European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the Ukraine war, Iran and China on Tuesday in their first phone call since the Trump administration took office on 20 January.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that the rigours of nearly three years of war did not allow for changes in mobilisation rules because if soldiers left for home en masse, Russian President Vladimir Putin “will kill us all”.
Ukraine’s government on Tuesday sacked a deputy defence minister in charge of weapons purchases amid infighting over procurement that is complicating Kyiv’s attempt to reassure key Western partners at a critical moment in the war with Russia.
EU’s Kallas, US’s Rubio discuss Ukraine in first phone call
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the Ukraine war, Iran and China on Tuesday in their first phone call since the Trump administration took office on 20 January.
The call comes amid heightened European concerns about what the new administration, with its “America First” approach, will mean for transatlantic ties in defence and security, the economy, trade and other areas.
“We discussed global issues where the EU and US have the same interests, including Russia’s war in Ukraine, Iran’s malign influence and challenges posed by China,” said Kallas on the social media platform X.
“The EU and US are always stronger together. Looking forward to meeting you soon,” said Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister.
An EU official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Kallas and Rubio had focused on shared priorities.
“They agreed on the necessity of maintaining maximum pressure on Moscow to move towards a just and sustainable peace in Ukraine,” said the official.
“The pair also addressed the destabilising role of Iran and Syria’s political transition.”
Zelensky says war means mobilisation rules cannot be changed
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that the rigours of nearly three years of war did not allow for changes in mobilisation rules because if soldiers left for home en masse, Russian President Vladimir Putin “will kill us all”.
Zelensky told Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, who was released this month after being detained for 21 days in Iran, that the toll of war on Ukrainians and their families underscored the need to bring the conflict rapidly to an end.
Parliament approved new mobilisation rules last year to boost the numbers of those at the front, but Ukraine’s fighting forces are still badly outnumbered by their Russian adversaries.
“The wartime situation calls for mobilisation of people and all the resources we have in the country. Absolutely all of them,” said Zelensky in the interview, excerpts of which were posted on the president’s Telegram channel.
“And, unfortunately, that is the challenge of this war and that is why we have to speed things up to the maximum to end it, to oblige Russia to end this war,” said Zelensky.
“Today, we are defending ourselves. If tomorrow, for instance, half the army heads home, we really should have surrendered on the very first day. That is how it is. If half the army goes home, Putin will kill us all.”
The legislation approved last year, lowered the age of mobilisation for Ukrainian men from 27 to 25 years, narrowed exemptions and imposed penalties on evaders.
Top Ukrainian defence official sacked amid infighting over procurement
Ukraine’s government on Tuesday sacked a deputy defence minister in charge of weapons purchases amid infighting over procurement that is complicating Kyiv’s attempt to reassure key Western partners at a critical moment in the war with Russia.
The dispute burst into the open last week after Defence Minister Rustem Umerov criticised Ukraine’s arms procurement effort as having failed to deliver results for frontline troops.
Ukraine has sought to clean up defence spending as the war grinds towards its fourth year, an effort that has taken on greater importance as US President Donald Trump considers whether to continue supporting Kyiv’s military.
As well as requesting Dmytro Klimenkov’s removal, Umerov levelled particular criticism at the Defence Procurement Agency, which coordinates weapons purchases for Ukraine’s outgunned military.
The agency was established after a series of allegations earlier in the war of ministry misspending and has aimed to cut out intermediaries and minimise the risk of corruption.
In a statement on Friday, Umerov said it had “inexplicably transformed into an ‘Amazon’” and its purchases were too publicly visible. Ukraine has long sought to keep details of arms procurement a closely guarded secret.
Umerov also said that he would not renew a contract with agency chief Maryna Bezrukova, a reformer whose appointment last year had been applauded by Kyiv’s Western partners. He pledged to install a new director.
Atomic scientists adjust ‘Doomsday Clock’ closer than ever to midnight
Atomic scientists on Tuesday moved their “Doomsday Clock” closer to midnight than ever before, citing Russian nuclear threats amid its invasion of Ukraine, tensions in other world hot spots, military applications of artificial intelligence and climate change as factors underlying the risks of global catastrophe.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the clock to 89 seconds before midnight — the theoretical point of annihilation. That is one second closer than it was set last year. The Chicago-based nonprofit created the clock in 1947 during the Cold War tensions that followed World War Two to warn the public about how close humankind was to destroying the world.
“The factors shaping this year’s decision — nuclear risk, climate change, the potential misuse of advances in biological science and a variety of other emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence — were not new in 2024. But we have seen insufficient progress in addressing the key challenges, and in many cases this is leading to increasingly negative and worrisome effects,” said Daniel Holz, chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board.
The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by scientists including Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Zelensky says he discussed US contacts with Netanyahu
Zelensky said on Tuesday he had had a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss bilateral matters.
“We also discussed maintaining close contact with partners, particularly the United States and President Trump,” he said on X.
