‘He Doesn’t Play by the Rules of War’ – Ukraine at War Update for Dec. 5

The foreign ministers of both Russia and Ukraine have said they will attend the OSCE summit in Malta this week, marking the first time that the Kremlin’s top diplomat has attended a meeting in an EU member nation since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

It was not yet clear if Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, would have a face-to-face meeting or even find themselves in the same room on Thursday for the 31st OSCE Ministerial Council.

Ukraine had boycotted the same meeting of OSCE foreign ministers in North Macedonia last year precisely because of Lavrov’s presence at the event.

AFP reported that Lavrov is set to use the event to blast OSCE’s “institutional crisis,” as Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described it to journalists in Moscow. His last trip to the EU was in December 2021 when he visited Stockholm, also for an OSCE summit.

Lavrov personally has been subject to sanctions by the EU, the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and Japan. At last year’s meeting, Lavrov complained that OSCE was being “turned into an appendage of NATO and the EU.”

Kyiv is not pleased with the Russian minister’s presence there, and in fact has called for Russia’s expulsion from the body, which “traces its origins to the Cold War détente of the early 1970s…to serve as a multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation between East and West,” according to OSCE’s web site.

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The Aftershock of the Cyberattack Rumbles into the New Year

Among other things, the Russians destroyed government documents pertaining to births, death, marriages, businesses and real estate.

Poland has joined Ukraine in those calls for Russia’s removal.

While Ukraine’s Baltic allies joined in the boycott last year, Poland was in attendance but was direct in its concerns about Russia’s attendance this year, with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, saying there would be “no talks” with Lavrov in Malta.

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski said earlier this week that inviting Lavrov to the meeting was a “mistake.” Indeed, both the Polish and Czech delegations have vowed to walk out of the meetings if they find themselves in the same room as Lavrov.

On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a release: “The current institutional crisis of the OSCE has resulted from the destructive actions of a number of Western countries that are using this platform for their own interests.”

US Defense Secretary nominee faces increased scrutiny, as Trump sees Florida governor as a backup

US President-elect Donald Trump’s embattled pick for Secretary of Defense has faced opposition from within his party in the Senate, as rumors have swirled that Trump’s team is considering other options.

Several TV news outlets reported that at least three Republican senators have said they would not approve the nomination of Pete Hegseth to run the Pentagon, and that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is being viewed as a possible replacement for that nomination.

The 44-year-old Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and briefly a mid-level officer in the Army National Guard, has faced allegations of a 2017 sexual assault and complaints from former colleagues that he was drinking on the job and causing disturbances at the network. He told legislators that he would not drink alochol if he were to be confirmed as Secretary of Defense.

DeSantis is a former JAG officer with the US Navy, at one point with Seal Team One. He was elected three times to the US House of Representatives and is now a second-term governor of Florida, the third-most populous state in the union. He was one of Trump’s leading rivals in the latest presidential primary campaigns, but endorsed Trump after backing out in January.

In 2003, DeSantis famously referred to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” in a Fox News interview, saying that backing Kyiv was “not in the interest of the United States.

On the other hand, Hegseth has expressed a much more hawkish view of Russia.

“When it comes to Ukraine though... [Russian President Vladimir Putin is] going to double down on the tactics he believes will bring civilians to their knees,” he said in a recent interview on Fox News. “You know why? He doesn’t play by the rules of war. We call him a war criminal, and we do, and rightfully so. He doesn’t care.”

While the Secretary of Defense does not have a defined role in shaping US foreign policy, he or she has a prominent role as a US envoy to NATO meetings and other international coalitions, notably the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, or Ramstein group.

16+ children are killed or injured every week in Russia’s war in Ukraine, Zelensky’s adviser tells the UN

State media outlet Ukrinform’s correspondent at the United Nations reported that Daria Zarivna, advisor to the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, and Chief Operating Officer of Bring Kids Back UA, told the Security Council that 16 Ukrainian children are victims of Moscow’s aggression every week.

She highlighted the almost 20,000 children illegally taken to Russia, adding that “the real number may be many times higher,” and described disturbing examples of the horrors faced by Ukrainian children across the country.

“Often death finds them thousands of kilometers away from the front line,” Zarivna told the council, on which Russia holds a permanent seat, citing several examples.

“We are facing enormous suffering and gross violations of children’s rights. It’s not just murder, it’s torture, sexual violence, destruction of family life, homes, schools, and security,” she said.

She noted that almost 4,000 educational institutions in Ukraine were damaged by Russian shelling. Ten percent of them were destroyed. More than 1,600 medical facilities have also been damaged or destroyed.

In June, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres placed Russia on the “list of shame” on Children and Armed Conflict for the second straight year, Ukrinform noted.

Still, the UN chief decided to visit the BRICS conference of the Kremlin’s allies hosted by Russia in October, drawing the ire of Kyiv.