British troops may go to Ukraine if Trump cuts Kyiv’s aid, says Boris Johnson– live

Kaja Kallas, the nominee to be the European Union’s next foreign policy chief, has warned against making assumptions about what US president-elect Donald Trump would do in Ukraine and said isolationism had never worked for the United States.

The former Estonian prime minister told her confirmation hearing in the European Parliament on Tuesday that she did not think anybody knew what Mr Trump would do and that the EU would need to hear directly from his team.

“If we look to the history, then isolationism has never worked well for America … If America is worried about China, they should first be worried about Russia, and we will have these dialogues with the United States,” Ms Kallas said.

Loud blasts have been heard in Kyiv in the early hours today amid reports on missiles heading for the Ukrainian capital.

“A rocket in Chernihiv region heading for Kyiv region!” the Ukrainian air force said on Telegram. “Rocket to Kyiv, take cover immediately,” it said.

“Russia’s winter campaign against Ukraine’s civil energy infrastructure appears to be starting. Some cruise missiles are headed Kyiv’s way,” said Oliver Carroll, a journalist based in Kyiv.

“Ballistic missiles reported headed to Kyiv right now. The sound of air defence is very audible in centre of capital,” he said in another tweet.

President-elect Donald Trump reportedly advised Russian President Vladimir Putin not to escalate the war in Ukraine in a phone call the day after the presidential election, a report says.

As one of his first orders of unofficial business as the president-elect, Trump spoke with Putin on Thursday in a telephone conversation that he took from his home in Florida, sources familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

He allegedly asked the Russian president not to escalate his war and reminded him of the US’s military presence in Europe.

My colleague Ariana Baio reports:

The outgoing Biden administration’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, headed to Brussels on Tuesday for talks with European allies concerned that US president-elect Donald Trump could abandon Ukraine in its war with Russia.

In his first overseas trip since Mr Trump’s election victory, the secretary of state will stop in Brussels ahead of scheduled visits to Peru and Brazil later this week, his department said.

In meetings with Nato and European Union officials, Mr Blinken will “discuss support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s aggression,” the US State Department said, without elaborating on what message he will deliver.

Ukraine is close to setting up three new joint ventures with European weapons producers in its effort to boost arms output during the war with Russia, the first deputy prime minister said.

Yulia Svyrydenko, who is also the economy minister, said five joint ventures with Western weapon producers had already been set up, including with German and Lithuanian companies. Several arms producers have opened offices in Ukraine.

“We have three more agreements with European companies in the final stages to set up joint ventures,” Svyrydenko told Reuters in an interview in the government headquarters in central Kyiv.

She gave no details about the planned new ventures or the scale of the investments.

Ukraine’s military industrial production has exploded in size with state and private companies rapidly increasing their production and innovating, as the government has scrambled to respond to Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a Massachusetts Air National Guard member to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to leaking highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine.

Jack Teixeira pleaded guilty earlier this year to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act following his arrest in the most consequential national security case in years. He was brought into court in an orange jumpsuit and showed no visible reaction as he was sentenced by US District Judge Indira Talwani.

Earlier in the hearing he apologized before the judge.

Nato chief Mark Rutte has called on Western allies to provide Ukraine with further support “to change the trajectory of the conflict” with Russia.

Speaking ahead of a meeting Tuesday in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron, Rutte said: “We must do more than just keep Ukraine in the fight.”

He added: “We need to raise the cost for Putin and his enabling authoritarian friends by providing Ukraine with the support it needs to change the trajectory of the conflict.”

Rutte, who did not provided details about the military equipment and weapons needed for that purpose, said it was “very concerning” that Russia was getting “closer to its allies, China, Iran and North Korea.”

A doctor accused of criticising the war in Ukraine in front of a patient was convicted Tuesday of spreading false information about the Russian military and sentenced to five and a half years in prison, part of an unrelenting Kremlin crackdown on dissent.

Dr Nadezhda Buyanova, 68, was arrested in February after Anastasia Akinshina, the mother of one of her patients, reported the paediatrician to authorities. Akinshina alleged that Buyanova told her and her son that his father, a Russian soldier who was killed in Ukraine, was a legitimate target for Kyiv’s troops and had blamed Moscow for the war.

A video of the outraged Akinshina complaining about Buyanova was widely publicised, and chief of Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin personally demanded a criminal case be brought against the doctor.

British forces could be deployed in Ukraine if US President-elect Donald Trump reduces military aid to Kyiv, former prime minister Boris Johnson said.

“What I’m saying is for people watching, thinking why are we supporting the Ukrainians? It’s because otherwise our collective security will be really degraded by a resurgent Russia threatening all sorts of parts of Europe,” he told GB News.

In such a scenario, the UK will be compelled to send troops directly, he said. “We will then have to pay to send British troops to help defend Ukraine,” Mr Johnson said.