• The Pentagon is telling employees to "pause any response" to DOGE's request for a work report.
• Federal employees were told this weekend to list five tasks they achieved last week by Monday night.
• But the Defense Department has instead said it would be the authority to review its employees.

The Pentagon told employees on Sunday not to respond to an instruction from the White House DOGE office to list their work accomplishments.

"For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled 'What did you do last week,'" the Defense Department wrote in a statement to civilian employees that was posted on X.

"The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures," said the statement, posted on behalf of Darin S. Selnick, the acting defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

It added that the Pentagon would handle responses to the email request.

Selnick was referring to an email sent through the Office of Personnel Management, which asked federal employees to respond by 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday with five tasks or accomplishments they achieved over the last week.

"Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments," said the DOGE email, which was sent to employees in federal agencies across the US.

It came just after President Donald Trump publicly wrote on Saturday that he wanted Elon Musk to "get more aggressive" in cutting workers and expenses from the federal bureaucracy.

Musk, who oversees the DOGE team, also announced the email on social media and said that a "failure to respond will be taken as a resignation."

The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.

Other security-related government departments — including the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — did not respond to requests for comment from BI.

Representatives for the State Department and the FBI declined to comment on the DOGE emails.

• Western companies may be considering a return to Russia post-war, but Moscow doesn't appear too keen.
• Foreign firms left Russia due to sanctions over its Ukraine invasion, impacting the economy.
• Russian officials say the country is prioritizing domestic companies over returning Western firms.

Some of the Western companies that left Russia over its war in Ukraine may be tempted to head back when the war ends — but Moscow wants them to know it's is not in a rush to receive them.

"We are not waiting for anyone with open arms. There will be a price to pay for past decisions," Anton Alikhanov, the Russian industry and trade minister, told reporters on Thursday, according to TASS state news agency.

Three years into the war in Ukraine, nearly 475 foreign companies have left the Russian market completely, according to the Leave Russia database from the Kyiv School of Economics. Those that have made a complete exit include McDonald's, Starbucks, Ikea, British energy giant Shell, and Japanese tire maker Bridgestone.

Alikhanov said Russia is prioritizing domestic brands instead of waiting for foreign brands to return.

His comments come as US President Donald Trump has signaled a willingness for the US to reconcile with Moscow, igniting discussions about the return of some departed companies.

"It is a reasonable assumption that some companies will seek to return to Russia following a comprehensive settlement to end the war," Andrew Staples, the principal of GeoPol Asia, a business strategy and geopolitical risk consultancy, told Business Insider.

Denis Manturov, the first deputy prime minister of Russia, echoed the country's emphasis on domestic companies and those from the Eurasian Economic Union — a group of five post-Soviet states— per TASS.

"We will clear for our market the ones of interest for ourselves," Manturov said on Thursday.

Foreign firms are probably not rushing back to Russia either

International companies may not race back, wrote Edward Verona, a former business executive who was based in Moscow in the 1990s and 2000s.

"Taking another chance on Russia might seem appealing to some. After all, memories can be short in the business world," Verona, who is now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, wrote on Thursday.

Good deals may not be enough to lure back Western companies still concerned about the safety of non-Russian staff and the rule of law, he said.

"US firms may feel less restrained to return than European firms given the geographical and political distance involved," Staples said.

Even if sanctions were to be lifted, he said it's hard to imagine countries closer to the conflict — such as Poland, the Baltic states, Scandinavia, Germany, France, and the UK — get involved again.

Staples said consumer goods companies and firms operating in less sensitive sectors are more likely to return to the market than those in strategic sectors like energy, tech, banking, finance, aerospace, and defense.

Companies seeking to safeguard their reputations and who left Russia for moral reasons are also unlikely to return in the foreseeable future, wrote Verona, who is a former head of the US-Russia Business Council.

Russia's wartime economy

Even if companies are enticed by the prospect of a return to the Russian market, the fundamental question is whether it's worth the effort.

"Perhaps most importantly, from a business perspective, the outlook for the economy is not great," Staples said, citing challenges including high inflation and a tight monetary policy.

The Russian economy has largely held out from three years of Western sanctions — at least on paper — as its leaders focused on defense manufacturing, ramping up military spending to account for 8% of its GDP in 2025.

The ruble slumped to a two-year low of 113.72 against the dollar in early January as Europe's progressive decoupling with Russian energy opened the way for another tranche of US sanctions. That latest measure, one of the Biden administration's final moves, blocks Russia's third-largest bank from handling many energy-related payments.

Still, a new wave of optimism has since buoyed the ruble to a six-month high, at 88.67 against the dollar on Thursday.

The ruble has strengthened about 14% since Trump took office on January 20.

Meanwhile, some of Russia's firms — even those outside the military — are doing well. Yandex, an internet company that operates one of Russia's largest search engines, posted record annual revenues of $11.22 billion on Thursday, surging 37% year-on-year.

Yandex's net income slumped 78% from 2023, to $129 million, as interest and operating expenses increased. Russia hiked interest rates to 21% last year to try to cool surging inflation.

Yandex split from its Dutch-domiciled ownership in July after a two-year negotiation that ended with local buyers acquiring its Russia-based assets.

But other sectors, such as its agriculture, automotive, and commodity industries, have showed signs of struggle.

In particular, Europe has found new sources of energy to supplant Russia, once its largest energy provider. Energy accounts for about one-fifth of Russia's GDP.

Meanwhile, demand from China is sluggish amid its economic downturn, and Trump is pressing other countries to buy more US energy — more competition for Russia's exports.

"Given this economic assessment and continued political and reputational risk of being in Russia, is it an attractive place for foreign firms? I wouldn't anticipate a 'rush to get back to Russia,'" said Staples.

Business risks in Putin's Russia

Even if the numbers work out, there are political risks associated with operating in Russia where President Vladimir Putin — who is in office for a fifth term — has an ironclad rule.

Eurasia Center's Verona wrote that Russia is far from the same Western-partnered country it was under Boris Yeltsin's 1991 to 1999 leadership.

"It is not even the Russia of the early 2000s, before Vladimir Putin had fully consolidated his grip on power and completed the transition from fledgling democracy to authoritarian regime," Verona added. "After twenty-five years of Putin's rule, the Kremlin now dominates all aspects of Russian life, including the country's business climate."

• Ukraine's spy chief said Russia helped North Korea fix a severe accuracy flaw in its KN-23 missiles.
• Often compared to the Iskandar-M, it's a ballistic missile with a range of over 400 miles.
• Budanov cited the KN-23 as an example of how Pyongyang is gaining from its fight against Ukraine.

North Korean KN-23 missiles had an accuracy flaw removed by Russian technicians as they were deployed against Ukraine, said Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's intelligence agency.

Speaking to the South Korean media outlet Chosun Ilbo, Budanov cited the missile as an example of Pyongyang's combat tech receiving major improvements from the active fighting.

"Initially, its accuracy was severely flawed, with an error margin of 500 to 1,500 meters," he said in the interview, published on Monday. "But Russian missile experts made technical modifications, resolving the issue. The missile is now significantly more precise and a far greater threat."

The KN-23 is the missile's US designation, but North Korea has named it the Hwasong-11A. The solid-fueled ballistic missile is believed to have a range of about 430 miles and is often compared to Russia's Iskandar-M, with a typical payload of up to 1,100 pounds.

It's one of North Korea's newer weapons, debuting during a parade in 2018, with a range that would allow it to strike deep into South Korea. In July, Pyongyang said it tested an advanced version of the missile, the Hwasong-11Da-4.5, saying it can carry a 4.5-ton warhead.

The White House said in January 2024 that Russia had fired multiple North Korean short-range ballistic missiles against Ukraine, and it's widely believed that these were the KN-23 and KN-24.

Referencing the strikes, South Korea's ambassador to the United Nations said at the time that North Korea was using Ukraine as "a test site of its nuclear-capable missiles."

