• A US government agency cut off Ukraine from high-resolution satellite imagery.
• A drone operator told BI that Maxar's images are essential to flying in GPS-jammed areas.
• Maxar's imagery, in particular, helps his unit find and hit Russian targets.

The commercial satellite imaging company Maxar confirmed that it is suspending the sharing of US government-commissioned imagery with Ukraine, a move that severely constrains Ukrainian drone pilots trying to defend their homeland.

This latest move is part of the Trump administration's drastic freezing of US aid and intelligence support to its ally. It will severely hamper how drone pilots can target Russian forces or spot their movements, a pilot told Business Insider. The widespread jamming of GPS navigation has forced Ukraine's drone pilots to rely on high-resolution imagery, particularly that produced by Maxar.

Maxar told BI on Friday that the US government had suspended Ukrainian accounts in the Global Enhanced GEOINT Delivery program, or GEGD, a major government portal for sharing government-purchased imagery with allies.

Maxar is contracted with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) on the program. The NGA told BI that it had "temporarily suspended" access "in accordance with the Administration's directive on support to Ukraine."

The change hinders Ukraine's awareness of the Russian forces behind the frontlines and obstructs their deep strike campaign that has targeted Russian supply lines and ammunition depots, said Dimko Zhluktenko, who works in Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, said.

The move, first reported by Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi on the basis of unnamed sources, comes just after the US announced it was pausing its intelligence sharing with Ukraine and days after President Donald Trump announced an indefinite pause in US aid to Ukraine, leaving the future of a major weapons source in doubt.

Much like Starlink, the SpaceX internet satellite service provided to Ukraine through US government contracts, commercial satellite images are essential to the planning and execution of Ukraine's military operations.

Zhluktenko said that Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, a branch that specializes in drone operations, relies more heavily on satellite imagery from private companies like Maxar than it does on intelligence given directly by the US government.

Without Maxar imagery, "deepstrike drone operators will not get as precise targeting," Zhluktenko told BI.

"Intelligence services will have worse understanding of Russian stockpiles and repair factories" and have "a worse understanding of how much capacity Russia has left."

He said that his unit often used Maxar satellite imagery to plan reconnaissance drone missions, to find deep strike targets and places where Russia was storing equipment like tanks and vehicles, and to see the results of those deep strikes.

Zhluktenko said Ukrainian soldiers use a mix of different satellite imagery companies, but that Maxar stood out because of the quality of its images. He estimated that 75% of the units that use drone imagery largely rely on Maxar specifically because "high-quality satellite images and maps are a must."

In addition to its assistance to Ukraine, the company's images have widely documented the changes and damage occurring during the war.

Drones have become an increasingly important part of Ukraine's fight back against Russia's invasion. Ukraine can make drones itself, whereas its supply of Western aid, while large, has often come with conditions or delays and has an unclear future.

Across the 600-mile stretch of the frontlines, drones have taken on the roles of anti-tank missiles and other weaponry. Even cheap drones have hit far behind Russia's lines, destroyed pieces of equipment worth millions, and contributed strongly to Ukraine holding Russia back. The USF, set up in 2024, is considered the world's first military branch devoted solely to drone warfare.

Ukraine's drone units as of last November accounted for at least 80% of Russian frontline losses, The New York Times then reported.

That means weakening Ukraine's drones — particularly at the same time that aid from the US is paused — could have a major impact on the battlefield. This effect gets more pronounced as the imagery stoppage continues, allowing Russia to mass forces for assault with a lower chance of being spotted.

And Ukrainian drone units have become increasingly reliant on satellite imagery as a way to get around Russian jamming.

Zhluktenko said that using GPS is impossible in heavily contested areas as jamming efforts are so high.

In place of locating with GPS, drone operators increasingly orient themselves by comparing the drone camera's view to maps and satellite images, Zhluktenko said. In this way, Maxar technology helps them "navigate the battlefield."

Ukraine has been developing drones that work along these lines — with software that compares what the drone sees to photos and video of the area that was previously captured — to get around Russian jamming.

American company Vermeer announced last month that it was integrating its technology into Ukrainian drones. This technology preloads satellite images onto drones so they don't need to rely on GPS.

Zhlutenko said the Trump administration's actions are making Ukraine weaker and could be used against other US allies.

In 2023, the NGA awarded Maxar a five-year, $192 million contract which would help provide US allies with imagery "consisting of high-resolution electro-optical, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and 3D data products," the company announced.

The Trump-ordered intelligence freeze may have most immediate impact by limiting the effectiveness of Ukraine's air defenses, which are improved by early warning sensors.

The longer the US intelligence hold continues, and its military risks mount, the more likely it is that Ukraine will have to make do with commercial satellite imagery firms outside the US and rely on other types of sensors like high-altitude drones.

But losing Maxar, and US intelligence more broadly, is a deficit all of that tech could not easily replace.

• Russia has touted its leading LLM, GigaChat MAX, as part of a national AI strategy.
• But the model is "unremarkable" and lags behind US and Chinese offerings, AI experts told BI.
• While the war in Ukraine has stunted development, Moscow may still be developing military AI.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants his country to compete in the global race to build AI, besting models coming out of China and the US. But its flagship large language model, or LLM, isn't even the best at speaking Russian.

On the Russian-language version of LLM Arena — where users go to compare and rank the answers of different LLMs — GigaChat MAX comes joint-eighth at the time of writing, behind various versions of Claude, DeepSeek, and ChatGPT.

YandexGPT 4 Pro, an LLM developed by the Russian search engine Yandex, is even lower, at joint 18th.

On the English-language version, neither appears in the ranking of more than 170 LLMs.

GigaChat MAX was developed by Russia's state-majority-owned Sberbank. When its latest iteration launched in November, its Moscow-based lead developer, Evgeny Kosarev, said on LinkedIn that it was "close to GPT4o in quality on Russian and English."

But experts have told Business Insider that, despite Putin emphasizing AI development as a crucial avenue for Russian foreign policy, GigaChat MAX is months behind American and Chinese competitors. The country's war against Ukraine has also drained it of expertise.

A spokesperson for Yandex told BI that its latest model, launched on February 25th, is on par with state-of-the-art models on a number of measures.

A spokesperson for GigaChat MAX did not respond to a request for comment.

An 'unremarkable' model

For now, GigaChat MAX, Russia's most developed LLM, is "unremarkable," Lukasz Olejnik, a visiting senior research fellow in cybersecurity at the Department of War Studies at King's College, London, told BI.

On "benchmarks" — standardized tests for AI effectiveness — the models' scores "are much lower," he said, adding that they don't surpass any of the cutting-edge, or "frontier," models, and don't involve any particular innovation.

Ben Dubow, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and CTO of data-analysis firm Omelas, added that GigaChat MAX lacked an edge in many ways.

While it handles math well, in the Russian language it is far behind most leading Western and Chinese LLMs on some benchmarks, Dubow wrote in The Moscow Times in January.

He said that leading LLMs developed in the US were a year ahead of GigaChat MAX's current level on the industry-standard "Massive Multitask Language Understanding," or MMLU, which tests an LLM's general knowledge and problem-solving ability in text-based answers across a huge range of subjects.

