MOSCOW/KYIV/DONETSK: Russia’s Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine within days, US President Joe Biden said on Friday after separatists backed by Moscow told civilians to leave breakaway regions on buses, a move the West fears is part of a pretext for an attack.
In one of the worst post-Cold War crises, Russia wants to stop Kyiv joining NATO and accuses the West of hysteria, saying it has no plans to invade, while the US and allies are adamant the military build-up continues.
Warning sirens blared in the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk on Friday after rebel leaders there announced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people to Russia.
“We have reason to believe the Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days,” Biden told reporters at the White House, adding that Kyiv would be a target.
“As of this moment, I am convinced that he has made the decision.”
Late on Friday, Ukraine’s military intelligence said Russian special forces had planted explosives at social infrastructure facilities in Donetsk, and it urged residents to stay at home. The Russian Federal Security Service did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Citing correspondents on the ground, Russian news agencies later reported that two explosions hit Luhansk, one of the main cities in Ukraine’s breakaway People’s Republic of Luhansk, and a section of a gas pipeline in the area caught fire.
Earlier, without providing evidence, Denis Pushilin, the separatist leader in Donetsk, accused Ukraine of preparing to attack the two regions soon — an accusation Kyiv said was false.
Asked about the evacuation, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was a “good example” of what Washington fears.
“We have ... long predicted for all of you that the Russians would take part in pretexts or steps that would lay a predicate for either war or to create confusion or spread misinformation on the ground,” she told reporters.
Hours after the evacuation announcement, a jeep exploded outside a rebel government building in the city of Donetsk.
Reuters journalists saw the vehicle surrounded by shrapnel, a wheel thrown away by the blast. Russian media said it belonged to a separatist official.
Many families in the mostly Russian-speaking area have already been granted citizenship by Moscow and within hours, some were boarding buses at an evacuation point in Donetsk, where authorities said 700,000 people would leave.
Biden ‘convinced’ Putin has ‘made decision’ to invade Ukraine
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Biden ‘convinced’ Putin has ‘made decision’ to invade Ukraine
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Trump, talking tariffs, immigration, revs up small-town base in Wisconsin
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- He repeatedly presented migrants as a grave danger, warning without evidence that immigrants in the country illegally could evict local residents from their homes
- Trump also warned, as he has in previous rallies, that the 2024 election could be the nation’s last
MOSINEE, Wisconsin: Donald Trump pledged in Wisconsin on Saturday to throw up unprecedented tariffs and clamp down on immigrants he said are stealing jobs and killing Americans, as he sought to solidify support among working-class and rural whites, a key part of his base.
Speaking at a regional airport in Mosinee, a town of about 4,500 people, the Republican presidential candidate warned that even allies like the European Union would face new trade restrictions if he wins the Nov. 5 election against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
He repeatedly presented migrants as a grave danger to Wisconsin, warning without evidence that immigrants in the country illegally could evict local residents from their homes.
“Crime is through the roof, and you haven’t seen the migrant crime yet,” Trump said. “It started, and it’s vicious, but you haven’t seen the extent of it yet.”
Trump also warned, as he has in previous rallies, that the 2024 election could be the nation’s last.
Support for the former president has eroded among most demographic groups over the summer when his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, replaced President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket.
Nationally, Harris leads Trump among Hispanic voters by 13 percentage points, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted in August; Biden led that demographic by just five points in May. Among Black Americans, she has been outperforming Biden by seven points.
But she has barely moved the needle among white voters, those same polls show. Whites without a college degree, long the linchpin of Trump’s coalition, still favor him by 25 points, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. They favored Trump by 29 points when he was running against Biden.
Several Trump advisers and allies have told Reuters in recent weeks that maintaining his margins and driving turnout among working-class whites will be crucial if he is to defeat Harris.
That is especially true in northern “Rust Belt” states including Wisconsin, which skew white and have large rural populations. Trump won the presidency in 2016 in part by winning these areas by promising to bring back industrial jobs to the region.
“We’re not going to watch our wealth and our jobs get ripped away from us and sent to foreign countries, and Wisconsin will be one of the biggest beneficiaries,” Trump said of his proposed trade policies.
Mosinee, where Trump spoke Saturday, is near Wausau, a small city of about 40,000, but hours from the state’s major population centers, Milwaukee and Madison.
