Vladimir Putin

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Volodymyr Zelenskiy pleads for more arms as frontline Ukrainian city falls

      by

      Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued a desperate plea for fresh arms on Saturday as his army commanders announced that Ukrainian troops were pulling out of the key eastern city of Avdiivka, handing Moscow its first major military victory since last May, just days before the second anniversary of the Russian invasion.Ukraine’s leader told the Munich Security Conference that the slowing of weapons supplies was having a direct impact on the frontline and was forcing Ukraine to cede territory.“Keeping Ukraine in the artificial deficit of weapons, particularly in deficit of artillery and long-range capabilities, allows Putin to adapt to the current intensity of the war,” he said.The retreat from Avdiivka hands the initiative in the conflict to Vladimir Putin, a month before rubber-stamp elections that will hand him another six years in office, and a day after the death of the leading Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny.Referring to the US Congress’s decision to call a two-week recess instead of voting on a $60bn military aid package, Zelenskiy warned that “dictators don’t go on vacation”.“Hatred knows no pause,” he said. “Enemy artillery is not silent due to procedural troubles. Warriors opposing the aggressor need sufficient strength.”Ukraine’s military announced in the early hours of Saturday that it was withdrawing forces from Avdiivka, a decision that has been regarded as inevitable for some time as Russian forces cut off the industrial city on three sides. “I decided to withdraw our units from the town and move to defence from more favourable lines in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen,” said the newly appointed army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi in a statement.Soldiers had raised concerns that Avdiivka could be “another Bakhmut” – the city that Ukraine defended fiercely last spring, but which ultimately fell after heavy losses.Soldiers involved in the retreat painted a chaotic picture of risky and terrifying withdrawal, in which they were sometimes forced to leave wounded behind. A top army commander wrote on the messaging service Telegram that “a certain number of Ukrainian servicemen” were taken prisoner during the retreat.Viktor Biliak, a soldier with the 110th Brigade, described earlier in the week how he and others had left a garrison in the south of Avdiivka. “There was zero visibility outside,” he wrote on Instagram. “It was just plain survival. A kilometre across a field. A group of blind cats led by a drone. Enemy artillery. The road to Avdiivka is littered with our corpses.”View image in fullscreenFewer than 1,000 civilians are left in the town, which was once home to 30,000 people and a sprawling coke plant. Close to the major city of Donetsk, which has been occupied since 2014, it has long been a fortified outpost, and has been the scene of intense fighting since October.Ukrainian forces are under pressure along the length of the frontline as the anniversary approaches on 24 February, and in Munich, the mood at the conference was darkened by Zelenskiy’s sombre warning that Ukraine will lose without more long-range weapons, drones and air support.The US Senate has approved a bill that allocates $60bn in new aid for the Ukrainian military. But it has been held up in the House of Representatives, which last week announced a sudden two-week recess. At a joint press conference with Zelenskiy, the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said that Washington “must be unwavering” and that “we cannot play political games”.Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said at a side meeting that everything depended on when Ukraine received further aid. “I am optimistic but the timing is critical,” he said. He was dubious that European aid, without sufficient US support, would be enough to prevent Ukraine ceding further territory.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAmong the politicians present, there was frustration not just with US isolationists, but with Europe’s failure to turn its promises of extra ammunition into a reality. The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said she did not understand why countries such as Germany and France that did have extra ammunition were not sending it to the frontline now. “The sense of urgency is simply not clear enough in our discussions,” she said. “We need to speed up and scale up.”Addressing Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison, Zelenskiy said Putin was responsible. “Putin kills whoever he wants, be it an opposition leader or anyone who seems like a target to him,” he said.On Friday, the Munich conference was rocked when Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s wife, addressed the conference hours after reports of his death broke.Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, said investigators in the city of Salekhard had refused to release Navalny’s body to his mother, who had arrived there on Saturday morning.Georgy Alburov, another ally, said that authorities wanted to prevent an independent autopsy by delaying the release of Navalny’s body.Prison authorities claim Navalny “fell unconscious” during a walk at the IK-3 prison in the Yamalo-Nenets region where he was serving a 19-year sentence widely seen as politically motivated.OVD-Info, a Russian NGO that monitors law enforcement, said that at least 359 people in 32 cities had been detained at vigils held in support of Navalny across Russia. Many had laid carnations at makeshift memorials under the eye of riot police. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden blames Putin for Navalny’s death as Republican ‘apologists’ condemned

