Russia Watch

“The dark forces of oppression are on the march again. I am here today to tell you where NATO stands, and what we must do to stop a war before it starts. And to do that, we need to be crystal clear about the threat. We are Russia’s next target, and we are already in harm’s way,” Rutte said.

The sentiment of Rutte’s address echoed that of his very first major address as NATO chief one year ago, in which he warned member nations that they must shift to a “wartime mindset” and be willing to hike defense spending to prevent a war with Russia. In his speech on Thursday, Rutte circled back to this message to show the efforts put toward defense spending since his initial call to arms, but warned against complacency.

BRUSSELS (AP) – European Union lawmakers voted on Tuesday to deepen integration of the bloc’s defense industry with Ukraine as a U.S. peace plan remains in flux and Russia’s unconventional warfare operations rattle the 27-nation bloc.

European Parliament legislators voted 457-148, with 33 abstentions, to approve a 1.5-billion euro ($1.7 billion) program, with 300 million euros ($345 million) slated for the Ukraine Support Instrument.

Raphaël Glucksmann, an EU lawmaker from France’s S&D party, said that the defense program “will enable us to build a more resilient and sovereign Europe” through partnering with Ukraine to build a cutting-edge military industrial complex.

“This is key to making sure we can protect our democracies effectively and autonomously,” he said.

Ukraine’s defense industry “needs us,” EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius told EU lawmakers before the vote in Strasbourg, France, without mentioning the ongoing peace negotiations to end the war. “But we need Ukraine’s defense innovations even more.”

President Donald Trump has in recent months brokered peaceful resolutions between numerous warring parties, including Israel and Hamas; Azerbaijan and Armenia; Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Cambodia and Thailand; and India and Pakistan.

The major peace he campaigned on securing between Ukraine and Russia has, however, proven elusive.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government’s representative to the U.N. appeared to reject the fundamentals of the Trump administration’s 28-point plan for peace.

The plan would have: barred Ukraine from NATO, having an army exceeding 600,000 men, and acquiring nukes but provided Kyiv with a NATO-style security guarantee from the U.S.; recognized much of the occupied territory in eastern Ukraine as Russian; set the stage for an American-backed rebuilding of Ukraine; and granted full amnesty to all parties involved in the conflict.

‘Don’t believe it until you see it.’

The Trump administration is urging Ukraine to sign a new peace proposal by Thanksgiving or risk losing U.S. support, according to Friday reports from The Washington Post and Axios.

U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll delivered the message to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday.

He presented a version of the 28-point plan drafted by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

Officials told The Post that the plan includes steep concessions from Ukraine to bring an end to the three-year war.

They include a major reduction of its armed forces and the ceding of territory that Russia has not taken by force.

MOSCOW, November 21. /TASS/. Russia will react to the United States’ peace plan for Ukraine once it sees something concrete, refusing to comment on “conflicting” reports about it that have come out in the media, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

“I think that commenting on leaks that are contradictory and contain conflicting elements is pointless. When we have some official information, when we receive it via a relevant channel, naturally, we will always be open to work,” she told reporters.

“For several days now, Western media outlets have been releasing various leaks and drafts – whatever this could be called – with different details, in different sequences, under various labels,” she said, referring to the US plan. “We have official channels of communication with Washington. The Foreign Ministry has received no information, plans or drafts.”

The air forces of several NATO states were scrambled overnight to protect the airspace of the alliance along its eastern border as Russia launched one of its deadliest air strikes against Ukraine’s western regions of the war so far.

Polish, Romanian, German, Spanish, Norwegian, and Dutch fighter jets were scrambled in two deployments in airspace bordering Ukraine over Poland and Romania and the Russian armed forces hammered western Ukraine. According to Kyiv, Russia launched 476 drones, 47 cruise missiles and one ballistic missiles in strikes across the country, but particularly on Western cities Ternopil and Lviv.

At least 20 people have been found dead in Ternopil, which is approximately 225 miles west of Ukrainian capital Kyiv and 110 miles short of the Polish border. Of the killed, at least two are children, and a further 66 were wounded including 16 children in the strikes which badly damaged two apartment blocks.