Some 70 countries and institutions worldwide pledged more than 1 billion euros ($1.05 billion) in immediate aid to help Ukraine get through a harsh winter as Russian forces batter its energy grid and other critical civilian infrastructure.

France hosted the global meeting to discuss what could be offered between now and March to maintain water, food, energy, health and transport during Ukraine’s typically frigid winter.

Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said over 1 billion euros had been pledged with some 415 million devoted to Ukraine’s energy sector, hammered by Russian air strikes, adding that the participation of non-Western countries such as Qatar and Cambodia showed a widening of support for Ukraine.

The rest of the funds will be channelled to Ukraine’s health, food, water and transport sectors, with almost 500 million euros still to be allocated, she said.

“This is a powerful signal to show the civilised world is supporting Ukraine,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told reporters in Paris. “We are grateful to the countries that remain by our side when we are suffering the aggression by Russia on our territory and our civilian infrastructure.”

The conference was also an opportunity for French President Emmanuel Macron to display solidarity with Ukraine. He has been criticised by some European allies and Kyiv itself over the level of French military support and his comments about needing to maintain dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Baltic states and other European nations upset over Macron’s remarks regarding possible security guarantees for Russia formally lodged their disapproval and explained their position to France on Monday, diplomats told Reuters.

Macron’s mixed messages on Ukraine have caused exasperation that has become increasingly public in some east European capitals. The French presidency has said his comments, notably on providing security guarantees for Russia, have been taken out of context and Paris has never wavered in its support for Kyiv.

“Since Ukraine has got back on top on the ground, Russia, whose military weaknesses have been exposed, has adopted a cynical strategy that targets civilian infrastructure to bring Ukraine to its knees,” Macron said in his opening speech, backing President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s 10-point peace proposal.

“For each of your country’s victories on the ground, Russia’s cowardly response is to bomb power, gas or water infrastructure necessary for the people’s survival this winter,” Macron said.

He said France would provide Ukraine 63 electric generators on top of the 100 delivered in November. With an additional 48.5 million euros, French aid would reach 200 million euros this year, according Macron.

Addressing the meeting by videolink, Zelenskiy said Kyiv needed at least 800 million euros of emergency aid to tackle what he said was Russia’s “energy terrorism” and help Ukrainians get through the winter.

“It’s a lot but the price is less than the cost of (power) blackouts,” Zelenskiy said.

The international meeting also established an online mechanism so that Ukraine can submit its urgent needs and donor countries can respond promptly.

A second meeting between France, Ukraine and some 500 French companies will look into what can be invested to assist Kyiv in the short to longer term.

($1 = 0.9487 euros)

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Days after the release of U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner from imprisonment in Russia, Democratic and Republican U.S. lawmakers will introduce legislation on Tuesday to establish March 9 as an annual day to remember Americans detained abroad.

The bill, according to text seen by Reuters, seeks to make March 9 “National Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Day,” to call increased attention to Americans unjustly held abroad and add urgency to the push to bring them home.

“Brittney Griner’s release and unjust imprisonment has only underscored the need for Congress to continue working to safeguard the lives of wrongfully detained Americans,” said Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a lead sponsor of the bill, in a statement.

The measure’s sponsors also include Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Representatives Haley Stevens, a Democrat, and French Hill, a Republican.

The bill would establish an official “Hostage and Detainee” flag, similar to the black-and-white POW-MIA flag adopted in 1972 to draw attention to Americans held prisoner or missing in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era.

March 9 is the day on which Robert Levinson disappeared in Iran in 2007. He was declared dead in absentia in 2020.

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced a prisoner swap involving Griner – a two-time Olympic gold medalist and Women’s National Basketball Association – and arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Griner’s February arrest in Moscow on charges of possessing vape cartridges containing cannabis oil triggered a surge of support from fans, celebrities and politicians calling for her release and criticizing the Biden administration for not doing more.

The administration has been unable to secure the release of former Marine Paul Whelan, who was jailed in Russia on 2020 on spying charges.

The United States does not provide an official figure for how many of its citizens are held abroad, but the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, named after an American journalist abducted and killed in Syria, says more than 60 U.S. citizens are wrongfully detained in about 18 countries.

