Ukraine war briefing: Weapons will be Europe's support to Ukraine – not Trump's, Kallas suggests
A meeting of Patriot owner nations and Ukraine donors – aiming to find additional Patriot air defence systems for Kyiv and chaired by Nato's top military commander – could take place on Wednesday of next week, Reuters reported. A Nato official said the alliance would coordinate weapons deliveries through a mechanism known as Nato Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine based in Germany.
Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to Nato, predicted Ukraine could ultimately receive 12 to 13 Patriot batteries but it could take a year for them all to be delivered. Trump caused confusion by saying one country had 17 Patriots, some of which would go directly to Ukraine. No Nato member except the US is believed to have that number of Patriot systems.
Ukraine must boost the proportion of weapons made at home to 50% within six months, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has declared. The president said he was counting on his new incoming government under prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko to deliver on the goal. Zelenskyy said that he, the outgoing PM and new defence minister Denys Shmyhal and the outgoing defence minister Rustem Umerov had met and decided that the defence ministry would have 'greater influence in the domain of arms production'.
'Ukrainian-made weapons now make up about 40% of those used at the front and in our operations,' Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. 'This is already significantly more than at any time in our country's independence … Our goal is to reach 50% Ukrainian-made weaponry within the first six months of the new government, by expanding our domestic production. I am confident this is achievable, though not easy.' Ukraine's arms production ramp-up so far has emphasised drones and air defences. Zelenskyy has in recent weeks stressed the importance of developing drone interceptors to tackle swarms of attacking drones.
A Russian bomb hit a shopping centre and market in Dobropillia near the frontline, killing two people and injuring up to 27 on Wednesday. Vadym Filashkin, governor of the Donetsk region, said a 500kg (1,100lb) bomb was dropped at 5.20pm when shoppers were out. 'The occupier specifically targeted the shopping centre. All nearby shopping centres have been either destroyed or damaged.' Zelenskyy described the attack as 'simply horrific, stupid Russian terror. There is no military logic to their strikes, only an effort to take as many lives as possible.'
Russia earlier bombed four Ukrainian cities overnight into Wednesday, injuring at least 15 people as it mostly targeted energy infrastructure, officials said. Russia launched 400 Shahed and decoy drones, as well as one ballistic missile, during the night, the Ukrainian air force said. The strikes targeted Kharkiv in Ukraine's north-east, Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine, Vinnytsia in the west and Odesa in the south.
The Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, urged the EU to adopt further sanctions against Moscow as he rejected as 'lies, manipulation and distortion' Russian accusations that Kyiv didn't want to progress peace talks. Sybiha reiterated that Kyiv was ready to hold them anytime. EU ambassadors were again unable to approve the 18th package of sanctions against Russia today as Slovakia maintained its opposition.
Bot networks have targeted Ukrainians in Russian-controlled regions, posting thousands of comments on social media aimed at 'manufacturing an artificial consensus in favour of Russia', according to a report released by the Atlantic Council thinktank and a 'cognitive defence' company called OpenMinds that works with governments including Ukraine. The report said short-lived 'disposable' bots commented on posts – often leaving nonsensical remarks under meaningless names, suggesting the use of generative AI. One post said: 'Lord, how wonderful that Putin advocates for the use of peaceful weapons.'
