Moldova's President Maia Sandu and France’s President Emmanuel Macron attend a media conference, in Paris.

France will deliver extra military aid to Ukraine in coming days and weeks, the Elysee said on Tuesday, after President Emmanuel Macron spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

"The President of the Republic reiterated France's determination to provide all the necessary support... He was also able to detail the deliveries for the coming days and weeks in support of the Ukrainian military effort," it said in a statement.

An Elysee official declined to elaborate on what the deliveries might include.

In his call with Zelenskiy, Macron stressed his support for a truce during the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, the statement said, which would involve Russia ceasing its operations and "all useful diplomatic initiatives" being taken to open negotiations.

Last week, China's President Xi Jingping backed the call for a global truce during the Paris Olympics.

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Zelenskiy lauds US aid, asks Blinken for air defenses

Zelenskiy lauds U.S. aid to Ukraine and asks for air defense systems as he meets with Blinken

:: May 14, 2024

:: Kyiv, Ukraine

:: Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukrainian President

:: “I wanted to thank you from all my team, all Ukrainians to crucial package for our forces, for our warriors. Thank you so much for this package thanks to Congress. Thanks President Biden, please, best regards from us to him and to administration. We are thankful for bipartisan support. And I know you did a lot also for this positive decision and of course we are very thankful for this to Americans, to American people. Air defence, the biggest deficit for us. I think that’s the biggest problem, yes. We need, really we need today two Patriots for Kharkiv, for Kharkiv region because people there are under attack, civilians and warriors, everybody there is under Russian missiles.”

:: Antony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State

:: “All of us admire your extraordinary resilience, your endurance, your strength, your leadership. And we know this is a challenging time, but we also know that in the near term the assistance is now on the way, some already arrived, more that will be arriving. And that’s going to make a real difference against the ongoing Russian aggression on the battlefield. We are equally determined that over time Ukraine stands strongly on its own feet militarily, economically, democratically. A strong, successful, thriving, free Ukraine is the best possible rebuke to Putin and the best possible guarantor for your future.”

Washington finally passed a bill in late April to provide military aid to Ukraine, held up for months by opposition from some Republicans in the U.S. Congress while Russian forces took advantage of their superior firepower to launch an offensive.

Blinken arrived in Kyiv by train early on Tuesday morning on the previously undisclosed visit, which comes days after Russia launched a ground incursion into the north of the region of Kharkiv, opening a new front and stretching Ukraine's soldiers.

Kyiv has been on the back foot on the battlefield for months as Russian troops have slowly advanced, taking advantage of Ukraine's shortages of troop manpower and artillery shells.

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South Korea's president promises to keep up Ukraine support

South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol confirmed his country's participation in a Ukraine peace summit in a phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart on Tuesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on X.

Zelenskiy said he told Yoon about the importance of encouraging other countries, including those from Asia-Pacific and Africa, to attend the summit next month in Switzerland that aims to rally support for Ukraine's vision for ending the war.

"We also discussed ways to further develop our bilateral cooperation, including in the area of humanitarian mine clearance," Zelenskiy said. "We paid specific attention to the system of security guarantees for Ukraine and the prospect of concluding a relevant bilateral security agreement."

Zelenskiy also thanked South Korea and its people for their "principled and long-term support".

Yoon's office said earlier he had promised to keep up the support during the phone call.

Last summer, Yoon said South Korea would step up support for Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv.

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NATO member Estonia is 'seriously' discussing sending troops to fill non-combat roles in Ukraine, security advisor says

NATO member Estonia is 'seriously' discussing sending troops to fill non-combat roles in Ukraine, security advisor says

• An Estonian official told Breaking Defense that his government is "seriously" discussing putting troops in Ukraine.

• Those soldiers would be put away from the frontlines and relieve Ukrainian troops of non-combat roles, he said.

• Estonia has around 4,200 active-duty soldiers, with a core reservist call-up of 38,000 more people.

Estonia has been "seriously" discussing sending troops to Ukraine in roles positioned away from the front lines, per a national security official.

Madis Roll, national security advisor to Estonia's president, told military news outlet Breaking Defense that his country's leaders were assessing the viability of sending Estonian soldiers to "rear" roles that wouldn't see direct combat in Ukraine.

Such a move would help relieve Ukraine's manpower crunch and allow it to send more soldiers to the front lines.

And while Estonia, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization country, prefers to act together with the alliance's major members, it's also not closed to the idea of jumping in with a smaller group of allies, Roll said.

"Discussions are ongoing," Roll told Breaking Defense. "We should be looking at all the possibilities. We shouldn't have our minds restricted as to what we can do."

Breaking Defense reported that Roll made these comments on Friday, just days after the country's defense chief, Gen. Martin Herem, told the outlet that Estonia had internally talked about sending troops to Ukraine.

