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      Zelenskiy accuses Russia of genocide and urges world leaders to attend peace summit

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      Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told the UN general assembly that Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine and urged world leaders to attend a peace summit to help stop the invasion and future wars of aggression.Appearing in the assembly chamber in New York for the first time in person, the Ukrainian president used the opportunity to try to galvanise support for his country’s plight among many countries, especially in the global south, many of whom have sought to sit on the fence in the face of the full-scale Russian invasion.Zelenskiy said he would give further details of his peace plan, based on national sovereignty and territorial integrity, at a special session of the security council on Wednesday. He said all leaders “who do not tolerate any aggression” would be invited to a peace summit. He did not say when or where the meeting would be held, but he has previously expressed the hope it would happen by autumn this year.Zelenskiy, dressed in an olive green long-sleeved polo shirt, used the word “genocide” to refer to the abduction of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children by Russian occupation authorities, who the Ukrainian president said were being brainwashed into hating their homeland.“Never before has mass kidnapping and deportation become a part of the government policy. Not until now,” Zelenskiy said, adding that the Ukrainian government knew of the names of tens of thousands of abducted children and had “evidence of hundreds of thousands of others kidnapped by Russia in the occupied territories of Ukraine and later deported”.The international criminal court has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and a top aide for their involvement in ordering the child deportations.“We are trying to get the children back home, but time goes by and what will happen to them? Those children in Russia are taught to hate Ukraine and all ties with their families are broken. And this is clearly a genocide,” Zelenskiy said, adding: “When hatred is weaponized against one nation, it never stops there.”The speech was watched from the Russian seats in the chamber by Moscow’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, who wrote in a notebook from time to time and occasionally grinned.Zelenskiy also accused Russia of weaponising food and energy, noting “there are many conventions that restrict weapons but there are no real restrictions on weaponisation”.He explained how Ukraine and its partners were trying to work around the Russian blockade of Black Sea ports, but he had bitter criticism for Ukraine’s neighbours who have periodically blocked the export of Ukrainian produce westwards for fear it would compete with domestic output and lower prices.He said “some of our friends in Europe” whose expressions of solidarity were “political theatre” were, by restricting imports from Ukraine, “helping set the stage for a Moscow actor”.He said that Russia, having long used oil and gas as a weapon, was now weaponising nuclear energy, pointing to the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which he said Moscow had turned into a potential “dirty bomb”.The goal of the Russian military campaign, the president said, was to turn Ukraine and its people, land and resources “into a weapon against you, against the international rules-based order”. If the Russians succeeded, he warned, “many seats in the general assembly hall may become empty”.He said the Ukrainian peace blueprint, which involves a Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory, accountability for war crimes and restitution for damages, represented “a real chance to end aggression on the terms of the nation which was attacked”.Zelenskiy added: “While Russia is pushing the world to a final war, Ukraine is doing everything to ensure that after this Russian aggression, no one in the world will dare to attack any nation.” More

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      Biden vows to lead by example on curbing weapons of mass destruction

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      Joe Biden has accused Russia of “shredding longstanding arms control agreements” but pledged that the US would “lead by example” in limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction.In his address to the UN general assembly, Biden castigated the Putin regime for its suspension, in February this year, of the 2010 New Start treaty, the last arms control agreement between the two countries.That suspension, coupled with Russia’s withdrawal from the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty in 2007, was “irresponsible and makes the entire world less safe”, the president said.However, Biden insisted that the US “is going to continue to pursue good faith efforts to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction and lead by example, no matter what else is happening in the world”.The statement appeared to be a confirmation that the US would continue the policy it has pursued since Vladimir Putin’s suspension of New Start, by not going beyond the treaty’s limits of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, and 700 deployed delivery systems.At the time of Moscow’s suspension of the New Start treaty, Russian officials said their government would continue to observe those limits, but there have been no inspections of Russian nuclear weapons facilities since the start of the Covid pandemic, and Russia has ceased to share data that was required by the agreement.In his speech, Biden said the US also remained committed to diplomatic means to containing North Korean’s nuclear weapons programme and would “remain steadfast in our commitment that Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons”.Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association, welcomed Biden’s statement on the New Start limits.