Ukraine war briefing: Russia repatriated at least 20 of its own dead soldiers in recent exchanges, Zelenskyy says
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia sent Ukraine at least 20 of its own dead soldiers in recent exchanges with Kyiv, describing it as a result of Moscow's disorganisation in carrying out large swaps of wounded PoW's and remains of troops. Zelenskyy said that an 'Israeli mercenary' fighting for Moscow was among the dead Ukraine had received. Officials did not disclose the identities of the bodies: 'They threw the corpses of their citizens at us. This is their attitude toward war, toward their soldiers. And this is already documented. Sometimes these bodies even have Russian passports,' he said. He said the Russian side insisted the dead were all Ukrainians.
Zelenskyy has also accused western firms of supplying Russia with 'machine tools' used to make weapons, in remarks made public Saturday. He said companies from Germany, the Czech Republic, South Korea and Japan were among them, as well as one business 'supplying a small number of components from the United States.' He said most of the companies supplying tools to Russia were from China, but that dozens of western firms were also culpable: 'We have passed on all this information to all countries, our partners, everyone … We strongly urge everyone to impose sanctions on these companies,' the Ukrainian leader added.
The Ukrainian president also called on Ukraine's western partners to allocate 0.25% of their GDP to helping Kyiv ramp up weapons production and said the country plans to sign agreements this summer to start exporting weapon production technologies. In remarks released for publication Saturday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was in talks with Denmark, Norway, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Lithuania to launch joint weapon production. He also said on Saturday he was planning staff changes in Ukraine's diplomatic corps and also in government institutions to boost the country's resilience. He gave no time frame for the decisions.
Siarhei Tsikhanouski, a leading Belarus opposition figure, was freed on Saturday after more than five years in prison, in the most significant move so far by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko to try to ease his isolation from the West. Lukashenko has been shunned by the West for years and faced sanctions after brutally crushing pro-democracy demonstrations in 2020 and then allowing Vladimir Putin, his close ally, to launch part of his 2022 invasion of Ukraine from Belarusian territory. The release came just hours after Belarusian authorities announced that Lukashenko met with US president Donald Trump's envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, in Minsk.
In the Donetsk region, Russian strikes on Saturday on key towns on the eastern front of the war in Ukraine killed at least one person. The Russian military said its forces had captured another small village in its slow advance westward through Donetsk region. Russian forces struck Sloviansk and Kramatorsk – two cities that Moscow will target as its forces press on. Donetsk region Governor Vadym Filashkin said one person died and three were injured in Sloviansk. In Kramatorsk, officials said at least one person was trapped under rubble and a number of other residents were injured.
In the north, another person died in a drone attack in the north near the Russian border, Ukrainian officials said. A mass drone attack on the town of Nizhyn near the Russian border killed one person and damaged local infrastructure. Reports from Kharkiv region in the north-east suggested Russian troops were closing in on the city of Kupiansk. On Friday, the Russian Defence Ministry said it had captured the village of Moskovka, just outside the city of Kupiansk.
Deportation of Ukrainians is part of a continuing 'cleansing' operation of the occupied territories, reports the Guardian's Shaun Walker in Zaporizhzhia, which may accelerate if US-led attempts to push Russia and Ukraine into a peace deal result in the freezing of the current frontlines, solidifying Russian control over the territory Moscow has seized over the past three years.
