SPINDALE, N.C.: When Andre Oliveira answered the call to leave his Word of Faith Fellowship congregation in Brazil to move to the mother church in North Carolina at the age of 18, his passport and money were confiscated by church leaders — for safekeeping, he said he was told.
Trapped in a foreign land, he said he was forced to work 15 hours a day, usually for no pay, first cleaning warehouses for the secretive evangelical church and later toiling at businesses owned by senior ministers. Any deviation from the rules risked the wrath of church leaders, he said, ranging from beatings to shaming from the pulpit.
“They trafficked us up here. They knew what they were doing. They needed labor and we were cheap labor — hell, free labor,” Oliveira said.
An Associated Press investigation has found that Word of Faith Fellowship used its two church branches in Latin America’s largest nation to siphon a steady flow of young laborers who came on tourist and student visas to its 35-acre compound in rural Spindale.
Under US law, visitors on tourist visas are prohibited from performing work for which people normally would be compensated. Those on student visas are allowed some work, under circumstances that were not met at Word of Faith Fellowship, the AP found.
On at least one occasion, former members alerted authorities. In 2014, three ex-congregants told an assistant US attorney that the Brazilians were being forced to work for no pay, according to a recording obtained by the AP.
“And do they beat up the Brazilians?” Jill Rose, now the US attorney in Charlotte, asked.
“Most definitely,” one of the former congregants responded. Ministers “mostly bring them up here for free work,” another said.
Though Rose could be heard promising to look into it, the former members said she never responded when they repeatedly tried to contact her in the months after the meeting.
Rose declined to comment to the AP, citing an ongoing investigation.
Oliveira, who fled the church last year, is one of 16 Brazilian former members who told the AP they were forced to work, often for no pay, and physically or verbally assaulted. The AP also reviewed scores of police reports and formal complaints lodged in Brazil about the church’s harsh conditions.
“They kept us as slaves,” Oliveira said, pausing at times to wipe away tears. “We were expendable. We meant nothing to them. Nothing. How can you do that to people — claim you love them and then beat them in the name of God?“
The Brazilians often spoke little English when they arrived, and many had their passports seized.
Many males worked in construction; many females worked as babysitters and in the church’s K-12 school, the former members said. One ex-congregant from Brazil told AP she was only 12 the first time she was put to work.
Although immigration officials in both countries said it was impossible to calculate the volume of the human pipeline, at least several hundred young Brazilians have migrated to North Carolina over the past two decades, based on interviews with former members.
The revelations of forced labor are the latest in an ongoing AP investigation exposing years of abuse at Word of Faith Fellowship. Based on exclusive interviews with 43 former members, documents and secretly made recordings, the AP reported in February that congregants were regularly punched, smacked and choked in an effort to “purify” sinners by beating out devils.
The church has rarely been sanctioned since it was founded in 1979 by sect leader Jane Whaley, a former math teacher, and her husband, Sam. Another previous AP report outlined how congregants were ordered by church leaders to lie to authorities investigating reports of abuse.
The AP made repeated attempts to obtain comments for this story from church leaders in both countries, but they did not respond.
Under Jane Whaley’s leadership, Word of Faith Fellowship grew from a handful of followers to about 750 congregants in North Carolina and a total of nearly 2,000 members in its churches in Brazil and Ghana and its affiliations in Sweden, Scotland and other countries.
Members visit the Spindale compound from around the world, but Brazil is the biggest source of foreign labor and Whaley and her top lieutenants visit the Brazilian outposts several times a year, the AP found.
Former member Thiago Silva said he was excited when he boarded a plane in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte to fly to a Word of Faith youth seminar in North Carolina in 2001. He was 18 and expecting to use his tourist visa to meet new people and visit the US
He soon learned, he said, that there would be “no happiness.”
“Brazilians came here for labor. I’m telling you, that’s it,” Silva said. He called the treatment “a violation of human rights.”
Silva, now 34, recounted being among a group of Brazilians working alongside Americans — the locals were paid, the Brazilians were not, he said.
Silva and others also said Whaley took complete control of congregants’ lives on both continents, mandating such daily staples of life as where they lived and when they could eat — and even forcing some into arranged marriages to Americans so they could stay in the country.
