WASHINGTON: Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance — a staunch opponent of aid for Kyiv who wants Washington to refocus on Asia — as his running mate, signaling a potential shift away from Europe if the Republican candidate wins in November.
Vance — a 39-year-old retired US Marine and best-selling author — is ideologically close to the former president, and his views on foreign policy could help shape Trump’s second term in office if he defeats Democrat Joe Biden.
“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another as a country,” the senator from Ohio said on a podcast in April.
Vance was one of the fiercest opponents of the approval of $61 billion in new military aid for Ukraine, which was stalled by Republican lawmakers for months earlier this year — a time in which Russia made battlefield gains.
The United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military assistance for Kyiv since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
But Vance and other Trump allies in Congress argue that Washington cannot continue to fund the war indefinitely, and a Trump victory in November would throw future American assistance for Ukraine into doubt.
Trump has said he would quickly end the conflict, raising the specter that Kyiv could be pushed to negotiate with Moscow from an unfavorable position.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that he was not concerned about the prospect of another Trump presidency, despite indications his administration could be more sympathetic to the Kremlin.
“I think that if Donald Trump becomes president, we will work together. I’m not worried about this,” Zelensky told a news conference.
Asked on Tuesday about the consequences of a Trump presidency for Ukraine, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said both lawmakers and the American public back continued support for Kyiv.
“The American people strongly support continued assistance to Ukraine. They strongly support allowing Ukraine and helping Ukraine to defend itself against Russia’s aggression. It’s not just the American public, but it’s bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress,” Miller told journalists.
For Vance, European countries have relied on the United States for security for far too long, and he advocates a shift to increasingly concentrate on East Asia.
“NATO countries can’t be welfare clients of the US,” Vance told Fox News in June, while he said in February that “we have been subsidizing European security to the tune of trillions of dollars.”
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Vance argued that “the United States has to focus more on East Asia. That is going to be the future of American foreign policy for the next 40 years, and Europe has to wake up to that fact.”
“The point is not we want to abandon Europe. The point is we need to focus as a country on East Asia, and we need our European allies to step up in Europe,” he said, urging the continent to “take a more aggressive role in its own security.”
Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance signals shift away from Ukraine, Europe
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Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance signals shift away from Ukraine, Europe
- J.D. Vance was one of the fiercest opponents of the approval of $61 billion in new military aid for Ukraine
- Republican VP candidate: ‘NATO countries can’t be welfare clients of the US’
More than 30 dead in Brazil bus and truck collision
- The exact death toll remains uncertain due to the condition of the bodies, which were burned beyond recognition
- Initially, firefighters reported the bus, carrying 45 passengers, had a tire blowout, causing driver to lose control
A packed bus collided with a truck and burst into flames early on Saturday in Brazil, killing more than 30 people, the fire department said.
After completing the removal of victims from a major highway near the town of Teofilo Otoni in Minas Gerais, the state’s fire department estimated the number of fatalities between 32 and 35, including at least one child.
The exact death toll remains uncertain due to the condition of the bodies, which were burned beyond recognition.
Confirmation will likely depend on forensic work by the Civil Police, the department said in a statement.
A forensic investigation will also be required to determine the accident’s cause, as differing accounts were gathered from witness testimonies, it added.
Initially, firefighters reported the bus, carrying 45 passengers, had a tire blowout, causing the driver to lose control before colliding with an oncoming truck on the BR-116 federal highway, a major route connecting Brazil’s densely populated southeast to the poorer northeast.
However, witnesses also reported that a granite block the truck was transporting came loose, fell on the road and caused the collision with the bus, said the fire department.
“Only the forensic investigation will confirm the true version,” it added.
The bus departed from Sao Paulo and was headed to the state of Bahia.
Firefighters said they rescued 13 passengers from the wrecked bus. Three occupants of a car that also collided and was trapped under the truck survived the accident.
Indian man denies hospital rape and murder of doctor
- The discovery of the doctor’s bloodied body at a government hospital in Kolkata on August 9 sparked nationwide anger
- The gruesome nature of the attack drew comparisons with the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus
KOLKATA: An Indian man on trial for raping and murdering a 31-year-old doctor has pleaded not guilty, his lawyer said Saturday, a crime that appalled the nation and triggered wide-scale protests.
The discovery of the doctor’s bloodied body at a government hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata on August 9 sparked nationwide anger at the chronic issue of violence against women.
Sanjoy Roy, 33, the lone accused in the case, pleaded not guilty before the judge in a closed court on Friday in Kolkata, his lawyer Sourav Bandyopadhyay told AFP.
“I am not guilty, your honor, I have been framed,” Roy told the court, Bandyopadhyay said, repeating his client’s words.
Roy, a civic volunteer in the hospital, was arrested the day after the murder and has been held in custody since.
He would potentially face the death penalty if convicted.
The court began hearings on November 11, listening to evidence from some 50 witnesses, but it was on Friday that Roy took the stand.
“Judge Anirban Das questioned him with more than 100 questions during the six-hour-long in camera deposition, that continued until late in the evening,” Bandyopadhyay said.
Roy had earlier proclaimed his innocence to the public while screaming from a prison van outside the court before a hearing in November.
Doctors in Kolkata went on strike for weeks in response to the brutal attack.
Tens of thousands of ordinary Indians joined in the protests, which focused anger on the lack of measures for female doctors to work without fear.
India’s Supreme Court has ordered a national task force to examine how to bolster security for health care workers, saying the brutality of the killing had “shocked the conscience of the nation.”