“I’m glad that Biden said this to keep the flame going, if you think about how you don’t have much room in a UN speech,” Kimball said. “It’s a positive signal that the United States remains ready to engage in serious dialogue on nuclear weapons production and arms control despite whatever else has happened in the Russian relationship.”In his address, Biden urged the UN general assembly to uphold the UN charter in its approach to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, framing it as a matter of principle, national sovereignty and territorial integrity that was essential to all UN members.“Russia believes that the world will grow weary and allow it to brutalise Ukraine without consequence,” Biden said. “But I ask you this: if we abandon the core principles … to appease an aggressor, can any member state in this body feel confident that they are protected? If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure?“I respectfully suggest the answer is no,” the president added. “We must stand up to this naked aggression today to deter other would-be aggressors tomorrow.”Much of the rest of Biden’s speech was dedicated to the principles of global cooperation to take on basic issues of poverty, human rights and the climate crisis. The US and other supporters of Ukraine are well aware that many countries at the UN, especially the developing nations in the Group of 77, are becoming restive at the focus on Ukraine, when the death toll from conflict, famine and climate change is so enormous in the global south. Biden stressed that he takes these concerns seriously.“My country has to meet this critical moment to work with countries in every region, in common cause to join together with partners who share a common vision of the future of the world,” he said. “The United States seeks a more secure, more prosperous, more equitable world for all people, because we know our future is bound up with yours … No nation can meet the challenges of today alone.” More

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      Donald Trump pleased at praise from Putin: ‘I like that he said that’

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      Donald Trump enjoyed hearing that he had drawn praise from the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the former US president and frontrunner for the 2024 Republican White House nomination has said.Told during a recorded interview with Kristen Welker, the new NBC Meet the Press moderator, that Putin had fawned over his stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump replied: “I like that he said that. Because that means what I’m saying is right.”Trump’s remarks to Welker – circulated by NBC on Friday to promote the interview with the ex-president, which is scheduled to air on Sunday morning – drew condemnation from some political quarters. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Republicans against Trump group shared a clip of the comments and wrote to its nearly half-million followers: “A vote for Trump is a vote against America.”One of the overarching themes during Trump’s lone term in the Oval Office centered on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won.Putin has endorsed Trump’s repeated boasts that he could bring Russia’s conflict with Ukraine to an end within a matter of hours if he were elected to a second term in the White House.“Mr Trump says he will resolve all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said at an economic forum in Russia recently. “We cannot help but feel happy about it.”Trump’s boasts on that topic have earned him derision from his Republican and Democratic opponents, saying a conclusion to the conflict would require a surrender to demands from Putin, whose forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022. But, in his conversation with Welker, Trump doubled down on his position, saying he would simply get Putin and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy “into a room and I would get a deal worked out”.Asked by Welker for specifics on precisely how he would bring a swift conclusion to the war in Ukraine, Trump declined to answer, saying: “If I tell you exactly, I lose all my bargaining chips.”“I mean, you can’t really say exactly what you’re going to do,” Trump told Welker, according to NBC. “But I would say certain things to Putin. I would say certain things to Zelenskiy.”Welker noted to Trump that Russian bombs had destroyed maternity wards, and forces under Putin’s command had deliberately attacked civilians. Furthermore, the international criminal court (ICC) in the Hague in March issued an arrest warrant for Putin, accusing him of war crimes in connection with the abduction of Ukrainian children.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s all terrible,” Trump told Welker.Trump has been facing more than 90 criminal charges across four separate indictments charging him with attempted subversion of the 2020 election that he lost to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, retention of classified information after his presidency and hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.Civil cases he is grappling with include a $250m lawsuit by the New York attorney general about his business affairs as well as a defamation claim stemming from a rape accusation that a judge has deemed to be “substantially true”.Trump nonetheless denies all wrongdoing and has sought to cast himself as the victim of political persecution. He also maintains substantial leads in national and key state polls regarding the 2024 Republican presidential primary. More

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      Putin, Citing Trump ‘Persecution,’ Wades Back Into U.S. Politics