The lack of freedom was pervasive, they said: Silva, for example, said he could phone his parents from the USonly if someone who spoke Portuguese monitored the call.
“There’s no free will,” he said. “There’s Jane’s will.”
’I SUFFERED SO MUCH THERE’
Over the course of two decades, Word of Faith Fellowship absorbed two churches in Brazil, in the southeastern cities of Sao Joaquim de Bicas and Franco da Rocha.
During her frequent visits, Whaley would tell the Brazilian members of her flock that they could improve both their lives and their relationships with God with a pilgrimage to the mother church, according to several of those interviewed. The Brazilians’ brand of worship was inferior, she often would say.
In addition to being promised a higher standing in the church, some said they also were enticed with the chance to attend college, to learn English, to see a bit of the US
Others said they felt they simply had no choice.
All the while, the strict rules in place in Spindale were being imposed in Brazil, leading to complaints to police reviewed by the AP and a legislative hearing in 2009. But Word of Faith never faced any official censure — many of the allegations came down to the word of ex-members against the church — and the human pipeline continued to flow, even as Brazilian parents said they were being completely cut off from their children in North Carolina.
Labeled a “rebel” because she talked back to pastors as a child, Elizabeth Oliveira, who is no relation to Andre, told the AP that she was frequently kept in isolation for days at a time in various ministers’ homes in Sao Joaquim de Bicas.
Being sent to the US was a way to “correct” her bad behavior. She said she was 12 when she made her first extended trip to Spindale and was immediately put to work. She helped out in the school during the day, then sewed clothes and babysat in the evenings, sometimes well past midnight, Oliveira said. She was never paid, she said.
Now 21 and studying medicine in Belo Horizonte, Oliveira said she broke with the church after her eighth trip to Spindale.
“I suffered so much there,” she said. “When I turned 18, I left and was told, once again, that I would die on my own in the world and go to hell.”
Ana Albuquerque traveled to Spindale from Brazil 11 times over the course of more than a decade, starting at age 5 with her parents. Over time, she said she witnessed so much screaming and shoving to “expunge devils” that she began to see the behavior as normal.
In her final three trips, she joined a group of two dozen other Brazilian teens staying up to six months under tourist visas.
“They come to you and say, ‘You will get to know the United States of America. You will get to go to the malls,’” she said. “But when you get there, everything is controlled.”
Albuquerque, now 25, said she worked full time without pay — as a teacher’s aide at the school during the day and babysitting congregants’ children at night.
Her reckoning came during her final trip, when she was 16. Albuquerque said Whaley and another minister repeatedly spanked her with a flat piece of wood while screaming that she was “unclean” and possessed by the devil.
“Pray for it to come out of you!” Albuquerque recalled being exhorted during a session lasting 40 minutes.
During her final two weeks in Spindale, Albuquerque said she endured days of forced isolation, Bible reading, threats of being placed in a psychiatric ward and refusals by Whaley to let her call her parents. She finally was allowed to return to Brazil, where she left the church.
Luiz Pires said he was 18 in 2006 when he was encouraged by ministers in the Sao Joaquim de Bicas church to travel to North Carolina for his spiritual betterment.
Upon arrival, he said he found “horrific” living conditions, with eight people crammed in the basement of a church leader’s house, forced to work long hours at church-related businesses. Any payment went to living expenses, Pires said, despite the fact that he and others cleaned and did yard work at the member’s house where they lived.
“There was never time to sit down. We were worked like slaves,” he said.
Former congregant Jay Plummer supervised remodeling projects for a church leader’s business and confirmed that his fellow American workers were paid while the Brazilians who labored alongside them were not.
“Room and board is what they worked for, and they did not have a choice,” Plummer told the AP. “And when they would not want to work and vocalize that, they would just get in trouble.”
Paulo Henrique Barbosa had heard the horror stories about life in Spindale. But the sect’s influence was so great that he said he felt he must comply when church leaders in Franco da Rocha — supported by his parents — told him to travel to Spindale in 2011, when he was 17.
Pastors told him he would violate God’s will if he refused.