During his interview with Chosun Ilbo, Budanov said collaboration between Russia and North Korea was "reaching the highest levels," warning of a heightened threat to Pyongyang's enemies in Asia.

"North Korea is using this war to gain combat experience and modernize its military technology," he told the outlet. "This will have lasting consequences for the security landscape in the Asia-Pacific region."

North Korea's lessons from the war

The West and Seoul have been especially concerned by what they estimate is a deployment of 12,000 North Korean special forces in Kursk.

Western intelligence says about 4,000 of those soldiers have since been wounded or killed. However, Pyongyang's direct involvement has ignited fears that its surviving troops will pick up invaluable combat experience and knowledge of modern war.

Vadym Skibitskyi, the deputy chief of Ukraine's intelligence agency, told Chosun Ilbo that the North Korean troops are learning quickly.

"Their combat effectiveness has improved dramatically, not only with conventional weapons like tanks but also with advanced systems such as drones," Skibitskyi told the outlet.

Pyongyang's soldiers were initially reported to often charge headlong at Ukrainian positions in high-casualty assaults, indicating a force that's primed to aggressively follow orders in the face of death.

In the early days of North Korean troop encounters, Ukrainian sources also said that Pyongyang's troops didn't appear to know that drones could kill them.

But there are some clues that they're adapting.

In January, Ukraine's special forces released what it said were excerpts of a North Korean soldier's diary, one of which described a tactic of sending a soldier into the open to bait drones that could then be gunned down by comrades.

In exchange for his troops and weapons, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is believed to be receiving technical assistance from Russia for his space and arms programs, as well as cash, raw materials, and food.

Their collaboration underscores a budding relationship between Pyongyang and Moscow, as both seek to lean on each other to help weather international sanctions imposed on their economies.

• A Ukrainian brigade says it hasn't seen North Koreans for a while in its part of the front in Kursk.
• North Korea has abruptly reduced its presence in the war after weeks of intense fighting.
• But it's unclear what Pyongyang is planning after conflicting reports of withdrawal emerged.

A Ukrainian brigade in the Kursk region has said it's no longer been encountering North Korean troops, as questions remain over Pyongyang's plans for the war front.

Petro Gaidashchuk, a senior communications officer for the 80th Air Assault Brigade, told Radio NV that while North Korean troops were still reported elsewhere on the battlefield, they'd "disappeared" from his brigade's part of the front.

"If we look at January, the front was saturated with North Koreans, in particular in the area of responsibility of the Galician Brigade," Gaidashchuk said in Ukrainian during the interview published on Monday. The 80th is sometimes referred to as a Galician Brigade.

"As of now, the reports of their presence are partially true," Gaidashchuk said of the North Koreans. "We have not observed them in our part of the front. Other brigades interacted with them a few days ago. As of now, they have disappeared."

Gaidashchuk said his brigade theorized that the North Korean soldiers might have withdrawn because of heavy losses.

"They withdrew, we do not know why," he said.

Other reports in the past month have said the same: After weeks of attempting to storm Ukrainian positions across Kursk, North Korea's forces have grown relatively quiet since late January.

A spokesperson for Ukraine's special forces told local media at the time that his branch hadn't seen North Korean soldiers for weeks, saying the Russian-allied troops had been "forced to withdraw." The New York Times, citing Ukrainian and US officials, reported similar observations the day before, writing that Pyongyang's forces were "taken off the front line."

South Korea's national intelligence agency also said in early February that North Korean troops had been pulled from the fighting.

Western intelligence estimates that about 11,000 North Korean soldiers were sent to fight Ukraine late last year and that about 4,000 have been wounded or killed since.

The UK Defense Ministry said the losses most likely caused North Korea's troops to temporarily withdraw and "rest and refit before redeploying."

But Pyongyang's presence in Kursk doesn't seem to have disappeared completely.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on February 7 that North Korean troops had returned to the front lines in "new assaults" in Kursk, though it's unclear to what extent.

Speaking to The Warzone in late January, Ukraine's intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, also said North Koreans had significantly reduced their presence in Kursk but warned against dismissing them as out of the picture.

"We have to wait some time to see if there are any real changes or if this is just lower activities for a couple of days," Budanov said.

He disputed reports that North Korean troops had completely withdrawn.

Zelenskyy voices triumph over Pyongyang

The uncertainty over North Korea's next move comes as Pyongyang and Moscow strengthen their defense ties to weather the international sanctions imposed on their economies.

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, has sent troops, weapons, and ammunition to Russia, with Western intelligence reporting that he's receiving financial assistance, technological expertise, and food from Russia in exchange.

North Korea sending troops to Kursk sparked concerns in the West that Russia's invasion was drawing the direct involvement of other states. But it's now unclear whether Pyongyang's intervention will escalate as feared or recede.

More recently, Zelenskyy spoke triumphantly on Saturday of Ukraine's fight against North Korea's forces.

"We completely destroyed the North Korean units that Putin had to bring in because his own forces weren't enough to hold back our counteroffensive," he said in his speech at the Munich Security Conference.

Yet he also cautioned against complacency when it came to Pyongyang.

"Make no mistake — North Koreans are not weak," he said. "They are learning how to fight now, how to fight the modern war."

Russia's defense ministry didn't respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.

• A drone unit in Ukraine said it destroyed three prized Russian air defense systems in a single day.
• It posted clips of drone attacks, saying it hit a Tor-M2, a Buk-M2, and a Buk-M3.
• In its post on Saturday, the unit also highlighted that the drones were funded by civilians.

The drone unit of a Ukrainian brigade in Zaporizhzhia said it destroyed three advanced Russian air defense systems in a single day.

The Ronin company of the 65th Mechanized Rifle Brigade posted footage of the first-person view drone attacks on Saturday, saying it took out a Tor-M2, a Buk-M2, and a Buk-M3.

Those are some of Moscow's most prized mobile surface-to-air missile systems, with the Tor-M2 lauded in Russian state media in 2023 as a "cutting-edge" weapon that can counter drone swarms on the move.

With a range of about 7.5 miles, the Tor-M2 is designed to engage up to 48 targets at once at low to medium altitudes.

The Buk-M3 is also one of Russia's newest air defenses. Russian state media outlet TASS compared it in 2016 to the Medium Extended Air Defense System, a Western-made system meant to replace the Patriot. Each Patriot system is estimated to cost about $1.1 billion.

The clips posted by the Ronin company on Saturday showed first-person view drones closely approaching the air defense systems before their video feeds went dark. While the drones' flight trajectory and distance to the Russian defenses indicate a successful hit, Business Insider couldn't independently verify if the systems were actively deployed assets or were destroyed.

But the videos show yet another example of how the fighting in Ukraine is increasingly relying on cheap loitering munitions, even to counter high-value targets.

Drone makers in Ukraine usually tell BI that they sell or create exploding drones for $750 to $1,500 apiece, depending on the device's size.

Meanwhile, it's difficult to pinpoint how much Russia spends on its air defense systems. The Ukrainian military has estimated that the Tor-M2 costs about $27 million per unit and that the Buk-M3 costs about $40 to $50 million per unit.

The Ronin company's post on Saturday also indicated that the drones used in the attack weren't officially supplied but received through civilian donations.

"The sponsor of the defeat is the Sternenko community," the unit wrote on its social media channel, referring to the Ukrainian crowdfunding activist Serhii Sternenko.

Sternenko, one of the biggest drone crowdfunders in Ukraine, acknowledged the attacks on Saturday, calling the drone unit "true masters of their craft" in a post on his Telegram channel.

"We provide them with drones upon individual requests specifically for performing such tasks," he wrote, adding that the air defense systems were positioned at the Russian rear.

Drone warfare continues to evolve on the battlefield in Ukraine.