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      The Russian leader, whose government meddled in the American presidential election won by Donald J. Trump, also offered words of praise for Elon Musk.The setting was an economic conference in far eastern Russia, with discussion of the ruble and domestic investment, but that didn’t stop President Vladimir V. Putin from wading into American politics on Tuesday, branding the criminal cases against Donald J. Trump political persecution and praising the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.For years, the Russian leader has demonstrated an ability to exploit political divisions within Western nations, often by signaling to conservatives abroad that he is aligned with them in a global fight against liberal values.Mr. Putin’s remarks on Tuesday, made at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, appeared aimed at lending firepower to the Republican outcry over the prosecutions of Mr. Trump, who has long expressed public admiration for the Russian leader and has helped encourage a sizable Moscow-friendly contingent within his party.The cases against Mr. Trump — who faces 91 felony counts in four jurisdictions — represent the “persecution of one’s political rival for political motives,” Mr. Putin said. He predicted that the entire affair would help Russia by exposing American domestic problems for the world to see and revealing the hypocrisy of American democracy.“Given today’s conditions, what is happening is good for us, in my opinion, because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach democracy to others,” Mr. Putin said, prompting the hall to erupt in applause.Mr. Putin, whose political adversaries have a way of ending up in prison or worse, said the criminal cases against Mr. Trump also demonstrated who Russia is really fighting against as it prosecutes its invasion of Ukraine. “As they said back in Soviet times, ‘the bestial visage of American imperialism, the bestial grin’” he said.Donald J. Trump at a rally this month in Rapid City, S.D.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesMr. Trump offered no public response to Mr. Putin’s remarks, and his aides did not respond to requests for comment.Unlike in the past, Mr. Putin expressed a measure of resignation about the American posture toward Russia, saying the United States would likely remain anti-Russian, even if Mr. Trump were to return to the White House.“Though they accused him of special ties to Russia, it was complete nonsense, total bullshit, and he more than anything imposed sanctions on Russia,” Mr. Putin said. “So what to expect in the future, regardless of who is president, is difficult to say. But it’s unlikely anything will change definitively, because the current government has configured American society in such an anti-Russian manner and spirit.”In the United States, where Republicans are competing for their party’s presidential nomination — with Mr. Trump considered to be far ahead — several leading G.O.P. figures rejected Mr. Putin’s criticism.“America’s founding principles will always stand the test of time, and Vladimir Putin’s opinion of our constitutional republic holds no value in the United States,” former Vice President Mike Pence said in a statement. “Putin should be more concerned about how quickly his military went from being the second most powerful in the world to the second most powerful in Ukraine.”Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is a strong supporter of both Mr. Trump and of American aid to Ukraine, said in an interview that the prosecutions taking place against Mr. Trump were “part of democracy.” He said that some parts of the American system were being “run off the rails,” but that the people in charge would have to answer to voters.“No one in Russia is able to speak against Putin,’’ Mr. Graham said, “because he’ll kill them.”Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is running against Mr. Trump for the nomination, said Mr. Putin’s comments were in effect a vote of support for his opponent. “It’s good to see Vladimir Putin has made his endorsement official — and no surprise, he’s endorsed another autocrat,” Mr. Christie said. Senator Lindsey Graham said that the prosecutions taking place against Mr. Trump were “part of democracy.”Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Putin’s comments amounted to the latest chapter in a political drama that began when Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, spreading disinformation online and hacking and releasing emails from the Democratic National Committee and the campaign manager of Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.The controversy over Mr. Trump’s seeming sympathies for the Kremlin continued well after he took office in early 2017. Throughout his term, Mr. Trump heaped praise on Mr. Putin, and at one point, during a 2018 summit in Helsinki, professed to trust the Russian leader more than his own intelligence services.Even after he was defeated for re-election, Mr. Trump clung to that stance. In January, in a post on his Truth Social website, he again suggested that he had been right to trust the Russian president more than U.S. intelligence and F.B.I. “lowlifes.”Mr. Trump’s assertions at the Helsinki meeting — where, in an unusual breach of protocol, he met with Mr. Putin without any aides present — were roundly criticized by his opponents as unseemly pandering to the Russian leader.Still, even as Mr. Trump expressed sympathy with Moscow from the White House, he packed his administration with officials who were hawkish on Russia and, in tandem with lawmakers in Congress, continued to promote a foreign policy that punished Moscow for the 2016 interference, pushed through sanctions, and labeled Russia a “great power” competitor.Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin during a news conference at their meeting in Helsinki in 2018.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAt his economic forum on Tuesday, Mr. Putin also offered praise for Mr. Musk, calling him a “talented businessman,” when asked about the possibility of private space companies similar to Mr. Musk’s SpaceX arising in Russia.“When it comes to private business, Elon Musk, he is, without a doubt, an outstanding person, one has to admit,” Mr. Putin said. “But I think everyone would admit that all around the world. He is an active, talented businessman. A lot works out for him, including with the support of the American government.”That description was reminiscent of the way the Russian leader once described Mr. Trump — “brilliant and talented” — in the early days of the New York real estate mogul’s first presidential campaign.Mr. Musk is a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, and his purchase of Twitter, recently rebranded to X, has led to a rise in the sort of misinformation and bot activity on a platform that Russia has turned to often to achieve its geopolitical aims.Mr. Putin offered praise for Elon Musk on Tuesday, calling him a “talented businessman.”Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersThe billionaire has also involved himself directly in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, at one point proposing a peace solution on Twitter that drew condemnation for echoing Kremlin talking points.And last week, Mr. Musk attracted renewed scrutiny when a new biography asserted that he had thwarted an attack on Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet in 2022 by refusing to let the Ukrainian military use his satellite network, Starlink, to guide its drones. He said he had disabled Starlink in Crimea long before the Ukrainian attack was planned, and had declined a request to enable it to avoid being complicit in what he said would be a “major act of war.’’ More

