MANCHESTER, England — On the day in June that Andy Burnham ended his nine-year term as mayor, Manchester’s authorities sent him off with a parting gift: a wingback chair whose shiny fabric was printed with the city’s trademark worker-bee symbol and its rallying cry “we do things differently here.”

One month later, Burnham moved to 10 Downing Street, the sprawling Georgian terrace in London replete with mice, net curtains, cranky heating and patchy phone signal from which six other prime ministers have struggled to run Britain in the last decade. But the worker-bee chair did not accompany him on the trip south. It moved just a half-mile, through a city that was once the engine of the industrial revolution but for more than a century has struggled for balance against the political, economic and military power consolidated in the capital.

The chair now sits beside a 10-seat conference table in what Burnham calls “No. 10 North,” a refurbished 1980s office block he has chosen as his auxiliary seat of power. What remains of the largest empire the world has known is now governed most Fridays from above a discount cocktail bar, where Burnham has replaced Downing Street’s concentric rooms of gatekeepers with clinically lit floors of open-plan desks. Staffed by several political allies from his time in Greater Manchester and decorated with a gold record of The Queen Is Dead, the 1986 album by Manchester band The Smiths, it is Burnham’s “comfort zone,” a person who has worked with him said — “an homage to his time” as mayor.

No. 10 North is more than Burnham’s own Manc-a-Lago, where he retreats ahead of weekends at his family home nearby. The prime minister, who succeeded Keir Starmer as the benefactor of a Labour Party putsch on July 20, has made it a central aim of his premiership to move power and money out from limestone buildings on Whitehall, the old heart of London’s civil service — by centralizing some of Whitehall’s power further in No. 10 North, and handing other parts of it to local leaders outside government. He is banking Labour’s political future, and that of the British center-left, on being able to reverse a decades-long decline of England’s former industrial heartlands, one that fueled a political polarization and drove the 2016 vote for Brexit.

“What we’re bringing is a different type of energy,” Caroline Simpson, the mayoral authority’s former chief executive whom Burnham has tasked with heading up his new northern outpost as deputy chief of staff, told POLITICO Magazine in her first interview since assuming the role. “That’s really the point about No. 10 North — to connect our places, connect devolution back into the heart of governing.”

Burnham’s political opponents — and, privately, some civil servants, who have seen past prime ministers try to move power out of London — have derided the Manchester office as a gimmick, a soundstage for a politician attuned more to optics than policy detail. (No. 10 North is “absolutely not” a gimmick, insists Simpson.) The office is already up and running, but some of the basic details of how it will geographically redistribute power — such as how funding or boundaries will be configured — have not been worked out. An early test of Burnham’s commitment to redistributing his government’s sparse finances will come on Oct. 28, the day of his first budget, and in a cross-government spending review in 2027.

POLITICO Magazine spoke to 28 current or former civil servants, political officials, regional officials, advisers and politicians to illuminate what life is like inside No. 10 North and the broader policy vision it reflects. Many were granted anonymity to speak frankly about the workings of Burnham’s government. Downing Street declined to comment on the specifics of this article, beyond making Simpson available for interview.

Burnham took office on a pledge to “rewire Britain.” He has to rewire the house first.

Moving to Heron House

The incoming prime minister discussed the idea of setting up No. 10 North with his closest aides ahead of the June special election that sent him back to Westminster, a person with knowledge of the conversations said.

But the idea was kept secret from all but his innermost team until Burnham announced it in late June. He did not even tell Simpson about it in advance. “It all happened very, very quickly,” she said.

After winning the June special election, Burnham scrambled to make No. 10 North a reality. He wanted to put it in Manchester — but where, exactly, wasn’t clear. He told an interviewer in early July that his preferred site was the planned Manchester Digital Campus in the Ancoats area of the city, but the site he named will only open fully in 2032. Burnham’s team looked at options for other government buildings in Manchester during a few frantic weeks of transition talks with the civil service.

A few days before he took power, Burnham and the civil service agreed on a temporary solution: Heron House, a red-brick office block that was renovated in 2019. No. 10 North occupies a floor that had been prepared for use by GCHQ, the U.K.’s intelligence and cyber-security agency. GCHQ was happy to vacate the floor; one senior government official said the agency was “bending over backwards to be helpful,” since it still has senior figures in other parts of the building who will find it useful to be near the PM. Less happy about the arrangement: Greater Manchester Police, which has been under more strain thanks to the burden of protecting the PM and building. It had an initial back-and-forth with London’s Metropolitan Police about when each force should be responsible for Burnham’s security, a person with knowledge of the talks said, and has raised concerns about who will pay the long-term bill. A Greater Manchester Police spokesperson said the force was still working with government departments on security arrangements and “the cost of this is yet to be determined.”

There was a recent model for moving a core government function from Westminster to the north, and Burnham’s team is relying on some of that expertise. Former PM Boris Johnson opened government offices outside London including the Treasury, which launched a campus in the north-eastern railway town of Darlington, conveniently near then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s large family home in North Yorkshire.

Beth Russell, the senior official who leads the Darlington campus, has been advising on the setup of No. 10 North. But the projects are not the same; Darlington has around 350 Treasury civil servants across all ranks (plus more from eight other departments) while No. 10 North currently has only 50 or so, many of them necessarily senior. That means Darlington’s boasts to have recruited 80 percent of its staff locally, including from nearby schools, are unlikely to be repeated in No. 10 North.

Heather Scott, the veteran Conservative who was leader of Darlington Council at the time, argued local recruitment had made the project a success; some young people “never thought that they would have an opportunity to work for a government office.” Local staff may also think (and therefore make policy) differently, because they live outside London. “They’re not in £5 Gail’s coffee world,” said one Labour official, referring to a high-end chain bakery.

Burnham has, though, poached many members of his old mayoral team to No. 10 North — some of them based fully in Manchester and others splitting their time between there and London. Simpson will be a political special adviser while others will be non-partisan civil servants including John Wrathmell, who influenced thinking on “Manchesterism,” Burnham’s vision of putting the needs of a place above political ideology by combining private investment with state intervention. They were joined in recent weeks by Amy Davies, who ran Burnham’s calendar as mayor; she has been given the job of executive assistant to the PM, according to two people with knowledge of the appointment. (No. 10 does not routinely comment on staffing matters.) Other civil servants who join No. 10 North will already have been based outside London or want to return to where they grew up.

But in the meantime, civil servants have descended on Manchester from afar. No. 10 North’s Director General Sam Lister — its most senior civil servant — was only appointed on the Friday before Heron House opened to staff the following Monday, July 20 — the day Burnham took power, two people with knowledge of the process said. Lister declined to comment for this article (civil servants are ordinarily barred from speaking in public). Department heads were asked to suggest staff who might transfer to No. 10 North less than a week before it opened. One senior Whitehall official described the process as a “tap on the shoulder” and said the method for choosing people had been “unclear.”

Many of the 50 or so civil servants currently in No. 10 North are still based outside Manchester — which is 180 miles from London — and living in hotels for part of the week. That includes Lister, whose commute from his north London home was photographed covertly by the Mail on Sunday. After the story broke, officials were advised to stay across a variety of hotels to keep a lower profile, an official with knowledge of the process said.

Civil servants assigned to work at No. 10 North have been turning up before 8 a.m. on Fridays to secure desks that Burnham will walk past. Some ministers hot-desk. Simpson has her own office, there is a suite for ministerial use and officials are “buying the nicer furniture that comes with being the center of government,” the same official with knowledge of the process said.

Cheerleaders for the No. 10 North agenda argue this rush to action shows the team is trying to do something that British governments seldom manage — behave like a start-up. Lister wrote on LinkedIn that the unit “must maintain an agile, scale-up, non-hierarchical mindset” to work, “solving problems in real time rather than waiting for perfect answers.”

Therefore officials are anxious not to appoint too many civil servants; a person with knowledge of the planning said the total number of civil servants in No. 10 North is likely not to exceed 150, a tiny number compared to the thousands who already work in government offices outside London.

Those who do move permanently will each be able to claim up to £14,000 in relocation costs under existing rules, said the same official with knowledge of the process quoted above. They would not be expected to take a pay cut.

And then it may all churn again. Putting No. 10 North in Heron House is still only a medium-term arrangement and is unlikely to last until the nearby digital campus is open in 2032, said the same person with knowledge of the planning quoted earlier. That means Burnham’s team is looking at whether it can move somewhere else — neither Heron House nor the digital campus — in the coming years.

Burnham has pledged to work from the office every week, mostly on Fridays. (Burnham’s advisers say he will have visited five times in the month since becoming prime minister.) Despite his love of casual clothes, some of the trappings of his office follow him around. Downing Street sent its front-of-house staff up north with Burnham during his visits; aides suddenly found themselves being waited on with cups of tea.

In recent weeks the Manchester base has become such a focus of conversation that Burnham insiders have begun referring to London’s most famous street address as “No. 10 South.” Those who work there now find themselves on the receiving end of the north-south insecurity. One Labour official retorted: “No, we are No. 10!”

Downing Street and the surrounding streets still hoard the vast bulk of state power; the old Georgian building is the one with the famous black door and Larry the Cat, the feline who has lived at No. 10 longer than several prime ministers. No. 10 North has no real cat, said Simpson — but it does boast a cardboard cutout of Larry.

“Our building at the moment is tricky,” Simpson explained. Unlike Downing Street, where Larry can come and go as he pleases, Heron House has security keypads that cannot be operated by paws.

All roads lead from London

Burnham is far from the first British PM to try to break London’s hold on Britain — the result of a highly centralized government, based in a city of global finance and tourism that is more than three times the size of its nearest U.K. rival.

London was always the seat of Britain’s establishment, but northern cities — as the seat of the industrial revolution — once held a power of their own. The first steam train ran through Darlington; Manchester has a statue of Abraham Lincoln in honor of mill workers who refused to touch slave-picked cotton. (It is next to the back door of No. 10 North.)

“There was a time during which people in the north had a load of control, agency and power by virtue of being part of the industries that powered this country — by having powerful MPs, councils that were well-funded, community institutions and organizations that were coherent and well-embedded in their in their place,” said Oliver Coppard, the Labour mayor of South Yorkshire, a county west of Manchester that includes Sheffield. “Those things have all gone, or largely gone, and communities are fractured. So people don’t have agency; they don’t know who to reach out to get things to change.”

Thirty years ago the U.K. had ceremonial mayors instead of empowered municipal ones, and no true parliaments for the nations outside England. Since then there has been an endless ratchet of pledges to move power outside Westminster. Labour’s Tony Blair set up democratic bodies for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London, but kept centrally-run agencies for England’s regional development (Simpson worked in one of them). Conservative David Cameron followed with his “northern powerhouse,” which gave some English cities mayors and funding deals. Boris Johnson, who built his profile as London’s mayor, extended the model to rural areas, seizing on the regional divides that drove the 2016 Brexit vote with his promise to “level up” Britain.

Yet England is still “very centralized” compared to the U.S. and its system of federalism, argues Simpson: “We are one of the most centralized countries in the Western Hemisphere. We have very little true devolution.” Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a business lobby group, added: “Our country is basically designed so we only have a federal government, we have no state government.”

