Russian President Vladimir Putin said he preferred Joe Biden as the next U.S. president over Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, who fell under intense scrutiny for his relationship with the Kremlin during his presidency.

“[Biden] is more experienced and more predictable. He is an ‘old school’ politician. But we will work with any US leader, elected by the people of America,” Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin late Wednesday, according to Russian state-controlled news outlet Tass.

The Trump and Biden presidential campaigns did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

Putin’s comments followed a week of international controversy over Trump’s recent NATO remarks and mounting tensions between U.S. Democrats and Republicans over a $95 billion aid package that includes military aid to Ukraine.

The Kremlin head of state will stand in his own election on 15-17 March, but is widely expected to clinch another presidential mandate after leading Russia as prime minister or head of state since 1999.

In the same interview, Putin also appeared to dismiss recently mediatized concerns over Biden’s mental acuity after Department of Justice special counsel Robert Hur said the White House leader “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” and exhibited poor memory during a relevant interview. Biden has disputed the claims.

Referencing their meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2021, Putin said he had noticed no signs of incapacity from Biden. “Yes, he was peeking at his notes from time to time, but, frankly speaking, I was peeking at mine as well,” Putin said, adding that there were “reports of [Biden] banging his head on the helicopter while leaving it, but who didn’t?”

Despite these apparently favorable comments, Putin stressed ongoing disagreement with Biden’s politics, saying “the incumbent administration’s approach is most harmful and erroneous.”

Biden assumed office roughly one year before Moscow’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. His administration has staunchly backed Kyiv with military and financial aid, and Biden has led the White house through a period of deteriorating relations with the Kremlin.

Putin has in turn distanced Moscow from Western countries — which have overwhelmingly sanctioned Russia and its officials — and sought fresh ties with various emerging markets, especially China and Iran.

Putin’s apparent stance of distancing himself from Trump is notable given historical questions over the strength of the pair’s relationship. Trump was probed during a nearly two-year special counsel investigation of Russian interference in the election that he won. The former president repeatedly denied claims that he had fallen under the Kremlin’s influence.

During a campaign rally in South Carolina late last week, Trump signaled that he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a country member of the NATO military coalition that did not meet its defense spending commitments — triggering widespread international outrage and criticism from NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg that his comments are undermining the security of all NATO allies.

Biden characterized Trump’s comments as “dumb,” “shameful,” “dangerous” and “un-American,” suggesting a close connection between the former U.S. president and the Russian head of state, and introducing distance between himself and Putin. 

“Can you imagine? A former president of the U.S. saying that? The whole world heard it. The worst thing is he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. And let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will,” Biden said.

The broader Republican party’s support of Ukraine faces an imminent test after a $95 billion bill passed by 70-29 in the Democrat-led U.S. Senate earlier this week. The aid package — which includes assistance for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — must win support from the Republican-helmed House of Representatives before becoming law.

BRUSSELS — European heads of state are gearing up for a difficult two-day gathering where support for Ukraine is at the top of the agenda, but internal divisions threaten any significant action toward Kyiv.

The meeting comes at a crunch time for Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hops across the world seeking further aid in the fight against Russia’s invasion. He started the week in Argentina, then travelled to the United States and landed in Norway on Wednesday.

Throughout all of his stops, he delivered one message: cutting support to Ukraine is a gift to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

“We must make decisions,” European Council President Charles Michel, who will be chairing the summit, told CNBC Tuesday.

“It is our duty to make sure we protect the interest of the European Union by supporting Ukraine.”

Some 50 billion euros ($54.43 billion) are on the table. The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, proposed in June to send this sum to Ukraine between 2024 and 2027, but opposition from Hungary, whose prime minister met with Vladimir Putin in person in October, is blocking the disbursement.

EU leaders will also discuss whether to start official negotiations with Ukraine for the nation’s potential future accession to the bloc. Hungary has, once again, expressed reservations. A handful of other EU member states, such as Italy, have also raised issues over enlarging the EU.

Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna said that the start of official negotiations would be a “major guarantee of Ukraine sustainability.”

“We need these messages to keep on being mobilised,” she added.

Nearly two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, western support for Kyiv is flattening. There has been a nearly 90% drop in newly committed aid to Ukraine between August and October, compared with the same period of 2022, data from the Kiel Institute showed last week.

“Ukraine now increasingly relies on a core group of donors such as the U.S., Germany, and the Nordic and Eastern European countries that continue to pledge and deliver both financial aid and important weaponry,” the institute said.