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Eva Kaili’s career charted a meteoric rise from student activism in Greece to the highest echelons of European lawmaking but now faces an equally precipitous fall after her arrest in a corruption probe involving World Cup host Qatar.

After climbing to become one of 14 vice presidents in the European Parliament, the 44-year-old was among four people arrested and charged on Sunday in Belgium over allegations that Qatar lavished them with cash and gifts to influence decisions.

Kaili, who defended the World Cup host in the European assembly last month against those trying to “bully” Doha over its treatment of migrant workers, denies any wrongdoing.

Qatar also denies the accusations.

But shaken by the scandal, European lawmakers stripped Kaili of her role as vice president on Tuesday. Some colleagues also said she should quit as an MEP, while the Greek socialist PASOK party she represents is expelling her.

An architect by training and a former TV newsreader, Kaili was among a group of young Greek politicians who emerged in the debilitating Greek debt crisis from 2010 to 2015.

While Greece secured three international bailouts, Athens regularly clashed with other European Union capitals, transforming Greek politics and creating an environment in which Kaili and others ready to challenge veteran politicians thrived.

“She always had ambition,” said a former PASOK official who has known Kaili and her family since her student days in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki.

“The position of VP suited her like a glove,” the official said of her European Parliament post of vice president, which she secured after being elected to the EU parliament in 2014.

In a parliamentary session on Nov. 21 to discuss the rights situation related to the World Cup, she defended Qatar, which has faced intense criticism from human rights groups over its treatment of migrant workers during preparations for the event.

Kaili, who visited the Kuwait and Qatar at the end of October and start of November, cited the International Labour Office saying Qatar had been “introducing labour rights … and introducing minimum wage despite the challenges.”

She added: “They committed to a vision by choice, they opened to the world. Still, some here are calling to discriminate them. They bully them and accuse everyone, who talks or engages, of corruption.”

Three days later, the European parliament approved a resolution calling on FIFA to help compensate families of migrant workers who died and workers who suffered rights abuses.

Kaili was a student activist at university and by the age of 24 was a municipal councillor in Thessaloniki.

She then spent three years as a television newsreader for the Greek channel MEGA TV before she was elected to parliament in 2007. At 29, she was the youngest PASOK lawmaker to be elected to the Greek assembly.

In the Greek parliament during the financial meltdown, she challenged then Prime Minister George Papandreou over his handling of the debt crisis, and threatened at one point to withhold crucial parliamentary support.

Responding to charges she is now facing in Belgium, Kaili’s lawyer in Greece, Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, told Open TV: “Her position is that she is innocent, I can tell you that.”

“She has nothing to do with financing from Qatar, nothing, explicitly and unequivocally,” he added.

Wall Street’s main stock indexes were set to open sharply higher on Tuesday as a smaller-than-expected rise in U.S. consumer prices raised hopes that the Federal Reserve could soften its aggressive rate hike stance.

U.S consumer prices barely rose in November amid declines in the cost of gasoline and used cars, leading to the smallest annual increase in inflation in nearly a year.

Expectations that the U.S. central bank will increase the benchmark rate by 50 basis points on Wednesday shot up to 97% with the rates seen peaking in May 2023 at 4.86%.

“The Fed has raised rates pretty significantly over the course of this year and we’re starting to see the real results today,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Financial.

The U.S. Labor Department’s report showed that prices increased by 7.1% on an annual basis in November, while the core rate, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, climbed 6.0%.

Economists were expecting a 7.3% rise in headline CPI and a 6.1% rise in core rates.

“I think what that tells us is that when the Fed meets tomorrow, they likely will have the ability to say we’re raising rates by less than what they have been, at 50 basis points, and the place at which we stop will likely be at 5%,” Hogan said.

The consumer inflation data follows November’s slightly higher-than-expected producer prices reading last week, which however, had pointed to a moderation in the trend.

Fears that the Fed’s aggressive policy tightening will tip the economy into a recession have pushed the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) down 16.3% this year.

Still, the index has rallied off its October lows on hopes that the U.S. central bank would ease the pace of its rate hikes with the economy showing signs of a strain from its policy actions.

