分类： politics

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year and a dramatic new escalation of deadly aerial assaults drives civilian casualties to their highest levels since the opening months of the war, Ukraine hosts key European allies in Kyiv on Monday for an urgent emergency summit focused on securing life-saving air defence supplies and tightening international pressure on Moscow.

The high-stakes gathering of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, a Franco-British-led forum coordinating international support for Ukraine, is co-chaired by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany. It comes as new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham makes his first overseas trip to Kyiv since taking office at 10 Downing Street, with other leaders joining the talks remotely and European Union Council President Antonio Costa also travelling to the Ukrainian capital for the negotiations.

Monday’s summit coincides with Ukraine’s Independence Day, which marks four and a half years since Russia launched its large-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. In pre-summit comments, Burnham underscored unwavering Western solidarity with Ukraine, saying: “Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve. We will not back down until there is a just and lasting peace.”

Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict – Europe’s largest land war since World War II – remain effectively frozen. Moscow has demanded sweeping territorial and political concessions that Kyiv has rejected as a surrender that would only set the stage for future Russian aggression.

Over recent weeks, Russia has unleashed a barrage of ballistic missile attacks across Ukraine, concentrating strikes on the capital Kyiv that have reduced residential apartment blocks to rubble and killed dozens of civilians. The surge in attacks has pushed monthly civilian death tolls to levels not seen since the first three months of the 2022 invasion. After every assault, which forces tens of thousands of Kyiv residents to shelter in the city’s metro system, basements and other emergency refuges, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeated urgent public appeals for expanded air defence support from the West.

As part of the summit, Burnham is set to announce that the British government will authorize defense contractor MBDA to declassify technical information needed to allow Ukraine and France to establish domestic production of long-range SCALP cruise missiles. The announcement follows a pledge from French President Emmanuel Macron over the weekend that Paris will deliver a new shipment of interceptor missiles to Ukraine. “It is crucial to provide Ukraine with all the necessary means to defend its skies and thwart this aggression,” Macron wrote on social media platform X.

Russia’s barrage of dozens of ballistic missiles poses a uniquely difficult challenge for Ukrainian air defences: the weapons travel at extremely high speeds along a steep, high-arching trajectory that makes them far harder to intercept than slower cruise missiles or attack drones. Ukraine’s domestically produced air defence systems cannot shoot down these ballistic projectiles, leaving Kyiv almost entirely dependent on advanced Western systems – most notably US-made Patriot interceptors – to shield its population and critical infrastructure.

But global stockpiles of Patriot interceptors have been stretched thin after the United States redirected large volumes of missiles to its own military campaign against Iran, leaving Ukraine facing catastrophic shortfalls. Ahead of Monday’s summit, Zelensky publicly disclosed the extent of the deficit, revealing closely held supply figures that highlight the severity of the crisis. He told reporters that deliveries of Patriot interceptors to Ukraine have fallen by half since 2023: over the full course of 2023, Ukraine received 675 missiles, compared to just 364 in 2025, even as Russian missile strikes have increased in frequency and intensity. Current projections put 2026 deliveries at only 264 interceptors, Zelensky added, noting that Ukraine is seeking a minimum of 300 extra missiles to prepare for the coming winter, when Russia typically intensifies attacks on energy infrastructure.

The United States has been unable to meet Ukraine’s requests for larger shipments, as it prioritizes building up its own stockpiles for its ongoing campaign against Iran. By contrast, Zelensky noted that Russia maintains the industrial capacity to produce roughly 100 new ballistic missiles every month, allowing it to sustain its current high pace of strikes.

In response to the intensified Russian aerial campaign, Ukraine has stepped up its own long-range strike operations targeting Russian energy infrastructure and logistics hubs, including oil refineries and commercial storage warehouses deep inside Russian territory.