      by

      Joe Biden put the blame for the reported death of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Friday squarely on Vladimir Putin, as many US politicians condemned Putin but also reacted angrily to the silence of some Republican lawmakers.“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” the US president said from the White House.“What has happened and evolving is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled, not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world. Putin does not only target citizens of other countries, as we have seen in what’s going on in Ukraine right now, he also inflicts terrible crimes on his own people.”Meanwhile some leading Republican politicians also decried Navalny’s death, while pointing the finger at some in their own party for appearing to appease the Russian leader.“There is no room in the Republican Party for apologists for Putin. RIP Alexey Navalny,” wrote the former vice-president Mike Pence on social media.Pence added: “Putin is a war criminal and only understands strength”, and urged Congress to “set aside the politics of the moment” and to pass legislation supporting aid to Ukraine.The North Carolina senator Thom Tillis also criticized Republicans who have expressed qualified sympathies for the Russian president.“Navalny laid down his life fighting for the freedom of the country he loved,” Tillis said.“Putin is a murderous, paranoid dictator. History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy. Nor will history be kind to America’s leaders who stay silent because they fear backlash from online pundits.”Both men were apparently referring to members of the Republican party who have in recent weeks slowed the passage of a $60bn military aid package to Ukraine.Last week, the Republican senator Ron Johnson was apparently moved to vote against the aid after watching Vladimir Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson. Johnson said that while Putin “is a war criminal [who is] obviously not telling you the whole truth”, his sit-down with the former Fox News host was “very interesting”, and that “an awful lot of what Vladimir Putin said was right … accurate and obvious”.Others, including the Republican congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a House Freedom caucus member, have recently expressed open admiration for the Russian president.“Putin is a studied man of resolute spirit, and he always comes across as very sincere in his beliefs. You come away from a conversation with him thinking ‘I may not believe what he says, but I know he believes what he says,’” Higgins has said.In his address on Friday, Biden said that “history is watching the House of Representatives” and a “failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten. It will go down in the pages of history. It’s consequential, and the clock is ticking. This has to happen. We have to help now.”While none of the leaders immediately put out statements about Navalny, the Republican congressman Michael McCaul, who heads the foreign affairs committee, said: “If confirmed, the death of Alexei Navalny is a tragedy. He was a voice for a better Russia amid the corruption and brutality of Putin’s genocidal regime. The Kremlin must be held to account for this outrage.”Democratic leaders, for their part, expressed united outrage at Navalny’s death. The vice-president, Kamala Harris, called Navalny’s death in prison “a further sign of Putin’s brutality”.Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible, and we will have more to say on this later,” Harris said at the top of keynote remarks at the Munich Security Conference.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionReports of Navalny’s death come days after the likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, said the US would not defend Nato allies from Russian attack, a core principle of the alliance, if they did not meet their obligation to spend 2% of their national economic output on defense.On Friday, before the Navalny news, the Biden re-election campaign pushed out a fresh ad targeting Trump’s comments. “Trump wants to walk away from Nato. He’s even given Putin the green light to attack America’s allies,” it states, calling the former president’s rhetoric “shameful”, “weak” and “un-American”.Speaking at the White House, Biden took another swipe at Trump for his Nato comments, saying: “All of us should reject the dangerous statements made by the previous president that invited Russia to invade our Nato allies if they weren’t paying up.”Referring to Trump, Biden went on: “He said if an ally did not pay their dues, he encouraged Russia to, quote: ‘Do whatever the hell they want.’“I guess I should clear my mind a little bit and not say what I’m really thinking, but let me be clear – this is an outrageous thing for a [former] president to say. I can’t fathom it.“As long as I’m president, America stands by our sacred commitment to our Nato allies.”Trump did not mention the Navalny reports on Friday in their immediate aftermath, and instead posted a message about how he would save the Teamster union from the effects of immigration and another about the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley hit out at Trump for his past praise of the Russian leader.“Putin did this,” Haley wrote on Friday morning on X, in response to news of Navalny’s death in prison. “The same Putin who Donald Trump praises and defends. The same Trump who said: ‘In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.’”Biden, asked directly by a reporter at the White House whether Navalny’s death was an “assassination”, responded:“We don’t know exactly what happened but there’s no doubt that the death of Navalny is a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did.” More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Pelosi condemned for suggesting pro-Palestinian activists have ties to Russia

