Russia Launches a Major Aerial Attack on Kyiv Hours before High-Level Talks on Support for Ukraine

3 days ago

Russia unleashed one of its largest aerial assaults on Ukraine in recent months hours before Britain and Germany chaired a meeting Monday to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump's plans for NATO allies to provide Ukraine with weapons.
The drone and missile attack on Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, killed two people and wounded 15, including a 12-year-old, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The deadly assault underscored the urgency of Ukraine's need for further Western military aid, especially in air defense, a week after Trump said deliveries would arrive in Ukraine within days.
A drone struck the entrance to a subway station in Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi district where people had taken cover. Videos posted on social media showed the station platform engulfed by smoke, with dozens inside. The heaviest strikes hit the city's Darnytskyi district, where a kindergarten, supermarket and warehouse facilities caught fire.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, who arrived in Kyiv on Monday for talks with Zelenskyy, visited some of the damaged area.
Zelenskyy and Barrot spoke about expanding defense cooperation, including a decision by French companies to start manufacturing drones in Ukraine, and advancing Ukraine's path toward European Union membership, the Ukrainian leader said on social media.
Western defense chiefs meet on Ukraine
The virtual meeting of high-level military officials was led by British Defense Secretary John Healey and his German counterpart Boris Pistorius. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and NATO leader Mark Rutte, as well as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, attended the so-called Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting.
Moscow has intensified its long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities, and analysts say the barrages are likely to escalate as Russian drone production expands.
Ukraine's new Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal urged allies to speed up deliveries of American air defense systems under the plan put forward by Trump.
'I request the U.S. to make these weapons available for purchase, and our European partners to extend all the needed financing for their procurement,' Shmyhal, who until recently served as prime minister, told the meeting.
Trump's arms plan, announced a week ago, involves European nations sending American weapons, including Patriot air defense missile systems, to Ukraine via NATO — either from existing stockpiles or buying and donating new ones.
In an shift of tone toward Russia, Trump last week gave Moscow a 50-day deadline to agree to a ceasefire or face tougher sanctions.
At Monday's meeting, Healey was expected to urge Ukraine's Western partners to launch a '50-day drive' to get Kyiv the weapons it needs to fight Russia's bigger army and force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, the U.K. government said in a statement.
NATO's Grynkewich told The Associated Press on Thursday that 'preparations are underway' for weapons transfers to Ukraine while U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said he couldn't give a time frame.
European Commissioner for Defense and Space Andrius Kubilius visited Washington on Monday ahead of talks with U.S. officials about European defense and support for Ukraine.
Kubilius told reporters he welcomed Trump taking a harder line on Putin, calling it 'a new opening in how we can support Ukraine.'
'If you combine American economic power and European economic power we are something like 20 times Russia's power,' he said. 'We need political will.'
Kyiv wants American-made Patriot missile systems
Germany has said it offered to finance two new Patriot systems for Ukraine and raised the possibility of supplying systems it already owns and having them replaced by the U.S.
But delivery could take time, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested, because 'they have to be transported, they have to be set up; that is not a question of hours, it is a question of days, perhaps weeks.'
Other Patriot systems could come thanks to Switzerland, whose defense ministry said Thursday it was informed by the U.S. Defense Department that it will 'reprioritize the delivery' of five previously ordered systems to support Ukraine.
While Ukraine waits for Patriots, a senior NATO official said the alliance is still coordinating the delivery of other military aid — such as ammunition and artillery rounds — which includes aid from the U.S. that was briefly paused. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
In a video address, Zelenskyy said another round of talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations was planned for Wednesday. He said he discussed the preparations with Rustem Umerov, who led the Ukrainian team in the previous two rounds, but didn't give further details.
The previous negotiations were held in Istanbul, and Russian media reports said it would likely remain the host city. The talks in May and June led to a series of exchanges of prisoners of war but produced no other agreements.
Ukraine fires drones at Moscow
The overnight Russian barrage of Kyiv began shortly after midnight and continued until around 6 a.m. Residents were kept awake by machine-gun fire, buzzing drone engines and multiple loud explosions.
It was the first major attack on Kyiv since Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, arrived in the city last Monday. Russia halted strikes during his visit.
Russia's Ministry of Defense said its attack used drones and Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. It said the barrage successfully targeted airfield infrastructure and Ukraine's military-industrial complex.
Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 426 Shahed and decoy drones overnight and on Monday, as well as 24 missiles of various types. It said 200 drones were intercepted with 203 more jammed or lost from radars.
Ukraine, meanwhile, continued to deploy its domestically produced long-range drones. Russia's Ministry of Defense said its forces shot down 74 Ukrainian drones overnight, almost a third of them destroyed close to the Russian capital. Twenty-three drones were shot down in the Moscow region, the ministry said, 15 of which were intercepted over the city itself.