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NBC News
2 minutes ago
- NBC News
New mural in France shows Statue of Liberty covering eyes in swipe at Trump
ROUBAIX, France — As statements go, it's a big one. A towering mural in France of the Statue of Liberty covering her eyes is racking up millions of views online with its swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump 's immigration and deportation policies. Amsterdam-based street artist Judith de Leeuw described her giant work in the northern French town of Roubaix, which has a large immigrant community, as 'a quiet reminder of what freedom should be.' She said 'freedom feels out of reach' for migrants and 'those pushed to the margins, silenced, or unseen.' 'I painted her covering her eyes because the weight of the world has become too heavy to witness. What was once a shining symbol of liberty now carries the sorrow of lost meaning,' de Leeuw wrote in a July 4 post on Facebook, when Americans were celebrating Independence Day. Her depiction of the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French people in the late 1800s, has inspired some sharp criticism. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican lawmaker from Tennessee, wrote in an angry post on X that the work 'disgusts me.' He said he had an uncle who fought and died in France, where U.S. forces saw combat in both World War I and World War II. In an interview with The Associated Press, de Leeuw was unapologetic. 'I'm not offended to be hated by the Donald Trump movement. I am not sorry. This is the right thing to do,' she said. The town stood by the work, with its deputy mayor in charge of cultural affairs, Frédéric Lefebvre, telling broadcaster France 3 that 'it's a very strong and powerful political message.' Since returning to the White House amid anti-immigration sentiment, Trump has launched an unprecedented campaign that has pushed the limits of executive power and clashed with federal judges trying to restrain him. People from various countries have been deported to remote and unrelated places like South Sudan and the small African nation of Eswatini. Immigration is one of Trump's strongest issues in public polling in the U.S. The mural in Roubaix is part of an urban street culture festival backed by the town. Roubaix is one of the poorest towns in France. It was economically devastated by the collapse since the 1970s of its once-flourishing textile industry that used to attract migrant workers from elsewhere in Europe, north Africa and beyond.
Times
3 minutes ago
- Times
How I helped Trump win — and found love along the way
The president's social media strategist has had a busy morning stirring up online outrage. In the past few hours Alex Bruesewitz has condemned Democrats as a 'pathetic group of people', denounced critics of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil, as 'far-left maniacs' and shared a post of the 'horrible' liberal podcast host Alex Cooper being booed at a baseball game. Bruesewitz, 28, has been starting arguments like this professionally for a decade but now, sipping a glass of water at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, in a well-fitted navy blue suit, he is relaxed and even polite. He co-founded X Strategies, a company that counsels conservatives on how to win social media wars, when he was 19. Last year he was the architect of the podcast game plan credited with helping Donald Trump to win back the White House. Today he is at the heart of the administration's ultra-combative communications operation, working as a hired gun because he is planning to get married and thinks that it is 'a little bit difficult' to afford a wedding on a government salary. Often the best ideas are not his, he says. Take some of the viral memes — of Trump dressed as the Pope, or Gaza rendered as a holiday resort (Gaza-Lago), or the AI-generated cartoon of a crying migrant — that have driven huge clicks and controversy, amplified by the president's social platforms. Bruesewitz says they are generated by Trump's fans, whom he calls 'really talented people'. 'These guys make some of the best memes, and they're bus drivers in small towns across the country,' he says. 'And they get off of work and they go home and they open their computer, they tell their wife they love them and they log on to X for the next five hours of their life. And they're making hilarious memes of the president or videos of the president.' But it was podcasts, not memes, that really sealed his reputation. During the 2024 campaign, which became known as the 'podcast election' because of the extent to which the format often seemed to usurp traditional media, Trump appeared on 20 episodes. Most were hosted by young men and popular with young men. These appearances reached 23.5 million Americans in an average week, compared with 6.4 million for his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Subsequently 56 per cent of men aged 18 to 29 backed Trump in 2024, up from 41 per cent in 2020. Trump's podcast circuit has been depicted as a long pitch to the 'right-wing manosphere'. Bruesewitz thinks this is unfair. 'None of the podcasters we sat down with during that period were Trump lovers,' he says. Instead, he calls them 'equal-opportunity critics' — hosts who have been critical of Trump on certain issues, and critical of Democrats on others. He also notes that Trump saw a bounce among young women, up from 33 per cent in 2020 to 40 per cent in 2024. Podcasts worked for the candidate because they suited his unique political skills, he says. 