And so Burnham, who decided in 2016 in a pub in Westminster that he would quit London, where he was serving in parliament and had previously been in cabinet, and run for mayoral office, now pledges to go further still. His plan is shaped by those nine years as mayor, when he was infuriated by how the system worked in practice — or didn’t.

He has vowed to extend devolution to more areas of England and go beyond the traditional focus on economic investment, looking also at public services such as bus networks. He is planning to tidy up the messy patchwork of boundaries for police, health and fire services that he confronted in the role. He says he will give mayors more true economic freedom; they will be allowed to spend an allotment of national income tax, and commit to more expensive projects without national approval, giving them a predictable income stream rather than forcing them to chase new grants each year. Regional officials will have less frenzied oversight from Whitehall. (One senior Labour figure in a mayoral authority joked that they had to tell the central government how many thumb tacks they had bought.)

“The conversation is completely different from what it was,” said Greg Clark, the Conservative minister for decentralization under Cameron in the early 2010s. In the early 2010s, he explained, “the direction was very much centralization. There was no real debate about devolution from the city deals onwards. These things have now become irreversible.”

Burnham’s policy vision is contained in a rare joint statement of his Cabinet on July 31, less than two weeks after he came to office. Thrashed out over pre-handover “access talks” between Burnham’s top aides and Antonia Romeo, Britain’s most senior civil servant, it said ministers had agreed to “the full shape” of how the government’s structure will shift power away from London before the next election. The seven-page PDF is “what people in No. 10 are excited about,” said Murison. Burnham deliberately imposed his end point without a detailed plan instead of letting Whitehall pore over drafts; one ally said it was to avoid his plans being “sanitized.” Romeo sees it as a foundational document too; she believes she could become the cabinet secretary who presided over the greatest change to the state in decades. Officials are now in what they privately call a 100-day sprint to produce a detailed policy paper in the fall that will set out more about how Burnham intends to actually implement the vision.

In their old jobs in the mayoral authority or elsewhere in Whitehall, No. 10 North aides had already looked to Germany and France for inspiration, including on the countries’ regional approaches to industrial strategy. Senior officials have also asked the BBC for advice after the national broadcaster relocated several operations to Salford — a district of Greater Manchester — in 2011. “The BBC didn’t just land as an island,” said Simpson. “The BBC created a whole creative sector around it.”

They may need the advice. The Cabinet document promises a “major transfer of powers, resources and functions” from central government to mayors and councils; that signals that Burnham intends to shrink Britain’s national civil service, which has billowed by 100,000 people in six years to around 550,000 after the Covid pandemic and Brexit. That will be “uncomfortable,” admitted the person with knowledge of the planning quoted earlier.

Burnham and his team have given no clue of how many civil servants they plan to cut. (“I don’t think they know,” said the official with knowledge of the process quoted earlier in this article.) Simpson said it will mean moving “significant resource from Whitehall” and into local areas, but added: “I am not going to put a figure on what that is going to look like.”

Nervous civil servants will be kept waiting. While Burnham’s October budget will set out much of the detail, the trade-offs may only appear in their starkest form in next year’s Treasury spending review. The small print of that will likely show that money is being held back from some Whitehall departments, especially outside the most politically contentious areas such as defense and health, to spend more on local and regional government. Burnham’s choices are even more difficult because Labour’s last spending review, under Starmer, frontloaded spending early on but tightened it after 2027.

One of the toughest decisions, on where to define the boundaries of police forces, could put Burnham in potential conflict with his home secretary, Shabana Mahmood. Mahmood had already been working on a plan to reduce the number of police forces and consolidate some of their functions. One person with knowledge of her thinking said she is generally skeptical of how well devolution can work in practice, though another said she is not ideologically against it. (The Home Office declined to comment on these specifics.)

There could be tension too with the Treasury, whose responsibility for local economic growth has already been handed to No. 10 North. Clark — who negotiated early city deals alongside Miatta Fahnbulleh, a former civil servant who is now a key Burnham ally in his Cabinet — recalled the finance ministry being “hostile” to his “subversive” push for devolution. “There’s a Whitehall preference for tidiness and for everything to be identical,” he added.

Another tricky and expensive decision will be around what to do with England’s private water firms, which have provoked public outcry by paying dividends while presiding over a creaking Victorian infrastructure. Burnham has promised greater “public control” of utilities but stopped short of promising full nationalization, and aides are still working through multiple options, including a mutual form of ownership and whether debt-ridden Thames Water could be split into two entities, one for London and the other for the surrounding region. On many issues, Burnham has identified problems without yet knowing the solutions.

Thus far there are many quiet skeptics of Burnham’s approach but few vocal critics. The skeptics tend to focus on two separate dilemmas: how do you meaningfully move money out of Whitehall and meet demands to raise spending on healthcare and defense? And after all the devolution promises that came before it, will No. 10 North prompt meaningful change?

One senior trade union figure said devolution in itself — which ties up the government in machinery changes and takes years to have an impact — does not “float the boat” of voters who are more concerned about the cost of living now. They voiced concern that the varying quality of leadership in each area could reinforce inequality, which would be ironic for a PM promising “good growth in every postcode.” Some MPs are already nervous that Burnham is running his devolution agenda from Manchester — a prospering city that has little in common with left-behind towns, or communities in England’s rural south west.

Then there is the existential question hanging over Burnham’s Labour — can empowering left-behind communities persuade voters to desert opposition parties, including Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK or the hard-right Restore Britain?

“This is the last bulwark against a fucking Farage-led government,” said one former Conservative government official. “I suspect it will be somewhat of a gimmick. But if it’s a gimmick that people respond to and vote for, is it all that bad?”

Some believe Burnham’s relentless focus on England’s individual regions misses the wider picture. “England as a constitutional and political entity does not figure,” said Jonathan Rutherford, who co-founded the socially conservative Blue Labour movement in the party. “And yet England is the place where the populist revolt is strongest. It’s where it originated. It was the strength behind the Brexit vote. It’s the source of the strongest form of nationalism — English, which is expressed through Reform and Restore.”

Others in Burnham’s own party worry that his plan could be too effective. After a series of strong electoral performances nationwide, Reform now controls many local councils, using its limited powers to scrap climate schemes, take down Pride flags and declare war on financial waste. A Labour government in London returning more authority to those councils would end up just empowering the opposition.

“I do worry about it,” said the senior Labour figure in a mayoral body quoted earlier in this story. They pointed out that mayors will soon have more say over police budgets and priorities. “You are putting quite a lot of power in the hands of people who could be quite malign in their intentions,” the senior Labour figure said.

Opposition parties sense an opportunity from Burnham’s extra funding; Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley in the north east, wants to hand money back to voters as a rebate. Burnham shut down the idea but Houchen told POLITICO Magazine he has spoken to Treasury officials and believes it will be possible, unless the government specifically blocks it. Simpson did not completely rule out such rebates, saying: “There’s going to be no ability to sit outside of the tax framework at a local level. That’s not what fiscal devolution is about. But flexibility about how that money is spent in a local area is going to be there.”

None of those concerns are deterring Burnham, whose allies say he can succeed because he will drive the devolution agenda personally from No. 10 North in a way no prime minister has done — and that he genuinely trusts the councils and mayors he’s empowering to serve their areas. “It is already changing things,” said Simpson.

Burnham’s team has met chief executives of mayoral authorities and hosted mayors for a meeting of a revived national economic council, set up by Gordon Brown in response to the 2008 financial crisis. There was potent symbolism in the way Burnham ran the meeting, forcing Cabinet ministers to listen and take note of the mayors rather than the other way round. Those at the table included the prime minister’s business adviser Varun Chandra, who is more used to talking to U.S. trade negotiators than regional leaders.

The prime minister told mayors he wanted to meet every two weeks.

‘It’s like Fort Knox in there’

Burnham has spent the last two weeks on a tour of the country he now leads, focusing on areas where Labour has fallen behind — a trial run for a general election the PM must call no later than 2029 to earn his own mandate for governing. It stands to be a five-way contest for power, pitting Labour against Reform and the Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats, alongside Restore.

Almost no one in the Labour Party believes Burnham will be able to repeat the 172-seat majority that Starmer won at the last general election in 2024, leaving him a narrow window to do something radical while he commands the sway of parliament.

Burnham is already trying to connect his technical reforms to real change on the ground. The PM crisscrossed England this week with stops at the Wolverhampton Bus Terminal, where he announced the local mayoral authority would take control of the bus network, and to a homelessness charity in Newcastle where he asked local leaders to help his pledge to end rough sleeping. Newspaper front pages this summer have splashed repeatedly on a long-running plan to release some prisoners early because England’s Victorian jails don’t have enough room; one interview this week was dominated by questions about messages that Burnham traded with a person impersonating White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

All those issues are already crowding out his focus on reengineering the machinery of government. “I wish people might just engage with the seriousness of the proposition,” Burnham told The Times this week.

The vibes in Burnham’s inner circle remain good. “I’m not saying there aren’t going to be difficulties, but sometimes you’ve just got to get up and do it,” said one current government minister. “That was part of the problem under [Starmer’s] administration. There were always roadblocks; there was always a reason not to do something.”

And if Burnham is seeking to show he is among his people, the building itself does some of the work for him. Unlike Downing Street, imposing and behind iron security gates since 1989, Heron House sits on top of ordinary life in the city.

It faces a busy public square above a Slug & Lettuce chain cocktail bar, a branch of the ubiquitous pie store Greggs and trendy cafes serving Vietnamese drip coffee and matcha from Kyoto. Shoppers sit on a bench next opposite the low metal barriers and police guards on the door. The Ferris wheel at the square’s Christmas market is so tall that last year riders could see down onto the six-storey building’s roof. The local marriage registration office is on the ground floor. “You don’t really notice it,” shrugged a groom, Max Harris-Green, while his bride posed for photos a few meters from the new heart of government.

Put simply, it looks boring. The entrance goes unnoticed by many of those walking past, save for the occasional passer-by taking a selfie by the door.

Getting into the building itself is harder than Downing Street, whose custodians swing open the black front door for guests who have cleared the perimeter. Visitors to No. 10 North go through one of several discreet entrances — one of them next to a Chinese restaurant favored by the former Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney — and successive doors. A Labour official said: “It’s like Fort Knox in there.” (No. 10 declined to give POLITICO Magazine a tour.)

Recent visitors speak of elevators with unmarked buttons, a bombproof room and special doors for agents who still work on other floors. Nearby during the lunch rush, one man in a shirt was overheard joking to three others: “Is this going on the MI6 credit card?”

But the success or failure of Burnham’s power shift will rest not on the building but the prime minister himself. Ironically for a man preparing to give up authority, Burnham will have to wield it firmly from the center to make his plan work. That even extends to where he sits.

No. 10 North will mean nothing without Burnham being there in person, said the official with knowledge of the process quoted earlier: “In the civil service, power always gravitates to the most senior people. You need the senior decision-making people there in person.” Former Chancellor Rachel Reeves was criticized for spending only five days working from the Treasury’s Darlington campus in almost two years after Labour took power. (Treasury officials insist she visited other places nearby.)

Burnham’s pledge to work from Manchester each week “can’t slip,” said one senior Labour aide, even as he faces more demands to travel abroad. “The whole center of power has to move there at the end of the week.”

Esther Webber contributed reporting from London.