The CBOE volatility index (.VIX), also known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, eased sharply off the near one-month high of 25.84 points hit earlier in the day.

At 8:44 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 735 points, or 2.16%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 111.5 points, or 2.79%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 458.5 points, or 3.91%.

Most rate-sensitive stocks including Meta Platforms Inc (META.O), Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) and Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) gained between 4% and 5.7% in premarket trading, helped by a decline in Treasury yields.

Oracle Corp jumped 5.0% on better-than-expected quarterly revenue, while Pinterest Inc (PINS.N) gained 7.2% after Piper Sandler upgraded the social media platform’s stock to “overweight” from “neutral”.

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A combination of Moderna Inc’s (MRNA.O) experimental melanoma vaccine and Merck & Co’s (MRK.N) blockbuster immunotherapy Keytruda cut the risk of skin cancer’s recurrence or death by 44% compared with Keytruda alone in a mid-stage trial.

Moderna’s shares rose over 8% in premarket trading on Tuesday after the data, which the companies hailed as spectacular. Merck’s shares were up nearly 2% at $111.12.

The study is the first randomized trial to show that combining mRNA vaccine technology – which has been behind the development of successful COVID-19 vaccines – with a drug that revs up the immune response would offer a better result for patients with the most deadly type of skin cancer.

“It’s a tremendous step forward in immunotherapy,” Eliav Barr, Merck’s head of global clinical development and chief medical officer, said in an interview.

Paul Burton, Moderna’s chief medical officer, said in a separate interview the combination “has the capacity to be a new paradigm in the treatment of cancer.”

The ongoing study involved 157 patients with stage III/IV melanoma whose tumors were surgically removed before being treated with the drug/vaccine combo or Keytruda alone with the aim of delaying disease recurrence.

The combination was generally safe and showed a statistically significant benefit compared with Keytruda alone after a year of treatment. Serious drug-related side effects occurred in 14.4% of patients who received the drug-vaccine combination compared with 10% with Keytruda alone.

In October, Merck exercised an option to jointly develop and commercialize the treatment, known as mRNA-4157/V940, sharing costs and any profits equally. Merck and Moderna plan to discuss the results with regulatory authorities and start a Phase III study in melanoma patients in 2023.

The Merck/Moderna collaboration is one of several combining powerful drugs that unleash the immune system to target cancers with mRNA vaccine technology. These so-called neoadjuvant vaccines are designed to target highly mutated tumors.

The personalized vaccine works in concert with Merck’s Keytruda, a so-called checkpoint inhibitor designed to disable a protein called programmed death 1, or PD-1, that helps tumors to evade the immune system.

To build the vaccine, researchers took samples of patients’ tumors and healthy tissue. After analyzing the samples to decode their genetic sequence and isolate mutant proteins associated only with the cancer, that information was used to design a tailor-made cancer vaccine.

When injected into a patient, the patient’s cells act as a manufacturing plant, producing perfect copies of the mutations for the immune system to recognize and destroy.

Moderna’s personalized vaccine can be made in about eight weeks, a timeframe the company eventually hopes to halve, Burton said.

Barr said the companies intend to study the approach in other types of highly mutated cancers, such as lung cancer. Other highly mutated cancers include bladder cancers and some triple negative breast cancers.

Moderna mRNA competitor BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE) likewise has several cancer vaccine trials in the works including one with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, which is testing a personalized BioNTech vaccine in combination with Roche’s (ROG.S) Tecentriq in patients with pancreatic cancer.

Gritstone Bio Inc (GRTS.O) is testing a personalized, self-amplifying mRNA vaccine in combination with Bristol Myers Squibb’s (BMY.N) immunotherapies Opdivo and Yervoy in a midstage trial in patients with advanced solid tumors.

Experts said the personalized vaccines were among several promising cancer vaccine ideas in the works after many failures in the field.

“In general, I think cancer vaccines are kind of at a tipping point, and there are going to probably be a lot of vaccines coming down the pipeline in the next five years,” said Dr. Mary Lenora Disis, director of the UW Medicine Cancer Vaccine Institute in Seattle.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the speed, ease and safety of mRNA vaccines, they came out of years of cancer vaccine research, she said.

