International Glance
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Wednesday that Russian troops have surrounded Ukrainian forces in two key eastern cities of Ukraine and offered to negotiate a deal for their surrender. Ukrainian military officials vigorously denied the claim.
Putin, speaking at a meeting with wounded soldiers at a Moscow military hospital, suggested that the Russian military was ready to open safe corridors for Ukrainian and Western journalists to “let them see with their own eyes what’s going on.”
He claimed Ukrainian troops are encircled in Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian stronghold in the eastern Donetsk region, and in Kupiansk, an important rail junction in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
Russia has recently been pushing its significant advantage in troops and weapons at key points along the around 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, almost four years after it invaded its neighbor.
The two Russian mobsters convicted in an international assassination plot targeting the Iranian American dissident Masih Alinejad were sentenced to 25 years in prison in a New York courtroom on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stood next to President Trump in Israel's parliament in Jerusalem and summarized the last two years of war:
The US military killed 14 people and left one survivor in more strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the eastern Pacific, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said on Monday, as the Trump administration continued to expand its campaign beyond the Caribbean.
An overnight Russian drone attack on Kyiv killed three people and wounded dozens, including seven children, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
The Trump administration’s military airstrikes against boats off Venezuela’s coast that the White House claims were being used for drug trafficking are “extrajudicial killings”, said Rand Paul, the president’s fellow Republican and US senator from Kentucky.