For example, with loitering munitions becoming so ubiquitous, the war fronts have increasingly been reported to become saturated with jammers. That prompted Russian units to bring fiber-optic drones to the fight last year, and Ukrainian companies and brigades have been following suit in manufacturing their own versions.

Russia's defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside regular business hours.

• Nissan and Honda said they canceled their $50 billion merger
• The merger would have created the world's third-largest automaker.
• Both Japanese companies face declining sales and a slow transition to EVs.

Nissan and Honda called off a $50 billion merger that would have formed one of the world's largest car companies.

The Japanese automakers said on Thursday they scrapped the deal, announced in December, "to prioritize speed of decision-making and execution of management measures" in an "increasingly volatile" market.

The companies said they would continue to work within a "strategic partnership."

Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida said Honda's desire to make his company a subsidiary rather than a partner played a key role in the deal's collapse.

"While both companies have a long history, we were not sure whether this would reflect our autonomy or allow us to demonstrate our potential or strength," he told a press conference.

Both companies released earnings on Thursday shortly after the deal's collapse.

Honda reported a 25% rise in pre-tax profit in the latest quarter, buoyed by strong US sales and its high-performing motorcycle business.

It still faces a major headache in China, where sales collapsed almost 40% in the nine months to December, but its financial position looks decidedly more rosy than its rival.

Nissan's profits crashed to 5.1 billion yen ($33 million) for the nine months to December, down from 325 billion yen ($2.1 billion) in the same period for 2023. It projected an annual loss of 80 billion yen ($519 million).

A scarcity of electric models has seen Nissan lose market share in China to local rivals, while its US sales have also suffered due to a lack of hybrid options and its EV's failure to qualify for $7,500 government tax credits.

Nissan stock has fallen about 25% over the past year. After being about the same size as Honda a decade ago, its market capitalization is now about a fifth of its rival. Honda stock is down about 15% in the same period.

Uchida is now racing to execute a turnaround plan that will involve cutting 9,000 jobs globally. He warned that all options were on the table to ensure the storied automaker's survival.

"Given the latest performance of the company and the changing environment, it is essential to explore all the options without taboo and carry out a deeper structural reform," Uchida said.

Nissan gave more details about its restructuring plans on Thursday, unveiling plans to cut 6,500 jobs at the company's factories in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Thailand.

It also plans to cut global vehicle production by 1 million to 4 million in the 2026 financial year.

Tariffs headache

Both Nissan and Honda also face a looming headache in the form of potential US tariffs on vehicles imported from Mexico and Canada, where the two companies have factories.

Uchida said Nissan would consider moving production from Mexico to other regions if the tariffs go ahead after the temporary suspension expires in March.

Honda vice president Shinji Aoyama said the automaker was racing to export vehicles made in Canada and Mexico into the US before the waiver expired.

The breakdown of the Honda deal leaves Nissan looking for investment elsewhere. The chairman of Apple supplier Foxconn said the Taiwanese firm was considering buying the 36% stake in Nissan owned held by France's Renault.

Private equity firm KKR is also considering an investment in Nissan, Bloomberg reported.

• Germany's top naval officer said "more than one" of its warships were recently sabotaged.
• A day before, a local report said a corvette-class vessel had metal shavings poured into its engine system.
• Without expressly accusing any party, the German naval chief warned of a growing threat from Russia.

Germany's naval chief said on Tuesday that several of Berlin's warships were sabotaged.

Vice Adm. Jan Christian Kaack, the inspector of the German navy, said at a press conference on Tuesday that the damage involved "more than one unit."

Kaack also said there had been attempted break-ins at German naval bases via land and sea, and he spoke of "attempts to approach" uniformed personnel while they were heading home.

The vice admiral did not give further details on the sabotage attempts or explicitly say who was behind them. But Kaack issued a general warning about Moscow while speaking with reporters.

"The growing threat from Russia is more urgent at the beginning of 2025 than it was two years ago," he said.

Kaack's comments follow a report published on Monday by the local outlet Süddeutsche Zeitung, which said that German police were investigating an incident at a Hamburg shipyard where several dozen kilograms of metal shavings were dumped into a corvette-class vessel's engine system.

Per the joint report from broadcasters WDR and NDR, the corvette was a brand-new ship called the "Emden" awaiting delivery to the German military. It's scheduled for deployment to the Baltic Sea, the outlets reported.

Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that if the shavings hadn't been detected during an inspection, they would have caused significant damage to the ship.

At Tuesday's press conference, Kaack was asked to address Süddeutsche Zeitung's report, but he did not directly confirm the "Emden" incident when speaking about sabotage.

The "Emden" is one of the five new K130 corvettes that Germany ordered for delivery in 2025 to fulfill its NATO requirements.

Naval Vessels Lürssen, the company responsible for building the ships in Hamburg, told Agence France-Presse that the "Emden" had recently completed a "successful sea trial."

It did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Germany is already on high alert for sabotage attempts after multiple incidents in the last two years that include a package catching fire on a plane and a fire at an ammunition factory in Berlin.

More recently, a German ammo factory in Spain was hit by an explosion in late January that injured six workers.

German authorities have repeatedly suggested that Russia is the prime suspect, but are still investigating many of these cases.

Ukraine's allies have accused Russia of waging a "hybrid war" against the West, with reports of an attempted assassination against a defense contractor CEO and the growing assessment that Russia-linked oil tankers damaged undersea infrastructure cables in the Baltic Sea.

The Russian government and the German navy did not respond to requests for comment from BI, sent outside regular business hours.

• Palmer Luckey's Anduril is set to take over Microsoft's US Army contract for mixed-reality goggles.
• The 10-year contract, worth $22 billion, has been plagued by development issues.
• Anduril now has a shot — a moment that Luckey said was part of Anduril's original vision.

Palmer Luckey just clinched a big personal win — his defense startup, Anduril, is set to take over Microsoft's $22 billion contract to make high-tech goggles for the US Army.

Both firms announced the transition on Tuesday, saying Anduril would spearhead "oversight of production, future development of hardware and software, and delivery timelines" for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System program.

The IVAS is meant to give soldiers a headset that uses augmented and visual reality to feed them information on the battlefield in real time. One of its most important functions is to help the wearer identify drones quickly and clearly.

For Luckey, the contract transition is his own watershed moment. In his blog on Tuesday, he wrote that the announcement is "deeply personal."

"Everything I've done in my career — building Oculus out of a camper trailer, shipping VR to millions of consumers, getting run out of Silicon Valley by backstabbing snakes, betting that Anduril could tear people out of the bigtech megacorp matrix and put them to work on our nation's most important problems — has led to this moment," he wrote.

The move calls back to Luckey's original foray into the tech industry, when he founded Oculus VR and sold it to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. After being ousted from Facebook, he started Anduril in 2017, and his defense startup has since delved into drones, AI, and counter-electronic warfare systems for the US military.

In September, Microsoft and Anduril said they were collaborating on the IVAS program, with Luckey's firm providing its Lattice software for the headsets.

Now, the entire program is set to be under Anduril's control.

Luckey wrote in his blog that he'd recognized the combat potential for high-tech goggles since he was a teenager, and that providing them to the US military was part of Anduril's original pitch deck eight years ago.

Yet Anduril's size at the time, which he estimated was a team of about a dozen people, hurt its chances at scoring the contract.

"I do believe our crazy pitch could have won this from the start — as things stand, though, there is no time like the present," Luckey wrote.

The US Army is having a rough time with IVAS

The handover still needs to be approved by the US government. The US Army awarded Microsoft the 10-year contract in 2021, when the deal was valued at up to $22 billion.

The IVAS program has since faced a tough road in development and testing. Microsoft converted its HoloLens 2 headsets for military use, but soldiers criticized the devices, complaining of software glitches and side effects like headaches, nausea, and neck strain.

The feedback prompted the US Army to delay the IVAS program in October 2021, and the systems have been repeatedly retweaked for the battlefield in the years after.