'The greatness about President Trump is that he knows all the issues, and he also has charisma that is unrivalled in the political space,' Bruesewitz says. In general, little to no preparation was needed. 'I think over-prepping your candidates is what kind of trips you up.' Underpreparing has its pitfalls too. In the last few days of the election The Atlantic described Bruesewitz as a 'terminally online troll and perpetual devil on the campaign's shoulder' who had urged JD Vance to amplify the lie that illegal Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets. The magazine also reported that it was Bruesewitz who had personally advocated for the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe to appear at a Trump rally days before the election, at which he then called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of garbage' (Bruesewitz says both claims are untrue.) But Trump's subsequent victory cast him in a much more favourable light and Axios hailed him as 'one of the most influential political strategists in the US'. In February the Trump family appointed him senior adviser to the political action committee Never Surrender, entrusting him with running two of the president's social media accounts. His team of five, based in Florida, manage the @TrumpWarRoom and @TeamTrump handles, which are followed by millions (although the president still posts his own messages on Truth Social). Bruesewitz has also found time to meet some British conservatives. He met Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, in London. 'I think she's a good person,' he says, adding that she's got the issues right but is in a tough position. 'The party that she leads now was led by imbeciles before.' On the Reform leader Nigel Farage, he says: 'He's probably the best in the UK and my advice to him has been to make sure you use your momentum and your platform to build up the voices of the next generation because he's not going to be hot for ever.' Bruesewitz's career started in April 2015 when he was 18 years old. He was sitting at his high school desk in the Wisconsin town of Ripon (population 7,900), 'and I posted a picture of the Trump Hotel in Chicago,' he says. 'And I said, 'the sign on Trump Chicago would look just as good on the White House'. And the president, then businessman Donald Trump, retweeted me.' Two months later, Trump announced his candidacy. 'And when he announced that he was running, I was sold already. I wanted to be like Donald Trump.' After high school, Bruesewitz skipped college and tried his hand at real estate, having admired the empire Trump had built. 'I didn't do so well in that,' he concedes. Trump's election in 2016 inspired Bruesewitz and his business partner Derek Utley to form X Strategies a year later. Their early clients included FreedomProject Academy, a Christian conservative homeschooling academy in central Wisconsin, and a father who lost his daughter in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. Utley and Bruesewitz represented the latter pro bono as he argued for more school security rather than fewer guns. Then came the 2020 election and Trump's claims of election fraud. Bruesewitz leapt to his defence on social media and made a speech in Washington's Freedom Plaza. When the BBC invited Bruesewitz on air, he argued with the presenter. 'Thank you for having me on,' he said, 'and I just want to make one thing very clear … your country's opinion stopped mattering in our country in 1776.' His sparring eventually got Donald Trump Jr's attention. 'He liked my tenacity online,' Bruesewitz says. 'He found me to be quite entertaining.' The two became friends and Don Jr introduced Bruesewitz to his father. 'I got to spend quality time with the president for the first time at a live golf tournament at his club in New Jersey,' he tells me. 'I ended up spending four and a half hours with the president that day.' They spoke about 'all things' — not just politics. 'And we've had a great relationship ever since.' After that, Bruesewitz poured his energy into attacking Republicans who had backed Trump's impeachment — not as an official Trump appointee but out of 'sheer patriotism and love of nation'. Eight out of ten of those Republicans either declined to stand in 2022 or lost their primary. 'We travelled [around] their campaign districts,' Bruesewitz says. 'I personally picked fights with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger,' he says of the two anti-Trump Republican members of Congress, 'which was also great entertainment. I found great joy in that'. In November 2022, the Trump family finally hired Bruesewitz. His mission? To help beat Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, to the Republican presidential nomination. That worked — and then came the general election. It was Trump's youngest son Barron, not Bruesewitz, who set up the first big podcast interview — with the 24-year-old online streamer and influencer Adin Ross — which proved the power of the format before the election. Bruesewitz calculated that clips from Trump's appearance were seen by 113 million people in the first 24 hours. When Bruesewitz presented the numbers to Trump, 'he flipped through it, and he was like, 'these numbers are massive''. Trump also thanked his 19-year-old son in a Truth Social post. 'And then about four or five days passed, and he kept texting me or calling me about how great that interview was.' Not long afterwards, Bruesewitz was called into the office of Susie Wiles, who helped manage Trump's election campaign and is now White House chief of staff. 