Dubow also told BI that most AIs are being held to more advanced benchmarks, with MMLU "almost considered passé at this point."

"Besting American and Chinese models on Russian language prompts is a top priority for the Russian government's AI strategy, but MAX has not achieved that," Dubow said.

The war in Ukraine is holding Russia's AI development back

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasized the importance of AI, including at a December conference where he touted GigaChat MAX and said Russia was ready to assist other nations with developing AI.

Samuel Bendett, a specialist in Russian military technology at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told BI that AI was "a status thing" for Russia.

But per a global AI ranking produced by UK media startup Tortoise Media, Russia is the only one out of the five "great power" countries — the US, China, France, the UK, and Russia — not at the top of the list. Russia is ranked 31st.

Bendett named several factors holding Moscow's AI sector back.

Russia's private sector is too small to foster real competition, with almost everything government-supported, he said.

Although Sberbank is increasingly casting itself as a technology company, "there is no equivalent to OpenAI and Microsoft or Google or Huawei or Alibaba," he continued.

Additionally, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has isolated it from both global expertise and collaboration, as well as access to tech like microchips necessary to train and run complex AI models efficiently.

"The story of the Russian AI industry is, in a lot of ways, Putin's expansionism undermining Russia's global standing," said Dubow.

2014 — when Russia annexed Crimea — was a transformative year for AI in the West and China.

Meanwhile, 2022, the year Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, was the year ChatGPT launched, sparking the generative AI boom.

The war in Ukraine accelerated a major brain drain from Russia, according to Dubow.

Bendett added that Russia lacks "hundreds of thousands" of high-tech researchers, although he said that he believed many of the "tech refugees" who left Russia to avoid the draft have started to trickle back.

Putin acknowledged the problems last year, blaming "unfriendly countries" for the roadblocks and vowing to increase the number of people graduating in AI technology to more than 15,000 a year by 2030, Russia's TASS news agency reported, citing government documents.

The report said just 3,000 graduated in 2022.

By comparison, the US had more than 73,000 graduates in AI-related fields in 2023, the majority of whom were international talent, according to the Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

Serhii Kupriienko, CEO of Swarmer, a Ukrainian startup specializing in AI-based systems, told BI that over the next decade, the US and China's LLMs will help them scale their economies "exponentially" by boosting productivity across various sectors, creating jobs in AI, and speeding up innovation.

Meanwhile, Russia's struggles with AI mean its likeliest path forward is to "be subordinate to China and rely on what China's producing," Dubow said.

The 'holy grail for AI' could boost Russia's military

The Kremlin's repeated public statements on AI and the ongoing war in Ukraine have led some analysts to conclude Russia may be secretly developing a dual-use LLM with military applications.

In 2022, a Russian official announced the creation of a department for developing AI within the defense ministry.

"Russia envisions AI as a transformative tool for its military," Saratoga Foundation military analysts Timothy Thomas and Glen Howard wrote in a February review of Russian writings on military AI.

Vitaliy Goncharuk, who chaired Ukraine's AI Committee between 2019 and 2022, believes Russia may be training its AI on the vast amounts of battlefield data being generated in Ukraine.

Telegram posts and channels, drone footage, satellite imagery, sound sensors, civilian reports, and hacked material from Ukraine's Delta cloud-based management system — which feeds Ukrainian commanders with battlefield data — all provide ample material, Goncharuk said.

AI developed on this would not only help Russia improve its precision in identifying targets but also help it plan its decision-making and real-time front-line operations, Goncharuk said. It could even predict Ukraine's future decision-making and future battlefield operations, he added.

Ukraine, too, has gathered vast quantities of battlefield data from three years of war — something that is "truly the holy grail of training your AI models and systems on battlefield target recognition and selection," Bendett told BI.

It would be difficult to imagine Russia not quietly also using this data, he added.

"They constantly hint at that," he said.

Editor's note: This article was updated after publication to include a comment from Yandex.

• President Donald Trump is pausing all military aid to Ukraine.
• The halting of aid affects all military equipment that has not reached Ukraine yet.
• The pause comes after Trump sparred with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on Friday.

President Donald Trump said that he would pause military aid to Ukraine, days after he clashed with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the Oval Office.

A White House official told Business Insider in a written statement that: "The President has been clear that he is focused on peace. We need our partners to be committed to that goal as well. We are pausing and reviewing our aid to ensure that it is contributing to a solution."

Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director-general at the UK's Royal United Services Institute, said in a statement sent to BI that the decision was driven by Trump's view that Russia is willing to strike a peace deal, while Ukraine stands in the way.

"But there is no evidence that Russia would be prepared to accept a deal, and what that would be," he said, adding: "This decision will encourage Putin to ask for more — including Ukrainian demilitarization and neutrality."

Mark Cancian, a senior advisor on defense and security at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told BI the aid pause would effectively halve Ukraine's total equipment intake and severely weaken its ability to fight.

"That's very serious because even with all the aid they were receiving previously, they were barely hanging on," Cancian said.

"My guess is if US aid does not restart, then Ukrainians could hold out two to four months," Cancian added. "But by four months, I think their front lines will crack, and they'll have to make some sort of deal."

Edward Hunter Christie, a former NATO official and a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told BI that Ukraine's most immediate concern is weaponry like interceptors for its Patriot batteries.

"We will see negative impacts soon," he said. "The question is how much."

Minerals deal in the balance

Discussions in the Oval Office escalated into a war of words on Friday between Vice President JD Vance, Trump, and Zelenskyy.

During the televised meeting, Trump accused Zelenskyy of "gambling with World War III" and was being "disrespectful" to the US.

Vance then accused Zelenskyy of not being grateful or thanking the US sufficiently for the military aid it had provided.

The US has provided $65.9 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, per the State Department. Zelenskyy has, on multiple occasions, thanked the US for its help.

Zelenskyy left the White House on Friday without signing a minerals deal with the US that had been under discussion. On Sunday, Zelenskyy said he remains "ready to sign" the agreement.

Trump said in early February that he wanted Ukraine to give the US access to valuable minerals in exchange for continuing to aid its war efforts.

On February 26, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said they'd agreed on a deal. Zelenskyy's visit to the White House was supposed to include a deal-signing ceremony in which the two leaders would cement the agreement.

However, it did not turn out that way.

In the meantime, European leaders have rallied around Zelenskyy and Ukraine.

Keir Starmer, the UK's prime minister, welcomed Zelenskyy to 10 Downing Street on Saturday with an embrace and said that Ukraine has the UK's "full backing."

• The European Union announced plans to boost defense spending amid rising security concerns on the continent.
• The plan follows reports that President Donald Trump has paused US military aid to Ukraine.
• The EU strategy includes loans and spending flexibility, but doesn't mention production capacity issues.

The European Union unveiled a plan on Tuesday to boost member states' defense spending amid an "era of rearmament."

The ReArm Europe plan could unlock 800 billion euros (about $840 billion) in funds, said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

The announcement followed reports late Monday that President Donald Trump had ordered a pause in US military aid to Ukraine after a fiery Oval Office meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

European leaders met in London on Sunday for an emergency summit on Ukraine. Many defense commentators believe it will be difficult for European states to fill the US-sized gap in military support.

