Federal Reserve officials are expected to keep their short-term interest rate unchanged Wednesday after three cuts last year, ignoring huge pressure for lower borrowing costs from the White House in favor of waiting to see how the economy evolves.
Day: January 28, 2026
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s accession to the European Union is “one of the key security guarantees” both for his country and Europe, Azernews reports.
The post Zelensky wants support for EU membership by 2027 first appeared on The South Caucasus News – SouthCaucasusNews.com.
Jaguars keep OC Grant Udinski, DC Anthony Campanile in the fold for 2026 season reut.rs/3LGS0VI reut.rs/3LGS0VI
— Reuters (@Reuters) Jan 28, 2026
MORE: The Russian military command continues to present demonstrable lies and exaggerations about Russian battlefield gains in order to push Ukraine and the West to concede to the demands that Russia remains unable to achieve militarily.
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) has been lying about the scale of Russian advances for months, provoking repeated criticisms from even pro-war Russian milbloggers. Russian military officials have repeatedly presented inflated claims of Russian advances across the frontline in recent weeks.
The Russian military command has been boasting about the seizure of small, rural villages and presenting these seizures as alleged evidence of the prowess of the Russian military to further the false narrative that Russian victory in Ukraine is inevitable.
The Russian military command is trying to create an alternate battlefield reality in order to influence the ongoing US-led peace talks and to convince Ukraine and the West that Ukraine should accept Russia’s demands now out of fear of future Russian offensives or breakthroughs.
The seizure of small, rural villages only a few square kilometers in area does not portend Russia’s ability to seize the much larger and heavily fortified cities in Ukraine’s Fortress Belt in Donetsk Oblast in the near future.Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar)MORE: ISW continues to assess that Russia would need to expend significant amounts of resources, time, and personnel to seize the rest of Donbas. Russian forces are unlikely to seize the remainder of Donetsk Oblast before August 2027, assuming Russian forces are able to sustain their rate of advance from late November 2025. The Russian rate of advance slowed in late December 2025 and early January 2026, likely in part due to adverse weather conditions, and Russian efforts to seize the rest of Donetsk Oblast could take longer than ISW previously forecasted. A Ukrainian withdrawal from Ukrainian-held territory in Donetsk Oblast would put Russian forces in more advantageous positions to renew attacks against southwestern and central Ukraine in the future after rest and reconstitution.
A strong Ukrainian military and robust Western security guarantees are necessary to effectively deter such future Russian aggression, but Russian officials have repeatedly rejected these security guarantees. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Head Sergei Naryshkin, for example, claimed on January 26 that European states in the Coalition of the Willing are imposing conditions on a peace settlement that are “completely unacceptable” to Russia – likely referring to the coalition’s efforts to finalize a plan to deploy troops to post-war Ukraine. Russian State Duma Defense Committee Deputy Chairperson Alexei Zhuravlyov explicitly rejected on January 27 the deployment of troops from NATO states in post-war Ukraine.
The Kremlin remains unlikely to accept any settlement that includes meaningful security guarantees for Ukraine. The Kremlin’s continued refusal of security guarantees for Ukraine and persistent dismissals of the negotiating process suggest that it remains committed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s theory of victory — the theory that Russia can win in Ukraine by outlasting Ukraine’s ability to fight and the West’s desire to support Ukraine.— https://x.com/TheStudyofWar/status/2016360837015826832
— Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar) Jan 28, 2026