Ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office, Ukraine’s future course is shrouded in uncertainty as it loses ground to Russia’s far larger military.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday said Donald Trump's return to the White House would open "a new chapter" and reiterated a call for Western allies to send troops to help "force Russia to peace".

The White House seized a rare chance to undermine Russia and build up regional allies as it built a coalition to support the Ukrainians.

If Ukraine falls, it will be hard to spin as anything but a debacle for the United States, and for its president.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, one of the European leaders closest to Donald Trump, said on Thursday she believed the U.S. president-elect would defend Western interests once he took office and would not abandon Ukraine.

The United States warned on Wednesday that North Korea is benefiting from its troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine, gaining experience that makes Pyongyang "more capable of waging war against its neighbors.

In the first trading day after Ukraine ceased the flow of Russian gas and oil, benchmark natural gas prices in Europe surged 4%.

After Italian prime minister’s visit to Trump’s Florida resort, a journalist is suddenly freed from an Iranian prison. Is there a correlation, and does Giorgia Meloni have the president-elect’s ear?

He made the statement just a week and a half before taking office, following promises during his campaign to bring peace to Ukraine, which has been under Russian invasion since February 2022.

US President-elect Donald Trump has said that a meeting was being set up between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump, however, did not share any timeline for talks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin used their final meeting on Thursday to press the incoming Trump administration to not give up on Kyiv’s fight, warning that to cease military support now “will only invite more aggression,