Poland says Russia trying to recruit Poles on dark net to influence election
A senior member of the Polish government accused Russia on Tuesday of attempting to recruit Poles on the dark net to try to influence Poland’s presidential election campaign.
The European Union and Nato member-state has warned before of the danger of Russian interference in the mid-May election but Moscow has repeatedly denied meddling in foreign elections.
Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said Russia was looking for Polish citizens willing to influence the campaign from inside the country, offering them €3,000 to €4,000 to spread content containing disinformation.
Gawkowski said recruitment was being done via the dark net, a part of the internet accessible only using a specialised web browser. Poland had been observing such attempts since the start of the year, he said.
“This is money directed from the Russian services GRU and FSB, which are looking for such patrons of their content here,” Gawkowski told Reuters, referring to Russia’s military intelligence and its Federal Security Service.
Moscow did not immediately comment on his remarks.
Poland said this month it had identified a Russian group tasked with influencing Polish elections through disinformation and stoking instability.
Warsaw says its role as a hub for supplies to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia’s invasion had made it a target for spies working for Russia and its ally Belarus, as well as for acts of sabotage. Minsk and Moscow have dismissed accusations that they are behind acts of sabotage.
Denmark to allow preservation work on damaged Nord Stream 2 pipeline
Denmark’s energy agency on Tuesday said it had granted Nord Stream 2, a unit of Russia’s Gazprom, permission to conduct preservation work on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, which was damaged in a series of blasts in 2022.
The maintenance work was necessary to reduce environmental and safety risks stemming from the pipeline being filled with seawater and remaining natural gas, said the agency.
“The work aims to preserve the damaged pipeline by installing customised plugs at each of the open pipe ends to prevent further gas blow-out and the introduction of oxygenated seawater,” it said.
Nord Stream 2 completed the $11-billion pipeline project in 2021 to pump gas from Russia to Germany. But Germany halted the plan as relations with Moscow broke down ahead of Russia’s war in Ukraine, while the US imposed sanctions.
In September 2022, one of the two lines of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was damaged by mysterious blasts, along with both lines of Nord Stream 1. No one has taken responsibility for causing the damage.
The damaged line of NS2 is estimated to still contain approximately 9-10 million cubic metres of natural gas, while the intact line remains filled with gas, said the Danish agency aid.
Both the US and Ukraine have denied having anything to do with the attacks as has Russia. Moscow, without providing evidence, has blamed Western sabotage for the blasts, which largely cut Russian gas off from the lucrative European market.
Russian officials accused of stealing millions meant to fortify Kursk
Russian prosecutors are seeking to recover nearly $33-million of funds that they say were allocated for the defence of the western Kursk region, invaded by Ukraine last year, but stolen instead by corrupt officials.
Ukrainian troops stormed across the border in a surprise attack on 6 August and seized a chunk of Russian territory, some of which they still hold — a valuable bargaining chip for Kyiv in any peace talks with Moscow.
A lawsuit filed by the office of Russia’s prosecutor-general orders the head of the Kursk Regional Development Corporation, his deputies and a number of businessmen to repay more than 3.2 billion roubles ($32.7-million) allegedly embezzled from the regional defence budget, state news agency RIA reported.
In the two years before Ukraine’s attack, the governor in charge of Kursk at the time had repeatedly told the public that Russia had boosted its fortifications along the region’s 240km border with Ukraine.
“Right now the risk of an armed invasion of the territory of Kursk region from Ukraine is not high,” Roman Starovoit assured residents in November 2022. “However, we are constantly working to strengthen the region’s defence capabilities.”
The next month, he posed in a snowy field beside a row of pyramid-shaped anti-tank defences known as “dragon’s teeth”.
But in the autumn of 2023, Ukraine’s National Resistance Centre, created by the special operations forces, said in an online post that reconnaissance showed “almost all the strongholds are deserted of personnel and equipment” along the border with Kursk. Corruption was a factor, it said.
Vidео published by Ukrainian paratroopers during the early days of the August incursion showed columns of armoured vehicles pouring into Kursk through the rows of dragon’s teeth.
Between 2022 and 2023, some 19.4 billion roubles were pumped from Russia’s federal budget to Kursk, according to RIA, to build defences such as ditches and dragon’s teeth.
The lawsuit alleges that officials instead funnelled that money into contracts with more than a half-dozen companies controlled by several business people. The companies created “the appearance of performing work on the construction of protective structures and put in place a false scheme of expenses”, it says.
The head of the regional development fund and two of his deputies “used their official position for personal purposes … [and] for their illegal enrichment through the wrongful seizure of budget funds allocated for the protection and strengthening of the country’s defence capabilities against enemy invasion”.
The trio was arrested and sent to pre-trial detention on corruption charges in December and January, Russian media reported. They face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. One of the businessmen named in the suit, whose firm carried out construction work in Kursk, was placed in pre-trial detention last week. DM