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Former President Donald Trump (r) leaves the East Room of the White House as his daughter Ivanka Trump (l) and her husband Jared Kushner look on in Washington, DC, on May 18, 2018.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

• Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have seemingly distanced themselves from her father, Donald Trump.
• Mary Trump told MSNBC they are turning their backs on him because he is “losing value.”
• Trump’s niece said the couple “don’t need” the former president like they used to. 

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner cut ties with former President Donald Trump because he is “losing value” and they don’t need him anymore, his niece told MSNBC on Sunday.

Mary Trump, a longtime and vocal critic of her uncle, told MSNBC that Trump’s eldest daughter and her husband are publicly removing themselves from politics because they “finally realized that they gain more by staying away from Donald than they do by staying aligned with him.”

“Donald is definitely losing value in terms of the party, and in terms of politics generally,” she added. “And Ivanka and Jared are legitimately wealthy people apart from whatever Donald is doing, so they don’t need him to the same degree they might have.”

Mary Trump also said that the couple, who both served as unpaid senior advisors to Trump during his administration, have grasped that their association with the former president “damaged them, at least socially.”

She added: “It’s the same with most of Donald’s inner circle — there is always a transactional calculation being made and a lot of people are making the calculation that it just isn’t worth it for them anymore.” 

Trump’s eldest daughter was notably absent from her father’s presidential campaign launch on November 15. Kushner was in attendance.

In a statement published on the same day, she said that she loves her father “very much,” but does not plan on staying in the political arena any longer. 

Since then, the couple appears to be prioritizing their personal life, traveling to Egypt with their three children and attending the World Cup in Qatar.

An unnamed source told The New York Post last month that Trump’s eldest daughter “hated all the criticism and the threats” that came with politics, and was “unhappy about how a lot of their friends turned their back on them.”

Mary Trump’s comments come as the former president appears to be losing his grip on the Republican Party after many of the candidates he backed did poorly in the midterm elections in November.

Their failures prompted a number of leading Republicans and conservative critics to question Trump’s effectiveness as a political leader, with some floating the idea of new leadership in the GOP.

Mary Trump, who has long been estranged from the former president, published a book last year called “The Reckoning: America’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal”.

Trump has repeatedly attacked his niece’s comments in the past, suggesting that she is biased against him.

Sam Bankman-Fried and a Bahamas government building in Nassau.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Walter Bibikow/Getty Images

• Bahamian officials asked Sam Bankman-Fried to mint new crypto coins as FTX collapsed, US lawyers say.
• According to court documents, the officials told SBF to transfer the digital assets to their control.
• Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after the US filed criminal charges.

Bahamian government officials asked Sam Bankman-Fried to mint new crypto coins as FTX collapsed, lawyers for FTX said in a court filing on Monday.

Bloomberg first reported the news.

Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after the US filed criminal charges. US authorities confirmed the arrest on social media, and the SEC released charges on Tuesday morning, accusing Bankman-Fried of a “years-long” fraud.

According to the Monday court filing, FTX’s CEO John Ray III and his team tried to block unauthorized users from FTX systems and watched as they minted new FTT tokens in the early hours of November 12.

The court filing accused Bahamas officials of instructing Bankman-Fried and FTX cofounder Gary Wang to “mint a substantial amount of new tokens.”

The court documents also alleged the officials had told the pair to “transfer hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of those new tokens and other digital assets” to the control of the Bahamian officials.

FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 11 and Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO with immediate effect. 

The court papers also pointed to a November 9 email to the Bahamas attorney general where Bankman-Fried offered to open up withdrawals for all Bahamian customers.

Tensions between the US team and the Bahamian officials have been escalating in the court filings. A January federal court date is set to decide how much deference the US team must give the Bahamas in the investigation, per Bloomberg.

Representatives for the Bahamian government did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

United Airlines

• United Airlines has placed an order for 100 Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, with options for 100 more.
• The purchase is the largest widebody order of any US airline in commercial aviation history.
• The planes will replace the carrier’s aging Boeing 767s and some of its Boeing 777s.

