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      Ukraine, Struggling on Land, Claims to Deal Blow to Russia at Sea

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      The Ukrainian military says it has sunk a large Russian landing ship off the coast of Crimea, although Ukrainian troops inland find themselves in a precarious position.As outgunned Ukrainian soldiers struggle to hold back bloody Russian assaults on land, Ukraine said on Wednesday that its forces had struck yet another powerful blow against the Russians at sea, sinking a large Russian landing ship off the coast of Crimea before dawn.The Ukrainian military released footage of the strike, which it said had resulted in the sinking of the 360-foot-long landing ship Caesar Kunikov, its fourth-largest landing ship taken out of action in the war, possibly complicating Russia’s logistical efforts in southern Ukraine.The Ukrainian claims could not be immediately confirmed, but when NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, was asked about the attack, he called Ukraine’s campaign on the Black Sea a “great achievement.”“The Ukrainians have been able to inflict heavy losses on the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” he said at a news conference in Brussels. Russia has lost more than a third of its fleet since the war began, according to Ukrainian officials and military analysts.Russia declined to comment on the attack.At the same time, however, Ukrainian ground forces find themselves in perhaps their most precarious position since the opening months of the Russian invasion.“The enemy is now advancing along almost the entire front line, and we have moved from offensive operations to conducting a defensive operation,” Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, told the German outlet, ZDF, in his first interview since being promoted to the post last week.The epicenter of the current fighting is around the battered city of Avdiivka, a longtime Ukrainian stronghold in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have broken through Ukraine’s defenses to enter the city in multiple locations and are threatening to cut off the main supply line for Ukrainian defenders.Kyiv has dispatched reinforcements, but soldiers fighting there have said it is unclear how long they can hold out. A growing shortage of ammunition has forced local commanders to ration their fires, making it more difficult to push back the Russian advance. More

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      Joe Biden calls Trump’s Nato remarks ‘dumb’, ‘shameful’ and ‘dangerous’

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      Joe Biden has attacked Donald Trump’s comments on the US pulling out of the Nato military alliance as “dumb”, “shameful” and “dangerous” in a blistering speech attacking Republican opposition to legislation partly aimed at providing support for Ukraine in its stand against a Russian invasion.Trump’s remarks about encouraging Russia to attack Nato allies who did not contribute what Trump called their fair share of Nato funding have set off alarm bells across Europe among leaders who eye the prospect of a second Trump presidency with growing disquiet.In a speech after the foreign aid bill – which also includes aid to Israel and Taiwan – passed the Senate, Biden urged reluctant Republicans to pass the legislation in the Republican-controlled House.“Supporting this bill is standing up to Putin,” Biden said. “Opposing it is playing into Putin’s hands.”Biden then attacked Trump for his encouraging of Republicans in the House to refuse to support the bill and for his comments about Russia and Nato.“Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that? The whole world heard it,” he said. “The worst thing is, he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will.“For God’s sake it’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous. It’s un-American. When America gives its word it means something, so when we make a commitment, we keep it. And Nato is a sacred commitment.”The passage of the bill through the House, however, looks far from assured despite the president’s urging and its hard-won success in the Senate. Mike Johnson, the hard-right Republican House speaker, in effect rejected the aid package because it lacked border enforcement provisions.“The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world,” he said, adding: “In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”Many see such sentiments as richly ironic given it was Johnson and his House Republicans who – under pressure from Trump and his allies – tanked an earlier version of the aid legislation which included a bipartisan immigration deal intended to tackle the US-Mexico border crisis.Conservatives had insisted recently that the foreign aid package must be tied to border security measures but with immigration poised to play a critical role in the November elections and Trump increasingly certain to be the Republican nominee, the party was suddenly scared of handing Biden a domestic policy victory by trying to solve the issue.But the crises being tackled by the legislation are not just limited to the border, Ukraine and Russia – or just Republicans.Biden also stressed the part of the package passed by the Senate that he said “provides Israel with what it needs to protect his people against the terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and others, and it will provide life-saving humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people desperately need food, water and shelter. They need help.”That was a message to Biden’s own party: three senators (two Democrats and the Democratic-aligned Bernie Sanders) also voted no on the bill, citing Biden’s staunch support for Israel’s military strikes in the Palestinian territories. More

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      Trump Steps Up, Helping Biden Just When the President Needs Him

