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Large numbers of Russian troops are pushing to capture the frontline town of Avdiivka, its Ukrainian mayor said Thursday, escalating a months-long effort to capture the industrial hub.

Late last year, Moscow launched a costly bid to seize the town, which has been caught up in fighting since 2014 when it briefly fell to Moscow-backed separatists.

"Unfortunately, the enemy is pressing from all directions. There is not a single part of our city that is more or less calm," Mayor Vitaly Barabash told state media.

"They are storming with very large forces," he added.

The capture of Avdiivka would provide a much-needed victory for Moscow ahead of the second anniversary of its invasion, as well as for Russian President Vladimir Putin personally as he seeks re-election in March.

Avdiivka is located in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia, along with four other Ukrainian territories that Moscow says it has annexed.

Barabash characterized the ongoing fighting for the town as "very hot" and "very difficult."

"The situation in some areas is simply unreal," he said.

Fewer than 950 people remain in the frontline town, of an estimated pre-war population of around 33,000 people, Barabash added.

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Russia Throwing Large Numbers of Troops at Ukraine's Avdiivka, Mayor Says - The Moscow Times

All the latest developments from the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met on Wednesday with the European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell in Kyiv.

The Presidential Office reported in a statement that the two discussed, among other things, Ukraine's most recent draft law which aims to increase mobilisation.

They also discussed military aid and financial support for Ukraine.

Borell pledged the EU will provide Ukraine with over a million artillery shells by the end of the year. Financial and military aid are vital to Kyiv, whose armed forced are said to be running out of ammunition.

Concerns of faltering support are focused on the US.

Republican senators, due to pressure from Donald Trump, have blocked sweeping legislation that would bring in tougher border restrictions and grant new aid to Ukraine and Israel.

The bill included55.6 billion in wartime aid to Ukraine and12.9 billion for Israel and was backed by President Joe Biden. GOP lawmakers had insisted that the money for conflicts abroad be paired with help for the US border.

Senators are now trying to fashion a new version of a bill that will pass, which has stripped out all the border security measures, leaving the foreign aid parts.

After two years of war, Ukraine's ranks are depleted.

Now, professional soldiers from Colombia bolster the ranks of volunteers from around the world who have answered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyys call for foreign fighters to join his nations war with Russia.

With a military of 250,000, Colombia has Latin Americas second-largest army, after Brazils. More than 10,000 retire each year. And hundreds are heading to fight in Ukraine, where many make four times as much as experienced non-commissioned officers earn in Colombia, or even more.

Now locked in a battlefield stalemate with Russia, Ukraine is expanding its system allowing people from around the world to join the Ukrainian army, said Oleksandr Shahuri, an officer of the Department of Coordination of Foreigners in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

In early 2022, authorities said 20,000 people from 52 countries were in Ukraine. Now, in keeping with the secrecy surrounding any military numbers, authorities will not say how many are on the battlefield but they do say fighters' profile has changed.

Shahuri explained that while the first waves of volunteers came mostly from post-Soviet or English-speaking countries,the military has now developed an infrastructure of Spanish-speaking recruiters, instructors and junior operational officers.

Hector Bernal, a retired ex-combat medic who runs a centre for tactical medicine outside Bogot, says that in the last eight months hes trained more than 20 Colombians who went on to fight in Ukraine.

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EU pledges more than a million military shells to Ukraine - Euronews

By Tiffany WertheimerBBC News, London

Former Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, says he will "soon" interview Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

In a video posted on X, formerly Twitter, Carlson said he wanted to do the interview because "Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they are implicated in".

It would be Mr Putin's first one-on-one interview with a Western journalist since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Kremlin has not yet commented.

The 54-year-old's visit to Moscow has been reported on voraciously in Russian state media, with near-constant coverage of his every move.

"There are risks to doing an interview like this, obviously, so we've thought about it over many months," Carlson said on his announcement video .

Carlson added that he paid for the trip to Russia himself, and wanted to do the interview because "most Americans are not informed" on the conflict which is "reshaping the world" - blaming the mainstream media.

