ELKO, Nev/MOSCOW: US President Donald Trump said Washington will exit the Cold-War era treaty that eliminated a class of nuclear weapons due to Russian violations, triggering a warning of retaliatory measures from Moscow.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated by then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, required elimination of land-based short-range and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles by both countries.
“Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out,” Trump told reporters on Saturday after a rally in Nevada.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Sunday that a unilateral US withdrawal would be “very dangerous” and lead to a “military-technical” retaliation.
Gorbachev, now a frail 87-year-old, said it would be a mistake for Washington to quit the treaty, and that it would undermine work he and US counterparts did to end the Cold War Arms race.
“Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?” Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying.
A Kremlin spokesman said Russian President Vladimir Putin would seek answers about the planned withdrawal when he meets John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, for scheduled talks in Moscow this week.
US authorities believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation.
Trump said the United States will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to a halt on development.
China is not a party to the treaty and has invested heavily in conventional missiles, while the INF has banned USpossession of ground-launched ballistic missiles or cruise missiles of ranges between 500 and 5,500 km (311 and 3,418 miles).
Ryabkov, in comments reported by state-controlled RIA news agency, said if the United States withdrew, Russia would have no choice but to retaliate, including taking unspecified measures of a “military-technical nature.”
“But we would rather things did not get that far,” RIA quoted him as saying.
TASS news agency quoted him as saying withdrawal “would be a very dangerous step,” and it was Washington and not Moscow that was failing to comply with the treaty.
He said the Trump administration was using the treaty in an attempt to blackmail the Kremlin, putting global security at risk. .”..We will, of course, accept no ultimatums or blackmail methods,” Interfax quoted him as saying.
British defense minister Gavin Williamson, in comments reported by the Financial Times, said London stood “resolute” behind Washington over the issue, and that the Kremlin was making a mockery of the agreement.
However, another of the United States’ NATO allies, Germany, voiced misgivings.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that for 30 years the treaty had been a pillar of Europe’s security architecture. “We now urge the United States to consider the possible consequences,” of quitting the pact, Maas said in a statement issued on Sunday.
Trump says US to exit nuclear treaty, Russia warns of retaliation
Trump says US to exit nuclear treaty, Russia warns of retaliation
- The pact prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles
- Trump said that ‘Russia has violated the agreement’
US imposes fresh round of sanctions against Russia ahead of Trump return to White House
- Sanctions target Russia’s military industrial base and evasion schemes
- Congressional approval required to lift some sanctions on critical Russian entities
- China-based entities, Kyrgyzstan financial institution among targets
WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday imposed hundreds of sanctions targeting Russia, seeking to increase pressure on Moscow in the Biden administration’s final days and protect some sanctions previously imposed.
The US State and Treasury departments imposed sanctions on over 250 targets, including some based in China, taking aim at Russia’s evasion of US sanctions and its military industrial base.
As part of the action, the Treasury imposed new curbs on almost 100 entities that were already under sanctions, potentially complicating any future efforts to remove the measures.
Russia’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Treasury in a statement said Washington was imposing fresh sanctions on almost 100 critical Russian entities — including Russian banks and companies operating in Russia’s energy sector — that were previously sanctioned by the United States. It said the move increases secondary sanctions risk for them.
The new sanctions are issued under an executive order that a senior Treasury official said requires Congress to be notified before any of the actions can be reversed.
Jeremy Paner, a partner at the law firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed, said the actions are “Trump-proofed,” preventing reversal of the additional sanctions without congressional approval.
“You can’t just with the stroke of a pen remove what’s being done,” he said.
Edward Fishman, a former US official who is now a research scholar at Columbia University, called it a “very significant action.”
“It protects these sanctions against sort of any frivolous decision to lift them,” he said. “It gives the new Trump administration more leverage with Russia.”
Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It was unclear how Donald Trump, who succeeds President Joe Biden on Monday, will approach the issue of sanctions on Russia. Trump has been friendly toward Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past and said on Monday that he would aim to meet quickly with him to discuss Ukraine.
When asked about his strategy to end the war, Trump told Newsmax: “Well, there’s only one strategy and it’s up to Putin and I can’t imagine he’s too thrilled about the way it’s gone because it hasn’t gone exactly well for him either.”
Sanctions evasion scheme
Washington also took action against a sanctions evasion scheme established between actors in Russia and China, targeting regional clearing platforms in the two countries that it said have been working to allow cross-border payments for sensitive goods. The Treasury said several Russian banks under US sanctions were participants.
“China firmly opposes any illegal unilateral sanctions and ‘long-arm jurisdiction’,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in a statement.
“The normal economic and trade exchanges between China and Russia should not be interfered with or disrupted, and should not be used as a tool to smear and contain China.”
Also hit with sanctions on Wednesday was Keremet Bank, a Kyrgyzstan-based financial institution the Treasury accused of coordinating with Russian officials and a bank identified by the United States as circumventing sanctions.
Keremet Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US State Department also imposed sanctions on Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.
The plant, located in Ukraine’s south east, was captured by Russia shortly after it launched the invasion in 2022. It is shut down but needs external power to keep its nuclear material cool and prevent a meltdown.
The sanctions will not affect its operations, Russian news agencies reported on Wednesday, citing the plant’s spokeswoman.
The Biden administration has imposed rafts of punitive measures targeting Russia over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine that has killed or wounded thousands and reduced cities to rubble. Washington has repeatedly sought to counter the evasion of its measures.
Less than a week ago, the administration imposed its broadest package of sanctions so far targeting Russia’s oil and gas revenues in an effort to give Kyiv and Trump’s incoming team leverage to reach a deal for peace in Ukraine.
Speaker Johnson removes chair of powerful House Intelligence Committee
WASHINGTON: House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday removed the GOP chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, who was a vocal supporter of assistance for Ukraine and held other views that put him at odds with President-elect Donald Trump.
Johnson told reporters late Wednesday that Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, would no longer lead the committee, which oversees the nation’s intelligence agencies and holds tremendous influence over law enforcement and foreign policy. During Trump’s first term, the committee became a hotbed of partisanship as its powers were used to assist the then-president. Johnson last year also gave two Trump allies highly-sought spots on the panel.
Johnson said he made the decision to remove Turner because the “intelligence community and everything related to (the committee) needs a fresh start.”
The Republican speaker, who has aligned himself closely with Trump, said he would soon announce the new chair for the committee.
Johnson went on to praise Turner and say he would play an important role in working with NATO. But Turner’s stances on foreign policy had run afoul of the incoming president, who will take the White House next week with a vision of reshaping the federal government’s intelligence and law enforcement capabilities. Trump has picked fierce loyalists to lead agencies with vast power for surveillance.
In a statement, Turner said: “Under my leadership, we restored the integrity of the Committee and returned its mission to its core focus of national security. The threat from our adversaries is real and requires serious deliberations.”
Turner last year also pushed back on Trump’s false claims that Haitian migrants in his Ohio district were eating pets.
Punchbowl News first reported that Turner had been removed as the chair.
The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Jim Himes, in a statement called Turner “a serious, security focused lawmaker dedicated at his core to the national security of the United States and to the thoughtful oversight of the Intelligence Community.”
Himes added, “The removal of Chairman Turner makes our nation less secure and is a terrible portent for what’s to come.”
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Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed.
Biden warns US ‘soul’ at stake with Trump on brink of power
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden warned Wednesday that the “soul of America” is still at stake, as he prepared to deliver his farewell address to the nation before the return to power of Donald Trump.
The 82-year-old Democrat will make a primetime speech from the Oval Office of the White House in which he is expected to tout the legacy of his single four-year term.