The EU plan focuses on ways to help member states unlock funding for defense spending, for both the "immediate" defense of Ukraine and in the long term, von der Leyen said.

They include suspending the Excessive Deficit Procedure — a mechanism that normally prevents member states from going into major deficits.

Low-cost loans worth 150 billion euros will be available to let governments "pool demand" and jointly purchase air and missile defense and artillery systems, missiles and ammunition drones and anti-drone systems, as well as cyber capabilities.

"The question is no longer whether Europe's security is threatened in a very real way, or whether Europe should shoulder more of the responsibility for its own security," von der Leyen said. "In truth, we have long known the answers to those questions."

The plans did not address the EU's defense production capacity, or the question of seizing frozen Russian assets worth more than $200 billion. Some European leaders are warming to the idea to help defend Ukraine.

• The US and Ukraine seemed all set to sign a mineral deal on Friday.
• But Trump and Zelenskyy had a heated exchange of words in front of cameras in the Oval Office.
• Zelenskyy said Ukraine is ready to sign the deal. But the US might have other thoughts.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that he remains "ready to sign" a deal with the US over Ukraine's mineral deposits, despite the spectacular breakdown in relations that played out between him and President Donald Trump on Friday.

Trump and Zelenskyy had a heated exchange of words in front of cameras in the Oval Office on Friday. And the Ukrainian leader left without either party having signed the deal, which had been touted by Trump earlier in the week.

The agreement would establish a jointly-owned reconstruction investment fund, with Ukraine contributing 50% of all revenues from new ventures into state-owned natural resource assets — minerals including lithium and cobalt, as well as oil and natural gas.

Some of the materials are crucial for both military production and batteries used in EVs.

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Zelenskyy said that "the agreement that's on the table will be signed if the parties are ready."

"If we agreed to sign the minerals deal, we're ready to sign it," he added.

The deal has changed considerably since it was first mentioned — initially, the US had wanted up to $500 billion of the profits to be used to repay it for its military aid.

Ukraine, meanwhile, had wanted ironclad security guarantees, but the final draft watered this down to a vague statement.

However, despite Zelenskyy's comments, moving forward might not be easy.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CBS on Sunday that it's "impossible to have an economic deal without a peace deal."

Although the minerals deal had been envisioned as a stepping stone toward developing a peace deal, Bessent said that "President Zelenskyy has thrown off the sequencing."

He also appeared to blame Zelenskyy for derailing the discussions, saying "he chose to blow that up."

However, views in Europe were markedly different, with many seeing Trump's approach as heavy-handed.

Zelenskyy received a positive welcome in London on Sunday, where he attended an emergency summit with European leaders alarmed by the recent breakdown in US support for Ukraine.

Following that summit, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the formation of a "coalition of the willing" to support Ukrainian security, involving the UK, France, and other European nations.

Starmer said that US support is essential to the plan, but "Europe must do the heavy lifting."

• European leaders held emergency talks to discuss support for Ukraine on Sunday.
• It came amid souring relations between the US and Ukraine, raising pressure on Europe to step up.
• One quick way to raise "game-changing" cash would be to seize $218 billion in frozen Russian assets.

Amid growing tensions between Washington and Kyiv, calls are growing for Europe to take an unprecedented step that could unlock billions in funding for Ukraine.

Some world leaders and politicians, including former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, are urging European countries to seize the roughly $218 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets — now largely held in Brussels — and hand them to Ukraine.

"It is only fair that Russia should pay for the damage its war has caused," Sunak wrote in an opinion piece for The Economist on Friday.

But such a move comes with risks.

The question of funding was a hot topic on Sunday as EU and UK leaders met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for emergency talks in London to discuss support for Kyiv — just days after the latter's unprecedented Oval Office clash with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Trump and Vance berated the Ukrainian leader on Friday in front of reporters and cameras. Zelenskyy ultimately left the White House without finalizing a minerals deal that would give the United States access to Kyiv's mineral wealth in exchange for investment and what Zelenskyy hoped would be security guarantees.

The situation has fueled questions over how Europe can step up to help aid Ukraine's defense efforts should the United States reduce, or cut altogether, its support for the war-torn nation.

For Europe to make up the difference would be an expensive prospect and one that could come with political repercussions — which makes the potential to unlock $218 billion in non-taxpayer money all the more attractive.

"We've got all of these different countries with their own internal political battles, and their own internal budgets, all trying to find more cash — and we're sitting on a game-changing amount of funding," Heather Buchanan, the chair of the Athena Foundation, an economic policy advisory nonprofit that supports the move, told Business Insider.

Europe's ace card

The EU holds the majority of the roughly $300 billion in Russian funds frozen by the United States and international allies after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. The funds have been earmarked for rebuilding Ukraine in peacetime.

Some of the interest earned on those funds has been transferred to Ukraine as loans. The UK's chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, and Ukraine's finance minister, Sergii Marchenko, signed a deal on Saturday to deliver another £2.26 billion, or about $2.8 billion, to Ukraine from the accrued interest, also as a loan.

But there's now growing support for a long-considered option: seizing those frozen funds, which would allow them to be transferred directly to Ukraine for use in its defense.

In December, Kaja Kallas, the EU's top diplomat, called for the move — and it's seen support in the past week from leaders in the UK, Estonia, Poland, and Finland.

On Saturday, a coalition of campaign groups and UK MPs brought together by the Athena Foundation called on the UK to get the ball rolling with the seizure of £25 billion, or about $31.4 billion, of Russian state assets now frozen in the UK financial system.

Adrian Karatnycky, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, wrote in Foreign Policy magazine in January that the full $300 billion in frozen assets could replace the US contribution to Ukraine for the next six or seven years if Trump were to cut support to Kyiv.

A nervous gambit

"The key blocker is that nobody wants to move alone," Buchanan said.

But the White House's recent moves have provided a "perfect storm" that is focusing minds, she added.

While many politicians are pushing for the move, some analysts warn that it should be a last resort because of the impact it could have on global economies.

For example, permanently confiscating Russian assets held in countries that aren't at war with Russia could also "increase the risk perceived by several other countries," Creon Butler, the director of Chatham House's global economy and finance program, wrote last year.

Other countries — such as China, India, and Saudi Arabia — may "fear that at some point they could be subject to similar measures," he wrote.

Sunak, writing for The Economist, has argued that those concerns are "overstated" and that this risk "can be contained."

There's also a debate among analysts over whether the assets should be kept available as a bargaining chip for any future peace talks.

Legal complications must also be considered, as the assets of a foreign nation are normally protected against seizure by a host country.

But the leading lawyer Paul Reichler previously argued to Congress that such protection falls apart when a host state carries out "egregiously wrongful conduct," as he said Russia had.

"If Congress has the power to authorize the executive to freeze a foreign state's assets, it must also have the power to authorize the executive to transfer them," he said.

Buchanan told BI that such a move does require legislation but that "that's what lawmakers are for," adding that meeting a satisfactory legal standard could be brought about "quite quickly."

