INSIDER
Stuart Kaufman, an expert on international relations and the war between Ukraine and Russia, joined News4JAX anchor Bruce Hamilton to break down the roadblocks to moving toward peace on Politics & Power.
Political and military leaders in Europe are fleshing out details of a plan for European forces to help ensure Moscow does not attack Ukraine again once the guns fall silent.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine three years ago has turned into Europe’s largest conflict since World War II.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed the military services to identify $50 billion in programs that could be cut next year in order to redirect those savings to fund President Donald Trump’s priorities.
NATO members are continuing their largest combat exercises of 2025 amid concern within the 32-nation alliance over its most powerful member, the United States.
Increasingly alarmed that U.S. security priorities lie elsewhere, a group of European countries has been working on a plan to send troops to Ukraine to help enforce any future peace settlement with Russia.
By saying Ukraine’s NATO membership is “impractical” and the return of Russian-occupied territories to Kyiv is “unrealistic,” the Trump administration is giving its blessing to key items on President Vladimir Putin’s wish list — even before a potential settlement of the conflict.
Several NATO allies are insisting that Ukraine and Europe must not be cut out of any peace negotiations, after U.S. President Donald Trump signaled that he would hold talks soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will become on Wednesday the first member of the new Trump administration to visit NATO.
The Associated Press has obtained audio of what military officials say is a broadcast from a Russian spy ship that suffered a fire and drifted uncontrolled off Syria's coast last month.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda says that any peace settlement in Ukraine must involve Kyiv and come with more defense spending by regional countries to deter future Russian aggression.
NATO is deploying eyes in the sky and on the Baltic Sea to protect cables and pipelines that stitch together the nine countries with shores on Baltic waters.
Current and former European and U.S. officials have raised concerns about some of President Donald Trump’s picks for top intelligence posts.
Sweden has opened a preliminary investigation into suspected aggravated “sabotage” and ordered the detention of a vessel in the Baltic Sea suspected of damaging an underwater fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland earlier that day.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has warned that a Russian victory over Ukraine would undermine the dissuasive force of the world’s biggest military alliance and could cost trillions of dollars to restore the organization's credibility.
U.S. president Donald Trump has apparently confused Spain for a member of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, causing some head-scratching and jitters over possible tariffs in Madrid.
Lithuania's president says his country has made the decision to raise its spending on defense to between 5% and 6% of overall national economic output starting in 2026.
The defense ministers of Europe’s five top military spenders say they intend to continue increasing their investments in defense but described President-elect Donald Trump’s challenge for them to raise spending to 5% of their overall economic output as extremely difficult.
Estonian naval ships are taking part in stepped-up patrols in the Baltic Sea by NATO countries after undersea power and communications cables have been damaged in recent months.
Britain's top diplomat says Europe’s security “is on a knife-edge” and President-elect Donald Trump is right to say NATO member nations must increase military spending.
President Joe Biden has canceled the final overseas trip of his presidency just hours before he was set to depart for Rome and the Vatican, choosing to remain in Washington to monitor the response to fires raging in California.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says the principle of inviolability of borders applies to every country, however powerful.
President-elect Donald Trump says he won't rule out the use of military force to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland as he declared U.S. control of both to be vital to American national security.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte says the military alliance will step up patrols in the Baltic Sea area as Finnish investigators work to establish whether a ship linked to Russia sabotaged undersea cables there this week.
President-elect Donald Trump has picked longtime foreign policy adviser Richard Grenell to serve as an envoy for special missions.
Presidential front-runner and far-right populist Calin Georgescu says Romania’s Western alliances remain secure providing they “serve the sovereignty of the country and nothing else.”.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is leading a fresh push for European countries to ramp up defense spending.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has sidestepped questions about Ukraine’s possible membership in the military alliance.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is heading back to Europe for what will likely be the last high-level NATO meeting before the Biden administration leaves office next month.
The Kremlin warns that Washington's decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russia with U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles would stoke the war and escalate international tensions.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called on Western allies to provide further support to Ukraine “to change the trajectory of the conflict.”.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he is re-establishing a special Cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations to address his administration’s concerns about another Donald Trump presidency.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh says North Korea has sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to train and likely fight against Ukraine within “the next several weeks.”.
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance says Russia is a U.S. adversary but suggests it’s counterproductive to approach Moscow as an enemy.
Officials say German submarine-hunting planes will patrol the North Atlantic from a base in Scotland under a new Britain-Germany defense pact in response to the growing threat from Russia.
Russia has returned to Ukraine the bodies of 501 soldiers in what appears to be the biggest repatriation of war dead since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his government has intelligence information that 10,000 troops from North Korea are being prepared to join Russian forces fighting against his country, warning that a third nation wading into the hostilities would turn the conflict into a “world war.”.
NATO is showing no sign it would be willing to invite Ukraine to join its ranks anytime soon.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told lawmakers that Ukraine’s Western partners are increasing pressure to negotiate with Russia, but he hinted such talks would be unfavorable to Kyiv as he unveiled what he called his “victory plan” for the war.
New NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has visited Ukraine in his first official trip since taking office and pledging continued support for Kyiv.
The new head of NATO is vowing to help shore up Western support for war-ravaged Ukraine and says he can work with whoever is elected president of the United States, the alliance’s most powerful member.
U.S. officials say the Biden administration still isn't convinced that it should give Ukraine the authority to launch long-range missiles deeper into Russia.
The head of NATO’s military committee says that Ukraine has the solid legal and military right to strike deep inside Russia to gain combat advantage, reflecting the beliefs of a number of U.S. allies.