The recent war between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel has also drifted attention away from Kyiv, while inflationary pressures have limited the ability of western governments to provide more aid. At the same time, Russia retains an advantage when it comes to military strength.

“Russia will likely continue to have a considerable advantage in terms of the availability of military equipment, munitions, and manpower, at least in the first half of 2024,” Andrius Tursa, Central and Eastern Europe Advisor at consultancy firm Teneo, said.

“Having mobilized its economy for the war, Russia is rapidly increasing its military output, in addition to supplies from North Korea and Iran. Moscow is also keeping up military recruitment to compensate for vast manpower losses without triggering visible public discontent.”

Recent surveys suggest that the majority of the Russian population is still in favor of Putin’s actions in Ukraine, although support is gradually declining. According to a poll carried out by the Levada Center and issued earlier this month, 74% of those surveyed support fully or to some extent the war in Ukraine.

A sharp rise in drone attacks targeting Russian territory is likely to intensify, analysts say, with Kyiv appearing increasingly determined to bring the destruction, instability and unpredictability of war — albeit a fraction of what it is experiencing itself — home to Russia.

Russia has seen a sharp rise in unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, carrying out assaults on western, central and southern Russian regions as well as the capital Moscow and Russian-occupied Crimea in recent weeks.

While Ukraine is continuing a counteroffensive on its own soil to regain Russian-occupied territory in the south and east of the country, and aiming to break Russia’s so-called “land-bridge” to occupied Crimea, the increasing use of drones to assault Russian soil shows another facet of Ukraine’s military strategy.

“The war is coming home to Russia,” Timothy Ash, emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, said in emailed comments Wednesday.

“Ukraine is demonstrating that it can make life very difficult for Russia, Russians and Putin,” he added.

“With attacks in Crimea itself, and the land corridor and the Kerch bridge, and Russian shipping in the Black Sea coming under attack the clear message is that while the invasion was partially sold as an effort to improve Russian security, it has made Crimea and Russia less secure for Russian forces.”

“And it is only going to get worse as long as this invasion continues,” Ash added.

Aerial assaults have intensified in recent days with strikes occurring further into Russian territory. In the early hours of Wednesday morning at least six Russian regions reported attempted drone attacks, one of which destroyed and damaged four military transport planes at an airfield in northwestern Russia.

More attacks followed overnight Thursday, with further drones shot down in the Moscow area and the Bryansk region of southern Russia that borders Ukraine. Airports in targeted regions have been forced to cancel and delay multiple flights as a result of the attacks.

Russia blamed Ukraine for the latest drone attacks while Ukraine remained characteristically tight-lipped about these, and previous, assaults. It’s undeniable that UAVs have become a crucial weapon in both Russia and Ukraine’s arsenals, however.

Ukraine has been targeted with thousands of Russian drone attacks during the 19-month-long conflict, with its energy, defense and civilian infrastructure pummeled by swarms of Iranian-made UAVs. On Tuesday night, Kyiv said it had repelled more than 20 drone and missile attacks on the capital.

In recent months, Russia has experienced more drone assaults too, however, with military bases, airfields and fuel depots, as well as neighborhoods in Moscow, targeted. Experts agree that Ukrainian forces direct attempts to attack Russian territory and are likely to be assisted by disaffected anti-war Russians at times.

While drone attacks are causing a headache for Moscow on a military and political level, forcing the country to re-allocate air defense complexes to its own territory, analysts say they’re unlikely to destabilize Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime unless an attack directly affects the elite.

“All these drone attacks force the Russian Ministry of Defense to distribute its limited number of defense assets deeper into Russia, for example, moving them from the frontlines to Moscow and airfields on Russian internationally recognized territory,” Kirill Shamiev, a Russian political scientist and a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC Thursday.

“This is especially important for these limited number of assets such as Pantsirs, which are good and powerful [anti-aircraft missile] systems on the frontlines, but now they need to bring some of them home. So this basically reduces the effectiveness there when they’re fighting Ukrainians,” he noted.

Shamiev said the increase of attacks on Russian territory was unlikely to cause a stir among Russian society, given that it was not close-knit and there had been few deaths from drone attacks.

Still, if UAVs continued to be used to target the more elite neighborhoods of Moscow, those where Putin’s allies and associates live, that could pose a problem for the Kremlin.

