In addition to the warships, the Swedish military will contribute an ASC 890 surveillance aircraft. And the country’s coast guard will contribute four ships to help monitor the Baltic, with a further seven vessels on standby.

Thousands of people demonstrated against a convention of the far-right Alternative for Germany on Saturday.

Ukraine’s forces have captured two North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday, the first such claim by Kyiv since North Korea sent thousands of troops to shore up Moscow’s war effort on the other side of the world.

A delegation from one of Turkey’s biggest pro-Kurdish political parties met a leading figure of the Kurdish movement in prison Saturday, the latest step in a tentative process to end the country’s 40-year conflict, the party said.

President-elect Donald Trump has tossed expansionist rhetoric at U.S. allies and potential adversaries with arguments that the frontiers of American power need to be extended into Canada and the Danish territory of Greenland, and southward to include the Panama Canal.

On Saturday, NSA Naples Support Site said the ammonia leak had been contained but the health advisory would remain in effect until the evening. Additional information would be posted as needed, the base said. 

An oil tanker believed to be part of Russia’s efforts to evade international sanctions went adrift and had to be towed ashore by a German tugboat. There was no immediate danger to the environment, the German news agency dpa said.

Estonian naval ships are taking part in stepped-up patrols in the Baltic Sea by NATO countries after undersea power and communications cables have been damaged in recent months. Suspicion has fallen on Russia, although nothing has been proven and the Kremlin denied any involvement.

Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom has halted supplies to a major power plant in Moldova’s separatist pro-Russian Transnistria region. Russia says the matter concerns Moldova’s alleged $709 million energy debt, while Moldova’s pro-Western government has accused Moscow of weaponizing energy to destabilize the EU candidate country.

Russia attaches no conditions to the possibility of face-to-face talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that “Putin wants to meet” and that a meeting is being set up.

The Biden administration bills the sanctions announced Friday as the most significant to date against Moscow’s oil and liquefied natural gas sectors, the driver of Russia’s economy. The sanctions target 183 oil-carrying vessels suspected to be part of a shadow fleet.

A U.S. soldier who admitted to distributing child pornography and attempting to arrange the rape of a young girl was sentenced to nine years in prison during a two-day hearing at Rose Barracks that ended Thursday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin used their final meeting 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, chaos and war.”

Italy’s Premier Giorgia Meloni said Thursday that her government is in talks with several private companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, over the country’s telecoms security system, but denied having discussed the issue privately with Musk.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a plea to press on with support for his war effort 11 days before the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged a swift end to the fighting.

The United States will provide Ukraine with an additional $500 million in weapons and equipment, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday, in what’s expected to be the final military aid package to the war-torn country under the outgoing Biden administration.

In one of his final interviews before he leaves office, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the Associated Press the U.S. needs to keep troops deployed in Syria to prevent the Islamic State group from reconstituting as a major threat following the ouster of Bashar Assad’s government.

The U.N.-led meeting, set for this spring, hopes to restart formal talks to resolve one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Turkey has advocated for a two-state arrangement in which the numerically fewer Turkish Cypriots would never be the minority, but Greek Cypriots fear it would create a potentially permanent Turkish military presence.

The U.S. is set to provide Ukraine an additional $500 million in weapons quickly pulled from its existing stockpiles as the Biden administration works to get Kyiv in a stronger negotiating position before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.