European Union countries are buying too much of their defense equipment abroad, much of it U.S.-made, and failing to invest in joint military projects, a landmark report is warning.
A senior official has confirmed a report that Turkey wants to join the BRICS bloc of developing economies but fell short of confirming that the NATO country had formally applied for membership.
NATO member Poland is paying tribute to its historic victory over the Red Army by honoring fallen Poles and displaying its modern armed forces, which it hopes will deter the threat it sees in modern-day Russia.
Russia may deploy new strike weapons in response to the planned U.S. stationing of longer-range and hypersonic missiles in Germany, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday.
Ukraine's defense minister said his country will find a way to withstand Russia’s invading forces even if Donald Trump wins a second term, jeopardizings vital U.S. support for its defense.
The European Commission says that the commission president and other top EU officials will boycott informal meetings hosted by Hungary while the country holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
European allies in NATO are stepping up their military spending, just as Donald Trump wanted.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made a Trumpian vow to “Make Europe Great Again” during his country’s six-month presidency of the European Union.
The U.S. and South Korea signed new joint nuclear deterrence guidelines, weeks after North Korea and Russia struck a defense pact that raised concerns in the region about the North’s growing nuclear threats.
NATO leaders met this week to celebrate the alliance’s 75th anniversary under the cloud of deep political uncertainty in its most powerful member – the United States.
Four Indo-Pacific countries attending the NATO summit have issued a joint statement to “strongly condemn the illicit military cooperation” between Russia and North Korea.
Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has traveled to Florida and met with former President Donald Trump following a NATO summit in Washington.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is embracing the support of international allies even as he pushed for the help to arrive faster and restrictions to be lifted on the use of U.S. weapons to attack military targets inside Russia.
The United States, Canada and Finland will work together to build up their icebreaker fleets as they look to bolster their defenses in the Arctic, where Russia is increasingly active.
China has accused NATO of seeking security at the expense of others and told the alliance not to bring the same “chaos” to Asia.
In their most serious rebuke against Beijing, NATO allies have called China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine and expressed concerns over China’s nuclear arsenal and its capabilities in space.
NATO has approved a new program to provide reliable military aid to Ukraine and help it get ready to join the alliance.
Poland is hoping a new NATO training center in the country can help recruit more volunteers for the fight in Ukraine.
Newly elected British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has made his maiden appearance on the international stage with a strong signal of support for Ukraine and a pat on the back from President Joe Biden.
President Joe Biden, facing pressure from within his own party to abandon his reelection campaign, is set to meet with top labor leaders as he tries to make the case that his record matters more than his age.
The 32-members of NATO are formally declaring that Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to membership in the Western military alliance, offering a bare but more binding assurance of protection once its war with Russia ends.
The Biden administration is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum shipped from Mexico that were made elsewhere.
The Defense Department says a Navy sailor tried to access President Joe Biden’s medical records early this year, but no personal information was compromised.
The U.S. and an array of other NATO allies will send Ukraine dozens of air defense systems in the coming months, including at least four of the powerful Patriot systems that Kyiv has been desperately seeking to help fight off Russian advances in the war.
President Biden will give remarks on Tuesday remarks at the 75th anniversary of NATO at the Mellon Auditorium, the site of the signing of the original NATO charter in 1949.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the world must not wait for November to drive back Russia’s offensive against his country.
NATO countries are moving to shore up their weapons production capabilities as a hedge against the November presidential vote, signing a nearly $700 million contract for more Stinger missiles and making pledges to boost their own defense production.
New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Australia are sending leaders or their deputies to the NATO summit in Washington this week as the military alliance shows growing interest beyond Europe and the Western Hemisphere.
President Joe Biden heartily welcomed NATO leaders to Washington, celebrating the transatlantic alliance's stout unity against Russia's Ukraine aggression and underscoring America’s ironclad commitment to the alliance under his watch.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he expects the upcoming NATO summit to provide specific steps to strengthen his country’s air defenses against Russia.
NATO allies are gathering in Washington for a summit this week, and the prospect that Donald Trump, the military alliance's most prominent critic, may return to power is dominating discussions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's message to NATO was simple and stark: Don’t go too far in providing military support for Ukraine, or you’ll risk a conflict that could quickly turn into a nuclear one.
NATO leaders plan to pledge to keep pouring arms and ammunition into Ukraine at current levels for at least another year.
Mark Rutte knows a thing or two about finding consensus among fractious coalition partners.
NATO has appointed Mark Rutte as its next secretary-general, putting the outgoing Dutch prime minister in charge of the world’s biggest security organization at a critical time for European security as war rages in Ukraine.
The Biden administration has thanked Romania for its president withdrawing from the race to lead NATO, saying the move would help ensure the Western military alliance stays properly focused.
Mark Rutte has gotten to know a thing or two about finding consensus among fractious coalition partners over the course of more than a dozen years at the top of Dutch politics.
NATO member Romania’s top defense body says the country will donate a Patriot missile system to neighboring Ukraine to help Kyiv in its war against Russia as Moscow’s forces continue to bombard civilian areas and energy infrastructure.
A new mutual-defense pact signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un commits each country to come to the other’s aid if attacked.
The far-right leader angling to become France’s prime minister after the country’s upcoming parliamentary election has backtracked on the party’s previous promise to pull out of NATO’s strategic military command.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says a record 23 of NATO's 32 member nations are hitting the Western military alliance’s defense spending target this year as Russia’s war in Ukraine has raised the threat of expanding conflict in Europe.
NATO defense ministers have approved a plan to provide reliable long-term security aid and military training for Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine and to begin negotiations if Kyiv started withdrawing troops from the four regions annexed by Moscow in 2022 and renounced plans to join NATO.
