Norway would more than double its financial pledge to Ukraine this year while also hiking its own defence spending, said the prime minister on Thursday, declaring the Nordic country faced its most serious security situation for 80 years.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called on EU leaders on Thursday to support the idea of a truce between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the air and at sea, saying it would be a chance to test Moscow’s will to end its three-year invasion.
Russia would seek a peace deal in Ukraine that safeguarded its own long-term security and would not retreat from the gains it had made in the conflict, said President Vladimir Putin on Thursday in comments to relatives of soldiers killed there.
Norway more than doubles Ukraine aid to $7.8bn in 2025
Norway will more than double its financial pledge to Ukraine this year while also hiking its own defence spending, said the prime minister on Thursday, declaring the Nordic country faced its most serious security situation for 80 years.
Norway, home to the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund with assets of $1.8-trillion, has seen soaring income from gas sales to Europe as a result of Russia’s 2022 Ukraine invasion, and faces pressure at home and abroad to increase its aid.
The government and opposition leaders agreed on Thursday to raise this year’s Ukraine funding to 85 billion Norwegian crowns ($7.83-billion), up from a plan agreed in November of 35 billion crowns, said Labour Party Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere.
Stoere’s move marks the latest example of a European country scrambling to boost defence spending and support for Ukraine after President Donald Trump froze US military aid to Kyiv and fuelled doubts about its commitment to European Nato allies.
It comes on the same day as European Union members, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in attendance, are meeting in Brussels to pledge more money to Ukraine and towards their own defence. Norway is not in the EU but is part of Nato.
The Nordic nation now faces “the most serious security situation for our country since World War 2”, Stoere said in an address to parliament earlier on Thursday.
He said he would come back to parliament at a later time with revised defence spending plans.
In recent days Norwegian politicians have been debating how much more Oslo should support Ukraine, given the drop in US support for Kyiv and the fact that Norway’s neighbours such as Sweden and Denmark have so far made bigger donations.
Norway’s opposition Conservative Party supported the increase, and said further increases could be considered later this year.
In the parliament’s upstairs gallery, a delegation of six Ukrainian legislators listened to the PM’s address.
One of them, Volodymyr Kabachenko from the opposition Batkivshchyna party, said he welcomed Norway’s move and said the country could do more, noting it was the only European nation that could finance aid with its own money rather than debt.
“If Norway wants to secure the lives of its own citizens ... the only right thing to do is to provide Ukraine with money and we will be fighting on behalf of Ukraine, Europe and Norway,” Kabachenko told Reuters.
In 2023 alone, inflows to Norway’s wealth fund from oil and gas revenues swelled to 1.1 trillion crowns (around $100-billion) — nearly three times the previous record set in 2008.
Truce in air and at sea could test Russia’s will to end war - Zelensky
Zelensky called on EU leaders on Thursday to support the idea of a truce between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the air and at sea, saying it would be a chance to test Moscow’s will to end its three-year invasion.
“Everyone needs to make sure that Russia, as the sole source of this war, accepts the need to end it,” said Zelensky, addressing a summit in Brussels where European leaders had gathered to discuss defence spending and support for Ukraine after the US paused military aid to Kyiv.
“This can be proved by two forms of silence that are easy to establish and monitor, namely, no attacks on energy and other civilian infrastructure — truce for missiles, bombs, and long-range drones, and the second is truce on the water, meaning no military operations in the Black Sea,” added Zelensky.
He underlined that any such truce could only be seen as a first step towards comprehensive agreement on ending the war and providing security guarantees to Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian leader, the release of all prisoners of war could also be a means of establishing “basic trust”.
Zelensky once again stressed the need to adhere to the principle of no talks on Ukraine without Ukraine after Trump engaged in bilateral talks with Russia, sidelining Kyiv and European leaders.
“Anything that affects the security of Europe should be resolved with the participation of Europe,” he added, welcoming a new rearmament plan to boost the EU’s defence spending.
“Let me emphasise once again that Ukrainians do really want peace, but not at the cost of giving up Ukraine,” said Zelensky.
As Ukrainian and US officials agreed to hold a meeting next week, Zelenskiy expressed hope that it would be “meaningful”.