In a letter previewing his remarks — due to be made at 8:00 p.m. US Eastern time (0100 GMT Thursday) — Biden took an implicit swipe at Republican Trump.
“I ran for president because I believed that the soul of America was at stake. The very nature of who we are was at stake. And, that’s still the case,” Biden said in the letter.
“History is in your hands. The power is in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands,” he said. “We just have to keep the faith and remember who we are.”
Biden said the United States was stronger than four years ago, when it “stood in a winter of peril” after Trump’s chaotic first term, the Covid pandemic and what he called “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Biden was sworn in just days after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn his election loss.
He did not mention Trump by name — but his words clearly echoed previous speeches in which he said he decided to run in the 2020 election because America’s “soul” was at risk from Trump and his supporters, and that Trump was a threat to democracy.
The US president said he had asked the White House to also release a long list of what he termed his administration’s achievements, covering issues ranging from the economy to health care and climate change.
He said the United States had the “strongest economy in the world” and was bringing down inflation — even if public anger over the cost of living was a major factor in the Democrats’ election loss.
“I have given my heart and my soul to our nation,” said Biden, adding that it had been the “privilege of my life to serve this nation for over 50 years.”
The outgoing president has spent much of his final days in power trying to burnish his legacy.
Those efforts got a boost on Wednesday when Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and hostage release deal, for which Biden says he has been pushing for nearly a year and a half.
“I’m deeply satisfied this day has come, finally come,” Biden said at the White House.
Trump, whose Middle East adviser was involved in the talks, also claimed credit for the “epic” accord.
Biden’s legacy was, however, damaged by his decision to run for a second term despite his age.
The Democrat was forced to drop out of the race last June after a disastrous debate against Trump, 78, who went on to a commanding victory over Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris.
In a farewell interview in the Washington Post published Wednesday, outgoing First Lady Jill Biden took a dig at the Democratic Party for pressing Biden to drop out.
“Let’s just say I was disappointed with how it unfolded,” she said.
Emotions ran high at the White House.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre — part of a team that brought back regular media briefings after Trump ended them during his first term — fought back tears on her last appearance at the famous podium as she described the “honor of a lifetime.”
Gaza truce bittersweet for Biden as Trump takes credit
- Trump had warned Hamas of “hell to pay” if it did not agree to a deal
WASHINGTON: The Gaza ceasefire clinched Wednesday was a bittersweet victory for US President Joe Biden days before he hands over the White House to Donald Trump, who claimed credit — and, most experts say, deserves some.
Biden first proposed the outlines of the deal between Israel and Hamas on May 31 but diplomatic efforts repeatedly came up short, even when Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned in Tel Aviv in August that it may have been the last chance for a deal.
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff marched into Netanyahu’s office on Saturday, forcing the Israeli leader to break the sabbath, and pushed to seal the ceasefire.
The timing has echoes of a 1981 deal on US hostages in Iran, freed from 444 days of captivity moments after Republican Ronald Reagan succeeded Democrat Jimmy Carter, although this time the outgoing and incoming administrations worked together.
In scenes unprecedented in recent US history, Witkoff and Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk met jointly with the emir of Qatar — a key intermediary between Israel and Hamas — when sealing the deal.
Trump quickly boasted that the “epic” deal “could only have happened” due to his election as US president in November.
Asked if Trump deserved credit, Biden quipped: “Is that a joke?“
Speaking hours before a previously scheduled farewell address to the nation, the outgoing president said he included the Trump team in negotiations so that the United States was “speaking with one voice.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it was not unexpected for all sides to seek credit for positive news.
“What I can say is, the president got it done,” she said, referring to Biden.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the Trump team’s presence was about demonstrating “continuity” rather than the Republican exerting new pressure.
Biden faced heated criticism from the left of his Democratic Party during its unsuccessful election year over his staunch support of Israel since Palestinian group Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.
Biden authorized billions of dollars in weapons for Israel’s relentless retaliatory campaign on Gaza, despite criticizing the strategic US ally for the civilian death toll — which authorities in Gaza say is in the tens of thousands.