Within Microsoft, the entire HoloLens project appeared to be ailing. Business Insider's Ashley Stewart reported in 2022 that plans for a third version of the headset were scrapped, and that the company had lost billions on its mixed-reality program.

In October 2024, Microsoft confirmed plans to halt production of the HoloLens 2 and cut support for the device, throwing the IVAS program into question. Microsoft's move tracked with a shift in the entire industry, as tech giants stepped back from developing mixed-reality headsets to instead focus on the AI race.

After Microsoft's decision, the US Army hinted in late January that it was surveying the market for a new contender for its 10-year contract, releasing a request for information related to the IVAS program.

With Anduril now in the driver's seat, it's not immediately clear what hardware it will use for the IVAS. There was no mention of the discontinued HoloLens 2 in its joint statement with Microsoft.

Instead, the joint statement said that part of Anduril's deal is to make Microsoft's Azure cloud service its "preferred hyperscale cloud" for the IVAS.

As Anduril takes over IVAS, Luckey projected confidence in his blog, writing that he wanted to "turn warfighters into technomancers" through his heads-up displays.

"We have a shot to prove that this long-standing dream is no windmill," he wrote.

Microsoft confirmed to Business Insider that its agreement with Anduril is now pending DoD approval. Anduril did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

• Wounded Russian troops are being sent to North Korean medical facilities, per a Russian official.
• Moscow's ambassador to Pyongyang, Alexander Matsegora, said the deal involved "hundreds" of troops.
• War analysts said it could give North Korea an opportunity to learn even more from the Ukraine war.

Russia is sending soldiers who were wounded in the Ukraine war to recuperate in North Korea, its ambassador to Pyongyang told state media.

The comment from Alexander Matsegora, Moscow's diplomat to North Korea for over a decade, was part of a wide-ranging interview about cross-border relations that state-run outlet Rossiyskaya Gazeta published on Monday.

"A clear example of such a brotherly attitude is the rehabilitation of hundreds of wounded soldiers of the SVO in Korean sanatoriums and hospitals," he said. "SVO" is an abbreviation used by the Kremlin to describe the war in Ukraine as a "special military operation."

Matsegora said North Korea had refused compensation from Moscow.

"Everything related to staying in the DPRK, all this was absolutely free," he said.

Matsegora said there was a "warm attitude toward Russians" in North Korea and mentioned several joint student and internship programs in the works between the two countries.

His remarks are yet another sign of how the strengthening alliance between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is playing out on the war front and beyond.

Kim is estimated to have sent about 11,000 to 12,000 of his elite troops to fight against Ukraine, prompting concerns in the West that Pyongyang's involvement would help its soldiers gain valuable combat experience.

Analysts from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, wrote that Russia sending wounded troops to North Korea could boost what Pyongyang can learn.

"The arrival of combat-experienced Russian soldiers, particularly if they include officers or non-commissioned officers, to North Korea may allow the Russian military to work with North Korean forces and disseminate lessons from the war in Ukraine while ostensibly recuperating," they wrote.

Matsegora also told state media that professors from Pyongyang would be stationed in major Russian cities such as Moscow, Kazan, Novosibirsk, and Vladivostok for a "long period of time." There, they would teach the Korean language and teach joint classes, he said.

ISW analysts said this indicates that Russia hopes to set the stage for further North Korean assistance in the war, or at least for help with its sanctioned wartime economy.

"The Kremlin may be setting informational conditions to justify an influx of North Korean citizens arriving in Russia to join either the Russian workforce or the Russian military," the ISW analysts wrote.

Matsegora's comments also come as Russia's Federal Security Service reported that the number of North Koreans entering Russia for work in 2024 had surged to over 13,000 crossings. That's a 12-fold increase compared to 2023.

Still, the exponential jump could also be due to a recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, over 21,000 North Koreans were recorded traveling to Russia for work.

Seoul's National Intelligence Service said on Sunday that many of the North Korean workers sent to Russia last year were dispatched to construction sites.

Per the South Korean agency, the move has helped to fill a worker shortage in Russia as the Kremlin's push to recruit more soldiers is draining the country's young workforce.

The NIS further accused Pyongyang and Moscow of using student visas to "dispatch workers without the international community's knowledge."

The international community imposes a wide range of sanctions on North Korea, while the West has been actively trying to sanction key Russian sectors such as energy, finance, and defense due to its invasion of Ukraine.

• DeepMind's Demis Hassabis said DeepSeek's new model is "impressive" but overhyped.
• Hassabis said it brought "no actual new scientific advance," as firms like his race to develop AGI.
• He also said many of the techniques used by DeepSeek were pioneered by his team.

Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google's DeepMind, said he's impressed by DeepSeek's new AI model but thinks the hype around the Chinese tech is exaggerated.

"I mean, just briefly, on DeepSeek, it's an impressive piece of work, and I think it's probably the best work I've seen come out of China," Hassabis said on Sunday in Paris, where he's set to attend the AI Action Summit.

"But it's important to understand that despite the hype, there's no actual new scientific advance there. It's using known techniques," added Hassabis. "Actually many of the techniques we invented at Google and at DeepMind."

He cited Alpha Zero, DeepMind's learning system that taught itself chess, go, and shogi to the point where it could beat world champions.

Still, Hassabis acknowledged that DeepSeek's new model could make a difference on the "geopolitical scale."

The Chinese AI product sent shockwaves through the tech industry last month when it showed that it could rival American models like OpenAI's ChatGPT, threatening to overturn what the markets had believed was a substantial lead held by US firms.

DeepSeek also said that it spent a fraction of what American firms were investing in their AI models, shaking perceptions of how much it truly costs to develop and improve advanced machine learning. The model's debut eventually sparked a $1 trillion sell-off in the US market.

Meanwhile, Google also said in its earnings on Tuesday that it's planning to spend $75 billion on capital expenditure this year.

His team and those at AI powerhouses like OpenAI and Microsoft have been focused on a race to achieve artificial general intelligence, or the point when an AI model can reach or surpass human reasoning.

DeepMind, DeepSeek, and Highflyer, the Chinese hedge fund that backs DeepSeek, did not respond to requests for comment sent by Business Insider.

• Several Russian officials are defending military use of donkeys after images of the pack animals went viral.
• Pro-war bloggers said the donkeys are being used to transport ammo and supplies to front-line units.
• One parliament official said Russia is experiencing "very significant difficulties" with logistics.

Donkeys are starting to appear among the Kremlin's invasion forces, with Russian media and war commentators reporting that the animals are used to ferry ammunition and supplies.

The spotlight on the pack animals comes as the Ukraine war continues to strain resources on both sides, and as Russia's ability to sustain its cornered economy — now increasingly reliant on defense manufacturing — remains in question. Its full-scale invasion is set to enter its fourth year on February 24.

Pro-Kremlin military bloggers published footage last week of soldiers interacting with donkeys, saying they were deployed as pack transport. Business Insider could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage.

"The guys in one of the directions were given a donkey for logistics. A real donkey," wrote one military blogger who posted a photo of a donkey standing next to a uniformed man.

"What did you expect? Vehicles are in short supply these days!" wrote another Russian commentator, Kirill Federov.

A widely circulated voice note, which Russian bloggers said was from a soldier on the front lines, said the donkeys were not provided by volunteers but by Russia's Defense Ministry. However, the ministry has not publicly addressed the claim.

Federov and several other bloggers also posted an image of three armed people in uniform posing with a camel.

It's unclear how widely the donkeys are being deployed, but several Russian officials publicly defended the practice when the images went viral among military bloggers.

"There's nothing wrong with this," Viktor Sobolev, a member of the State Duma's defense committee, told the Russian outlet Gazeta. The State Duma is the lower house of Russia's national legislature.