Any Ukraine peace deal must ensure Russia’s security, says Putin
Russia would seek a peace deal in Ukraine that safeguarded its own long-term security and would not retreat from the gains it had made in the conflict, said President Vladimir Putin on Thursday in comments to relatives of soldiers killed there.
“We must choose for ourselves a peace option that will suit us and that will ensure peace for our country in the long term,” Putin told a group of Russian women who had lost loved ones during the three-year war in Ukraine.
Asked by the mother of one fallen soldier if Russia would retreat, Putin said he did not intend to do that. Russia currently controls just under a fifth of Ukraine — or about 113,000 square km.
EU leaders pledge defence aid to support Zelensky after US aid freeze
European leaders on Thursday said they would stand by Ukraine and spend more on defence in a world upended by Trump’s reversal of US policies.
“Europe must take up this challenge, this arms race. And it must win it,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk as he arrived at the summit in Brussels.
“Europe as a whole is truly capable of winning any military, financial, economic confrontation with Russia — we are simply stronger,” said Tusk.
Many EU leaders hailed the European Commission’s proposals this week to give them fiscal flexibility on defence spending, and to jointly borrow up to €150-billion to lend to EU governments to spend on their militaries.
“We are here to defend Ukraine,” said the chairperson of the meeting, Antonio Costa, as he and European Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen, both smiling broadly, warmly welcomed Zelensky.
But decades of reliance on US protection, divergences on funding and on how France’s nuclear deterrence could be used for Europe showed how difficult it would be for the EU to fill the void left by Washington after it froze military aid to Ukraine.
Washington provided more than 40% of military aid to Ukraine last year, according to Nato, some of which Europe could not easily replace. Some leaders still held out hope, in public at least, that Washington could be coaxed back into the fold.
“We must ensure, with cool and wise heads, that US support is also guaranteed in the coming months and years, because Ukraine is also dependent on their support for its defence,” said Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The Brussels summit takes place against a backdrop of dramatic defence policy decisions driven by fears that Russia, emboldened by its war in Ukraine, may attack an EU country next and that Europe cannot rely on the US to come to its aid.
Trump to revoke legal status for 240,000 Ukrainians
Trump’s administration was planning to revoke temporary legal status for some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the conflict with Russia, said a senior Trump official and three sources familiar with the matter, potentially putting them on a fast-track to deportation.
The move, expected as soon as April, would be a stunning reversal of the welcome Ukrainians received under President Joe Biden’s administration.
The planned rollback of protections for Ukrainians was under way before Trump publicly feuded with Zelensky last week. It is part of a broader Trump administration effort to strip legal status from more than 1.8 million migrants allowed to enter the US under temporary humanitarian parole programmes launched under the Biden administration, said the sources.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back on the Reuters report in a post on X, saying “No decision has been made at this time.” US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on Wednesday that the department had no new announcements. Ukrainian government agencies did not respond to requests for comment.
Mocking him as ‘Micron’, Russia warns Macron
Russia warned French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday not to threaten it with nuclear rhetoric and, mocking his height by calling him “Micron”, ruled out European proposals to send peacekeeping forces from Nato members to Ukraine.
Macron said in an address to the nation on Wednesday that Russia was a threat to Europe, Paris could discuss extending its nuclear umbrella to allies and that he would hold a meeting of army chiefs from European countries willing to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine after a peace deal.
The Kremlin said the speech was extremely confrontational and that Macron wanted the war in Ukraine to continue.
“This [speech] is, of course, a threat against Russia,” said Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“Unlike their predecessors, who also wanted to fight against Russia, Napoleon, Hitler, Mr Macron does not act very gracefully, because at least they said it bluntly: ‘We must conquer Russia, we must defeat Russia’.”
Russia and the US are the world’s biggest nuclear powers, with more than 5,000 nuclear warheads each. China has about 500, France has 290 and Britain 225, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Russian officials and legislators accused Macron of rhetoric that could push the world closer to the abyss. Russian cartoons cast him as Napoleon Bonaparte riding towards defeat in Russia in 1812.
“Micron himself poses no big threat though. He’ll disappear forever no later than May 14, 2027. And he won’t be missed,” wrote former President Dmitry Medvedev on X, looking ahead to the end of Macron’s term.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova suggested Macron might want help measuring his true military size, and her ministry said his speech contained “notes of nuclear blackmail” and amounted to a threat directed towards Russia.