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      China Sows Disinformation About Hawaii Fires Using New Techniques

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      Beijing’s influence campaign using artificial intelligence is a rapid change in tactics, researchers from Microsoft and other organizations say.When wildfires swept across Maui last month with destructive fury, China’s increasingly resourceful information warriors pounced.The disaster was not natural, they said in a flurry of false posts that spread across the internet, but was the result of a secret “weather weapon” being tested by the United States. To bolster the plausibility, the posts carried photographs that appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence programs, making them among the first to use these new tools to bolster the aura of authenticity of a disinformation campaign.For China — which largely stood on the sidelines of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections while Russia ran hacking operations and disinformation campaigns — the effort to cast the wildfires as a deliberate act by American intelligence agencies and the military was a rapid change of tactics.Until now, China’s influence campaigns have been focused on amplifying propaganda defending its policies on Taiwan and other subjects. The most recent effort, revealed by researchers from Microsoft and a range of other organizations, suggests that Beijing is making more direct attempts to sow discord in the United States.The move also comes as the Biden administration and Congress are grappling with how to push back on China without tipping the two countries into open conflict, and with how to reduce the risk that A.I. is used to magnify disinformation.The impact of the Chinese campaign — identified by researchers from Microsoft, Recorded Future, the RAND Corporation, NewsGuard and the University of Maryland — is difficult to measure, though early indications suggest that few social media users engaged with the most outlandish of the conspiracy theories.Brad Smith, the vice chairman and president of Microsoft, whose researchers analyzed the covert campaign, sharply criticized China for exploiting a natural disaster for political gain.“I just don’t think that’s worthy of any country, much less any country that aspires to be a great country,” Mr. Smith said in an interview on Monday.China was not the only country to make political use of the Maui fires. Russia did as well, spreading posts that emphasized how much money the United States was spending on the war in Ukraine and that suggested the cash would be better spent at home for disaster relief.The researchers suggested that China was building a network of accounts that could be put to use in future information operations, including the next U.S. presidential election. That is the pattern that Russia set in the year or so leading up to the 2016 election.“This is going into a new direction, which is sort of amplifying conspiracy theories that are not directly related to some of their interests, like Taiwan,” said Brian Liston, a researcher at Recorded Future, a cybersecurity company based in Massachusetts.A destroyed neighborhood in Lahaina, Hawaii, last month. China has made the wildfires a target of disinformation.Go Nakamura for The New York TimesIf China does engage in influence operations for the election next year, U.S. intelligence officials have assessed in recent months, it is likely to try to diminish President Biden and raise the profile of former President Donald J. Trump. While that may seem counterintuitive to Americans who remember Mr. Trump’s effort to blame Beijing for what he called the “China virus,” the intelligence officials have concluded that Chinese leaders prefer Mr. Trump. He has called for pulling Americans out of Japan, South Korea and other parts of Asia, while Mr. Biden has cut off China’s access to the most advanced chips and the equipment made to produce them.China’s promotion of a conspiracy theory about the fires comes after Mr. Biden vented in Bali last fall to Xi Jinping, China’s president, about Beijing’s role in the spread of such disinformation. According to administration officials, Mr. Biden angrily criticized Mr. Xi for the spread of false accusations that the United States operated biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine.There is no indication that Russia and China are working together on information operations, according to the researchers and administration officials, but they often echo each other’s messages, particularly when it comes to criticizing U.S. policies. Their combined efforts suggest a new phase of the disinformation wars is about to begin, one bolstered by the use of A.I. tools.