Ukraine looks to jointly produce weapons with allies, while US halts some shipments
Those plans come at what appears to be a key point in the all-out war launched by Moscow nearly 3 1/2 years ago. A renewed Russian push to capture more Ukrainian land has put Ukraine's short-handed defenses under severe strain, and Russian missiles and drones are battering Ukrainian cities. U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to find a peace settlement, meanwhile, have stalled.
As Washington has distanced itself under U.S. President Donald Trump from Ukraine's war efforts, a bigger onus has fallen on European countries to pressure Russia.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday held their first direct telephone call in almost three years. Macron's office said that during their two-hour conversation, the French leader underlined France's 'unwavering support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity' and called for a ceasefire.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that officials are preparing with a sense of urgency for upcoming meetings with European Union countries and other partners to talk about cooperation in weapons manufacturing.
'One of the key topics will be weapons production – our joint investments, joint projects,' Zelenskyy said in his daily address on Tuesday evening.
Defense Minister Rustem Umerov announced that draft legislation on joint weapons production with international allies is expected to be put to a vote in the Ukrainian parliament later this month. The proposed laws were shown to national defense companies on Tuesday, Umerov said.
The program includes plans to create a special legal and tax framework to help Ukrainian defense manufacturers scale up and modernize production, including building new facilities at home and abroad, according to Umerov.
Earlier this week, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said during a visit to Kyiv that Germany aims to help Ukraine manufacture more weapons more quickly. He was accompanied on the trip by German defense industry representatives.
The U.S. is halting some weapons deliveries to Ukraine out of concern that its own stockpiles have declined too far, officials said Tuesday. Certain munitions were longer-term commitments promised to Ukraine under the Biden administration, though the Defense Department didn't provide details on what specific weapons were being held back.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry summoned the U.S. chargé d'affaires, John Hinkel, on Wednesday to discuss ongoing defense cooperation.
Deputy Foreign Minister Maryana Betsa thanked the U.S. for its continued support, but emphasized the 'critical importance' of maintaining previously allocated defense packages, especially for bolstering Ukraine's air defense.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Pentagon's decision will help bring a settlement closer, because 'the fewer weapons supplied to Ukraine, the closer the end of the (war) is.'
The United States has been Ukraine's biggest military backer since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022. Under Trump, there have been no new announcements of U.S. military or weapons aid to Ukraine.
Between March and April, the United States allocated no new aid to Ukraine, according to Germany's Kiel Institute, which tracks such support.
For the first time since June 2022, European countries surpassed the U.S. in total military aid, totaling 72 billion euros ($85 billion) compared with 65 billion euros ($77 billion) from the U.S., the institute said last month.
Monday Mornings
The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week.
Washington's latest decision could remove some of the most formidable weapons in Ukraine's battlefield arsenal.
Analysts say Ukraine's European allies can fill some of the gaps and provide artillery systems. But they don't possess alternatives to the U.S.-made HIMARS missiles and air defense systems, especially Patriots, which are crucial to help defend Ukrainian cities from Russian air attacks.
It's not clear how much weaponry Ukraine possesses or what its most urgent needs are.
