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      White House announces $300m stopgap military aid package for Ukraine

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      The Pentagon will rush about $300m in weapons to Ukraine after finding some cost savings in its contracts, even though the military remains deeply overdrawn and needs at least $10bn to replenish all the weapons it has pulled from its stocks to help Kyiv in its desperate fight against Russia, the White House announced on Tuesday. It’s the Pentagon’s first announced security package for Ukraine since December, when it acknowledged it was out of replenishment funds. It wasn’t until recent days that officials publicly acknowledged they weren’t just out of replenishment funds, but $10bn overdrawn. The announcement comes as Ukraine is running dangerously low on munitions and efforts to get fresh funds for weapons have stalled in the House because of Republican opposition. US officials have insisted for months that the United States wouldn’t be able to resume weapons deliveries until Congress provided the additional replenishment funds, which are part of the stalled supplemental spending bill.The replenishment funds have allowed the Pentagon to pull existing munitions, air defense systems and other weapons from its reserve inventories under presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, to send to Ukraine and then put contracts on order to replace those weapons, which are needed to maintain US military readiness.“When Russian troops advance and its guns fire, Ukraine does not have enough ammunition to fire back,” said the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in announcing the $300m in additional aid.The Pentagon also has had a separate Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI, which has allowed it to fund longer-term contracts with industry to produce new weapons for Ukraine.Senior defense officials who briefed reporters said the Pentagon was able to get cost savings in some of those longer-term contracts of roughly $300m and, given the battlefield situation, decided to use those savings to go ahead and send more weapons. The officials said the cost savings basically offset the new package and keep the replenishment spending underwater at $10bn.One of the officials said the package represented a “one-time shot” – unless Congress passes the supplemental spending bill, which includes roughly $60bn in military aid for Ukraine, or more cost savings are found. It is expected to include anti-aircraft missiles, artillery rounds and armor systems, the official said.The aid announcement comes as Polish leaders are in Washington to press the US to break its impasse over replenishing funds for Ukraine at a critical moment in the war. The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, met on Tuesday with Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate and was to meet with President Joe Biden later in the day.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, has so far refused to bring the $95bn package, which includes aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, to the floor. Seeking to put pressure on the Republican speaker, House Democrats have launched a long-shot effort to force a vote through a discharge petition. The seldom-successful procedure would require support from a majority of lawmakers, or 218 members, to move the aid package to a vote.Ukraine’s situation has become more dire, with units on the front line rationing munitions as they face a vastly better supplied Russian force. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has repeatedly implored Congress for help, but House Republican leadership has not been willing to bring the Ukraine aid package to the floor for a vote, saying any aid must first address border security needs.Pentagon officials said on Monday during budget briefing talks they were counting on the supplemental to cover the $10bn replenishment hole. This is the second time in less than nine months that the Pentagon has “found” money to use for additional weapons shipments to Ukraine. Last June, defense officials said they had overestimated the value of the weapons the US had sent to Ukraine by $6.2bn over the past two years.The United States has committed more than $44.9bn in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including more than $44.2bn since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on 24 February 2022. More

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      Ukraine Stages Flurry of Attacks and Drone Strikes on Russia

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      The attacks and drone strikes across the southern border were intended to counter President Vladimir V. Putin’s control over Russia, a leader in one of the groups said.Ukraine staged a flurry of cross-border ground attacks and long-range drone strikes into Russia on Tuesday, assaults that appeared aimed at disrupting President Vladimir V. Putin’s re-election campaign messaging that the war had turned in Moscow’s favor.Three armed groups of Russian exiles who operate in coordination with Ukraine’s military said they had crossed the border into southern Russia overnight and were fighting in border regions. Farther from the border, drone strikes hit a Russian oil refinery and fuel depot.Throughout the war, Ukraine has struck targets inside Russia to disrupt military logistics, hit airplanes parked on runways and blow up railway bridges. The cross-border attacks, Ukrainian officials have said, are also intended to unnerve Russians and undermine Mr. Putin’s efforts to insulate them from the war.Mr. Putin has through his two and a half decades in power — and through multiple elections, the next of which is scheduled to be held next week — portrayed an image of bringing order to Russia. The Kremlin has also barred the only vocally antiwar candidate from running.The reported border-area fighting in two regions, Kursk and Belgorod in southern Russia, could not immediately be independently confirmed.The groups saying they crossed into Russia — the Free Russian Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian Battalion — operate in coordination with Ukraine’s military. Some members of the groups, including the leader of the Russian Volunteer Corps, hold far-right nationalist views.Members of two of the organizations, the Volunteer Corps and the Legion, also crossed into Russia last spring to skirmish with Russia’s border patrol and military. But whereas the incursion last spring was considered to have a military purpose — diverting Russian forces to the border before a planned Ukrainian offensive elsewhere — the attacks on Tuesday delivered a more overtly political message.A deputy commander of the Free Russia Legion, Maksimillian Andronnikov, posted a video on social media describing the incursion as being timed to the lead-up to a presidential election that is set to extend Mr. Putin’s tenure into a fifth term.“We are the same Russians as you,” Mr. Andronnikov said in the address. “We also have the right to a statement of will.”The reports of the fighting in the border region coincided with Ukrainian drone attacks throughout central Russia, including a strike on an oil refinery near Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow. The refinery operator, Lukoil, said the facility had halted operations but did not clarify why.A spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, Andriy Yusov, confirmed that Ukraine had launched the wave of long-range strikes but he did not clarify their intention or confirm specific targets.“Such incidents will occur with everything used for military purposes, one way or another,” Mr. Yusov told Radio Liberty. “This work will continue.”Oleksandr Chubko More