A further worry is the prospect of retaliation by the Kremlin, whose State Duma is discussing a draft bill allowing it to confiscate foreign property in response to similar moves from "unfriendly countries," Reuters reported.

Striking a psychological blow

Buchanan said passing the cash to Ukraine would send a "crystal clear" signal to Russia that this money isn't coming back — potentially dealing a strong psychological blow to a country whose economy and labor market are already deeply strained by the war.

The question is whether Western leaders will take the leap.

"It's just political will at this point," she added.

• The CEO of Denmark's largest retailer said it will start labeling goods made by European companies.
• A spokesperson told BI that customers had asked for greater clarity, but weren't rejecting US goods.
• However, the move comes amid souring relations over Trump's comments about taking over Greenland.

The CEO of Denmark's largest retailer said that his company will start marking its goods to indicate which ones are made by European companies, in what he described as a response to customer demand.

Anders Hagh, CEO at Salling Group, wrote in a LinkedIn post on Thursday about the move, saying they'd received inquiries from a number of customers who wanted to buy groceries from European brands.

"Our stores will continue to have brands on the shelves from all over the world, and it will always be up to customers to choose," he added.

Hagh shared a sample image showing a black star on a pricing label to show the product's European origin.

The move comes amid strained transatlantic relations and widespread public outrage at President Donald Trump's repeated comments about how the US should take control of Greenland, which is part of Denmark.

Salling Group, which commands about 36% of the Danish market, operates more than 1,700 stores across countries including Denmark, Poland, and Germany, including the Netto supermarket chain, the føtex department store, as well as hypermarket Bilka. They reported a combined revenue of more than $9.8 billion in 2023.

In his post, Hagh made no reference to the tensions with the US but said that the Salling Group had recently received inquiries from customers who wanted to buy goods from European brands.

Christoffer Green Sørensen, a company spokesperson, told Business Insider that the group's customers had "not made inquiries regarding a boycott of the USA," adding: "They have solely requested more explicit information about European ownership."

He added that the change is set to come into its Danish stores "within two to three weeks," with the possibility of rolling it out across German and Polish stores later.

Public sentiment in Denmark has soured since President Donald Trump's Greenland comments.

Mette Heerulff Christiansen, the owner of a delicatessen store, told Danish TV earlier this month that "Trump has only been president for a month, and we have already felt that our customers have an opinion."

She added: "I actually think it's the start of something that could almost become a movement here in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe."

Trump's sharp criticisms of European and NATO policies have also set alarm bells ringing for the status of the transatlantic relationship.

A Danish group titled "Boycott goods from the USA," created in response to what it described as a trade war by Trump, has more than 36,000 members on Facebook.

Meanwhile, an English-language subreddit named r/buyfromEU, set up less than two weeks ago, has 57,000 members and counting.

• One of Biden's top DEI chiefs said she wants to dispel "myths" amid Trump's rollback of the practice.
• Alaysia Black Hackett told Business Insider that corporations should hold firm to DEI practices.
• She said that companies are now reaching out to her for advice.

A former DEI chief who served in the Biden administration wants to "dispel a lot of the myths" swirling around diversity initiatives.

These include the idea that DEI hires aren't recruited on merit, or that diversity initiatives are only aimed at benefiting Black People, said Alaysia Black Hackett, who served as the Department of Labor's chief diversity and equity officer before resigning last month.

"It is not: 'You have to make sure you have a woman in a leadership position," Black Hackett said in an interview with Business Insider. "It is looking at the data to say: 'What groups of people are we missing and how can this be a detriment to the service?'"

The sentiment toward DEI has been shifting in recent months. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of people who see DEI as a positive fell from 56% to 52% between February 2023 and October 2024. At the same time, those who saw it as a bad thing grew from 16% to 21%.

But Black Hackett says the field is misunderstood, in part thanks to a tough media environment, and the Biden administration not being good at touting its own achievements. She said she believes people don't want to understand what diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility really stand for.

"People want to hate it because it seemed to benefit one race of people more than it fits another," she said.

What does DEI do?

During her two and a half years in the Biden administration, Black Hackett said federal hiring initiatives were merit-based and designed to "ensure that our internal federal workforce mirrored the communities that we serve."

If federal bodies lacked diversity of thought, "we're going to miss something," she said.

Black Hackett described much of her work as being aimed at making sure that federal funding filtered through to people who are either under-resourced, or are in historically underrepresented groups.

Much of her work focused on determining how federal funding could effectively reach marginalized communities. This included identifying rural communities that needed better internet access — a fixture in Biden's infrastructure law in 2021.

"When you look at data about rural communities, you will see that it's not typically inundated with people of color," she said, adding that "most Americans fit under at least one of the categories under DEIA."

Impact on corporate DEI

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month ending DEI programs in the federal government. The Trump administration has said DEI "divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination."

Trump has directed federal agencies to compile lists of private companies' DEI efforts, and many, including Meta and Walmart, have decided to roll back or end their DEI programs. Others, like JP Morgan and Costco, have not altered course on their diversity policies.

Black Hackett said that companies are reaching out to her for advice.

"I have small business owners who are asking me: 'Alaysia, what do I do? What direction is this going to impact me?'" she said.

She said that companies feeling cowed should "bunker down, stand up for what's right, and look at your data" to see the benefits.

"Productivity goes up," she said. "Statistics show that. People are more productive if they feel like they're welcome in their environment, their thoughts, their opinions."

A 2022 report by the International Labor Organization said that DEI can add value to businesses through increased employee productivity, stronger collaboration with colleagues, and improved well-being.

The recent DEI rollback could make people become "afraid to even show up as their authentic selves," Black Hackett said.

Even so, she feels positive about the future of DEI initiatives.

"What I will say, and I will say it quite candidly, is DEIA is resilient," she said. "The work doesn't stop."

The White House didn't reply to a request for comment.

• North Korean troops have returned to fighting alongside Russia, South Korea's spy agency said.
• It also said there appears to have been a deployment of fresh troops.
• Ukraine said in January that at least 3,800 North Koreans had been killed or wounded in the war.

North Korean troops have returned to fighting alongside Russia, South Korea's spy agency said, following reports of earlier heavy losses.

"Following about a monthlong lull, North Korean troops were placed back in the frontline region of Kursk starting in the first week of February," South Korea's National Intelligence Service said in a note to the press seen by South Korean news agency Yonhap.

"It appears that there has been a deployment of additional troops, but their size is still being examined," the intelligence agency said.

The note came after South Korean newspaper The JoongAng cited unnamed sources as saying that Russian cargo ships and military aircraft had transported between 1,000 and 3,000 additional North Korean troops sometime in January or February.

Business Insider was unable to independently verify the claim.

Last fall, Western and South Korean intelligence agencies said that Pyongyang had sent around 11,000-12,000 troops to fight in Kursk, the Russian region under partial occupation by Ukraine.

Russia was estimated to be paying around $2,000 a month per soldier, though the soldiers themselves are unlikely to see much of that.

Dmytro Ponomarenko, Ukraine's ambassador to South Korea, told Voice of America in November that Pyongyang would likely maintain a presence of up to 15,000 troops in the war, rotating soldiers every two to three months.

