World
Russia's war on Ukraine unlikely to end in 2024; Congress plays pivotal role in direction conflict takes
The direction of the third year of the Russia-Ukraine war will largely depend upon whether Congress can overcome hesitation about continued support as fatigue sets in, experts told Fox News Digital.
“America’s partnerships and alliances have never been more important than they are right now,” Kenneth J Braithwaite, former secretary of the Navy in the Trump administration and former ambassador to Norway, argued.
“Communism is alive and well, and we are up against it as Russia wages war against Europe and China seeks to exert more influence on the globe,” Braithwaite said. “That means Americans need to look outside our borders at how we can protect ourselves from these looming challenges, starting with one of our greatest force multipliers: Our partnerships and willingness to stand united against authoritarian threats to sovereignty.”
The second year of the Ukraine invasion proved a truly chaotic one, starting with Russia seeming to suffer catastrophic setbacks when the vital Wagner forces turned traitor and tried to march on Moscow. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin died after his plane exploded, killing him and everyone aboard.
BRET BAIER REFLECTS ON THE IMPORTANCE, COST OF WAR JOURNALISM AS RUSSIA’S WAR ON UKRAINE ENTERS ANOTHER YEAR
A Ukrainian armored personnel carrier travels along a road in Bakhmut in the Donetsk region March 3, 2023. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)
Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to rally and beat back Ukraine’s counteroffensive, much to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s frustration. Putin grew so confident in his standing he refused to renew a U.N.-backed deal to secure access for grain shipments through the Black Sea, turning and attacking Ukraine.
Ukraine countered with an impressive naval effort that destroyed a dozen Russian ships in the Black Sea, pushing the fleet out of the western part of the sea and allowing Kyiv to establish its own grain corridor.
As the dust settles following that roller coaster series of events, the third year of the war remains vague and dependent upon two major developments. Russia or Ukraine will both look to overcome war fatigue to gain a major advantage. And Ukraine’s chances rest largely on whether the U.S. Congress can overcome its hesitation about continued support for Ukraine without a clear end in sight.
“For Ukraine, the shell hunger and the manpower shortages caused by, and in the former case caused in part by U.S. delays to aid, it’s a challenging year,” John Hardie, the deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)’s Russia Program, told Fox News Digital.
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“It was always going to be a tough year no matter what happened with U.S. aid,” Hardie stressed. “The congressional delays have just made it worse. So, I think for Ukraine early this year, they’ll just try to hold on by the teeth and try to make it through 2025, when — if we put the pieces in place this year — I think Ukraine could regain the advantage.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with House Speaker Mike Johnson to discuss additional aid from Congress (Courtesy Speaker Mike Johnson’s office)
“But it obviously depends on the right decisions being made and implemented this year.”
Congress has failed to approve new aid packages that would supply Ukraine with much-needed defense equipment, munitions and air defense systems. A rare Sunday vote Feb. 11 in the Senate pushed forward an aid package for Ukraine along with Israel and other U.S. allies that would provide $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, including $8 billion for Kyiv and other assistance.
Several holdouts in Congress, including senators JD Vance, R-Ohio.; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., have spoken against continued support for Ukraine.
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Vance has argued that he sees little sense in “unlimited, unaccounted-for aid to Ukraine without any goals in mind,” while Tuberville found it difficult to continue “paying Ukrainian farmers” after “we just punted the farm bill for American farmers [to] next year.”
Mark Green, President and CEO of the Wilson Center and former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under President Trump, argued in favor of continuing to support Ukraine. He worried that “standing by and letting Putin’s forces win would embolden our rivals elsewhere.”
An apartment building damaged in a Russian rocket attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in the early hours of Jan. 17. (Kharkiv Regional Administration/AP)
“What scares Putin more than anything else is democratic success on his borders,” Green told Fox News Digital. “That’s why his invasion of Ukraine was not merely a military invasion: He demolished infrastructure to demoralize Ukrainians and weaponized food to punish anyone who stands with Ukraine.
“He wants to undermine Ukraine and the rules-based system we created in every way, which is why the U.S. needs a wide range of tools to help the Ukrainians defend themselves. The world is watching.”