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Telegraph
34 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Germany's crisis-hit car industry is the key to its rearmament
Once the pride of the nation, Germany's car industry is reeling from an annus horribilis of poor sales, job losses and the threat of unprecedented factory closures. But defence firms have found a silver lining in the decline of the 'auto' trade: rehiring skilled workers to build equipment for a new German army that may soon have to defend Europe from Russia. Sources in the European defence industry, which will play a critical role in German rearmament, say they are eager to snap up engineers who have been let go by car companies so they can be put to work producing tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Discussions are also being held in Berlin about repurposing car factories to produce military equipment. 'Let's put it this way: there's a similarity in the jobs, which means teaching an expert to weld vehicles other than cars takes less time than [training] a new person,' said a defence industry source. 'Thus, job offers usually work quite well for those who left the car industry.' It comes as Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, seeks to turn his country into a major European security power, after decades of Berlin taking a back seat on geopolitical issues. Mr Merz, the centre-Right Christian Democrats (CDU) leader, has vowed to increase German defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP and transform the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, into the 'strongest conventional army in Europe'. The CDU chief has created a special €500 billion (£430 billion) fund to rebuild Germany's crumbling infrastructure, a key requirement for the rapid transit of Nato troops and tanks to its eastern flank. His coalition government is also mulling a possible return to conscription, and last month unveiled the deployment of a new brigade of soldiers in Lithuania to defend the border with Russia – the first permanent military deployment by Germany since the Second World War. The dramatic shift in German defence policy, known as the 'Zeitenwende' or turning of the times, has created unprecedented opportunities for the German arms industry, which used to be a pariah in the country due to its Nazi past. At the same time, years of economic stagnation, Donald Trump's tariff war, poor electric car sales and fierce competition from China have all wrought havoc on the once mighty German car industry. A recent study by the Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) said the German car industry is facing its worst slump since the pandemic, with two fifths of businesses struggling with a shortage in orders. 'Intensifying competition, especially from outside Europe, seems to be increasingly taking its toll on the German automotive industry. The crisis in the German car industry is continuing,' the Ifo said. Another study by EY, an audit firm, found that the German car industry suffered 19,000 job losses in 2024 and now only employs around 760,000 people in Germany, the lowest figure since 2013. But Mr Merz's rearmament policy could come to the rescue. Rafael Loss, a German security expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said discussions were under way to convert German car factories, which might otherwise have closed down, so they can be used to build weapons, such as one Audi factory in Brussels. Volkswagen, which is Europe's biggest carmaker but losing sales to China, is also understood to be looking for alternative uses for its factories in Dresden and Osnabrück. 'In cases where you have a car factory that already has skilled workers and is equipped for production of heavy machinery, that is one of the stronger arguments for the defence industry getting involved to prevent job losses,' he said. Mr Loss added that electricians could also have a valuable role to play in developing military technology that has similar design features to civilian cars. 'This could be applied to micro-electronics, the sort of electronic devices you see in automated cars such as proximity sensors for parking,' he said. 'They are not too different from the sensors being used in military vehicles.' Germany's 'Zeitenwende' policy began under Olaf Scholz, the previous chancellor, who announced the concept in a major speech in 2022 responding to Vladimir Putin's illegal and full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He vowed that Germany would no longer be a bystander on issues of European security, as he created a €100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr, in addition to giving billions of euros in aid to Ukraine. Mr Scholz was initially reluctant to provide German military support, due to fears of angering Putin, but eventually sent tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, air defence systems and huge quantities of ammunition to Kyiv. His successor, Mr Merz, wants to take German support even further, having swept to victory in elections last February and formed a coalition propped up by Mr Scholz's Social Democrats. 