“Everybody knew these trips were not about tourism,” said Barbosa, now 23 and working in information technology in Sao Paolo. “I didn’t want to go, but I had no choice.”
Once in Spindale, conditions were worse than he feared, he said: For six months, he helped in the school in the mornings and worked in construction in the afternoons and evenings, sometimes until 1 a.m. He was never paid, he said.
The church controlled everything he did, Barbosa said, even prohibiting snacks between meals. Television, music and certain brand-name products all were off-limits.
Barbosa said he also slept in a church member’s basement, with about 15 other young males. Speaking Portuguese was forbidden.
Anyone in the bathroom for more than the mandated five minutes was suspected of committing the “sin” of masturbation, and Whaley would be called to the house to decree the punishment.
If any of the males appeared to be having an “impure dream,” Barbosa said, everybody would be awakened, ordered to surround him and repeatedly shake him and shriek into his ears to “expulse the devils,” a Word of Faith practice called “blasting.”
Barbosa said he asked to return to Brazil many times “but they always told me no, that it was God’s will for me to stay.”
Leaving on his own seemed insurmountable, Barbosa said. He had flown into Charlotte, more than an hour from Spindale, and had no car and little money. He knew no one outside the church and did not speak English. He was allowed to return to Brazil only when his six-month tourist visa was set to expire.
“From the time you are a kid, you are trained to believe that leaving the church will mean you go to hell, get cancer or get AIDS,” he said.
VISA VIOLATIONS
The AP investigation documented repeated abuses of the tourist and student visas obtained for Brazilian church members.
Brazilians most often first arrived in North Carolina on six-month tourist visas for church functions, sometimes 20 or 30 at a time. Some Brazilians would leave after a few weeks; others would stay the duration.
Perhaps to circumvent the rules against employment, church leaders sometimes referred to the forced labor projects as “volunteer work,” according to Brazilians interviewed in both countries.
Such work included ripping out walls and installing drywall in apartments owned and rented out by a senior church minister and family members, they said.
Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank focusing on labor issues, said rental properties are “for-profit businesses for which the immigrants cannot volunteer” under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Some of those interviewed said they’d been lured to the US in part by promises of obtaining a college education but were unable to study or attend classes because of their punishing work schedules.
“There were times I would get done at 4 in the morning and I knew I had to get up by 8 to go to work. I would sit there, staring at my books. But how can you concentrate? You’re just too tired,” Andre Oliveira said.
Former congregants said far more Brazilians came on tourist visas, with several hundred teenagers staying for extended periods.
The experience of Andre Oliveira, now 24, is illustrative.
After first traveling to Spindale in 2009, he said it took him months to obtain permission to return to Brazil. Back home, he said he and others were forced to move into a minister’s house, where he worked as a cleaner for months until he was told “it was the will of God to visit Spindale — this time, on a student visa.”
When he arrived back in North Carolina, ministers again took his passport and put him to work in companies owned by church ministers, he said. He took a few college classes, but didn’t have time to study.
“A typical day would start like this: I’d start work at 9 in the morning and it would end 15 or 16 hours later — sometimes longer,” he said. “We didn’t stop.” ‘Oliveira and others said they had little choice but to follow orders.
“We knew what would happen: We would be screamed at, blasted, hit. And what are you going to do? You have nowhere to go. You don’t know the language. You have no documentation. So you work,” Oliveira said.
“It was slave labor,” added Rebeca Melo, 29, who grew up in the church in Brazil and visited the US about 10 times for religious functions and trips with her family.
Those visits included shopping excursions, but she said things were far different when she moved to Spindale on a student visa in 2009.
“I did not want to move here. Jane said it was the will of God,” she told the AP.
Melo said her passport was taken and she was quickly put to work. Despite her student visa, church officials were clear that school was not to be her focus, she said.
Student visas were just a “means for us to be here legally,” she said.
ARRANGED MARRIAGES
Whaley’s brand of “love” also played a key role in enticing Brazilian males to Spindale — and keeping them there once their visas expired, according to 10 former members of the church.
Some of those interviewed spoke of male Brazilians — as well as church members from various other countries — obtaining green cards for permanent residency and being able to legally work by being “married off” to female American congregants.