He said this could mean 100,000 North Korean troops cycling in and out of combat within a year.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month that at least 3,800 North Koreans had been killed or wounded in Kursk.

The UK's Ministry of Defence also said earlier this month that North Korean units had been withdrawn from frontline positions, likely to rest and refit before being redeployed.

"This is almost certainly primarily due to heavy losses sustained during attacks against Ukrainian-held positions," it said.

Pyongyang has sent some of its best units to Russia — special forces including members of its elite 11th Corps, also known as the "Storm Corps," considered to be committed and hardened fighters.

But the US said in December that North Korean troops were being sent on "hopeless" human wave assaults against Ukrainian positions, taking more than 1,000 casualties in the space of just one week.

According to the Kyiv Independent, Russia has, in recent days, ramped up its attacks in Kursk. The region is considered a key negotiating chip in any coming peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

• Ukraine's prime minister said Wednesday that Ukraine and the US had agreed on a mineral deal.
• Denys Shmyhal said they planned to set up an investment fund based on Ukraine's mineral wealth.
• Discussions about Ukraine's minerals have been a source of tension between the two countries.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Wednesday that his country and the US had agreed on a major deal for Ukraine's minerals.

While the full terms of the deal haven't been made public, Shmyhal told Ukrainian TV that the two countries planned to set up an investment fund based on much of Ukraine's mineral wealth, per the BBC.

Kyiv and Washington will manage it on equal terms, he added.

Shmyhal also said Ukraine would contribute 50% of future revenues from its mineral and metal extraction into the fund, which would go toward the country's reconstruction, according to the Ukrainian state broadcaster Suspilne.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump responded to reporters' questions about the proposed agreement, details of which were first reported by the Financial Times.

He said he believed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was preparing to visit the US to formalize a deal on Friday. "I understand that's a big deal, a very big deal," he added.

Ukraine has significant deposits of valuable minerals, including uranium, titanium, and lithium — the last being a key component in batteries relied on by the EV industry. It also has considerable oil and gas fields.

The draft deal, seen by the FT, doesn't include mineral resources already being extracted by the likes of the oil and gas producers Naftogaz and Ukrnafta, the report said.

The extent of the US's holding in the project remains undefined, the FT reported.

The Ukrainian government and various ministries didn't respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

The Ukrainian minister who led the negotiations, Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna, told the FT on Tuesday that the agreement was "only part of the picture."

"We have heard multiple times from the US administration that it's part of a bigger picture," she added.

On Monday, Stefanishyna wrote on X that Ukrainian and US teams were "in the final stages of negotiations regarding the minerals agreement."

She added: "The negotiations have been very constructive, with nearly all key details finalized. We are committed to completing this swiftly to proceed with its signature. We hope both US and UA leaders might sign and endorse it in Washington the soonest to showcase our commitment for decades to come."

Trump said Tuesday that through the deal, "the American taxpayer now is going to get their money back plus," without offering specifics.

"It could be a trillion-dollar deal," he said.

Asked what Ukraine gets, Trump said: "The right to fight on."

Both Ukraine and the US have dropped key demands that were earlier being discussed, the FT reported.

The US will no longer demand $500 billion in revenue from the resources extracted, the report said, while Ukraine will no longer demand security guarantees in return.

But Shmyhal said Wednesday that the deal was "directly tied" to security guarantees, according to Euromaidan Press.

The reported deal would be a notable step in recent relations between Trump and Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy refused earlier proposed terms that would have seen Ukraine send the US up to $500 billion in proceeds from its minerals, while Trump has called the Ukrainian president a "dictator."

• President Donald Trump's media company sued a Brazilian judge in a Florida court on Wednesday.
• The lawsuit accused Justice Alexandre de Moraes of undermining First Amendment rights.
• The lawsuit comes after Moraes received an indictment related to former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

President Donald Trump's media company sued a Brazilian Supreme Court judge, claiming that he censored right-wing voices on social media.

Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of Truth Social; and Rumble, an online video network platform, accused Justice Alexandre de Moraes of censoring political discourse in the United States and claimed that he undermined the First Amendment.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Tampa, Florida, on Wednesday and was first reported by The New York Times.

The legal action came as de Moraes was deciding whether to arrest former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro was charged with masterminding and attempting a coup to cling to power after losing Brazil's presidential election in 2022.

Brazil's chief prosecutor brought five charges against Bolsonaro, a Trump ally. They include allegations that he planned to kill de Moraes and poison President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

TMTG and Rumble, which say they are bastions of free speech and are popular with MAGA supporters, said in the lawsuit that de Moraes had "issued sweeping orders to suspend multiple U.S.-based accounts."

The plaintiffs said the judge wanted to remove accounts he labeled "anti-democratic" and targeted high-profile conservative social media users. They seek a jury trial and permanent injunctive relief.

De Moraes has styled himself as a protector of democracy with his rulings.

In August, the judge ordered Elon Musk's X to halt operations in Brazil until it complied with court orders and paid fines.

Martin De Luca, the Boies Schiller Flexner partner representing Rumble in the lawsuit, said: "We have asked the court to determine whether a foreign judge can unilaterally dictate what speech is allowed in the United States."

He added that the case was about "protecting America's digital sovereignty."

Joseph Russomanno, an emeritus professor specializing in First Amendment and media law at Arizona State University, told Business Insider by email that he couldn't comment on the part that international and Brazilian law might play in the case.

However, he said that the complaint "seems to have a good chance of succeeding largely because of the First Amendment element."

A key consideration would be the plaintiffs' ability to demonstrate that de Moraes' gag order lacks legitimacy, particularly regarding the First Amendment's protection of press freedoms.

The plaintiffs have argued that legitimate political discourse was censored — and "political speech generally has the highest level of protection," Russomanno said.

Another factor would be why de Moraes issued the orders, he said: "For example, does the content of these organizations endanger public safety?"

This type of lawsuit was not unprecedented, Russomanno said, pointing to a 1976 Supreme Court ruling — Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart — that could offer guidance.

• A senior Russian lawmaker said the US should release lists of Russians who have received USAID funding.
• Vyacheslav Volodin said they would then hand the lists to the FSB, Russia's security agency.
• Russian leaders claim the agency has fomented coups and conducted military research.

A top Russian politician said he wants the US to release lists of people and groups in the country that have received USAID funding.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chair of Russia's State Duma, said this week that they would then "hand these lists to the FSB," Russia's main security and intelligence agency, and the successor to the much-feared KGB.

Volodin's statement came after the Trump administration moved to dismantle the US Agency for International Development, which was established in 1961 to oversee the US' aid programs worldwide.

The agency spent nearly $32.5 billion in fiscal year 2024, channeling aid to countries like Ukraine, Jordan, and Ethiopia.

But Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has called USAID a "criminal organization" on X, and said it was "time for it to die."

Last week, USAID announced that it would place most of its staff on administrative leave — a move that could reduce the workforce from about 10,000 to fewer than 300.

But staff are now in limbo after a judge blocked the shutdown.

Russian lawmakers have applauded the moves to end the agency.