“We don’t have direct evidence of coordination between China and Russia in these campaigns, but we’re certainly finding alignment and a sort of synchronization,” said William Marcellino, a researcher at RAND and an author of a new report warning that artificial intelligence will enable a “critical jump forward” in global influence operations.The wildfires in Hawaii — like many natural disasters these days — spawned numerous rumors, false reports and conspiracy theories almost from the start.Caroline Amy Orr Bueno, a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security, reported that a coordinated Russian campaign began on Twitter, the social media platform now known as X, on Aug. 9, a day after the fires started.It spread the phrase, “Hawaii, not Ukraine,” from one obscure account with few followers through a series of conservative or right-wing accounts like Breitbart and ultimately Russian state media, reaching thousands of users with a message intended to undercut U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.President Biden has criticized President Xi Jinping of China for the spread of false accusations about the United States and Ukraine.Florence Lo/ReutersChina’s state media apparatus often echoes Russian themes, especially animosity toward the United States. But in this case, it also pursued a distinct disinformation campaign.Recorded Future first reported that the Chinese government mounted a covert campaign to blame a “weather weapon” for the fires, identifying numerous posts in mid-August falsely claiming that MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, had revealed “the amazing truth behind the wildfire.” Posts with the exact language appeared on social media sites across the internet, including Pinterest, Tumblr, Medium and Pixiv, a Japanese site used by artists.Other inauthentic accounts spread similar content, often accompanied with mislabeled videos, including one from a popular TikTok account, The Paranormal Chic, that showed a transformer explosion in Chile. According to Recorded Future, the Chinese content often echoed — and amplified — posts by conspiracy theorists and extremists in the United States, including white supremacists.The Chinese campaign operated across many of the major social media platforms — and in many languages, suggesting it was aimed at reaching a global audience. Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center identified inauthentic posts in 31 languages, including French, German and Italian, but also in less prominent ones like Igbo, Odia and Guarani.The artificially generated images of the Hawaii wildfires identified by Microsoft’s researchers appeared on multiple platforms, including a Reddit post in Dutch. “These specific A.I.-generated images appear to be exclusively used” by Chinese accounts used in this campaign, Microsoft said in a report. “They do not appear to be present elsewhere online.”Clint Watts, the general manager of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, said that China appeared to have adopted Russia’s playbook for influence operations, laying the groundwork to influence politics in the United States and other countries.“This would be Russia in 2015,” he said, referring to the bots and inauthentic accounts Russia created before its extensive online influence operation during the 2016 election. “If we look at how other actors have done this, they are building capacity. Now they’re building accounts that are covert.”Natural disasters have often been the focus of disinformation campaigns, allowing bad actors to exploit emotions to accuse governments of shortcomings, either in preparation or in response. The goal can be to undermine trust in specific policies, like U.S. support for Ukraine, or more generally to sow internal discord. By suggesting the United States was testing or using secret weapons against its own citizens, China’s effort also seemed intended to depict the country as a reckless, militaristic power.“We’ve always been able to come together in the wake of humanitarian disasters and provide relief in the wake of earthquakes or hurricanes or fires,” said Mr. Smith, who is presenting some of Microsoft’s findings to Congress on Tuesday. “And to see this kind of pursuit instead is both, I think deeply disturbing and something that the global community should draw a red line around and put off-limits.” More

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      Joe Biden calls for stable US-China relationship during south-east Asia tour

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      Joe Biden’s national security tour of south-east Asia reached Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday, where the president called for stability in the US-China relationship against an increasingly complex diplomatic picture in the region for his country.“I don’t want to contain China,” Biden said. “I just want to make sure that we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about.”Biden also said that China’s recent economic downturn may limit any inclination to invade Taiwan.“I don’t think it’s going to cause China to invade Taiwan – matter of fact the opposite, probably doesn’t have the same capacity as it had before,” he said on Sunday during a press conference in Hanoi.He added that the country’s economic woes had left President Xi Jinping with “his hands full right now”.The president’s remarks came after a meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist party, in the nation’s capital designed to secure global supply chains of semiconductors and critical minerals, which would offer a strategic alternative to China.“I think we have an enormous opportunity,” Biden said of the visit. “Vietnam and the United States are critical partners at what I would argue is a very critical time.”The meeting came during a multi-front diplomatic push to shore up international support for Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion and enunciate a policy toward China that both encourages trade and reduces the potential for US-Chinese conflict.The complexities of the administration’s approach were illustrated on Saturday, a day before Biden landed in Hanoi, when the New York Times reported that Vietnam is in talks with Russia over a new arms supply deal that could trigger US sanctions.Reuters said it had seen – but could not authenticate – documents describing talks for a credit facility that Russia would extend to Vietnam to buy heavy weaponry, including anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine aircraft and helicopters, anti-aircraft missile systems and fighter jets.Earlier, at the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, western leaders failed to reiterate an explicit condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The summit declaration referred only to the “war in Ukraine” and lamented the “suffering” of the Ukrainian people – an equivocation that indicates a growing lack of international consensus.Less than a year ago, G20 leaders still issued a strong condemnation of the Russian invasion and called on Moscow to withdraw its forces.Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, attempted to smooth over the disparity, telling ABC’s This Week that world leaders meeting in New Delhi had “stood up very clearly, including in the statement, for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.Blinken said that virtually every meeting participant “is intent on making sure there is a just and durable end to this Russian aggression”.It was clear in the room, he said, that “countries are feeling the consequences and want the Russian aggression to stop”.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “The vast majority of G20 countries have supported multiple UN resolutions that call out Russia’s illegal aggression.”Jean-Pierre said the New Delhi communique “builds on that, to send an unprecedented, unified statement on the imperative that Russia refrain from using force for territorial acquisition, abide by its obligations in the UN charter, and cease attacks on civilians and infrastructure”.The comments came as a CBS News poll found only 1 in 4 Americans think Biden is improving the US’s global position. According to the survey, 24% thought Biden was making the US stronger, 50% said weaker and 26% that he was not having much effect.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJust 29% said they were optimistic for the prospects of world peace and stability in the world, and 71% said they were increasingly pessimistic. Asked if the Biden administration was being “too easy” on China, 57% agreed.On CNN, Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley slammed the Biden administration’s policy toward China, describing the country as an “enemy”.“China has practically been preparing for war with us for years,” Haley said. “Yes, I view China as an enemy.”Haley said China had bought 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) of US soil and the largest pork producer in the country, and continues to steal $600bn a year in intellectual property while spreading propaganda. She pointed to Chinese drones used by US law enforcement and to the crisis caused by Chinese-sourced fentanyl that “had killed more Americans than the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam war combined”.“How much more has to happen for Biden to realize you don’t send cabinet members over to China to appease them?” she said, referring to the recent visit of the US commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, to Beijing.The administration’s effort to present a coherent picture of US foreign policy toward its two most vexing issues – China and Russia – continued Sunday with vice-president Kamala Harris telling CBS News that a planned meeting between North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin “would be a huge mistake”.“When you look at Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine, and the idea that they would supply ammunition to Russia – well, it’s predictable where that ends up,” Harris said. “I also believe very strongly that for both Russia and North Korea, this will further isolate them.”Harris also spoke to an emerging concern that China’s president, Xi Jinping, who skipped the G20, may decline to attend the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation leaders’ meeting in San Francisco, California, in November.Last week, China’s security agency hinted that a meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in San Francisco will depend on the US “showing sufficient sincerity”.China’s ministry of state security said that the country “will never let its guard down”.The comments came after Raimondo said the US did not want to decouple from China but that American companies had complained to her that China had become “uninvestible”.Asked how important it is for Xi Jinping to come to America, Harris remarked that “it is important to the … stability of things that we keep open lines of communication”. 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      G20 Declaration Omits Criticism of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

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      A painstakingly negotiated declaration Saturday evening at the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi omitted any condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or its brutal conduct of the war, instead lamenting the “suffering” of the Ukrainian people.It was an eye opening departure from a similar document agreed to less than a year ago in Bali, when leaders acknowledged different views over the invasion but still issued a strong condemnation of the Russian invasion and called on Moscow to withdraw its troops.This year, amid low expectations that the divided group would reach any sort of consensus with Ukraine, the declaration pointed to past United Nations resolutions condemning the war and noted the “adverse impact of wars and conflicts around the world.” The statement also called on Russia to allow the export of grain and fertilizer from Ukraine and “to support a comprehensive, just and durable peace.”American officials defended the agreement, saying it built on the statement released last year and that the United States was still pressing for peace in Ukraine.“From our perspective, it does a very good job of standing up for the principle that states cannot use force to seek territorial acquisition or to violate the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of other states,” Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters.But Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, said on Facebook that the omission of Russian aggression was “nothing to be proud of.”Mr. Biden and his advisers focused on what the new declaration had achieved: It included new language on the issue of global debt and on overhauling institutions like the World Bank to address the growing strains on poorer countries; an invitation to the African Union to join the G20; and a push for more financing to help vulnerable nations deal with the costs of dealing with climate change. The declaration also underscored the potential of digital technologies to increase inclusion in global economies.The president joined other leaders in announcing a project to create a rail and shipping corridor linking India to the Middle East and, eventually, Europe. It was a