09.03.2025

Reuters: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Poland's foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski of "making things up" and suggested on Sunday he was ungrateful, in a strong rebuke after Sikorski said Ukraine may need an alternative to the Starlink satellite service.

NBC News: Trump has privately made clear to aides that a signed minerals deal between Washington and Kyiv won’t be enough to restart aid and intelligence sharing with the war-torn country.

Reuters: German Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz on Sunday said he would like talks with France and Britain about sharing their nuclear weapons, but not as a substitute for U.S. nuclear protection of Europe.

CNN: European countries should “absolutely” be introducing conscription to combat the threat of Russian aggression, Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs said Sunday, as Europe grows increasingly concerned about the trajectory of the war in Ukraine.

Reuters: France will use interest from Russian assets to fund another 195 million euros in arms for Ukraine, Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu said a newspaper interview.

ISW: The Kremlin continues to promote the false narrative that European Union member states and Ukraine seek to protract and escalate the war in Ukraine in order to distract from Russia's own long-term preparations for a war with the West.

Reuters: Romania's central election authority on Sunday barred far-right pro-Russian candidate Calin Georgescu from running in May's presidential election re-run, a decision likely to deepen a constitutional crisis in the European Union and NATO member.

08.03.2025

The Insider: More than 11,000 Western-owned companies continue to operate in Russia, contributing an estimated $5 billion in annual tax payments to the Kremlin.

Bloomberg: The US has rejected a Canadian proposal to establish a task force that would tackle Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers, as the Trump administration re-evaluates its positions across multilateral organizations (archive).

The Kyiv Independent: Russian and North Korean troops have launched an attack on the Ukrainian-held town of Sudzha in Russia's Kursk Oblast, the Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group DeepState and Yury Butusov, chief editor of the news site censor .net, reported on March 8.

Bloomberg: Germany is nearing an agreement to unlock €3 billion of military aid for Ukraine, alongside a broader set of measures to revamp the country’s defense and infrastructure (archive).

The Telegraph: EU countries that share a border with Russia are moving to withdraw from international bans on cluster bombs and landmines as they seek to build up deterrence (archive).

Anadolu Agency: The US commerce secretary has called on India to stop purchasing weapons from Russia, saying that New Delhi and Washington should form the “best relationship.”

ISW: Russian forces are further intensifying offensive operations in select frontline areas likely in order to capitalize on any immediate and longer-term battlefield impacts of the cessation of US aid to Ukraine.

The Kyiv Independent: The casualty count has risen in Dobropillia following a Russian attack late on March 7. 11 people have been killed and at least 47 have been injured, the State Emergency Service reported.

07.03.2025

The Hill: Republican lawmakers are starting to urge Trump to reverse his decisions to pause U.S. military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine, warning that a prolonged stoppage of U.S. help for the war effort would have a seriously detrimental effect.

Reuters: The U.S. government is studying ways it could ease sanctions on Russia's energy sector as part of a broad plan to enable Washington to deliver swift relief if Moscow agrees to end the Ukraine war.

The Kyiv Independent: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants to grant Ukraine privileged access to the EU single market as part of a final peace deal, The Telegraph reported on March 7.

BBC: Three Bulgarian nationals have been found guilty of spying for Russia, in what police have described as "one of the largest" foreign intelligence operations in the UK.

NewsGuard's Reality Check: A well-funded Moscow-based global ‘news’ network has infected Western artificial intelligence tools worldwide with Russian propaganda. An audit found that the 10 leading generative AI tools advanced Moscow’s disinformation goals by repeating false claims from the pro-Kremlin Pravda network 33 percent of the time.

Reuters: Poland's President Andrzej Duda proposed enshrining defence spending of at least 4% of GDP in the constitution on Friday, while the government backed giving military training to all adult males as Warsaw readies itself for threats from Moscow.

Reuters: Ukraine has received a first tranche of funds worth about $1 billion from Britain, secured by the proceeds of frozen Russian assets, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Friday.

Reuters: U.S. aerospace firm Maxar Technologies said on Friday it had disabled Ukrainian users' access to satellite imagery on one U.S. government platform, as U.S. President Donald Trump's administration suspends intelligence sharing with Kyiv.

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