Russia Watch
Sharp dressed man: Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the sartorial switch for NATO– www.euronews.com
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US rock band ZZ Top stormed the charts in 1983 with a song about a “Sharp Dressed Man,” lyrics that this week could apply to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Zelenskyy is currently in The Hague attending this year’s NATO summit in a bid to ensure continued Western military support for his country, which, more than three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion, is still trying to repel Moscow’s forces.
And this time around, the Ukrainian president looks more formal than he has been since Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine started in early 2022.
Gone are the army fatigues Zelenskyy has worn since then; in their place is a blazer (albeit with military overtones), dress pants, and a dress shirt, sans necktie.
But why the switch? There are several possible reasons. But first, let’s take a quick look at why Zelenskyy ditched the more usual presidential attire of suit, dress shirt and tie in the first place.
Between his election to the Ukrainian presidency in 2019 and the Russian full-scale invasion, Zelenskyy dressed much like any other head of state: he was clean-shaven and wore tailored suits, dress shoes, shirts and ties.
But after the 2022 invasion, Zelenskyy opted for a sartorial switch, favouring instead sweatshirts, cargo pants and work boots. He has also worn a military-style vyshyvanka — a traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt that is part of the country’s cultural heritage.
The choice of clothes partly reflects the fact that he is Ukraine’s commander-in-chief and is also a sign of solidarity with Ukraine’s armed forces.
“Zelenskyy dresses demonstratively. But the only message he wants to convey with his clothing is: ‘In my country, there is a war,'” Ukrainian fashion historian Zoya Zvynyatskivska told The Kyiv Independent newspaper.
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President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan on Sunday morning was met with muted approval from European allies and Arab states.
While China predictably teamed up with Iran, Russia, and Pakistan to condemn the U.S. action, European leaders were surprisingly vague in their response, urging ‘all parties’ to show restraint and find a diplomatic solution.
Arab states, fearful of seeing a nuclear-armed Iran, called for ‘de-escalation’ and more ‘diplomacy.’
China led the condemnation of the U.S. targeting of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. In its first statement following the strikes, Beijing claimed the action “seriously violates the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law and exacerbates tensions in the Middle East.”
China singled out Israel as the aggressor, calling for a “ceasefire.” “China calls on all parties to the conflict, especially Israel, to cease fire as soon as possible,” the statement added.
The South China Morning Post reported China’s reaction:
China condemned the United States for its weekend attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, describing them as serious violations of international law.
In a brief statement on Sunday night, the Chinese foreign ministry said the bombing of the facilities, which were under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, seriously violated the United Nations Charter and its principles.
It called on all parties, especially Israel, to cease fire as soon as possible, ensure the safety of civilians and start dialogue.
“China is willing to work with the international community to uphold justice and restore peace and stability in the Middle East,” the ministry said.
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BANFF, Canada — President Donald Trump opened the 2025 Group of Seven leaders’ summit by complaining it was a “mistake” for the multilateral organization to remove Russia from its ranks.
“The G7 used to be the G8. [Former President]Barack Obama and a person named [former Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in, and I would say that was a mistake because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in,” Trump told reporters on Monday.
Russia was removed from the G7 in 2014 in response to its annexation of Crimea.
“What’s that? Nine years ago, eight years ago, it switched over,” Trump said. “They threw Russia out, which I claimed was a very big mistake, even though I wasn’t in politics then, I was very loud about it. It was a mistake in that you spend so much time talking about Russia, but he’s no longer at the table, so it makes life more complicated.”
Trump made the remarks during his first appearance at this year’s G7 summit, which Canada hosted in Kananaskis. He was beside Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney.
Carney welcom
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Russia said Sunday it had evacuated several of its citizens from Iran and halted activity at its Tehran consulate after Israeli attacks on the country sparked retaliatory missile fire towards Israel.
“Due to the current situation, the consular service of the embassy is temporarily suspending its activities. The resumption of consular services will be announced later,” the Russian embassy in Tehran said on Telegram.
Russian Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova said musicians from the Tchaikovsky Grand Symphony Orchestra were evacuated from Iran.
“The musicians crossed the Azerbaijani border. Yesterday (Saturday), Fyodor Bondarchuk’s film crew left Iran via the same route,” she said on Telegram, referring to the Russian director and actor.
Russia’s civil aviation authority ordered airlines to suspend flights to Iran and Israel and avoid their airspace — along with the airspace of Jordan and Iraq — until at least June 26, following official travel warnings issued Friday.
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The RAF has scrambled fighter jets over Poland six times in one week to repel 15 Russian military aircraft operating close to NATO airspace.
The Typhoon FGR4 aircraft were based at the 22nd Tactical Air Base in Malbork, Poland, and conducted the missions from June 7 to 12.
The six incidents mark the most intense period for the air force since being deployed in the region on April 1 as part of Operation Chessman, underlining an uptick in Russian intelligence-gathering operations in the Baltics.