“If these drones continue hitting targets inside Moscow, and especially if they kill somebody, among the people closer to the Kremlin, this would be unfortunate and this is something they want to prevent from happening … I think they would rather prefer Ukrainians hit military targets than the civilian political infrastructure in Moscow, for example,” Shamiev said.

CNBC has requested a response to these comments and is awaiting a reply from the Kremlin.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in mid-August that Kyiv was working to significantly increase its drone production, aiming to manufacture UAVs with different ranges and different purposes.

“Production is necessary. We are increasing production significantly. However, we need to systematize what is already being supplied to the troops and used. Drones are the “eyes” and protection on the frontline,” Zelenskyy said in a nightly address, adding that “drones are a guarantee that people will not have to pay with their lives when drones can be used.”

Oleksandr Musiyenko, a military expert and head of the Centre for Military and Legal Studies in Kyiv, told CNBC he expected drone attacks to intensify further as Ukraine increased domestic drone production further.

“I think that the scale of these attacks will be higher .. Ukraine has tried to use different types of drones to launch attacks on Russian military objects, on Russian objects of the defense industry. And I think that these drones can be the game changer in the Russia-Ukrainian war,” he told CNBC Thursday.

“We do not have different types of missiles like Russia has, but we will increase the production of different types of drone.” “It’s very important for us,” he noted.

The chief of the Wagner Russian mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is believed to have been killed in a plane crash, Russian state media reported Wednesday.

The aircraft, a business jet, crashed in the Tver region northwest of Moscow, leading to the deaths of all 10 people onboard, according to Russian authorities.

While Russian officials said that Prigozhin was on the passenger list, it was not immediately clear if he was in the aircraft.

“An investigation of the Embraer plane crash that happened in the Tver Region this evening was initiated. According to the passenger list, first and last name of Yevgeny Prigozhin was included in this list,” Russia’s Federal Agency for Air Transport said in a statement.

The plane was flying from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow to St. Petersburg, the agency said, according to a Google translation.

The Russian Ministry of Emergency Services wrote on its Telegram account: “In the Tver region, near the village of Kuzhenkino, a private Embraer Legacy aircraft crashed while flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg. There were 10 people on board, including 3 crew members.”

“According to preliminary information, all on board were killed. EMERCOM of Russia is conducting search operations,” the post read, according to a Google translation.

U.S. President Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation, a White House spokesperson told NBC.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said that, if confirmed, Prigozhin’s death should come as no surprise.

“We have seen the reports. If confirmed, no one should be surprised,” Watson said. “The disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now — it would seem — to this.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also commented on the developing situation.

“The fact that Prigozhin made a direct challenge to Putin’s authority, the fact that he questioned publicly the very premises that Putin has advanced for the aggression against Ukraine – that’s playing out and will continue to play out,” Blinken told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday when asked about the incident.

“We’ve seen the ongoing drama, too, of where is Prigozhin, what is the arrangement with Putin?” he added. “If I were Mr. Prigozhin, I would remain very concerned. NATO has an ‘Open Door’ policy; Russia has an open windows policy, and he needs to be very focused on that.”

The “open windows policy” was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that numerous prominent Russian officials and businessmen who fell out of favor with Putin died by what local authorities described as falling out of windows or off of balconies.

Prigozhin effectively disappeared from public life after the failed mutiny. But just on Monday, Aug. 21, the mercenary leader appeared in a video published by Wagner-affiliated channels on Telegram, which suggested the footage was filmed in Africa. It was believed to be Prigozhin’s first video address since the coup attempt.

In the clip, the Wagner leader is holding a rifle and standing against a desert backdrop. The camera briefly pans to other armed men in a pickup truck.

“We are working. The temperature is plus 50 [Celsius]. Everything’s the way we like it. PMC Wagner is conducting reconnaissance, making Russia even greater on every continent – and Africa even freer,” Prigozhin said, according to a NBC News translation.

“Justice and happiness for the African nations,” he said. “We are messing with ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other banditos. We hire real supermen and continue working on tasks that were set to us and we promised to carry out.”

NBC News was not able to verify the video’s authenticity, as well as when or where it was shot.

Wagner has operated in parts of Africa including Mali, the Central African Republic and Libya.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive that launched in June against Moscow’s invasion has run into a Russian wall. 

In the run-up to the Ukrainian push, weapons from Western allies — such as tanks, artillery and other equipment — poured into Ukraine. Despite some small gains, Ukrainian forces have yet to see a large breakthrough, leaving some to wonder what else is needed.