Volodin has previously claimed that USAID's efforts to promote democracy are aimed at fomenting coups, harming countries like Ukraine and Armenia, according to state-controlled news agency TASS.

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Volodin said: "The only real democracy left is in Russia.

"Those who were funded from abroad should publicly apologize and seek penance on Red Square."

According to a now-archived description of USAID's spending in Russia, the agency has funded multiple public health projects, child welfare programs, and the promotion of the free market.

It has also supported civil society organizations and nonpartisan watchdog groups, and the building of ties between US and Russian media outlets.

Volodin also said those who left Russia and hoped to be funded by USAID "will now go cold and hungry waiting to receive something."

Other lawmakers have also weighed in, and Russian commentators have moved to recast some projects as nefarious, with one military expert saying, without providing evidence, that the health programs were a means of studying "potential vulnerabilities of specific population groups to certain drugs," TASS reported.

On February 2, Musk posted to X, claiming that USAID had funded "bioweapon research, including COVID-19."

• Russia wants to become a top lithium producer but faces a challenging environment.
• Its largest lithium mining project was sanctioned by the US in January.
• China, a partner in Polar Lithium, may be spooked by the sanctions, experts said.

Russia's plan to develop one of its vast untapped lithium reserves is hitting major roadblocks.

Russia sits on an estimated one million tons of lithium, an amount comparable to the US.

Lithium is used to make lithium-ion batteries, and has been in increasing demand since the EV boom.

With oil and gas sanctions weighing on Russia's economy after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, mining lithium is becoming more attractive.

"The production of this metal is, without exaggeration, a strategically important task," President Vladimir Putin said in the fall.

But a slowing market, US sanctions and a complex mining environment are challenging this ambition, experts told Business Insider.

It's a wide-ranging ambition: Russia has struck international deals and currently occupies Ukrainian land believed to hold lithium deposits.

The jewel in Russia's lithium crown is the Kolmozerskoye field in Murmansk in the country's arctic northwest.

Polar Lithium was set up in 2023 as a joint venture between the state nuclear energy company Rosatom and the privately-owned metals giant Nornickel.

There is technical backing from the Chinese engineering firm MCC International Incorporation.

It's projected to come online by 2030 and produce some 45,000 tons a year — putting it roughly on a par with Chile, the world's second-largest producer.

Rosatom has said that Russia aims to become self-sufficient for lithium and capture 10% of the global market by 2030, catapulting it ahead of the US and into the world's top five producers.

A sanctions chilling effect?

On January 10, the outgoing administration of former President Joe Biden imposed a slew of sanctions on Russia's energy sector.

On its list was Polar Lithium, an inclusion that could spook China's involvement.

Writing last year, analyst Vita Spivak said sanctions could "limit the further integration of China and Russia's metals supply chains, as Chinese firms would be wary of being targeted by Western secondary sanctions."

Speaking to BI in the wake of the recent US announcement, Pavel Devyatkin of The Arctic Institute agreed.

"The sanctioning of Polar Lithium creates risks for the Chinese company and may affect the company's plans," he said.

"Chinese companies have not shown a willingness to challenge US sanctions, including in the Arctic economy."

Philip Andrews-Speed, a senior research fellow at Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, also said that China has been "very careful" about investment in Russia's energy sector.

"My guess is that the Chinese might withdraw, or just slow things down," he said.

The extent of MCC's involvement in the project is unclear — Rosatom's announcement described its technical know-how in extracting and processing but didn't talk about what sort of payment it would get, whether in cash or in the form of mined lithium.

Laurence Haar, a financial economist specializing in energy markets at the UK's University of Brighton, told BI that a so-called offtake agreement, giving away some of the product, is likely the only way Russia can pay for China's expertise. China has used that model in lithium projects elsewhere.

Asked about the extent of MCC's involvement both before and after the sanctions, Polar Lithium spokesperson Vasily Zakharov told BI: "The project continues to advance in accordance with its planned timeline and operational objectives."

Business Insider wasn't able to reach MCC; a listed email address was inactive.

A challenging market

Lithium is often hailed as "white gold" or "the oil of the 21st century" — but for the time being it's not that rare.

Despite a rise in prices during the EV boom, oversupply cooled the market in 2024.

The lithium market "has become highly competitive," Ahmed Mehdi, another senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, told BI by email. China gets plenty from its domestic industry as well as from Australia and Africa, he said.

Mehdi added that it's also difficult to know how much investment would be needed to make Polar Lithium commercially viable, "particularly given potential infrastructure constraints and market opportunities (given its sanctions profile)."

Those infrastructure constraints are considerable, Haar told BI, and "would be challenging at the best of times."

Working in the remote and cold High North requires significant transport and civilian infrastructure just to get going, he said, which will add to production costs.

This makes Russia's ambition of taking up 10% of the world's market "a bit optimistic," Haar said, adding: "I don't see it as a threat to the market."

Polar Lithium isn't doomed, yet

This doesn't mean the project is dead in the water.

Lithium mining isn't a complex process, and Andrews-Speed, the OIES academic, said Russia could move ahead without Chinese cooperation in the hopes that sanctions will be lifted later.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has overturned some of the Biden administration's sanctions. The State Department declined to comment on its plans for Polar Lithium's sanctions.

Even under sanctions, it would not be hard to quietly sell the unprocessed lithium, Haar told BI. Russia has taken a similar approach with its oil and gas.

"Once it's turned into batteries and processed into oxide, no one can know from where it came," he said.

But the real money is in processing it, he added.

"The Chinese have cornered the market in processing lithium," he said. "Which is smart because beneficiation, moving downstream into producing the oxide, and then actually producing batteries, is where you make the money."

• Australia is facing similar egg shortages to the US due to bird flu and industry shifts.
• Sales have been rationed in some stores since June.
• Egg production recovery is slow, taking upwards of six months.

More than six months after some Australian stores restricted the sale of eggs, some shelves are still empty.

As US consumers start to feel the same pinch, Australia's example could show such shortages don't end fast.

This week, multiple US stores, including Costco, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's, began limiting the number of cartons customers could buy.

It's not unfamiliar to Australians. In June last year, the chains Coles and Woolworths began limiting egg-carton purchases to two per shopper.

As of January, supermarkets were still limiting sales, some shelves were bare, and the industry body Egg Farmers of Australia noted a "lower supply."

The causes have much in common with the US.

1) Avian influenza — albeit different strains — in both cases wipes out some 7% of the national flock.

2) Demand went up over the holidays, further pressuring supplies.

3) A long-term trend away from caged birds' eggs toward barn-laid or free-range.

That resulted in a 11.5% price spike in Australia last year — steep, but pretty minor compared to the 65% hike in the US.

If Australia's seven-month egg shortage is anything to go by, US consumers could be waiting a while to get easy access to eggs again.

Australia is looking at several months before egg production returns to normal while it repopulates its flocks, even after its government declared its bird flu outbreak over.

Emily Burton, a professor in sustainable food production who focuses on poultry at the UK's Nottingham Trent University, told BI that it takes around six months from losing a flock to getting back to full-throttle egg production.