promise of new technological and trade pathways, they said, in a part of the world where deeper economic cooperation was overdue.The project lacked key details, including a time frame or budget. Even so, it represented much softer than usual rhetoric about Russia from Mr. Biden and other Western leaders, who have spent the better part of two years spending billions on arming Ukraine and burning untold domestic political capital building support for the war. Facing a summit rife with deep divisions, Mr. Biden did not speak publicly about the war or almost anything else, except to say “it would be nice” if President Xi Jinping of China, who skipped the summit along with the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, had attended.Mr. Biden spent most of his time at the summit quietly nurturing his relationship with Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, who has continued his country’s traditional practice of abstaining from superpower skirmishes, but who has his own tensions with China. He is also keenly interested in presenting himself — and his country — as an ascendant global player.“Biden, like previous presidents, is trying to bring India closer,” Richard N. Haass, a foreign policy veteran and former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “He’s having limited success, but that’s the nature of the relationship. That’s baked into the cake here.”Mr. Haass said that joint declarations often take on the characteristics of the host country. In this case, he said, it seemed that “the host determined not to antagonize either China or Russia.” He called the statement — and the economic summit — an example of “incremental diplomacy” and not a forum where the conflict could be resolved.White House officials did not publicly say why the United States would sign onto a joint agreement that did so little to keep pressure on Russia, though the Russians had loudly complained about the focus on them. (Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, cited the “Ukrainization” of the summit to explain Mr. Putin’s absence.)Besides Ukraine, there were other points of contention over the declaration. Mr. Sullivan was asked about reports that the Chinese had objected to language in a draft that confirmed that the United States would host the G20 meeting in 2026. “On the issue of China, all I can say is the communiqué is done,” he said.The absence of two of the group’s most influential leaders, coupled with the ongoing war in Ukraine, had raised questions about whether the summit meeting could achieve much of anything given the current geopolitical divisions. Biden administration officials spent much of their time with reporters assuring them that the summit was still effective.Mr. Biden’s advisers pointed to to the announcement of plans to build a rail and shipping corridor from India through the Middle East to Europe as evidence that the group could build connections even in fraught territory.At the event presenting the initiative, Mr. Biden shook hands with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, which has agreed to participate, something he had pointedly avoided doing when visiting the kingdom last year.The announcement comes as the Biden administration has worked, so far unsuccessfully, to broker an ambitious diplomatic agreement that would help the Saudis normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. The United States and the European Union also announced on Saturday a project that would explore the creation of a rail line between Zimbabwe and Angola.Unlike in years past, where he held high-stakes meetings with individual allies and competitors, Mr. Biden stayed in the background for most of his time in India, content to let Mr. Modi take the lead. On Sunday, Mr. Biden will travel to Vietnam, where he is expected to celebrate a new upgrade in relations with Vietnam, despite concerns about the country’s recent authoritarian crackdown and repression.Unlike his predecessor and possible 2024 competitor, former president Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden’s brand of personalized statesmanship has long been centered around the belief that the best relationships — and even some of the worst ones — are best handled through one-on-one interactions and private negotiations. At forums like the G20, Mr. Biden has often presented his version of leadership as a steadier alternative to Mr. Trump’s bombastic and unpredictable style.Mr. Modi, for his part, was so intent on showcasing the promise and potential of India to the rest of the world that his government effectively shut down a city of 20 million people for the occasion. Leading up to the event, Mr. Modi’s likeness was plastered on thousands of posters throughout New Delhi.On Saturday, speaking in Hindi, Mr. Modi began his inaugural address to the group of leaders by paying respects to the people of Morocco, where an earthquake killed hundreds. He ended his remarks by announcing the invitation to the African Union and hugging Azali Assoumani, the chairman of the bloc and the president of Comoros. Officials offered Mr. Assoumani a flag, a country nameplate and a seat at the table.India’s G20 presidency comes at a moment of contradiction for the country: Its rise to a bigger role on the world stage coincides with increasing divisions at home. While Mr. Modi is tapping into India’s strengths — a rapidly growing economy, a young work force and a strong tradition of technological and scientific innovation — to transform it into a developed nation, he is making sure that nation is reshaped along Hindu-first lines.The increasing aggression of his right-wing support base has created a combustible reality, with religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims frequently erupting in clashes.Mr. Biden notably stayed away from the democracy-versus-autocracy themes that shape much of his messaging overseas and at home. (At one point, Mr. Biden did pose for a photo with the leaders of several other democracies, including India, Brazil and South Africa.) And, his advisers stressed that the G20 was not competing with forums like the group of nations known as BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.They pointed out that reaching a consensus on the declaration, even if it was a softer one, was a labor of effective diplomacy.“The G20 is just a more diverse body with a wider range of views,” Jon Finer, the president’s deputy national security adviser, said. “It gives us a chance to interact with and work with and take constructive steps with a wider range of countries, including some we don’t see eye-to-eye with on every issue.”Mujib Mashal, Peter Baker, Alex Travelli and Damien Cave contributed reporting from New Delhi. More

