A Ukrainian delegation met on Wednesday with senior representatives of Donald Trump, a source familiar with the meeting told the Reuters news agency. The Ukrainian delegation was led by Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The group met in Washington with Trump’s choice for White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and his Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, the source said, without providing details. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting.
The Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov said on Wednesday that a Ukrainian drone attack on Grozny damaged the premises of a special police unit fighting in Ukraine. The regiment is a police special forces unit named after Akhmad Kadyrov, the current leader’s late father and predecessor, the state news agency wrote.
The top US military officer, air force Gen C.Q. Brown, spoke by phone with Russia’s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov last week, the US military said on Wednesday, the first time Brown has spoken with his Russian counterpart. “The leaders discussed a number of global and regional security issues to include the ongoing conflict in Ukraine,” a spokesperson for Brown said in a statement. The rare call took place on 27 November, but “at the request of Gen. Gerasimov, Gen. Brown agreed to not proactively announce the call”. The request for the call was made by the Russian ministry of defence, the spokesperson said.
Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, has appealed to the incoming Trump administration to sustain the ramp-up of the domestic defence industry begun by the incumbent president and spurred by the war in Ukraine. Otherwise, Sullivan said, the US could quickly run out of munitions in a war with China. “God forbid we end up in a full-scale war with the PRC,” Sullivan said. “But any war with a country like the PRC, a military like the PRC, is going to involve the exhaustion of munition stockpiles very rapidly,” he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The fall of France’s government on Wednesday and the failure to pass a budget could make it difficult for Paris to ramp up its support for Ukraine despite President Emmanuel Macron’s repeated promises to help Kyiv for as long as necessary.
The US on Wednesday unveiled sanctions on five people and four entities allegedly involved in a global network of “sanctions circumvention on behalf of Russian elites”, the US treasury said. “Through the TGR Group, Russian elites sought to exploit digital assets – in particular US dollar-backed stablecoins – to evade US and international sanctions,” said Bradley Smith, a treasury official in terrorism and financial intelligence. The treasury called TGR “an extensive sanctions evasion and money laundering network.”
Britain’s National Crime Agency said it was part of the internationally coordinated law enforcement effort against TGR, codenamed Operation Destabilise, which also targeted a network known as Smart that helped Russians under sanctions access the financial system. “For the first time, we have been able to map out a link between Russian elites, crypto-rich cybercriminals, and drugs gangs on the streets of the UK,” said Rob Jones, director general of operations at the NCA. “The thread that tied them together – the combined force of Smart and TGR – was invisible until now.” The operation also involved authorities in France, Ireland and the UAE, the NCA said. It had so far led to 84 arrests, and the seizure of over £20m (US$25m) in cash and cryptocurrency.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday denounced the Georgian government’s actions in ordering the dispersal of protests as “shameful” and proof that the ruling Georgian Dream party is working for Russia. Georgian Dream, whose re-election is disputed, sparked the latest protests by shelving plans to join the EU. “This is about how the current government in Georgia is pushing the country into obvious dependence on Russia,” Zelenskyy said. “It is simply shameful what actions they are taking against their own people.”
A defence pact between North Korea and Russia, signed by its leaders in June, has gone into effect after the two sides exchanged ratification documents, North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said on Thursday. The formalisation of the treaty comes as the United States and South Korea have accused the nuclear-armed North of sending more than 10,000 soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine.
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