Sobolev, a retired lieutenant general of the Russian army, cited " very significant difficulties in supplying units and subdivisions" with ammo and food. He said pack-animal transport was a valid solution, and that losing a donkey would be better for the Russian military than losing troops or transport vehicles.

"During the Great Patriotic War, part of our artillery was horse-drawn," Sobolev added, referring to World War II.

Another member of the State Duma defense committee, Viktor Zavarin, told the Russian TV network RTVI: "Let it work, let the donkeys help the victory."

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by BI.

Meanwhile, the appearance of the donkeys has triggered a deluge of satirical memes in both Russia and Ukraine, such as a comic panel about a Soviet version of the donkey character Eeyore from the cartoon "Winnie the Pooh" being mobilized for the war.

Two Majors, a popular pro-war Russian military blogger, asked on Telegram if donkeys that gave birth in service would have their offspring considered state-owned property.

"If one is captured by an enemy sabotage group, will it be considered missing in action or a prisoner of war?" they wrote.

• Ukrainian companies are increasing the production of fiber-optic drones.
• The drones can't be jammed with traditional electronic warfare, making them a huge threat in combat.
• BI spoke with several people involved in the effort to scale up production to keep pace with Russia.

Drones radically changed the Ukraine war. Soldiers then learned to fight back with electronic warfare. It's been a cat-and-mouse game since, and now, the fight is evolving once again.

This time, a new breed of drones is the catalyst.

George, an Eastern European drone pilot with Ukraine's International Legion, vividly recalls the first time he deployed one of these drones.

It was last fall, and he had just received intelligence that five Russians were positioned in a cellar in the village of Hlyboke, an area where intense Russian jamming had made it almost impossible for Ukrainian forces to fly their drones.

He flew his drone and its three-and-a-half-pound explosive payload through Russia's electronic shield. It slipped past the frequency jammers and into a hole in the target structure. Smoke engulfed the enemy position as a recon drone watched the scene from above.

His team cheered as they observed the strike on a screen from miles away. George had just live-tested a fiber-optic drone that could bypass electronic warfare, and the implications were huge.

"That first time I used the fiber optic, I never wanted to go back to the regular. It just cannot compare," George, an Eastern European drone pilot with the International Legion, told Business Insider. For security reasons, he and several other sources asked to be identified only by their first names. BI verified their identities.

Russians first brought fiber-optic drones to the war this past spring, and since then, Ukraine has been racing to develop and produce them at scale. The weapons became more prominent in the fall, especially in Russia's Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched a shock invasion in early August.

BI spoke to executives at several Ukrainian companies producing fiber-optic drone supplies. Some said they're starting to close the gap with Russia, which had a head start.

"Whichever side adapts quicker and learns and transforms its capabilities, that side becomes dominant," George said. "Well, the Russians have been dominant. It's clear. No one can say otherwise."

Ukraine's booming drone market

Troy Smothers, a US Marine veteran who runs the firm Drone Reaper, said his phone immediately lit up with calls from Ukrainian units after the footage of the strike in Hlyboke was posted online (there was some delay between the strike and the video post). Pilots who saw the demo wanted in on the tech, a simple fiber-optic kit. In Ukraine, many individual combat units procure their own parts for drone projects.

"Ukrainian developers are actively ramping up the production of fiber-optic drones," Nataliia Kushnerska, a senior executive in Ukraine's defense industry, told BI. "There is a strong demand for this from the Ukrainian military, addressing a real need on the front lines where electronic warfare tools are increasingly disrupting drone operators' activities."

Fiber-optic drones are regular first-person-view drones that can carry a small explosive payload. Instead of relying on a radio frequency signal connection, which can be jammed, they're equipped with spools of long, thin cables to ensure a stable link between the drone and its operator.

Because of the fiber-optic cables, these drones are highly resistant to traditional electronic warfare systems like frequency jammers, making them dangerous and difficult to defend against. They produce high-quality video transmissions without bandwidth issues, allowing the operator to guide them for pinpoint strikes on enemy troops or vehicles.

"There is almost no defense against these drones," Max, the CEO of the Kyiv-based company BattleBorn, which develops and makes a range of drones, told BI. "They hit expensive equipment very often and efficiently."

BattleBorn is one of many Ukrainian companies producing fiber-optic drones. Alex, the COO, told BI that his drones have a range of up to 6.2 miles — he expects this will soon increase to 9.3 miles — and can carry anywhere from 3 to 17.6 pounds of explosives, depending on the size of the drone.

There is a trade-off to relying on fiber-optic cable connections, though. Manufacturers have to make space on the drones for their spools, thus reducing the payload these platforms can carry. Alex said producing the coil — which is quite fragile and can be vulnerable to damage — is also a complicated technical process.

Kushnerska, the chief operating officer of Brave1, a Ukrainian government platform that facilitates innovation within the country's defense industry, said dozens of teams across the country are working on fiber-optic drones.

Some teams make their own spools domestically, while others source their hardware from overseas, mainly China. Kushnerska said that Ukrainian companies can produce thousands of fiber-optic drones a month, and the number of participating firms is only growing.

Krab Technologies, a company based in Kharkiv, custom-designed a spool kit that crams roughly 10 kilometers of fiber-optic cable onto a drone while only increasing its weight by less than 2.2 pounds. The company's owner, Vlad, said his firm uses a Chinese-produced 0.25mm fiber-optic cable — about as thick as a coarse strand of human hair. That's about half as thin as the fiber optics that he said Russia's forces use.

"We're getting a big quantity of orders from military units," Vlad said. "We have more than 15,000 spools ordered."

Vlad's fiber-optic drones cost about $350 at their cheapest. His most expensive offering is a 13-inch drone that can carry a seven-pound explosive payload and has a range of roughly 12.5 miles. That one costs $900. Regular hobby-style first-person view drones, which rely on signal connections, cost just a fraction of that price. But Ukraine will likely have little to no alternative as radio frequency jammers become more prolific on the battlefield.

"The moment you reach the zero line, you're jammed," said George, referring to the moment one crosses out of Ukrainian-held territory.

By his estimates, a typical day of fighting would see 70% of the regular first-person view drones fail to reach their targets. For pilots like him, operating on the field has become a slog of sending drone after drone at his target, hoping one will get through.

"It's not just about the video signal," he said. "It's incredibly hard to get through the signal disruptions because you can't control your drone anymore. You feel like it's being controlled by someone else."

Vlad of Krab Technologies said that a common strategy in Ukraine is to use the more expensive fiber-optic drones to target the jammers first, then send in the regular loitering munitions to do the rest of the work.

'This must be the priority'

Fiber-optic drones aren't perfect — the cable can snap or get hung up on obstacles — but they offer options to punch holes in the formidable electronic warfare shields hindering front-line drone operations, especially as AI-driven autonomous systems still haven't come online.

They can target advancing forces shielded by mobile electronic warfare, increasing the already high costs of enemy advances, as well as protected fixed positions.

After observing Moscow's forces using fiber-optic drones this past Spring, Smothers, the US Marine veteran, and several friends reverse-engineered their own spool from photos of a downed Russian model discovered by Ukrainians in March 2024. Once they had a design, Smothers said, he then toured Ukraine with about 50 fiber-optic kits for four-and-a-half months, pitching the tech to drone units.

A big part of wartime innovation, he said, is demonstrating that the tech works in battle.

"You take a guy like myself who doesn't have a drone background or even an electronic background, if I can deploy it, that means the average military member can use that design and be effective with it," he said. Smothers worked in the real-estate industry back home and was an infantry sergeant in the Marines.

He returned to the US in the winter to procure 30- and 50-kilometer fiber-optic spools from an American defense firm. Since early January, he's been offering them to Ukrainian units.

Ukrainian officials are pushing the defense industry to make more drones. In mid-January, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that 2025 "must be a record-breaking year" for drone production output. Kyiv has raised its annual manufacturing capacity to 4 million units, a significant increase from previous years.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian defense ministry recently announced that it will provide combat units with $60 million monthly to procure drones to quickly meet front-line needs. This initiative allows soldiers to sidestep slower, centralized purchasing.