It is illegal to enter a sham marriage for the purpose of avoiding US immigration laws.
The arranged marriages also addressed the fact that the Spindale congregation has more unmarried females than males, the ex-members said. Under Whaley’s rules, congregants aren’t allowed to date outside the church, much less marry.
“I can count at least five or six Brazilian guys that moved here to marry an American girl,” Melo said. “They would never, ever, ever consider letting you date somebody outside of the church.”
Silva said that Whaley often told people that she heard from God who they should marry or used her iron grip over members’ lives to arrange relationships.
Silva recalled a young Brazilian couple in love who would be unable to stay in the US past their visas if they married. Whaley wanted to keep the man in Spindale so she told him it was the “will of God” for him to marry an American, Silva said.
With his visa time running down, Andre Oliveira said church leaders found him a bride.
It wasn’t long after former member Kim Rooper joined the Spindale church that she said she was asked to marry a man from Ecuador whose visa was expiring.
Rooper, an American who now lives in Tampa, Florida, said she was coached on how to make the marriage look legitimate to immigration authorities, like keeping a photo album of the couple.
“Long story short, it came time to consummate the marriage and I struggled with that,” she said. “I had a hard time because I didn’t love him, and nor did I have an attraction to him.”
Church leaders told her it was the “will of God” to submit to her husband, Rooper said.
“And that’s when I knew I had to escape,” she said.
Brazilians funneled as “slaves” by US church, ex-members say
Brazilians funneled as “slaves” by US church, ex-members say
Hong Kong court hears appeals by jailed democracy campaigners
- They are among 45 opposition figures, including some of Hong Kong’s best-known democracy activists, who were sentenced in November
- Authorities arrested figures from a broad cross-section of the city’s opposition in morning raids in 2021, a group later dubbed the ‘Hong Kong 47’
HONG KONG: A Hong Kong court began hearing appeals on Monday from 12 democracy campaigners who were jailed for subversion last year during the city’s largest national security trial.
They were among 45 opposition figures, including some of Hong Kong’s best-known democracy activists, who were sentenced in November over a 2020 informal primary election that authorities deemed a subversive plot.
Critics including the United States, Britain and the European Union said the case showed how a Beijing-imposed national security law has eroded freedoms and quashed peaceful opposition in Hong Kong.
Ex-lawmakers “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, Lam Cheuk-ting, Helena Wong and Raymond Chan are among those contesting their convictions and sentences in hearings that are scheduled to last 10 days.
Owen Chow, a 28-year-old activist who was sentenced to seven years and nine months in jail – the harshest penalty among the dozen – has also lodged an appeal.
Former district councilor Michael Pang withdrew his appeal application on Monday morning, leaving a total of 12 appellants.
Some of them have already spent more than four years behind bars.
Amnesty International’s China director Sarah Brooks said the appeal will be a “pivotal test” for free expression in the Chinese finance hub.
“Only by overturning these convictions can Hong Kong’s courts begin to restore the city’s global standing as a place where rights are respected and where people are allowed to peacefully express their views without fear of arrest,” Brooks said.
Dozens of police officers were deployed outside the West Kowloon court building on Monday morning as people queued to attend the hearing.
“They made a sacrifice... I hope they understand that Hongkongers have not forgotten them,” said a public hospital worker in his thirties surnamed Chow.
A 66-year-old retiree surnamed Chan said the case made him feel “helpless,” adding that fewer people were paying attention as court proceedings dragged on.
“I don’t expect any (positive) outcome, but I still want to support them.”
Prosecutors began Monday’s session by challenging the acquittal of lawyer Lawrence Lau, one of two people found not guilty in May 2024 from an original group of 47 accused.
Lau’s “overall conduct” showed that he was party to the conspiracy and he should be tried again because the lower court made the wrong factual finding, the prosecution argued.
Lau, representing himself, replied that the trial court’s findings should not be “casually interfered” with.
“… I have never advocated for the resignation of the chief executive, I have never advocated the indiscriminate vetoing of the financial budget,” Lau told the court, referring to core tenets of the alleged conspiracy.