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Without the aid, Ukraine will find it difficult to sustain its defense against Russia, Zelenskyy said in an exclusive interview this week with Bret Baier, FOX News’ chief political anchor and executive editor of “Special Report.”
Zelenskyy claimed that Russia has lost five troops for every one Ukrainian, and he highlighted that Russia’s only significant gain in the past year was to take the city of Avdiivka near Donetsk.
Looking into year three, FDD’s Hardie worried about a Ukraine that did not have the consistent U.S. support to overcome war fatigue while Russia faces issues that could prove catastrophic in the coming months.
A woman walks among apartment buildings destroyed by Russian shelling on the outskirts of Odesa, Ukraine, July 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Michael Shtekel)
“I think both sides have a structural manpower problem where they can’t rotate forces, and troops become increasingly exhausted,” Hardie said. “Despite having both mobilized, they haven’t done so to the extent that they could actually take tens of thousands of forces or more off the front line and let them rest for months on end.
“Folks on both sides maybe get a week of vacation here or there, but it’s not a real force rotation where you can give someone a date and say, ‘This is your deployment window, and once you’re done, you’re done,’” he added. “So, that hasn’t affected morale.
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“It’s sort of both sides are struggling with that. For Ukraine, the issue is mobilizing young men. And, for Russians, it’s just one example of political risk and the economic risk of another round of mobilization,” Hardie added. “So, I think those are the things to watch out for.”
Ukraine will seek to remedy that issue with changes to its mobilization laws, which have slowly progressed through rounds of revisions as lawmakers have resisted several measures, including increasing the age for the draft.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during the Victory Day military parade marking the 78th anniversary of the end of World War II in Red Square in Moscow May 9, 2022. (Dmitry Astakhov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Putin issued a decree to expand his forces by around 170,000 men, bringing the troop total to 1.32 million, not including any confirmed death count, which would significantly diminish that total if verified.
The Kremlin went to great pains to ensure that the public understands the expansion does not indicate an impending draft, which proved wildly unpopular when Putin rolled it out in 2022 after promising that he would not do so.
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Putin on Friday promised to continue improving Russia’s military power, including — once again — its nuclear capabilities, which he promised would remain in modernized and good order, according to Reuters.
“Incorporating our real combat experience, we will continue to strengthen the Armed Forces in every possible way, including ongoing re-equipping and modernization efforts,” Putin said.
“Today, the share of modern weapons and equipment in the strategic nuclear forces has already reached 95%, while the naval component of the ‘nuclear triad’ is at almost 100%,” he added.
Zelenskyy will continue to fight for support and to convince Congress to back Kyiv, even if things remain unclear in the immediate future as his country faces an existential crisis.
“My message is, if they want to be very pragmatic, the price, we are asking now to support, this price is less than it will be in the future. … They will pay much more, much more. We just want to live, to survive,” Zelenskyy said during his interview with Baier. “We don’t have [an] alternative.”
World
Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration officer, Minnesota’s Twin Cities on Sunday braced for what many expect will be a new normal over the next few weeks as the Department of Homeland Security carries out what it called its largest enforcement operation ever.
Protesters screamed at heavily-armed federal agents and honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt their operations in one Minneapolis neighborhood filled with single-family homes.
There was some pushing and several people were hit with chemical spray just before agents banged down the door of one home on Sunday. They later took one man away in handcuffs.
“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city councilmember. “They’ve definitely been out here.”
Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.
People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners in the neighborhood where 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed Wednesday, watching for any signs of federal agents.
More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of trainings to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization .
“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.
The protests have been largely peaceful, but the Twin Cities remained anxious. Minneapolis public schools on Monday will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.
Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.
While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said on Sunday that the investigation into Good’s shooting death shouldn’t be overseen solely by the federal government.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews Sunday that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.
“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened,” Smith said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle.
Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, defended the officer on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”
“That law enforcement officer had milliseconds, if not short time to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents,” he said.
Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn’t be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”
The killing of Good by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, led to dozens of protests across the country over the weekend.
