Ukraine’s former top military commander warned that the US is “destroying” the world’s established order, delivering a sharp critique of Donald Trump’s approach to Russia that risks hampering President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attempt to repair ties.

Valerii Zaluzhnyi, a popular general whom Zelenskiy replaced last year, has been viewed as a potential contender to the wartime president in any future election. He is now Ukraine’s envoy to the UK.

On Thursday, he broke with a penchant to keep a low profile, accusing the White House of jeopardizing the “unity of the Western world” and warned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “may cease to exist.”

“It is obvious that Washington’s non-recognition of the Russian Federation’s aggression is also a new challenge — not only for Ukraine, but also for Europe,” he told a security and defense conference hosted by Chatham House in London.

“Not only Russia and the axis of evil are trying to destroy the world order, but the United States is actually destroying it completely,” the ambassador said.

The comments may undercut Zelenskiy’s effort to ease relations with the Trump administration after a visit to the Oval Office last week descended into a shouting match with the US leader and Vice-President JD Vance.

The US responded this week by cutting off military aid and some intelligence-sharing to Ukraine, undermining its war effort. The Trump administration has called on Kyiv to organize a presidential election, which the country’s constitutions prohibits under the martial law.

Zaluzhnyi, known as the “Iron General,” remains one of Ukraine’s most popular political figures despite tensions with Zelenskiy’s office that contributed to his dismissal. He was the only figure to surpass Zelenskiy in a February public survey issued by Rating Group.

While he didn’t explicitly rule out a potential future run against Zelenskiy for Ukraine’s highest office when asked about his political ambitions at an event in Kyiv last month, he suggest the timing wasn’t yet ripe.

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Russia says Franco-British plan is bid to buy time for Ukraine

 Russia said that a French and British peace initiative on Ukraine was a bid to buy time for Kyiv and prevent its military collapse.

"In reality, we are dealing with an open desire to achieve a respite at any cost for the Kyiv regime in its death throes, for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and to prevent the collapse of the front," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

She told reporters that Moscow was interested in a definitive settlement to end the war, not a pause that she said would help Ukraine.

"Firm agreements on a final settlement are necessary. Without all this, any respite or regrouping is absolutely unacceptable, as it will lead to exactly the opposite result," she said.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said at the weekend that London and Paris would work on a peace deal with Ukraine and present it to U.S. President Donald Trump. French President Emmanuel Macron said the two countries were proposing a partial one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine.

France and Britain have also said they would be willing to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine in the event of a settlement. Moscow has repeatedly and emphatically rejected the idea that troops from NATO countries could play such a role.

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Russia's former president said Moscow's main goal is 'inflicting maximum damage' on Ukraine as the US pauses weapons aid

• Dmitry Medvedev says Moscow's primary objective now is "inflicting maximum damage" on Ukraine.

• The Trump administration paused US military aid to Kyiv this week.

• There are Western fears that the suspension could hinder Ukraine's vital fighting capabilities.

Russia's former president, Dmitry Medvedev, said the Kremlin should press the attack on the battlefield as the US suspends arms supplies to Ukraine.

"Inflicting maximum damage to the enemy on the ground remains our primary objective today," Medvedev wrote in a social media post on Wednesday.

Medvedev noted that President Donald Trump had on Monday paused American aid.

However, he said Ukraine's disadvantage from the US aid pause would exist only for a limited time window.

"As soon as the deal is concluded, American arms supplies will likely resume (especially since Europe has already increased them)," Medvedev wrote.

"Russia is advancing," he added. "The enemy resists and is not yet defeated."

Medvedev, who was Russia's president from 2008 to 2012 and then its prime minister for eight years after, still holds a key position in the Kremlin's top military decision-making body.

He's now the deputy chairman of the Security Council, ranking behind only Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The former president is no stranger to hawkish rhetoric toward Ukraine and the US, previously threatening nuclear attacks on Western cities if NATO deployed soldiers in Ukraine. He's also called for a "maximum reward" bounty on such troops.

His new post comes as Ukraine's air force reported that Russia attacked with three Iskander ballistic missiles on Tuesday, alongside Moscow's regular daily barrage of over 100 Shahed attack drones.

Russia's ballistic missile attacks are rarer than its drone assaults and typically come every few weeks. This time, it launched a salvo on the same evening as Trump's address to Congress.

In a report on the military's Tuesday operations, the Russian Defense Ministry posted on Telegram that it had attacked Ukrainian airfields, an oil depot, drone production workshops, and other military assets in 150 districts.

It's still unclear how Ukraine's warfighting capabilities might be affected by a loss of continued US support. But there are fears in Kyiv that the move will scupper the effective use of critical American weapons, such as Patriot air defense systems and HIMARS long-range artillery.