Lavrov and the Kremlin dismissed Macron’s proposal to send peacekeepers to Ukraine and said Russia would not agree to it.
“We are talking about such a confrontational deployment of an ephemeral contingent,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
US is ‘destroying’ world order, says Ukraine’s former army chief
Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former armed forces chief and current ambassador to Britain, said on Thursday that the US was “destroying” the current world order.
The popular general, who led Ukraine’s defence in the first two years of Moscow’s full-scale invasion, spoke as Zelensky sought to mend fences with Washington after a fiery White House row with Trump.
Zaluzhnyi said Ukraine had held onto its independence despite “animus and threats coming even from friends”.
His sharp remarks, made at London’s Chatham House think tank, came after Trump froze military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv in moves to push Zelensky into peace talks with Russia, while refusing to offer Kyiv security guarantees.
“It’s obvious the White House has questioned the unity of the whole Western world,” said Zaluzhnyi, “because we see that it’s not just the axis of evil and Russia trying to revise the world order, but the US is finally destroying this order.”
European leaders add pressure to solve Ukraine gas transit halt
European leaders are set to urge EU authorities and Kyiv to intensify talks following a halt to Russian gas transit through Ukraine, according to draft summit conclusions seen by Reuters that follow pressure from Slovakia.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has sought a mention of the Ukraine gas transit — a major route for Russian gas destined for Slovakia that Kyiv stopped from the start of this year — as part of summit conclusions, threatening to block the statement without it.
European Union leaders met on Thursday for an extraordinary summit to discuss Ukraine and European defence.
The draft conclusions include calling on the parties to intensify efforts on “finding workable solutions to the gas transit issue”, including through resumption.
The European Commission has previously said it has no interest in continuing Russian gas flows through Ukraine and alternatives exist. The EU has sought to cut its remaining reliance on energy from Russia since it invaded Ukraine.
An EU diplomat said inclusion of the transit reference was not a change in policy but left discussions on Slovakia’s concerns open.
The gas transit ended after Ukraine declined to renew an agreement with Moscow as it sought to deprive Russia of revenue to fund its invasion.
Slovakia’s own transit business of sending gas on to Europe suffered as a knock-on effect and it had to seek new routes for its Russian supplies. It has also said the halt increases prices and impairs the European Union’s competitiveness.
Fico has opposed military aid to Ukraine to prevent it from prolonging the war.
While locked in dispute with Zelensky over the transit issue, Slovakia has continued talks with EU officials.
Ukraine’s economic outlook remains exceptionally uncertain, says IMF
Ukraine was continuing to make good progress in implementing structural reforms, but its economic outlook remained exceptionally uncertain given its ongoing war against Russia’s invasion, said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday.
IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack said the war was taking a heavy toll on Ukraine’s people, economy and infrastructure, although the country had shown continued resilience since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The IMF last month forecast Ukraine’s gross domestic product growth would ease to between 2% and 3% in 2025 from an estimated 3.5% in 2024, reflecting headwinds from labor constraints, damage to energy infrastructure, and the ongoing war.
She said it was premature to assess the impact of recent US moves to halt aid to Ukraine or an eventual ceasefire on the country’s economy, but the IMF was keeping a close eye on those developments. The same was true for Russia, she said.
France says its intelligence for Ukraine not affected by US freeze
France’s defence minister said intelligence it provided to Ukraine was unaffected by the US suspension of intelligence sharing with Kyiv, but warned that Washington’s halt in military aid would harm Ukraine’s operations against Russia’s invasion.
The US made the decision as part of efforts to crank up pressure on Zelensky to cooperate with Trump’s bid to convene peace talks with Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Speaking on France Inter radio, Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said the US halt to military aid and intelligence sharing would have a “significant operational impact” on Ukraine. But Lecornu said France’s intelligence provided to Kyiv was not reliant on Washington.
“I think for our British friends who are in an intelligence community with the United States, it is more complicated,” he said, alluding to the “Five Eyes” group of English-speaking countries that also includes Canada, Australia and New Zealand, when asked whether Europe could replace US intelligence.
“We have sovereign intelligence and we have our own capacities and have resources that we use to help the Ukrainians,” he said. DM