The Coalition of the Willing was originally conceived as a group of nations prepared to deploy peacekeeping troops to Ukraine if a ceasefire is reached. It has since evolved into a key coordinating forum for marshalling European support for Ukraine, filling a growing gap in commitments amid ongoing uncertainty over long-term US support for Kyiv following Donald Trump’s return to office.

A 21-year-old defendant has formally entered a not guilty plea and confirmed he will defend a manslaughter charge at a scheduled 2025 trial over the fatal one-punch assault on senior Australian Labor Party strategist Tim Picton outside a Western Australian nightclub. Brodie Dewar made his first court appearance before the West Australian Supreme Court on Monday, where he denied the allegation of unlawfully killing 36-year-old Picton.

The violent incident unfolded in the early hours of December 27 last year, just outside a popular Perth venue. Picton was rushed to a local hospital immediately after the assault, where medical teams placed him in an induced coma to treat his injuries. Despite initial emergency interventions, the senior Labor figure succumbed to his injuries and died several weeks after the attack.

On Monday, Justice Joseph McGrath confirmed the trial timeline, scheduling a 10-day court hearing set to begin in July 2025. The two-week proceeding will hear all evidence related to the case as Dewar contests the manslaughter charge.

Before relocating to Western Australia, Picton built an extensive career across Australian Labor politics. He previously served as president of South Australian Young Labor, and held advisory roles for federal Labor parliamentarians Amanda Rishworth and Don Farrell, as well as working in the office of former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. At the time of his death, he was a key strategist in WA Labor, and was widely recognized for his critical work contributing to former WA Premier Mark McGowan’s landslide election victory in 2021. He is also the brother of current South Australian State Development Minister Chris Picton.

As senior European leaders gathered in Kyiv for the high-stakes Nordic-Baltic Eight summit over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky doubled down on his rejection of holding national elections amid ongoing full-scale conflict with Russia, pushing back against a surprise call from his former defense minister to organize a vote. In comments published Sunday that emerged from a Saturday press briefing with international reporters including Agence France-Presse, Zelensky framed wartime elections as an existential danger to Ukrainian national unity at a moment when the country is united around fending off Moscow’s 2022 invasion.

“I believe that in a war like this, elections as such are a huge risk,” Zelensky told reporters. “Elections right now are a tsunami for the country that will split Ukraine. If we want to destroy the country, then we can move in the direction of elections during these times of war.”

The debate over wartime voting comes amid a turbulent summer of domestic political unrest in Ukraine, triggered when Zelensky dismissed popular former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who had built a strong public following as a leading advocate for Ukraine’s dominant drone warfare strategy and a vocal proponent of military reform. Following his ouster, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to call for his reinstatement, and Fedorov launched scathing public attacks on Ukraine’s top military leadership, a conflict that ultimately forced Zelensky to replace his commander-in-chief.

Days ago, Fedorov unexpectedly broke his silence to call for urgent progress on organizing a national election. Though he stopped short of explicitly declaring a challenge to Zelensky’s presidency, the move prompted even some of Fedorov’s own long-time supporters to distance themselves from the proposal. Polling data shows the proposal has little traction among the Ukrainian public: only 15 percent of respondents back holding elections before hostilities come to an end, consistent with the broad national support for the continued suspension of elections under existing martial law regulations.

Political analysts have outlined a cascade of practical and security barriers that would make a free, fair wartime vote all but impossible. Key challenges include facilitating ballot access for millions of Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines, millions of refugees displaced across Europe, and residents living under Russian occupation in illegally annexed territories, as well as mitigating the constant threat of Russian election interference and targeted Russian missile and drone strikes on voting infrastructure.

Despite growing pockets of domestic criticism as the war enters its third year, Zelensky remains the most popular political figure in Ukraine. Over the weekend, Fedorov’s team confirmed to AFP that the former minister plans to travel to the United States in the near future, a trip that has already reignited public speculation that he is laying the groundwork for a potential 2025 presidential challenge against the incumbent.