"My guess is if US aid does not restart, then Ukrainians could hold out two to four months," Mark Cancian, a senior advisor on defense and security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, previously told Business Insider.

The CIA's director, John Ratcliffe, and Trump's national security advisor, Mike Waltz, both said that the US had also rolled back the amount of intelligence it shares with Ukraine.

Analysts from the Institute for the Study of War wrote on Wednesday that losing US intel would hurt Kyiv's ability to find and hit Russian ammo depots and air defense systems, giving Moscow more options to strike Ukraine and allowing its pilots to get closer to drop bombs.

The move would also hurt Ukraine's chances of detecting incoming drone attacks so it can warn civilians and troops, they added.

"Russian forces exploited the previous suspension of US military aid in early 2024, including by trying to seize Kharkiv City in May 2024 before US military aid resumed flowing to Ukrainian forces on the frontline," the analysts wrote.

US military aid to Ukraine was paused for several months last year amid resistance from congressional Republicans.

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Norway faces pressure to tap its $1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund to boost aid to Ukraine

• Calls are growing for Norway to tap into its sovereign wealth fund to boost funding for Ukraine.

• The calls come amid souring relations between the US and Ukraine, raising pressure on Europe to step up.

• Norway has spent less on Ukraine aid than its neighbors. Its SWF is worth $1.8 trillion.

Norway is facing growing pressure to tap into its massive sovereign wealth fund to boost aid for Ukraine as concerns grow over continued US support for Ukraine's war efforts.

Norway, a founding member of NATO, has a $1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, fueled by oil and gas revenues, as well as investments in stocks, bonds, real estate, and renewable energy.

The country caps its annual use at 3% to finance Norway's welfare state and budget. However, amid growing tensions between Washington and Kyiv, Norwegian politicians and economists are pushing to tap the fund to increase support for Ukraine.

"Norway is one of the few countries that has large money easily accessible, and we must therefore double our support to Ukraine immediately," Guri Melby, the leader of Norway's Liberal party, said in a Facebook post Saturday.

Arild Hermstad, the country's Green Party leader, said that "Norway has a record-high oil fund that we must now actively use to secure peace and democracy in Europe and Ukraine."

Norway lags behind its Nordic neighbors

Norway has spent less on aid to Ukraine than its Scandinavian neighbors, allocating just 0.75% of its GDP, compared to Sweden's 0.91%, Finland's 0.98%, and Denmark's 2.17%, according to the Kiel Institute for World Economy Ukraine Support Tracker.

Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in an X post on Thursday that parliament had agreed to double the country's financial pledge to Ukraine this year, to about $8.1 billion.

The Prime Minister's Office didn't reply to a request for comment from Business Insider.

But when it comes to the sovereign wealth fund, Norway's finance minister, Jens Stoltenberg, a former NATO Secretary General, warned last month that breaking the 3% cap would be risky and should only be used in times of crisis.

Meanwhile, in an op-ed published last weekend, 47 Norwegian economists, analysts, and professors urged the country to use the fund to help Ukraine.

"Russia's attack, if not stopped, poses an existential threat to freedom and democracy, not only in Ukraine but throughout Europe, including Norway," they wrote.

Breaking the 3% cap

Knut Anton Mork, a professor emeritus of economics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, told BI it wouldn't be the first time Norway had broken the 3% cap.

It exceeded it by 1.2 percentage points in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and by 0.1 percentage points during the 2008 financial crisis, when it was already set at 4%.

Even so, Mork said "disregarding the 3% rule would be somewhat unusual, and more so the larger the gift."

He predicted that the government would likely stay "within the 3% rule, or maybe slightly above" it.

Einar Lie, a professor of economic history at the University of Oslo, who along with Mork signed the op-ed, said breaking the 3% cap to aid a foreign country has never been considered before, but he argued that helping Ukraine to "survive and deter further aggression is vital" for long-term security.

"It is definitely more likely to happen as a part of a broad concerted action among European countries and, hopefully, the US," he added.

European concern over US support

Calls for Norway to step up its spending for Ukraine come amid uncertainty over Washington's commitment to the war-torn country.

Last Friday, during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to the White House, President Donald Trump accused Zelenskyy of "disrespecting" the US.

Days later, Trump said he was pausing all military aid to Ukraine. One military expert told BI that if US aid does not restart, then Ukrainians could hold out for perhaps two to four months.

The situation has raised concerns about how Europe could step in to further help Ukraine's defense.

At emergency talks in London on Saturday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said a "massive surge" in defense spending among European allies was in the works.

And on Tuesday, the European Union unveiled a plan to boost member states' defense spending amid what von der Leyen referred to as an "era of rearmament."

The ReArm Europe plan could unlock about $840 billion in funds.