But there hadn't been a "serious discussion" due to domestic political concerns, Herem told the military news site on May 9.

Estonia is one of the geographically closest NATO members to Russia, with an eastern border shared with the Russian regions Pskov and Leningrad. Its military relies largely on reservist units, with about 4,200 permanent staff and 38,000 reserve troops ready for wartime operations.

Additional reserves bring the total number of Estonians with military training to around 230,000 of its 1.3 million population, per the official defense forces website.

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More NATO members are thinking about troops in Ukraine

Tallinn is now joining a growing chorus of alliance members touting the possibility of backing Ukraine's forces with troops, with French President Emmanuel Macron drawing Moscow's ire for repeatedly floating such a strategy.

The Baltic States are following suit. Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė told The Financial Times on May 8 that she had the authority from parliament to deploy troops to Ukraine for training, but that Kyiv had not put forward such a request yet.

NATO needs the consensus of its members to send troops as an alliance to a war zone, but individual states may deploy their own forces as they see fit.

Russia, meanwhile, has said that any significant NATO troop presence in Ukraine would be seen as a major escalation, regularly bringing up the threat of nuclear war.

But its gains in Ukraine, where Kyiv for months suffered from ammunition undersupply and now faces a widening manpower disadvantage, have spooked Western Europe.

States bordering Russia's western flank, like Finland and Estonia, are cautioning that a Ukrainian defeat means they may soon be the next targets of Russian aggression.

Estonia has given Ukraine about $640 million worth of military, humanitarian, and financial aid, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy's aid tracker.

That's about 1.6% of its total GDP, more than any other nation that has supplied Ukraine with aid. The latest tranche of US aid to Kyiv, of $61 billion, is worth around 0.2% of American GDP.

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Fearing Russian invasion Estonia's civilians heed their country's call to arms

Indrek Jurtšenko is a trained opera singer. But today he takes me to a military manoeuvre in the Estonian forests. Armed civilians, part of the “Estonian Defence League” (EDL), are war-gaming together with professional soldiers: “In our exercise there are 500 people from Estonia, Lithuania and France participating”, he says.

The drill is called “Northern Frog” and takes place around a former soviet military airfield. Close to the landing strip, infantry troops from NATO-partner France fortify trenches. In the nearby forest, Baltic volunteers are gathering. They are armed civilians with professional military skills. It's quite an intriguing setting; Estonian milita forces and professional NATO-troops are mutually testing and upgrading their combat skills for trench warfare.

Local knowledge, local strength

From a French professional perspective, what is the advantage of such a militia force, I ask Captain Hubert. “They are operating in their own zone of living, in the region they belong to”, he tells me. “And that’s why they can react at once exactly when and where they are needed.”

Some 30,000 members signed up with the EDL. Workers, clerks, students or farmers spending their time off in military exercises; they receive no pay for this patriotic service. Many of them have their own weapon at home and they know how to handle it when things become serious.

To never ever again live under foreign rule, that’s Reet Saari motivation for joining. She’s a mother and sales manager at a hardware store. Today she leads a reconnaissance patrol – a heavily armed all-female combat unit. "Estonia is a small country, so everybody has to contribute to the defence efforts in one way or another. Some can fight at the frontline in the forest, like me. Others can help with support tasks and logistics.” In manoeuvres like this one Reet learnt shooting, battlefield medecin, infantry tactics and close combat.

Spend to defend

In the Estonian capital Tallinn I meet defence minister Hanno Pevkur. Estonia urges its NATO partners to increase their defence spending. Two percent of GDP is not enough, Pevkur insists: “The main threat will remain Russia. The dictatorship will grow”, he says on record.

In this context the Estonian Parliament voted to keep defence expenditure at three percent of GDP. This year it could be even more. What are the priorities for 2024-2027, I ask the Defence Minister. Pevkur: “We are buying self-propelled howitzers on wheels, new medium range air defence, a lot of anti-tank systems and a lot of new ammunitions. In the last two years we have bought more ammunition as we have bought in the past 30 years in total!”

Estonia is exposed to Russian destabilisation efforts through airspace violations, fake-news-campaigns, cyber-attacks and GPS signal jammings. Is Estonia really at risk, I ask former EDL commander Riho Ühtegi, who has also a background with Estonian special forces and intelligence. NATO membership is a solid safeguard, he knows, but “this empire feeling, it's not gone from Russia, they still have it. So, because of that, we must be ready”, Ühtegi warns.

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All for one, one for all

NATO officers are full of praise for the fully-trained civilians in the Baltics. The militia fighters are able to improvise and to find solutions for bad surprises even in the midst of stressful combat situations, they say. Chains of command are working well, reconnaissance and communication flows are professional, I get told in a few background details on the ground.