'She's like, 'Alex, we've got to get him to do more of these.'' After that, they went all in. 'We lined them up, one major podcast a week, up until we did Rogan, which was like a week before the election,' Bruesewitz says. The appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, the most popular podcast in the US, garnered more than 44 million views on YouTube by election day, allowing Trump to reach young, predominantly male voters, opining on topics such as martial arts, the possibility of life on Mars, and his admiration for William McKinley, the president who was assassinated in 1901. When I ask how Bruesewitz decided which podcasts Trump should do, he shrugs. 'I mean, I just went through something called Spotify and Spotify rankings. And I think we did eight of the ten podcasts on Spotify that were popular.' There was one conspicuous exception, however. Trump avoided Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, one of the most popular podcasts among young American women. Cooper, the 30-year-old host of the show, is beloved by her 'Daddy Gang' — some 70 per cent of whom are female, with 76 per cent under 35. In October Kamala Harris appeared on the podcast, discussing women's rights and abortion. Cooper later said her team had a Zoom call with Trump's team about the possibility of him appearing. Bruesewitz says that's not true. (A Call Her Daddy representative declined to comment.) 'I was President Trump's team,' Bruesewitz says. 'I never had a conversation with Alex Cooper about going on the podcast. Her team reached out to me. We never responded. I would never put the president on Call Her Daddy.' Why not? 'Because one, she's terrible, she's terrible at what she does. I think personally. I think she's been a detriment to society with the content that she talks about.' And she's 'regressive', he says, 'when it comes to starting families and having happy, healthy relationships'. A source close to the Call Her Daddy team confirmed that a call about the president coming on the show occurred before the election in November 2024 with members of his campaign team, including discussing a suggestion by his staff that they film the episode at Mar-a-Lago. Instead, looking for a female-friendly podcast to counter Harris's appearance on Call Her Daddy, he landed on a show called Girls Gone Bible. 'It's the No 2 religious podcast on Spotify,' he says. 'Massive following. They do these in-person shows where they get 1,000 young girls at each tour stop. They talk about Jesus and they pray over them. And it's actually really beautiful.' Bruesewitz organised a meeting between Trump and the hosts of Girls Gone Bible in Las Vegas. The night before, one of the hosts brought a glamorous friend to dinner. It was Carolina Urrea, the former Miss Nevada. 'Carolina walked in. I'm like, wow, who's that girl?' The following day, Carolina took a picture with Trump, who gave Bruesewitz a 'thumbs up'. The pair got engaged eight months later. Bruesewitz says his fiancé has 'strengthened my relationship with the Lord'. He sees his experience as part of a larger shift toward Christianity in America in recent years. 'Another trend is moving away from the girl boss attitude to the trad wife,' he says. 'I don't know if it was Covid that kind of made that switch where people were spending more time at home and they were, you know, learning to cook more and doing more things. But that trad culture started taking off big time.' • My day with the trad wife queen and what it taught me While podcasts helped Trump to reclaim the White House, the president has rarely appeared on them in his second term. Though he showed up last month on the New York Post's Pod Force One, Trump is spending most of his time these days on Truth Social and his old favourite: TV news. Bruesewitz, who describes Trump as 'a good friend of mine' thinks this could change. 'I think he'll eventually do some. You know, he's been very busy running the free world.' As for his own future, he says that Trump would have endorsed him to run for office if he had wanted to, but he didn't. 'I think Congress would be a little too boring for me.'
BreakingNews.ie
3 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Spend of €1 million on eight advisers to Taoiseach
Over €1 million will be spent this year on paying the wages of the Taoiseach's eight political and media advisers. The Department of Public Expenditure has made public the details of the salaries. Advertisement Taoiseach Micheál Martin currently has eight special advisers including his deputy secretary and assistant secretary. All eight are being paid over €100,000 annually. The yearly bill for the Taoiseach's eight advisers comes to just over €1 million. The highest paid is his deputy secretary, who is on over €210,000 per year. For comparison, the highest paid special adviser in the UK is Cork native Morgan McSweeney. The chief of staff for UK prime minister Keir Starmer is paid €185,000 per year. Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said those at the top of Government are out of touch. "This is outrageous. Why does the Taoiseach need eight special advisers? These salaries are higher than their British counterparts. "One year of special advisers' salaries for the Taoiseach is three times the amount of the cost of the bicycle shed and it's ongoing, it's happening every single year. "I think that cavalier attitude towards taxpayers' money is evident right at the top of the Government, and I think there needs to be change."