“This is about as hard as it gets,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Think World War I with drones. … That’s a little bit what the Ukrainians are facing. And so in our microwave culture here in the United States, we want results yesterday, but that’s just not the way it works when you’re confronting a military like the Russians.”

Land mines have been a massive problem for Kyiv’s forces. Russia has deployed large tracts of the explosive devices, including mines aimed at troops as well as mines that are designed to take out armored vehicles like tanks, slowing down any Ukrainian advance. And with Russia’s ability to lay mines with specialized artillery, keeping cleared lanes open to send forces through has been a struggle.

“Let me be clear, this would present a significant challenge for any force that is trying to take it without the full scope of Western capabilities,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, executive chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator and co-founder of CrowdStrike.

Many in Kyiv have called for the introduction of Western fighter jets, such as the F-16, to beef up the beleaguered Ukrainian Air Force, which has managed to keep flying and fighting despite what on paper is an overwhelming Russian advantage in air power. These fighters would also help take the pressure off of air defense forces, which consists of older Soviet surface-to-air missile systems that are difficult to resupply, and the newly provided Patriot missile system. Just sending F-16s to Ukraine wouldn’t turn the tide overnight. It would take months, if not years, of training to get the most out of these expensive jets.

“These weapons are not silver bullets,” said Mick Ryan, a retired major general of the Australian army and adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There’s no such thing as a single weapon system that will provide that. It’s when you have lots of different weapons systems in the air on the ground. You have operators who are technically proficient and then you’re able to undertake the collective combined arms training, that’s when you have a really war-winning capability.”

Watch the video above to find out if more big-ticket, U.S.-made weapons such as F-16s, the Patriot missile system and HIMARS can turn the tide in Ukraine.

After months of apparent reluctance to engage with Kyiv on the same level as Moscow, China said Wednesday that it will send special representatives to Ukraine and hold talks with all parties on reaching an end to the conflict.

Chinese state media said that President Xi Jinping told his Ukrainian counterpart President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a phone call — the first that the leaders have held since the war began in February 2022 — that Beijing will focus on promoting peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

State media added that Beijing would make efforts for a cease-fire to be reached as soon as possible, in order to end what China called a “crisis” rather than a conflict.

Commenting on the call, which he described as “long and meaningful,” Zelenskyy said he believed it would “give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relation.”

The timing of the call — and China’s decision to send emissaries to Ukraine — has raised eyebrows among political and defense analysts, particularly as Ukraine is widely known to be preparing to launch a large-scale counteroffensive against Russian forces in a bid to retake territory in the east and south.

A number of analysts believe China is eager to halt the conflict before there’s a massive escalation in the fighting as the spring’s muddy season passes, allowing offensive operations to begin again in earnest, and as Ukraine receives more military hardware from its Western allies.

“The spring months are basically coming to an end and it’s time for counter attacks to begin so I think China wants to be seen as immediate mediator before that escalation,” Max Hess, fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told CNBC Thursday.

That’s a view shared by Oleksandr Musiyenko, a military expert and head of the Centre for Military and Legal Studies in Kyiv. He was, however, surprised at the timing of China’s call, as he expected it might wait and see how the counteroffensive proceeded before intervening.

“I was confident that China would wait for the results of Ukrainian counteroffensive and would then probably propose something [on a cease-fire and peace talks],” he told CNBC Thursday.

“But I think the Russians are afraid of the future Ukrainian counteroffensive, they are afraid that they will lose some territory that they are occupying right now … so I think that they asked Xi to call Zelenskyy to ask him to stop this counteroffensive,” he said.

China has been eager to position itself as a peace broker to end the war, but has appeared to be allied with Moscow throughout, refusing to condemn the invasion, holding frequent calls with Moscow and having no direct diplomatic contact with Ukraine during the war — until now.

And when Xi visited Russia in March, he said he would hold a phone call with Kyiv but no arrangements had been forthcoming, making yesterday’s announcement even more surprising.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made that point on Thursday when he “welcomed” the call between Xi and Zelenskyy, but he noted it does not change the fact China still hasn’t condemned Russia’s invasion.

The Kremlin, for its part, said it welcomes anything that could bring the end to the conflict closer, but said that it still needs to achieve the stated aims of its so-called “special military operation,” such as the complete takeover of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

Analysts are generally skeptical about China’s positioning of itself as a mediator and its ability to help bring an end to the war, questioning how much sway Beijing has over Moscow.

