Ukraine Breaking News Today Live on 03-29-2025

Why, some still ask, should the US and its democratic allies continue to support Ukraine in this hour of joint peril? – The reasons are obvious.

Reason 1: It is morally the right thing to do

Anyone with a moral compass that has not been broken by propaganda must realize that supporting Ukraine is simply the right thing to do. To witness Russian genocide and do nothing is a sign of moral bankruptcy.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who stood up to Hitler in Nazi Germany, once said: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Fighting for three years in various war zones, Maksym Nesmiianov, an infantry soldier in Ukraine’s Border Guard Service talked mental health, PTSD, and combat joys and losses with Kyiv Post.

Since the beginning of the war, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have joined the defense of their country, and among them are people from myriad backgrounds, united by one misfortune and necessity.

Maksym Nesmiianov, a fighter of the State Border Guard Service, is a soldier who, before the war, was an expert on consumer protection and headed the Consumer Rights Union of Ukraine.

With the successful incorporation of F-16s, Mirage 2000s into its Air Force, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov announced military restructuring to focus vertically on aviation development.

Recognizing the critical nature of Air Power in fighting against Russia’s full-scale invasion, The Defense Ministry of Ukraine is elevating aviation to be given more prominence within the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), a separate vertical for technological development and systems integration, and a billet for a Deputy Minister of Defense for Aviation.

Ukraine’s Minister of Defense, Rustem Umerov, announced the creation of a separate vertical chain of command in the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, which will focus exclusively on aviation development.

Reopening of H&M and Inditex in Ukraine brought $178 in revenue despite power outages and air raid alarms, as businesses adapt to wartime conditions.

Ten of the largest international clothing and footwear retailers in Ukraine, including Inditex and LPP, increased their revenue in the Ukrainian market by 63% in 2024, with over a third of the total generated by Polish companies, Forbes Ukraine reported.

Swedish brand H&M reopened in Ukraine in November 2023 after closing due to the full-scale Russian invasion, while Spanish conglomerate Inditex returned in April 2024.

The scorecard reads three US-Ukraine huddles, two formal US-Russia sessions, and a handful of backroom chats – yet the breakthroughs remain elusive.

The diplomatic marathon in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton lumbers into its fifth day, a tedious spectacle of US-Russia haggling over a Black Sea ceasefire that’s proving as solid and transparent as Black Sea mud.

Since March 24, the scorecard reads three US-Ukraine huddles, two formal US-Russia sessions, and a handful of backroom chats – yet the breakthroughs remain elusive.

Latest from the British Defence Intelligence.

• As of March 2025, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) forces had highly likely sustained over 5,000 casualties in offensive combat operations against Ukrainian forces in the Russian oblast of Kursk, with approximately a third of the casualties killed in action.
• The total casualties amount to close to half of the approximately 11,000 DPRK troops initially deployed to the Kursk region. Open source reports suggest DPRK has subsequently deployed limited numbers of additional troops to Kursk in support. Significant DPRK casualty rates have almost certainly been sustained primarily through large, highly attritional dismounted assaults.
• DPRK forces and Russian forces have made territorial gains in recent weeks in offensive operations against Ukrainian forces in Kursk. Ukrainian forces likely retain at least a foothold in the Russian territory of Kursk.
• DPRK operations have thus far been confined to the Kursk region. Any decision to deploy into internationally recognised, sovereign Ukrainian territory in support of Russian forces, would almost certainly require sign-off from both Russia’s President Putin, and DPRK leader Kim Jong Un.

As Belgrade sees the largest anti-government demonstrations in Serbia’s recent history, Moscow is quietly stepping in – not to support democratic reform, but to help put it down.

The largest anti-government protests in Serbia in more than two decades have shaken the capital and spread nationwide, bringing hundreds of thousands to the streets in scenes not seen since the fall of Slobodan Milošević. 

What began as student-led demonstrations against corruption and creeping authoritarianism has now ballooned into a full-blown political crisis for President Aleksandar Vučić’s government.

Yermak updated the security advisors on the results of a recent meeting with the Trump team in Riyadh, which was a follow-up to the dialogue initiated in Jeddah.

The Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, held an online discussion on Friday with the national security advisors to the G7 leaders focused on current security challenges, the humanitarian situation, and steps toward achieving a just peace, according to the President’s Office of Ukraine.

Yermak updated the security advisors on the results of a recent meeting with the Trump team in Riyadh, which was a follow-up to the dialogue initiated in Jeddah.

What is happening in the US now is an attack on liberalism, but it came from “enormous” disillusionment in democracy in the country, James Robinson said during his visit in Kyiv.

The Trump administration is trying to build extractive institutions – entities where power concentrates in the hands of a narrow elite and extract resources from society, James Robinson said during his lectures in Kyiv after he won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2024 alongside his colleague Daron Acemoglu. 

But Trump is a symptom of problems that didn’t start overnight. Americans became disillusioned with liberal democracy because it failed to deliver them prosperity since the 1970s. 

Russia has accused Ukraine of violating a US-brokered agreement for both sides to halt strikes on energy infrastructure – something which Kyiv strongly denies.

Russia “reserves the right” to strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure if Kyiv violates a moratorium agreement, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov is quoted by Russian Interfax as saying.

“It would be illogical for us to comply while facing nightly attempts to strike our energy facilities,” Peskov said, adding that Russian forces are still “upholding the moratorium on shelling Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.”

RFE/RL’s lawsuit maintains that the Trump executive branch does not have this authority, since the grant was awarded by an act of Congress, according to Article I of the US Constitution.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is continuing legal action against the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to secure the release of congressionally appropriated funding, it said in a statement on March 28.

USAGM oversees RFE/RL, Voice of America (VOA), and other US international media.

Four people were killed and 19 more were injured in the city of Dnipro as a result of a massive Russian drone attack.

A Russian drone attack has killed at least four people and wounded 19 in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, damaging high-rise buildings and triggering fires in a hotel, service stations and homes, an official said Saturday.

Both Russia and Ukraine have stepped up their aerial attacks even as US President Donald Trump pushes the Kremlin and Kyiv to agree to a ceasefire after more than three years of costly fighting.