Since his fiber-optic strike in Hlyboke this past fall, George said he'd flown a few more wired drones in combat over Kharkiv. But he stressed that his unit still has too few of these platforms. Russian troops, on the other hand, have been hunting his comrades with fiber-optic drones for over a year.

"In probably a year or two, there will be something else coming up, something new," George said, "but right now, this must be the priority because this can actually do the work."

• Russian soldiers are showing up on the front lines in crutches, the UK Defense Ministry said.
• It's likely a sign that Russia's military medical system is "overburdened," the ministry said.
• Several videos of Russian soldiers in crutches and casts have gone viral in Ukraine.

Repeated frontline sightings of Russian soldiers on crutches suggest Moscow's injured troops are returning to combat from a medical system struggling to keep up, the UK's Defense Ministry said.

Citing open-source reports, the ministry wrote in an intelligence update on Sunday that it's "highly likely injured Russian personnel are being returned to combat duties in Ukraine with unhealed wounds, often on crutches."

It specifically named the 20th Combined Arms Army, which the intelligence update said had likely formed "assault groups" of wounded soldiers.

"There is a realistic possibility Russian commanders are directing this activity to retain personnel who would otherwise become lost in the overburdened medical system," the ministry wrote.

The update pointed to Ukraine's estimate that 830,000 Russian soldiers have been wounded or killed in the war so far, with about 400,000 requiring treatment at medical facilities outside the war zone.

"The injured soldiers have likely been returned to their units after being discharged from forward medical facilities, prematurely, at the behest of their commanders," the British ministry wrote. "This reduces the pressure on the overburdened military medical system and increases unit's ability to track and use wounded servicemen for operational tasks."

"The lack of proper medical attention in facilities away from the front line necessitates the transfer of the administrative and medical burden back to troops' units," it added.

The UK's assessment comes as pro-Ukraine Telegram channels posted clips last month of Russian men in military uniforms moving on crutches through a forested area near Pokrovsk. Several others were filmed complaining about the deployment.

In mid-January, Ukrainian sources posted drone footage of two men walking on crutches in an open field that was also said to be near Pokrovsk. The drone dropped several munitions on both men, appearing to incapacitate them.

However, it's visually unclear what initial injury either man sustained before the drone attack. Neither is it clear whether they were assaulting Ukrainian forces or moving between Russian positions.

The footage has gained traction in Russia, too. Military blogger Svyatoslav Golikov, for example, criticized the reported practice of sending wounded troops to fight, calling it an "entire wild disgrace" in a post in late January.

"In particularly egregious cases, obvious cripples can even be sent to assault, but more often they are sent to fortify newly recaptured positions," he wrote.

Golikov wrote that it's possible the two men in the drone video were seen without weapons or equipment because Russian soldiers are often told to find their own supplies on the front line.

The criticism also follows recent backlash on Russian social media toward the treatment of the war's wounded, after a video that went viral in mid-January showed a man in military fatigues assaulting two injured Russians with a baton and a stun gun.

Local authorities in Kyzyl, a city in the Russian region of Tuva, told Moscow-based news agency Interfax that they were investigating the incident.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a comment request sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Signs of strain in Russia's troop supply are significant, because the war now increasingly hinges on whether Moscow or Kyiv can outlast each other in terms of gear and soldiers.

To enlist recruits, the Kremlin has been raising sign-up bonuses and benefits for newcomers, with some Russian regions seeing cash incentives almost on par with the US military's.

Russia is already set to spend almost a third of its federal budget on defense in 2025, or 13.5 trillion rubles (worth $135 billion, at press time), as its economy grows isolated by Western-led sanctions.

• China's internet is in love with Liang Wenfeng after his firm, DeepSeek, sparked an AI uproar in the US.
• His burst of stardom has come largely off the back of a subsequent market rout in the US.
• Local media are now calling Liang a "genius," an "AI hero of Guangdong," and a "great god."

As US tech stocks roiled on Monday from the hype about Chinese startup DeepSeek, the company's founder is being lauded as a hero back home.

Hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng, who started the artificial intelligence firm as a side project in 2023, went viral on Chinese social media on Tuesday largely because of the rout.

DeepSeek's cost-effectiveness was already making waves in the tech industry over the last two weeks, but it was the latest market reaction that pushed Liang into internet stardom in China.

DeepSeek's story is now that of a Chinese startup — which says it spent $6 million building a large language model rival to ChatGPT — shocking investors and AI scientists so much that US stocks like Nvidia lost a collective $1 trillion in on-paper value within a day.

In a bout of national pride, viral threads on Weibo, China's version of X, regularly referenced Liang's hometown of Zhanjiang in Guangdong province.

"DeepSeek is a megahit: internet users buzz about three AI heroes of Guangdong," said one top thread with 18 million views, as of Tuesday morning Beijing time.

Liang was listed as one of those "heroes," alongside Moonshot AI's founder, Yang Zhilin, and the AI scientist He Kaiming, who is an author of one of the most-cited papers on machine learning.

Notably, China's social media is heavily moderated, making it difficult to determine the full scope of discussion on any given topic. However, that can also provide insight into the rhetoric and topics that are encouraged or permitted in its online spaces.

Another major Weibo discussion, with more than 52 million views, anticipated Liang's return to his hometown for the Lunar New Year, which begins on Wednesday. The Yangcheng Evening News, a Guangdong-based regional newspaper, praised Liang as a "genius" and "great god with foreign fame."

"Let us wish that he shall create more miracles," the paper wrote.

"The country must protect him! Seriously," wrote a popular Shanghai-based blogger with 2.2 million followers.

Liang was also spotted among several advisors who gave suggestions to Chinese Premier Li Qiang at a symposium last week on Beijing's direction on AI.

Having Li's ear could be significant, because the premier is the top official responsible for implementing Chinese leader Xi Jinping's executive decisions. Time Magazine, for example, described him as Xi's COO in its 100 Most Influential People list for 2024.

But the DeepSeek founder's presence at the symposium gained attention online more because of Liang's age: The 40-year-old was filmed sitting among a panel of visibly older men.

"How the post-85 youth from Zhanjiang 'surprised' the world," one viral thread about him said. Generations are popularly referred to as "post-1990" or "post-1980" in China, as opposed to "millennial" or "Gen Z."

Liang, who grew up in the 1980s in Guangdong, and his firm rocked the tech space earlier this month with the release of their flagship AI model, R1, which experts say is sophisticated enough to compete with ChatGPT.

DeepSeek said it used only 2,000 Nvidia H800 chips to train R1, meaning it spent about $6 million — a cost dwarfed by the billions invested into AI by US tech giants.

As of press time, the DeepSeek app hit the number 1 spot on Apple's Top Free Apps chart.

DeepSeek and Liang's quant hedge fund, High Flyer, did not respond to requests for comment sent by Business Insider.

• North Korea is set to send another tranche of artillery systems to Russia, Kyrylo Budanov said.
• The Ukrainian intel chief said Pyongyang already has about 240 artillery systems in Russia.
• These are chiefly homegrown self-propelled howitzers and multiple-launch rocket systems.

North Korea looks like it's ready to double down on Russia's war, per Ukraine's military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov.

Budanov, head of the intelligence agency GUR, told The Warzone that Pyongyang has already given Russia at least 120 M1989 "Koksan" self-propelled howitzers and 120 M1991 multiple-launch rocket systems. The M1989 uses a 170-mm caliber gun, and the M1991 is a 240-mm system.

Per The Warzone, Budanov said the artillery deliveries were made over the last three months, and that Pyongyang will likely send another tranche of about the same number.

Both guns are systems developed by North Korea, and their names — designated by the US — correspond to the year when Western intelligence first discovered them.

