munitions for its own troops.Germany has said that it is in “intensive talks” to buy the Patriot missiles for Ukraine, although it’s unclear whether those stocks would be available immediately.“There are various ways to fill this Patriot gap,” a German government spokesperson told a news conference in Berlin on Friday. One option being considered was for the German government to buy the Patriot missile batteries in the United States and then send them to Ukraine.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I can confirm that intensive discussions are indeed being held on this matter,” the spokesperson said.The shortage of Patriot missiles was further highlighted by the record bombardment of Ukraine in which Russia sent more than 550 drones and ballistic missiles at major cities in what Zelenskyy described as a “deliberate act of terror”.The strike immediately followed the call between Putin and Trump, Zelenskyy said, and was a “clear interpretation of how Moscow interprets diplomacy”. More

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      As Trump Returns to G7, Rift With Allies Is Even Deeper

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      In 2018, the president called for the group to embrace Russia and stormed out of the summit. Now he is seeking to shrink America’s military role abroad and embarking on a more expansive trade war.When President Trump last attended a Group of 7 meeting in Canada, he was in many ways the odd man out.At that meeting, in 2018, Mr. Trump called for the alliance of Western countries to embrace Russia, antagonized allies and ultimately stormed out of the summit over a trade battle he began by imposing metals tariffs on Canada.As he returns on Sunday for the Group of 7 meeting in Alberta, those fissures have only deepened. Since retaking office, the president has sought to shrink America’s military role abroad and made threats to annex the summit’s host after embarking on a much more expansive trade war.Mr. Trump is now facing a self-imposed deadline of early July to reach trade deals. His trade adviser even promised in April that the tariffs would lead to “90 deals in 90 days.” Despite reaching framework agreements with Britain and China, the administration has shown scant progress on deals with other major trading partners.The future of the president’s favored negotiating tool is uncertain as a legal battle over his tariffs plays out in the courts. But a failure to reach accords could lead the Trump administration to once again ratchet up tariffs and send markets roiling.“I think we’ll have a few new trade deals,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Sunday as he left for the summit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Donald Trump is losing control of American foreign policy | Christopher S Chivvis

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      Iran and the US have stood at a crossroads in recent weeks. Down one path lay negotiations that, while difficult, promised benefits to the citizens of both countries. Down the other path, a protracted war that promised little more than destruction.Back in 2018, Donald Trump had blocked the diplomatic path by tearing up the existing nuclear agreement with Iran – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. But since beginning his second term in January he has been surprisingly open to negotiations with Tehran. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seemed ready to go along.But the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has now decided for them in favor of the path of war, and despite initial hesitation, Trump now appears to be following him. Though uniquely positioned to rein in Netanyahu – more than any US president in decades – Trump has jumped on his bandwagon.After entering office, Trump rightly pursued a deal that would offer Iran sanctions relief in return for an end to its nuclear weapons program. This deal would have served the interests of both parties. The risk of an Iranian nuclear breakout would have been greatly reduced, thus reducing pressure on other regional and global powers to pursue nuclear weapons themselves. Global energy markets would have benefited. The United States could have meanwhile pursued the drawdown of its military forces in the region, thus furthering a goal of every US president since Barack Obama. Improved US relations with Iran would also have helped to complicate Iran’s deepening ties to Russia and China.But the Israeli government wanted none of this and has therefore spoiled the Trump administration’s negotiations. The Israeli government claims that Iran was days away from a bomb and that it had no choice but to attack. This is hard to believe. For years, experts, including the US intelligence community, have estimated it would take months if not years for Iran to not only produce enough highly enriched uranium but to also build a bomb with it. If this timeline had changed in recent days, the US would almost certainly have joined Israel in these strikes.The strikes also will not end Iran’s nuclear program. The damage will be real, and military operations are ongoing, but Israel is ultimately only capable of destroying parts of Iran’s program. The destruction of the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz is a setback for Iran, but these facilities can be rebuilt. The assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists is a blow, but their knowledge can also be replaced over time. History shows that so-called decapitation strikes can have a near-term effect, but they rarely work in the long term. Even if the United States now joins Israel in strikes, this will not eliminate Iran’s weapons program entirely without a regime change operation against Tehran. That strategy would repeat the tragic errors of the 2003 Iraq war, but on an even larger scale.Iran’s nuclear weapons program will thus remain in some form. But hope of negotiations to control it is now badly damaged. The result is the worst of both worlds: a vengeful Iran even more determined to get nuclear weapons and no hope of negotiating a way out.Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has wisely attempted to distance the United States from Israel’s attack. Trump, however, who initially tried to rein in Israel’s attack, has now tried to use it as leverage to get Tehran to sign up for his deal. Aligning America so closely with Israel at this juncture is only likely to draw the United States more deeply into the conflict and expose it to Iranian reprisals.As a negotiating tactic it is also unlikely to work. The autocrats in Tehran cannot allow themselves to be visibly coerced into a deal lest it damage their domestic legitimacy. Some powerful Iranian officials moreover benefit from the status quo under sanctions, which have enriched a powerful few at the cost of the Iranian people.Israel’s audacious move is another example of US partners seizing the strategic initiative from Trump. Israel’s strikes come on the heels of the decision by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to strike deep into Russia with drones at the very moment the US was attempting to negotiate a ceasefire with Moscow.With the US focused on the turmoil the Trump administration is whipping up domestically, and so much uncertainty about the trajectory of Trump’s global policy goals, other actors are probably going to do the same. Unless the administration can find the discipline and focus to get control over its own foreign policy, the United States risks getting dragged into more conflicts that will not serve the interests of the American people.