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Ukrainian forces fighting inside Russia are almost surrounded, open source maps show

 Ukrainian serviceman patrols in the town of Sudzha.

Thousands of Ukrainian troops who stormed into Russia's Kursk region last summer in a shock incursion are nearly surrounded by Russian forces there, in a major blow to Kyiv which hoped to use its presence there as leverage over Moscow in any peace talks.

Ukraine's situation in Kursk has deteriorated sharply in the last three days, open source maps show, after Russian forces retook territory as part of a gathering counteroffensive that has nearly cut the Ukrainian force in two and separated the main group from its principal supply lines.

The precarious situation for Ukraine comes after Washington suspended its intelligence sharing with Kyiv and raises the possibility that its forces may be forced into a politically awkward and psychologically difficult retreat back into Ukraine, or risk being captured or killed.

The battlefield reversal comes at a time when Kyiv is under mounting U.S. pressure to agree a ceasefire with Moscow and as Russian forces continue to advance along parts of the front line inside Ukraine, even as Ukrainian forces stage a fightback in one area.

"The situation (for Ukraine in Kursk) is very bad," Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group, told Reuters.

"Now there is not much left until Ukrainian forces will either be encircled or forced to withdraw. And withdrawal would mean running a dangerous gauntlet, where the forces would be constantly threatened by Russian drones and artillery," he said.

"If Ukrainian forces are not able to restore the situation quickly, this could be the moment where the Kursk salient begins to finally close into an encircled pocket."

There was no official confirmation of the Russian thrust from the Russian Defence Ministry or the Ukrainian military, both of which tend to report battlefield changes with a delay.

Yan Matveev, another military analyst, said on Telegram that Ukraine had a difficult choice to make.

"The only argument in favour of holding the bridgehead is political. To use the remnants of the bridgehead for bargaining. And also a little morale - after all, a retreat is a retreat...," he said.

TAKING WAR TO RUSSIA

Ukraine's incursion into Kursk last August was the most serious attack on Russian territory since the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and was designed to bring the war to ordinary Russians, whom the Kremlin had tried to shield from the fallout from the fighting raging inside Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said it was also aimed at trying to ease pressure on Ukrainian troops defending their own country from Russian forces in the east by forcing Moscow to divert resources to defend its own territory, and at giving Kyiv a potential bargaining chip in future peace talks.

The incursion was embarrassing for Moscow and raised uncomfortable questions about its ability to protect its own borders. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said his forces would regain full control of Kursk by force and rejected any idea of making it part of wider future talks.

Open source mapping from Deep State, an authoritative Ukrainian military blogging resource, showed on Friday that around three-quarters of the Ukrainian force inside Russia had now been almost completely encircled.

It showed they were joined to the remaining Ukrainian force located closer to the Russian border by a land corridor around 1 km long and less than 500 metres wide at its narrowest point as Russian forces move to cut that off too.

Deep State said late on Thursday that Russian forces had advanced near the nearby settlement of Kuryilovka. In an update released on Friday it also said that Russian forces were pressuring Ukraine's positions in the border area with Sumy region as part of the same operation and moving to try to block supplies to Ukrainian forces inside Kursk.

"It is worth noting that the enemy has an advantage in UAVs (drones), both reconnaissance and strike. The most commonly used is the FPV drone. They are mainly responsible for fire control of everything that moves ‘in’ or ‘out’ of Kursk region," Deep State said in its note.

Yuri Podolyak, an influential Russian war blogger, said Russian forces had broken through south of Sudzha, a Russian town located inside the nearly surrounded pocket.

"The Russian Armed Forces have driven a deep wedge (up to 4 kilometres deep) and actually reached the alternative supply route to Sudzha (which the enemy was using because the main road could not be used)," Podolyak wrote on his Telegram channel.

Ukraine's General Staff said on Friday that its armed forces had repelled 32 Russian attacks in the Kursk region over the past day.

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Turkey urges swift ceasefire in Ukraine war, backs EU measures

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday spoke in favour of reaching a ceasefire in the Ukraine war as quickly as possible.

Ankara advocates "the cessation of aerial and maritime aggression ... as well as establishing an urgent ceasefire," Erdoğan told a video meeting of leaders organized by the European Union.

France has proposed a one-month ceasefire in the air and at sea as a step towards a possible peace agreement. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also shown openness to such a limited ceasefire.

Turkey seeks to be involved in future possible EU mechanisms for the security and reconstruction of Ukraine, the Turkish leader added.

Erdoğan also emphasized the importance of a "solid diplomatic foundation" to bring both sides to the negotiating table.

Turkey, a NATO member, has good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, and Erdoğan has previously said Turkey would be the "ideal" place to hold potential peace negotiations.

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