Since the war in Ukraine began, he said, Western journalists have interviewed Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky - whom he has previously called a "dictator" - many times.

But they are "fawning pep sessions" aimed at amplifying Mr Zelensky's demand to get the US more and more involved in the war, Carlson insisted.

"That is not journalism - it is government propaganda."

Meanwhile, "not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview" Vladimir Putin, Carlson said.

Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Russia Editor, posted that the BBC has "lodged several requests with the Kremlin in the last 18 months. Always a 'no' for us".

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has devastated the country and its people.

The United Nations has said that Russian forces are responsible for rapes, "widespread" torture and killings in Ukraine.

Russia has also annexed four more regions of Ukraine, after its illegal takeover of Crimea in 2014.

And the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin , accusing him of war crimes and the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.

Within Russia, journalists are under extreme reporting restrictions - the media are banned from calling it a "war": it is meant to be called a "special military operation".

Tucker Carlson has been an outspoken defender of Mr Putin since the war began. Just before Russia's invasion, he claimed that "hating Putin has become the central purpose of America's foreign policy", but urged his viewers to ask themselves why.

"Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?" Carlson said as Russian troops started to mass on Ukraine's border. "These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is: No. Vladimir Putin didn't do any of that."

After Russia had invaded, he changed his tone slightly during a different show, saying "Vladimir Putin started this war... He is to blame for what we're seeing tonight in Ukraine".

Exactly when the interview will take place is unclear, but Carlson said it would be uploaded live and unedited to his X account. Elon Musk, who owns the platform, has "promised not to suppress or block the interview".

Tucker Carlson was one of America's top-rated cable TV hosts - but he abruptly left Fox News last year.

While at the US network, his shows frequently set the agenda for conservatives and, by extension, the Republican party.

He was hugely influential as the anchor of a late-night political talk show between 2016 and 2023 and has since launched a show on X.

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Tucker Carlson to interview Russia's Putin - BBC.com

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., plans to bring up a standalone bill with aid to Israel after rejecting a bipartisan Senate border deal. Jose Luis Magana/AP hide caption

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., plans to bring up a standalone bill with aid to Israel after rejecting a bipartisan Senate border deal.

After months of stalling an international aid package for Ukraine and Israel in favor of tougher border policy, top Republicans are calling for a standalone international aid package because they now oppose the addition of stricter border policy they demanded.

A bipartisan Senate package that paired border security measures with assistance to Israel and Ukraine appeared all but dead Tuesday, after Republicans backed away from the deal amid growing criticism from the right.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who on Monday urged his colleagues to support the package, had shifted dramatically by Tuesday.

"It looks to me and to most of our members that we have no real chance here to make a law," McConnell told reporters.

The bill in question was specifically crafted to meet GOP demands that Democrats link border policy changes to President Biden's request for military aid to Israel and Ukraine. But by Monday night, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., the top Republican negotiator on the Senate deal, was predicting that a procedural vote on the package would fail this week.

"We are trying to figure out what to do next," Lankford told reporters in the Capitol. "People are saying, 'Hey, we need a lot more time to go through this.'"

The deal began to unravel after former President Donald Trump publicly trashed it and House GOP leaders proclaimed it "dead on arrival." The failure of the package which includes roughly $20 billion for border provisions and raises the threshold to meet asylum claims would cast doubt on Congress' ability to get anything done on border security or foreign assistance between now and Election Day.

The chaos over the border is the latest collapse for one of the least productive congressional sessions in history.

As Congress stewed, Biden blamed Trump.

"Republicans have to decide who do they serve: Donald Trump or the American people?" Biden posed in a speech at the White House. "Are they here to solve problems, or just weaponize problems for political purposes?"

He went on to threaten that a failure on the legislation will become an issue in his own campaign.

"Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends," Biden said.

Democrats in Congress also quickly blamed Republicans.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy suggested Wednesday's procedural vote would likely mark the end of a bipartisan effort to address the border, saying about Republicans, "They walked away from the old plan, they'll walk away from a new plan."

