In an interview with French broadcaster TF1 on May 13, Macron discussed new Russia sanctions and stationing French nuclear weapons in other European countries as a deterrent against Russia.
Performing their song "Bird of Pray," Ukrainian band Ziferblat passed the Eurovision semi-finals on May 13, qualifying Ukraine for the grand final on May 17.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that a Russian delegation will be in Istanbul on May 15 for direct peace talks with Ukraine. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov will likely represent Russia.
The move follows Ukraine's ratification of the minerals agreement, deepening U.S.-Ukraine economic ties and signaling expanded U.S. involvement in Ukraine's long-term recovery.
"Ukraine has initiated a coordinated campaign to vilify Hungary in order to undermine our initiative to hold a poll on (Kyiv's) EU membership," Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned that further concessions from Ukraine during negotiations would be unreasonable if Russia continues to attack civilian targets.
U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg, will travel to Istanbul for possible peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, Reuters reported on May 13, citing three undisclosed sources.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said he will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, but said both leaders are ready to fly to Istanbul if Russian President Vladimir Putin chooses to attend the talks there.
Eric Schmidt speaks at the NSCAI Global Emerging Technology Summit on July 13, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The U.S. military should replace its "useless" tanks with AI-powered drones, Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt said on Oct. 30, Bloomberg reported.
Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia, Schmidt said that Russia's war in Ukraine showed how a "$5,000 drone can destroy a $5 million tank."
According to Forbes, Schmidt has been quietly building a startup in the U.S. and Ukraine for the production of military drones. The White Stork project aims to manufacture unmanned aerial vehicles using artificial intelligence and resistant to GPS jamming, the outlet wrote.
The former chief executive of Google and ex-chairman of its parent company, Alphabet, is also backing the startup Istari, which seeks to modernize the U.S. military with cutting-edge AI technology.
"The cost of autonomy is falling so quickly that the drone war, which is the future of conflict, will get rid of eventually tanks, artillery, mortars," said Schmidt, who has been an advisor to U.S. defense officials on emerging technologies.
Schmidt believes that Western militaries are adapting too slowly to new technology trends of the modern-day battlefield.
Ukraine and Russia have pioneered drone technology throughout the full-scale war. Kyiv, in particular, has been using cheaper drones in innovative ways to offset its limited resource pool when compared to Moscow or NATO militaries.
Some military experts warned against dismissing traditional weapon systems like tanks as obsolete, however.
"The wars in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh (in 2020) both show that mobile armored platforms with firepower are still important," defense expert Rob Lee wrote in a War on the Rocks article.
The analyst connected the tank losses Russian forces suffered in the early phase of the war to inadequate use of combined arms and weak logistics.
Martin Fornusek is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. He has previously worked as a news content editor at the media company Newsmatics and is a contributor to Euromaidan Press. He was also volunteering as an editor and translator at the Czech-language version of Ukraïner. Martin studied at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia, holding a bachelor's degree in security studies and history and a master's degree in conflict and democracy studies.
Charles Fergusson
