WASHINGTON: The grinding war between Ukraine and its Russian invaders has escalated ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, with President Joe Biden rushing out billions of dollars more in military aid before US support for Kyiv’s defenses is thrown into question under the new administration.
Russia, Ukraine and their global allies are scrambling to put their side in the best possible position for any changes that Trump may bring to American policy in the nearly 3-year-old war. The president-elect insisted in recent days that Russia and Ukraine immediately reach a ceasefire and said Ukraine should likely prepare to receive less US military aid.
On the war’s front lines, Ukraine’s forces are mindful of Trump’s fast-approaching presidency and the risk of losing their biggest backer.
If that happens, “those people who are with me, my unit, we are not going to retreat,” a Ukrainian strike-drone company commander, fighting in Russia’s Kursk region with the 47th Brigade, told The Associated Press by phone.
“As long as we have ammunition, as long as we have weapons, as long as we have some means to defeat the enemy, we will fight,” said the commander, who goes by his military call sign, Hummer. He spoke on condition he not be identified by name, citing Ukrainian military rules and security concerns.
“But, when all means run out, you must understand, we will be destroyed very quickly,” he said.
The Biden administration is pushing every available dollar out the door to shore up Ukraine’s defenses before leaving office in six weeks, announcing more than $2 billion in additional support since Trump won the presidential election last month.
The US has sent a total of $62 billion in military aid since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. And more help is on the way.
The administration is on track to disperse the US portion of a $50 billion loan to Ukraine, backed by frozen Russian assets, before Biden leaves the White House, US officials said. They said the US and Ukraine are in “advanced stages” of discussing terms of the loan and close to executing the $20 billion of the larger loan that the US is backing.
Biden also has eased limits on Ukraine using American longer-range missiles against military targets deeper inside Russia, following months of refusing those appeals over fears of provoking Russia into nuclear war or attacks on the West. He’s also newly allowed Ukraine to employ antipersonnel mines, which are banned by many countries.
Biden and his senior advisers, however, are skeptical that allowing freer use of the longer-range missiles will change the broader trajectory of the war, according to two senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
But the administration has at least a measure of confidence that its scramble, combined with continued strong European support, means it will leave office having given Ukraine the tools it needs to sustain its fight against Russia for some time, the officials said.
Enough to hold on, but not enough to defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces, according to Ukraine and some of its allies.
Even now, “the Biden administration has been very careful not to run up against the possibility of a defeated Putin or a defeated Russia” for fear of the tumult that could bring, said retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, a former supreme allied commander of NATO. He is critical of Biden’s cautious pace of military support for Ukraine.
Events far from the front lines this past weekend demonstrated the war’s impact on Russia’s military.
In Syria, rebels seized the country’s capital and toppled Russia-allied President Bashar Assad. Russian forces in Syria had propped up Assad for years, but they moved out of the way of the rebels’ assault, unwilling to take losses to defend their ally.
Biden said it was further evidence that US support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was wearing down Russia’s military.
Trump, who has long spoken favorably of Putin and described Zelensky as a “showman” wheedling money from the US, used that moment to call for an immediate ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
And asked in a TV interview — taped before he met with Zelensky over the weekend in Paris — if Ukraine should prepare for the possibility of reduced aid, Trump said, “Yeah. Probably. Sure.”
Trump’s supporters call that pre-negotiation maneuvering by an avowed deal-maker. His critics say they fear it shows he is in Putin’s sway.
Zelensky said Monday that Russian forces’ retrenchment from outposts worldwide demonstrates that “the entire army of this great pseudo-empire is fighting against the Ukrainian people today.”
“Forcing Putin to end the war requires Ukraine to be strong on the battlefield before it can be strong diplomatically,” Zelensky wrote on social media, repeating near-daily appeals for more longer-range missiles from the US and Europe.
In Kursk, Hummer, the Ukrainian commander, said he notices Russian artillery strikes and shelling easing up since the US and its European allies loosened limits on use of longer-range missiles.
But Moscow has been escalating its offensives in other ways in the past six months, burning through men and materiel in infantry assaults and other attacks far faster than it can replace them, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
In Kursk, that includes Russia sending waves of soldiers on motorcycles and golf carts to storm Ukrainian positions, Hummer said. The Ukrainian drone commander and his comrades defend the ground they have seized from Russia with firearms, tanks and armored vehicles provided by the US and other allies.