With US officials still reporting sporadic outbreaks in commercial flocks as recently as Friday, supply chains may remain scrambled for some time yet.

• Venice is doubling a last-minute tourist fee for daytrippers.
• The fee, first introduced in 2024, is an attempt to manage overtourism and better preserve the city.
• Venice's tourism chief says other destinations have sought advice on copying the measures.

Venice has doubled its last-minute visitor fee, with the city's tourism chief saying its success has prompted other overcrowded tourist destinations to consider similar measures.

In 2024, the Italian city introduced a €5 charge for visitors on select peak-season dates, in an attempt to curb overtourism.

The fee will remain €5, a little over $5, for those who pay at least four days in advance, but is set to rise to €10 for last-minute bookings.

Fines for not registering range from the equivalent of $52 to $310.

Simone Venturini, the city's tourism councilor, said at a recent tourism fair that other destinations overrun by tourists are looking to follow Venice's lead, something the city's tourism office corroborated.

"We confirm that several institutional bodies, both in Italy and internationally, have contacted the City of Venice to gain a deeper understanding of the Access Contribution mechanism," a spokesperson for Venice's tourism office told Business Insider in an email.

They added that discussions have taken place with representatives from Kyoto in Japan, Formentera in Spain, and the Swiss city of Zermatt, "in addition to various Italian local authorities."

Venice's tourism office said the visitor fee generated €2.4 million in revenue for the city in 2024, about $2.5 million.

It also credited the entrance fee with preventing Venice from hitting previous peak visitor numbers on certain high-traffic days.

The charge applies to daytrippers entering Venice's historic center between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., with exemptions for overnight guests, local residents, students, and those visiting relatives.

In 2024, it was enforced on 29 high-traffic days; in 2025, that will expand to 54 days, covering periods from April to July.

At the tourism fair, Venturini said Venice was a "pioneer" in tackling overtourism.

He said the pilot program had worked and that the goal in 2025 remained the same: To "create a new system to manage tourist flow and disincentivize daytripper tourism in several periods, in line with the delicate and unique nature of the city."

Venice's tourism office said in the statement provided to BI that while the fee led to more people booking visits in advance, the measure was insufficient by itself to prevent overtourism.

Venice has also tried other means, including limiting tourist groups to 25 people and banning loudspeakers on tours.

• The White House announced 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports.
• The US is the world's top steel importer, sourcing mainly from Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.
• Higher tariffs may increase US inflation, affecting industries reliant on these metals.

President Donald Trump on Monday ordered 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, escalating his trade moves against some of the nation's closest allies.

Trump told reporters on Monday that he would announce "reciprocal tariffs," likely on Tuesday or Wednesday, on countries that have placed tariffs on US goods.

"If they are charging us 130% and we're charging them nothing, it's not going to stay that way," Trump said.

Steel and aluminum were among the first products that Trump targeted during his first term. He imposed tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum but later granted some duty-free exemptions for trade partners, including Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.

This time, Trump said he is giving "great consideration" to an exemption for Australia — a country with which the US has a trade surplus.

"We have a surplus with Australia. One of the few. And the reason is they buy a lot of airplanes. They're rather far away and they need lots of airplanes," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.

Since companies tend to pass the higher price of tariffs on to their customers, the move could boost prices of construction, cars, and travel.

The US is the world's top importer of steel, which is used in a wide range of industries, from construction to automobile manufacturing.

Canada, Mexico, and Brazil were the US' largest steel and iron suppliers last year by dollar value, Census Bureau data showed.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said in a Tuesday statement that tariffs hurt businesses and consumers.

"I deeply regret the US decision to impose tariffs on European steel and aluminum exports," she said. "Unjustified tariffs on the EU will not go unanswered — they will trigger firm and proportionate countermeasures."

Canada and Mexico were also among the top countries for aluminum and bauxite imports. The United Arab Emirates ranked No. 2, based on 2024 Census Bureau data by dollar value. Aluminum is used for aircraft construction, consumer products like cans, and construction, among other industries.

Shortly after taking office, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on most goods from Canada and Mexico. He later announced that those tariffs would be delayed 30 days after he reached a deal with both countries to strengthen border security.

Trump also placed a 10% tariff on imports from China, and China quickly announced retaliatory tariffs on coal, crude oil, agricultural machinery, and some vehicles. The tariffs announced Monday come in addition to the 10% tariffs on other goods, Bloomberg reported.

Charles Johnson, the president of the US Aluminum Association, said in a February 1 statement: "To ensure that American aluminum wins the future, President Trump should exempt the aluminum metal supply needed for American manufacturers, while continuing to take every possible action at the US border against unfairly traded Chinese aluminum."

Steel inflation may damp demand

There are fears that higher US tariffs on imports from key trade partners could drive up inflation in the US — at least in the short term.

"Constructing and ramping up new smelters/mills can take three or more years," Morgan Stanley analysts Carlos De Alba and Justin Ferrer said in a January 29 report. "Hence, any import tariffs applied to metals or mined products are likely to result in higher domestic prices for local buyers of these materials."

However, high steel prices could weigh on demand that has already been sluggish from the second half of 2024 due to US election uncertainty and seasonality, wrote analysts from the research firm CreditSights in a Tuesday note.

Meanwhile, it's unclear how Pittsburgh-based aluminum company Alcoa would restart capacity after scaling back in the US for years, they wrote.

But Trump's tariffs are politically strategic, the analysts wrote. The levies also curb transshipment through Canada and Mexico.

"The steel industry seems to becoming quasi-government-owned," wrote analysts from research firm CreditSights in a Tuesday note, citing the tariffs and the US blocking Nippon Steel from acquiring US Steel.

• Russian soldiers received sabotaged drone headsets that exploded when switched on.
• The headsets were supplied via humanitarian aid, according to Russian state media.
• The incident highlights risks in military supply chains and crowdfunded gear.

Russian soldiers received a batch of sabotaged drone headsets that were modified to explode when they were switched on, according to Russian media.

Igor Potapov, a spokesperson for Russian manufacturer JSC NPP, told state-controlled news agency TASS that an individual donated the goggles as humanitarian aid.

"When the glasses were turned on, they detonated and exploded," Potapov said.

TASS did not specify whether there had been any injuries or fatalities.

According to Potapov, the goggles were Skyzone Cobra X v4 headsets, used to provide a visual when controlling first-person view drones. He added that when the military opened the batch, "they found plastic explosives in all of the products."

Business Insider was unable to independently verify the report.

Skyzone supplies companies in multiple countries, including Russia and Ukraine, but does not list JSC NPP among its distributors.

Neither company immediately responded to Business Insider's request for comment.

Defense Intelligence of Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the reported sabotage.

Consumer-grade FPV drones are used in their thousands by both Ukraine and Russia, for everything from surveillance and reconnaissance, to target spotting and carrying explosives.

Pro-Russian Telegram channel Razved Dozor shared images purporting to be of the headsets still in their boxes, along with video of them being dismantled.

It said that the goggles contained between 10-15 grams of plastic explosive and that the boxes showed signs of tampering.

The channel added that this was one of several instances of plots to use unwitting volunteers to sabotage Russian soldiers. BI was unable to verify the claim.