Beijing has remolded Hong Kong in its authoritarian image after imposing a sweeping national security law in 2020 following months of huge, and sometimes violent, pro-democracy demonstrations.
Authorities arrested figures from a broad cross-section of the city’s opposition in morning raids in 2021, a group later dubbed the “Hong Kong 47.”
The group, aged between 27 and 69, included democratically elected lawmakers and district councilors, as well as unionists, academics and others with political stances ranging from modest reformists to radical localists.
They were accused of organizing or taking part in an unofficial primary election, which aimed to improve the chances of pro-democracy parties of winning a majority in the legislature.
The activists had hoped to force the government to accede to demands such as universal suffrage by threatening to indiscriminately veto the budget.
Three senior judges handpicked by the government to try security cases said the plan would have caused a “constitutional crisis.”
Search for Texas flood victims to resume after pause due to heavy rains
KERRVILLE, Texas: Crews on Monday were expected to resume looking for victims of catastrophic flooding in Texas that killed at least 132 people after more heavy rains temporarily paused their search and rescue operations.
Those efforts along the Guadalupe River were halted on Sunday after a new round of severe weather led to high water rescues elsewhere and prompted fears that waterways could surge again above their banks.
It was the first time search efforts for victims of the July Fourth floods were stopped due to severe weather. Authorities believe more than 160 people may still be missing in Kerr County alone, and 10 more in neighboring areas.
In Kerrville, where local officials have come under scrutiny over whether residents were adequately warned about the rising water in the early morning hours of July 4, authorities went door-to-door to some homes after midnight early Sunday to alert people that flooding was again possible. Authorities also pushed phone alerts to those in the area.
During the pause in searches, Ingram Fire Department officials ordered crews to immediately evacuate the Guadalupe River corridor in Kerr County, warning the potential for a flash flood was high.
Late Sunday afternoon, the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office announced that search teams in the western part of that county could resume their efforts. The Ingram Fire Department would resume its search and rescue efforts Monday morning, said agency spokesman Brian Lochte.
Latest flooding damages dozens of homes
Gov. Greg Abbott said on X the state conducted rescues of dozens of people in San Saba, Lampasas and Schleicher counties, and that evacuations were taking place in a handful of others.
The latest round of flooding damaged about 100 homes and knocked down untold lengths of cattle fencing, said Ashley Johnson, CEO of the Hill Country Community Action Association, a San Saba-based nonprofit.
“Anything you can imagine in a rural community was damaged,” she said. “Our blessing is it was daylight and we knew it was coming.”
With more rain on the way, county officials ordered everyone living in flood-prone areas near the San Saba River to evacuate, with people moved to the San Saba Civic Center, Johnson said.
A wide-ranging weather system brings heavy rains
The weather system brought slow-moving storms and multiple rounds of heavy rain across a widespread area, pushing rivers and streams over their banks.
The rains caused waterways to swell further north in Texas, where emergency crews rescued one motorist who was left stranded in waist-high rapids on a submerged bridge over the Bosque River.
“He drove into it and didn’t realize how deep it was,” said Jeff Douglas, president of the McGregor Volunteer Fire Department.
In the west Texas city of Sonora, authorities called for evacuations of some neighborhoods due to rising flood waters. Sonora is located about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northwest of Kerrville.
Kerrville residents get support from police, alerts
Under heavy rain, Matthew Stone on Sunday cleared branches and a log from a storm sewer in front of his home on Guadalupe Street in Kerrville as several inches of water pooled up on the road.
Multiple houses on the street overlooking the Guadalupe River were severely impacted by the July 4 floods. Stone said he felt safe for now.
“The cops have been coming back and forth, we’re getting lots of alerts, we’re getting a lot of support,” he said.
Just before daybreak on the Fourth of July, destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26 feet (8 meters) on the Guadalupe River, washing away homes and vehicles. Ever since, searchers have used helicopters, boats and drones to look for victims.
The floods laid waste to the Hill Country region of Texas. The riverbanks and hills of Kerr County are filled with vacation cabins, youth camps and campgrounds, including Camp Mystic, the century-old, all-girls Christian summer camp.
Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counselors.