United Airlines is bolstering its Boeing fleet with another massive aircraft order. 

On Tuesday, the Chicago-based carrier announced an order for 100 Boeing 787 Dreamliners, with options for 100 more, marking the largest order of widebody jets by any US carrier in commercial aviation history.

United CFO Gerry Laderman told media during a conference call on Monday that the first 100 are considered replacement planes, while the options are “opportunities” to expand its network.

“United emerged from the pandemic as the world’s leading global airline and the flag carrier of the United States,” United CEO Scott Kirby said in a press release. “This order further solidifies our lead and creates new opportunities for our customers, employees, and shareholders by accelerating our plan to connect more people to more places around the globe and deliver the best experience in the sky.”

Deliveries for the new jets, which will feature Polaris business class, United premium plus, economy plus, and regular economy, will begin deliveries in 2024. The airline can choose from either the -8, -9, or -10 variant, which it says will provide “flexibility to support a wide range of routes.”

The order comes just months after Boeing was given the green light by the Federal Aviation Administration to resume deliveries of the 787 after production flaws grounded it for over a year.

Also announced on Tuesday is an order for 100 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, 44 of which were exercised options and will be delivered by 2026, and the other 56 are new purchases and will be delivered between 2027 and 2028.

United did not divulge any information on how much the order is worth, but Reuters estimates the total order value at $43 billion. However, for an order of this magnitude, it’s likely United negotiated a discount.

United told media in the call that that order will not impact its long-standing Airbus A350 order and deliveries of those jets are now not expected to start until 2030. The airline originally placed the order in 2009, according to Reuters. It then increased the number of A350 jets on order to 35 in 2013 and then again in 2017 to 45, where it currently stands.

The orders are part of the carrier’s United Next plan, which also includes a June 2021 order for 270 Boeing and Airbus narrowbody planes. 

According to United, total deliveries of narrowbody and widebody aircraft will reach more than 700 by the end of 2032, with 100 of the widebodies replacing old Boeing 767s and some Boeing 777s. The carrier told media that the company has not decided when the rest of the 777s will be replaced.

And, it won’t be long before United’s 767s are gone forever as the carrier announced the entire fleet will be retired by 2030, reducing carbon emissions by 25%, expanding cargo capacity, and offering more premium cabins, United CCO Andrew Nocella told media during the call.

The move follows American Airlines’ retirement of the type in April 2020. Delta initially said it planned to retire its 767s in 2025 but recently decided to keep them flying longer.

The order will help United expand its international footprint. The carrier already operates the largest network across both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, serving nearly 300 international destinations from its seven US hubs. In 2021 alone, United made its largest-ever transatlantic expansion to places like Amman, Jordan, and Ponta Delgada, Portugal.

However, the larger network will require more employees, with United saying it plans to hire 2,500 more pilots and 4,000 more flight attendants in 2023. Overall, the airline brought on 15,000 new workers in 2022 and plans to hire the same in 2023.

“We’re not just creating jobs – these are long-lasting careers that offer great pay, outstanding benefits, and flight privileges to see the world,” United EVP of human resources and labor relations Kate Gebo said. “And the best part is we’re actively hiring across every role at the airline.”

A shopper looks at Black Friday displays at a Walmart store in Wilmington, Delaware, on November 25, 2022.

SAMUEL CORUM/AFP via Getty Images

• The Consumer Price Index rose 7.1% in November from the same time last year.
• That’s below the 7.3% economists estimated and was the lowest rate since December 2021.
• November’s increase signals that inflation is still cooling.

Inflation continues to cool from its sky-high rates seen throughout 2022.

Inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index soared 7.1% year-over-year in November, lower than the year-over-year increase of 7.7% in October. That’s according to new data out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. November’s increase comes in below the 7.3% increase economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecasted, and is the lowest year-over-year rate since December 2021.

Over the month, CPI increased by a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in November, below the 0.3% expected to be seen this month by economists. November’s increase is less than October’s increase of 0.4%.

Looking at just core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, this measure rose 6.0% year-over-year. That’s just shy of the 6.1% forecasted. Core CPI increased 6.3% in October from the same time a year ago.