Ukraine’s supporters fear that the kind of immediate ceasefire Trump is urging would be mostly on Putin’s terms and allow the Russian leader to resume the war when his military has recovered.
“Putin is sacrificing his own soldiers at a grotesque rate to take whatever territory he can on the assumption that the US will tell Ukraine that US aid is over unless Russia gets to keep what it has taken,” Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, wrote on his Substack channel.
Putin’s need for troops led him to bring in North Korean forces. Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use longer-range missiles more broadly in Russia was partly in response, intended to discourage North Korea from deeper involvement in the war, one of the senior administration officials said.
Since 2022, Russia already had been pulling forces and other military assets from Syria, Central Asia and elsewhere to throw into the Ukraine fight, said George Burros, an expert on the Russia-Ukraine conflict at the Institute for the Study of War.
Any combat power that Russia has left in Syria that it could deploy to Ukraine is unlikely to change battlefield momentum, Burros said.
“The Kremlin has prioritized Ukraine as much as it can,” he said.
Biden is rushing aid to Ukraine. Both sides are digging in. And everyone is bracing for Trump
https://arab.news/5t9k2
Biden is rushing aid to Ukraine. Both sides are digging in. And everyone is bracing for Trump
- Russia, Ukraine and their global allies are scrambling to put their side in the best possible position for any changes that Trump may bring
- A Ukrainian military commander says his forces will keep fighting but when the aid runs out, they’ll be destroyed
Student anti-corruption rallies spread across Balkans
After the Serbian example, young people have organized similar anti-graft rallies in North Macedonia and Montenegro
BELGRADE: Massive student-led anti-graft protests have spread from Serbia to neighboring Balkan countries, with thousands rallying under the slogan “Corruption kills” following a series of deadly tragedies that have claimed dozens of lives.
Young people have used the rallies to vent their anger in a region of Europe that rights groups say suffers from endemic corruption, prompting hundreds of thousands of mostly young people to go onto the streets in Serbia alone to demand change.
The wave of demonstrations on a scale unseen in Serbia since the 1990s kicked off after a recently renovated train station canopy collapsed on November 1 in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people.
With many blaming the deaths on corruption and inadequate oversight, the tragedy fueled outrage across Serbia and prompted the prime minister to resign in the protests’ wake.
After the Serbian example, young people have organized similar anti-graft rallies in North Macedonia and Montenegro, while protesters in European Union member state Bulgaria have offered solidarity with their Balkan neighbors.
Now the symbol of those protests — a bloodied red hand print — has turned up at rallies in neighboring North Macedonia after a fire at a nightclub operating under a questionable license killed 59 mostly young concert-goers on March 16.
“Girls from my generation died,” Ema Peseva, a 20-year-old student from Skopje, told AFP during Monday’s protest in the capital which drew thousands.
As in Serbia, demonstrators at the Skopje rally chanted “Corruption kills” while accusing officials of being “murderers.”
“Everyone is bribed so they can line their pockets for travels, yachts, private schools. Meanwhile, children are dying from fire and pyrotechnics at concerts,” Peseva said, referring to the stage effects blamed for the blaze.
Milena Janevska, one of the organizers, said that students wished to “demand accountability for the tragedy in Kocani,” where the fire took place.
“We demand transparency from all institutions, simply to be accountable to the citizens who have a duty to show this revolt,” the 26-year-old told AFP.
In a show of solidarity Bulgarian anti-graft protesters last week held a few minutes’ silence remembering the Kocani fire dead along with their own, with some drawing comparisons to the country’s 2001 Indigo Disco stampede that killed seven queueing teenagers.
“We said a long time ago that corruption kills — literally. We saw in Bulgaria how corruption killed children in front of the Indigo nightclub. We saw it when people died in bus crashes, on unsafe roads, in incidents caused by poor construction,” said lawyer Velislav Velichkov, one of the organizers.
Montenegro meanwhile was likewise shaken in early 2025 by protests after a man shot dead 13 people in the street on the evening of January 1 — the second mass killing in the small town of Cetinje in less than two and a half years.