Marathon County, where Mosinee is located, used to be politically competitive, having voted for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008. Since then, the county has veered right, favoring Trump in 2016 and 2020 by about 18 points both times.
While the Trump campaign has identified Hispanics and Black men as areas of growth for the Republican Party, much of Trump’s campaigning in recent weeks has been in small Rust Belt cities and towns that have few of either demographic.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio US Senator JD Vance, is expected to hit relatively rural areas of the Rust Belt hard in the final weeks before the election, two Trump advisers told Reuters.
Debate on the horizon
The Saturday rally was one of the last public appearances Trump will make before his debate with Harris in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Many of his allies are pushing him to concentrate his attacks on policy and steer clear of deeply personal broadsides.
Trump did not concentrate on Harris’ racial identity during his speech, which was laden with grievances, yet a recording the campaign played during the rally sounded like an imitation of Harris’ laugh, which Trump has frequently derided.
Trump told the crowd he would purge the federal government, including public health and intelligence agencies, of corrupt actors.
He repeatedly attacked Fani Willis, the district attorney in Georgia who is prosecuting Trump for trying to overturn his 2020 defeat in that state to Biden.
Trump also said he would support modifying the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution to make a vice president covering up a president’s mental incapacity an impeachable offense. And he attacked the political leadership of Colorado and Maine.
Both states were the site of challenges to his ballot eligibility in the 2024 election. Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled last year that Trump should not be on the ballot because of his alleged role in fomenting insurrection by trying to overturn his 2020 defeat, a decision the US Supreme Court
overturned.
Trump told supporters without evidence that Colorado authorities had ceded control of parts of the state to Venezuelan gangs.
“In Colorado, they’re so crazy they’re taking over sections of the state,” Trump said. “And you know, getting them back will be a bloody story.”
Blinken to head to UK for talks on Ukraine, Mideast
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- Britain and the US have cooperated in lockstep on most global issues, but PM Starmer has taken a harder line on Israel since taking office
- Starmer has also dropped his predecessor’s plans to challenge the ICC's moves to seek the arrest of Israeli PM Netanyahu over war crimes raps
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will head to London next week to discuss the Middle East and Ukraine, the State Department announced Saturday, ahead of a US visit by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Blinken’s visit to London on Monday and Tuesday will be the senior-most by a US official since Starmer’s Labour Party won July elections, ending 14 years of Conservative rule.
Blinken will take part in a strategic dialogue “reaffirming our special relationship,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
He will discuss Asia as well as the Middle East and “our collective efforts to support Ukraine,” Miller said in a statement.
The White House earlier announced that Starmer will visit next Friday, his second trip to Washington since his election.
He met President Joe Biden at the White House on July 10, days after taking office, as Starmer attended a NATO summit in Washington.
Britain and the United States have cooperated in lockstep on most global issues, and Biden’s Democrats historically have been seen as closer to the Labour Party than the Conservatives.
Starmer, however, has taken a harder line on Israel since taking office, with his government announcing a suspension of some arms shipments, citing the risk that they could be used to violate humanitarian law.
The Labour government has also dropped its Conservative predecessor’s plans to challenge the right of the International Criminal Court to seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court and has opposed the bid to target Netanyahu, arguing that Israel has its own systems for accountability.
But the United States, Israel’s primary weapons supplier, did not criticize the arms decision, saying that Britain had its own process to make assessments.
Iran’s secret service accused of plots to kill Jews in Europe
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- The group intended to attack a Paris-based former employee at an Israeli security firm and three of his colleagues residing in the Paris suburbs
PARIS: A Paris court in May detained and charged a couple on accusations that they were involved in Iranian plots to kill Jews in Germany and France, police sources told AFP.
Authorities charged Abdelkrim S., 34, and his partner Sabrina B., 33, on May 4 with conspiring with a criminal terrorist organization and placed them in pre-trial detention.
The case, known as “Marco Polo” and revealed Thursday by French news website Mediapart, signals a revival in Iranian state-sponsored terrorism in Europe, according to a report by France’s General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) consulted by AFP.
“Since 2015, the Iranian (secret) services have resumed a targeted killing policy,” the French security agency wrote, adding that “the threat has worsened again in the context of the Israel-Hamas war.”
The alleged objective for Iranian intelligence was to target civilians and sow fear in Europe among the country’s political opposition as well as among Jews and Israelis.
Iran is accused of recruiting criminals, including drug lords, to conduct such operations.
