US President Donald Trump said he is not worried about Beijing’s military drills around Taiwan, choosing to instead highlight his rapport with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
“I have a great relationship with President Xi, and he hasn’t told me anything about [the drills]. I certainly have seen it,” Trump told reporters at a press conference on Monday.
“No, nothing worries me. They’ve been doing naval exercises for 20 years in that area,” he said.
The two-day war games kicked off on Monday – nearly two weeks after the US announced one of its largest-ever arms sale to Taiwan. The sale had angered Beijing, which sees the self-governed island as a breakaway province.
China’s military exercises on Tuesday will see it run 10 hours of live-firing exercises in the sea and airspace of five locations surrounding the island.
Its Eastern Theater Command in charge of the Taiwan Strait said it has lined up destroyers, frigates and fighter-bombers to test the military’s “sea-air coordination” and “integrated containment capabilities”.
The war games, which simulate the seizure and blockade of the island’s key areas, as a warning against “Taiwan independence separatist forces” and “external interference”, the Chinese military said.
Taiwan’s presidential office has criticised the drills, calling them a challenge to international norms.
China has long vowed to “reunify” with Taiwan and has not ruled out the use of force to take it.
It has in recent years ramped up pressure over Taipei with military drills and regular incursions into its waters and airspace. Taiwan in turn has plans to boost defence spending to modernise its armed forces.
While Trump has downplayed Beijing’s ongoing drills, his administration had recently announced a $11bn (£8.2bn) weapons package to Taiwan, which includes advanced rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers and a variety of missiles.
The US has formal ties with Beijing rather than Taiwan, and has walked a tight diplomatic rope for decades. But it remains a powerful ally of Taiwan’s and the island’s biggest arms supplier.
China hit back at the sale with sanctions on several US defence firms. Its foreign ministry also said that any attempt to “contain China by using Taiwan will absolutely not succeed”.
Murat Mukashev (inset) signed up for the army after he was given a 10-year jail term
Over the past 10 months, Russian losses in the war with Ukraine have been growing faster than any time since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, BBC analysis suggests.
As peace efforts intensified in 2025 under pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration, 40% more obituaries of soldiers were published in Russian sources compared with the previous year.
Overall, the BBC has confirmed the names of almost 160,000 people killed fighting on Russia’s side in Ukraine.
BBC News Russian has been counting Russian war losses together with independent outlet Mediazona and a group of volunteers since February 2022. We keep a list of named individuals whose deaths we were able to confirm using official reports, newspapers, social media, and new memorials and graves.
The real death toll is believed to be much higher, and military experts we have consulted believe our analysis of cemeteries, war memorials and obituaries might represent 45-65% of the total.
That would put the number of Russian deaths at between 243,000 and 352,000.
The number of obituaries for any given period is a preliminary estimate of the confirmed losses, as some need additional verification and will eventually be discarded. But it can indicate how the intensity of fighting is changing over time.
2025 starts with a relatively low number of published obituaries in January, compared with the previous months. Then the number rises in February, when Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin talked directly for the first time about ending the war in Ukraine.
The next peak in August coincides with the two presidents meeting each other in Alaska, a diplomatic coup for Putin that was widely seen as an end to his international isolation.
In October, when a planned second Russia-US summit was eventually shelved, and then in November, when the US presented a 28-point peace proposal, an average of 322 obituaries were published per day – twice the average in 2024.
It is difficult to put increased Russian losses down to any one factor, but the Kremlin sees territorial gains as a way of influencing negotiations with the US in its favour: Putin aide Yuri Ushakov stressed recently that “recent successes” had had a positive impact.
Murat Mukashev was among those who gambled on a quick peace deal, and it cost him his life.
Mukashev was an activist who had never supported Putin’s policies.
Over the years, he had taken part in demonstrations against police violence and torture, and joined rallies for LGBT rights and the release of Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s main opponent who died in prison in 2024.
Murat Mukashev
Murat Mukashev was never a Putin supporter and had protested against the war and police violence
He had repeatedly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on social media from 2022. Then, in early 2024, Mukashev was detained near his home in Moscow and charged with large-scale drug dealing.