The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in a county that lacked a warning system.
Largest-ever warfighting drills in Australia, Exercise Talisman Sabre, is underway
- Talisman Sabre began in 2005 as a biennial joint exercise between the United States and Australia
- This year, more than 35,000 military personnel from 19 nations will take part over three weeks
MELBOURNE: The largest-ever warfighting drills in Australia, Exercise Talisman Sabre, is underway and expected to attract the attention of Chinese spy ships.
Talisman Sabre began in 2005 as a biennial joint exercise between the United States and Australia. This year, more than 35,000 military personnel from 19 nations, including Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, and the United Kingdom, will take part over three weeks, Australia’s defense department said on Sunday.
Malaysia and Vietnam are also attending as observers.
The exercise will also take part in Papua New Guinea, Australia’s nearest neighbor. It is the first time Talisman Sabre activities have been held outside Australia.
Chinese surveillance ships have monitored naval exercises off the Australian coast during the last four Talisman Sabre exercises and were expected to surveil the current exercise, Defense Industry Minister Pat Conroy said.
“The Chinese military have observed these exercises since 2017. It’d be very unusual for them not to observe it,” Conroy told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“We’ll adjust accordingly. We’ll obviously observe their activities and monitor their presence around Australia, but we’ll also adjust how we conduct those exercises,” Conroy added.
Conroy said the Chinese were not yet shadowing ships as of Sunday.
The exercise officially started on Sunday with a ceremony in Sydney attended by Deputy Commanding General of US Army Pacific Lt. Gen. J.B. Vowell and Australia’s Chief of Joint Operations Vice-Adm. Justin Jones.
The exercise, showcasing Australia’s defense alliance with the United States, started a day after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese began a six-day visit to China.
Albanese is expected to hold his fourth face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday.
The Australian leader has been criticized at home for failing to secure a face-to-face meeting with US President Donald Trump.
Suspect kills 2 women in Kentucky church after shooting state trooper, police say
- The suspect carjacked a vehicle after the traffic stop near Lexington’s airport and fled to Richmond Road Baptist Church, where he opened fire
Two women died Sunday at a church in Lexington, Kentucky, in a shooting rampage that began when a state trooper was wounded after making a traffic stop, police said. The suspect in both shootings was also killed.
The suspect carjacked a vehicle after the traffic stop near Lexington’s airport and fled to Richmond Road Baptist Church, where he opened fire, city Police Chief Lawrence Weathers said. Killed in the shootings at the church were a 72-year-old woman and a 32-year-old woman, the local coroner said.
Two other people were wounded at the church and taken to a local hospital, the police chief said. One victim sustained critical injuries and the other was in stable condition, Weathers said.
The suspect was shot by police and died at the scene, he said. The suspect was not immediately identified pending notification of family, he said.
“Preliminary information indicates that the suspect may have had a connection to the individuals at the church,” the police chief said at a news conference.
The trooper stopped the vehicle after receiving a “license plate reader alert” and was shot about 11:30 a.m., Weathers said. The trooper was in stable condition, he said.
Police tracked the carjacked vehicle to the Baptist church, the police chief said. The church is about 16 miles 26 kilometers) from where the trooper was shot.
The shootings remain under investigation, Weathers said.
Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said the church is home to a small, tight-knit congregation.
“Please pray for everyone affected by these senseless acts of violence, and let’s give thanks for the swift response by the Lexington Police Department and Kentucky State Police,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a social media post.
State Attorney General Russell Coleman said detectives with his office were ready to support local and state agencies. “Today, violence invaded the Lord’s House,” Coleman said in a statement. “The attack on law enforcement and people of faith in Lexington shocked the entire Commonwealth.”
Trump says US will send Ukraine Patriot air defense systems as Russian attacks continue
- Says Russian President Putin “talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening”
- Trump set to meet NATO chief as plan takes shape for Ukraine weapons sales
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he will send Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine, saying they are necessary to defend the country because Russian President Vladimir Putin “talks nice but then he bombs everybody in the evening.”
Trump did not give a number of Patriots he plans to send to Ukraine, but he said the United States would be reimbursed for their cost by the European Union.
