NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said a Russian victory over Ukraine would undermine the dissuasive force of the world's biggest military alliance.

Russia has given its first response to Donald Trump’s ultimatum calling on Vladimir Putin to engage in peace talks or see his Ukraine invasion end “the hard way”.Writing on his Truth Social platform days after re-entering the White House,

Moscow will respond to attempts to disrupt shipping and abuses by NATO ships in the Baltic Sea, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned that restoring the alliance's credibility after a Russian victory in Ukraine could require trillions of dollars.

The extremely active position of Paris regarding the need to ensure Kiev's "strong position" in the negotiation process with Moscow, voiced a few days earlier by Emmanuel Macron in an appeal to the French Armed Forces,

Russia is believed to be behind dozens of hybrid attacks, like arson or sabotage, on NATO soil since the Ukraine war started.

Trump has echoed Moscow’s rhetoric, which has described its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine as a response to planned Nato membership for Kyiv

Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov issued a fresh warning to NATO member U.K. over assistance provided to Ukraine in the war.

Any attempt to get Ukraine into Nato will run into a “buzz saw” in Washington unless Europe pays for it, a top diplomat for Donald Trump has said. Richard Grenell, a US special presidential envoy, suggested that US taxpayers would not be prepared to fund Ukrainian membership of the Western alliance.

The second ship, the 75,100-dwt Yi Peng 3 (built 2001), was intercepted in November and held off Denmark for about a month, after which its owner ordered the ship to sail again “for consideration of the crew’s physical and mental health”, as the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement at the time.

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to broker a peace deal in Ukraine, but as he prepares to take office, peace seems as elusive as ever.

A spate of alleged sabotage operations against undersea cables in the Baltic Sea has raised the prospect of a dangerous 2025 in NATO's northern theater.