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Morning Headlines
Reuters: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Wednesday he has given the military permission to board and detain Russian ships his government alleges are part of a network of vessels that enables Moscow to export oil despite Western sanctions.
ISW: A prominent Russian milblogger issued a lengthy critique of the Russian military’s inability to achieve victory in Ukraine and called for serious force generation and defense industrial reforms.
Reuters: Russian attacks killed two people in Ukraine's northeastern city of Kharkiv and the region around it and a strike on the Danube port of Izamil damaged port facilities and energy infrastructure, officials said.
More News
Reuters: The U.S. is making its offer of security guarantees for a peace deal in Ukraine conditional on Kyiv ceding all of the country's eastern region of Donbas to Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
The Moscow Times: Trump’s special envoy to Belarus said he gained the trust of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko by echoing his disdain for Europe, including by calling Europeans “pussies.”
The Kyiv Independent: A potential "big deal" between Belarus and the United States would effectively normalize relations between Washington and Minsk, U.S. Special Envoy for Belarus John Coale said.
The Moscow Times: A group of State Duma lawmakers is preparing to travel to the United States for meetings with members of Congress, Russian media reported Wednesday, citing sources in the lower house.
The Kyiv Independent: Ukraine is preparing "key changes" to both mobilization and the prevention of soldiers going AWOL in an effort to address the military's chronic manpower shortage and better resist Russia's war on the front line, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on March 25.
RFE/RL: The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab identifies Russian state-owned companies Gazprom and Rosneft involved in transport and indoctrination of 2,158 children from Ukraine since beginning of full-scale invasion. This is the first definitive public proof of the companies' involvement in Russia's systematic campaign of child deportation and indoctrination.
Reuters: At least 40% of Russia's oil export capacity is at a halt following Ukrainian drone attacks, a 'disputed' attack on a major pipeline and the seizure of tankers, according to Reuters calculations based on market data.
The Kyiv Independent: Ukrainian forces have damaged a Russian military icebreaker in the Baltic Sea port of Vyborg amid a mass overnight attack, the General Staff reported on March 25. The attack is the first known successful strike on Russian military ship in the Baltic Sea, almost 1,000 kilometers from Ukrainian territory.
Kyiv Post: The EU said Wednesday it had launched proceedings to become a “founding member” of a special Ukraine tribunal to try top Russian officials over Moscow’s war against its neighbour.
Reuters: Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev said on Wednesday that Russia was supplying fuel to Cuba as humanitarian aid. Tsivilev, who was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the ministry's conference, did not elaborate further.
Reuters: Hungary will gradually stop sending natural gas to Ukraine until crude oil flows on the Druzhba pipeline resume, PM Orban said on Wednesday, escalating a standoff with Kyiv over energy supplies disrupted by the war.
Reuters: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Belarusian dictator Lukashenko in Pyongyang on Wednesday with a white-horse cavalry and 21-gun salute, cementing ties between two close allies of Russia's Putin.
France 24: A confidential report into the OSCE's "chaotic" evacuation of its monitors from Ukraine after Russia invaded four years ago is damning about how it put its own staff at "serious security risk", AFP can reveal.
worth mentioning
U.S. citizen among the suspects in arson attack against Czech drone maker
Libya's coast guards tow damaged Russian LNG tanker away from its shores
Russian government ordered Moscow internet blackout, The Bell reports
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