___
Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Globe and Mail
15 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
‘Honestly, it's gotten a lot worse': Teen girls on the Hockey Canada trial and life after #MeToo
Eight years ago, at the peak of the #MeToo movement, it seemed, for a brief moment, like progress was imminent. Women from around the world were sharing their extensive – and oftentimes painful – experiences of sexual abuse and violence, and lawmakers and corporations alike were pledging to make change. But in the years since, that progress has been stuttered. Harvey Weinstein, the film mogul whose case served as the rallying cry for the #MeToo movement, saw one of his convictions overturned. Donald Trump, who in 2023 was found liable for rape, was re-elected as President of the United States. And here in Canada, the recent Hockey Canada trial has reignited a conversation around what constitutes consent. The Globe and Mail spoke with a group of five teenaged girls, all of them 12th-graders from Kitchener, Ont., to get their thoughts on the current state of things: what it's like to be a young woman growing up in the post-#MeToo era, what sexual harassment looks like today and what they wish they'd been taught about consent. Have you all been following the Hockey Canada trial? [All of them shaking their heads no] Samira Nur, 17: It wasn't on my radar. But it does sound similar to a lot of stories I've heard, whether it's from people I know, or stories from the news. The case centres around consent – whether the young woman at the centre of it felt pressured and coerced into a situation she couldn't handle. How does that land with all of you? Have any of you had experiences where you felt pressured into uncomfortable situations? Samira: I work at a grocery store, so I encounter a lot of creepy men. There are a lot of older guys who are like, 'Oh, how old are you?' 'Let me take you home.' Or comment on my body while I'm picking something up from the floor. I've had a couple guys follow me home. I had another man ask me my ethnicity. When I said I was Somali, he was like, 'Oh, girls your age are married with kids by now. I'm going to ask your mom for your hand in marriage.' Technically speaking, I'm at work, and under the expectation that I still have to treat these people with kindness, despite the fact that I'm being, like, fully disrespected. Anna De Sousa, 18: I've been working since I was 12 at a bakery. There's this one [older male] customer I encounter every year. He comes in every summer, and asks me my age. And he always says, 'Oh, don't worry, I'll wait until you're 18.' Last year, he was like, 'You're 17 now. Next year, I'll be back. We're gonna go out.' I know he's going to show up this summer. Every time I see his face, my body literally starts shaking. As a teenager in the 1990s, I don't remember learning about consent or body safety in high school. What kind of sexual education were you given? Nishtha Tomer, 18: In Grade 9 health class, I think we only had, like, one or two classes about sex ed, and that's about it. It was mostly just sexual health – pregnancy, STDs and a lot about that. I also heard we learned a lot more than the guys did. A mistrial, jury dismissal, excluded evidence: Key moments in the Hockey Canada trial What about consent? Loyd Gebreselassie, 18: I know that they mentioned briefly things about consent – like what are your personal boundaries? And how do we make sure that's expressed? But it wasn't very in-depth. Samira: I think they used the 'tea' scenario. Like, if you don't want tea, you say you don't want tea. [Everybody laughs] It was like a YouTube video. It wasn't really treated very seriously. What do you wish you'd been taught? Samira: I wish we could have learned more about how much of a grey area consent can be. Consent can be removed. It can be coerced. It can be [the result of] abuse. Consent isn't as simple as yes or no. Not in terms of sexual situations, but I think a lot of us have said yes [to things] because of pressure, and not because we felt freedom or liberation to choose. I think that can apply in a lot of young women's sexual encounters – like because they're scared of losing someone. Anna: That's one thing I wish we explored more at school: Being able to say no in a way where you feel protected, you feel safe, but it's also respectful. So where do you turn to for advice on handling these situations? Shantelle Carrion, 18: I learned more from my mom. But it's kind of scary knowing that my knowledge of consent and relationships – everything comes from my parents. Thankfully, I'm in a very loving family, but that's not the case for everyone. Nishtha: I do have a close relationship with my parents. But it's still a brown household, and an immigrant household [Nishtha's parents are immigrants from India]. So it is a very stigmatized topic. So I mostly learned, like, from my amazing friend group about these things – and online as well. What about the role of alcohol or other substances when it comes to consent? What kinds of conversations are you girls having with your friends and families about that? Shantelle: Underage drinking is so normalized. I've had a personal experience where I went to a party [inebriated] my very first time – my only time. I regret it a lot. Thankfully I had a bunch of my girls with me. I bring this up because this is what happened in the Hockey Canada trial. It gives me chills, imagining the situation I could have gotten into if nobody else was there. It's so scary. We've been talking about it a lot [as friends], because we're going to be freshmen soon – how there's going to be a big party culture at university. As a teenager in the 90s, sexual harassment meant, for the most part, harassment on the street, or at school. What does it look like for you today? Nishtha: Honestly, I think it's gotten worse. With Instagram and Snapchat, it gives guys the ability to be anonymous when they're saying things. It switched from, like, being in the hallways to, like, texting your account, adding you to group chats. They will not say a word to you in real life, but online, it's the meanest things. And what does it look like when you try to have conversations about this stuff with your male peers? Loyd: I think this trend is growing with younger men – this Andrew Tate, red-pill sort of mentality. 'You have to be jacked. Your woman has to be submissive.' All these ideologies they've gathered and almost try to force onto women – and especially teenagers. Samira: It's gotten more hostile with the digital era. A lot of men do take women speaking out about these situations as hatred. I see that a lot. At the height of the #MeToo movement, many of us had hoped that things would be better, and safer for the next generation of young women. Has that been the case? Shantelle: I feel like the #MeToo era was amazing in the sense of spreading awareness, and bringing solidarity between women. More so that than actually really solving anything. Nishtha: It removed a lot of stigmatization, and helped to destigmatize conservations around sexual assault. And it helped remove a lot of shame that women carry. But I feel like legally, or even politically, there hasn't been real recognition or actual change for victims. Women did learn to cope with that together, and did build more of a sense of community. But also, it's something we shouldn't be having to cope with. There should be consequences.
Global News
30 minutes ago
- Global News
U.S. added 147K new jobs last month. Here's what the numbers don't show
The U.S. labor market delivered another upside surprise last month, churning out a surprisingly strong 147,000 jobs. The unemployment rate ticked down unexpectedly, too. But the headline numbers masked some weaknesses as the U.S. economy contends with fallout from President Donald Trump's economic policies, especially his sweeping import taxes and the erratic way he rolls them out. Here are five key takeaways from the jobs report the Labor Department released on Thursday. The headline jobs numbers looked good June hiring was up modestly from May's 144,000 increase in payrolls and beat the 118,000 jobs economists had forecast for last month. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.1% from 4.2% in May as the ranks of the unemployed fell by 222,000. Forecasters had expected the jobless rate to inch up to 4.3%. Story continues below advertisement Labor Department revisions added 16,000 jobs to April and May payrolls. 2:04 Canada on track for 'mild recession' this year: Deloitte Average hourly wages came in cooler than forecasters expected, rising 0.2% from May and 3.7% from a year earlier. The year-over-year number is inching closer to the 3.5% considered consistent with the Federal Reserve's 2% inflation target. Healthcare jobs increased by 39,000. State governments added 47,000 workers and local governments 33,000. A closer look reveals weakening in the job market 'On net, it was a good report,'' said Sarah House, senior economist with Wells Fargo, 'But when you dig underneath the surface, it was another jobs report that didn't look quite as good as first meets the eye.'' Story continues below advertisement Private companies, for instance, hired just 74,000 workers last month, about half the 137,000 they hired in May. And it was the fewest hires since last October, when there were significant labor disruptions from hurricanes. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy State and local governments added nearly 64,000 education jobs last month – a total that may have been inflated by seasonal quirks around the end of the school year. 2:56 World Bank says economy is on track for worst decade since 1960s The U.S. labor force — the count of those working and looking for work — fell by 130,000 last month on top of a 625,000 drop in May. Economists expect Trump's immigration deportations — and the fear of them — to push foreign workers out of the labor force. A falling labor force can keep the unemployment rate lower than it would be otherwise. That is because jobseekers need time to find employment and can show up as unemployed in the interim. Story continues below advertisement A good job can be hard to find With unemployment low, most Americans enjoy job security. But as hiring has cooled over the past couple of years it's become harder for young people or those re-entering the workforce to find jobs, leading to longer job searches or longer spells of unemployment. The Labor Department said the number of discouraged workers, who believe no jobs are available for them, rose by 256,000 last month to 637,000. When he was laid off earlier this year from his job as a communications manager for a city government in the Seattle area, Derek Wing braced for the worst. 