"This readiness of France, this is something very promising," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters in Brussels on the sidelines of an EU summit. "We have to treat this proposal seriously."
Ukrainians and foreign donors have sent over 27 million hryvnia ($649,000) in donations to the fundraiser "for nukes" that was opened immediately after the publicized White House clash between U.S. President Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The nuclear dimension has been a key aspect of the Russo-Ukrainian War since its onset in February 2014. Behavior in this war, not just of Moscow and Kyiv but of other states as well, has been conditioned by Russia’s possession and Ukraine’s lack of weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. President Donald Trump says he wants to bring peace to Ukraine. But his approach cannot work, because it fails to address the problem of security guarantees. There will be no peace as long as Ukraine must face Russia on its own. But perhaps this flaw can be overcome.
Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva said his country is willing to maintain stable relations with the U.S. administration but emphasized that Washington has yet to take concrete steps toward resuming arms control discussions.
"The chance of them getting their nuclear weapons back is somewhere between slim and none," Keith Kellogg, U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy for Ukraine and Russia said.
Key developments on Feb. 5: * Ukraine brings back 150 POWs from Russian captivity in prisoner swap * Ukraine strikes Russian oil facility, Buk air defense system overnight, military claims * UK pledges $69 million to boost Ukraine's resilience, grain deliveries to Syria * Ukraine's Defense Ministry introduces robotic units into army * Ukraine should
President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that Ukraine's NATO accession could be delayed "for years or decades," raising the question of how the country would defend itself.
In times of war, the fundamental questions of survival, morality, and identity not only dominate the discourse but also expose the fissures in global political ideologies. Amid the clamor of media narratives and entrenched partisan frameworks, a few voices manage to rise above the fray, offering incisive critiques and grappling
In a video message to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his desire for "denuclearisation" and reiterated his call for trilateral discussions involving the U.S., Russia, and China.
"It was necessary to exchange (nuclear arms) for real security guarantees, and at the time, that was only NATO. And to be honest, today, it is only NATO," President Zelensky said in an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Foglio.
The company allegedly shipped a large-scale batch of stainless steel profiles to Russia after the full-scale invasion. These products were used to outfit the Russian Institute for Nuclear Research, the SBU said.
Key developments on Jan. 17: * Putin, Pezeshkian sign strategic Russia-Iran partnership agreement in Moscow * Ukraine strikes Russian S-400 radar equipment in Belgorod Oblast, military claims * Biden administration secretly funded Ukraine's drone industry, NYT reports * US assured Putin no nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Biden says * There's no evidence that Australian fighter
"We have reason to believe that China engaged Russia and said: 'Don't go there,'" outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Financial Times on Jan. 3.
To understand recent fears about the possible escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine into a nuclear conflict, we must revisit its beginnings, where the groundwork for this crisis was laid. Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, articulated the wager underpinning Russia’
Around half of the respondents said they would support the development of nuclear weapons even at the price of losing Western aid and coming under sanctions.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Premier Donald Tusk met on Dec. 12 in Warsaw. High on the agenda was how to support Ukraine in the “new Transatlantic context.” On the sidelines of the visit, the Élysée emphasized that “France’s position is that it is necessary to support Ukraine
For the 30th anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum, The Kyiv Independent’s Daria Shulzhenko visits a former Soviet-era nuclear missile silo in south Ukraine.
Zelensky added that effective guarantees are currently needed for Ukraine's security, namely "real alliances and a real security foundation within the country," as well as "weapons that enable defense and deterrence of the enemy."
On Dec. 5, 1994, Ukraine had signed a set of political agreements that would guarantee the country's sovereignty and independence in return for accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Signed in Budapest, the memorandum would lay grounds for Ukraine to dispose of its nuclear arsenal
The world faces the dawn of a "third nuclear age," the head of the U.K.'s armed forces Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said on Dec. 4.
The Kyiv Independent’s reporter Oleg Sukhov sat down with Robert Kelley to discuss whether the weapon Ukraine gave up would be of much use now and if the country still has the capacity to produce a nuclear device.
The United States is not considering returning to Ukraine the nuclear weapons the country previously agreed to give up under the Budapest Memorandum, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in an interview on Dec. 1.
Vladimir Putin's talks of a potential nuclear strike "gradually lead to an increase in the proportion of (Russians) who believe it is acceptable, in fact, morally justified," Russian sociologist Alexey Levinson said.
Intelligence assessments over the past seven months have shown that a nuclear escalation is unlikely to result from a decision to ease restrictions on Ukraine's use of U.S. weapons.
Joe Rogan, one of the world's most popular podcasters, has sparked outrage in Ukraine, after claiming that Kyiv and its Western allies, rather than Russia, "are about to start World War III." In an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience last Friday, the U.S. host criticized the outgoing President
Editor’s Note: This article was published by the twice-weekly newsletter “The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak” on Nov. 23, 2024, and has been re-published by the Kyiv Independent with permission. To subscribe to The Counteroffensive, click here. For a brief period just over 30 years ago, Ukraine possessed the third-largest
Following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman from New York, publicly appealed to those who had voted for both her and Trump. She wanted to know what motivated such an apparently inconsistent choice, and the predominant answer she heard was
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's comments came in the wake of Russia's attack on Dnipro a day earlier.
"We haven’t seen any indications of Russia preparing to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. We just have not seen that," White House Press Secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said on Nov. 21.
The comments came on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country had launched its "newest missile," an IRBM called "Oreshnik," in an attack on Dnipro, eastern Ukraine.
Key developments on Nov. 20: * Ukraine strikes Russia with Storm Shadows for the first time, Bloomberg reports * Biden approves delivery of anti-personnel mines to Ukraine in light of Russian gains in east * Ukrainian drones allegedly strike Russian factories, weapons arsenal * North Korean troops in Russia to be led by secrecy-shrouded