Directly inspired by the Serbian protest movement, demonstrators demanded the dismissal of senior security officials, police reform, the confiscation of illegal weapons and better mental health care.
“Students in Serbia are truly an inspiration to all those frustrated by the high levels of corruption — which, as we have seen from concrete examples, can be deadly,” Aleksandar Popov, president of the Center for Regionalism, a Novi Sad-based think tank, told AFP.
And compared with the rest of Europe many Balkan countries struggle with graft, according to watchdog Transparency International.
Serbia ranks 105th out of 180 countries on the latest global corruption perceptions index — its worst position in more than a decade.
North Macedonia fares only slightly better at 88th place, while Bulgaria ranks 76th and Montenegro 65th.
Sofija Todorovic, director of the Serbian branch of the regional Youth Initiative for Human Rights NGO, said she found it encouraging that young people are leading the anti-graft protests and driving change in the Balkans.
She said that they have defied the stereotypes of their generation as being “passive and too absorbed by the Internet and their phones.”
“I believe young people have shown far more sharpness, capability, and wisdom than previous generations,” Todorovic told AFP, adding that the key difference lies in how they access and process information.
“They genuinely feel they have a role to play in society, that their voices matter, and I believe this is crucial for the future of the region.”
Venezuelan migrants deported by the US ended up in a Salvadoran prison. This is their legal status
- El Salvador hasn’t had diplomatic relations with Venezuela since 2019
- So the Venezuelans imprisoned there do not have any consular support from their government either
SAN SALVADOR: The US government used an 18th-century wartime law to deport more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, where they were immediately transferred to the country’s maximum-security gang prison.
And while a federal judge in Washington tries to determine whether the US government defied his order to return the migrants while they were in the air and insists that they must get an opportunity to challenge their designations as alleged members of a notorious gang, there has been no word from El Salvador’s president or judiciary about what the prisoners’ legal status is in that country.
That may change soon. On Monday, lawyers hired by the Venezuelan government took legal action on behalf of the Venezuelan prisoners seeking their release from the prison, which US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is scheduled to visit Wednesday.
The US says the Venezuelans were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, a criminal organization that US President Donald Trump declared an invading force, but has provided no evidence of their alleged membership. The Alien Enemies Act allows noncitizens to be deported without the opportunity to go before an immigration or federal court judge.
El Salvador hasn’t had diplomatic relations with Venezuela since 2019, so the Venezuelans imprisoned there do not have any consular support from their government either.
Even Salvadoran citizens have been living under a state of emergency that has suspended fundamental rights since 2022 and the country’s judiciary is not considered independent. All of which raises questions about the prisoners’ legal future in El Salvador.
What has El Salvador’s government said about the prisoners’ status in the country?
Nothing.
President Nayib Bukele announced Sunday that the United States had sent what he called “238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua” to El Salvador and they were immediately sent to its maximum security gang prison. The US government would pay an annual fee for their incarceration, Bukele wrote in a post on X.
El Salvador’s Attorney General’s Office and Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights and Freedom of Expression did not respond to requests for comment about the status of the Venezuelan prisoners.
What do El Salvador’s laws say about the status of these prisoners?
Lawyer David Morales, legal director for the nongovernmental organization Cristosal, said there was no legal basis for the Venezuelans’ imprisonment in El Salvador. He said he knew of no Salvadoran law or international treaty that would support their imprisonment.
“They are illegal detentions because they haven’t been submitted to the jurisdiction of a Salvadoran judge, nor have they been prosecuted or convicted in El Salvador,” he said. As such, their imprisonment here is “arbitrary.”
He said El Salvador’s prosecutor’s office for human rights would have the authority to intervene, because it has a broad mandate when it comes to prisoners, “but we already know that it’s not playing its role because it is dominated, subjected to political power.”
What are lawyers doing?
Lawyers hired by the Venezuelan government filed a legal action Monday in El Salvador aimed at freeing 238 Venezuelans deported by the United States who are being held in a Salvadoran maximum-security prison.
Jaime Ortega, who says he represents 30 of the imprisoned Venezuelans, said his firm filed the habeas corpus petition with the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber. He said that by extension they requested that it be applied to all Venezuelans detained in El Salvador.