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      Russian strike on crowded Ukraine market leaves at least 17 dead

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      A Russian strike has hit a crowded market in the Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka, killing at least 17 people, as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was in Kyiv for an unannounced visit, his first for a year to the Ukrainian capital.Ukrainian officials said a further 32 people were wounded in the attack, one of Russia’s deadliest attacks in months, 12 miles (20km) from the frontlines in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.Video of the aftermath showed fires raging in destroyed buildings and soldiers carrying body bags away from the scene. The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said a child was among those killed.“A regular market. Shops. A pharmacy. People who did nothing wrong. Many wounded,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, wrote in a post on Telegram.He called the strike “a terrorist attack” and said in a later press conference that it reflected the situation on the battlefield. “Whenever there are any positive advances by Ukrainian defence forces in that direction, Russians always target civilian people and civilian objects.”Russia also targeted Kyiv with ballistic missiles in the hours prior to Blinken’s arrival, with loud booms audible in the Ukrainian capital shortly before 6am, as his train was approaching.“It was clearly meant as a greeting to Blinken,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to Zelenskiy, told the Guardian. “Russia is constantly showing that it will not abide by any rules,” Podolyak added.He said Russia had used Iskander missiles in the Kyiv attack, which was thwarted by Ukrainian air defences. Falling debris damaged building but there were no casualties, officials said.Blinken met his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, in Kyiv and held discussions with Zelenskiy. The two-day visit will include an overnight stay in the Ukrainian capital.While Blinken was in Kyiv, the US announced a new package of military assistance, including $100m (£80m) in financing for Ukraine’s long-term requirements and $175m in arms and ammunition drawn from US stockpiles, which included depleted uranium shells for the US M1 Abrams tanks that are due to be delivered by the end of this year.Depleted uranium shells are effective in piercing armour, but concerns have been raised over the incidence of cancer and birth defects in areas where they have been used. Because they have not definitively been identified as the cause, they are not banned under international law.The arms package also included components for air defence systems, guided multiple launch rocket systems, 155mm artillery and 105mm artillery ammunition.“I’m here in large part at the behest of President Biden to reaffirm our commitment to stand with you – to stand with you to help ensure that you succeed militarily in dealing with the aggression, but also to stand with you to make sure that your efforts to build a strong economy and a strong democracy succeed,” Blinken said, in remarks before a meeting with Shmyhal.The visit comes shortly after Zelenskiy fired his defence minister, and as Ukraine’s military counteroffensive grinds on in the south-east of the country. On Wednesday Ukraine’s parliament approved the appointment of Rustem Umerov as the new defence minister. He replaces Oleksii Reznikov, who was sacked after a number of corruption scandals linked to the defence ministry. Reznikov is tipped to become ambassador to Britain.Umerov was tasked with negotiations with Russia in the early stages of the war, before heading the state property fund, Ukraine’s main privatisation agency. “He has an impeccable reputation, and all political circles respect him,” said Podolyak. “He’s a consensus candidate, which is important.”In a statement posted to Facebook, Umerov promised to do “everything possible and impossible” to bring about Ukraine’s victory, saying: “42 million Ukrainians stand behind every solider. Behind every soldier is a ministry that will do everything to protect and provide for all our people.”Unnamed western officials have criticised the speed and tactics of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which has irritated Ukrainian officials. The offensive has proceeded more slowly than expected, partly due to the extensive fortifications and minefields that Russian forces have built to defend their lines.“I understand that the further away you are from the war, sitting in your office, the better you understand the war, and if you’re 10,000km away then it’s the best place to understand what is happening,” said Podolyak, in a sarcastic aside.He criticised western officials who saw the war as “arrows on a map” rather than in terms of human lives, but said in recent months there had been an increased understanding of the task Ukraine faced in pushing through Russian lines.One senior western official said in a briefing to journalists on Wednesday that Ukraine was making “incremental but methodical progress” on parts of the southern and eastern fronts but accepted it was “slower than expected a couple of months ago”.This was due to the heavier than expected minefield belt laid by the Russians on the frontline, at times forcing Ukrainian soldiers to dismount and “crawl on their bellies to get through”, meaning that the pace of advance has been at best a few hundred metres a day.An unnamed US official told Reuters that Blinken wanted to get a first-hand assessment of the counteroffensive during the trip.“What’s most important is that we get a real assessment from the Ukrainians themselves,” the official said. “We want to see, hear how they intend to push forward in the coming weeks.” More