Germany to slash military aid for Ukraine in deepening crisis for Zelensky – live

One person was killed and eight were wounded in Ukrainian attacks on part of the southern Kherson region which is controlled by Russian forces, Vladimir Saldo, the area’s Russian-backed governor, wrote on Telegram.

Saldo accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the area and of striking it with drones.

Reuters could not independently verify his assertions and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

Germany has said it will halve its military aid to Ukraine next year, despite concerns that US support for Kyiv could potentially diminish if Republican candidate Donald Trump returns to the White House.

It will be cut down to €4bn (£3.36bn) in 2025 from around €8bn (£6.72bn) in 2024, according to a draft of the 2025 budget seen by Reuters. Germany has faced criticism for repeatedly missing a Nato target of spending 2 per cent of its economic output on defence.

Germany hopes Ukraine will be able to meet the bulk of its military needs with the $50bn in loans from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets approved by the Group of Seven, and that funds earmarked for armaments will not be fully used.

“Ukraine’s financing is secured for the foreseeable future thanks to European instruments and the G7 loans,” German finance minister Christian Lindner said yesterday at a news conference.

Officials say EU leaders agreed to the idea in part because it reduces the chance of Ukraine being short of funds if Trump returns to the White House.

Alarm bells rang across Europe this week after Trump picked Senator JD Vance, who opposes military aid for Ukraine and warned Europe will have to rely less on the United States to defend the continent, as his candidate for vice president.

The mayor of the Russian Black Sea port city of Novorossiisk issued a sea drone alert this morning, warning of a likely attack from Ukraine on Russia.

Mayor Andrei Kravchenko urged locals to stay away from the shoreline. Ukrainian sea drones have in the past attacked Russian ships near the port, disrupting traffic.

Novorossiisk is Russia’s largest Black Sea port and a key outlet for crude oil and oil product exports in Russia’s south. It also loads oil coming from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan and handles grain, coal, fertilizers, timber, containers, food and chemical cargoes.

This coincides with Russian forces saying they destroyed a Ukrainian sea drone in the Black Sea near the city, according to the Russian-appointed governor of the city of Sevastopol in Crimea.

Germany will halve military aid for Ukraine next year, even with the possibility that Republican candidate Donald Trump could return to the White House and curb support for Kyiv.

German aid to Ukraine will be cut to 4 billion euros ($4.35 billion) in 2025 from around 8 billion euros in 2024, according to a draft of the 2025 budget seen by Reuters.

Germany hopes Ukraine will be able to meet the bulk of its military needs with the $50 billion in loans from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets agreed by the Group of Seven, and that funds earmarked for armaments will not be fully used.

The stocks of Germany’s armed forces, already run down by decades of underinvestment, have been further depleted by arms supplies to Kyiv.

So far, Berlin has donated three Patriot air defence units to Kyiv, more than any other country, bringing down the number of Patriot systems in Germany to nine.

Although military aid to Ukraine will be cut, Germany will comply with the NATO target of spending 2% of GDP on defence in 2025, with a total of 75.3 billion euros.

Switzerland has opened investigations into more than 50 cases of possible sanctions violations and has found breaches in 15 of them so far, the government said in a statement on Wednesday.

Since Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine, Switzerland has adopted sanctions similar to those of other Western countries, passing new measures earlier this month.

The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said in an email to Reuters that the effective implementation of sanctions was a government priority and that it had opened 56 violations proceedings to date.

Of those, around half have been dropped and penalties have been ordered for 15 of them. The others remain under investigation, it said.

SECO did not name the sectors involved, nor the individual companies subject to investigation.

Switzerland said earlier this year it had set up a specialist team to investigate and enforce sanctions that Bern imposed following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 95 prisoners of war from each side after the United Arab Emirates acted as an intermediary, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.

Russia‘s Defence Ministry, in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, said the returning Russian soldiers would undergo medical examinations in Moscow.

The ministry noted the UAE’s “humanitarian mediation.”

Russia’s foreign minister accused the United States on Tuesday of holding the entire West “at gunpoint” and impeding international cooperation, a claim the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations denounced as “hypocrisy” by a country that invaded neighboring Ukraine.

The finger-pointing came at Russia ’s showcase event during its presidency of the U.N. Security Council this month, and it chose the topic — “Multilateral cooperation for a more just, democratic and sustainable world order.” Russia’s top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, flew in from Moscow to preside.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations told Russia’s foreign minister on Tuesday that President Vladimir Putin should release detained Americans, singling out journalist Evan Gershkovich and ex-Marine Paul Whelan, and accused the Russian leader of treating “human beings as bargaining chips.”

Linda Thomas-Greenfield took the opportunity of Moscow’s top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, presiding at a U.N. Security Council meeting to promote multilateralism and democracy to appeal for the release of Americans.

Over the past decade, Russia has seen a sharp increase in treason and espionage cases.

Lawyers and experts say prosecutions for these high crimes started to grow after 2014 – the year when Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula. That’s also when Moscow backed a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

The number of these cases in Russia spiked significantly after the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, urged the security services to “harshly suppress the actions of foreign intelligence services [and] promptly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs”. The crackdown has ensnared scientists and journalists, as well as ordinary citizens.