The White House seized a rare chance to undermine Russia and build up regional allies as it built a coalition to support the Ukrainians.

Russia has launched more than 51,000 guided aerial bombs against Ukraine since the start of its full-blown invasion nearly three years ago, the Ukrainian air force said on Thursday.

Ukrainian drones struck deep inside Russia in an overnight attack targeting an oil facility serving a military airfield in the city of Engels, nearly 400 miles from the border, Ukraine’s military said Wednesday.

If Ukraine falls, it will be hard to spin as anything but a debacle for the United States, and for its president.

The U.S. is set to provide Ukraine an additional $500 million in weapons quickly pulled from its existing stockpiles as the Biden administration works to get Kyiv in a stronger negotiating position before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, one of the European leaders closest to Donald Trump, said on Thursday she believed the U.S. president-elect would defend Western interests once he took office and would not abandon Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military says it struck a fuel storage depot deep inside Russia. The strike caused a huge blaze at the facility that supplies an important Russian air base.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that some 38,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded fighting in Russia's western Kursk region since August.

North Korea is learning valuable lessons from fighting against Ukraine, making it an increased threat to its neighbors, a US official said. In recent months, North Korea has sent around 12,000 troops to fight for Russia against Ukraine as part of a new security pact between its leader, Kim Jong Un, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump has repeatedly pledged to negotiate a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war. The US president-elect has already started doing the groundwork. His special Ukraine peace envoy, Keith Kellogg, told Fox News that Trump aims to end Russia's war against Ukraine within 100 days of his inauguration.

Independent MEP Fidias Panayiotou met the billionaire in 2023 and has taken his line on some big political issues, from Ukraine to digital rules.