A politician made an AI clone of himself. The outrage was real.
'I've tried my best to sit at my desk and answer all the requests that come through on my laptop, but it's not possible for one person to do that,' Sewards, then 34, told the BBC.
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Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Soldiers under bombardment in eastern Ukraine say peace still feels far away
In a Ukrainian dugout, where the constant thunder of Russian weapons sends dirt raining from the ceiling and black plastic lining the walls slips, soldiers express profound scepticism about peace talks. Amid the regular blasts from glide bombs and artillery shells, forcing them underground except to fire their M777 howitzer, the prospect of an end to the conflict feels remote. On the Eastern Front, there is no indication the war will conclude anytime soon. Diplomatic efforts, soldiers believe, are too far removed from the brutal reality of the battlefield to yield results. Their doubt stems from what they perceive as months of unfulfilled US promises to swiftly end the war. Recent suggestions by Donald Trump of "swapping of territories", coupled with media reports implying Ukrainian troops might abandon the Donetsk region – a territory they have defended inch by inch for years – have only deepened the confusion and rejection among the fighting forces. Few believe the current talks can end the war. More likely, they say, is a brief pause in hostilities before Russia resumes the assault with greater force. 'At minimum, the result would be to stop active fighting — that would be the first sign of some kind of settlement,' said soldier Dmytro Loviniukov of the 148th Brigade. 'Right now, that's not happening. And while these talks are taking place, they (the Russians) are only strengthening their positions on the front line.' On one artillery position, talk often turns to home. Many Ukrainian soldiers joined the army in the first days of the full-scale invasion, leaving behind civilian jobs. Some thought they would serve only briefly. Others didn't think about the future at all — because at that moment, it didn't exist. In the years since, many have been killed. Those who survived are in their fourth year of a grueling war, far removed from the civilian lives they once knew. With mobilization faltering and the war dragging on far longer than expected, there is no one to replace them as the Ukrainian army struggles with recruiting new people. The army cannot also demobilize those who serve without risking the collapse of the front. That is why soldiers wait for even the possibility of a pause in hostilities. When direct talks between Russia and Ukraine were held in Istanbul in May, the soldiers from 148th brigade read the news with cautious hope, said a soldier with the call sign Bronson, who once worked as a tattoo artist. Months later, hope has been replaced with dark humor. On the eve of a deadline that U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly gave Russia's Vladimir Putin — one that has since vanished from the agenda amid talk of a meeting in Alaska — the Russian fire roared every minute for hours. Soldiers joked that the shelling was because the deadline was 'running out.' 'We are on our land. We have no way back,' said the commander of the artillery group, Dmytro Loviniukov. 'We stand here because there is no choice. No one else will come here to defend us.' Dozens of kilometers from Zaporizhzhia region, north to the Donetsk area, heavy fighting grinds on toward Pokrovsk — now the epicenter of fighting. Once home to about 60,000 people, the city has been under sustained Russian assault for months. The Russians have formed a pocket around Pokrovsk, though Ukrainian troops still hold the city and street fighting has yet to begin. Reports of Russian saboteurs entering the city started to appear almost daily, but the military says those groups have been neutralized. Ukrainian soldiers of the Spartan brigade push through drills with full intensity, honing their skills for the battlefield in the Pokrovsk area. Everything at the training range, only 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the front, is designed to mirror real combat conditions — even the terrain. A thin strip of forest breaks up the vast fields of blooming sunflowers stretching into the distance until the next tree line appears. One of the soldiers training there is a 35-year-old with the call sign Komrad, who joined the military only recently. He says he has no illusions that the war will end soon. 'My motivation is that there is simply no way back,' he said. 'If you are in the military, you have to fight. If we're here, we need to cover our brothers in arms.' For Serhii Filimonov, commander of the 'Da Vinci Wolves' battalion of the 59th brigade, the war's end is nowhere in sight, and current news doesn't influence the ongoing struggle to find enough resources to equip the unit that is fighting around Pokrovsk. 'We are preparing for a long war. We have no illusions that Russia will stop," he said, speaking at his field command post. "There may be a ceasefire, but there will be no peace.' Filimonov dismisses recent talk of exchanging territory or signing agreements as temporary fixes at best. 'Russia will not abandon its goal of capturing all of Ukraine,' he said. 'They will attack again. The big question is what security guarantees we get — and how we hit pause." A soldier with the call sign Mirche from the 68th brigade said that whenever there is a new round of talks, the hostilities intensify around Pokrovsk — Russia's key priority during this summer's campaign. Whenever peace talks begin, "things on the front get terrifying,' he said.