      by

      Supporters of a ceasefire in Gaza condemned comments made by the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi as “downright authoritarian” after the California Democrat suggested, without offering evidence, that pro-Palestinian activists may have ties to Russia and president Vladimir Putin.In an interview on Sunday, Pelosi called on the FBI to investigate protesters involved in the progressive movement pressuring the Biden administration to support a ceasefire in Gaza.“For them to call for a ceasefire is Mr Putin’s message,” Pelosi said during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine. It’s about Putin’s message. I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia.”Pressed for clarity on whether she believed the activists were “Russian plants”, Pelosi replied: “Seeds or plants. I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.”The interview sparked a furious backlash among activists and anti-war protesters, who pointed to polling that shows strong shares of Democrats support calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and agree with the claim that Israel is committing a “genocide” against the Palestinian people.Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called the remarks an “unsubstantiated smear” that “echo a time in our nation when opponents of the Vietnam war were accused of being communist sympathizers and subjected to FBI harassment”.“Her comments once again show the negative impact of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by those supporting Israeli apartheid,” Awad said in a statement. “Instead of baselessly smearing those Americans as Russian collaborators, former House Speaker Pelosi and other political leaders should respect the will of the American people by calling for an end to the Netanyahu government’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza.”Since the outbreak of war in October, Joe Biden has faced a groundswell of opposition to his policy in Gaza. Prominent Jewish, progressive and anti-war groups are among the many organizations involved in the ceasefire movement. In recent weeks, activists have interrupted major campaign events, including a speech on reproductive rights in Virginia where he was interrupted at least a dozen times.Biden has resisted calls to back an immediate ceasefire, even as his administration works to secure a temporary pause to the bloodshed in exchange for the release of nearly 100 hostages taken in the 7 October attack on Israel. The mounting Palestinian death toll, now estimated to have surpassed 26,000, and widespread suffering in Gaza, have infuriated key parts of his Democratic base.Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, who supports a ceasefire and has been closely monitoring the US response to the war in Gaza, said Pelosi’s remarks amounted to an “unacceptable disinformation being spread by the most powerful Democratic party leaders”.“Democrats are most successful when they represent a broad coalition, but the party leadership has sabotaged itself by vigorously attacking the majority of their own Democratic voters who oppose the war,” he said.Pelosi, who led House Democrats for 20 years and served twice as House speaker, is apparently the first and most high profile US official to publicly accuse Russia of supporting pro-Palestinian activists in an effort to exacerbate divisions among Democrats over Israel’s war in Gaza.Pelosi made the comments in response to a question about whether opposition to Biden’s handling of the conflict could hurt the president’s re-election prospects in November.In a statement following Pelosi’s appearance on CNN, a spokesperson emphasized that the former speaker believes the “focus” should remain on strategies to end the suffering of the people in Gaza and secure release of the hostages held by Hamas.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe spokesperson continued: “Speaker Pelosi has always supported and defended the right of all Americans to make their views known through peaceful protest. Informed by three decades on the House Intelligence Committee, Speaker Pelosi is acutely aware of how foreign adversaries meddle in American politics to sow division and impact our elections, and she wants to see further investigation ahead of the 2024 election.”Brianna Wu, who created a pac to support progressive candidates called Rebellion, wrote on social media that Pelosi’s comments were inartful, but tracked with recent efforts by Russia to interfere in a US election.“Information warfare doesn’t invent new divisions. It finds existing divisions and exacerbates them,” Wu wrote. “Since Putin wants Trump to win, he will obviously be funding efforts to split the Democratic Party. Israel/Palestine is proving to be very effective at this.”Democrats in Michigan have warned the White House that dissatisfaction with Biden’s approach to the Israel-Gaza war may jeopardize his support among Arab Americans in a swing state that could determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.Abdullah Hammoud, the Democratic mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a sizable Arab American population that helped seal Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, shared the results of a November poll that showed broad support for a permanent ceasefire and de-escalation of violence in Gaza.“So, based on Nancy Pelosi’s remarks, 76% of Democrats / 49% of Republicans / 61% of Americans are potentially paid operatives of Russia who are pushing Putin’s message of calling for a ceasefire??” he wrote.Hammoud, who last week joined a group of Arab and Muslim leaders in refusing to meet with Biden’s reelection campaign manager to discuss the administration’s approach to the war, concluded: “The Democratic party leadership is in disarray.” More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      If Trump wins, US would look like Putin and Orbán’s ‘illiberal democracy’, Raskin says

