Financial Times - Christopher Miller and Max Seddon / Ukraine faces race against time to deploy US funding
 

• Ukraine faces tough weeks ahead in its fight to stem Russian battlefield advances despite this weekend’s passage of a long-awaited US funding bill, according to Ukrainian officials, soldiers and military analysts. 

• The US House of Representatives passed the $60bn military aid package on Saturday night after months of delay that have left Ukraine short of critical weaponry in the face of Russian advances. 

• American weapons and munitions will start flowing into Ukraine within the coming days if the bill is approved by the US Senate this week, as is widely expected. 

• “The time between political decisions and actual damage to the enemy on the front lines, between the package’s approval and our warriors’ strengthening, must be as short as possible,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Sunday evening address.

   

The Guardian - Daniel Boffey / Global defence budget jumps to record high of $2440bn
 

• Global military expenditure has reached a record high of $2440bn (£1970bn) after the largest annual rise in government spending on arms in over a decade, according to a report. 

• The 6.8% increase between 2022 and 2023 was the steepest since 2009, pushing spending to the highest recorded by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) in its 60-year history.

• For the first time, analysts at the thinktank recorded a rise in military outlay in all five geographical regions: Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania and the Americas. 

• Nan Tian, a senior researcher with Sipri’s military expenditure and arms production programme, warned of the heightened risk of an unintended conflagration as governments raced to arm. He said: “The unprecedented rise in military spending is a direct response to the global deterioration in peace and security.

   

Bloomberg - Alex Barinka / TikTok Braces for US Divest-or-Ban Law — And a Legal Fight

• After years of working to assure the US government that its popular social media app isn’t a threat to national security, TikTok’s loss in that fight now seems almost inevitable. 

• The US House of Representatives on Saturday put legislation requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance Ltd., to divest its ownership stake in the app on a fast track to become law, tying it to a crucial aid package for Ukraine and Israel. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill in the coming days. President Joe Biden has said he will sign the legislation promptly. 

• That action would be an unprecedented move by Congress to use legislation to threaten the ban of a large consumer technology platform. If it’s signed into law, ByteDance intends to fight the effort in court and exhaust all legal challenges before it considers any kind of divestiture, people familiar with the matter have said. 

• “This is an unprecedented deal worked out between the Republican Speaker and President Biden,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, said in a memo to TikTok’s US staff. “At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge.”

   

Politico - Kathryn Carlson / Bulgaria can’t join the eurozone in January. Here’s why.
 

• Behind an imposing wooden desk in Sofia, in a complex once housing a statue of Lenin, the man who presides over the 20-strong group of eurozone finance ministers chose his words carefully. 

• “I am strongly convinced that Bulgaria will join the euro area in 2025,” Paschal Donohoe said. "The question is when your country will introduce the euro as its currency. And not if.” 

• Flanked by the country’s prime minister, deputy prime minister, and foreign minister, his presence carried plenty of European political heft. A month on, the coalition government has collapsed and those three ministers have all been swept from office. Donohoe’s visit ― drumming up support for Bulgaria's wobbling bid to become the 21st country to use the euro ― turned out to be at a less than ideal time. 

• Experts and politicians who spoke with POLITICO are convinced the January 1, 2025, target date is not going to be met ― not just because of Bulgaria’s political turmoil but also because of persistent inflation and lack of popular backing.

Our opinion reads for today:
 

• Foreign Affairs - Alex Crowther, Jahara Matisek, and Phillips P. O’Brien / Europe—but Not NATO—Should Send Troops to Ukraine 
• Politico - Stuart Lau and Jacopo Barigazzi / Who’s the boss when it comes to defense: NATO or the EU?