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      Donald J. Trump’s stunning statement supporting a Russian attack against “delinquent” NATO allies takes attention away from unwelcome questions about the president’s age and provides the Biden camp a useful contrast.If anyone gets a thank-you note from President Biden for helping get him out of a jam in recent days, it should probably be former President Donald J. Trump.Just when Mr. Biden was swamped by unwelcome questions about his age, his predecessor and challenger stepped in, rescuing him with an ill-timed diatribe vowing to “encourage” Russia to attack NATO allies that do not spend enough on their militaries.The stunner from Mr. Trump over the weekend not only drew attention away from the president’s memory problems, as detailed in a special counsel report, but also provided a convenient way for Mr. Biden’s defenders to reframe the issue: Yes, they could now say, the incumbent may be an old man who sometimes forgets things, but his challenger is both aging and dangerously reckless.It was not the first time, nor likely will it be the last, that Mr. Trump has stepped up when an adversary was in trouble to provide an escape route with an ill-considered howler of his own. Mr. Trump’s lifelong appetite for attention has often collided with his evident best interest. For Mr. Biden, that may be the key to this year’s campaign, banking on his opponent’s inability to stay silent at critical moments and hoping that he keeps reminding voters why they rejected him in 2020.“There’s a saying that the enemy of your enemy is your friend,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked on the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who lost the party nomination that year to Mr. Trump. “Since Trump is his own worst enemy, he’s arguably Biden’s best friend.”That does not mean that age is no longer a political liability for Mr. Biden, who at 81 is already the oldest president in American history and would be 86 at the end of a second term. While Mr. Trump is close behind him at 77, the special counsel’s characterization of the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” proved searing and damaging.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

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      in US Politics

      Republicans say Trump call for Russia to attack Nato allies was just fine, actually

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      A leading Republican senator said Donald Trump was “simply ringing the warning bell” when he caused global alarm by declaring he would encourage Russia to attack Nato allies who did not pay enough to maintain the alliance, as Trump’s party closed ranks behind its presumptive presidential nominee.“Nato countries that don’t spend enough on defense, like Germany, are already encouraging Russian aggression and President Trump is simply ringing the warning bell,” Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a former soldier, told the New York Times.“Strength, not weakness, deters aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine twice under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but not under Donald Trump.”Cotton was referring to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.As president between 2017 and 2021, Trump was widely held to have shown alarming favour, and arguably subservience, to Vladimir Putin.Trump made the controversial remarks at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday.View image in fullscreenIn remarks the Times said were not part of Trump’s planned speech but which did repeat a story he has often told, the former president said: “One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’“I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want. You’ve got to pay. You’ve got to pay your bills. And the money came flowing in.”Amid fierce controversy over remarks the Biden White House called “appalling and unhinged”, another Republican hawk in the Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, told the Times: “Give me a break – I mean, it’s Trump.”Graham, who has vacillated from warning that Trump will “destroy” the Republican party to full-throated support, added: “All I can say is while Trump was president nobody invaded anybody. I think the point here is to, in his way, to get people to pay.”Last year, Marco Rubio co-sponsored a law preventing presidents unilaterally withdrawing from Nato. On Sunday the Florida senator, whom Trump ridiculed and defeated in the 2016 primary, also dismissed Trump’s remarks about Russia.“Donald Trump is not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,” Rubio told CNN, referring to a Washington thinktank. “He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician, and we’ve already been through this. You would think people would’ve figured it out by now.”Among other Senate Republicans there was some rather muted pushback. Thom Tillis of North Carolina reportedly blamed Trump’s aides for failing to explain to him how Nato works, while Rand Paul of Kentucky was quoted by Politico as saying Trump’s remarks represented “a stupid thing to say”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s last rival for the presidential nomination, which he is all but certain to secure, is Nikki Haley, who served as United Nations ambassador under Trump. Asked about his remarks, Haley told CBS: “Nato has been a success story for the last 75 years. But what bothers me about this is, don’t take the side of a thug [Vladimir Putin], who kills his opponents. Don’t take the side of someone who has gone in and invaded a country [Ukraine] and half a million people have died or been wounded because of Putin.“Now, we do want Nato allies to pull their weight. But there are ways you can do that without sitting there and telling Russia, have your way with these countries. That’s not what we want.”A former candidate for the nomination, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, told NBC the Nato remark was “absolutely inappropriate” and “consistent with his love for dictators”.Among former Trump aides, John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser, told MSNBC: “When he says he wants to get out of Nato, I think it’s a very real threat, and it will have dramatically negative implications for the United States, not just in the North Atlantic but worldwide.”HR McMaster, Bolton’s predecessor, who was a serving army general when Trump picked him, said Trump’s Nato comment was “irresponsible”.Another former general and former Trump adviser, Keith Kellogg, told the Times he thought Trump was “on to something” with his remarks, which Kellogg said were meant to prompt member nations to bolster their own defences.“I don’t think it’s encouragement at all,” Kellogg said of Trump’s apparent message to Russia. “We know what he means when he says it.”But Liz Cheney, the former Republican Wyoming congresswoman who became a Trump opponent after the January 6 attack on Congress, called Nato “the most successful military alliance in history … essential to deterring war and defending American security”. She added: “No sane American president would encourage Putin to attack our Nato allies. No honorable American leaders would excuse or endorse this.” More

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      Biden and Germany’s Scholz Meet at White House and Push for Ukraine Aid

