“Ukraine refused me entry. I am horrified and angry,” Pellmann said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday evening, after he was deported. “The reasons for this are anyone’s guess, but it is probably my commitment to an immediate ceasefire, a peaceful solution and a halt to arms exports.

“I wanted to see the situation in the country for myself. This has now been prevented."

“Apparently there is a list of public figures who have taken a critical stance and are no longer allowed to enter Ukraine,”

The German embassy in Kiev had tried to intercede on his behalf, but apparently to no effect.

“I don’t think there will be any invitation as a result of this year’s summit, but everything else will speak of such a future,” he said.

NATO also intends to give Kiev at least €40 billion ($43.3 billion) over the next year, set up a mechanism to coordinate deliveries of military aid and training of Ukrainian troops, and support Ukraine on its path to “full Euro-Atlantic integration.”

Kiev was furious at the lack of a formal invitation, with Vladimir Zelensky firing off a series of angry social media posts accusing NATO of weakness and cowardice.

The proposal for “automatic” draft registration is among several previously-undisclosed provisions related to Selective Service in the newly-release version of the National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA)

a spokesperson for the SASC told me that if “automatic” Selective Service registration had been included in the bill, it would have been included in the summary. That proves to have been incorrect: The proposal for “automatic” draft registration was included in the SASC version of the bill, but not in the summary.

What’s a near-certainty is that this “must-pass” bill will be enacted into law, in some form, later this year – probably by a lame-duck Congress after the elections

Politically, registration and other preparation for a draft, by whatever means, makes war more more likely and enables military strategists to plan and commit to larger, longer, less popular wars without having to think about whether enough people will be willing to fight them.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that the pier the US military built off the coast of Gaza will be reattached to the shore on Wednesday and then permanently removed after a few days.

Aid groups have criticized the pier as a public relations stunt to make it appear that the US was doing something to get more aid into Gaza while continuing to support the Israeli military’s genocidal war and starvation blockade.

The pier was removed from the coast several times due to weather that it could not handle.

Aid delivered through the pier also couldn’t be delivered due to the security situation for aid groups

[...] in the Nuiserat massacre. Video that surfaced online showed an Israeli military helicopter operating near the pier during the operation, and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said some of the Israeli troops who carried out the raid arrived in an aid truck.

The US announced on Wednesday that it will deploy missiles to Germany that would have been banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2019.

“The United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future,” the US and Germany said in a joint statement released amid the ongoing NATO summit in Washington.

the Trump administration tore up the [INF] treaty. It was clear the US exited the treaty so it could deploy intermediate-range missiles near China, leading Russia to propose a moratorium on the deployment of INF missiles in Europe. But the US never accepted the offer.

In an address to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Dr. Vladimir Zhovnir, the director of Kiev’s Okhmatdyt children’s hospital, accused Russia of deliberately striking the facility on Monday. Two people died and scores were injured in the blast, Zhovnir claimed, calling the incident “not just a war crime, [but] far beyond the limit of humanity.”

“Does Mr. Zhovnir understand that if it was a Russian missile, there would be nothing left of the building?” Nebenzia responded. “Children and adults would have died rather than been injured.”

In an official statement on Monday, the ministry said that “photos and video footage from Kiev clearly confirm” that the building was hit by a falling “Ukrainian air defense missile launched from an anti-aircraft missile system within the city.”

Pro-Kiev media outlets have claimed that the weapon that struck the hospital was a Russian air-launched Kh-101 cruise missile. However, others have argued that the projectile, which can apparently be seen in a video filmed from a distance by a witness, was more likely an AIM120 fired by a NASAM missile system or a PAC-3 interceptor fired by the MIM-104 Patriot missile system. Western donors have provided Ukraine with both of these weapons systems.

Ukraine’s air defense missiles have malfunctioned on numerous occasions throughout the conflict with Russia. In November 2022, a Ukrainian S-300 anti-air missile veered off course and landed on Polish soil, killing two farmers. Despite a Polish investigation confirming that the missile was fired by Ukrainian forces, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and his officials insisted for several weeks that it was launched by the Russian military.