As part of the UK’s commitment to NATO’s defence, it has moved both aircraft and personnel to the enhanced air policing mission, including the fourth-generation jet.
The first aerial showdown took place on June 7 when RAF pilots were sent to identify an aircraft departing the Kaliningrad region, later confirmed to be an Antonov An-30, a Soviet-era reconnaissance craft used to map terrain via aerial photography.
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Russia launched one of its largest air strikes on Kyiv in over three years of war and struck a maternity ward in the southern city of Odesa in attacks that killed at least three people, officials said on Tuesday.
The overnight strikes followed Russia’s biggest drone assault of the war on Ukraine on Monday and were part of intensified bombardments in what Moscow says is retaliation for attacks by Ukrainian forces on Russia.
The Russian attack also damaged Saint Sophia Cathedral, a UNESCO world heritage site located in the historic centre of Kyiv, Ukrainian Culture Minister Mykola Tochytskyi said.
“The enemy struck at the very heart of our identity again,” Tochytskyi wrote on Facebook about the site he called “the soul of all Ukraine”.
Loud explosions shook Kyiv and blasts and fires lit up the sky in the early hours of Tuesday morning, leaving palls of heavy smoke over the city, Reuters witnesses said. Authorities deployed two firefighting helicopters to douse flames.
One person died in the attack on Kyiv, city authorities said.
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Russia claims its forces are now pushing into previously unoccupied regions of Ukraine, with Kyiv claiming the move is part of a wider plan to seize more than half the country by the end of 2026. On Monday, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its 90th Tank Division had reached the western edge of Donetsk Oblast and begun advancing into neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk – a region not included in Moscow’s 2022 annexation claims.
If confirmed, the offensive would mark a major shift, extending Russia’s invasion into previously untouched territory. Kremlin officials said the move was part of the “new realities on the ground” – a phrase repeatedly used by former president Dmitry Medvedev to describe what Russia believes Ukraine must concede in any future peace talks. The announcement follows unverified reports that Russian troops have also entered Sumy Oblast, in Ukraine’s northeast.
Videos circulating online on Monday appeared to show Russian troops crossing into the Dnipropetrovsk region, although the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said it had not seen verifiable geolocation evidence to confirm the claims.
In a further development, Russian military bloggers reported that troops had reached the Donetsk-Dnipropetrovsk border near the village of Horikhove.
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Kyiv, Ukraine – Russian President Vladimir Putin faces criminal charges for the “unlawful deportation and transfer of children”.
That is the definition of the 2023 arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court, the intergovernmental tribunal based in The Hague.
On June 2, as ceasefire talks rumbled on, Ukrainian diplomats handed their Russian counterparts a list of hundreds of children that they said were taken from Russia-occupied Ukrainian regions since 2022.
The return of these children “could become the first test of the sincerity of [Russia’s] intentions” to reach a peace settlement, Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, told media. “The ball is in Russia’s corner.”
But Ukraine claims the number of children taken by Russia is much higher. Kyiv has so far identified 19,546 children who it says were forcibly taken from Russia-occupied Ukrainian regions since 2022.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom, LA Mayor Karen Bass and the entire extremist California progressive class have egg on their faces Monday evening as the Los Angeles anti-ICE protests were neutered by the president’s shaming of Golden State officials to take action, his decision to send in the National Guard and the Marines, and his refusal to tolerate violence.
Bass, Sen. Adam Schiff, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former vice president and failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and the whole Marxist gang decried Trump’s decisions—yet, as we’ve seen before, they had no interest in stopping the rampage and look pathetic now that the president is showing how things are actually done.
It’s similar to the border crisis: he shut down that garbage almost overnight. The commander-in-chief summed that up when addressing a joint session of Congress in March:
One of Trump’s standout lines during his speech was when he said, “It turned out that all we really needed was a new president” in response to how former President Joe Biden and Democrats complained they needed legislation to tackle soaring illegal immigration.
Last month, the Border Patrol recorded 8,450 migrants who crossed the southern border illegally – the lowest level in at least 25 years. For perspective, most months during the Biden administration had well over 100,000 border encounters.
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Most Russians no longer consider the United States their country’s main enemy, according to a Levada Center survey released Thursday, as Donald Trump’s return to the White House fuels hopes of a diplomatic thaw between Moscow and Washington.
The share of respondents who named the U.S. as the most hostile country toward Russia has nearly halved to 40% this year, down from 76% in 2024.
“The U.S. dropped from first to fourth on this list for the first time in 20 years of measurements,” the independent pollster said.
Germany (55%), the United Kingdom (49%) and Ukraine (43%) now rank as the top three most hostile countries in the eyes of Russian respondents.
The shift in perception follows Trump’s inauguration in January after a campaign pledge to swiftly end the war in Ukraine. In March, Russian favorability toward the U.S. doubled, Levada said.
Russian state media has in recent months portrayed Trump as a pragmatic leader open to dialogue with Moscow. At the same time, Russian attitudes toward the U.S. have historically fluctuated in response to global events.