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      Biden’s Armageddon Moment: When Nuclear Detonation Seemed Possible in Ukraine

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      For a few weeks in October 2022, the White House was consumed in a crisis whose depths were not publicly acknowledged at the time. It was a glimpse of what seemed like a terrifying new era.President Biden was standing in an Upper East Side townhouse owned by the businessman James Murdoch, the rebellious scion of the media empire, surrounded by liberal New York Democrats who had paid handsomely to come hear optimistic talk about the Biden agenda for the next few years.It was Oct. 6, 2022, but what they heard instead that evening was a disturbing message that — though Mr. Biden didn’t say so — came straight from highly classified intercepted communications he had recently been briefed about, suggesting that President Vladimir V. Putin’s threats to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine might be turning into an operational plan.For the “first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he told the group, as they gathered amid Mr. Murdoch’s art collection, “we have a direct threat of the use of a nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they’ve been going.” The gravity of his tone began to sink in: The president was talking about the prospect of the first wartime use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.And not at some vague moment in the future. He meant in the next few weeks.The commander of a Ukrainian assault unit, standing by an abandoned Russian tank in October 2022. That period appears to have been the high-water mark of Ukraine’s military performance over the past two years.Ivor Prickett for The New York TimesThe intercepts revealed that for the first time since the war in Ukraine had broken out, there were frequent conversations within the Russian military about reaching into the nuclear arsenal. Some were just “various forms of chatter,” one official said. But others involved the units that would be responsible for moving or deploying the weapons. The most alarming of the intercepts revealed that one of the most senior Russian military commanders was explicitly discussing the logistics of detonating a weapon on the battlefield.Fortunately, Mr. Biden was told in his briefings, there was no evidence of weapons being moved. But soon the C.I.A. was warning that, under a singular scenario in which Ukrainian forces decimated Russian defensive lines and looked as if they might try to retake Crimea — a possibility that seemed imaginable that fall — the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher. That “got everyone’s attention fast,” said an official involved in the discussions.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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      Russia’s Advance Around Avdiivka Loses Momentum After Quick Gains

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      Ukraine has committed significant forces to defending the area, and Russian troops are now attacking across open fields with little cover.When the eastern city of Avdiivka, a Ukrainian stronghold, fell to Russian forces three weeks ago, Kyiv and its allies feared that Moscow’s troops could build on their momentum and quickly press ahead toward strategic military hubs and population centers.But after making rapid gains in the subsequent days, Russian assaults have stalled around three contested nearby villages. Military experts cite several factors, including terrain that does not favor offensive operations, Russian troops exhausted by months of fighting and a Ukrainian army that has committed significant forces to defending the area.Russia seems to be maintaining its initiative on the battlefield, and military analysts say its forces could still break through Ukrainian lines in the near future, especially since Kyiv’s defensive efforts are increasingly curtailed by the absence of further American military aid.Yet for now, they say the fighting appears to have reverted to the kind of inconclusive back-and-forth battles that have characterized much of the war’s front line combat this past year.“The capture of Avdiivka has not led to the collapse of Ukrainian lines, the possibility for the Russians to move onto open ground or even to make major gains,” said Thibault Fouillet, the deputy director of the Institute for Strategic and Defense Studies, a French research center. “There’s no decisive action or breakthrough.”It’s a contrast to the situation that emerged from the fall of Avdiivka in mid-February. At that time, as Ukraine’s forces retreated, Russia advanced rapidly, aided in part by the absence of strong Ukrainian defensive positions. Russian troops captured three settlements and took control of nine square miles of land, according to open-source maps of 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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      ICC Issues Arrest Warrants for 2 Russian Officers in Ukraine