Matthew Ford, a war expert and lecturer in international relations at the UK's University of Sussex, compared the Russian reports to Israel's attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon using explosive pagers last September.

That incident required months of planning and infiltration into Hezbollah's supply chain.

In this instance, the headsets were reportedly supplied via an individual donor, likely bypassing official channels.

Russian and Ukrainian units have, throughout the war, turned to crowdfunding to get some basic gear, in what Ford refers to as "participative warfare" — the idea that anyone can participate in the war effort.

At the time of publication, a Cobra X v4 was available to buy on Amazon for $324.

Threatening this less orthodox supply chain adds new headaches for militaries, who will have to add a new level of scrutiny, Ford said.

"That's the target, I suppose," he said.

JSC NPP, which is sanctioned by the UK and EU, develops and supplies electronic warfare equipment to Russian forces in Ukraine, according to TASS.

Potapov warned individuals to be vigilant when dealing with new donors to the Russian armed forces.

• Syria is open to allowing Russia to hold onto two key military bases after Bashar Assad's ousting.
• Syria's new defense minister said that relations with Russia, which supported Assad, have improved.
• Hmeimim and Tartus bases are strategic for Russia, offering major air and naval advantages.

Syria is open to allowing Russia to keep hold of its two military bases in the country, two months after rebel groups ousted Kremlin ally Bashar Assad and set in motion a Russian troop and military equipment withdrawal.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra said that there is a possibility Russia could hold onto the bases — Hmeimim air base and Tartus port — "if we get benefits for Syria out of this."

It's not clear what military, economic, or political support could be offered, but Abu Qasra said that Russia's stance had "improved significantly" toward the new government.

Assad, who ruled Syria for 24 years, fled to Russia in early December after a lightning two-week military campaign by rebel forces.

This threw Russia's hold on the bases — described by Andreas Krieg, a Gulf specialist at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King's College London, as Russia's "most important bases outside the direct sphere of Russian influence" — into question.

Russia was granted a 49-year lease on the bases in 2017 in return for military assistance.

At the end of January, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said that "nothing has changed" and that preserving Russian access to the bases "requires additional negotiations," according to Russian state-controlled news agency TASS.

Prior to his ousting, Assad had enjoyed strong military and political support from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who stationed troops there and helped suppress rebel areas and a 2015 uprising with air and missile strikes.

Within days of Assad's removal, satellite images picked up a flurry of Russian activity at the bases: equipment being packed up, ships moving in and out of port, and the likely transfer of soldiers.

In January, Ukraine said that Russia was moving military gear from Tartus to Libya, where it also has a strong influence.

The Syrian bases are a key foothold in the Middle East and beyond for Russia.

Hmeimim affords Russian air forces a base for refueling and overflight for much of Africa. Tartus, on the Mediterranean, is unique in Russia's assets in being its only warm-water port with direct access to the oceans.

The rebel groups now governing Syria were previously targetted by Russian forces, but Abu Qasra told the Post, "in politics, there are no permanent enemies."

One trump card held by Russia is Assad himself. According to the Post, the new Syrian government wants Assad's extradition so that he can be held to account for his bloody rule.

• Russia's dead and wounded have averaged over 1,500 a day in recent months, according to Ukraine.
• Russia's recruitment rate will likely struggle to replace those lost, military analysts said.
• The Kremlin is trying to avoid a politically unpopular military mobilization to support its war.

Russian battlefield casualties — dead and injured — have risen to more than 1,500 a day over the last three months, posing serious problems when it comes to replacing their numbers, military analysts said.

UK Ministry of Defence reports suggest that Russia lost an average of 1,523 soldiers a day in November, 1,570 in December, and 1,556 in January, citing figures from Ukraine's General Staff. (Russia doesn't regularly release its own casualty figures.)

It's a significant jump that matches the pace and intensity of Russian assaults along the front line in Ukraine and in Ukrainian-occupied Kursk throughout 2024.

In January 2024, Russia was losing far fewer troops — an average of 846 a day, according to the UK MOD.

But it was attracting between 1,000-1,100 new recruits a day, according to an estimate from Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy chief major general of Ukraine's main military intelligence arm, more than enough to replace those lost.

Some estimates of Russia's current military recruitment, alongside soaring casualty figures, suggest that this may no longer be the case.

"The Russian military may be struggling to recruit enough new military personnel," analysts at the Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment this week.

They added that they had observed reports in recent months that parts of Russia were failing to meet their monthly recruitment quotas, with people less willing to sign up to fight.

Russia announced a large military recruitment drive last year, but calling up reservists is both politically unpopular and removes workers from its already stretched labor force.

The Kremlin has tried to tempt recruits by more than doubling its one-time signup payout to about $4,640 per soldier.

And on February 3, Russia's defense ministry proposed reclassifying illnesses like syphilis and schizophrenia as less serious medical conditions, loosening restrictions on military service, Russian state-run news agency TASS reported.

Estimates of current Russian recruitment rates vary.

In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that 430,000 recruits — or an average of 35,833 a month — signed up in 2024.

But Pavel Luzin, a defense expert for the Center for European Policy Analysis, wrote in January that Putin "appears to have been exaggerating again."

Luzin's own analysis of Russian budget figures gave a "probable assessment" of no more than 60-70,000 new troops in the last quarter of the year, or 23,300 new troops a month at most.

That's less than an estimate by one NATO official, who said that Russia was likely recruiting around 25-30,000 a month over that period.

Ukraine has also struggled to recruit additional troops, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy so far resisting US calls to lower the military draft age from 25 to 18.

Russia's recent losses are a marker of the pace and ferocity of its assaults along the front line in Ukraine. The UK MOD said that 48,240 Russian troops were killed or wounded in January alone.

• Police say they are investigating the theft of 100,000 eggs from a Pennsylvania supplier.
• Egg prices have surged due to avian flu and increased holiday demand.
• The stolen eggs are estimated to be worth $40,000, police said.

Police are investigating the theft of about 100,000 eggs stolen from a Pennsylvania supplier on Saturday, amid a nationwide hike in prices.

The eggs were stolen from the back of a distribution trailer in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, at around 8.40 p.m. local time, according to Pennsylvania State Police. The truck belonged to egg producer Pete & Gerry's Organics.

Police said in an incident report seen by Business Insider that the eggs were estimated to be worth around $40,000.

Once considered a cheap staple, the average price of a dozen grade-A eggs hit $4.15 in US cities in December, a steep hike from the January 2024 price of $2.52, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Egg prices have become a marker for the public's attitude to the economy. The price hike has been linked to the avian flu outbreak that has posed challenges to the industry.

Brian Moscogiuri, a global trade strategist at California-based supplier Eggs Unlimited, earlier told BI that the industry had lost 26 million birds since October, or at least 7% of the national flock. The outbreak also appears to have affected shell quality.

Recent increases may also be related to the holiday season when demand rises — and that's set to continue into Easter.

In a statement sent to CNN, Pete & Gerry's said it was working with law enforcement to investigate the theft.

It added: "We take this matter seriously and are committed to resolving it as quickly as possible."