Putin, Vladimir V

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares33 Views

    What Are ATACMS, the U.S. Missiles That May Be Used Against Russia?

    by

    In a major policy shift, the Biden administration has authorized Ukraine to use the ballistic missiles within Russia.For the first time, the Biden administration has authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied ballistic missiles for attacks inside Russia, American officials say, marking a major policy shift.The missiles are known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS (pronounced “attack ’ems”). They are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops to support Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, according to American officials.Ukraine has been lobbying the United States for years to receive the authorization, which comes in the final months of the Biden administration. President-elect Donald J. Trump has said he will seek a quick end to the war in Ukraine.Here’s what you need to know about ATACMSWhat do these missiles do?Why did the U.S. wait?How will Ukraine use them?Has the U.S. used them in combat?What do these missiles do?ATACMS, made by Lockheed Martin, are short-range ballistic missiles that, depending on the model, can strike targets 190 miles away with a warhead containing about 375 pounds of explosives. Ballistic missiles fly much higher into the atmosphere than artillery rockets and many times farther, coming back to the ground at incredibly high speed because of gravity’s pull.They can be fired from the HIMARS mobile launchers that the United States has provided Ukraine, as well as from older M270 launchers sent from Britain and Germany.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 50 Shares88 Views

      in Elections

      Blinken Visits NATO Headquarters

      by

      The U.S. secretary of state met with European allies rattled by the American election results at a critical moment for Ukraine and the alliance.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken visited NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday at what he called a “critical moment” for Ukraine and the U.S.-led military alliance, as Europe braces for the anticipated upheaval of a new Trump era in Washington.In a trip organized only after last week’s presidential election results made clear that U.S. policy will likely swing dramatically away from President Biden’s lock step support for NATO and Ukraine, Mr. Blinken met with alliance and European officials to help plan for a post-Biden future.Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House in January has deeply shaken Europe’s mainstream political leaders, thanks to his skepticism about the value of NATO, the cost of defending Ukraine, and the wisdom of isolating Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin.Once in office, Mr. Trump could move quickly to change U.S. policy on all three fronts — a shift that European leaders fear might leave their countries both less secure from Russian aggression and at an economic disadvantage.Mr. Blinken did not explicitly mention Mr. Trump or last week’s election in his public remarks after meetings at NATO headquarters. But an American leadership change with huge global import was the obvious subtext, as Mr. Blinken stressed the intrinsic value of the alliance.Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, addressed the elephant in the room before sitting down with Mr. Blinken at a Brussels hotel. He said that their meeting offered “an opportunity to coordinate steps” after the U.S. election, noting that Ukraine’s government was speaking “both with the president-elect and his team and also with the outgoing administration.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      North Korea, in the Spotlight Over Ukraine, Launches a Long-Range Missile

      by

      The launch, into waters west of Japan, came shortly after the United States and South Korea criticized the North for sending troops to join Russia’s war. North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile off its east coast on Thursday, South Korean defense officials said, shortly after the United States and South Korea condemned the country for deploying troops near Ukraine to join Russia’s war effort.The missile was fired from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, at a deliberately steep angle so that it reached an unusually high altitude but did not fly over Japan, the South Korean military said in a brief statement. The missile landed in waters between North Korea and Japan.The military said it was analyzing data to learn more about the missile, but that it believed it was an ICBM. North Korea last tested a long-range missile​ in December, when it test-fired its solid-fueled Hwasong-18 ICBM.The launch on Thursday was the North’s first major weapons test since September, when it fired a new type of Hwasong-11 short-range ballistic missile, which it said could carry a “super-large” conventional warhead weighing 4.5 tons.On Wednesday, South Korean defense intelligence officials told lawmakers that North Korea might conduct long-range missile tests before the American presidential election next week. They also said that the North was preparing to conduct its seventh underground nuclear test, in a bid to raise tensions and gain diplomatic leverage with the next U.S. president. North Korea conducted its last nuclear test in 2017.In recent weeks, North Korea has posed a fresh security challenge to Washington and its allies by sending an estimated 11,000 troops to Russia to fight in its war against Ukraine. Thousands of them, outfitted with Russian uniforms and equipment, have moved closer to the front lines, preparing themselves for possible battle against Ukrainian troops, South Korean and American officials said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares156 Views

      in Elections

      Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Already a Leader in Satellites, Gets Into the Spy Game