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      Arrest warrants were issued by the International Criminal Court for two military officials, a general and an admiral, both accused of targeting civilians and destroying crucial energy infrastructure.The International Criminal Court on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for two top Russian military officers, accusing them of war crimes in Ukraine for targeting civilians and destroying crucial energy infrastructure.The two officers — Lt. Gen. Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash and Adm. Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov — are accused in a court statement of being personally responsible for numerous missile strikes by their forces on electrical power plants and substations in multiple locations between October 2022 and March 2023.The wintertime strikes were defined as war crimes because they were largely directed against civilian targets, causing “excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects,” the court said.General Kobylash is a senior Russian Air Force officer who commanded the country’s long-range aviation forces during that time period, while Admiral Sokolov was then commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.Lt. Gen. Sergei Ivanovich Kobylas commanded Russia’s long-range aviation forces.Sergei Chirikov/EPA, via ShutterstockAdm. Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov as commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in 2022.Alexey Pavlishak/ReutersThe two are also accused of crimes against humanity because of “intentionally causing great suffering” and serious physical or mental injuries in the general population.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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      Biden Unites With Italy’s Prime Minister to Champion Ukraine

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      In a visit to the White House by Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, the president declared that “we have each other’s backs” and “we also have Ukraine’s back.”President Biden turned to an unlikely ally on Friday in his drive to build support for Ukraine’s war effort as U.S. aid falters, declaring during a White House visit by the far-right prime minister of Italy that the two leaders “have each other’s backs” and “have Ukraine’s back.”The warm tone, a striking departure from Mr. Biden’s assessment of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni when she was elected, extended to a number of foreign policy fronts, as the leaders sought to portray themselves as united on topics including confronting global migration and trying to prevent a broader war in the Middle East.“As you said when we first met here in the Oval, Giorgia, that we have each other’s backs,” Mr. Biden said. “We do, and you’ve demonstrated that from the moment you took office.”But Mr. Biden highlighted their unity on Kyiv’s efforts to fend off an invasion by President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, creating a contrast with conservatives in Congress. “We also have Ukraine’s back,” Mr. Biden said. “That’s why I’m urging the House of Representatives to pass legislation” that would send billions of dollars to fund the war effort.The meeting intensified an all-out assault by Mr. Biden to push stalled military aid for Ukraine through a reluctant Congress. He convened a meeting this week at which he sought to push Speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on aid. He has warned that the divisions over aid are a gift to Russia. And he has used meetings with European officials this year not only to ensure a united front against Russia’s invasion but also to pressure Congress.In Ms. Meloni, Mr. Biden has found a surprisingly kindred spirit.The Italian prime minister said on Friday that as the chairwoman of the Group of 7 nations, she was focused on “defending freedom and building peace for Ukraine.”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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      US Congress averts shutdown but the deadlock remains over Ukraine aid

