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1. Institute for the Study of War:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov explicitly rejected two suggestions reportedly considered by US President-elect Donald Trump's team in early November 2024 as conditions for ending the war in Ukraine – the delay of Ukraine's membership in NATO for 20 years and the deployment of European peacekeepers in Ukraine. Lavrov stated in an interview with Kremlin newswire TASS published on December 29 that Russia is "not satisfied" with the Trump team's reported early November 2024 proposals to delay Ukraine's membership in NATO for 20 years and to station a European peacekeeping contingent in Ukraine. Lavrov is amplifying Russian President Vladimir Putin's December 26 explicit rejection of the Trump team’s reported suggestion to delay Ukraine's membership in NATO for 20 years. Lavrov stated that any agreements to end the war in Ukraine "must eliminate the root causes" of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and "must establish a mechanism to make it impossible to violate them." Lavrov claimed in an interview on December 26 that the two main "root causes" of the war are NATO's alleged violation of obligations to not advance eastward and "aggressive absorption" of areas near Russia's borders and the Ukrainian government's alleged discrimination against ethnic Russians and Russian language, media, and culture in Ukraine. Lavrov's statements are part of ongoing senior Russian officials' statements that the Kremlin refuses to consider any compromises on Putin's late 2021 and early 2022 demands. These demands include forcing Ukraine to become a permanently neutral state that will never join NATO, imposing severe limitations on the size of the Ukrainian military, and removing the Ukrainian government. (Source: understandingwar.org)
2. Israel built an ‘AI factory’ for war. After the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces deluged Gaza with bombs, drawing on a database painstakingly compiled through the years that detailed home addresses, tunnels and other infrastructure critical to the militant group. But then the target bank ran low. To maintain the war’s breakneck pace, the IDF turned to an elaborate artificial intelligence tool called Habsora — or “the Gospel” — which could quickly generate hundreds of additional targets. The use of AI to rapidly refill IDF’s target bank allowed the military to continue its campaign uninterrupted, according to two people familiar with the operation. It is an example of how the decade-long program to place advanced AI tools at the center of IDF’s intelligence operations has contributed to the violence of Israel’s 14-month war in Gaza. The IDF has broadcast the existence of these programs, which constitute what some experts consider the most advanced military AI initiative ever to be deployed. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
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