France is among several Western nations aiding Ukraine with both training and weaponry in a bid to turn the tide in its nearly three-year-long war with Russia. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, France has delivered military equipment and weaponry valuing more than 2.6 billion euros, in addition to training nearly 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers, according to the country’s defense ministry. Over the last few months, a French military task force trained a brigade of Ukrainian troops on effective fighting tactics and how to use French-supplied military weaponry, including the tank-destroying AMX-10 armored vehicle. French and Ukrainian officials have referred to the AMX-10 as a “light tank,” but it lacks the large-caliber armament and tracks typically equipped on tanks. Its light aluminum armor left it vulnerable to Russian artillery. Better described as an armored reconnaissance vehicle, Ukraine initially struggled to effectively use the AMX-10 in its frontline defenses, instead adapting the vehicle’s operations to the Ukrainian battlefield.

About 1,700 soldiers from a Ukrainian unit equipped by the West and trained in France went AWOL before firing a shot.

Andrew Day and Connor Echols cover the foreign policy news of the week. In this episode, Day and Echols also discuss how progressives should approach Trump’s foreign policy. Plus: Anatol Lieven joins to discuss Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

In 2023 the situation in Ukraine had developed into what looked like a stalemate. But 2024 proved that bigger things had been in the making. In 2024, after taking Avdivka, the Russian forces began to deliberate and steadily move forward.

Stepped up attacks by Russia are heightening longstanding concerns over how Ukraine manages its military and countering assumptions that Moscow’s offensive would slow, soldiers and military analysts say.

Throughout 2024, Ukraine and its armed forces have been shaken by corruption scandals, primarily related to orders of military supplies for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) but also related to the embezzlement of funds which Western countries provided for the functioning of the Ukrainian state.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Five months after their shock offensive into Russia, Ukrainian troops are bloodied and demoralized by the rising risk of defeat in Kursk, a region some want to hold at all costs while others question the value of having gone in at all.

Ukraine is losing the battle on the ground. Many of its soldiers are tired and exhausted after three years of fighting. The question – can the country endure another year of war?

“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” Scott Horton is the liberty movement’s foreign policy hedgehog, endeavoring to convince the American public of one essential truth: the folly of war. But within that sphere, Horton is a fox, weaving an encyclopedic knowledge of various conflicts into an elaborate and convincing tapestry that indicts elites, intellectuals, the military-industrial complex, and—with characteristic vitriol—neoconservatives in pushing the US toward unnecessary wars.

There is a rule: in peacetime, prepare for war, and in wartime, think about organizing peace. Now, while the conflict in Ukraine is not over, our thoughts are about victory. We are sure it will come. But it is time now to start thinking about the world that will follow. Paraphrasing Stalin’s famous statement, we can say: Bandera come and go, but the Ukrainian people remain.