      by

      If Donald Trump wins a second presidency, the US would resemble the authoritarian regimes of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, a prominent Democratic congressman predicted Sunday.During an appearance on MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki, Jamie Raskin invoked the names of some of the globe’s most powerful strongmen political leaders to characterize the threat posed by Trump’s status as the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination despite the mound of legal problems with which he is grappling.“The role of the government in his view is to advance his political fortunes and destroy his … enemies,” Raskin said of the former president and reality television show host. “So what would a second term look like?“It would look a lot like Vladimir Putin Russia. It would look a lot like Viktor Orbán in Hungary – illiberal democracy, meaning democracy without rights or liberties or respect for the due process system, the rule of law.”Raskin added: “Their position is that they don’t accept elections that don’t go their way. They refuse to disavow political violence – they embrace political violence as an instrument for obtaining power. And then everything flows from the will of a charismatic politician, and that is Donald Trump in their book.”Raskin said another turn in the Oval Office for Trump would thrust the US “into a completely different form of government than any of us would recognize as continuous with the past”, one that instead would feel more familiar in Xi Jingping’s China or in Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil before the latter man was ousted from office last year and then barred by his country’s courts from running for re-election due to abuses of power.The Maryland congressman’s dramatic admonition to Psaki came days after Trump went on Univision and suggested he would use federal investigators and prosecutors to pursue his enemies if he scores a victory in next year’s presidential election.On Saturday, Trump promised in a speech to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left thugs that live like vermin” in the US. Many commentators noted how the term “vermin” echoed antisemitic rhetoric that the Nazis frequently employed to dehumanize Jews as they murdered 6 million of them during the Holocaust.Meanwhile, the New York Times reported Saturday that Trump – who routinely speaks fawningly of Putin and other autocratic world leaders – is “planning an extreme expansion” of the immigration crackdown that the Republican oversaw during the presidential term he won in 2016.The plan reportedly envisions sweeping raids that round up undocumented people in the US before detaining them en masse in sprawling camps while they await deportation. Among other measures, it also calls for a revival of his first-term ban against travelers from predominantly Muslim countries.Raskin served on the US House committee which investigated the deadly Capitol attack staged by Trump’s supporters on 6 January 2021, weeks after he lost the presidency to his Democratic rival Joe Biden.After a series of televised hearings last year, the committee recommended that the justice department file criminal charges against Trump. And since March, a combination of federal and state prosecutors have obtained more than 90 criminal charges in four separate, pending indictments against Trump accusing him of election subversion, retention of government secrets and illicit hush-money payments to a porn actor.He has also faced civil lawsuits over his business affairs and a rape allegation which a judge deemed “substantially true”.Trump has denied all wrongdoing and sought to portray himself as a victim of political persecution. Nonetheless, he has held commanding polling leads in the contest for the 2024 Republican White House nomination. And there is a consensus among experts that a rematch between him and Biden would be very close.The Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, on Sunday said her organization is ready to support and embrace Trump as its candidate if he clinches the party’s nomination.“The voters are looking at this, and they think there is a two-tiered system of justice,” she said on CNN’s State of the Union. “They don’t believe a lot of the things that are coming out in this. And they’re making these decisions. And you’re seeing that reflected in the polls.” More