Abdelkrim S. was previously sentenced to 10 years behind bars over a killing in Marseille and released on probation in July 2023.
He is accused of being the main France-based operative for an Iran-sponsored terrorist cell that planned acts of violence in France and Germany.
A former fellow inmate is believed to have connected the suspect with the cell’s coordinator, a major drug trafficker from the Lyon area who likely visited Iran in May, according to the DGSI.
The group intended to attack a Paris-based former employee at an Israeli security firm and three of his colleagues residing in the Paris suburbs.
Three Israeli-German citizens in Munich and Berlin were also among the targets.
Investigators believe that Abdelkrim S. despite his probation made multiple trips to Germany for scouting purposes, including travels to Berlin with his wife.
He denied the accusations and said he simply had purchases to make.
French authorities are also crediting the cell with plots to set fire to four Israeli-owned companies in the south of France between late December 2023 and early January 2024, said a police source.
Abdelkrim S. while in detention rejected the claims, the source added, saying he had acted as a go-between on Telegram for the mastermind and other individuals involved in a planned insurance scam.
13 killed, dozens injured in Ivory Coast road accident
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- A bus carrying passengers and a petrol-filled truck on the opposite lane collided
- “The collision between the bus and the tanker set off a fire of terrifying intensity,” leaving “13 bodies charred” by the flames, Police Secours wrote
ABIDJAN: Thirteen people have been killed and 45 injured in a road accident in northern Ivory Coast, after a tanker truck crashed into a bus, rescuers and local media said Saturday.
A bus carrying passengers and a petrol-filled truck on the opposite lane collided on Friday where the road’s width had been narrowed by a freight truck parked without indicators, said Police Secours, a platform monitoring deadly accidents in the country.
The vehicles crashed around 2300 GMT on the highway between Bouake and Korhogo, two large cities in northern Ivory Coast.
“The collision between the bus and the tanker set off a fire of terrifying intensity,” leaving “13 bodies charred” by the flames, Police Secours wrote.
The Ivorian Press Agency (AIP) confirmed the toll which included 19 injured children rushed to hospitals in the nearby cities of Katiola and Niakara.
Deadly accidents are frequent in the Ivory Coast due to many roads and cars in poor condition and reckless driving.
The country in 2023 introduced a point-based driver’s license granting each driver a total of 12 points that can be gradually taken away depending on the violation.
Ivorian authorities have also set up cameras on the country’s main roads to fine offenders.
Between 1,000 and 1,500 people are killed every year in road accidents in the Ivory Coast, according to the transport ministry.
‘Gaza is America’s war and we can stop it the blink of an eye,’ US presidential candidate Jill Stein tells Arab News
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- Green Party candidate says the billions of dollars in military aid given to Israel should be used to address American needs
- Asked whether a third party could undercut the main candidates, Stein says Democrats and Republicans ‘don’t own those votes’
CHICAGO: Dr. Jill Stein, the US Green Party’s candidate for November’s presidential election, says Americans are losing “much needed benefits” due to tax money allegedly being redirected to fund Israel’s war in Gaza.
Speaking to The Ray Hanania Radio Show during an episode broadcast on Thursday, Stein accused the mainstream media and the Democrats of trying to block her candidacy to artificially strengthen the candidacy of Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris.
She also said the US bore responsibility for the violence in Gaza, fueled by the perceived pro-Israel bias in the media and by politicians who received millions in campaign donations from pro-Israel political action committees to support the war.
“In the current case, the US is providing 80 percent of the weapons that are being used to murder women, children, and innocent civilians. We’re also providing money, military support and diplomatic cover and intelligence. So the US has total autonomy here,” she said.
“This is our war. It is really a misnomer in many ways to call this Israel’s war. This is the US’ war. We are in charge of this war and we can stop this war with the blink of an eye,” she added, urging voters not to get talked into “endorsing genocide.”
“There is no more critical of an issue than what’s going on right now in Gaza because this is really normalizing the torture and murder of children on an industrial scale. The destruction of international law and human rights.
“As Gaza goes, eventually we’re all gonna go. If we allow human rights to be systematically torn down and international law, the way it’s being done here, eventually that’s gonna rebound to us because the US has been the dominant power for the last several decades but we are no longer the dominant power economically and militarily.”
Stein said every vote for her candidacy and the Green Party could help bring an end not only to Israel’s war in Gaza but also to other conflicts around the world.