      by

      The Pentagon needs what the company offers to compete with China even as it frets over its potential for dominance and the billionaire’s global interests.The breakthrough came last month, about 600 miles above Earth.For the first time, the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency used lasers transmitting data at light speed to communicate between military satellites on a secure network, making it easier to track enemy missiles and if necessary shoot them down.It was a milestone not only for the Pentagon. This was a defining moment for a certain up-and-coming military contractor that had built key parts of this new system: Elon Musk’s SpaceX.SpaceX over the last year started to move in a big way into the business of building military and spy satellites, an industry that has long been dominated by major contractors like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman as well as smaller players like York Space Systems.This shift comes as the Pentagon and U.S. spy agencies are preparing to spend billions of dollars to build a series of new constellations of low-earth-orbit satellites, much of it in response to recent moves by China to build its own space-based military systems.SpaceX is poised to capitalize on that, generating a new wave of questions inside the federal government about the company’s growing dominance as a military space contractor and Mr. Musk’s extensive business operations in China and his relations with foreign government leaders, possibly including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Musk is also unpredictable in a sector in which security is often perceived to be synonymous with predictability. He chafes at many of the processes and rules of government, saying they hold back progress, and wants to make his own calls.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Secretly Stayed in Touch With Putin After Leaving Office, Book Says

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump has secretly spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as many as seven times since leaving office, even as he was pressuring Republicans to block military aid to Ukraine to fight Russian invaders, according to a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward.The book, titled “War” and scheduled to be published next week, describes a scene in early 2024 at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s estate in Florida, when the former president ordered an aide out of his office so he could conduct a phone call with Mr. Putin. The unidentified aide said the two may have spoken a half-dozen other times as well since Mr. Trump left the White House.The book also reports that Mr. Trump, while still in office early during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, secretly sent Mr. Putin what were then rare tests for the virus for the Russian’s personal use. Mr. Putin, who has been described as particularly anxious about being infected at the time, urged Mr. Trump to not publicly reveal the gesture because it could damage the American president politically. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me,” Mr. Putin reportedly told him.The disclosures raise new questions about Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Putin just weeks before an election that will determine whether the former president will reclaim the White House. A copy of the book was obtained by The New York Times. The Washington Post, where Mr. Woodward has worked for more than half a century, and CNN, where he often appears as a commentator, also reported on the book on Tuesday.Mr. Trump’s campaign dismissed Mr. Woodward’s book by assailing the author with typically personal insults — “a total sleazebag,” “slow, lethargic, incompetent and overall a boring person with no personality” — without addressing any of the specifics reported in it.“None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Steven Cheung, the campaign communications director, said in the statement. Mr. Cheung said Mr. Trump did not give Mr. Woodward access for the book and noted that the former president was suing the author over a previous book.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Fears of a Global Oil Shock if the Mideast Crisis Intensifies

      by

      The threat of an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has created an “extraordinarily precarious” global situation, sowing alarm about the potential economic fallout.As the world absorbs the prospect of an escalating conflict in the Middle East, the potential economic fallout is sowing increasing alarm. The worst fears center on a broadly debilitating development: a shock to the global oil supply.Such a result, actively contemplated in world capitals, could yield surging prices for gasoline, fuel and other products made with petroleum like plastics, chemicals and fertilizer. It could discourage investment, hiring, and business expansion, threatening many economies — particularly in Europe — with the risk of recession. The effects would be potent in nations that depend on imported oil, especially poor countries in Africa.The possibility of this calamitous outcome has come into focus in recent days as Israel plots its response to the barrage of missiles that Iran unleashed last week. Some scenarios are seen as highly unlikely, yet still conceivable: An Israeli strike on Iranian oil installations might prompt Iran to target refineries in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, both major oil producers. Iranian-supported Houthi rebels claimed credit for an attack on Saudi oil installations in 2019. The Trump administration subsequently pinned the blame on Iranian forces.As it has done before, Iran might also threaten the passage of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway that is the conduit for oil produced in the Persian Gulf, the source of nearly one-third of the world’s oil production. Such a move could entail conflict with American naval ships stationed in the region.That, too, is currently considered to be improbable. But the upheaval in the region in recent months has pushed out the parameters of possibility, rendering imaginable scenarios that were once dismissed as extreme.As Israel plots its next move, it has other targets besides Iranian oil installations. Iran would have reason for caution in crafting its own retaliation. Broadening the war to its Persian Gulf neighbors would invite a punishing response that could push Iran’s own economy — already bleak — to the brink of collapse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Why the World’s Biggest Powers Can’t Stop a Middle East War