    • 163 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      In a world on fire, Biden struggles to banish the curse of Trump

      by

      Is Joe jinxed? In less than three years as US president, Joe Biden has faced more than his fair share of international crises. America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan blew up in his hands like a cluster bomb. Then came Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Europe’s biggest war since 1945. Now, suddenly, the Middle East is in flames.It could just be bad luck. Or it could be Biden, who prides himself on foreign policy expertise, is not as good at running the world as he thinks. But there is another explanation. It’s called Donald Trump. If Biden’s presidency is cursed, it’s by the toxic legacy of the “very stable genius” who preceded him.It’s worth noting how the poisonous effects of Trump’s geostrategic car crashes, clumsy policy missteps and egotistic blunders continue to be felt around the world – not least because he hopes to be president again. In 2020, with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side, Trump unveiled his “ultimate deal” for peace in Israel-Palestine.His plan was a gift to rightwing Jewish nationalists, offering Israel full control over Jerusalem and large parts of the West Bank and Jordan Valley while shattering hopes of a viable Palestinian state. It was laughably, amateurishly lopsided. Except it was no joke. It excluded and humiliated Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, convinced many that peaceful dialogue was futile and so empowered Hamas.Netanyahu had long advised Trump that the Palestinians could be safely ignored, normalisation with Arab states was a better, more lucrative bet and Iran was the bigger threat. Now he could barely contain his glee. “You have been the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House,” he cooed. Naturally, Trump lapped it up.The catastrophic consequences of Trump’s dangerous fantasising are now plain to all – but it’s Biden, his re-election prospects at risk, who is getting heat from left and right. Partly it’s his own fault. He thought the Palestinian question could be frozen. Meanwhile, Trump, typically, has turned against Netanyahu while praising Hamas’s close ally, Iranian-backed Hezbollah, as “very smart”.The 2018 decision by Trump, egged on by Israel, to unilaterally renege on the west’s UN-backed nuclear counter-proliferation accord with Iran was the biggest American foreign policy blunder since the Iraq invasion. Ensuing, additional US economic sanctions fatally weakened the moderately reformist presidency of Hassan Rouhani.Iran took Trump’s confrontational cue – and shifted sharply to the anti-western, rejectionist right. A notorious hardliner, Ebrahim Raisi, president since 2021, has pursued close alliances with Russia and China. At home, a corrupt, anti-democratic clerical oligarchy, topped by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, brutally suppresses dissent, notably advocates of women’s rights.Mahsa Yazdani is the mullahs’ latest victim. Her “crime”, for which she was jailed for 13 years, was to denounce the killing by security forces of her son, Mohammad Javad Zahedi. Such persecution is commonplace. Yet if the Barack Obama-Biden policy of engagement, backed by Britain and the EU, had been maintained by Trump, things might be very different today, inside and outside Iran.Instead, Biden faces an angry foe threatening daily to escalate the Israel-Hamas war. Iran and its militias are the reason he is deploying huge military force to the region. Iran is why US bases in the Gulf, Syria and Iraq are under fire. And thanks to Trump (and Netanyahu), Iran may be closer than ever to acquiring nuclear weapons capability.Trump’s uncritical, submissive, often suspiciously furtive attitude to Vladimir Putin has undermined Biden’s Russia policy, doing untold, lasting harm. Untold because Democrats have given up trying to cast light on at least a dozen, publicly unrecorded Trump-Putin calls and meetings over four years in the White House.It’s not necessary to believe Moscow’s spooks possess embarrassing sex tapes, or that Trump solicited Russian meddling in US elections, to wonder whether he cut private deals with Putin. Did he, for example, suggest the US would stand aside if Russia invaded Ukraine, where there had been fighting over the Donbas and Crimea since 2014? Trump has a personal beef with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. That alone is sufficient to shape his policy.Trump’s criticism of European allies and threats to quit Nato caused a damaging loss of mutual confidence that Biden still struggles to repair. For his part, manipulative Putin sticks up for the former president. He recently declared that federal lawsuits against Trump amounted to “persecution of a political rival for political reasons”. Evidently, he’d like to see his pal back in power.Did Trump’s behaviour in office, his impeachments and failed coup, encourage Putin (and China’s Xi Jinping) to view American democracy as sick, failing and demoralised. Probably. Trump’s 2020 Afghanistan “peace deal” – in truth, an abject capitulation to the Taliban – confirmed their low opinion. It led directly to the chaotic 2021 withdrawal and a shredding of US global credibility that was largely blamed on Biden.Little wonder Putin calculates that American staying power will again fade as Trump, campaigning when not in court, trashes Biden’s Ukraine policy and his House Republican followers block military aid to Kyiv. Unabashed by his Middle East fiasco, Trump vainly boasts he would conjure a Ukraine peace deal overnight – if re-elected (and not in jail).It’s an unusually challenging time in world affairs. And Biden has been unlucky domestically, too, given a post-pandemic cost of living crisis and a supreme court gone rogue. Yet his biggest political misfortune remains the noxious global legacy and continuing, uniquely destructive presence of Trump.He is more than just a rival waiting for an 80-year-old president to slip and take a tumble. Symbolically, Trump is nemesis. He is the darkness beyond the pale, he’s a monster lurking in the depths, he’s the enemy within. He’s Joe’s Jonah.
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      US targets Wagner by sanctioning gold companies suspected of funding group