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      The message came as congressional lawmakers were working on a package with billions in assistance but an uncertain fate.President Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany used a meeting at the Oval Office on Friday to pressure Congress to pass billions more in aid for Ukraine, as legislative dysfunction and opposition among some Republicans have left the critical package in limbo.“Hopefully Congress, the House, will follow you and make a decision on giving the necessary support because without the support of the United States and without the support of European states, Ukraine will not have a chance to defend its own country,” Mr. Scholz said in opening remarks before their meeting.Mr. Biden had a more blunt assessment of the congressional gridlock.“The failure of the United States Congress, if it occurs, not to support Ukraine is close to criminal neglect,” Mr. Biden said. “It is outrageous.”The joint pressure amounted to another maneuver in the high-stakes battle over funding for Ukraine as it tries to fight off Russia’s invasion, a debate that could ultimately help determine the course of the war and, much of Europe worries, security across the continent.The message comes after Senate Republicans blocked a broad bipartisan deal this week that would have provided billions in funding for Ukraine and Israel, as well as stringent restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border. Senators are now inching ahead with legislation would provide $60.1 billion for Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel and $10 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in global conflicts.Senators were planning to work into the weekend on the bill, and it appeared to be on track for passage in the Senate within days. But it faces stiff opposition from many Republicans in the G.O.P.-led House.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

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      Senators Work Into Weekend on Ukraine and Israel Bill as G.O.P. Slows Progress

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      The $95 billion package appeared on track for eventual passage, but Republicans who killed a bipartisan version were still trying to make changes.The long-stalled emergency national security package to send aid to Ukraine and Israel is back on track in the Senate and headed toward passage within days — but not before Republican senators try to take a few partisan shots at the legislation.The senators are slowing progress on the $95 billion measure as they seek votes on proposed revisions, particularly concerning border security — despite having voted this week to kill a version of the bill that included a bipartisan deal to crack down on immigration.The demands amount to an exercise in political face-saving. Republicans said for months that they would never approve funds to help Ukraine fight off a Russian invasion without simultaneously taking significant steps to secure the U.S. border with Mexico. But their decision to kill a proposal to do just that means the aid will move forward without immigration restrictions.Now, they are settling for staging a series of votes that aim to show the right-wing Republican base, the G.O.P.-led House and former President Donald J. Trump that they tried to muscle through tough new border policies — and blame Democrats for blocking them.Senators planned a rare weekend session to work through the bill, with a critical vote on the legislation expected Sunday.“Democrats are willing to consider reasonable and fair amendments here on the floor,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on Friday.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

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      Putin Calls on U.S. to ‘Negotiate’ on Ukraine in Tucker Carlson Interview

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      In a two-hour interview, President Vladimir Putin of Russia was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but a deal with the West.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has worked for decades to win allies in the West, using his spy agencies to interfere in elections and deploying diplomats to build links with Kremlin-friendly politicians.On Thursday, the world witnessed a new, verbose chapter in those efforts: Mr. Putin’s two-hour interview, taped in a gilded hall at the Kremlin, with one of America’s most prominent and most divisive conservative commentators.Speaking to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, Mr. Putin called on the United States to “make an agreement” to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia in order to end the war. He sought to appeal directly to American conservatives just as Republican lawmakers are holding up aid to Ukraine on Capitol Hill, echoing the talking points of politicians like former President Donald J. Trump who say that the United States has more pressing priorities than a war thousands of miles away.“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Mr. Putin said in response to Mr. Carlson’s question about the possibility of American soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt.”He went on: “Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia?”Much of the interview constituted a familiar Kremlin history lesson about Russia’s historical claim to Eastern European lands, beginning in the ninth century, that Mr. Putin made little effort to distill for American ears. He opined on artificial intelligence, Genghis Khan and the Roman Empire. He also laid out his well-worn and spurious justifications for invading Ukraine, asserting that Russia’s goal was to “stop this war” that he claims the West is waging against Russia.But Mr. Putin was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but through an agreement with the West. At the interview’s end, Mr. Putin told Mr. Carlson that the time had come for talks about ending the war because “those who are in power in the West have come to realize” that Russia will not be defeated on the battlefield.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

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      Ukraine’s Creative Use of Weapons Carries Promise and Risk

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      A Russian plane shot down with a Patriot missile was probably carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war, U.S. officials say.U.S. officials say Ukraine should continue to develop innovative ways to strike at Russian forces as the war approaches its third year. But Ukraine’s use of a Patriot missile to take down a plane last month is an example of how novel battlefield tactics can be fraught with peril as well as promise.Unbeknown to Ukraine’s military, the Russian aircraft it targeted may have been carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war, according to U.S. officials.The Patriot is a defensive system, usually used to protect a location and not to shoot down planes. A European partner provided the Patriot interceptor that hit the Russian Ilyushin-76 cargo plane on Jan. 24, according to American officials briefed on the incident.Russian officials immediately claimed the aircraft was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, who were to be exchanged for Russian service members.Publicly, American officials will not comment on what brought down the plane, though officials who spoke privately on the condition of anonymity said the reports of a Patriot missile being used were accurate.The question of who was on the plane is less clear. American officials have not confirmed the identities of the passengers, but they said it appeared probable that at least some of them were Ukrainian prisoners. U.S. and Ukrainian officials say Russia may have overstated the number of deaths.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