German kebab shops want you for the country’s army: German citizens can now join the Bundeswehr’s medical service by scanning QR codes on street-food wrappers nationwide.

A defense ministry spokesperson told German outlet Berliner Kurier on Wednesday that the new recruitment campaign aims to reach “not only young people” deciding on a career but also “career changers and skilled workers” considering a new profession.

The kebab wrappers form part of what the ministry calls “ambient” advertising — recruitment materials placed in locations where potential applicants go about their daily lives. The kebab joints themselves don’t get paid, and operators voluntarily agree to distribute the material, according to the ministry.

“The restaurants receive the branded packaging free of charge,” it said.

Germany isn’t the first European country to rethink its military recruitment pitch in recent years: In a 2019 advertising campaign, the British Army targeted “snowflakes,” “selfie addicts” and “phone zombies.” France launched a nationwide multimedia recruitment drive in 2024, and the Netherlands has been offering young people the chance to spend a paid year in uniform since 2023.

The unconventional recruitment strategy comes as Berlin races to expand its armed forces. The Bundeswehr counted 186,705 active troops at the end of July — its highest level in 13 years — but aims to reach more than 260,000 by 2035 to meet NATO capability targets.

Russia unleashed a barrage of missiles and drones across Ukraine early Thursday, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens more.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the hours-long attack struck Kyiv and the surrounding region as well as Odesa and Chernihiv, damaging apartment buildings, a children’s hospital and a school in the capital. Twelve people were killed in Kyiv and another in the surrounding region, he said, with around 40 injured.

“Unfortunately, while Moscow is investing in ballistic missiles and escalation, such strikes do not always receive the response they should from the world,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “As long as Ukraine does not have enough anti-ballistic defense, Russia will not consider peace seriously.” U.S.-made Patriot interceptors “cannot yet be replaced,” he added.

Russia’s defense ministry said it used air-, land- and sea-launched weapons to strike military facilities and warehouses. Moscow also claimed its forces had shot down 726 Ukrainian drones.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko declared Aug. 21 a day of mourning “in memory of the victims of the enemy’s massive attack on the capital.” Flags will be lowered and entertainment events banned as emergency crews continue working across three districts of Kyiv.

The barrage also put neighboring NATO countries on alert.

Romania’s defense ministry announced that a drone “entered Romanian national airspace” at 3:21 a.m. before crashing minutes later near Grindu “in an uninhabited area.” No casualties or damage were reported.

Poland meanwhile scrambled military aircraft as Russian strikes continued in neighboring Ukraine. The Polish military said it had activated available forces and assets, while ground-based air-defense and radar systems were put “in a state of readiness.”

The Trump administration’s snub of South Korea has America’s allies in Asia rethinking how much they can depend on the U.S. for defense — and looking to each other to reduce their reliance on Washington.

President Donald Trump said this week he is cutting back joint military exercises with South Korea, and announced Wednesday that he will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this year. That is pushing countries in the region to accelerate their defense spending and forge alternate partnerships, according to Asian diplomats and others familiar with discussions among regional governments.

“Expect a refocus on self-reliance,” said one Asian diplomat. The diplomat, and others, were granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of their comments.

“U.S. defense tech is still the best, and it’s not economical or logical for countries already locked in on it to pivot or diversify due to interoperability and maintenance issues,” the diplomat said. “But I reckon there’ll be more investment by those that can in self-defense to reduce reliance on the U.S. umbrella in the long term.”

That’s especially true because the move against South Korea was a pressure tactic related to a completely different conflict: the Iran war.

Trump’s move “resonates not just in Korea but across the entire Indo-Pacific because everyone’s wondering whether or not their relationship with the United States is as unstable as the Koreans’,” said Ian Brzezinski, who served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy under President George W. Bush. Brzezinski is still in regular contact with Asian officials.

As recently as December, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared South Korea a “model ally” worthy of a “special favor.” The apparent reevaluation of that relationship is the latest sign that Trump can quickly flip on longtime partners in the region. In May, Trump delayed a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan as a “bargaining chip” with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The U.S. has long worked to buttress alliances in Asia as a counterweight to Beijing’s growing military dominance. Over recent months, however, the Trump administration has appeared to see that as less essential, and Asian countries have already been investing in their own capacities.

The South Korea decision could speed that transition. South Korea is making it clear that it sees the Trump administration’s action and its approach as an insult.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told lawmakers in Seoul on Wednesday that the government was “not notified in advance” of Trump’s decision to cut the duration of the exercises by a week. President Lee Jae Myung — who presented Trump with a gold crown in October — is trying to get U.S. military ties back on track through joint discussions with administration officials, Cho added.

And the talks “are getting messy,” said a person familiar with those discussions. “The War Department and U.S. Forces Korea are just surprised and don’t have any specific plans right now.”

Lee is already seeking other partnerships. “He’s talking to African countries, to the Gulf and Japan” to expand those links, said Jung Pak, a former U.S. senior official who worked on North Korea and the region in the Biden administration. “This dispute is just going to reinforce that the Republic of Korea has to continue to do that.”

Trump’s push to renew high-profile conversations with the North Korean leader, whom he met three times in his first term, comes as the nuclear-armed authoritarian state accelerates its tempo of ballistic missile tests and threats against neighboring Japan.

The departure of the only Asia-based U.S. aircraft carrier to the Middle East this week also has allies questioning how committed the U.S. is to preventing such acts of aggression.

“Recent signals look more like U.S. disengagement, even though cooperation is clearly still ongoing,” said a second Asian diplomat. “The key issue is increasingly not U.S. intent, but U.S. capacity to sustain the level of presence it has promised.”

The Department of Defense declined to comment.

Asian countries do have some options to insulate their defense capabilities — including military hardware supplies — from the risk of becoming bargaining chips in future policy disputes with Washington.

That could include investments in air and missile defense systems, the hardening of military facilities to protect them from attack and greater cooperation with Australian and European forces, said a third Asian diplomat.

China and North Korea’s growing arsenal of conventional long-range ballistic and hypersonic missiles has increased the vulnerability of Asian nations’ military infrastructure previously considered safe from attack — making such investments high on many countries’ priority lists. Taiwan is building a network of hardened fighter aircraft shelters designed to withstand a Chinese missile barrage.

Longer term, South Korea and Japan could develop their own nuclear arsenals for fear that they may not be able to rely on the U.S. as a deterrent.

Indo-Pacific countries are already forging alternate defense partnerships. Japan and the Philippines sealed an agreement in June that creates a secure supply chain for joint military training exercises, while India and Vietnam launched a weapons co-production initiative in May.

“Tokyo keeps repeating that the U.S.-Japan alliance is a cornerstone of its defense policy, but that’s dwindled down to lip service at this point,” said Yuki Tatsumi, former special assistant for political affairs at the Japanese Embassy in Washington, who is in regular contact with both Japanese diplomats and government officials in Tokyo. “Japan increasingly sees itself as leading a coalition of U.S. allies with deep anxiety about U.S. long-term commitment in the region.”

Asian governments feel a growing sense of urgency to take such measures due to the strains that the ongoing war in Iran has placed on the U.S. military and the depletion of key munitions essential in any possible future conflict with China, the third diplomat said.

“U.S. commitments look more contingent, transactional and vulnerable to being overtaken by events elsewhere, and that raises doubts about whether the U.S. can sustain its stated Indo-Pacific priority in a multi-theater crisis,” the person added.

The rise of those new defense groupings could boost Beijing’s longtime efforts to pry Asian countries away from established U.S.-dominated alliances. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi could make the case for a South Korean defense strategy less dependent on the U.S. during his two-day visit to Seoul, which began today.

“The Chinese leadership has long sought an opening to divide the U.S. from its two most important allies in the region: South Korea and Japan,” said Nicholas Burns, former U.S. ambassador to China in the Biden administration. “The timing of the president’s criticism of the South Korean leadership will give Wang Yi an opening to drive the wedge further between Washington and Seoul.”

The Chinese embassy declined to respond to a request for comment.

KYIV — Ukraine’s popular former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has emerged as a new rival to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — but his call for an election is facing immediate blowback.

In a video address on Tuesday night, he zeroed in on topics he knew would strike a public chord in one of the most direct internal challenges to Zelenskyy since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He complained that corruption was undermining the war effort and protested about centralized and opaque decision-making in the Zelenskyy administration — for which he worked until only last month.

However, Fedorov’s unexpected appeal for the nation to go to the ballot box sparked immediate retorts across the political spectrum. Critics insisted such an election would be banned by Ukraine’s martial law, would be impossible to organize in wartime, would play into Russia’s hands and would sow division when national unity remains vital.

Zelenskyy still commands broad support as a war leader, and his allies pointed out that, regardless of public frustration, there are limits to how much he can reveal about the inner workings of the state when national survival is at stake.

Fedorov’s emergence as a rival to Zelenskyy was accelerated by his shock dismissal as defense minister last month. The 35-year-old built up a strong following for spearheading Ukraine’s success in using new technologies — from cyberattacks to drones — to damage Russia.

His ejection from office sparked immediate protests, with thousands of people taking to the streets, calling for his reinstatement or for Zelenskyy to properly explain the decision to fire him.

In his address on Tuesday night, Fedorov delivered a thinly veiled criticism of Zelenskyy’s management style, referring to his peremptory approach to hiring and firing.

“People cannot endlessly live in a state where they do not understand why certain decisions are made. Why some reforms move forward while others are blocked. Why decisions needed on the frontlines today spend months circulating through government offices,” Fedorov said.

“It is dangerous when society develops the feeling that the main criterion for an appointment is not professionalism, results, or the ability to transform the country, but personal loyalty to the system,” added the former minister, who had himself been viewed as a Zelenskyy loyalist for seven years.

Election backlash

A top official in Zelenskyy’s office, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about Fedorov’s move, had little time for the criticism that the president should explain his actions publicly.

“The president cannot just explain his hiring choices to the public during war, as those are matters of national security. And it’s his right to decide whom to appoint as his defense minister and whom to fire,” they said.

The official was also scathing about the possibility of holding an election in the face of devastating Russian attacks: “Let’s wait out another massive Russian ballistic attack and then go vote,” the person added, sarcastically.

Olga Aivazovska, head of Ukraine’s election watchdog OPORA, also stressed the practical obstacles to an election, insisting that there were “hundreds of scenarios and actions” that the Russians could use to undermine the electoral process.

Roman Lozynskyi, a parliamentarian from the opposition liberal Holos party and deputy head of the state management committee, feared the call for elections could prove disastrously divisive.

“There is zero positive for the country. Don’t be happy that you will have candidates in the post-war elections. You still have to live to see them,” he said. “People understand that elections during the war are in the enemy’s hands. That it will be a war of all against all.”

Even one of the leaders of the protest movement, war veteran Dmytro Koziatysnkyi, said he didn’t want to see elections during wartime. “I am also very afraid of the disunity of society during the electoral process and how this may affect the course of the war,” he said.

Far from bolstering Fedorov’s political future, the call for an election could even count against him.

Economist Timothy Ash, who frequently writes on Ukraine, suggested the ex-minister had made “an extraordinary political error of judgement which some would likely use against him if he ever pitches in to run as president in the future.”

Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst based in Kyiv, conceded Zelenskyy had become accustomed to “acting like in business,” defined by “single-man leadership” and “quick decisions,” but argued that the president was hardly acting out of step with any other major international leader.

