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Russia is mustering its military might in the Luhansk region of Ukraine, officials said Wednesday, in what Kyiv suspects is preparation for an offensive as the first anniversary of Moscow's invasion approaches. Also Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government continued its crackdown on alleged corruption with the dismissal of several high-ranking officials, prominent lawmaker David Arakhamia said. Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 on an anti-establishment and anti-corruption platform in a country long gripped by graft. The latest allegations come as Western allies are channeling billions of dollars to help Kyiv fight Moscow and as the Ukrainian government is introducing reforms so it can potentially join the European Union one day. Ukraine's Security Service said on the Telegram messaging app that an operation on Wednesday targeted corrupt officials who undermine the country's economy and the stable functioning of the defense-industrial complex. It identified one as a former .
The war in Ukraine is at a critical point right now, US President Joe Biden said Thursday as the US and Germany announced additional support for Ukraine. "Right now, the war in Ukraine is at a critical point. We have to do everything we can to help the Ukrainians resist Russian aggression. And Russia is not attempting to slow up. The actions they're taking are as barbaric as they were a year ago, and they're not letting up at all," Biden told reporters during a Cabinet meeting. Earlier this afternoon, Biden said, he had a long discussion with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz about Ukraine and their alliances in Europe and the EU. "We have a much larger contingent of countries that share our view, including Japan and others. But we talked about what we're going to do, he said. "Today we jointly announced a statement saying that we're going to increase support for Ukraine. We're going to provide the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles to the Ukrainians, and the Germans are going to provi
The US will send Ukraine nearly USD 3 billion in military aid, in a massive new package that will for the first time include several dozen Bradley fighting vehicles, US officials said on Thursday, in the Biden administration's latest step to send increasingly lethal and powerful weapons to help Ukraine beat back Russian forces. The aid totalling about USD 2.85 billion is the largest in a series of packages of military equipment that the Pentagon has pulled from its stockpiles to send to Ukraine. It is aimed at getting as much to the Ukrainian forces as possible during the winter months, before spring sets in and an expected increase in fighting begins. An announcement is expected Friday, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the package have not been publicly announced. The Bradley fighting vehicles is a medium-armoured combat vehicles that can serve as a fortified troop carrier on the battlefield. It has tracks rather than wheels, but is ligh
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his armed forces to observe a 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old war. Putin did not appear to make his cease-fire order conditional on a Ukrainian agreement to follow suit, and it wasn't clear whether hostilities would actually halt on the 1,100-kilometer (684-mile) front line or elsewhere. Ukrainian officials have previously dismissed Russian peace moves as playing for time to regroup their forces and prepare for additional attacks. At various points during the war that started on February 24, Putin has ordered limited and local truces to allow evacuations of civilians or other humanitarian purposes. Thursday's order was the first time Putin directed his troops to observe a cease-fire throughout Ukraine. Based on the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the combat areas, we call on the ..
Russia is preparing to step up its attacks on Ukraine using Iranian-made exploding drones, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as Moscow looks for ways to keep up the pressure on Kyiv after months of battlefield setbacks for the Kremlin's war strategy. We have information that Russia is planning a prolonged attack by Shaheds (exploding drones), Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address late Monday. He said the goal is to break Ukraine's resistance by exhausting our people, (our) air defense, our energy, more than 10 months after Russia invaded its neighbor. Russian President Vladimir Putin is exploring how to shore up confidence in Moscow's flawed war effort, which in recent months has been dented by a Ukrainian counteroffensive backed by Western-supplied weapons. That has brought criticism in some Russian circles of the military's performance. In the latest embarrassment for the Kremlin, Ukrainian forces fired rockets at a facility in the eastern Donetsk region