Some voices from Ukraine are sending alarming signals: The Baltic States could be next on Putin's list, they say. However, article 5 of the NATO treaty guarantees to come to the aid of any member if it is attacked; one for all, all for one. An evocation shared by Indrek Jurtšenko, Reet Saari, Hanno Pevkur, Riho Ühtegi, Captain Hubert and many other people living in the western defence alliance.

British soldiers have been warned Russian spies could target phone data

Army troops on Nato exercises are being advised on how to dodge electronic surveillance -

British troops have been warned that the Kremlin could spy on their phones when they conduct military exercises near the country’s border.

Thousands of British soldiers have been deployed to countries which border Russia to conduct major land and air assault exercises as part of Operation Steadfast Defender, Nato’s largest military exercise since the Cold War.

Lieutenant Colonel Grant Brown warned troops in Estonia that Russian agents could carry out an “electronic collect” of data on their mobile phones, according to The Times.

He wrote: “We must be under no illusions. Russia will be watching us as we prepare, as we deploy and as we are operating in Europe.

“That’s a good thing, it is the whole point of this deployment. But it will mean a rigorous approach to things like the use of mobile phones while out in theatre.

“We must expect Russian agents to be conducting an electronic collect on us while there, so the measures we will have in place are designed to protect all of us.”

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Russia has been accused previously of compromising the smartphones of Nato personnel in order to mine or delete contacts and intimidate soldiers.

The British force at the base in Estonia has several measures in place to counter the threat, including a rule that phones are to be left in dorm rooms during exercises.

Geo-tagging reportedly must also be disabled to stop locations being revealed.

One soldier said that the main threats were phones being used to trace their location being tracked and the contact details of friends and family being hacked.

He said: “Typically what you would see particularly in the Operation Herrick days [the codename for the Afghanistan campaign], is them getting access to personal contact details of loved ones at home and just trying to use that against us. They’re just trying to use any asset that is available to them.

“So, again, it’s why it’s very important to stick to the guidance that’s pushed out from above.”

Brigadier Mark Berry, commander of the 16 Air Assault Brigade Combat Team, said not using mobile phones would make troops “harder to find”.

He said: “Electronic surveillance is a tool that many different nations have, so it’s important for our soldiers that they get used to taking the precautions that will limit any adversary.”

“Simply going back to what we call ‘reversionary methods’, old-fashioned ways of doing business, not using GPS but using maps and compasses, we’re hiding from those enemy surveillance tactics.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin Finally Gets His Revenge From Beyond the Grave

Less than 24 hours after Vladimir Putin sent his defense minister packing after reportedly privately blaming him for failures in the war against Ukraine, another top Defense Ministry official was yanked out of bed by masked security forces.

Counterintelligence agents reportedly arrived armed to the teeth to detain Lieutenant-General Yury Kuznetsov, the head of the Defense Ministry’s personnel department, on bribery charges Monday. The Investigative Committee announced in a press release Tuesday that Kuznetsov is currently in pre-trial detention on large-scale bribery charges.

The charges against him, for the most part, remain unclear. Investigators say that from 2021 to 2023, while he was serving as head of the 8th Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Kuznetsov accepted a bribe from commercial enterprises in exchange for “performing certain actions in their favor.”

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His arrest comes just a few weeks after Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov went down on bribery charges in what was widely seen as a major blow to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Shoigu was replaced by Putin on Sunday in a surprise move that sees him replaced by civilian economist Andrei Belousov. The Kremlin has explained the move by saying the country’s defense ministry must be “absolutely open to innovation” and Belousov fits that bill. But Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, reported that Putin had lost faith in Shoigu’s ability to handle the war amid corruption in the Defense Ministry. Last year’s dramatic mutiny by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was cited in the report as another likely reason for Shoigu’s dismissal.

In the wake of Kuznetsov’s arrest, Kremlin media has framed it as part of an “anti-corruption purge” in the Defense Ministry, with Belousov now tasked with cleaning up Shoigu’s mess. “A lot of money has come into the Defense Ministry, the budget has doubled as a result of the [war]. And as we saw with the arrest of Timur Ivanov, the situation with corruption goes beyond reasonable limits,” former Putin adviser Sergei Markov said in an interview Tuesday with Komsomolskaya Pravda.

In one fell swoop, it appears Shoigu’s legacy has been cemented as one of wartime corruption and incompetence, while at the same time, anyone fed up with the war against Ukraine dragging on into its third year can blame rampant corruption in the military instead of the Kremlin.

It’s no surprise that pro-war bloggers linked to Prigozhin were celebrating the news of Kuznetsov’s arrest Tuesday. Prigozhin had famously called for the ouster of Shoigu and everyone within his circle during his short-lived uprising against the military last June, just a month before he was killed in a fiery plane crash widely seen as an assassination.

“Straight into the fire,” wrote one Wagner-linked Telegram channel of the “sleazebags” Kuznetsov and Ivanov.