'The word I would use is: 'terrifying''' to describe the experience, he said. 1:44 Canada's jobless rate ticks up as Trump's tariffs cause cracks in labour market Lots of big local employers like Microsoft continue to cut jobs. And he'd heard horror stories of people applying for jobs and then – crickets. Story continues below advertisement 'I had a couple of experiences where I would apply for a job and just feel like it was going out into the ether and never hearing back,'' he said. But Wing's fortunes turned quickly. He applied for an opening with Gesa Credit Union. Six weeks later – 'superfast in this economy'' — he had a job as a communications strategist for Gesa. The Fed is likely to stay put The upside surprise in June payrolls likely will encourage the Fed to continue its wait-and-see policy of leaving rates unchanged until it has a better idea of how Trump's tariffs and other policies will affect inflation and the job market. The Fed raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023 to combat an outburst of inflation. As price pressures eased last year, the Fed reversed course and cut rates three times in 2024. More cuts were expected. Story continues below advertisement But the central bank has turned cautious this year. 'Today's results are more than positive enough to reduce expectations for Fed rate cuts in the wake of tariffs and policy chaos, at least for now,″ Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a commentary. 2:04 Trump takes aim at Fed chair Jerome Powell, rattling markets After the jobs data was released Thursday, yields on U.S. Treasurys spiked immediately. Traders in the futures market now see less than a 7% chance that the Fed could cut its main interest rate at its next meeting later this month. That's down sharply from the nearly 24% chance they saw just a day earlier, according to data from CME Group. The outlook is cloudy Employers are now contending with fallout from Trump's policies, especially his aggressive use of import taxes – tariffs. Story continues below advertisement Mainstream economists say that tariffs raise prices for businesses and consumers alike and make the economy less efficient by reducing competition. They also invite retaliatory tariffs from other countries, hurting U.S. exporters. Trump has increased the anxiety by imposing tariffs in an unpredictable way — announcing and then suspending them, then coming up with new ones. The uncertainty has left businesses bewildered and hesitant to make decisions about hiring and investment. House at Wells Fargo expects monthly job growth to fall below 100,000 in the second half of the year. 'We're bracing for a much lower pace of job growth,″ she said. 'There's still a lot of policy uncertainty.″
Winnipeg Free Press
36 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Israeli drone strike kills 1, injures 3 near Beirut
KHALDEH, Lebanon (AP) — An Israeli drone strike hit a car on a highway in the town of Khaldeh just south of Beirut, killing one person and injuring three others, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported Thursday. The Israeli army said in a statement that it had targeted 'a saboteur who was involved in arms smuggling and advancing terrorist plots against Israeli citizens and the Israeli Defense Forces on behalf of Iran's Quds Force.' It was not immediately clear if the target of the strike was the person killed. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal nominally ended the latest war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in November, but Israel has continued to launch near-daily airstrikes in Lebanon since then against what it says are officials and facilities of Hezbollah and other militant groups. Hezbollah has claimed one strike fired across the border since the ceasefire. Most of the Israeli strikes have been in southern Lebanon, but Israel has also struck a handful of times in Beirut's southern suburbs since the ceasefire. Thursday's strike was in a congested area close to Lebanon's only commercial airport. Nearly 250 people were killed and 609 wounded in Israeli attacks in Lebanon between Nov. 28 — the day after the ceasefire took effect — and the end of June, according to Lebanon's health ministry. Also Thursday, Hezbollah members and supporters held a funeral in Beirut's southern suburbs for the former bodyguard and head of security of Hassan Nasrallah, the group's longtime leader. Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut last year, while his former bodyguard was killed in Iran during last month's Israel-Iran war, along with his son. ——- Associated Press staff writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