Musiyenko said China doesn’t appear to understand the conflict, noting it’s “unbelievable” for Beijing “to call the war a political crisis.”

He was afraid that any cease-fire or peace agreement deal put forward by China would include Russian-proposed conditions such as territorial boundary changes.

It wasn’t lost on analysts that China’s call on Wednesday took place just days after a diplomatic gaffe last week, when its ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, told French media that countries that were part of the Soviet Union, like Ukraine, lacked status in international law.

The comment sparked indignation in the EU as well as Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states. China was forced to issue a statement distancing itself from Lu’s comments, insisting that “China respects the status of the former Soviet republics as sovereign countries after the Soviet Union’s dissolution.”

After the incident, Timothy Ash, senior emerging markets sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, said the timing of Xi’s call to Zelenskyy cannot be overlooked.

“The timing looks very suspicious, coming after that incredible diplomatic faux pas/catastrophe by the Chinese ambassador to Paris, by commenting to the effect that post Soviet states have not right to exist,” Ash said in emailed comments.

“These may have been his actual views about Ukraine but in one interview I think he offended all of the 14 non-Russian states that secured independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. And this includes the states in Central Asia and Transcaucasia that China relies on for critical commodities. They must be absolutely furious, as is most of the post Communist space, ex Russia, in Emerging Europe,” he noted.

Ash said the gaffe could have caused immeasurable damage to bridge-building with former Soviet states and showed a lack of understanding that could be shared more widely by those in Beijing, though it was only shown by one official.

“This one comment has undermined 30-odd years of oh-so-careful Chinese diplomacy in the region,” Ash said, adding that “actually it shows that Chinese officials fundamentally don’t understand Europe.”

For the past year, it’s been harder and more expensive for Russians to travel abroad.

But some say that’s only the beginning of their concerns.

With anti-Russian sentiment on the rise, several Russian citizens spoke to CNBC Travel about their worries, how they’re treated when they travel, and what goes through their minds when people ask where they are from.

Julia Azarova, an independent journalist, said she left Russia a year ago. She said she fled Moscow for Istanbul after the invasion of Ukraine, before eventually settling in Lithuania.

“I had to leave my own country” or risk imprisonment, she said. “We had to pack our things in a day and go.”

Since then, Azarova said she’s been to Latvia twice, but she can’t go to Ukraine, where she has relatives. Her Russian friends have encountered problems getting into Poland, while her colleagues have been prevented from entering Georgia, the latter likely in a show of loyalty to Putin, she said.

Anna — who asked that we not use her real name over fears of “unpredictable consequences” — has the opposite problem. She said she’s in Moscow and doesn’t know when she will leave Russia again.

“Normally, I’d visit one to two countries a year,” she said. But now “traveling somewhere abroad seems like something unimaginable and impossible.”

Traveling, especially airfare, is very expensive, she said. Also, “Russian credit cards are blocked almost everywhere and buying foreign currency in Russia is so difficult.”

As for when she plans to go abroad again: “Probably when the war ends.”

Another Russian traveler, Lana, also asked that we not use her full name over fears of retaliation from Russian authorities. She lives in Asia and was planning to go home last summer for the first time since the pandemic started, she said.

But she canceled the trip after the invasion of Ukraine, she said, despite her parents not having seen her child in years.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen,” she said, adding that the risk of border closures or flight cancellations prompted her decision.

Rather than returning home, Lana traveled around Asia — to places like Thailand and Japan.

It’s “really hard to go abroad and meet new people thinking that you are the person from Russia — and how people will respond to that,” Lana said.  

She said when people ask where’s she from, there’s an “anticipation moment” that didn’t exist when she was young.

“Back then, when you say ‘I’m from Russia,’ the first thing people say is vodka, bears, Matryoshka [dolls], and all that innocent stuff,” she said. “You kind of feel like yeah, I’m from Russia — it’s cool.”

But it’s different now, she said. While traveling, she braced for negative comments. Yet so far none have come, she said. Rather, people have offered words of sympathy and concern, she said.

Lana may have been lucky. A wave of anger at Russia has blanketed parts of the world, from Europe to the United States, in incidents which the Russian government has used to stoke nationalism in the country.