      by

      The United States’ ability to influence events in the Mideast has waned, and other major nations have essentially been onlookers.Over almost a year of war in the Middle East, major powers have proved incapable of stopping or even significantly influencing the fighting, a failure that reflects a turbulent world of decentralized authority that seems likely to endure.Stop-and-start negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the fighting in Gaza, pushed by the United States, have repeatedly been described by the Biden administration as on the verge of a breakthrough, only to fail. The current Western-led attempt to avert a full-scale Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon amounts to a scramble to avert disaster. Its chances of success seem deeply uncertain after the Israeli killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah on Friday.“There’s more capability in more hands in a world where centrifugal forces are far stronger than centralizing ones,” said Richard Haass, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Middle East is the primary case study of this dangerous fragmentation.”The killing of Mr. Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah over more than three decades and the man who built the Shiite organization into one of the most powerful nonstate armed forces in the world, leaves a vacuum that Hezbollah will most likely take a long time to fill. It is a major blow to Iran, the chief backer of Hezbollah, that may even destabilize the Islamic Republic. Whether full-scale war will come to Lebanon remains unclear.“Nasrallah represented everything for Hezbollah, and Hezbollah was the advance arm of Iran,” said Gilles Kepel, a leading French expert on the Middle East and the author of a book on the world’s upheaval since Oct. 7. “Now the Islamic Republic is weakened, perhaps mortally, and one wonders who can even give an order for Hezbollah today.”For many years, the United States was the only country that could bring constructive pressure to bear on both Israel and Arab states. It engineered the 1978 Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt, and the Israel-Jordan peace of 1994. Just over three decades ago, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, shook hands on the White House lawn in the name of peace, only for the fragile hope of that embrace to erode steadily.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Dislikes Ukraine for the Most MAGA of Reasons

      by

      It’s certainly understandable that many millions of Americans have focused on Springfield, Ohio, after the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. When Trump repeated the ridiculous rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were killing and eating household pets, he not only highlighted once again his own vulnerability to conspiracy theories, it put the immigrant community in Springfield in serious danger. Bomb threats have forced two consecutive days of school closings and some Haitian immigrants are now “scared for their lives.”That’s dreadful. It’s inexcusable. But it’s not Trump’s only terrible moment in the debate. Most notably, he refused to say — in the face of repeated questions — that he wanted Ukraine to win its war with Russia. Trump emphasized ending the war over winning the war, a position that can seem reasonable, right until you realize that attempting to force peace at this stage of the conflict would almost certainly cement a Russian triumph. Russia would hold an immense amount of Ukrainian territory and Putin would rightly believe he bested both Ukraine and the United States. He would have rolled the “iron dice” of war and he would have won.There is no scenario in which a Russian triumph is in America’s best interest. A Russian victory would not only expand Russia’s sphere of influence, it would represent a human rights catastrophe (Russia has engaged in war crimes against Ukraine’s civilian population since the beginning of the war) and threaten the extinction of Ukrainian national identity. It would reset the global balance of power.In addition, a Russian victory would make World War III more, not less, likely. It would teach Vladimir Putin that aggression pays, that the West’s will is weak and that military conquest is preferable to diplomatic engagement. China would learn a similar lesson as it peers across the strait at Taiwan.If Vladimir Putin is stopped now — while Ukraine and the West are imposing immense costs in Russian men and matériel — it will send the opposite message, making it far more likely that the invasion of Ukraine is Putin’s last war, not merely his latest.But that’s not how Trump thinks about Ukraine. He exhibits deep bitterness toward the country, and it was that bitterness that helped expose how dangerous he was well before the Big Lie and Jan. 6.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Starmer, Meeting Biden, Hints at Ukraine Weapons Decision Soon

      by

      As the president deliberated with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the question of whether to let Ukraine use long-range weapons in Russia was a rare point of contention between allied nations.President Biden’s deliberations with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain about whether to allow Ukraine to attack Russia with long-range Western weapons were fresh evidence that the president remains deeply fearful of setting off a dangerous, wider conflict.But the decision now facing Mr. Biden after Friday’s closed-door meeting at the White House — whether to sign off on the use of long-range missiles made by Britain and France — could be far more consequential than previous concessions by the president that delivered largely defensive weapons to Ukraine during the past two and a half years.In remarks at the start of his meeting with Mr. Starmer, the president underscored his support for helping Ukraine defend itself but did not say whether he was willing to do more to allow for long-range strikes deep into Russia.“We’re going to discuss that now,” the president told reporters.For his part, the prime minister noted that “the next few weeks and months could be crucial — very, very important that we support Ukraine in this vital war of freedom.”European officials said earlier in the week that Mr. Biden appeared ready to approve the use of British and French long-range missiles, a move that Mr. Starmer and officials in France have said they want to provide a united front in the conflict with Russia. But Mr. Biden has hesitated to allow Ukraine to use arms provided by the United States in the same way over fears that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would see it as a major escalation.On Thursday, Mr. Putin responded to reports that America and its allies were considering such a move by declaring that it would “mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia,” according to a report by the Kremlin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More