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      Trump picks Keith Kellogg to serve as special envoy to Ukraine and Russia

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      Donald Trump has picked Keith Kellogg to serve as a special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, a newly conceived role given the ongoing war between the two countries.Kellogg, an 80-year-old retired US army lieutenant general, would start in the role as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues into its third year.“Keith has led a distinguished Military and Business career, including serving in highly sensitive National Security roles in my first Administration. He was with me right from the beginning! Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.Kellogg previously served as a national security adviser to the former vice-president Mike Pence during Trump’s first presidency. Kellogg later became acting security adviser to Trump himself after Michael Flynn resigned in 2017.As per his plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, Kellogg previously told Reuters that he would emphasize getting the two countries to the negotiating table.“We tell the Ukrainians: ‘You’ve got to come to the table, and if you don’t come to the table, support from the United States will dry up,’” Kellogg said in a June interview. “And you tell [Vladimir] Putin [that] he’s got to come to the table and if you don’t come to the table, then we’ll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field.”Early reactions to Kellogg’s potential confirmation have been tepid, the Hill reported.“It was a gulp – not horrible, not amazing,” said one security analyst based in Washington DC, who spoke anonymously to the publication.Oleh Shamshur, a former Ukrainian ambassador to the US, told the Hill he was pessimistic about Kellogg’s potential appointment.“As I understand, he totally accepts the logic of Trump’s ‘peace plan’ as related by [vice-president-elect JD] Vance,” said Shamshur, referring to Vance’s support of ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia and rejecting plans for Ukraine to join Nato.Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative thinktank, noted to the New York Times in September that Vance’s plans weren’t “a realistic proposal for peace”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He offered a plan for a Russian victory,” Coffey told the Times.Trump’s upcoming presidency has prompted questions about the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine. He pledged to bring a quick end to the war as one of his main campaign promises, though he has not elaborated on how he will do so.Some Ukraine supporters have voiced concerns that Trump’s steps to end the war could be detrimental to the country’s security or see Ukrainian land ceded to Russia, while Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says he is certain the war with Russia will “end sooner” than it otherwise would have once Trump takes office.Zelenskyy reportedly had a “constructive exchange” with Trump during a conversation in the aftermath of Trump’s victory the US presidential election. More

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      Russia Fires Record Number of Drones in Overnight Assault, Ukraine Says

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      The assault, which the Ukrainian Air Force said involved 188 drones, came as both sides intensify air bombardments.Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday that Russia launched 188 attack drones against the country overnight, calling it a record number as both sides intensify aerial assaults.The Ukrainian Air Force said that it had shot down 76 of the drones in the “massive attack” but that nearly all the rest had disappeared from radar. It was unclear how many of those drones had been intercepted by other means, such as electronic interference, and how many had struck targets.Some critical infrastructure was hit and residential buildings were damaged in several regions, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Damage to the power grid in Ternopil, a city in western Ukraine, caused electricity and water outages, the local authorities said.Russia’s military has attacked Ukrainian cities with waves of drones almost every night since September in a campaign that analysts say is intended to test and wear down air defenses. The drones have also targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in a renewed effort to plunge the population into cold and darkness as winter sets in.The overnight drone assault, however, stood out for its sheer scale. It came as both Ukraine and Russia have been stepping up tit-for-tat air attacks over the past week.Last Tuesday, Ukraine struck deep inside Russia with U.S.-made missiles for the first time. Moscow vowed to respond and test fired an intermediate-range missile designed to deliver nuclear weapons, though it was not armed with nuclear warheads. The strikes represented a demonstration of force by both sides and shifted the focus away from ground assaults to a Cold War-style missile brinkmanship.On Tuesday, ambassadors from Ukraine and NATO’s member states were set to discuss a possible response to Russia’s use of the intermediate-range missile, which was fired at the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine. The strike caused little damage, but it raised alarm in Ukraine at a time when Moscow has been elevating threats of nuclear war.Ukrainian officials were expected to use the Tuesday meeting, to be held in Brussels, to reiterate their requests for allies to send more air-defense systems to counter Russian attacks.Months of Russian drone and missile bombardments have depleted Ukraine’s air defenses. In recent weeks, Russian drones have increasingly penetrated central Kyiv, home to government administration buildings and the presidential palace. The once rare buzz of drones flying overhead at night and the rat-tat-tat of heavy machine guns trying to take them down now echo regularly through the heart of the capital. More

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      U.K. Man Fighting for Ukraine Is Said to Be Captured in Russia