'Germany is back,' he has declared. Now there is speculation as to whether Mr Merz will finally agree to send powerful long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, a step that the government of Mr Scholz always maintained was a step too far that would drag Berlin into open conflict with Moscow. Mr Merz's government maintains a policy of secrecy on the nature of arms supplies to Ukraine, which it says is to keep Moscow guessing, although critics wonder if it really means that he has developed cold feet about the Taurus system. The coalition is also hampered by doveish figures in the Social Democrats, who hold many of the same views about Russia as their former leader Mr Scholz. At the same time, the rise of the Kremlin-friendly far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party – which came second place in the last election – is putting pressure on Mr Merz to temper his actions against Russia. Some German officials have been slightly taken aback by the highly positive response to Mr Merz's rearmament policy, fearing that expectations have been set too high for his government. 'We know expectations in Europe are high, and we view this defence reform as an important and necessary step,' one source said. 'But buying tanks, building tanks, this is not something that Germans are enthusiastic about,' they added, citing Germany's previous and far more infamous attempt to build the biggest army in Europe.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Mea Culpa: I know why the caged metal bird won't sing
We had a wonderful mixed metaphor in a comment article about rich people allegedly fleeing the country to escape Rachel Reeves's clampdown on non-doms: 'The UK, once a favoured magnet for the world's billionaires and multimillionaires, has fallen off its perch.' I tried to imagine a toy bird attached to a metal perch by a magnet, possibly a special kind of magnet 'favoured' by rich people, but it didn't work. Not only did we mix our metaphors, we overdid the first one. We meant that the UK had once been favoured by the world's mobile rich, or that it used to be a magnet for them, but both together was too much. In a bird cage. Fission power: Sometimes it is fine to split an infinitive. In the headline, 'Trump lacks the strength to usefully wield US soft power,' hardly anyone would notice that 'to' and 'wield' have been separated. In another headline, however, it didn't work at all: 'After 30 years – it's time to again ask what women want.' The natural rhythm there is 'to ask again'. Putting 'again' in the middle of 'to ask' is like when we write, as we sometimes do although I haven't seen it in the past week, 'the government on Saturday said…' When oh when? On Wednesday, we compared the prime minister's approach to the European Court of Human Rights with his predecessor's handling of the European Union. The headline said: 'Why Keir Starmer risks making the same mistake as David Cameron when it comes to Europe.' This is not wrong; it is just weak. 'When it comes to' is one of those phrases of verbal fluff that gives away a badly constructed sentence. What we meant was: 'Why Keir Starmer risks making the same mistake on Europe as David Cameron.' Hanging by a thread: In an article about a woman's campaign to educate students about coercive control in relationships, we lost our thread. 'Now studying for a master's degree in sociology at the University of Cambridge, her petition, which has been signed by more than 105,000 participants, has received cross-party support and was delivered to No 10 on Monday afternoon.' A natural reading is that the petition was studying for a master's degree. We broke it up into two sentences. Bevvied: We wrote about the confusion caused by the Office for National Statistics when it announced the most recent consumer price inflation figure. It had admitted that the previous month's figure was wrong: it was 3.5 per cent and it should have been 3.4 per cent, but it wasn't going to go back to correct the official series. 'The decision not to correct was taken so as not to disrupt a bevvy of contracts linked to the CPI,' we said. Thanks to Roger Thetford for pointing out that we meant 'bevy', a group, rather than 'bevvy', short for beverage, usually an alcoholic one. It may be, however, that both words come from the same source, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. 'Bevy' dates from the 15th century as a collective noun for quails or ladies, it says, from Anglo-French bevée, of unknown origin. 'One supposed definition of the word is 'a drinking bout', but this perhaps is a misprint of bever (see beverage). If not, perhaps the original sense is birds gathered at a puddle or pool for drinking or bathing.' The online dictionary comments: 'The quest for a clear and logical origin in such a word might be futile.' Amid celebrations: Finally, let me pause my campaign against 'amid' to allow Mick O'Hare to praise a good and helpful use of the word. In our report of the Premier League fixtures for the 2025-26 season, we said: 'Arsenal have away trips to Manchester United and Liverpool in their first five fixtures, amid home ties against newly promoted Leeds, last season's revelation Nottingham Forest and Pep Guardiola's Manchester City.' Amid? Used to mean 'in the middle of' and not just to bolt two parts of a sentence together? Alleluia.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Britain's new breed of drone-racing soldiers will be more than ready to take on Putin