Alongside navigating domestic political pressure, Zelensky used the weekend’s Nordic-Baltic summit to shore up critical international military support. Following one-on-one talks with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, Zelensky announced a new bilateral drone agreement that will deepen defense industrial cooperation between Kyiv and Oslo. Store also used the summit to announce that Norway has pledged $9 billion in military and economic support for Ukraine for 2025, one of the largest single-country annual commitments from any European ally to date.

On Monday, Ukraine’s Independence Day, participating leaders will convene formal working talks focused on building new international pressure on Russia to end its invasion and addressing Ukraine’s increasingly urgent military gaps. The most pressing of these gaps is a critical shortage of interceptor missiles for Ukraine’s U.S.-supplied Patriot air defense systems, which are the primary defense against Russia’s growing campaign of hard-to-intercept ballistic missile strikes across Ukrainian population centers.

Zelensky confirmed over the weekend that deliveries of these critical Patriot interceptors have dropped by half since 2023. The United States is currently facing its own supply chain shortages of the missiles amid rising tensions with Iran, and has so far declined to approve large-scale new transfers to Kyiv. The intensification of Russian strikes has pushed civilian casualty rates to their highest level since the opening months of the 2022 invasion, according to recently updated verified data from the United Nations.

Ukraine has responded to the stepped-up Russian attacks by accelerating its own long-range strike campaign targeting Russian energy infrastructure, military logistics hubs, and supply depots deep behind Russian lines. Over the weekend, Ukrainian forces struck a warehouse belonging to major Russian e-commerce company Ozon for the second consecutive day, marking the latest in a series of sustained attacks on Russian commercial and military supply networks.

At 89 years old, Norway’s King Harald V — the longest-reigning living monarch in Europe — has seen his health worsen over the weekend while receiving inpatient care at Oslo University Hospital, the Norwegian Royal Palace confirmed in an official public statement released Sunday. The king was first admitted to the facility one week prior after experiencing dangerous fluid retention linked to ongoing cortisone treatment for his chronic blood condition, haemolytic anaemia, and was initially placed on a two-week medical leave from all official duties. Haemolytic anaemia develops when red blood cells break down faster than the body can replace them, triggering persistent fatigue, skin paleness, and difficulty breathing for affected patients. Since admission, the king has also developed a secondary bacterial blood infection, which medical teams are treating with antibiotic therapy. The palace noted in its update that the monarch has shown initial positive responses to this antibiotic regimen, despite the overall decline in his health status. Following the deterioration, the royal household has already scrapped a planned official visit to Norway’s central Trondelag region, scheduled for September 1 and 2 — a trip that was slated to take place after the original two-week leave period was set to end. Multiple senior members of the Norwegian royal family have visited the king at his hospital bedside in recent days. According to local Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang, visitors on Sunday included the king’s wife, 89-year-old Queen Sonja; his son and heir Crown Prince Haakon, who has stepped into the role of regent during the king’s medical leave; Crown Princess Mette-Marit, Haakon’s wife; and the king’s sister. All family members declined to comment on the king’s condition to reporters after leaving the hospital. King Harald has navigated a series of serious health challenges in recent years, which have already forced him to adjust his public role: he previously received a pacemaker to manage a heart condition and has gradually reduced the volume of his official engagements over time. Despite these struggles, the king has repeatedly rejected calls for him to abdicate the throne, noting that he swore a lifelong oath of office to the Norwegian Parliament when he ascended to the throne in 1991. This is not the king’s first unplanned hospitalisation in 2024: in February, he was admitted for treatment of an infection and dehydration while on a private holiday in Tenerife with Queen Sonja, who herself had a brief hospital stay for heart concerns in May. The king’s declining health comes at a period of unprecedented turmoil for the entire Norwegian royal household, which has faced overlapping scandals and personal crises in recent months. Crown Princess Mette-Marit, the next queen consort of Norway, has faced intense public and media scrutiny over her documented past connections to disgraced American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison in 2019. Court documents released in the United States earlier this year revealed that Mette-Marit maintained regular, at times intimate, correspondence with Epstein between 2011 and 2014 — years after Epstein had already been convicted of a sex offense in Florida. Further adding to the household’s stress, Mette-Marit’s son from her first relationship, Marius Borg Hoiby, was convicted in June on dozens of criminal charges including two counts of rape and multiple counts of violence against a former partner, resulting in a four-year prison sentence. Borg Hoiby has since filed an appeal challenging the conviction. Mette-Marit herself has also faced a major personal health crisis: living with a chronic serious lung condition, she underwent a life-saving lung transplant in July. Despite the string of personal challenges and scandals facing the royal family, the institution remains broadly popular among the Norwegian public. Polling and public sentiment consistently reflect high approval for the monarchy, a trend widely attributed to King Harald’s longstanding reputation as a unifying national figure during his 33-year reign.

