A new Nato mission located in Wiesbaden will take over the coordination of western military aid for Ukraine in January, Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said on Monday. The setting up of NSATU – Nato Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine – has been months in the planning and is widely seen as an effort to safeguard the aid mechanism against interference by Donald Trump. Europeans will step up military support for Ukraine, Pistorius pledged, after talks in Berlin with his British, French, Italian and Polish counterparts. “Our target must be to enable Ukraine to act out of a position of strength,” Pistorius said after hosting a meeting of the five leading nations in European defence.
The Polish defence minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, echoed Pistorius’s pledge of more aid for Kyiv. “We are obliged today to say it clearly: Europe must increase its efforts when it comes to helping Ukraine but above all … when it comes to its own security. Without higher spending, without awareness in every European society of the times we are living in, everything is nothing.”
Russian forces have been advancing in Ukraine at the fastest pace since the first months of the invasion, and much faster than they did in 2023 as a whole, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War says in a report. The Russians were moving into the strategic town of Kurakhove and exploiting vulnerabilities of Ukrainian troops, analysts said. The report said there were battlefield gains by Russia near Vuhledar and Velyka Novosilka, which are in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Kurakhove represents a stepping stone towards the logistical hub of Pokrovsk in Donetsk. The fall of Pokrovsk has been predicted for months, but Ukrainian troops have been holding off the onslaught, which has been exceptionally bloody for the Russians.
Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, was under a sustained Russian drone attack early on Tuesday morning, said its mayor, Vitali Klitschko. “Air defence forces are operating in different areas of the city. [Drones] are entering the capital from different directions.” What sounded like air defence systems in operation could be heard, Reuters said.
A Russian strike on Kharkiv on Monday left 23 people wounded and about 40 buildings damaged, said the city mayor, Igor Terekhov. In the southern port city of Odesa, authorities said a Russian attack damaged infrastructure and wounded 11 people.
The fatal crash of a DHL cargo plane as it approached Vilnius airport in Lithuania could have been sabotage or an accident, Germany’s foreign minister said. A crew member was killed and three others injured when the plane crashed into a house, Deborah Cole reports from Berlin. Germany is already investigating several fires caused by incendiary devices hidden inside parcels at DHL warehouses earlier this year. The crashed plane had taken off from Leipzig, Germany, where an incendiary device hidden in a DHL package caught fire in July as part of a suspected Russian sabotage plot against flights. Of the Vilnius crash, the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said: “We must now seriously ask ourselves whether this was an accident or whether it was another hybrid incident.”
The EU is proposing to sanction several Chinese firms it claims helped Russian companies develop attack drones that were deployed against Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. The European Commission was also looking to impose restrictions on additional Russian oil tankers to curb Russia’s ability to circumvent existing restrictions, the report said, citing documents seen by Bloomberg.
The British government has promised to do all it can to assist a former British soldier apparently fighting as a volunteer for Ukraine who has been taken prisoner by the Russian army. Videos on Russian social media showed a man identifying himself as 22-year-old James Scott Rhys Anderson, who had his hands tied and said in English he had served as a signalman in the British army between 2019 and 2023. The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said the government was supporting the captive and his family. The Kremlin regularly but falsely classifies such captives as “mercenaries” when they are foreigners who have legally enlisted in the Ukrainian military.
The podcaster Joe Rogan is “repeating Russian propaganda” about the war in Ukraine, the former world heavyweight boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko has said, adding that Rogan should invite him on his podcast to discuss the issue “like free men”. Martin Pengelly writes that Rogan said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “100% wrong” but claimed that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was “about to start world war three” with Joe Biden’s support. “I listen to your latest podcast,” said Klitschko, whose brother, Vitali, was also a world champion boxer and is mayor of Kyiv. “I’m sending you this video to let you know that I disagree. You talk about these American weapons being sent to Ukraine, which you believe will lead to the third world war. So let me tell you that you’re repeating Russian propaganda.”