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Hulk Hogan, pro wrestling icon and controversial figure, dies at 71

Nikkei Asia

16 minutes ago

Nikkei Asia

Hulk Hogan, pro wrestling icon and controversial figure, dies at 71

(Reuters) -- Hulk Hogan, the American sports and entertainment star who made professional wrestling a global phenomenon and loudly supported Donald Trump for president, has died at the age of 71, World Wrestling Entertainment said on Thursday. "WWE is saddened to learn WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan has passed away. One of pop culture's most recognizable figures, Hogan helped WWE achieve global recognition in the 1980s," WWE said on X. It gave no cause of death. The bleach-blond, mahogany-tanned behemoth became the face of professional wrestling in the 1980s, helping transform the mock combat from a seedy spectacle into family-friendly entertainment worth billions of dollars. A key moment in that evolution came at the WrestleMania III extravaganza in 1987, when Hogan hoisted fellow wrestler Andre the Giant before a sold-out Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan for a thunderous body slam of the Frenchman. Hogan parlayed his wrestling fame into a less successful career in Hollywood, starring in films like "Rocky III" and "Santa With Muscles," but kept returning to the ring as long as his body would allow. In 2024, he appeared at the Republican National Convention to endorse the presidential bid of Trump, who in the 1980s had played host to Hulk-headlined WrestleManias. Hogan said he made the decision to support the Republican candidate after seeing his combative, fist-pumping reaction to an attempted assassination on the campaign trail. "Let Trumpamania run wild, brother!" Hogan bellowed to a cheering crowd, ripping off his shirt to reveal a Trump tank top. "Let Trumpamania rule again!" Born Terry Gene Bollea in Augusta, Georgia, on Aug. 11, 1953, the future Hulk and his family soon moved to the Tampa, Florida area. After high school, he played bass guitar for area rock bands, but felt a pull to the red-hot wrestling scene in Florida in the 1970s. Many of the details of his career were show business exaggerations, representative of the blurred lines between fact and fiction in wrestling. His first trainer reportedly broke Hogan's leg to dissuade him from entering the business, but he kept at wrestling, weight training, and -- he later admitted -- anabolic steroids. He gained in notoriety as his biceps turned into what he dubbed the "24-inch pythons." The "Hulk" moniker came from comparisons to the comic-book hero portrayed on TV at the time. He would end up paying royalties to Marvel Comics for years. "Hogan" was the invention of promoter Vincent McMahon, the owner of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), who wanted Irish representation among his stable of stars. His appearance as wrestler Thunderlips in "Rocky III," where he dwarfed leading man Sylvester Stallone, rocketed Hogan to the mainstream. Upon a return to the WWF, now controlled by McMahon's son Vincent K., he defeated the Iron Sheik in 1984 to claim the world championship, a belt he would hold for four years. Hogan became a household name, appearing on the cover of magazine Sports Illustrated and performing alongside pop culture stars like Mr. T. The WWF came to dominate wrestling, anchored by its annual WrestleMania pay-per-view events. Later, he joined competitor World Championship Wrestling, swapping his trademark yellow tights for black and taking on a persona as the villainous "Hollywood" Hogan, the head of a gang of rulebreakers known as the New World Order. The gimmick reinvigorated his career. Hogan eventually returned to the WWF, now known as WWE, and faced Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson at WrestleMania in 2002. "I'm in better shape than him," Hogan told Reuters at the time, five months shy of his 50th birthday. "I'll stand next to The Rock and pose down with him if he wants to." The Rock ultimately won the match. Hogan was inducted twice into the WWE Hall of Fame, and referred to himself as the "Babe Ruth" of wrestling -- after the New York Yankees' famed baseball player. But Hogan's support of Trump in 2024 did not go down well with all wrestling fans, and he also faced other controversies. Gossip website Gawker was shuttered after it posted parts of a sex tape between him and a friend's wife and Hogan sued on privacy grounds, winning a $140 million judgment. In 2015, he was suspended by the WWE after another surreptitious recording revealed that Hogan had used a racial slur. He was reinstated in 2018. He was married three times and had two children, who starred alongside him and first wife Linda in a 2005-2007 reality TV show, "Hogan Knows Best."