“Not everyone understands that the government, the country and the people, it’s not always the same thing,” she said. “Let’s say you’re from … [the United] States, I mean, you might not support Trump after all, right? The same thing’s been happening in Russia for the past, probably, 10 years.” 

Anna said telling new people she’s Russian has “always been tricky, to be honest, even before the war.”

She said there’s a “prejudice and stigma about Russians,” describing instances in Polish restaurants where waitstaff refused to serve her after spotting her Russian guidebook. After that, she began hiding her nationality more, she said.

She said being asked where she’s from will be even harder once she starts traveling abroad again.

“After the war, I guess, I’ll be afraid of the question even more, because I’ll instantly feel the need to start explaining myself, fearing a negative and aggressive reaction.”

Azarova agreed it’s hard to meet foreigners, especially as she wrestles with her own feelings of “guilt.”

“You understand that you personally haven’t done anything wrong, but you can’t get rid of the idea that something’s wrong with you personally,” she said.

Since leaving Russia, Azarova said she’s not had any confrontations over her nationality. However, like Anna, she said she often feels the need to quickly say how she feels about the war.

She said her conversations with foreigners have helped her because “you get the feeling that nobody’s blaming you.”

Now she’s now no longer afraid to say she’s Russian, she said, namely because she can’t do anything about it.  

“But I can do something to show the face of Russians who are not for Putin, who are not for that war … and who tried to do something to stop it.”

She now covers the war for the news channel Khodorkovsky Live, a YouTube channel backed by the exiled Russian businessman and prominent Kremlin critic, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

“People are just people,” Lana said, “regardless of nationality, your passport, your citizenship. I’ve lived in a few countries. I’ve traveled a lot. From my experience, most of the time stereotypes just don’t stand.”

Anna said she wants the world to know that not all Russians are “crazy scary.” Rather, they are friendly, warm-hearted, ready to help and eager to be good friends, she said.

“Many of us are trying hard to change something but people should know that it is difficult and very dangerous indeed to do … People should know, that behind scary news about Russia, there are millions of Russians, who suffer, who are scared and who are trapped, and who pray for peace every single day.”

Azarova said she wishes the world understood that sanctioning the Russian people, as opposed to the government and ruling elite, won’t influence Putin.

That’s because their opinions don’t affect change, like in a democracy, since “Putin is not an elected leader. This is a very, very important point. He hasn’t been elected in a fair and free election,” she said.

Plus, Putin doesn’t care what happens to Russian people, she said — their difficulties won’t change anything.

What will? “If Putin is removed by force” she said. But “Russian people don’t have … weapons.”

Lana said she’s fearful about the future.  

“I don’t … see a way out of the current situation. I’m afraid that Russia is … stuck,” she said.

Azarova said that, although she misses Moscow tremendously, she is slowly accepting she may never live there again.

“Never mind all the problems … it’s still a very beautiful city with all my memories of my childhood,” she said.

But she said, her home, the way she knew it, “no longer exists.”   

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration announced nearly $3.8 billion in security assistance for Ukraine and European allies on Friday, Washington’s largest package since Russia’s full-scale invasion began nearly a year ago.

The upcoming military aid package, the 29th such tranche, brings U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s fight to about $24.9 billion since the beginning of the Biden administration.

The assistance includes $2.9 billion in weapons to be provided immediately to Ukraine and $225 million in long-term financing to support Ukraine’s military. The package also includes $682 million in foreign military financing to rebuild the arsenals of European allies.

The $2.85 billion weapons package includes Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, artillery systems, armored personnel carriers, surface-to-air missiles and ammunition.

New to this aid package are 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, armored tracked vehicles manufactured by U.S. defense firm BAE Systems. Bradleys are typically equipped with a rotating turret, mounted 25mm gun and TOW anti-tank missiles. The U.S. will provide 500 TOW anti-tank missiles and 250,000 rounds of ammunition for use with the Bradleys.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said it would take “some time” for the vehicles to get to Ukraine.

“What I can tell you is that we are going to do it as fast as I can,” Kirby said when pressed for a timeline during a White House briefing.

He added that “it’s not going to take very long” for Ukrainian forces to learn how to use the vehicles when U.S. troops train them in a location outside of Ukraine.