      Chris Chivvis is a senior fellow and director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace More

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      European Union Unveils Fresh Sanctions on Russia, Including a Nord Stream Ban

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      Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, announced a proposal meant to ramp up pressure on Moscow.The European Union’s executive arm unveiled its latest package of sanctions against Russia, aiming to apply pressure to President Vladimir V. Putin by damaging the nation’s energy and banking sectors.The sanctions proposed on Tuesday — which still need to be debated and passed by member states — would ban transactions with the Nord Stream pipelines, hoping to choke off future flows of energy from Russia into Europe.They would lower the price cap at which Russian gas can be purchased on global markets, hoping to chip away at Russian revenues.And they would hit both Russian banks and the so-called “shadow fleet,” old tanker ships, often registered to other countries or not registered at all, that Moscow uses to covertly transport and sell its oil around the world to skirt energy sanctions. The new measures would blacklist a new batch of ships that are being used in this way.The proposal is the 18th sanctions package to come out of Brussels since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Taken as a whole, the measures are a sweeping effort to threaten Russian economic might and morale at a critical juncture in the war.The announcement comes as peace talks between Russia and Ukraine stall. Despite pressure from the Trump administration to work toward a cease-fire, the latest round of talks between the two sides, earlier this month in Istanbul, created little result outside of another agreement to swap prisoners.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ukraine Hid Attack Drones in Russia. These Videos Show What Happened Next.

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      <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Strategic bombers in at least two airfields, Belaya and Olenya, were destroyed. In total, Ukraine targeted bases in five regions, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, which said attacks on three other locations had been repelled. The Times was not able to verify those claims, […] More

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      The Guardian view on UK military strategy: prepare for a US retreat – or be left gravely exposed | Editorial

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      With the prime minister’s Churchillian claims that “the front line is here”, the public might expect a military posture that meets the drama of the moment. Yet the promised rise in defence spending – from 2.3% to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027 – suggests something less than full-scale mobilisation. The strategic defence review is systematic and detailed, but it remains an exercise in tightly bounded ambition. It speaks of daily cyber-attacks and undersea sabotage, but proposes no systemic institutional overhaul or acute surge in resilience. Given the developing dangers, it is surprising not to spell out a robust home-front framework.Instead, it is a cautious budget hike in the costume of crisis – signalling emergency while deferring real commitment for military financing. The review suggests that the more ambitious spending target of 3% of GDP, still shy of Nato’s 3.5% goal, is delayed to the next parliament. The plan is not to revive Keynesianism in fatigues. It is a post-austerity military modernisation that is technocratic and geopolitically anxious. It borrows the urgency of the past without inheriting its economic boldness.The review marks a real shift: it warns of “multiple, direct threats” for the first time since the cold war and vows to reverse the “hollowing out” of Britain’s armed forces. But in an age of climate emergencies and democratic drift, UK leadership should rest on multilateralism, not pure militarism. Declaring Russian “nuclear coercion” the central challenge, and that the “future of strategic arms control … does not look promising”, while sinking £15bn into warheads, risks fuelling escalation instead of pursuing arms control.Given the war in Ukraine, there is an ominous warning about changing US “security priorities”. This calls into question the wisdom of being overly reliant on America, which is now internally unstable and dismantling global public goods – such as the atmospheric data that drones rely on for navigation. Left unsaid but clearly underlying the report is the idea that the old defence model is no longer sufficient – for example, when maritime adversaries can weaponise infrastructure by sabotaging undersea cables, or where critical data systems are in commercial hands. It cannot be right that Ukraine’s sovereignty depends on the goodwill of the world’s richest man. But the private satellite network Starlink keeps Ukrainian hospitals, bases and drones online, leaving Kyiv hostage to the whims of its volatile owner, Elon Musk.The menace of hybrid warfare – including disinformation, cyber-attacks, economic pressure, deployment of irregular armed groups and use of regular forces – intensified in the last decade. This should see Britain forge deeper institutional ties with European partners, not just military but in infrastructure and information technologies. This would allow for a sovereign digital strategy for European nations to free them from dependency on mercurial actors.Though the review gestures toward greater societal involvement, it stops short of articulating a whole-of-society doctrine like Norway’s. This, when some analysts say the third world war has already begun with a slow, global breakdown of the post-1945 institutional order. The defence review should be about more than missiles and missions. It must also be about whether the country can keep the lights on, the gas flowing, the internet up and the truth intact. This review sees the threats, but not yet the system needed to confront them. In that gap lies the peril. More

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      Ukraine Says Russian Strike on Military Base Killed 12 Soldiers

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      The commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, submitted his resignation after the attack, saying that he felt a “personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy.”A Russian missile attack on a Ukrainian military training base killed at least 12 soldiers and wounded more than 60 others on Sunday, the Ukrainian military said, in a rare statement acknowledging casualties within its ranks.The commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, submitted his resignation after the attack on the base, in the Dnipro region, saying in a statement that he felt a “personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy.”Ukraine’s military said it was investigating the circumstances, but emphasized that there was not a mass gathering at the time of the attack — an apparent attempt to demonstrate lessons learned from previous incidents.“At the time the air raid alert was announced, all personnel were in shelters, except for those who may not have had time to reach it,” Vitalii Sarantsev, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Ground Forces, said in an interview with Ukrainian news media.Ukraine’s military does not typically disclose official casualty figures, which are treated as a state secret and are a highly sensitive topic in the country. Past attacks with large numbers of military casualties — like when a Russian missile killed soldiers gathered for an awards ceremony in southern Ukraine in late 2023 — have raised questions about security protocols.The strike on the training base came on the eve of another round of peace talks in Istanbul, proposed by Moscow. While Kyiv had insisted it see a promised memorandum outlining Russia’s cease-fire terms before sending any officials to the talks, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine announced on Sunday that Kyiv would in fact send a delegation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More