Additionally, economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected a month-over-month increase of 0.3% in November for this measure, unchanged from the month before. Core CPI surged 0.2%.

This week’s CPI report comes in just ahead of the Fed’s last meeting of 2022 where the central bank could potentially raise interest rates at a slower pace than the outsize hikes from earlier this year per a speech from Fed Chair Jerome Powell. 

Looking forward, inflation may be cooler next year. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently said on “60 Minutes” that she thinks “inflation will be lower.”

“I am very hopeful that the labor market will remain quite healthy so that people can feel good about their finances and their personal economic situation,” Yellen said.

While Americans have faced rising prices, there has been some recent good news, such as at the gas pump. 

“Some relief has been seen from the peaks of inflation, particularly with hugely consequential gasoline prices,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate, stated before the release. “The national average has recently been just pennies a gallon away from year-ago levels. Bargain conscious holiday gift shoppers are finding compelling values on the likes of clothing and consumer electronics.” 

However, rising prices are still affecting what shoppers can buy. Hamrick said that “with the costs of necessities so high, consumers are having to forego a good number of discretionary purchases.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

A still from an instructional video issued by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on December 12, 2022, showing Russian soldiers how to surrender to a drone.

General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine/Facebook

• Ukraine has released an instruction video for Russian soldiers on surrendering to a drone.
• It’s part of the “I Want to Live” hotline, which entices Russians to stop fighting in Ukraine.
• The video suggests that surrendering via drone may become increasingly common. 

Ukraine’s army issued an instruction video on Monday with a step-by-step guide for Russian soldiers on how to surrender to one of its drones.

The video comes as part of Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project, a hotline that encourages Russians who are reluctant to fight in Ukraine to surrender.

The video, which is narrated in Russian, shows three men in uniform and white armbands in a trench within a snowy landscape. From there, they are led to Ukrainian captivity by a small red quadcopter. 

The footage suggests that the role of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, on the Ukrainian battlefield is rapidly expanding, even to the sensitive area of surrender. 

The video claims that the goal is to make the capture process safer. 

 

Surrendering soldiers are instructed to contact the “I Want to Live” hotline to arrange the time and place of the meeting ahead of time. “Once verified, go to the place at the exact time indicated,” the video says. 

Given the short flight time of a drone, the video notes, “the accuracy and timeliness of arrival is critical.”

Once in place, soldiers are told to wait for the drone to appear — or for further instructions. 

“Seeing the drone in the field of view, make eye contact with it,” the video instructs. Soldiers should then raise their arms and signal they’re ready to follow.

After that the drone will move up and down a few meters, before heading off at walking pace in the direction of the nearest representatives of Ukraine’s army, it says. 

A still from an instructional video issued by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on December 12, 2022, showing Russian soldiers how to surrender to a drone.

General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine/Facebook

The video also warns that the drone’s battery may run low, in which case it will head back to base and the soldiers should stay put and await a fresh one.

That one, too, should be met with eye contact and arms raised, it says. 

The video shows the three uniformed men finally meeting with Ukrainian soldiers with arms raised, whereupon they lie face down on the ground in order to be searched. 

“Russian soldiers, keep this instruction for yourself,” the video advises. “Distribute it among your colleagues and acquaintances. Save more lives.”

“I Want to Live” was launched in September, just before Putin announced the partial mobilization of reservists — an unpopular move that called up an estimated 300,000 Russians not in active service to join the war in Ukraine. 

Ukraine claims the service has received thousands of enquiries from Russians. Insider was unable to verify the number. 

In an earlier interview with the Kyiv Post, the project’s spokesperson, Vitaliy Matvienko, explained that Russians can even contact the hotline pre-emptively, to register an intention to surrender ahead of being physically sent to Ukraine.

The project says that those who surrender will be greeted under the terms of the Geneva Convention, which guarantees the safety of noncombatants. 

In late November, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence shared drone footage showing a man in a Russian soldier’s uniform walking with arms raised — an example, it said, of a drone mediating a surrender.

In November, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that it had also used drones to transmit text messages enticing Ukrainians to surrender, state news agency TASS reported, though it is unclear how successful the initiative has been.