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It's April 27th, 2023, and this is your DSR Daily Brief. I'm Chris Cotnor. Our top stories from international outlets this morning.

According to reporting from Al Jazeera, Ukrainian forces have advanced on a poorly defended part of the riverine coast of Kiersohn.

The southern region bisected by the Danepro River, according to several reports during the 61st week of the war.

Ukraine took back a large swath of the region, including the capital city, also called Kiersohn, from invading Russian forces last year, but the Russians entrenched themselves on the river's left bank.

According to leaked US military documents reported in the New York Times, 12 Ukrainian combat brigades, amounting to 4,000 soldiers, are expected to be ready to head to the front lines by the end of April,

with nine of them trained and supplied by the US and NATO. There were also signs that the drone attacks on Russian soil, thought to have been launched by Ukraine, although it has not acknowledged it, have had some psychological effect.

Some 3,000 people were evacuated from the Russian city of Belgorod after a bomb scare on April 22nd.

The Daily Beast reports that after months of planning, weeks of frenetic negotiating, and days of doubtful speculation, House Republicans on Wednesday passed a bill barely to lift the federal government's debt limit and drastically cut spending.

Now comes the difficult part. The hard-fought, limit-saved, grow act is merely Speaker Kevin McCarthy's opening bid to kick-start negotiations with President Joe Biden to secure deep budget cuts in exchange for not crashing the US economy by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.

Biden has said he will negotiate over spending, but not over the debt limit, with time running short until the federal government risks fiscal calamity with the borrowing limit coming as soon as June, McCarthy now has his bargaining chip in hand to try and force Biden to the negotiating table and attempt to work out some compromise.

To cobble together the bare minimum 217 votes needed to pass the limit-saved grow act, McCarthy had to agree to hard-right conservative demands like even stricter work requirements for recipients of food stamps and other forms of poverty aid. We will continue to follow this story as it develops.

According to the BBC, the US and South Korea have secured a landmark deal to counter the North Korean nuclear threat. Washington has agreed to periodically deploy US nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea and involve Seoul in its nuclear planning operations.

In return, South Korea has agreed not to develop its own nuclear weapons. The Washington Declaration will strengthen the Allies' cooperation in deterring a North Korean attack, US President Joe Biden said.

The South Korean President Yoon Seok-yul, who was at the White House for a state visit, said the Washington Declaration marked an unprecedented commitment by the US to enhance defense, deter attacks, and protect US allies by using nuclear weapons.

The US already has a treaty obligation to defend South Korea and has previously pledged to use nuclear weapons if necessary, but some in South Korea have started to doubt that commitment and call for the country to pursue its own nuclear program.

Elsewhere, The New York Times reports that Jack Tashera, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused the posting classified documents online, repeatedly tried to obstruct federal investigators and has a troubling history of making racist and violent remarks, just as Department lawyer said in a court filing late Wednesday.

In an 18-page memo, released before a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday in a Massachusetts federal court, the Department's lawyers argued that Airman Tashera needed to be detained indefinitely because he posed a serious flight risk and might still have information that would be of tremendous value to hostile nation states.

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