Thousands of people marched Saturday in Minneapolis, where Homeland Security called its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation.
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Associated Press journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis, Thomas Strong in Washington, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.
World
Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the possibility of U.S. intervention in Iran, according to a report.
The two leaders spoke by phone Saturday as Israel is on “high alert,” preparing for the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Iran, according to Reuters, citing multiple Israeli sources. A U.S. official confirmed the call to Fox News Digital but did not provide additional details.
The report comes as nationwide anti-regime demonstrations across Iran hit the two-week mark.
On Saturday, the Iranian regime triggered an internet “kill switch” in an apparent effort to conceal alleged abuses by security forces and as protests against it surged nationwide, according to a cybersecurity expert. The blackout reduced internet access to a fraction of normal levels.
KEANE WARNS IRANIAN REGIME TO TAKE TRUMP ‘DEAD SERIOUS’ ON PROTEST KILLING THREAT AMID ONGOING DEMONSTRATIONS
Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds his end-of-year press conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2025. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters)
On Sunday, Iran’s parliament speaker warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America strikes the Islamic Republic.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf issued the threat as lawmakers rushed the dais in the Iranian parliament, shouting, “Death to America!” according to The Associated Press.
President Donald Trump offered support for the protesters on Saturday, writing on Truth Social that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”
IRANIAN MILITARY LEADER THREATENS PREEMPTIVE ATTACK AFTER TRUMP COMMENTS
In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)
At a news conference Friday, Trump said Iran was facing mounting pressure as unrest spreads across the country.
“Iran’s in big trouble,” he said. “It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago. We’re watching the situation very carefully.”
The president said the U.S. would respond forcefully if the regime resorts to mass violence.
“We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts,” he said.
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Protests in Iran intensify for the 12th day. (The National Council of Resistance of Iran)
Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and White House for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey, Brie Stimson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
World
Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine
Published on
Russia fired more than 150 drones overnight into Sunday targeting close to two dozen locations across Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring 20 more.
Ukraine’s Air Forces say they intercepted 125 drones aerially but confirmed that at least 25 strike drones struck their targets.
They added that Moscow’s latest barrage mainly targeted Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk, all of which were targeted in Saturday’s overnight strikes as well.
Local officials in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia say the strikes targeted residential areas and energy infrastructure. More than 385,000 homes were affected by electric, gas or water outages, at a critical time as temperatures plunged to 10 degrees below Celsius.
Regional lawmakers say service was restored to most of the affected households and areas by Sunday morning, but added that emergency work was still being carried out to restore power to the remaining homes.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of timing their attacks with the cold peaks of winter as to maximise civilian suffering.
“They struck targets that have no military purpose whatsoever – energy infrastructure, residential buildings. They deliberately waited for freezing weather to make things worse for our people. This is deliberate, cynical Russian terror specifically against civilians,” wrote Zelenskyy in a post on X.
He also noted that this week had seen heightened Russian assault on Ukrainian cities, announcing that his country’s defence forces recorded thousands of attacks using a variety of different weapons.
“Over the course of this week, Russia launched almost 1,100 attack drones against Ukraine, more than 890 guided aerial bombs, and over 50 missiles of various types – ballistic, cruise, and even the Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile.”
The Ukrainian leader thanked all units responsible for protecting the country and responding to attacks, and praised their tireless efforts and resilience.
He also called on allies to ensure his embattled country maintains “stable support”, in defence and diplomatic fields as coordinated dialogue efforts continue in search of peace.
Meanwhile, Russia says that one person was killed in Ukrainian strikes on the western city of Voronezh. Officials say a young woman succumbed to her wounds at an intensive care unit of a local hospital after debris from a drone fell on her house during Saturday’s attacks.
They added that at least three others were injured in the attacks which targeted more than 10 residential apartment buildings, private homes and a high school.
The city of Voronezh lies just 250 kilometres from the Ukrainian border and is home to approximately one million people. The attacks, which Kyiv have yet to confirm, came after the Kremlin’s major offensive on Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday.
Additional sources • AP
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