Pyongyang maintains deep reserves of artillery systems and ammunition, built and stockpiled mainly to defend against or threaten its rival, South Korea.

Its systems often use some elements of Soviet or Chinese weaponry. The M1989, for example, is believed to use a modified Soviet artillery tractor to get around.

These are also a step up from the 1970s-built North Korean weaponry that Russia was observed using in 2024.

Speaking to The Warzone, Budanov said both guns are being used by Russia against Ukrainian troops, and that North Korea is helping to train Russian operators to use the systems.

"The 170mm weapons have powerful ammunition and good capability," Budanov said. "The 240mm MLRS are like any other heavy systems. They make more problems on the front line."

Additionally, Budanov said North Korea is expected to send another 150 short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, after sending about 148 in 2024.

Intelligence agencies from the West and South Korea also say that Pyongyang has also sent Russia about 12,000 troops from its elite "Storm Corps" units.

Western estimates say they've taken heavy casualties since arriving in late 2024 to Kursk. One of the latest tallies, reported by the BBC this week, cites anonymous Western officials saying that 4,000 of the North Koreans were killed or wounded. Business Insider could not independently verify the authenticity of this figure.

Pyongyang's losses in Kursk pale in comparison to the scope of the entire war, with some Western estimates saying that Russia has suffered more than 600,000 men wounded or killed.

However, recurring North Korean support would provide Russia with a valuable source of manpower and weapons. While relatively small compared to Russia's total war consumption, that aid could stand a chance to frustrate Western hopes that Moscow's reliance on defense spending will become unsustainable for its economy.

The Kremlin's defense budget has surged for the third year since invading Ukraine in 2022. Military spending made up 32.5% of its federal budget in 2025, up from 28.3% in 2024.

• The ex-commander of the 155th Mechanized Brigade has been arrested, with bail set at $2.1 million.
• Col. Dmytro Ryumshin led the "Anne of Kyiv" brigade until stepping down abruptly in December.
• The unit was hyped as French-trained but has faced reports of mass desertion before deploying.

A court in Kyiv has set bail for Col. Dmytro Ryumshin, the recently replaced commander of Ukraine's 155th Mechanized Brigade, at $2.1 million.

His lawyer, Bohdan Zabara, told Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne of the court's decision on Wednesday.

It comes as Ukraine probes a series of scandals that have marred the combat debut of the 155th — a new brigade partially trained in France and equipped with modern French weaponry.

Nicknamed "Anne of Kyiv" after an 11th-century Kyiv princess who became a French queen, it was touted as a way for Europe to directly strengthen Ukraine's starved manpower. But the brigade's reputation soured at home as local journalists reported that it continually suffered from mass desertion and was being picked apart to reinforce other units.

One reporter, Yuriy Butusov, estimated that 1,700 men had gone AWOL before the 155th was sent into battle, including about 50 men who deserted in France.

Ryumshin oversaw the 155th as it prepared to deploy on the front lines, but suddenly announced his resignation in early December.

Federal investigators arrested him on Monday, accusing him of the "systematic concealment" of desertion among his troops. The State Bureau of Investigation said Ryumshin received both verbal and written reports of discipline issues, but had neither notified higher authorities nor acted upon this information.

"Due to the commander's actions, law enforcement officers were unable to initiate the legal procedure to search for and return servicemen to their military unit and reserve battalions, or in some cases, ensure that they served their sentences for the crimes they committed," the investigators said.

Ryumshin's lawyer, Zabara, told Suspilne that the colonel would contest the bail amount set by authorities in Kyiv. Should he fail to meet bail, he must serve 60 days in detention before his closed-door hearing.

Zabara did not respond to a comment request sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Meanwhile, the 155th's social media accounts show that its men are now fighting around Pokrovsk, where Russia has been pushing slowly but relentlessly to capture the key strategic city.

The brigade is equipped with 18 AMX 10 armored vehicles, 18 truck-mounted Caesar howitzers, and 128 armored troop carriers. It enjoyed a relatively high profile while training in France, with French President Emmanuel Macron meeting its troops during an October visit.

And it looks like Europe isn't done with these joint training programs. The European Union has allocated $425 million to training more Ukrainian soldiers until the end of 2026, including 15,000 by the winter of 2025.

But at home, the 155th's reputation is still shaky. Some fighters and analysts in Ukraine believe it was a mistake for Kyiv to make brand-new brigades like the 155th instead of replenishing older, more experienced units that were already fighting.

Serhii Sternenko, a well-known Ukrainian lawyer who provides crowdfunded drones to military units, said his organization was assisting the 155th because the brigade lacked officially provided drones and jammers.

"Why create a new brigade when existing brigades are critically understaffed, only to later divide it and transfer personnel to the old brigades? What's the point?" he wrote in early January on his Telegram channel.

As the 155th geared up to enter the fray, its men were also often siphoned off by other brigades in desperate need, leaving the French-trained force to haphazardly reassign its troops to positions they didn't train for.

Sergey Filimonov, commander of Ukraine's 108th Battalion, wrote on January 10 that he knew of about "10 such brigades operating under these conditions."

He added that Western training methods, while provided by NATO troops, "often fail to align with the realities of modern warfare" in Ukraine.

"The realities of modern warfare show that foreign training, unless adapted to Ukrainian conditions and integrated with unit practices, is not only ineffective but dangerous," he wrote in an opinion piece published by Ukrainska Pravda.

Ukrainian leaders appear to be listening. Butusov, the journalist who broke the news about desertion in the 155th, reported on January 12 that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had ordered for all freshly mobilized troops to be sent to existing brigades instead of being assigned to newly formed units.

The Ukrainian and French defense ministries did not respond to comment requests sent outside regular business hours by BI.

• Sweden uses nighttime satellite photos to gauge Russia's economic health, its economic minister said.
• Elisabeth Svantesson said the inflation figures from Russia's central bank were an understatement.
• Images of Moscow before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine are noticeably brighter, she said.

The declining health of Russia's economy is as clear as day — or night, a finance minister said Wednesday.

Elisabeth Svantesson, the finance minister of Sweden, said she and her officials were skeptical of how Russia's official figures were describing its economy.

One measure they use instead, she said on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, is comparing photos of Moscow by night.

The lighting there, she said, was darker in 2023 than in 2021, indicating a capital and a nation in trouble.

Business Insider found some public photos showing the Moscow skyline in the years Svantesson mentioned. Here is one from March 2021:

And another from November 2023:

It's hard to make a precise comparison — the time of day and cloud cover are different.

But in the 2023 image, the pools of light showing Moscow's suburbs appear smaller and less frequent than in the preinvasion image.

"It's very clear that the Russian economy is definitely not as strong as Putin wants us to believe," Svantesson said.

She said that Moscow's inflation was "much higher than the public figure says." Russia's most recent figure puts it at 9.5%, which Svantesson said was out of kilter with its main interest rate of 21%.

She also said levels of capital leaving Russia suggested a struggling economy, as did the space photos of Moscow.

"There is over Moscow, for example, a much darker picture," she said.

"They're not using as much electricity," said the panel moderator, Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy.

"No, no, no. It's much darker," Svantesson said.

Western countries imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in the wake of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, mostly designed to cut off the oil and gas exports crucial to its economy.

The Kremlin says it has withstood the worst potential effects of the sanctions. Svantesson said that vision of a strong economy was a tactic to convince Ukraine and its allies that sanctions don't work.

She concluded that "we don't know" the true state of Russia's economy, "but what we know is that his narrative and his truth is not true."

• Ukrainian paratroopers said a North Korean soldier they captured ran into a pillar to knock himself out.
• They said they found him alone on the battlefield with a grenade, a knife, and some food.
• Their prisoner closely resembles one of the two North Koreans Ukraine said it captured.