The shift has left senators from both parties discussing plans to go back to the original plan from last year to try to pass funding for Ukraine, Israel and humanitarian aid separately.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he plans to move forward with a procedural vote to begin debate Wednesday or Thursday, in response to Republican requests for more time to consider the bill.

"Senators are elected to vote, not to be afraid, run away, make excuses when it comes to voting on the tough issues," Schumer said on the Senate floor. "No one is being asked to take a position on the supplemental tomorrow. The only thing a yes vote would allow us for the Senate to simply begin to consider, discuss and debate the vitally important issues before us now."

Even if the bill were to advance through the Senate, it faced even longer odds in the House. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Tuesday morning that "Republicans simply cannot vote for the bill in good conscience," arguing that it does not do enough to secure the border and that Biden already has legal authority to address the surge of migrants that he is not using.

Several senators have suggested in recent days that Ukraine aid should be considered independently if the larger package collapses.

But it was Republicans who initially demanded that border policy changes be paired with Ukraine assistance, and it's not clear there is appetite among the House GOP for a standalone Ukraine bill.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was forced to remove $3oo million of aid to Ukraine from a larger defense bill in the fall in order to win over a handful of GOP holdouts. Ninety-three Republicans voted for an amendment to the defense bill that would "prohibit security assistance" to Ukraine.

Johnson said Tuesday that efforts to help Ukraine "have not been abandoned. The Pentagon has warned that Ukrainian forces are running out of ammunition and other resources now that U.S. funding has lapsed.

In lieu of the larger package, House Republicans brought forward a bill to provide military assistance to Israel. But that proposal also failed.

Johnson brought up the bill under suspension of the House rules, which requires a two-thirds majority to pass. The final vote was 250-180, as the proposal drew opposition from both sides of the aisle.

House Democratic leaders slammed the standalone proposal as a "nakedly obvious and cynical attempt" to undermine the bipartisan deal in the Senate. Meanwhile, the House Freedom Caucus criticized the bill for its lack of financial offsets.

Republican leaders were forced to skirt a Rules Committee hearing on the bill that might have exposed anger among far-right conservatives. Rules must sign off on legislation and the full House must agree in order for a bill to come up with a simple majority vote.

As the legislative efforts appeared to falter, so too did an entirely partisan effort by House Republicans to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The vote was stuck in a tie for several minutes as leaders scrambled to sway holdouts. But in the end, four Republicans voted against the measure and the final vote was 214 to 216, scuttling an effort that was widely seen as an opportunity to deliver on a key promise to GOP base voters.

Republicans may revisit the impeachment for another vote when Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., returns to the chamber. Scalise has been out for cancer treatment.

Read the rest here:
Congress in chaos over border deal, Israel and Ukraine - NPR

President Biden took the border fight directly to former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday, blaming his predecessor and putative challenger for torpedoing a bipartisan immigration agreement out of crass politics at the expense of national security.

Weighing in forcefully after months of largely staying out of the fray, Mr. Biden called on congressional Republicans to show some spine and stand up to Mr. Trump. But he effectively acknowledged that the deal negotiated over several months was doomed and vowed to make it a campaign issue against the opposition.

All indications are this bill wont even move forward to the Senate floor, Mr. Biden said in a speech televised from the White House. Why? A simple reason. Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump thinks this is bad for him politically.

The president said that Mr. Trump would rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it and has leaned on Republicans to block it. It looks like theyre caving, he added. Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right.

The decision by Republicans to reject a bipartisan border deal that they had previously demanded not only paralyzed the immigration debate but also imperiled security assistance for Ukraine and Israel attached to the $118 billion measure, closing off what had been seen as the best remaining avenue to aid embattled American allies.

The deadlock raised questions about whether Congress would be able to salvage the emergency aid package and, if so, how. Speaker Mike Johnson sought to advance aid to Israel alone by pushing a separate $17.6 billion measure. But it ran into strong resistance from hard-right Republicans, as well as Democrats and Mr. Biden, who threatened a veto, and failed to garner the two-thirds vote needed for passage on Tuesday evening.

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Biden Tells Republicans to 'Show Some Spine' Against Trump on Border Deal - The New York Times