While his case was being tried he was offered a contract with the defence ministry, according to his friends and family.
They saw the heavy charges levelled against him as a typical ploy to get people to sign up. A 2024 law allows the accused a way out of a criminal conviction if they join up – an attractive option in a country with an acquittal rate of less than 1%.
Mukashev refused the offer, and the court sentenced him to 10 years in a high-security penal colony.
In prison in November 2024, he changed his mind. Friends said he was encouraged by Trump’s promises to end the war quickly and decided he needed to sign up as soon as possible to secure his release before a peace deal was reached.
“He saw this as a chance to be released instead of being imprisoned for 10 years of strict regime,” reads a statement from his support group.
There was no explanation of how he reconciled taking part in the war with his reluctance to kill.
On June 11 2025, Mukashev died fighting as part of an assault squad in the Kharkiv region of north-eastern Ukraine.
Like him, the majority of Russians killed at the front in 2025 had nothing to do with the military at the start of the full-scale war, BBC figures show.
But since the bloody battle for the city of Avdiivka in October 2023, there has been a steady increase in casualties among so-called “volunteers” – those who have voluntarily signed a contract since the start of the invasion.
They now appear to form the majority of Russia’s new recruits, as opposed to professional soldiers who joined the army before the invasion or those mobilised for military service afterwards.
A year ago 15% of Russian military deaths were volunteers, but in 2025 it was one in three.
Reuters
File pic of Russian recruits in Rostov region
Local governments, under pressure to maintain a constant flow of new recruits, advertise hefty pay-outs, meet people who have large debts and campaign in universities and colleges.
This means that the Kremlin has been able to compensate for heavy losses at the front while avoiding the politically risky move of a large-scale mandatory mobilisation.
By October, 336,000 people had signed up for the military this year, according to National Security Council deputy chief Dmitry Medvedev – well over 30,000 a month.
Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte has since said that 25,000 Russian soldiers are being killed every month. If both are right, Russia is still recruiting more soldiers than it is losing.
Based on obituaries and relatives’ accounts, most of those who signed up to fight did so voluntarily; but there are reports of pressure and coercion, especially on regular conscripts and those charged with criminal offences.
Some recruits mistakenly believe that after they have signed up for a year they can return to their old life with money in their pockets.
A new recruit can earn up to 10m roubles (£95,000; $128,000) in a year. In reality all contracts signed with the defence ministry since September 2022 are automatically renewed until the war is over.
According to Nato, the total number of Russian dead and wounded in the war is 1.1 million, and one official has estimated there have been 250,000 fatalities.
This is in line with the BBC’s calculations, although our list does not include those killed serving in the militia of two occupied regions in eastern Ukraine, which we estimate to be between 21,000 and 23,500 fighters.
Ukraine has also sustained heavy losses.
Last February, President Volodymyr Zelensky put the number of battlefield deaths at 46,000 and 380,000 others wounded.
Tens of thousands more were either missing in action or held captive, he added.
Based on other estimates and cross-referencing data, we believe the number of Ukrainians killed by now is as high as 140,000.
CNN’s Harry Enten on Monday broke down how Vice President JD Vance is “running well ahead” of the rest of the potential Republican field ahead of the 2028 GOP presidential primaries.
Vance, who has yet to announce a 2028 bid, is the top choice among likely voters in New Hampshire’s Republican primary that year, with 51% planning to vote for him in 2028, according to a University of New Hampshire Granite State poll from October.
The Republicans trailing Vance among likely GOP voters in the New Hampshire poll are former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley (9%) and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard (8%).
“There’s a reason why he’s such a heavy favorite in the prediction market so far, because if you win the GOP primary in New Hampshire, chances are, you’re going to be the Republican nominee for president,” said Enten of Vance.
Enten, who likened Vance to racing great Mario Andretti and compared the rest of the field to go-kart drivers, highlighted that Vance is the only non-sitting president for the Republican Party since 1980 to hit 50% or above in early New Hampshire primary polling.
“JD Vance is pulling off something historic at this time, and that is the key reason why, at this point, he is the far and away favorite for the Republican nomination,” Enten said.