In a candid briefing with journalists held Saturday, comments on which were made public Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky firmly rejected calls to hold national elections during the ongoing full-scale Russian invasion, warning that a vote at this stage of the conflict would tear the country apart amid existential danger.

The announcement comes in the wake of a surprise call for elections from ousted former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, whose recent push for a wartime vote even split some of his own political backers, who have stepped back from the proposal. This latest political upheaval follows widespread public protests after Zelensky dismissed the popular defense minister last month, triggering a period of domestic unrest that has put the Ukrainian leadership’s unity under a spotlight.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has operated under martial law, which legally suspends all national electoral activity. This measure continues to hold broad popular support as the nation prioritizes fending off Russian territorial advances, according to public sentiment data. Recent polling from the Kyiv Institute of Sociology underscores this: only 15 percent of Ukrainian respondents back holding elections before hostilities come to an end.

Zelensky, who was first elected to office in 2019, framed the debate over wartime elections in stark terms during the briefing—the first he has held with international reporters including Agence France-Presse in months. “I believe that in a war like this, elections as such are a huge risk. Elections right now are a tsunami for the country that will split Ukraine,” he said. “If we want to destroy the country, then we can move in the direction of elections during these times of war.”

Beyond the risk of political division, independent policy experts have outlined a long list of practical barriers that make holding a free, fair election all but impossible during the current conflict. These include major questions around how to facilitate voting for frontline soldiers, more than 5 million Ukrainian refugees living abroad, and residents of Russian-occupied territories, along with the severe threat of Russian disinformation campaigns designed to manipulate the election outcome. Practically, the ongoing Russian missile and drone assault across Ukrainian cities also puts election workers and voters at grave risk of attack.

During the briefing, held ahead of Ukraine’s Independence Day celebrations Monday that will draw dozens of international leaders and new talks on bolstering Ukrainian air defenses, Zelensky did not hold back in criticizing his former defense minister’s call. “I believe he is going himself — or is being pushed — toward wrong things,” Zelensky said of Fedorov, who was a leading advocate for expanded drone warfare and military reform but repeatedly clashed with Ukraine’s top military command over its traditional, rigid approach to operations.

After Fedorov’s dismissal, much of the Ukrainian public initially rallied around the former minister, calling for the dismissal of Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky. Zelensky acknowledged that Ukrainians retain the full right to peaceful protest, but pushed back against what he described as attempts to prioritize political positioning over the sacrifices of frontline troops. “Since when has marketing started to outweigh the people who are giving their lives?” he asked, adding that he sees ongoing efforts to pull the country into internal division as a dangerous development that threatens Ukraine’s war effort.

Positioning himself as a bulwark against domestic fragmentation, Zelensky emphasized that preserving unity between civilian society and the armed forces is a non-negotiable priority during the invasion. “I believe that society and soldiers must not be divided,” he said. “We must acknowledge that there is this risk — that there may be movement in that direction, toward dangerous developments.”