The gruesome nature of the attack drew comparisons with the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus, which also sparked weeks of nationwide protests.
The trial continues. The next hearing is set for January 2, 2025.
Russia’s UK embassy denounces G7 loans to Ukraine as ‘fraudulent scheme’
- Britain said in October it would lend Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds as part of a much larger loan from the Group of Seven nations backed by frozen Russian central bank assets
LONDON: The Russian embassy in London on Saturday described Britain’s planned transfer to Ukraine of more than 2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) backed by frozen Russian assets as a “fraudulent scheme.”
Britain said in October it would lend Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds as part of a much larger loan from the Group of Seven nations backed by frozen Russian central bank assets to help buy weapons and rebuild damaged infrastructure.
The loans were agreed in July by leaders of the G7 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US — along with top officials from the European Union, where most of the Russian assets frozen as a result of the war are held.
“We are closely following UK authorities’ efforts aimed at implementing a fraudulent scheme of expropriating incomes from Russian state assets ‘frozen’ in the EU,” the Russian embassy in London said on social media.
British Defense Minister John Healey said the money would be solely for Ukraine’s military and could be used to help develop drones capable of traveling further than some long-range missiles.
The embassy added: “The elaborate legislative choreography fails to conceal the illegitimate nature of this arrangement.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry last week described the US transfer to Ukraine of its share of the G7’s $50 billion in loans as “simply robbery.”
Death toll in German Christmas market car-ramming rises to five, more than 200 injured
- Source: Saudi Arabia had warned German authorities about the attacker
- Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declined to comment on the ongoing investigation
MAGDEBURG, Germany: At least five people were killed in a car-ramming attack at a German Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg that also left more than 200 injured, officials said, and a Saudi man was arrested on suspicion of driving a car into the crowd.
The Friday evening attack on market visitors gathered to celebrate the pre-Christmas season comes amid a fierce debate over security and migration during an election campaign in Germany, where the far right is polling strongly.
“What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in the central city, part of the former East Germany, where he laid a white rose at a church in honor of the victims.
“We have now learnt that over 200 people have been injured,” he added. “Almost 40 are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”
German authorities are investigating a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who has lived in Germany for almost two decades in connection with the car-ramming. Police searched his home overnight.
The motive remained unclear and police have not yet named the suspect. He has been named in German media as Taleb A.
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia had warned German authorities about the attacker after he posted extremist views on his personal X account that threatened peace and security.
Der Spiegel reported that the suspect had sympathized with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The magazine did not say where it got the information.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
Germany’s FAZ newspaper said it interviewed the suspect in 2019, describing him as an anti-Islam activist.
“People like me, who have an Islamic background but are no longer believers, are met with neither understanding nor tolerance by Muslims here,” he was quoted as saying. “I am history’s most aggressive critic of Islam. If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs.”
Andrea Reis, who had been at the market on Friday, returned on Saturday with her daughter Julia to lay a candle by the church overlooking the site. She said that had it not been for a matter of moments, they may have been in the car’s path.
“I said, ‘let’s go and get a sausage’, but my daughter said ‘no let’s keep walking around’. If we’d stayed where we were we’d have been in the car’s path,” she said.
Tears ran down her face as she described the scene. “Children screaming, crying for mama. You can’t forget that,” she said.
Scholz’s Social Democrats are trailing both the far-right AfD and the frontrunner conservative opposition in opinion polls ahead of snap elections set for Feb. 23.
The AfD, which enjoys particularly strong support in the former East, has led calls for a crackdown on migration to the country.
Its chancellor candidate Alice Weidel and co-leader Tino Chrupalla issued a statement on Saturday condemning the attack.
“The terrible attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg in the middle of the peaceful pre-Christmas period has shaken us,” they said.
A leading Social Democrat lawmaker in the Bundestag parliament warned against jumping to conclusions and said it appeared the attacker did not have an Islamist motive.
“Now we have to wait for the investigations. It seems that things are different here than was initially assumed,” Dirk Wiese told the Rheinische Post newspaper.
Pope Francis slams ‘cruelty’ of strike killing Gaza children
- ‘Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war. I want to say it because it touches my heart’
- The Holy See has recognized the State of Palestine since 2013, with which it maintains diplomatic relations
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Saturday condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as “cruelty,” a day after the territory’s rescue agency said an Israeli air strike killed seven children from one family.
Gaza’s civil defense rescue agency reported that an Israeli air strike killed 10 members of a family on Friday in the northern part of the territory, including seven children.
“Yesterday they did not allow the Patriarch (of Jerusalem) into Gaza as promised. Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” he told members of the government of the Holy See.
“I want to say it because it touches my heart.”
Violence in the Gaza Strip continues to rock the coastal territory more than 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war, even as international mediators work to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants.
The Israeli military said it had struck “several terrorists who were operating in a military structure belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization and posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the area.”
“According to an initial examination, the reported number of casualties resulting from the strike does not align with the information held by the IDF,” it added.
Francis, 88, has called for peace since Hamas’s unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli retaliatory campaign in Gaza.
In recent weeks he has hardened his remarks against the Israeli offensive.
At the end of November, he said that “the invader’s arrogance... prevails over dialogue” in “Palestine,” a rare position that contrasts with the tradition of neutrality of the Holy See.
In extracts from a forthcoming book published in November, he called for a “careful” study as to whether the situation in Gaza “corresponds to the technical definition” of genocide, an accusation firmly rejected by Israel.
The Holy See has recognized the State of Palestine since 2013, with which it maintains diplomatic relations, and it supports the two-state solution.