“The Biden administration was terrified of the political cost of being seen to be pressing Israel in any way,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now.
Trump, while vowing to be even more pro-Israel, was able to make clear to Netanyahu that “I do not want to inherit this,” Whitson said.
“It made me think that all of this would have been possible months ago and we could have saved thousands of Palestinian lives,” she said.
Trump had warned Hamas of “hell to pay” if it did not agree to a deal, which includes in its first phase the release of 33 hostages seized on October 7.
David Khalfa, an expert on Israel at the Jean Jaures Foundation in Paris, said that Trump’s unpredictability likely impacted Hamas.
He also pointed to Netanyahu’s political position heading a hard-right but shaky coalition government.
“There is today an ideological alignment between the American populist right and the Israeli prime minister. So he has very weak room to maneuver against a Trump who doesn’t face the pressures of reelection,” said Khalfa.
Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said a desire by Israel and others for the right optics as Trump takes over could have played a role in sealing the deal.
But a larger factor than Trump was the changing dynamics in the region — the major blows inflicted both on Hamas and its patron Iran, he said.
Israel has devastated Iranian ally Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran’s own air defenses, with Tehran’s main ally in the Arab world, Syria’s Bashar Assad, ousted last month by rebel forces.
“I don’t think any of the threats and bluster that we saw from Trump were a huge factor on either side. I think it’s mostly a baby that’s fathered by Biden and his team,” Katulis said.
“But I think the sense that there were big question marks on what was coming might have motivated those who were stonewalling,” he said.
Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that the uncertainty following Trump’s victory contributed to the deal.
Israel and Hamas were negotiating “under the terms that each side had become familiar with” and knew there was a high risk “that the parameters were about to change.”
And if the deal falls apart?
“Then it doesn’t matter who implemented it; there will be plenty of blame to go around,” Alterman said.
Pro-Palestinian protesters target military and defense industry recruiters at UK universities
- Activists confront Royal Air Force recruiters at careers fairs in Newcastle, Glasgow, York and Cardiff
- About 20 defense companies reportedly forced to steer clear of events because of security risks
LONDON: The UK’s military and defense industries are being forced to avoid university careers fairs because of pro-Palestinian protesters.
Student activists have targeted representatives of the Royal Air Force in recent months during events at which they were attempting to recruit graduates, The Times newspaper reported.
Videos and images shared on social media show RAF recruiters shutting down display stands or leaving them while the protests take place.
About 20 defense companies have stopped attending university careers events because of security concerns about the protests, it was reported last week.
The demonstrations are part of the widespread activism in the UK in response to Israel’s military operations in Gaza that have killed more than 46,000 Palestinians since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed and at least 250 taken hostage.
Protesters have also targeted the factories of UK defense companies that supply Israel, and called on the British government to halt arms deliveries.
One protest group, called “Newcastle Apartheid Off Campus,” claimed to have shut down a recruitment fair at Newcastle University at which the RAF and defense firm BAE Systems were represented.
And about 20 students surrounded the recruitment stands of GE Aerospace, the RAF and BAE Systems at Glasgow University in October.
“The students managed to kick out BAE Systems, RAF and (defense and intelligence company) CGI,” the Glasgow University Justice for Palestine Society said in a message posted on Instagram.
“Shame on Glasgow University, we continue to demand divestment and cutting all ties with these genocidal companies.”
Similar disruptions took place at a recruitment fair at York University in October and during an RAF talk at Cardiff University the same month.
In a letter to ministers, Lord Walney, the UK government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption, warned that the protests go beyond peaceful assembly and could “seriously undermine our nation’s security and technical edge.”
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson told The Times: “We continue to engage widely with our industry partners to highlight the importance and significant benefits of a career in the defense sector.
“This government recognizes the vital role of the defense sector as an engine for growth, strengthening our security and economy.”