“When his critics say he should appoint professionals instead of loyalists, they sound right but naive at the same time. Even in the West, unless we are talking about coalition governments, such an approach does not work. Any serious politician … and especially in a country like ours, will appoint trusted loyalists,” Fesenko added.

Fesenko also defended Zelenskyy’s record in appointing senior officials. He noted that Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi, new commander-in-chief, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, as well as new Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara, all had positive reputations, even among Zelenskyy’s top critics in parliament.

Indeed, Khmara was confirmed in his new role to succeed Fedorov by a parliamentary vote on Wednesday, by 312 lawmakers out of 392.

‘People want change’

Fedorov is certainly popular. A poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology said earlier this month that 63 percent of people saw him as trustworthy — a score that put him second only to former military supremo Valeryi Zaluzhnyi, who is now ambassador to the U.K.

But none of that put Zelenskyy, who scored a robust 56 percent, out of the picture.

In line with Fedorov’s attack on a lack of transparency in the centralized state, another survey found dwindling sympathy for Zelenskyy using his powers to intervene over other state authorities. The poll found that 79 percent of people in 2022 — the year of Russia’s full-scale invasion — thought the president could override the constitution’s division of powers, but that had slipped to 52 percent in May 2026.

“People are placing all responsibility for the course of the war on the president. Because of this, the president feels the need to make all these decisions independently, which is against Ukraine’s constitution and legislative procedures. As a result, one person, the president, has a huge number of completely different tasks, incentives, requirements,” said Yurii Hudymenko, head of the Public Anti-Corruption Council at Ukraine’s defense ministry.

Corruption is also a hot topic, as Fedorov identified. Last year, Zelenskyy signed a law to strip Ukraine’s national anti-corruption watchdogs of their procedural independence, only to then backtrack on that decision when it faced criticism from the EU and protests at home.

Later, his former business partner and allies were implicated in a $100 million corruption scheme in the state nuclear energy sector — a scandal that forced Zelenskyy to fire his faithful No. 2, Andriy Yermak. Yermak was charged with corruption and is standing trial.

Several of Zelenskyy’s top allies are also under investigation for corruption, including former Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Olga Stefanishyna, while watchdogs complain they still face tremendous pressure and surveillance when investigating top officials.

On Wednesday, Zelenskyy fired Iryna Mudra as deputy head of his office, hours after anti-corruption watchdogs searched her workplace as part of a sweeping probe into an alleged criminal organization.

Yaroslav Zheleznyak, MP from opposition party Holos, and a prominent Zelenskyy critic, said the cumulative weight of these problems would ultimately count against the president.

He predicted Zelenskyy would suffer the fate of British wartime leader Winston Churchill and lose an election during the tail end of the war.

“No matter the competitors, Zaluzhnyi, [Head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo] Budanov, Fedorov or someone else, I think we will get the situation like in 2019, when anyone but the incumbent will win in the second round. In this case, this is very much a Churchill story, when a guy who won the war got voted out,” Zheleznyak said.

“People want change,” he added.

Oleksandr Saienko, expert at the Center for Political and Legal Reforms, said it was possible to avert a political crisis even without elections, but that would mean shifting some decision-making back to parliament and other state authorities.

“The subjectivity of the parliament must be restored both in terms of the legislative process and parliamentary control. The government must become the main center for the formation of state policy,” he said. “The pause on reform of the judicial system and law enforcement agencies, public administration, must be lifted and people should get a real sense of justice and protection.”

BARROW-IN-FURNESS, England — Submarines appear before the town does.

They can be seen from the road next to the factory, where the BAE Systems yard dominates the landscape and workers in high-visibility jackets are a constant presence. Police keep watch for anyone who might threaten Britain’s national security.

AUKUS — a security partnership announced in 2021 linking the U.S., U.K. and Australia seen by many as in a long-term effort to protect democracies against Chinese aggression in the Pacific — is a clear part of the town’s history, and its future.

A local memorial recalls the crews lost or captured sailing the first two submarines built in Barrow for the Royal Australian Navy during World War I, and over the next 15 years AUKUS depends on Barrow’s shipyards building the next generation of nuclear-powered submarines.

But observers, from the British parliament to former cabinet secretaries and prime ministers, say delays in Barrow are not only possible, but likely.

The SSN-AUKUS fleet will be based on a British design, incorporating technology from all three countries. The first examples will be built at BAE Systems’ Barrow yard, then later at Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, Australia, with Rolls-Royce supplying the nuclear propulsion plants.

And while Britain insists the first SSN-AUKUS class submarine will cut steel in 2027, delays would strain Britain’s national security and test the central promise of AUKUS.

A one-town dependency

Simon Case, the former U.K. Cabinet Secretary charged with regenerating the town, told POLITICO that AUKUS has become a live conversation in Barrow: “Barrow’s fortune has become synonymous with AUKUS.”

A House of Commons committee examining AUKUS went further, calling Barrow’s regeneration “too big to fail.”

That’s because Barrow must support Britain’s Dreadnought nuclear deterrent program and Astute fleet while also increasing output from one submarine a decade to one SSN-AUKUS every 18 months.

Achieving that leap in pace is more than a workforce challenge. It will take thousands of new houses, new higher education institutions, and an urban transformation.

The local college that feeds the shipyard apprentice pipeline was failed by Britain’s education standards body Ofsted in 2024.

If those facts are not daunting enough, Barrow’s regeneration challenge has a wider meaning: Get it right and this small town of 67,000 can claim to be at the center of a British power revival, in its post-Empire, post-EU era.

Get it wrong, and the central promise of AUKUS will go unmet.

The challenges will be constant over the next 15 years.

About 13,500 people work for BAE at the shipyard, roughly one-third of Barrow’s working-age population. While that’s a massive expansion from a workforce of 2,900 in 2003, the company still needs to reach 16,500 workers by the end of 2027.

Adding 3,000 jobs in a small town in 18 months is no easy feat. Adding them to achieve what Australia’s Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy told POLITICO is “the most technically advanced thing in the world,” is even harder.

Conroy has visited Barrow twice and remains optimistic.

Trevor Taylor, director of the Defence, Industries & Society Programme at the RUSI defense think tank, also described the United Kingdom as the least risky part of the AUKUS bargain. Dreadnought and Astute class submarines appear to be emerging without drastic delays, he said.

The unresolved question is experience. “They’ve certainly got the workforce, and I think the infrastructure,” Taylor told POLITICO. “Whether they’ve got the workforce experience is another matter.”

That distinction matters in a nuclear program. Barrow can train welders and other tradespeople. The design engineers, nuclear physicists and systems architects required for SSN-AUKUS will mostly have to be brought in.

And Barrow will be competing against shortages faced in other parts of Britain’s nuclear workforce, from highly qualified specialists to vocational workers.

The town the workforce needs

The production schedule is colliding with the town’s social reality.

Case, the former head of Britain’s civil service who now leads Team Barrow, a partnership dedicated to transforming the town, said the yard’s fortunes declined after the Cold War peace dividend and the town declined with it.

The order book is now strong, with decades of work ahead. Housing, education, health and employment have yet to catch up.

“What is holding the town back is actually the previous 30 years of under investment in housing, education, health and employment,” Case said.

Despite Barrow being situated near England’s Lake District — a major countryside tourist hub and holiday destination — the town itself is not seen as an attractive place to live.

Barrow’s town center has the familiar marks of Britain’s former industrial heartlands. The Commons report records 18.3 percent of working-age people as not in employment, 71.3 percent of adults as overweight or obese and drug and alcohol misuse above national rates. Government statisticians report Barrow residents as having the lowest life satisfaction in the U.K.

BAE provides high-paying work, but deprivation remains interwoven with that prosperity.

John Woodcock, a former Labour MP for Barrow who now sits on the House of Lords crossbench, said the town must become a magnet for engineering, nuclear physics and other high-technology graduates.

Barrow’s relative remoteness makes that harder. The town is more than five hours’ drive from London.

Young graduates often want a major city, and visible deprivation can become a barrier to recruitment, Woodcock said, even when the jobs are among the most advanced in the world.

Housing is the immediate constraint.

BAE has said a stable workforce cannot be transient. A family moving to Barrow needs a home, a school, health services and a reason to stay, making regeneration critical to ongoing defense production.

With 89 percent of the BAE workforce living locally, up to 2,700 new households may be needed by the end of 2027. The district builds about 750 homes a year.

Marina Village, a planned 1,350-home development supported by £24.8 million from Homes England, has yet to deliver a home.

What sets Barrow apart from many industrial communities across England’s North, which have seen deprivation creep in after the closure of the mills and mines that provided jobs in the 20th century, is that Barrow’s industrial future still exists and is set to exist for decades to come.

Barrow’s technical education foundation is improving.

Around 11 percent of the population, about 6,000 people, have been in the apprentice system, the highest proportion in England. BAE received another 6,000 applications in 2025. The young adult population is growing, and a new University Technical College is due to open soon.

No additional funding, no nuclear submarines

The U.K. government has committed £200 million over 10 years through the Barrow Transformation Fund. Case, who leads the public-private partnership established to revive the town, puts the real requirement at £1 billion and says government health and transport departments are yet to make funding commitments. “Some of the most deprived wards in the entire country are here in Barrow, despite the fact we spend billions of pounds a year,” Case told the Commons defense committee.

His conclusion is blunt: “If Barrow does not get it, we do not get our nuclear submarines, which are the cornerstone of this nation’s security. It is that simple really.”

The Ministry of Defence rejects the £1 billion investment figure. It says the £200 million fund was designed to catalyze investment from other departments and the private sector, and points to a £6 billion dedicated submarine investment.

On July 29, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced £8.4 billion for Dreadnought, including £5.9 billion for BAE and £2.5 billion for the wider supply chain and apprenticeships.

Burnham’s appointment of John Healey — the former defense secretary — as the chancellor, has cheered Australian officials. “That shows to me that they’re putting defense and national security at the heart of their economic agenda as well as their defense agenda,” said James Paterson, the shadow defense minister, who is at the heart of debates about AUKUS accountability.

The military clock

Barrow’s local problems translate into military risk through the gaps in Australia’s submarine capability.

Paterson has identified two potential gaps in Australia’s submarine capability that need planning.

The first comes between the Collins-class submarines and Virginia-class submarines in the early 2030s. The second comes between the Virginias and SSN-AUKUS in the early 2040s.

Australia’s interim options include rotating British Astute-class submarines through waters around Australia and acquiring second-hand U.S. Virginia-class submarines in the early 2030s.

The Commons report says the Royal Navy’s Astute fleet is the smallest the U.K. has had in decades: In the first half of 2024, none of the five Astute-class boats completed an operational deployment, according to the report.

Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow specializing in sea power at Royal United Services Institute, told POLITICO a deployment to Australia would stretch it to the limits of its capacity.

“What I don’t want to see is fatalism,” Paterson said. “These are solvable problems. We’ve got time to get this right, as long as we are honest and realistic about it now.”

A shared industrial gamble

The U.K. is designing and building its own SSN-AUKUS boats before Australia builds its fleet.

That front-loads risk onto Britain and gives the U.K. a powerful incentive to get the program right for its own national security.