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      Russian state media reported that a British volunteer for the Ukrainian Army was captured amid fighting in the Kursk region.Russian forces in the country’s Kursk region have captured a British man who volunteered for the Ukrainian Army, Russia’s state news agencies reported, in what would likely be the first case of a Westerner detained on Russian soil while fighting for Ukraine.A Russian state news agency identified the detained individual on Monday as James Scott Rhys Anderson. The agency, Tass, reported that he was part of a battalion of up to 500 Ukrainian servicemen sent to the sliver of land in the Kursk region that has been occupied by Ukraine since August. Mr. Anderson said he was deployed there against his will, according to Tass.When asked about Mr. Anderson being captured in Russia, the British Foreign Office said only that it was “supporting the family of a British man following reports of his detention.”Before being dispatched to the Kursk region, Mr. Anderson, a former signalman in the British Army, was training Ukrainian soldiers at a military range near the village of Inhulets in central Ukraine, according to Tass.Tass also referred to an unverified video, posted by a pro-Russian military blog on Telegram, a popular messaging app, in which Mr. Anderson, said in the video to be 22, said that he had served in the British Army for four years, starting in 2019, but then “got fired” from his job. He then decided to join the international legion in Ukraine.“That was a stupid idea,” Mr. Anderson said in the video.Yuri Podolyaka, one the most popular pro-Kremlin military bloggers on Telegram, said in a post that Mr. Anderson was captured in the village of Plyokhovo, about a mile north of the border between Russia and Ukraine. Plyokhovo has been the scene of some of the most intense fighting in the area.Over the past few weeks, Russia has been trying to drive Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region. So far, at least a third of the captured territory has been retaken by Russia in bloody assaults against some of the best Ukrainian units.After more than two and a half years of heavy fighting, both Russia and Ukraine are suffering from troop shortages. But with a much smaller population, the difficulty has been more acute for Kyiv.Russian investigators are now likely to charge Mr. Anderson with being a mercenary in a foreign conflict. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison.In June 2022, a court in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine sentenced to death two British men who had been fighting for Ukraine. They were released in a prisoner exchange that September.Megan Specia More

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      Ukraine Says Russia Struck It With New Missile; ICBM Claim Is Disputed

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      Russia struck the city of Dnipro with a volley that Ukraine said included an intercontinental ballistic missile. Western officials said an ICBM was not used.Russia sent a volley of missiles at the eastern city of Dnipro on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said, the latest assault in a week of rising hostilities between the two adversaries.Ukraine claimed Russia had used an intercontinental ballistic missile, which would have represented a significant escalation in its assaults. But several Western officials said that the weapon was not an ICBM and instead was likely an intermediate-range missile that flies shorter distances.The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private Western intelligence assessment.The Ukrainians did not provide much detail on the strike, saying only that the missile had been launched from the Russian region of Astrakhan and was part of a volley aimed at Dnipro. The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had attacked Ukraine with a new class of missile. “All the parameters — speed, altitude — match those of an intercontinental ballistic missile,” he said. “All expert evaluations are underway.”A senior U.S. official said the weapon appeared to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile, adding, “But it is a new type we have been tracking.”In the last few days, the Ukrainian military has used longer-range American and British missiles to strike deeper into Russia, after the two countries granted permission to do so. In response, President Vladimir V. Putin lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons. More

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      What’s behind the escalating situation in Ukraine? – podcast

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      Tuesday marked 1,000 days of the Ukraine war – a conflict that for months had seemingly no end in sight. Russia has been advancing, but its progress has been grindingly slow, with Ukraine’s resistance struggling with a lack of weapons and aid. Both sides have had problems with morale and recruitment.Over the past week, things have changed. Russia has drafted in North Korean troops, while Ukraine has hit Russia with long-range missiles provided by the US. Dan Sabbagh is in Ukraine and explains how hits to the energy grid could make the difference on the ground, and how important the use of North Korean troops could be given the lack of willing Russian conscripts.Looming over it all, Dan tells Michael Safi, is the impending Trump presidency and the expectation that making “a deal” would be his priority. Is the recent increase in violence a sign that both sides are jockeying for a more powerful negotiating position?Support the Guardian today theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod More

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      Biden Agrees to Supply Ukraine With Anti-Personnel Mines

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      The decision is the latest in a series of moves by the U.S. and Russia that have escalated tensions between the two.The Biden administration has approved supplying Ukraine with American anti-personnel mines to bolster defenses against Russian attacks as Ukrainian front lines in the country’s east have buckled, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday.The decision is the latest in a series of moves by Russia and the United States related to the war in Ukraine that have escalated tensions between the two.The White House recently granted permission to Ukraine to fire longer-range American missiles at targets in Russia, which the Ukrainians did for the first time on Tuesday. Moscow in response formalized a new doctrine lowering the threshold for when it would use nuclear weapons.Mr. Austin said the U.S. decision was prompted by Russia’s increasing reliance on foot soldiers to lead their assaults, instead of armored vehicles. Mr. Austin, speaking to reporters while traveling in Laos, said the shift in policy follows changing tactics by the Russians. Because of that, Ukraine has “a need for things that can help slow down that effort on the part of the Russians,” Mr. Austin said.“They’ve asked for these, and so I think it’s a good idea,” Mr. Austin said.The move is also noteworthy because it is part of a series of late actions taken in the waning weeks of the Biden presidency to bolster Ukraine. President Biden in the past has sought to calibrate American help for Ukraine against his own concern about crossing Russian “red lines” that could lead to direct conflict between Washington and Moscow.But since the Nov. 5 election that will bring former President Donald J. Trump back to the White House, Biden administration officials have said the potential benefits of the actions outweigh the escalation risks.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 Fired U.S.-Made Missiles Into Russia for First Time, Officials Say

