Latest news from Russia’s Ukraine war: Putin’s planes ‘steal Ukrainian children’ as Britain considers sending troops to war

While he has yet to reveal details of his plan to end the war, signs that Ukraine will be forced to make significant concessions to the Russian occupiers have worried NATO countries.

Britain and France are closer to considering sending troops to Ukraine to monitor a ceasefire if Kyiv and Moscow start peace talks, a senior NATO official said on condition of anonymity.

Officials said Paris and London are looking at options for various situations that can take place in Ukraine, reported Radio Free Europe. The discussions are not taking place within NATO structures, but between national governments, the official said.

One option being considered would involve sending a task force to the contact line to enforce a ceasefire, the report added.

Some NATO members are waiting for the incoming US administration led by Donald Trump to take office before making up their minds about Ukraine’s request for an invitation to join the alliance, Latvia’s foreign minister said.

“In principle, we as political leaders have agreed that Ukraine will be a member,” Latvian foreign minister Baiba Braže told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

“The problem is what the situation is, and it is clear that the alliance must be united. All the allies, now, everyone is waiting for the new US administration to start working, so I think that this is one aspect that is talked about or not understood, but it is real,” he said.

Braže, a former senior NATO official, said Ukraine’s battle-hardened military would be an asset to NATO, and that his country would vote to invite Ukraine to join if a decision was made.

“Some countries are not always happy to invite warring countries to join NATO,” the minister said, adding: “We are more flexible.”

Kyiv has asked NATO’s foreign ministers to issue an invitation to a meeting in Brussels this week, but the move seems unlikely in the face of opposition from some capitals and the transition in Washington.

After the edict on Tuesday night, the military surrounded the National Assembly in Seoul and clashed with protesters angry at the declaration.

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The Kremlin has said that the US decision to send another arms package to Ukraine worth $725 million shows that the Biden administration is determined to waste oil on the war in Ukraine to ensure the conflict continues.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the aid package would not change the situation on the front lines.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Monday that the new aid would include Stinger missiles, ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), and drones and landmines.

Asked about the aid package, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “The government is now working towards its goal, the consistent line is that this war does not last longer.

“The administration (Biden) is doing everything possible to add fuel to the fire. At the same time, this and other aid packages cannot change events, cannot affect the dynamics on the front line.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae Yul said earlier this week that all options are on the table, but experts noted that Seoul is more likely to send a variety of military support short of soldiers.

The alleged presence of some 12,000 North Korean troops in Russia, reportedly under a defense agreement signed by Russian president Vladimir Putin with Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier this year, has set off alarm bells on the Korean peninsula.

Top Russian officials say there is no reason yet to negotiate on how to end the war in Ukraine.

“There is no reason for negotiations yet,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Izvestia newspaper, reiterating Moscow’s long position in the negotiations.

“Many countries have announced their readiness to provide their territory … And we are grateful to all countries for their good will, including Qatar.”

Qatar has mediated several returns of Ukrainian children taken to Russia from the conflict zone since the beginning of the war. Thousands of civilians, mostly Ukrainians, have been killed since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

Valentina Matviyenko, chairman of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, said on Monday that there might be an attempt to start peace talks with Ukraine in 2025.

In late November, sources told Reuters that Russian president Vladimir Putin was open to discussing a ceasefire deal in Ukraine with Trump and could agree to freeze the conflict on the front line. Russian forces control about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory and have advanced recently at their fastest pace since the start of the war.

But the Kremlin has repeatedly said it will not negotiate with president Volodymyr Zelensky unless Ukraine renounces its ambitions to join NATO and withdraws forces from the area currently controlled by Russian forces.

Russian presidential planes and funds are used in a program that takes children from occupied parts of Ukraine, strips them of their Ukrainian identity and places them with Russian families, according to a report from the Yale School of Public Health.

Research supported by the US State Department, published yesterday, identified 314 Ukrainian children who were taken to Russia in the early months of the war in Ukraine as part of a systematic Kremlin-funded program to “Russify”.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian president Vladimir Putin and children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, on charges of war crimes of deportation of Ukrainian children.

The new research, first reported by Reuters, offers details of the alleged deportation program and the individuals involved, including what the lead researcher says are new links to Putin.

The researcher, Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, said he was scheduled to present his findings to the UN security council today. The US holds the rotating presidency of the 15-member body this month.

Mr Raymond said the research provided evidence that would support additional charges by the ICC against Putin over the “forced transfer” of people from one national and ethnic group to another.

He said the report proved “the deportation of Ukrainian children is part of a systematic Kremlin-led program” to make them Russian citizens.

Forced transfer is a crime against humanity under international law. Because they must be widespread and systematic, crimes against humanity are considered more serious than war crimes.