Burnham says British money should be spent on British workers, firms and skills in places written off for 40 years. Conroy supports this effort, seeing a stronger British yard as part of northern Britain’s economic rejuvenation, which will ultimately benefit Australia.

BAE says its £25 million Submarines Academy for Skills and Knowledge in Barrow and a Skills and a related Training Academy Campus in Adelaide will support thousands of future submarine builders. The Adelaide campus is scheduled to open in 2028 for up to 1,000 learners a year.

Woodcock argues that more of the early boats should be built in Barrow, creating a faster route to transfer capability and to build Australia’s sovereign capacity.

The future of AUKUS runs through a town where the shipyard has recovered faster than the place around it.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Wednesday that Seoul received no warning of Donald Trump’s plan to slash joint military exercises, a move the U.S. president announced publicly and linked to South Korea’s refusal to help with his war in Iran.

“Neither our government nor U.S. officials knew what President Trump wrote on his Truth Social,” Cho told the National Assembly’s foreign affairs committee. “We were not notified in advance.”

Trump ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday to “substantially reduce” the annual exercises, calling them costly and “totally inappropriate and hostile” toward North Korea. He tied the move to Seoul’s refusal to assist his effort to strip Iran of its nuclear capabilities and highlighted his “very good relationship” with Pyongyang’s ruler Kim Jong Un.

Cho said Trump’s announcement caught Seoul by surprise, but added the eventual changes to the drills were being worked out jointly. Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back was in “close consultations” with Washington, he said. “Since our defense minister was involved in the discussions, I do not think it amounts to a unilateral notification.”

He also warned that the smaller drills should not delay the transfer of wartime operational control, or OPCON, to Seoul — a longtime plan that would put a South Korean general in command of the combined U.S.-South Korean forces during a conflict.

The drills have anchored the U.S.-South Korean alliance for more than 70 years, born from the aftermath of the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with an armistice agreement but no peace treaty. North Korea, which routinely condemns the drills as rehearsals for an invasion, launched another round of ballistic missile tests last week after this year’s exercises were announced.

The rollback is already taking effect. South Korea said Wednesday that this year’s exercise will end on Aug. 21 rather than Aug. 27 after a U.S. request, cutting six days from the schedule.

President Donald Trump dropped a political bombshell on the Korean peninsula this week.

But security officials say the president’s threats to curtail a major military exercise with South Korea will do little to undermine the detente between Seoul and Pyongyang.

Trump’s declaration Sunday that he would instruct the Pentagon to cut back on annual drills sent Seoul’s leaders scrambling to repair the damage. But the president appears more focused on pushing for investment from the country than trying to upend defenses against North Korea’s nuclear threat. And that means security on the world’s most militarized border hasn’t significantly changed.

The U.S. has more than 28,000 troops stationed on the peninsula, along with thick layers of air defenses. It has worked hand in glove with the Korean military for decades, a powerful joint force that works closely at every level. The border between a nuclear-armed North Korea and the U.S. ally to its south is a case study in mutually assured destruction. And top commanders in Seoul and Washington remain in tight contact.

“I don’t think this is cataclysmic,” said Sydney Seiler, former national intelligence officer for North Korea at the National Intelligence Council.

Defense officials were tight-lipped about what Trump’s announcement would mean in terms of concrete changes to military exercises. The Pentagon would only say that it is “is actively working on executing the commander-in-chief’s directive.”

Trump’s order, and his praise of dictator North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “unthreatening and respectful” behavior, came days after the secretive nation launched its second ballistic missile test in a week. It flew over 430 miles before landing just outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Some American lawmakers said the optics were horrible, particularly Trump’s seeming desire to appease a totalitarian regime.

“Kim Jong Un has won a propaganda victory and South Korea, one of our strongest allies, has been punished for no reason beyond Trump’s ego,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “China and Russia are watching how easily this president abandons America’s allies, and they will remember it the next time they test us.”

The order affects a major exercise, Ulchi Freedom Shield, a staple of the alliance since it was first held in 1976. The drills this year were scheduled to begin Monday and encompass 14 different exercises over 11 days, ranging from cyber warfare to defending against drone attacks and GPS jamming. Officials are especially worried that North Korea received Russian technologies and know-how about electronic jamming after it sent tens of thousands of troops to help Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“The alliance will manage through, [although] this is clearly a rough patch,” said Victor Cha, a former National Security Council official during the George W. Bush administration and now Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Trump’s criticism of South Korea is particularly surprising because it’s a departure from comments by top Pentagon officials, who have repeatedly praised Seoul for increasing defense spending.

Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby called South Korea “a model ally” in a January speech in Seoul, and lauded its commitment to the alliance. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also praised the relationship several times this year, including when his South Korean counterpart visited the Pentagon in May.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday sought to soothe concerns over a rift. He said in a Cabinet meeting that “a strong alliance makes the foundation of security stronger, and strengthening our own capabilities increases our value and necessity as an ally.”

Many officials remain puzzled about why Trump would abruptly curtail an annual exercise that has taken place reliably for 50 years. There’s some precedent. He had railed against expensive exercises in South Korea during his first term and the Pentagon did scale back some large joint operations. But Ulchi Freedom Shield is a cornerstone of the military-to-military relationship.

The effort — a combination of a tabletop, virtual event and physical exercises — will continue in some form. But U.S. officials indicated that military leadership is trying to find ways to modify the event to meet the president’s demands. And the announcement underscores that American support remains at the whim of an unpredictable president.

Some of the president’s motivation is likely financial. South Korea pledged last year to invest $350 billion in the U.S., but Trump officials believe its government is slow-walking its commitment, POLITICO has reported.

“The thing about Trump is it’s all very transactional,” said Cha. “So if they announce a first tranche of investments, he’ll be fine, right?”

But Asian allies are closely watching whether the distancing from traditional backers will continue, particularly movement of some critical American military assets out of the Pacific region. The USS George Washington aircraft carrier left port in Tokyo this month and is heading west. It will presumably go to the Middle East and replace the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which is on the ninth month of an extended deployment.

The Pentagon relocated some elements of the THAAD missile defense system earlier this year from South Korea as part of a wider shift to the Middle East.

Lawmakers are also watching warily. Congress voted last year to restrict the Pentagon from reducing troop levels on the Korean peninsula below 28,500 unless the Pentagon certifies doing so is in the national interest and conducted after consultation with South Korea and other allies.

Lawmakers appear poised to extend those restrictions again in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.

“Reduced training hurts American preparedness too,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). “If we have moral clarity, then we’d treat [South Korea] as our ally and know North Korea is a dictatorship and slave labor state. … The president is wrong here.”

Conor O’Brien and Leo Shane contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump is waiting for Iran to cave to his economic pressure. Tehran may be willing to wait even longer.

Even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promises a level of economic isolation “never seen before,” former Trump administration officials, U.S. ambassadors and other Middle East experts are skeptical that tightening the economic vise will force Iran to relinquish its desire to toll ships passing through the State of Hormuz and make the other concessions Trump is demanding to bring an end to the war.

“It’s an attrition campaign, and I am sure Treasury tweaks this or that to fill gaps or expand coverage of sanctions,” said James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term. “But, it’s hard to believe [there will be] something decisive after 20 years of U.S. sanctions and Iranian experience of going around them.”

It’s an acknowledgement that underscores the asymmetry of the situation. The Trump administration is staring down a consequential midterm election amid an unpopular war that has sent oil prices back up to roughly $90 a barrel and helped push long-term borrowing costs to their highest level in nearly two decades as hope dims that a peace deal is near.

Iran’s leaders, meanwhile, see the conflict as existential, giving Tehran reason to absorb the extraordinary economic pain rather than accept terms it believes could imperil the regime — especially as U.S. inflation remains elevated and treasuries sell off.

The yield on 30-year U.S. government bonds, a figure Trump has in the past been attuned to, jumped on Tuesday to its highest level since just before the global financial crisis.

The increase in the yield to its highest level in nearly two decades isn’t solely because of the six-month war; global fuel shortages and broader instability have kept energy prices higher for longer, increasing the threat of persistent inflation. And that’s heaped even more risk on global bond markets that have repeatedly blanched at Trump-related shocks.

“We are in a situation where we’re spending more and more to finance more and more,” said Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives. And the war has created “a riskier world full of more frictions, full of more supply shocks.”

Iran’s outsized incentive to muscle through the pain is partly why some former administration officials doubt that the naval blockade, while unprecedented in its scale in the modern era or whatever new strategies Bessent may unveil, will change Iran’s calculus.

“I think the economic pressure would need to hit them in new ways we haven’t seen so far to change the mindset of the regime,” said one former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to candidly assess the impact of the U.S.’s economic pressure campaign.

The administration has yet to indicate what further action it plans to take, but options include going after major Chinese banks that facilitate Iran’s oil trade, expand secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Iran and confiscating Iranian assets under U.S. jurisdiction instead of just freezing them.

Iranian leaders publicly mocked U.S. efforts to sanction them into submission.

“Americans think squeezing Iran harder will win concessions that were never part of the agreement,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, posted on X Tuesday.

“Bessent and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth are way out of their league,” he wrote. “Stop waiting for the clown crew to pull a rabbit out of their hat and clean up the mess you made.”

White House aides, however, continue to contend that the leverage is on its side.

“The crushing sanctions and one of the most successful blockades that have crippled Iran’s economy and has left Iran completely broke,” said one administration official, granted anonymity to share the U.S.’s thinking. “There are many levers the president can crank harder in the weeks and months ahead.”

In the half-year since the Iran war began, the president has deployed an array of pressure tactics to choke Iran economically, including physically preventing the country from selling its most important export — oil — as part of an ongoing naval blockade of Iranian ports. The administration has also sanctioned foreign buyers of Iranian oil, targeted the country’s shadow fleet of ships that ferries it and sought to cut the country off from the financial networks it uses to move money.

That economic pressure has sent Iran’s economy, which was already troubled before the war, into a deeper tailspin. Now, Iran is grappling with year-over-year inflation of 88 percent, long lines and rationing at gas pumps and food prices that have more than doubled.

But those who have worked on previous Iran negotiations say that’s far from enough to get the regime to cave, especially after six months of U.S. bombing that has killed, by Tehran’s own measure, more than 3,000 Iranians.

“It’s undeniable that there is economic pressure. The question is whether there is a breaking point, and I would say for a regime that is fighting for its life and has never hesitated to transfer economic pain to its population, there is no breaking point,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, who helped work to bridge differences between Iran and world powers during negotiations over the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Yet Trump continued to project patience on Tuesday, signaling that he was prepared to let the pressure campaign play out.

“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

A senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the situation in Iran, insisted that Iran will cave long before the pain in the U.S. or world markets become intolerable.

“Ultimately we want a deal, but in the interim, the Iranian economy is tanking … people are lining up for gas, just for a half gallon of gas. And there’s a lot of civil unrest going on in Iran, that’s not being played on the news for whatever reason,” the official said late last week. “We’re fine if that’s the route they want to take.”

Still, there are signs inside the White House that the economic impacts are a growing concern. Vice President JD Vance last week said on Fox News that the administration’s first goal in the Iran war was to “keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over the country.” The president, meanwhile, has repeatedly insisted voters will bear the pain of higher gas prices for an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The voters have a more dyspeptic view. A Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week showed Trump’s approval rating at 33 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. Roughly 80 percent of Americans — 87 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans — think U.S. involvement in Iran “will go on for an extended period of time,” the poll found.