Ukrainian paratroopers in Kursk said they captured a North Korean soldier who tried so hard to evade capture that he intentionally ran into a concrete pillar to knock himself out.

Three members of the 95th Separate Air Assault Polissia Brigade spoke of the encounter in a video published on Tuesday, describing how one of their drones found a lone North Korean on the battlefield after an assault had ended.

The clip was published by the brigade's press service on its YouTube, Facebook, and Telegram accounts.

The paratroopers said they enveloped the North Korean with guidance from drone operators and found that he didn't respond to commands in Ukrainian, Russian, or English.

"With gestures, we showed him what to do," one of the paratroopers said.

The soldier was carrying a grenade, a knife, and a sausage, the paratroopers said.

They said the North Korean was also visibly wounded, with his jaw bandaged and one of his hands appearing to be injured.

One paratrooper said the injured soldier appeared calm at first but grew agitated when he saw a vehicle coming to pick him up.

"When we brought him near the road, suddenly he ran headfirst into a concrete pillar at full speed. He hit it very hard and probably passed out," he said.

But the paratrooper also suspects it might have been a ploy by the North Korean soldier, because the latter fell backward, not forward, as one might expect when a charging person faints.

"I think he was faking it, trying to get us close so he could grab a weapon and attack us," he said.

The paratroopers said they eventually hauled the North Korean into a vehicle and took him away from the front lines, after which he received food and watched romance films upon request.

An older paratrooper said in the video that the North Koreans' tactics appeared to mimic Russia's Soviet-era fighting, with frontal assaults where "they try to crush simply with massive numbers."

But he added that while Russian forces in Kursk tend to attack in groups of two or three, the North Koreans would conduct assaults with groups of at least six.

The paratroopers said that Pyongyang's forces would fight to the end if cornered, adding that their brigade reported instances where wounded North Koreans blew themselves up to avoid capture.

"They are not in a mood to surrender," one of the paratroopers said.

The man they captured appears to be one of two North Korean soldiers whom Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced had been seized from the battlefield in early January.

One was captured by Ukraine's special forces, while the other was found by the Polissia brigade.

The paratroopers posted a clip of their prisoner on January 11, which they referenced when recounting the events of his capture in their Tuesday video.

Another North Korean soldier, separate from the pair shown by Zelenskyy, was captured in December, but South Korea's intelligence service said he died of his injuries shortly after.

Western and South Korean intelligence estimate that 12,000 North Korean soldiers have been sent to Russia, where they've been deployed to fight a Ukrainian incursion in the Kursk region.

Their presence in the war is a significant sign of Pyongyang and Moscow strengthening an economic and military partnership spurred by Russia's isolation since the war began.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is believed to have received food, financial assistance, and Russian expertise in space and weapons technologies in return for his troops and guns.

Meanwhile, the West fears that North Korean troops are gaining valuable combat experience from fighting in Russia.

A captured North Korean soldier's documents obtained by The Washington Post discusses guidance related to the six-man frontal assaults the paratroopers spoke of.

"In modern warfare, where real-time reconnaissance and drone strikes are conducted, failing to disperse combat teams into smaller units of two to three members could lead to significant casualties from enemy drones and artillery," one document read, per The Post.

• Sanofi's CEO said the pharma firm uses AI to help decide to move a drug to the next developmental phase.
• He said it's a "sobering" process because AI agents have no careers at stake.
• "The agent isn't wedded to the project for 10 years," Paul Hudson said at Davos.

Paul Hudson, CEO of the pharmaceutical firm Sanofi, has an argument for letting AI make top-level decisions in medicine: It has no attachments.

Speaking at a panel in Davos on Tuesday, Hudson said Sanofi uses AI to recommend whether drugs should "pass through a tollgate," or essentially get approval to move to the next phase of development.

He said that when Sanofi's senior decision-makers convene to discuss a drug, they start with an AI's recommendation for their choice.

"And we do that because it's very sobering, because the agent doesn't have a career at stake," Hudson said. "The agent isn't wedded to the project for the last 10 years. The agent is dispassionately saying: 'Don't go forward or go forward faster, or go forward and remember these things.'"

"And we're not used to having somebody without a career at stake in the room at a senior level," he continued.

Hudson also said that Sanofi typically takes about 12 to 15 years to fully develop a drug and bring it to market and that it's been practically using AI for about three years.

By his estimate, that means AI has been around at Sanofi for about a third of the "discovery" process for some drugs. That process is when manufacturers figure out what compounds should qualify as candidates for new medicines.

The pharmaceutical company, which makes drugs like Lantus insulin jabs and Plavix blood thinners, spends about three billion euros, or $3.1 billion, on discovery within that timeframe, Hudson said.

He and four other senior-level speakers, including Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman and Aramco CEO Amin Nasser, spoke positively about AI at the panel, saying people shouldn't be so worried that they might lose their jobs.

"The jobs that are at risk are the jobs where the human isn't interested in AI. AI doesn't beat human plus AI," Hudson said.

Sanofi's press team did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

• A commander in Ukraine's 14th UAV regiment said combat drone tech can change in a month.
• One example is the evolving need for new hardware to counter jamming techniques, he said.
• Military contracts like a three-year agreement wouldn't be able to fulfill those demands in time, he said.

A Ukrainian commander overseeing a drone battalion said the speed at which his decentralized manufacturers can alter their battlefield tech gives them an edge over traditional defense production lines.

"We say to them: 'Here, after three months, this antenna no longer works, this GPS module no longer works.' We tell them: 'This and this needs to be changed,'" said a battalion commander for the 14th Unmanned Aerial Vehicle regiment to the Ukrainian military channel ARMY TV.

"They say: 'No problem.' And in one month, on the dot, they implement it," added the commander, referring to drone producers in Ukraine. He was identified by his call sign, Kasper, in an interview published on Sunday.

"We can plan all according to the rules and try to aim where we are going to be in 5, 10, 15, 20 years," Kasper said.

But he said the "realities of war" mean his unit must continuously give feedback to manufacturers, who in turn roll out changes quickly.

Kasper compared that to production lines for drones like the Iranian-designed Shahed, which Russia has been manufacturing at scale for the war.

"Let us say you are creating a production line and planning to make one Shahed. There is a three-year contract for it planned in advance, it already has pre-written technical specifications, pre-written set of components," Kasper said.

Installing new components or tweaking designs would, therefore, be difficult, he said.

"They already received the money. 'I gave you the Shahed according to the specifications, so what do you want from me? I don't really care!'" Kasper said.

He cited an example of Ukraine's evolving battlefield needs: GPS-jamming countermeasures for larger drones. These require special hardware like receivers or antennae that allow operators to switch between frequencies.

If those measures don't work, the drones need an inertial navigation system so they can fly blindly out of jamming range, or perhaps a camera that lets the pilot navigate the drone through visuals, he added.

"So if the drone sees that it is being jammed, it transitions to the visual navigation and is moving forward, or transitions to the inertial navigation and is moving forward, or it has a multiband antenna that jumps from channel to channel. And it is impossible to jam it," Kasper said.

That's not to say that Russia is limited to traditional military contracts. Both sides have active volunteer organizations that donate thousands of civilian drones for combat, though Ukrainian units believe they're maintaining a lead in innovation over Russian forces.

One way that Russia has brought new tech to the front lines is through fiber-optic drones, which allow them to bypass electronic jamming. Ukrainian developers, meanwhile, are scrambling to adopt the same technology for first-person loitering munitions.

All of this is happening as militaries worldwide watch the war closely for lessons to glean from what's become a yearslong open conflict between two major modern forces.

Seeing how much of the battlefield now hinges on drones, some countries have begun prioritizing uncrewed aerial vehicles or novel anti-drone defenses.

The US, for example, is awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to firms such as Teledyne and Anduril to make loitering munitions. In October, Anduril also announced that it secured a $249 million Defense Department contract to produce 500 Roadrunner drones and an electronic warfare system.