Bloomberg
10 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Stock Movers: Orsted, S4 Capital, Rheinmetall
On this episode of Stock Movers: - Shares in Danish company Orsted A/S dropped as much as 24% after it announced it will conduct a rights offering to raise as much as 60 billion Danish kroner ($9.4 billion). -S4 Capital, the advertising agency founded by Martin Sorrell, is in talks to combine with private equity-owned MSQ Partners. - European defense stocks are significantly underperforming on Monday morning, with markets looking to US President Donald Trump's efforts to broker an agreement to end the war in Ukraine through a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this week.
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Editorial: Putin blocks Trump's peacemaking — Another blown deadline shows Ukraine truce is not easy
President Donald Trump's deadline of today for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine seems ready to come and go with no deal. We wish the president's desire for peace was fulfilled, for as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says: 'the war must end. And it must be done honestly,' meaning a complete withdrawal of invading Russian troops. But this is Putin's war and Putin has not achieved his war aims, namely to conquer Kyiv. Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin at the Kremlin this week and now there are plans that Trump will sit down with Putin and Zelenskyy soon. We hope that Trump, a salesman for more than half a century, can put on the charisma and win over Vlad, but the ex-KGB lieutenant colonel is probably immune to the Donald's charms. Having been back in the White House for six months now, Trump must finally be realizing that he can't end this war 'in 24 hours,' as he boasted when he was out of office. Putin will respond only to military defeats and economic pressure. The Ukrainians will bloody him on the battlefield and the U.S. and our allies must keep on the sanctions to blunt Putin's power and his vision of an imperial Russia retaking its place in the firmament of global powers. Putin's withdrawal and ending this war will not be pleasant for him. But his failure to quickly capture Kyiv following the February 2022 invasion set the stage for the grinding conflict that is draining both Russia and Ukraine of blood and treasure. In an ideal world, Putin's recalcitrance to end his folly will at least finally convince Trump that there is not and was never going to be a quick and easy solution that he could be seen to personally mediate in his apparent quest to get a Nobel peace prize. We hope that it's become clear to Trump that the only reason any negotiations are even happening as opposed to a Putin puppet already calling the shots in Ukraine is that the Ukrainian forces have continued to receive the support of the international community, including necessary arms replenishment and supplies from the United States. Despite his missteps and confusion, Trump is right about one thing: the only way out of this mess is dialogue until the sides can reach a resolution, which must happen from a position of strength for Ukraine. A final deal rests on having each side feel like it can claim some measure of victory, which may entail some concessions to Russia, although there should be some clear nonnegotiables. Among those, the most important is the crux of this entire mess in the first place: Ukraine's territorial integrity, which must be preserved at least to the borders that existed as of the time of the invasion. Beyond being moral, this is for practical reasons. As much as Putin has lost in this campaign — military capability, economic strength and hundreds of thousands of lives — he may well consider it a template worth repeating if he ultimately gets the chunk of territory he so desperately desires. For the sake of Europe's — and our — continued security, it must be made crystal clear to Putin that his objectives of territorial expansion have failed absolutely. Perhaps this debacle might also temper some of Trump's own stated territorial ambitions; the age of military annexations is over, for good reason. _____