But some former Trump administration officials, however, are holding out hope that patience will be rewarded and that the administration’s economic pressure campaign will work, in part because they see the other options on the table, including putting U.S. boots on the ground in Iran, as politically untenable.

Fred Fleitz, Trump’s former National Security Council chief of staff and vice chair of the American First Policy Institute’s American Security, predicted that the U.S. could be “dealing with a different Iran” in 30 to 60 days.

“I think patience is the best approach,” Fleitz said. “I don’t believe that a large-scale military attack right now is going to make a difference in changing the regime’s position, and I strongly oppose the idea of seizing Kharg Island or sending in American troops. The American people don’t want that. That would really bog us down in a quagmire.”

White House envoy Jared Kushner met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for hours Monday, yielding an agreement to establish two working groups for disarmament and public health in the Gaza Strip, according to the Board of Peace and the Israeli leader’s office.

The meeting came a week after Netanyahu publicly rejected a 15-point plan negotiated by the United States with Hamas, which agreed to hand over its weapons as part of a roadmap that calls for Israel to withdraw its troops from Gaza.

“We’ve made a lot of progress to get here,” Kushner said Monday on Fox News. “For Israel we think this is a win-win situation because if Hamas actually gives over the weapons and the tunnels willingly over the next 60 to 90 days that obviously would be the elimination of a huge security threat for Israel, almost an unthinkable achievement.”

Kushner’s comments and the two readouts of his meeting seemed to show the Board moving toward Israel’s wide understanding of the definition of disarmament, which appears in conflict with Hamas’ more narrow interpretation. The gap underscores the difficulty in getting a final agreement that all three parties can agree to, despite the progress in establishing the working groups.

“It was agreed that there will be no [Israeli Defense Forces] redeployment from Gaza until Hamas is fully disarmed and all of Gaza is demilitarized – every weapon, light and heavy, and every tunnel,” the Board of Peace said in a statement.

An official familiar with the talks, granted anonymity to disclose details, confirmed Board of Peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair attended the meeting with Netanyahu as well.

The White House and State Department referred questions on the meeting to the Board of Peace.

Kushner visited Jerusalem a day after he met with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya in Cairo.

The Board of Peace roadmap, published this month, called for Hamas to disarm and relinquish control in Gaza to a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, which the Board of Peace oversees. The Israeli military would withdraw its troops from Gaza in return. Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told POLITICO last week he understood the roadmap to entail “storage of heavy weapons” under NCAG. When he rejected the roadmap, Netanyahu said Israel will not withdraw from the enclave until Hamas has been “genuinely disarmed.”

Another Hamas official, granted anonymity to frankly discuss negotiations, told POLITICO that he saw a difference in the terms of disarmament between the roadmap Hamas signed and the Board of Peace’s statement Monday. While Hamas described storing heavy weapons, the Board of Peace comment envisioned decommissioning all weapons, both light and heavy, as well as tunnels.

The Monday statement from the Board of Peace “suggests a metric that is rather absolute and likely impossible to achieve” on disarmament, said Robert Danin, a former career State Department official and previous head of Blair’s Quartet Mission in Jerusalem. “It requires the removal of every pistol and every tunnel before Israel withdraws from Gaza. And presumably the discovery of either would be grounds for Israel to halt or perhaps not begin to withdraw from Gaza.”

A major military music festival in Moscow has been canceled four days before it was due to start, the organizers said on Telegram.

The lavish parade, known as the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival, attracts thousands of visitors and brings together dozens of military bands in the heart of Moscow on Red Square near the Kremlin.

The event, which began in 2007 at President Vladimir Putin’s orders, is one of Russia’s most prominent military-themed events, alongside the May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow and the Navy Day show in St. Petersburg. Spasskaya “Tower was only canceled once before — in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its early years, military bands from EU countries, Australia and Canada took part in Spasskaya Tower, though the number of international participants has declined since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

According to the festival’s Telegram channel, “the event has been postponed until 2027 due to circumstances beyond the organizers’ control.”

The move comes amid an increase in Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian capital.

Overnight, Kyiv’s forces launched one of the largest assaults on Moscow in recent months, with more than 600 drones directed toward the Russian capital and surrounding region. The strikes, which, according to Russian media, targeted the facilities of Wildberries, a major Russian online marketplace, as well as logistics warehouses, sparked massive fires and killed one person.

Earlier in June, the Kremlin canceled another event in Moscow’s Red Square — a gala concert marking Russia Day. The Victory Day parade on May 9 was held on a limited scale and, for the first time in nearly 20 years, without heavy military equipment.

Dave Brat, Australia’s freshly confirmed U.S. ambassador, didn’t need to learn another language to qualify for his new gig. But he’s coming into the job fluent in a niche dialect that could give him a big advantage.

“He can speak Trump,” James Braid, President Donald Trump’s director of legislative affairs, said in a recent interview. “He can understand Trump, and he’s recognized as a longtime Trump ally. And I think that will really help him facilitate Aussie-United States relations.”

This dynamic could be key as Brat gets to work in Canberra, where political leaders have been rattled by the Trump administration’s aggressive trade agenda resulting in the implementation of a 12.5 percent tariff on Australian goods.

A longtime economist and academic, Brat is an avowed free trade advocate, which could quell some nerves on the ground. But Brat has also defended the Trump administration’s tariff regime as a kind of reset of the U.S. economic relationship with the world, telling a local news outlet in his home state of Virginia last year that “these tariffs are an attempt to bring some balance.”

At the same time, he has the ear of the White House, having earned Trump’s trust and respect long ago as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2014 to 2019. There, Brat was a member of the House Freedom Caucus — a contingent of conservative hard-liners known for taking uncompromising positions on federal spending — and in 2016 he embraced then-presidential candidate Trump as other more establishment Republicans turned their noses.

“The president hasn’t forgotten that,” said Braid, who was policy director of the Freedom Caucus during that period.

The Freedom Caucus was, as it is now, perpetually at war with party leadership on Capitol Hill, but the group harnessed Brat’s affable disposition and deft touch in high-stakes policy negotiations. He was obsessed with making sure that the group’s goals would be understood both by negotiators across the table and the public — something his former colleagues expect him to bring to the international stage.

Justin Ouimette, a former longtime executive director of the House Freedom Caucus, said in an interview that Brat’s approach has always been, “here’s the message and here’s where it is coming from” — a tactic that “tends to lower the temperature.”

“He was one of those guys that’s typically dispatched to disagree without being disagreeable,” Braid agreed. “Brat is really effective at stating a position, being firm while also collaborating to reach an outcome, and so that that experience will serve him well in his new diplomatic post.”

There’s hope among some in Washington that Brat’s views on trade, coupled with his ties to the Trump administration, could help soothe existing tensions and result in a positive working relationship between the U.S. and Australia. That optimism is shared by Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, who supported Brat’s nomination.

“He will be very focused on commerce, trade, and economic opportunity. You know, things that are good for the U.S. and good for the Australian economies,” said Kaine, who as governor once relied on Brat’s contributions to a bipartisan economic advisory panel to build the state’s budget.

“He’ll be very mindful of the commercial relationship, and I think that’s something that will be viewed positively by the Aussies,” Kaine added.

He noted that Virginia’s massive naval base would now have an advocate in Brat amid the continued implementation of AUKUS, a trilateral security pact among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. in 2021 aimed at helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

Warner was less effusive, saying he has “disagreed with Dave on a lot of issues,” but acknowledged he also was “a smart guy” he supported for the ambassadorship.

Brat also has long been vocal about the competitive threats to the U.S. posed by China, a concern shared by Australia in its diplomatic engagement with the Pacific region. Ouimette speculated that “his clear-mindedness and alignment with the administration on that particular issue weighed in his favor” as the White House was making its ambassador selection.

There are still some unknowns, however, including whether Brat will be living in Canberra full time and how he’ll handle staffing issues at the U.S. Embassy.

“I understand that Mission Australia’s current staffing and facilities are insufficient to meet the demands of our expanding Alliance activities,” Brat said in a written response to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, as part of his confirmation proceedings. “Our investment in diplomatic infrastructure reflects our commitment to this vital partnership.”

Brat’s arrival heads a wave of new senior appointments at the embassy including Robert T. Koepcke as deputy chief of mission and Jonathan A. Habjan as counselor for political affairs.

A slew of new military postings at the embassy includes Col. Richard Bush as defense attaché; Col. Pete Roongsang as Army attaché; and Col. Kabir Rao as chief of MILGROUP, which manages security cooperation, foreign military sales and defense relations with the Australian Armed Forces.

Brat also hasn’t spoken publicly or at length about how or why he was recommended for this particular posting, though he said during his confirmation hearing that he “loved the Australian people I have met in my life and appreciate their decency, wit and sense of humor” — as well as being a “tennis fanatic” eager to engage in “sports diplomacy across the board.”

Australian Prime Anthony Albanese is also a keen tennis player, known to invite dignitaries and journalists to play on the court at his official Canberra residence, The Lodge.

“I’m very much looking forward to having a hit of tennis with David Brat,” Albanese told POLITICO, adding that he believes Brat’s appointment will “bolster” the existing alliance.

Brat did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for interviews.

But Braid made clear that sending Brat to Australia is not a vanity posting or just a favor for a longtime Trump loyalist, calling Brat “a serious lawmaker with serious chops.” He conceded that while Brat “comes from a political tradition that may be a little bit unfamiliar to the Australians,” he brings relationships and experiences to the table a career foreign service officer could not.

“This is a serious person,” Braid said.

President Donald Trump directed the Pentagon on Sunday to substantially scale back planned joint military exercises with South Korea, saying that South Korea declined to help with denuclearizing Iran.

“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, while emphasizing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The move directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — who in May praised South Korean leaders for their commitment to “alliance burden-sharing” in defense of the Korean Peninsula — to scale back the plans comes just a day before the 11 days of exercises were set to start on Monday, part of an annual practice to deter threats from North Korea.

Trump also sought to end the exercises during his first administration, similarly arguing at the time that doing so “will save us a tremendous amount of money.”

North Korea launched its latest round of ballistic missile tests just last week, seen in part as a response to the announcement of the U.S. and South Korea’s planned military exercises.

The U.S. and South Korea have held joint military exercises for more than 70 years. This year’s iteration, termed Ulchi Freedom Shield, was expected to involve about 18,000 South Korean troops and a sizable portion of the 28,500 American troops stationed in the country.

Pentagon leaders are considering plans to withdraw about 4,500 troops from South Korea, to be redeployed elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region.

Congress has generally opposed the idea, including language in last year’s national defense authorization act to prevent the administration from reducing the American footprint there below the 28,500 level.

Jets from NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission shot down a drone that entered Latvian airspace overnight, the country’s armed forces reported on X.

The drone was downed near the village of Rugāji in northeastern Latvia, close to the Russian border, after Italian Eurofighters based in Lithuania and Turkish F-16s based in Estonia were scrambled.

The uncrewed aerial vehicle appeared in Latvian airspace “as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare,” said the Latvian National Armed Forces in a press release. Earlier Friday, more than 50 Ukrainian drones attacked targets in Russia’s western regions, including Leningrad and Tver, where they struck Ust-Luga — the second-largest port in Russia — and a warehouse belonging to e-commerce giant Wildberries.