The Chief of the General Staff – the head of the British Army – General Sir Roly Walker has a plan to defeat the Russians. In a speech this week he made it clear that our Army is laser focused on the enemy, the Russian Army, and is not only learning from Ukraine but re-equipping and re-training itself at pace. The European Nato allies are also focusing East. Collectively, European Nato will soon over-match Putin's men, even without the traditional assumption of massive help from the US. Though the whole world seems currently focused on Iran in its struggle with Israel, Vladimir Putin remains the main threat here and we should not forget it. He is committing war crimes every week in his evil campaign against Ukraine's civilian population: the latest is the reported use of cluster munitions against residential areas of Kyiv. Not only are cluster bomblets devastating across wide areas against unprotected civilians, their use leaves unexploded bomblets scattered across the target area: effectively a field of landmines, and one that is difficult and dangerous to clear up. Against this background, the move of US air defence assets from Europe to the Middle East is dispiriting, and seems to indicate that President Trump has given up on European peace. He will probably seek instead to disable the Iranian nuclear programme, with most of the hard work done for him by the Israelis. But this is no help to us in Europe and most especially not to the brave Ukrainians who are keeping Putin's war machine tied up and so protecting us all. Bold Ukrainian secret-service operations have taken the fight to Russia and shown the world that Zelensky and his indomitable compatriots are a force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile here in Britain there is scepticism among journalists and commentators regarding the British Army's ability to stand up to Russia, and the willingness of our young people to fight for their country. But in fact there is no shortage of young Brits wanting to join – over a million have tried over the last ten years, but sadly some 75 per cent of them were defeated by the absurdly clunky recruitment mechanism. This is now being sorted out, and people are making it through: among them my own son, following in my footsteps at Sandhurst and probably doing it better! General Walker reminded us this week of Field Marshal Montgomery's memoirs in which he wrote: 'I shall take away many impressions into the evening of life. But the one I shall treasure above all is the picture of the British soldier – staunch and tenacious in adversity, kind and gentle in victory – the figure to whom the nation has again and again, in the hour of adversity, owed its safety and its honour'. Never a better word said on the British soldier and it is as true today as it was then, in my opinion. When it comes to lethality, General Walker explained how this will double in two years and treble by the end of the decade. The traditional heavy end, tanks, artillery and attack helicopters, will account for 20 per cent with the remaining 80 per cent expected to come from drones. Anybody who has dipped even the smallest toe into the Ukraine war would agree this is a good mix. Mass, still the main currency that ensures victory, can come from drones: thousands of them, AI enabled, with the tanks providing the direct 'thunder' when appropriate. There is also a realisation in Strategic Defence Review that he who controls the Electromagnetic Spectrum nowadays controls the battlefield. Electronic warfare capabilities are now a priority. The third element which guarantees success in battle is training, and British soldiers have been training like dervishes in this contemporary battlespace. Despite the Russians having a few 'islands of excellence' the rank-and-file conscripts of Putin's army are in the main untrained and used as cannon fodder. The meat grinder has now consumed over one million Russian souls. The British Army for its part is now a 'world of excellence', well trained, with excellent kit coming onboard, and still pound for pound the best fighters on the planet. In the past the British Army concentrated on a few very expensive drones, but we have now well and truly grasped the mass drone idea, so critical for success against the Russians. General Walker tells us that 3,000 drone pilots have been trained in the last 12 months, and we will have another 6,000 in the next 12 months. These will fly mainly the basic FPV drones, $500 a pop-ish, that will create the mass we need. The Army's newest sport is drone racing, which teaches FPV pilots the skills they need to manoeuvre on the modern battlefield. At the beginning of the war, we were teaching Ukraine how to fight, but we are now learning from them how to be very much more lethal in the battle space, and most especially against a Russian looking threat. Sir Keir Starmer may be Trump's buddy today, but I'm sure he realises his genuine friends are in Europe and this absolutely includes Ukraine. It is now up to us to enable Ukraine to get into a position to get a just ceasefire out of the Kremlin. I'd argue that the RAF jets stationed at eastern airbases on Nato missions and our troops forward deployed in Estonia are doing more for our national interests than the planes we recently deployed to Cyprus. President Trump does not need our help to defeat Iran's nuclear weapons programme, but President Zelensky does to stop the Russians and force them to seek peace. I believe that General Walker is on the right track and is delivering the Army the nation needs and that Nato needs. When war in Ukraine ends and Putin looks further westwards, he will see a very different picture to that of 2022. The British Army will once again be ready to take the advice of the great General Slim: 'Hit the other fellow as quickly as you can, as hard as you can, where it hurts him most, when he is not looking'.