Hulk Hogan, who helped turn pro wrestling into billion-dollar spectacle, dies at 71

Nikkei Asia

an hour ago

Nikkei Asia

Hulk Hogan, who helped turn pro wrestling into billion-dollar spectacle, dies at 71

US Foreign Aid With Chinese Characteristics

The Diplomat

3 hours ago

The Diplomat

US Foreign Aid With Chinese Characteristics

The dismantling of USAID is the culmination of a decade-long realignment of Western approaches to development, inspired by China's Belt and Road Initiative. The GSEZ Mineral Port in Gabon, one of the projects supported by public-private partnership via the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. As President Donald Trump takes a chainsaw to U.S. foreign aid programs, it would be easy to attribute such extreme measures to MAGA isolationism or DOGE zealotry. While anti-globalist and anti-government ideologies certainly played a role, the shift away from traditional foreign aid is not limited to the U.S. and does not represent a full-scale abandonment of development finance. Indeed, Trump's moves represent the culmination of a decade-long realignment of Western approaches to development, inspired by China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The retreat from traditional foreign assistance cuts across the Western world. By 2026, estimates hold that foreign aid budgets will have fallen by over one-quarter in Canada and Germany and by close to 40 percent in Britain, compared with 2023 levels. Overall, G-7 countries, which account for 75 percent of foreign assistance, spent 28 percent less in 2025 than in 2024. Yet even as Trump's Big Beautiful Bill cut foreign aid, it also provided new funding – a $3 billion revolving fund – for the International Development Finance Corporation (IDFC), which was created by the 2017 BUILD Act. The IDFC is up for renewal this year, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee has already voted in support of authorizing its operations for another seven years with a lending cap of $120 billion, double the initial level. The IDFC was intended as an answer to China's BRI, which represented an alternative to traditional Western approaches to aid. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) – a club of Western donor countries – defines Official Development Assistance (ODA) as concessional finance directed toward developmental projects in low- and middle-income countries. The DAC encourages transparency and discourages the tying of aid to purchases of goods and services from the donor country. Most DAC countries emphasize 'soft' aid, focused on health, education, and humanitarian assistance. ODA typically draws upon budgeted funds that must be renewed annually. Very little of Chinese development finance meets these criteria. Instead, China's development finance is commercial in orientation. Most loans are initiated by policy banks – the China Development Bank and the China Export-Import Bank – that raise funds by issuing bonds to investors. Loans carry near-market interest rates and must be repaid in full. Much of Chinese development finance has been channeled through the BRI, which focuses on infrastructure construction. Loans through these policy banks and others have amounted to well over a trillion dollars over the past decade. Western countries have followed China's lead both in commercializing development finance and in driving more resources toward infrastructure development. The latter move has transpired under the guise of various initiatives: the BUILD Act (U.S.), Build Back Better World (U.S.), the Global Gateway initiative (European Union), the Blue Dot Network (U.S., Australia, Japan), the Quality Infrastructure Investment Initiative (Japan), and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (G-7). The competitive ambitions of the West have been limited by a paucity of available public funds, which makes it difficult to match the scale of China's BRI. This problem gave rise to efforts to leverage public money to mobilize private capital for development purposes through blended finance initiatives. At the multilateral level, a group of multilateral development banks issued a planning document titled 'From Billions to Trillions: Transforming Development Finance' in 2015. This paper outlined a vision for mobilizing private financial resources toward Global South infrastructure and other developmental needs. This was followed by the World Bank's 'Maximizing Finance for Development' initiative and the United Nation's 'Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance.' These projects and those discussed below constituted what Daniela Gabor characterized as a 'Wall Street Consensus.' Many types of infrastructure take the form of public (or semi-public) goods. Public goods, by their nature, are underproduced relative to their social utility because producers cannot exclude consumers from benefiting once the goods are produced. The Wall Street Consensus aims to make infrastructure projects 'bankable' or attractive to private investors by shifting the risk of unprofitability to the state. If successful, private money is pooled with public funding through blended financing models such as syndicated bond issues. In this 'development as derisking' model, private capital is 'escorted' into the process of financing infrastructure through the creation of new asset classes freed of investor risk. In 2018, the G-20 declared support for a Roadmap to Infrastructure as an Asset Class. Two types of risks must be minimized for private investors: regulatory risk and financial risk. Reducing regulatory risk includes lower environmental and safety standards, guaranteed grid access, legal protections against nationalization, and liability limits. Financial risk is managed through guaranteed toll revenues, preferential credit, loan guarantees, tax relief, or subsidies. Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) or DAC donors help build state capacity in project identification and development, provide expertise in securitizing infrastructure assets for the market, and offer partial financing or loan guarantees. The necessity for subsidies and other forms of state support arises from the fact that more than half of infrastructure projects in emerging economies do not promise sufficient cash flow to attract private investors. Even projects with dedicated revenue streams often carry demand risks, meaning they turn unprofitable if demand for the service declines. Governments may be compelled to include contract provisions that promise to cover revenue shortfalls with public funds when demand falls below certain thresholds. Seth Schindler, Ilias Alami, and Nicholas Jepson noted that what Gabor referred to as the 'derisking state' becomes both more dependent upon global finance and increasingly interventionist in shaping market outcomes. This contrasts with the Washington Consensus, which counseled state neutrality vis-à-vis the market, but also differs from the East Asian development model, where state intervention sought to shape the behavior of national capital rather than global capital. By relieving private investors of risk, states aim to amplify the capital that can be mobilized toward critical development needs beyond national savings or the resources of MDBs and bilateral donors. The trade-off is the acceptance of risk by the developing state, a danger highlighted when the COVID-19 pandemic and rising interest rates threatened the solvency of many highly indebted countries. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation fits this model. The BUILD Act described its purpose as to 'provide countries a robust alternative to state-directed investments by authoritarian governments and United States strategic competitors.' With a financing authority of $60 billion, the IDFC seeks to 'crowd-in' private capital with a flexible toolkit that includes nonconcessional loans, loan guarantees, export credits, political risk insurance, equity investments, and technical assistance. Largely due to IDFC activity, nonconcessional development finance flows jumped from 4 percent of overall U.S. aid spending in 2020 to 36 percent in 2021. Among the major projects funded by the IDFC are investments related to the Lobito Corridor in Southern Africa, which aims to create transportation links allowing Western firms to access critical minerals that are presently monopolized by China. Ironically, this growing Western emphasis on nonconcessional, commercialized development finance with an emphasis on infrastructure development comes at a time when China has scaled back the BRI (largely due to growing evidence that many recipient countries have exceeded their borrowing capacities) and begun allocating more resources to 'soft' aid through the Global Development Initiative. An obvious drawback of the blended finance model is that it diverts attention and resources from traditional concessional aid and the investment in health, education, and disaster assistance that remain essential. But even on its own terms, the effectiveness of the Wall Street Consensus remains in doubt. A 2020 report by the Center for Global Development concluded that the overall flow of blended finance had been disappointing and that the great bulk of MDB-mobilized private financing was directed to middle-income rather than low-income countries. A 2019 study by ODI Global reached similar conclusions. In low-income countries, on average, each $1 in public development financing mobilized only $0.37 in private finance. Blended finance was constrained by the low risk tolerance of both public and private actors in the face of environments hampered by poor governance and few profitable investment opportunities. Since most blended finance flowed to middle-income countries and to 'hard' sectors, such as transport and energy, as opposed to social sectors, the report suggested that the increased priority given such investments came at the expense of programs that more directly targeted poverty in low-income countries. Indeed, the proposed doubling in the funding cap for the IDFC cannot substitute for the human costs that follow from the cuts to U.S. Official Development Assistance, which one study suggests will lead to 14 million deaths over the next five years. Traditional aid may have drawbacks, whether evaluated as a tool of U.S. foreign policy or in terms of development effectiveness, but abandoning it in favor of the privatization of development finance is neither wise nor humane.