Also included in the security assistance package are:

100 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers55 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles138 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles18 155mm self-propelled Howitzers and 18 ammunition support vehicles70,000 155mm artillery rounds500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds1,200 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine Systems36 105mm towed Howitzers and 95,000 105mm artillery rounds10,000 120mm mortar roundsApproximately 2,000 anti-armor rockets

The U.S. will send additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, as well as RIM-7 missiles for air defense and 4,000 Zuni aircraft rockets. The Pentagon will also supply Ukraine with sniper rifles, machine guns, ammunition for grenade launchers and small arms, as well as night vision devices, spare parts and other field equipment.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked President Joe Biden for the “very powerful” security package during a video message on his official Telegram channel.

“Today a new one was announced, and a very powerful one! A package of American defense support for our country. For the first time, we will receive armored vehicles Bradleys, this is exactly what is needed,” Zelenskyy said.

French citizens are heading to the polls Sunday in a presidential election set against the backdrop of war in Ukraine and a cost of living crisis.

The second — and final — round of voting sees centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron face off against nationalist and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. The same pair were also in the final runoff back at the 2017 election, but political commentators believe Le Pen has improved her chances this time around.

“While Macron is likely to get re-elected on Sunday, around 13-15% of voters remain undecided. Therefore, there is still room for surprises,” Antonio Barroso, deputy director of research at consulting firm Teneo, said in a research note Thursday.

Barroso said that one potential path to a Le Pen victory would be if a considerable amount of voters who had opted for hard-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in the first round, suddenly switched to the radical right instead of staying at home or casting a blank vote.

A poll out Thursday predicted that Macron would win the second round with 55% of the votes, with Le Pen on 45%. This is, however, a smaller margin when compared to the final result of France’s 2017 election. Back then, Macron crushed Le Pen’s party (National Front which has since been rebranded National Rally) with 66.1% of the votes, to 33.9%.

“Opinion polls now give Macron a 55% to 45% edge over Le Pen. In the past five years, polls have not understated support for Le Pen. But, with up to 25% of voters still undecided early this week, we cannot rule out an upset win for Le Pen,” analysts at Berenberg said in a research note Friday, adding that “a lot is at stake for France and the EU.”

Le Pen has softened her rhetoric toward the European Union since 2017. She is no longer campaigning for France to leave the EU and the euro, saying she wants to transform the bloc into an alliance of nations — fundamentally changing the way it works. She also wants French troops to move out of NATO’s military command.

“Le Pen’s narrow ‘France first’ approach and her desire to put her own French rules above EU rules would cause constant strife with the EU, hurt the business climate and scare away foreign investors. France would fall back,” Berenberg analysts said.

They added: “She wants to preserve outdated economic structures through subsidies and regulations. She is toying with the idea of lowering the retirement age from 62 to 60 after 40 or 42 years of work, whereas Macron wants to raise the retirement age to 65.”

The last days of the campaign trail have seen Le Pen’s old links with Russia and President Vladimir Putin resurface. In a key TV debate Wednesday against Macron, Le Pen was accused of being “dependent” on Russia.

Macron told Le Pen during the two-hour talks: “When you speak to Russia, you are speaking to your banker,” according to a translation. Back in 2014, Le Pen’s party reportedly requested loans from Russian banks including from the First Czech Russian Bank — a lender that is said to have links to the Kremlin. Le Pen rebuffed the accusations Wednesday, saying: “I am a completely free women.”

Warwick University Professor of French Politics Jim Shields told CNBC Wednesday that Macron has had the difficult task of defending his five years in office but also presenting a fresh vision for the future.

“Le Pen, this time round, can play the card of change much more than Macron,” he said. “What he has to do is show empathy, come off his high horse, try to show that he cares about people’s everyday concerns, that he’s not the president of the rich that many accuse him of being,” he added, referencing surging inflation in France which has become a pillar of Le Pen’s election campaign.

“Each of the two candidates need to try to correct their perceived weakness. For Le Pen, lack of credibility, for Macron, lack of connectedness, lack of empathy, in order to attract new voters,” Shields said.

If Macron is re-elected he will become the first incumbent in two decades to return for a second term. The yield on the 10-year French government bond has risen in the runup to the election, crossing the 1% threshold at the start of April amid wider concerns on inflation and the war in Ukraine.

Polls are due to close at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET) with early projections on a winner expected shortly afterward.

In a week that uncovered the extent of Russian atrocities against Ukrainian civilians, an indiscriminate attack on a train station Friday appeared to provide the strongest indication yet that President Vladimir Putin remains undeterred in his offensive, even as he faces the prospect of war crime charges.