      by

      The United States has taken fresh aim at Russia’s Wagner group, imposing sanctions on companies it accuses of engaging in illicit gold dealings to fund the mercenary force.In a statement on Tuesday, the US treasury department said it slapped sanctions on four companies in the United Arab Emirates, Central African Republic and Russia it accused of being connected to the Wagner Group and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.The companies engaged in illicit gold dealings to fund the militia to sustain and expand its armed forces, including in Ukraine and some countries in Africa, the treasury said.“The Wagner group funds its brutal operations in part by exploiting natural resources in countries like the Central African Republic and Mali,” the treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Brian Nelson, said in a statement.“The United States will continue to target the Wagner Group’s revenue streams to degrade its expansion and violence in Africa, Ukraine, and anywhere else.”The Wagner Group did not immediately respond to the US allegations.The measures against the Wagner group had been previously planned but were briefly put on hold as US officials sought to avoid appearing to favor a side in a power struggle between the mercenaries’ chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russian president Vladimir Putin.Wagner, whose men in Ukraine include thousands of ex-prisoners recruited from Russian jails, has grown into a sprawling international business with mining interests and fighters in Africa and the Middle East.Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said this week “private military contractors” would remain in Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali, the two countries in sub-Saharan Africa where Wagner has the biggest presence. The group has been accused of widespread atrocities in both countries.The State department spokesman, Matthew Miller, previewing the sanctions earlier Tuesday, renewed his criticism of the Wagner mercenaries, who have been accused of wide abuses in Africa.“We believe that everywhere that Wagner goes, they bring death and destruction in their wake. They hurt local populations, they extract minerals and extract money from the communities where they operate,” Miller told reporters.“And so we would continue to urge governments in Africa and elsewhere to cease any cooperation with Wagner,” he said.The United States has previously imposed sanctions on Wagner and Prigozhin.The companies hit with sanctions on Tuesday included Central African Republic-based Midas Ressources SARLU and Diamville SAU, Dubai-based Industrial Resources General Trading and Russia-based Limited Liability Company DM.The United States also issued an advisory highlighting risks raised by gold trade in sub-Saharan Africa due to what it said was increasingly concerning reporting related to the role of illicit actors, including the Wagner Group. More