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      The attack came just days after President Biden gave Ukraine permission to use the weapons to strike targets inside Russia.Ukraine’s military used American-made ballistic missiles on Tuesday to strike into Russia for the first time, according to senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials, just days after President Biden gave permission to do so in what amounted to a major shift of American policy.The pre-dawn attack struck an ammunition depot in the Bryansk region of southwestern Russia, Ukrainian officials said. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement that Kyiv used six ballistic missiles known as the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS. The senior American and Ukrainian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations, confirmed that ATACMS were used.The strike represented a demonstration of force for Ukraine as it tries to show Western allies that providing more powerful and sophisticated weapons will pay off — by degrading Russia’s forces and bolstering Ukraine’s prospects in the war.Officials in Kyiv had pleaded for months for permission to use ATACMS to strike military targets deeper inside Russia before the Biden administration relented and gave its assent on Sunday. The authorization came just months before the return to office of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has said he will seek a quick end to the war in Ukraine.His election has cast uncertainty over whether the U.S. will maintain the robust military support it has provided Ukraine under Mr. Biden, or whether Mr. Trump might take a different approach. The addition of up to 10,000 North Korean troops to Moscow’s war effort this fall appeared to be what persuaded the Biden administration to shift its stance on ATACMS. The United States and its allies viewed their arrival as an escalation. More

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      Trump allies attack Biden for allowing Ukraine to use US missiles inside Russia

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      Allies of the president-elect, Donald Trump, have lashed out angrily at Joe Biden for his decision to permit Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to launch attacks inside Russia for the first time, in what the Kremlin has termed an “escalation” in the war.Key Trump surrogates, including his son Donald Trump Jr, hardline congressional Republicans, and other backers have accused Biden of seeking to spark “world war three” before Trump’s presidential inauguration in January.“The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives,” wrote Donald Trump Jr on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.Richard Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, who was seen as a potential candidate for secretary of state, wrote: “No one anticipated that Joe Biden would ESCALATE the war in Ukraine during the transition period. This is as if he is launching a whole new war. Everything has changed now – all previous calculations are null and void.”Other Republicans to sound off included the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Utah senator Mike Lee, who said: “Joe Biden has just set the stage for World War III. Let’s all pray that it doesn’t come to this.”A state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, defended the decision during a press briefing on Monday, saying: “[The] American people elected Joe Biden to a four-year term, not to a term of three years and 10 months, and we will use every day of our term to pursue the foreign policy interests that we believe are in the interests of the American people.”Discussions had been ongoing for months between the White House, the state department and European allies on whether to allow strikes into Ukraine. Currently, the decision to allow limited strikes using the US-supplied Atacms missiles would permit the Ukrainian army to target Russian military infrastructure in the Kursk region where the US has said that more than 10,000 North Korean troops have joined Russian forces preparing a counter-offensive to force Ukrainian troops out of the region.The decision by the White House will set up a dilemma for the incoming administration on whether to immediately roll back the authorisation after Trump’s inauguration or retain it as a potential bargaining chip in the negotiations the president-elect has said he wants to hold in order to end the fighting.While Trump and his allies have broadly denounced increasing military support and financial aid for the Ukrainian government, analysts said it was unclear whether Trump would move immediately to repeal the decision regarding long-range missiles.“On the first day they could announce, ‘We are suspending this authorization pending a review of Ukraine policy,’” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a thinktank based in Washington. “But that would engender a lot of criticism and revive all these stories about some deals with Putin.”He said it was not a foregone conclusion that Trump would immediately repeal the decision. “One is just the political cost isn’t worth the gain, but Trump’s also a deal-maker, and that would be to give away something without getting anything for it … to start off with a concession is just bad negotiating tactics.”The White House decision may also prompt European allies with similar restrictions on the use of their long-range missiles in Ukraine to follow suit. The UK is expected to supply Storm Shadow missiles for use by Ukraine on targets inside Russia following the Biden decision with Keir Starmer, the prime minister, saying at the G20 summit that the UK needed to “double down” on its support for Ukraine.Germany has maintained its position not to supply Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles, while the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had already said Paris was open to consider greenlighting the use of its missiles to strike on Russian soil.Theresa Fallon, the director of the Center for Russia Europe Asia Studies in Brussels, said that there were mixed reactions among European military officials, with some worried about the potential for an escalation, while others were “happy … that Ukraine could now use the equipment without one hand tied behind their back any more. But this decision came late, very late, [Ukraine] needs to be able to defend itself, and use this equipment for what it was designed to do. But we should keep in mind it is not going to be a game changer and more equipment is needed.”“I can’t predict what Trump will do,” she said. “But … once these things are in place, there is a momentum to continue to use them. It may be hard to put it back into the box. But on the other hand, if there is not a resupply of missiles then the use of them for targets in Russia will have run its course.” More