Two rockets hit a railway station in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, killing at least 50 people and injuring almost 100 as families and individuals waited to evacuate to safer parts of the country. Ukraine has demanded that Russia be punished for the shelling — and all crimes on their territory.

The Kremlin has denied it was responsible for the Kramatorsk station attack.

It comes as hundreds of devastating images and more local accounts of mass killings and torture of civilians came to light this week, chiefly from the cities of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel, just outside Kyiv.

In Bucha alone, satellite images of crowded graves appear to corroborate claims by the mayor that more than 300 people have been deliberately killed in the city by Russian soldiers. On the streets there, some bodies were found with their hands tied behind their backs, suggesting they were executed. Others appear to have been killed while trying to flee via humanitarian corridors.

The Kremlin has also denied any involvement in these attacks, despite well-documented evidence to the contrary.

Western allies and human rights groups have rallied to denounce the indiscriminate civilian attacks. G-7 foreign ministers on Thursday responded to the news from Bucha and elsewhere saying they “welcome and support” efforts to investigate potential war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Russian forces.

“The massacres in the town of Bucha and other Ukrainian towns will be inscribed in the list of atrocities and severe violations of international law, including international humanitarian law and human rights, committed by the aggressor on Ukrainian soil,” they said in a joint statement.

But not everyone is convinced that such measures will be enough to deter the Kremlin from its onslaught.

“It is difficult to know whether the threat of accountability weighs at all on the minds of the Russian military or political leadership, including Putin,” Shelley Inglis, executive director of the University of Dayton’s Human Rights Center, said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the Kremlin-led attacks amounted to genocide and called for those responsible to face war crime charges in front of a tribunal — like the one established in Nuremberg, Germany after World War II.

Putin, meanwhile, continues to deny that Russian forces are targeting civilians — despite evidence suggesting otherwise — espousing an alternate reality of Ukraine as the aggressor and insisting that Kyiv has fabricated evidence of war crimes. That even as satellite footage of the corpse-strewn streets of Bucha dating back to mid-March — when the city was under Russian occupation — counter Moscow’s claims.

In the meantime, investigations into alleged war crimes continue under the leadership of the International Criminal Court backed by Western allies.

Evidence gathering for such crimes is a lengthy and complex process with no guarantee that Putin or other perpetrators would be prosecuted in the end. Historically, few heads of state have ever been held accountable for war crimes or crimes against humanity, and none while in power. As such, the threat of war crime investigations may not be a sufficient deterrent for the Kremlin.

The University of Dayton’s Inglis said such trials could “raise the stakes politically” for the Western alliance and further undermine Russia’s position on the world stage, making it “more difficult to imagine a path by which Russians and Putin can negotiate their way out.”

Yet others are less optimistic that recent events, however brutal, will bring a conclusion to the war.

“International condemnation or war crimes threats will have little effect on Russian behavior. This is nothing new for them,” said Bob Latiff, a chairman at the University of Notre Dame, citing previous offenses in Syria and Chechnya.

“As others, I am afraid there will be no end of the war any time soon,” added Thomas Kuehne, professor at Clark University.

“The history of warfare and war crimes over the last 100+ years shows consistently that war crimes like those we see now are perpetrated purposefully and in full awareness of the shock they evoke. And we are shocked, but sadly, we are also used to witnessing such crimes and their consequences,” he said.

Still, there is another source of international action that could prove more powerful in influencing Putin’s resolve, according to analysts. That is increased pressure from India and China.

“The crimes are increasing resolve among Ukraine’s existing supporters to continue and even step-up military assistance and economic pressure. But ending the war will require a bigger coalition of support — reaching China, India, and others,” Mary Ellen O’Connell, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, said.

India, without naming Russia, said this week that it “unequivocally condemned” the mass killings in Bucha and supported calls for an independent investigation, breaking from its previous neutrality. On Thursday, it abstained from a vote, backed by two-thirds of countries, to suspend Russia from the U.N.’s Human Rights Council.

However, China — a key strategic ally of Russia’s which has toed the Kremlin’s line on the war — continues to resist condemnation of the killings in Bucha and indeed voted against Russia’s suspension from the human rights body.

Without a shift in tone from the world’s second-largest economy, Putin is unlikely to be moved, Inglis said.

“If China were to shift its stance on the war it would likely be a game-changer for Putin. But today, China moved away from historically abstaining in votes on resolutions at the UN related to the war, to voting against the resolution,” she said.