“What’s going on is terrible for the US and it’s terrible for Israel. We are hypocrites. We’re supposedly defending democracy, yet we are throwing candidates off the ballot here in our own country,” she said, referring to recent efforts by the Democratic Party in Montana, Nevada and Wisconsin to remove the Green Party from the ballot over alleged procedural issues.
“We’re also mobilizing Israel’s neighbors against Israel. In the countries that have had peace treaties, some of Israel’s most staunch partners, including Egypt and especially Jordan where there are huge rallies and demonstrations against Israel demanding the end of the peace treaty.”
Stein, who is Jewish American, has openly stated she supported Israel, Palestine, and the two-state solution, but has criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, calling it “a fascist government” that was engaged in genocide.
She urged voters not to believe the one-sided picture often presented by politicians and the media, insisting that criticism of Israeli policies was “not antisemitism” but legitimate political discourse that must take place to make the US stronger.
“In the long-term interest of everyone in the region, the US and the Netanyahu government need to come into compliance with international law and specifically the rulings of the International Court of Justice,” she said.
“Which means an end to the genocide immediately and then a withdrawal to 1967 borders, which is what this agreement calls for. Withdrawal, an end to the occupation and an end to the ethnic cleansing, which has been going on for a very long time,” she said, referring to the civilian death toll of more than 40,000, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
“To criticize Israel should not be conflated with antisemitism. Zionism and Judaism are very different things. Zionism is a political ideology. It is not the Jewish religion. There are many strong proponents of the Jewish religion who are fierce opponents of Zionism.”
Instead of financing Israel’s military campaigns, Stein said the next US president should “fund solutions” to improve the lives of Americans by addressing affordable healthcare, creating more jobs, improving education for children and strengthening social security for seniors and retirees.
Both the Democrats and Republicans were instead sending US tax money to Israel while depriving public services of the funding they need, she said.
“Half of the Congressional budget is being spent on the endless war machine,” she said, referring to legislation providing $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which includes $3.8 billion from a bill in March and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriations act in April.
Although this is in no way half of the Congressional budget, which is worth $6.8 trillion, Stein said the outlay nonetheless meant “we are not meeting the emergencies that we have on healthcare, housing, education and the environment.”
“So this is a disaster for every American, and it’s really important that we not be talked into drinking the Kool-Aid,” she said, using a term that means having a cult-like faith in a dangerous idea because of wrongly perceived rewards.
Stein, who ran for the presidency in 2012 and 2016, said she was again putting her name on the ballot because she was concerned about the problems that Americans were facing, which she believes neither of the two main parties are addressing.
Americans “need a new political option that is in the public interest,” she said, insisting the Green Party offered a greater focus on American needs than either the Republicans or the Democrats.
On the same episode of The Ray Hanania Radio Show, in an interview recorded a couple of days earlier, former Chicago Congressman Bill Lipinski — who represented one of the largest concentrations of Arab and Muslim voters in the US — said American voters should not take the role of third-party candidates like Stein for granted.
Although it is extremely difficult for a third-party candidate to break the two-party system and win a presidential election, Lipinski said they could have a disproportionate impact on the outcome, particularly in swing states where every vote counted.
Given today’s polarized, emotion-driven politics, Lipinski said the US election system should be changed to better accommodate third-party candidates.
“At times I would like to see a third party. There are other times when I think (it is better having just) two parties. In another time in another place, two parties were sufficient. Today, I don’t believe that’s the case,” he said.
“Today I would really like to see a third party because, unfortunately, the Republicans are controlled to a great extent nowadays by their extreme right wing, the Democrats by their extreme left wing. That’s not good for the parties. Nor is it good for the country.”
The Green Party has run candidates in several presidential elections, often making a significant impact on the final outcome. Ralph Nader, the party’s candidate in the 2000 poll, drew votes away from Democratic Vice President Al Gore, contributing to his loss to Republican George W. Bush.
When Stein ran as the Green Party candidate in 2016, she drew significant support away from Democrat Hillary Clinton, who lost to Republican Donald Trump.
To those who might argue that a vote for the Green Party means splitting the progressive vote, making it easier for the Republicans to succeed, Stein insisted that neither the Democrats or Republicans “own those votes.”
“They don’t belong to parties. They belong to people.”
You can listen to the full interview with US presidential candidate Jill Stein and former US Congressman Bill Lipinski online at ArabNews.com/RayRadioShow.