The US president has grown increasingly disenchanted with Putin because the Russian leader has resisted Trump’s attempts to negotiate a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has asked for more defensive capabilities to fend off a daily barrage of missile and drone attacks from Russia.
“We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people. He talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening. But there’s a little bit of a problem there. I don’t like it,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington.
“We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated military equipment. They are going to pay us 100 percent for that, and that’s the way we want it,” Trump said.
Trump is set to meet NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte this week to discuss his plan to sell NATO allies US weaponry that they can then pass on to Ukraine.
Rutte will be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday and plans to hold talks with Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as well as members of Congress.
“I’m gonna have a meeting with the secretary general who’s coming in tomorrow,” Trump told reporters as he arrived in Washington on Sunday night. “But we basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated (weapons) and they’re gonna pay us 100 percent for them.”
“Inflection point”
A top ally of Trump, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said Sunday that the conflict is nearing an inflection point as Trump shows growing interest in helping Ukraine fight back Russia. It’s a cause that Trump, who during his campaign made quickly ending the war a top priority, had previously dismissed as being a waste of US taxpayer money.
“In the coming days, you’ll see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves,” Graham said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He added: ”One of the biggest miscalculations (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has made is to play Trump. And you just watch, in the coming days and weeks, there’s going to be a massive effort to get Putin to the table.”
The Rutte visit comes after Trump last week teased that he would make a “major statement” on Russia on Monday and as Ukraine struggles to repel massive and complex air assaults launched by Russian forces. Trump on Sunday declined to offer further details on his coming announcement.
“We’re going to see what we will see tomorrow,” he said.
“It’s time to do it”
Graham and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who also appeared on CBS, said there is also growing consensus on Capitol Hill and among European officials about tapping some of the $300 billion in Russian assets frozen by Group of Seven countries early in the war to help Ukraine.
“It’s time to do it,” Blumenthal said.
Rubio said Friday that some of the US-made weapons that Ukraine is seeking are deployed with NATO allies in Europe. Those weapons could be more quickly transferred to Ukraine, with European countries buying replacements from the US, he said.
French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu, in an interview published Sunday in La Tribune Dimanche, said European officials have been making the case to the Trump administration to bolster air defense capabilities with any coming packages.
He added that France is in a “capacity hole” and will have to wait until next year before being able to provide Ukraine new ground-air missiles.
Hitting Russia’s enablers
Trump is also facing calls from Republicans and Democrats as well as European allies to support legislation in the Senate that aims to cripple Russia’s oil industry and hit Moscow with US sanctions for its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The legislation, in part, calls for a 500 percent tariff on goods imported from countries that continue to buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports. It would have an enormous impact on the economies of Brazil, China and India, which account for the vast majority of Russia’s energy trade.
“The big offender here is China, India and Brazil,” Graham said. “My goal is to end this war. And the only way you are going to end this war is to get people who prop up Putin — make them choose between the American economy and helping Putin.”
That revenue is critical in helping keep the Russian war machine humming as the US and Europe have imposed significant import and export bans on a wide range of goods to and from Russia, affecting sectors like finance, energy, transport, technology and defense.
Trump for months had threatened, but held off on, imposing new sanctions against Russia’s oil industry.
Congress has been prepared to act on the legislation, sponsored by Graham and Blumenthal, for some time.
The bill has overwhelming support in the Senate, but Republican leadership has been waiting for Trump to give the green light before moving ahead with it.
The White House had expressed some reservations about the legislation. Trump made clear he wants full authority over the waiver process to lift the sanctions, tariffs or other penalties, without having to cede control to Congress.
Under the initial bill, the president “may terminate” the penalties under certain circumstances, but immediately reimpose them if the violations resume. Graham has said the president would be allowed to waive the sanctions, for 180 days, and could also renew a waiver.
Some Democratic lawmakers have expressed concerns about the waivers. But Blumenthal downplayed the differences and said the legislation would give Trump a “sledgehammer” to utilize on Putin.
“The waiver language we will have in this bill is very much like the provisions have existed in past similar measures,” Blumenthal said. He added, “What I think is most important right now is our unity.”