Latvia’s military warned that similar incidents may happen again in the future. “While the Russian aggression in Ukraine is ongoing, the recurrence of such cases when a foreign unmanned aircraft enters or approaches Latvian airspace is possible,” it said.

An air raid alert was declared in four eastern Latvian municipalities at around 4 a.m. local time. The military urged people to stay indoors and away from exterior walls.

After the drone was downed, Sandra Kapteine, head of the Rugāji village administration, told the Latvian Information Agency that the incident “caused no casualties,” as the drone wreckage fell in a “wooded area.”

There has been an uptick in similar incidents over recent months in countries close to the war-zone. A week ago, Bulgarian Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov said a Ukrainian-made drone crossed Bulgarian airspace from Romania and exploded near the village of Kardam.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a problem: Nobody wants the hardest job in Washington.

The Ukrainian president is struggling to find someone of sufficient influence to represent Kyiv to the Trump administration, with prospective candidates proving reluctant to take on the grueling assignment at a critical moment in the war, according to two former senior Ukrainian officials and four lawmakers.

The need to replace the previous envoy, Olga Stefanishyna, helped trigger Zelenskyy’s still-incomplete government reshuffle. Stefanishyna was formally dismissed on Aug. 3 over impending embezzlement charges. 

Zelenskyy moved his reshuffle plans forward so he could offer the ambassadorship to Yulia Svyrydenko, the outgoing prime minister, according to a former senior Ukrainian official and a Republican foreign expert familiar with the background to the shake-up. But she declined, disrupting his plans. 

“It is no secret that I counted on and offered Yulia Svyrydenko the post of ambassador to the United States,” Zelenskyy said at a press conference in late July. He added that he was looking for a candidate with the highest possible qualifications: “a person at the level of a deputy prime minister, minister, or prime minister.”

Since then, however, other prospective candidates have proved equally reluctant, spurning what would in any case be the difficult job of handling Donald Trump’s unpredictable White House.

Ukrainians with sufficient heft and skill for the ambassadorship are looking at it askance, “worrying that they would not enjoy the conditions they would need to do the job properly,” said Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a prominent Ukrainian opposition lawmaker and former deputy prime minister who is a regular critic of Zelenskyy.

“Certainly that would be the case without having the ear of the president or his trust,” she added. That narrows Zelenskyy’s options sharply. The person would likely have to come from his tight inner circle of trusted aides, Klympush-Tsintsadze said, but there is no one there who seriously fits the bill. 

“Framing it as if nobody wants the job would be a kind of oversimplification,” said a former Ukrainian diplomat who was granted anonymity in order to speak freely. “Of course, there are people who want the job, but there’s no one who really measures up to it. Zelenskyy is having a hard time filling the position.”

Wrong direction

The trouble filling the Washington post is part of a broader problem for Zelenskyy, whose office did not respond to a request for comment. The president’s approval ratings have deteriorated since he embarked a month ago on a government shake-up that remains incomplete and has proved turbulent. According to a Socis Center for Social Research survey, more than 55 percent of Ukrainians believe their nation is moving in the wrong direction.

Zelenskyy’s dismissal in July of popular defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov sparked street protests and a political backlash, while several key posts remain unresolved. The reshuffle has also raised questions about how Zelenskyy chooses his senior team — and how far beyond his tight circle of trusted aides he is prepared to look. 

“No one has explained to Ukrainians why exactly the government had to be changed,” Mykola Knyazhitskiy, an opposition lawmaker from Lviv and founder of Ukraine’s Espreso TV channel, said.

“There had been no clearly articulated public complaints about Svyrydenko. In her farewell address to parliament, Svyrydenko received applause. MPs gave her a standing ovation. So why was she dismissed if her performance was considered so successful and was so highly regarded?” 

Difficult timing

The ambassadorial vacancy comes at an especially fraught moment for Kyiv. Washington remains central to Ukraine’s ability to sustain the war, and whoever takes the job will have to navigate a Trump administration that has repeatedly shifted course on military support and on how — and when — the war should end.

In an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns earlier this year, Stefanishyna acknowledged she had experienced “diplomatic whiplash” in the role. 

Kyiv is trying to persuade Trump to give Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot air defense systems, something he promised in June, only to reverse himself in July. The issue is becoming more urgent as Ukraine heads toward another winter of Russian attacks on its energy and civilian infrastructure and is already struggling to intercept intensified ballistic missile strikes. Zelenskyy has said this year’s deliveries of air defense missiles from Ukraine’s allies have fallen by two-thirds compared with 2025.

At the same time, there are signs the White House may soon seek to revive stalled peace negotiations. That would put a premium on having an ambassador in Washington with the political weight to get through the door, the authority to speak for Zelenskyy and the skill to navigate an administration where policy can change quickly. And also to lobby Congress. 

Leaving the post vacant, therefore, carries risks well beyond diplomatic protocol. Ukraine could find itself without a heavyweight operator in Washington just as decisions are being made over weapons, air defense, logistics and intelligence sharing, as well as the terms of any renewed peace push.

“It is quite likely that Zelenskyy won’t appoint anyone this side of the midterm elections in the United States,” said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, an opposition lawmaker. “It will be hard to judge who would fit the political landscape best until those elections have been held.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week publicly rejected President Donald Trump’s latest Gaza peace plan.

The Trump administration can live with it — for now.

The administration says it’s less concerned with what Netanyahu says than what the Israeli Defense Forces do. A U.S. official, who, like others in the story, was granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, said that the administration was initially “disappointed” that Israel responded to the 15-point peace proposal by ramping up attacks in Gaza — but is pleased that it has since eased its assault.

Now, the administration is willing to give the Israeli prime minister some leeway to message the peace plan in the way he needs to, the official said. There is broad understanding that he is two months from a tough reelection — and needs to please his own hard-right allies to win. Few expected the president’s roadmap to be wholesale embraced, even as Trump on Truth Social trumpeted it as a “major milestone” in the conflict.

“We recognize the complexities that come from the Israeli elections, and we’re obviously going to give Bibi a space to try and navigate that,” the official said. But in turn, “they need to give us a little bit of space in terms of no targeted killings in order to allow us to try to get to the next phase, so there’s a lot more challenges to go to get there.”

U.S. officials and Hamas negotiated the latest peace framework separately, with help from Middle East allies. The proposal, announced last month, called for Hamas to disarm and relinquish governance in Gaza and Israel to withdraw its military from the territory. The plan stalled when Hamas said it would not disarm until Israel withdrew, and Israel said it would not withdraw until Hamas disarmed.

Even as skeptics of the Trump plan criticized the president for overhyping its achievement, U.S. officials believed that they needed to go public once Hamas was on board to lock in its pledge to disarm. Despite the president’s public confidence, administration officials privately expected that the proposal would likely face pushback from Netanyahu but that talks could continue with Israel.

Still, they considered the roadmap a significant win.

“Nobody’s ever gotten to this point where they got Hamas to agree to this, so that’s a necessary step before actually disarming it,” the U.S. official said.

And there are signs that Israel is preparing for the possibility of withdrawal anyway, with Israeli media reporting Israel’s defense establishment began weighing contingencies to do so in the days after Netanyahu’s public rejection.

Another administration official said the Board of Peace, a 27-country initiative formed as part of Trump’s deal last year to end the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has been “getting good cooperation on the ground of late.”

“That’s what’s important,” the administration official said.

And it’s not just Trump administration officials hailing the framework as a step in the right direction. Former ambassadors and administration officials, including some who served in the Biden and Obama administrations, see the recent commitment the U.S. secured from Hamas to disarm — a monthslong sticking point in the peace process — as a small, but meaningful step, even as doubts remain whether Hamas will follow through. A member of the Hamas political bureau, according to the Associated Press, said this week that Hamas remains “committed to the roadmap.”

“For Netanyahu, his primary objective, of course, is getting through his election so he’s going to at least voice rejection even while he may allow some aspects of it to move forward,” said Dan Shapiro, a U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration. “It looks like Trump is tolerating the Netanyahu two-step. These two have done a dance like this before and as long as certain elements of it are moving forward … Trump seems to be willing to tolerate Netanyahu’s stated rejection.”

Even Trump appeared in little hurry Monday to escalate the dispute with Netanyahu, insisting to reporters in the Oval Office that he had a “good relationship” with the Israeli prime minister despite the very public rejection of his peace proposal.

The White House referred requests for comment to the Board of Peace.

A Board of Peace official added that “separate discussions with Israel are continuing.”

“The objective remains the full decommissioning of weapons and ensuring Gaza can never again pose the kind of threat Israel faced on October 7,” the official said. “Plans are moving forward in this regard. We have seen important elements of cooperation in recent days and we are intensifying our efforts to accelerate progress.”

The U.S. official added that Israel remains skeptical that Hamas will follow through on their commitments, while noting the country was similarly skeptical that Hamas would release the Israeli hostages.

“We basically have built a lot of credit with them. And I think that they’re willing to give us more of a shot to see if we can get to the next phase,” the official said. “We’re in an uncomfortable position for everyone, but I think that there’s a pathway to get through it.”

The idea that Israeli troops are at least planning to withdraw — especially if that withdrawal goes to the yellow line in Gaza, a key point of the plan the Board of Peace proposed — is giving Trump allies hope that Netanyahu’s words are meant for a domestic audience, while his actions are meant to demonstrate he might consider a deal in the future.

“Netanyahu’s playing a fairly tricky tightrope, where on the one hand he flexes his muscle for domestic audiences, given his situation at election eve, and on the other hand, he’s doing some baby steps in the direction of the 15-point plan — testing the tolerance of the American or Board of Peace team,” said Nimrod Novik, who served as senior diplomatic adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term, said that “of course it’s a win” to get Hamas to agree to disarm. And, behind the scenes, he said there continues to be movement between the U.S and Israel.

“Slowly we and Israel are moving forward on both Lebanon and Gaza even in the face of Israeli elections,” Jeffrey said.

Still, the incremental movement leaves fundamental questions, which have repeatedly stymied efforts to create a lasting peace between Israel and Gaza. U.S. allies are also concerned that Netanyahu’s public rejection of the latest peace plan is undermining confidence in the Board of Peace and the broader Middle East peace efforts.

Hamas’ willingness to disarm is conditioned on Israel withdrawing from Gaza, leaving unresolved how — and in what order — either side would carry out its commitments.

Hamas is supposed to turn over its weapons to a United Nations-created body responsible for governing the day-to-day operation in Gaza, and that governing authority is supposed to eventually run the territory, supervised by the Board of Peace, though the timeline for leadership handover remains uncertain. And Israel, meanwhile, has not agreed to the withdrawal in the plan, even as its military is preparing for the possibility.

But administration allies don’t really expect some big peace ceremony at Camp David or in Geneva. They’ll settle for dialogue, however tenuous.

“You have to judge these things incrementally in the Middle East,” a person familiar with the White House’s discussions around the peace process said.

Jerry Wu and Daniella Cheslow contributed to this report.

Russian authorities said Ukraine’s overnight bombardment of the western Krasnodar region killed two people and injured at least 12.