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      Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress managed to ward off a damaging federal government shutdown with a last-minute compromise reached this week – but remain deadlocked over approving further military assistance for Ukraine and Israel, and tightening immigration laws.Congress was up against a Friday midnight deadline to reauthorize government spending or see a chunk of the federal departments cease much of their operations.On Wednesday, top lawmakers including Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, and Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, announced they “are in agreement that Congress must work in a bipartisan manner to fund our government”, and the following day lawmakers passed a short-term spending measure that Joe Biden signed on Friday.But similar agreement has proven elusive when it comes to funding both the continuation of Ukraine’s grinding defense against Russia’s invasion and Israel’s assault on Gaza.Last month, a bipartisan Senate agreement that would have paired the latest tranche of military aid with measures to limit the number of undocumented people and asylum seekers crossing into the country from Mexico was killed by Republicans – reportedly so Donald Trump, who is on the cusp of winning the Republican presidential nomination, could campaign on his own hardline approach to immigration reform.The Senate then approved a $95bn bill that would authorize aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan without changing policy at the border, but Johnson has refused to put it to a vote in the House. Meanwhile, the government funding saga isn’t quite over. This week’s agreement pushed the funding deadlines for the two bills authorizing spending to 8 and 22 March. In their joint statement, the House and Senate leaders said lawmakers would vote on the 12 separate appropriations bills funding federal departments before these dates.As Russia’s invasion enters its third year, enthusiasm for Kyiv’s cause has cooled among the American right. While it still has high-profile champions among the GOP, including the party’s top senator, Mitch McConnell, it is Democrats who have been loudest in sounding the alarm over the holdup of aid as Russia advances in the country.“Every day that House Republicans refuse to hold a vote on the bipartisan National Security Supplemental, the consequences for Ukraine grow more severe,” Biden said on Thursday.And though Biden’s administration faces intense criticism from some of his allies for his support for Israel – on Tuesday, a write-in campaign to protest his Middle East policy picked up 100,000 votes in vital swing state Michigan’s Democratic primary – the president insisted the aid would help both Israel’s fight against Hamas and the needs of Gaza’s civilians.“This bill will help ensure that Israel can defend itself against Hamas and other threats. And it will provide critical humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people and those impacted by conflicts around the world. Because the truth is, the aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough, and nowhere fast enough. Innocent lives are on the line,” he said.The biggest obstacle at this point appears to be Johnson, a rightwing lawmaker and Trump ally elevated to the speaker’s job in October after an unusual intraparty revolt cast Kevin McCarthy from the post. On Wednesday, a coalition of parliamentary leaders from European countries including France, Spain, Finland and Ukraine sent an open letter to Johnson asking him to allow a vote on Ukraine aid.“While Speaker Johnson believes we must confront Putin, and is exploring steps to effectively do so, as he said at the White House, his immediate priority is funding America’s government and avoiding a shutdown,” the speaker’s office replied.Centrist lawmakers in Congress’s lower chamber, which the GOP controls by a meager two seats, are reportedly planning to circulate a discharge petition, which, if signed by a majority of members, could force Johnson to put Ukraine aid up for a floor vote. Asked about that at a press conference, the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, was not ready to endorse the idea.“The most effective way to secure aid for our democratic allies, including, but not limited to, Ukraine, is to take the bipartisan bill that is pending before the House right now and put it on the floor,” Jeffries said, adding: “All legislative options remain on the table.” More

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      Senate aide investigated over supplying Ukraine forces with sniper gear – report

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      A senior staffer who advises the US Senate on Russia policy is under investigation for making trips to Ukraine in military uniform and supplying the country’s armed forces with privately donated sniper equipment, it was reported on Monday.The actions of Kyle Parker, chief of staff to the Helsinki commission that informs senators on issues of European security, might have crossed legal and ethical grounds that could make him an unregistered foreign agent, according to the New York Times, which reviewed a confidential report by the commission’s director and general counsel.Parker “traveled Ukraine’s frontlines wearing camouflage and Ukrainian military insignia and had hired a Ukrainian official for a US government fellowship over the objections of congressional ethics and security officials”, the newspaper said.An independent law firm is investigating the allegations, and undertaking what the Times said was a broad investigation into conduct by staff of the commission, which has taken a strongly pro-Ukrainian stance as the country defends itself against the invasion by Russia.The report, written by Helsinki commission executive director, Steven Schrage, and counsel Michael Geffroy, said Parker was “wittingly or unwittingly being targeted and exploited by a foreign intelligence service”, raising unidentified “counterintelligence issues” that needed to be reported to the FBI.The Times said it was not known if federal law enforcement had been made aware. But it said Parker’s representatives insisted he had done nothing wrong and was instead the victim of retaliation by the report’s authors for making allegations of misconduct against them.The Helsinki commission’s chairperson, South Carolina Republican congressman Joe Wilson, wanted Parker fired after he read the report, the Times said. “I urgently recommend you secure his immediate resignation or termination,” Wilson wrote to his co-chairperson, the Maryland Democrat Benjamin Cardin, citing “serious alleged improper acts involving Ukrainian and other foreign individuals”.Parker is a longtime adviser to the commission and has traveled to Ukraine at least seven times since Russia invaded in February 2022, the Times said. He has delivered numerous pro-Ukraine lectures, podcasts and social media posts, and he describes himself as “the most well-traveled US official in Ukraine since” the war began, according to his online biography.On one such visit, the report said, he handed over to Ukraine’s military about $30,000 of sniper’s range finders and ballistic wind gauges he had bought on Amazon in the US using money raised by a relative in Ukraine.In a written response to the newspaper’s questions, a representative for Parker said none of his trips were official visits – even though the commission posted a photograph of him in Kherson – and that he never wore military insignia while dressed in army-style camouflage.A video seen by the Times of Parker cutting up and urinating on a Russian hat was “a personal expression of rage and grief” at Russia’s brutality in Ukraine, the representative said. More