• Ninety-one countries at the United Nations General Assembly, including the US, have backed a resolution demanding Russia “ensure the immediate, safe and unconditional return of all Ukrainian children who have been forcibly transferred or deported” from Ukraine since Moscow launched its war in 2022.
• Russia and 11 other countries voted against the resolution – which was drafted by Ukraine, Canada and the European Union – while 57 countries abstained.
• Ahead of the vote, Russia had urged countries to oppose the resolution. “Each vote for the resolution is support for lies, war and confrontation. Every vote against is a vote for peace,” Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Maria Zabolotskaya, said.

Ukrainian affairs

• Ukraine’s parliament has approved the 2026 budget allocating nearly a third of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) to defence. The vote, which comes as Ukraine is dogged by a political crisis following a recent corruption scandal, was seen as a litmus test for parliament to pass key decisions during a critical stage of the war.
• “This is an important signal of Ukraine’s resilience and securing a stable financial provision for the next year’s needs,” President Zelenskyy said. “The priorities are clear: ensuring our defence, social programmes and the ability to rebuild our lives after Russia’s attacks.”

Sanctions and military aid

• The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, has proposed an unprecedented use of frozen Russian assets or international borrowing to raise 90 billion euros ($105bn) for Ukraine. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the body is “proposing to cover two-thirds of Ukraine’s financing needs for the next two years. That’s 90 billion euros”. She added that the “remainder would be for international partners to cover”.
• But Belgium, whose Brussels-based financial institution Euroclear is the main holder of the Russian assets, has voiced a range of legal concerns. While von der Leyen said the proposal had taken into account Belgium’s concerns, Brussels does not “share that assessment”, a senior official told Reuters, adding that it “cannot accept being asked to bear the risks of such an operation alone”.
• The EU also agreed to phase out Russian gas imports by late 2027 as part of an effort to end the bloc’s decades-long dependency on Russian energy. Under the agreement, the EU will permanently halt the import of Russian gas and move towards a phase-out of Russian oil. Liquefied natural gas imports will be phased out by the end of 2026 and pipeline gas by the end of September 2027.
• Hungary and Slovakia are both weighing up legal options to challenge the order, as both EU members are still highly reliant on gas and oil supplies from Moscow and fearful that more costly alternatives will damage their economies.
• More than two-thirds of NATO member states have so far committed $4bn worth of weapons for Ukraine through the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) – an initiative to supply Kyiv with weapons bought from the US – according to the alliance’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte.
• Outside NATO, Australia and New Zealand have also agreed to contribute to the PURL initiative, Rutte said.

European defence

• Germany has become the first European nation to deploy the Arrow air defence system, built to intercept intermediate-range ballistic missiles such as Russia’s Oreshnik.
• The system, developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in cooperation with the US Missile Defense Agency, is used as the upper layer of Israel’s missile defences. “Who could have imagined that only 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the Jewish state, through the technologies it develops, would help defend not only Germany but all of Europe,” said Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Germany.
• The Romanian military has blown up a maritime drone it said was endangering navigation in the Black Sea, identifying it as a Ukrainian-developed Sea Baby. Ukraine’s SBU security service, however, said that all of its Sea Baby maritime drones engaged in operational tasks in the Black Sea region were accounted for, with none entering Romanian waters.
• Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has described attacks on Russia-linked tankers in the Black Sea in recent days as “very scary”. Ukraine has claimed some of these attacks. Fidan said that the attacks threaten regional safety and show that the reach of the war is expanding. The strikes within Turkiye’s exclusive economic zone violate navigational safety and are impacting commerce, he added, saying that Turkiye, Romania and Bulgaria were looking at measures to boost security.