Andrei Kravchenko, mayor of the Russian city Novorossiysk, said the attack killed one child and injured eight people. Drone debris damaged four businesses and 21 residential buildings, including apartment blocks, he said. Krasnodar Krai regional governor, Veniamin Kondratyev, said on his Telegram channel that more buildings were damaged elsewhere in the region, killing one man and injuring four people.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the attack on Wednesday but insisted that Kyiv’s forces had targeted the naval base in Novorossiysk, which he called “the last major stronghold of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.”

“Our Palianytsia jet-powered drones, Neptune missiles, and unmanned naval systems successfully struck the designated targets. Hits on air defense positions, piers, and seaport infrastructure have been confirmed,” wrote Zelenskyy on X.

“The occupation fleet and all the infrastructure supporting it will not be safe as long as Russian aggression continues,” he warned Moscow.

Russia’s defense ministry said the country’s air defenses had intercepted and destroyed 502 Ukrainian drones over several regions and the Black Sea overnight.

Moscow has stepped up its missile attacks on Ukraine in recent months, killing dozens of Ukrainian civilians, while Kyiv has hit back at Russian targets, including oil refineries and warehouses belonging to Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries.

Last week, an intercepted Ukrainian drone crashed onto a Russian beach, killing seven people and injuring 40.

President Donald Trump denied Tuesday that he played a role in orchestrating a dramatic ruse to secretly switch planes to depart Turkey in early July, following reports that most of the decoy plane’s passengers were unaware of the move.

“It’s only up to Secret Service,” Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One in Ohio. “I just follow what they like to do.”

The clandestine operation, first reported by The Washington Post on Monday, involved the president being covertly shuttled off an Air Force One jet to a smaller military plane by an airport catering truck.

The switch took place after the president boarded the traditional jet in front of television cameras. Journalists and many administration staff who remained on Air Force One were unaware of the switch and their role as unwitting decoys, The Post reported.

Trump claimed at the time that he was riding the recently retired Air Force One jet — instead of a Qatari-gifted Boeing 747-800 which the president flew into Ankara on — for “old time’s sake.” But subsequent news reports suggested the Secret Service had become aware of an Iranian threat, leading to the older jet to be used. The flight out of Turkey on July 8 occurred just a day after the U.S. renewed military strikes on Iran after the collapse of peace talks.

Trump then reboarded the older jet to descend its stairs upon his arrival to the United Kingdom, though the Post story was unable to determine how he reentered the plane.

Trump on Tuesday didn’t elaborate much on the threat, telling reporters: “I guess there was a threat out here. I really didn’t ask too much.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the White House Correspondents’ Association said it had expressed concerns to administration officials about how the subterfuge impaired reporters’ ability to report on the president’s movements and their safety, CNN reported.

But, Trump argued Tuesday that he believed the plane he was flying on was “at greater risk because that would be the plane that they would be more likely to go for.”

The originally represented decision to travel on the older Air Force One jet instead of the Qatari-gifted plane raised questions about the security of the newer plane. The Trump administration subpoenaed reporters for The New York Times over their reporting around the security of the plane, but later withdrew it after the Times challenged the demands in courts.

Russia bombarded Ukraine with North Korean missiles overnight, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The Russian attack killed six people and injured at least 19 in Zaporizhzhia, said the city’s mayor, Rehina Kharchenko. Four apartment buildings and several non-residential buildings were damaged in the southeastern city, Kharchenko wrote on her Telegram channel.

According to Zelenskyy, the city was struck with North Korean ballistic missiles, Zircons and guided aerial bombs. In a post on X, he wrote: “It was a vicious attack, calculated to inflict maximum damage specifically on civilian infrastructure.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un have deepened ties since the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine began. In September last year during a meeting in Beijing, Kim vowed to do “everything we can to assist Russia.”

Zelenskyy also reported attacks on a Kyiv hospital and businesses overnight, with at least one person injured. The capital’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, urged residents late Monday to seek shelter.

Moscow also attacked substations in Kherson and Kharkiv, causing power outages, Zelenskyy said. Further attacks took place in the Donetsk, Dnipro and Mykolaiv regions.

“Every step Russia takes — increasing ballistic missile production, bringing in North Korean equipment, preparing for mobilization — all of this shows that Moscow is preparing not for peace, but for escalation,” Zelenskyy wrote.

Russia has stepped up its missile attacks this summer, with Zelenskyy urging Western allies to help Kyiv strengthen its air defenses and to heap sanctions pressure on companies fueling Moscow’s war. However, Europe is running out of Patriot interceptors to shoot down Russian missiles, according to the continent’s military officials.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has struck back, targeting Russian infrastructure including oil refineries and buildings belonging to e-commerce giant Wildberries.

Russian state media on Tuesday reported that two Wildberries warehouses in the Voronezh region, several hundred kilometers south of Moscow, caught fire following drone strikes, killing one person.

BERLIN — Europe is scrambling for more Patriot interceptors to donate to an increasingly desperate Ukraine, which is racing to reinforce its ballistic missile defenses before Russia’s expected winter assault.

Kyiv is seeking hundreds of interceptors, but new production will come too late, the war with Iran has strained U.S. supplies, and several of Ukraine’s leading European backers say they have few left that they can safely donate.

“Over the last few months, Russia fires more missiles a week at us than we get from partners over months,” former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said last week. In July, Ukrainian air defense intercepted only 29 out of 195 Russian ballistic missiles, with another 40 failing to reach their targets, Ukraine’s defense ministry said.

Germany, one of Ukraine’s top military aid donors, has already transferred Patriot systems and missiles to Ukraine. But Berlin must now balance Kyiv’s increasingly urgent needs against the minimum stocks required to protect Germany and meet its NATO commitments. Other European countries are also weighing whether to hang on to their interceptors or give them to Ukraine.

“We are really reaching our limits here,” Brig. Gen. Jürgen Schrödl, a senior German defense ministry official, said at a panel in Berlin shortly after last month’s NATO summit in Ankara. “We also have to ensure our own protection.” 

Berlin and other Northern European capitals have urged counterparts elsewhere on the continent to examine what more military equipment and financial support they could release.

“I think it’s not sustainable for Europe in the long run,” Norwegian Defense Minister Tore O. Sandvik told POLITICO. “All the European countries have to step up.”

That’s putting pressure on countries with stocks of Patriot interceptors like Poland, Spain and Greece. The shortage primarily concerns Patriot PAC-3 and PAC-2 missiles, which are among Ukraine’s few effective defenses against fast-moving Russian ballistic weapons.

Ukraine can use other, often cheaper, air-defense systems against drones and cruise missiles. The country is racing to develop its homegrown Freyja interceptor, but the anti-ballistic system still requires investment, engineering work and testing before it can fill that role.

Until Freyja is ready, Ukraine needs an immediate answer to Russia’s ballistic missiles. “One of the priority directions is Patriot — PAC-3 or PAC-2,” Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, told POLITICO.  “The first [solution] is buying, or receiving from stockpiles, PAC-3 and PAC-2 interceptors.”

Stuck in Washington

The Patriot dependence makes U.S. President Donald Trump essential to Kyiv: Most PAC-3 interceptors are produced in America, which means their sale and any production deals are subject to White House decisions.

During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump last month, “The main topic was Patriot interceptors,” according to a senior official familiar with the talks.

Trump raised hopes at the Ankara summit when he said Ukraine would be allowed to produce U.S.-designed Patriot interceptors under license — a step that could eventually reduce Kyiv’s dependence on scarce American deliveries. 

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker made clear that production would not solve the immediate shortage. 

“A long-term production agreement will not be concluded before this winter,” he told Fox Business, and manufacturing the first missiles would take longer still.

But Trump has now walked that back, last week saying: “We have not agreed to that. We’re talking about it. But it’s a hard thing to give away, that kind of technology.” 

Following a Reuters report that the U.S. had almost exhausted its missile stocks thanks to the war against Iran, Trump is now focusing on rebuilding U.S. supplies. Asked on Thursday about Zelenskyy’s calls for more Patriot missiles, he said: “We want missiles too.”

Ukraine has also signed a deal to get PAC-2 interceptors being made in Germany, but they are unlikely to arrive before next year.

Faced with a shortage of interceptors, Kyiv is now looking at a more aggressive campaign to hit Russian launchers.

“The Russians must understand that a few minutes after the launch, the entire team that launches the rocket must die from our ballistic missile,” Fedorov said.

Europe’s unbalanced effort

That puts the immediate burden on Europe, where allies are once again searching their own arsenals — and one another’s — for interceptors that could reach Ukraine before winter.

Germany supplied three Patriot systems from its own military stocks and subsequently arranged two more through a deal under which the U.S. would replenish the Bundeswehr. The Netherlands assembled the components for another complete system, including five launchers, a radar and missiles.

But with stocks now stretched thin, governments face limits of their own. 

Warsaw confirmed in July that it had released several PAC-3 interceptors after requests from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and senior U.S. commanders. Polish outlet Defence24 reported that just five missiles were transferred.

Even that triggered a political backlash. Opposition lawmakers accused the government of weakening the country’s defenses at a time when Russian missiles and drones have repeatedly strayed across its border.

Countries closer to Russia are now becoming less likely to give up existing Patriots because their armed forces already regarded their air defenses as insufficient for national requirements, according to a European diplomat granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic contacts.

That is shifting attention toward Southern European countries, which have contributed less to Ukraine than Germany and many Northern European donors.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez confirmed in 2024 that Madrid was sending missiles to Ukraine, but the government has not disclosed their type or amount.

Spain’s defense ministry did not respond to a question from POLITICO whether it had recently been approached for more interceptors or was considering another transfer. It instead pointed to Spain’s wider military support for Ukraine and its NATO commitments.

Greece — which traditionally sees fellow NATO member Turkey as its greatest security threat — has not announced any Patriot transfers to Ukraine. Greek media reported in July that Ukraine had requested as many as 200 older PAC-2 interceptors from Athens.

The Greek defense ministry did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

Prying open Europe’s arsenals

This isn’t the first time European allies have had to cobble together Patriot missile deliveries from their own limited stocks.

At a February meeting, Ukraine’s Fedorov said he and Rutte worked through a list of interceptors held by European allies, asking governments for whatever they could spare.

“Dear defense minister of Poland, can you give us five?” Fedorov recalled in this week’s interview. 

Berlin offered to top up the effort. “If you get 20 out of all the countries, I’ll give you an extra five,” Fedorov quoted German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius as saying. “That’s the exercise we had to perform to get more than 20. And it is a hard mission.”

Kyiv is continuing those types of talks with its allies. 

“Of course, Ukrainian diplomats have been working with Spain, Greece and everyone in the world who has [PACs],” said the senior official familiar with the talks. “Everything depends on the U.S., and the lack of political will to help influences everyone else.”

“The American administration could have helped, but they don’t do this. And as the result it’s been hard with everyone else,” they added.

For Kyiv, the arguments over allied stockpiles are unfolding against a ticking clock. With demand for PAC-3 interceptors surging in the Middle East, the Pentagon replenishing its own stock and many European countries worrying about their own ability to fend off a future Russian attack, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine was struggling to buy, exchange or secure any available rounds.

“We are literally fighting for every missile,” Sybiha said.

Veronika Melkozerova reported from Kyiv.