Before it was filed, constitutional lawyer Enrique Anaya had suggested human rights organizations and the prisoners’ families should file habeas corpus petitions, essentially compelling the government to prove someone’s detention was justified “as a mechanism to denounce (the situation) as well as to pressure” the government.
Still, Anaya said the lack of judicial independence in El Salvador made success unlikely. Bukele’s party removed the justices of the Supreme Court’s Constitutional chamber in 2021 and replaced them with judges seen as more amenable to the administration.
“Who is going to decide these people’s freedom, US judges, Salvadoran judges?” Anaya asked. The habeas corpus petitions could at least “show the illegitimacy of this vacuum.”
How hard is it for Salvadorans to get out of prisons there?
El Salvador has lived under a state of emergency since March 2022, when Congress granted Bukele extraordinary powers to fight the country’s powerful street gangs.
Since then, some 84,000 people have been arrested, accused of gang ties. The state of emergency has allowed authorities to act without basic protections like access to a lawyer or even being told why they’re being arrested. They can be held for 15 days without seeing a judge.
Homicides have plummeted in El Salvador and the improved security has fueled Bukele’s popularity.
But while Bukele has said some 8,000 of those arrested have been freed for lack of evidence, many more have found no way out.
Last year, the Due Process Foundation published a report showing that the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court had “systematically” rejected more than 6,000 habeas corpus petitions made by families of people arrested under the state of emergency.
Mike Huckabee, Trump’s pick to be Israel ambassador, will face senators as war in Gaza restarts
- If Huckabee, a Republican, is confirmed by the Senate, his posting will likely complicate an already unstable situation in the Middle East
- He has spoken favorably in the past about Israel’s right to annex the West Bank and incorporate its Palestinian population into Israel
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Israel will face a confirmation hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill as US and Arab mediators struggle to get a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas back on track after Israeli forces resumed the war in Gaza last week with a surprise wave of deadly airstrikes.
Trump nominated Mike Huckabee, a well-known evangelical Christian and vehement supporter of Israel, to take on the critical post in Jerusalem days after he won reelection on a campaign promise to end the now 17-month war.
If Huckabee, a Republican, is confirmed by the Senate, his posting will likely complicate an already unstable situation in the Middle East as the former governor of Arkansas has taken stances on the conflict that sharply contradict longstanding US policy in the region.
Huckabee, a one-time presidential hopeful, has spoken favorably in the past about Israel’s right to annex the West Bank and incorporate its Palestinian population into Israel. He has repeatedly backed referring to the West Bank by its biblical name of “Judea and Samaria,” a term that right-wing Israeli politicians and activists have thus far fruitlessly pushed the US to accept.
Most notably, Huckabee has long been opposed to the idea of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian people. In an interview last year, he went even further, saying that he doesn’t even believe in referring to the Arab descendants of people who lived in British-controlled Palestine as “Palestinians.”
“There really isn’t such a thing,” he said on the podcast show “Think Twice” with Jonathan Tobin. “It’s a term that was co-opted by Yasser Arafat in 1962,” referring to one of the early leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
During the same interview, Huckabee described himself as an “unapologetic, unreformed Zionist.”
As the situation in Gaza has deteriorated with the recent collapse of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release deal, Israeli officials have begun to talk more seriously about re-occupation of the territory, something to which the Biden administration had been adamantly opposed.
Trump has made his own proposals about a potential US takeover of Gaza, which have attracted attention as well as strong criticism from Arab nations and others.
Huckabee will likely be asked about all of these points in addition to ongoing Israeli military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon and persistent threats to the country from Iran and Iranian-backed proxy groups, like the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
In remarks prepared for his testimony, obtained by The Associated Press, Huckabee does not specifically mention either annexation or Trump’s Gaza plan. But he can be expected to offer qualified praise of both, given that he blasts many past Mideast policies as “failed” and speaks of the need to look “at entirely new ways” of promoting peace.
He plans to reaffirm his strong endorsement of Trump’s policies toward Israel during his first term in office, notably his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, his decision to move the US embassy to the holy city from Tel Aviv, his recognition of the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory and his sealing of the Abraham Accords, in which several Arab nations normalized relations with Israel, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
“President Trump’s first term was the most consequential for Israel and the Middle East ever with his historic Abraham Accords, and finally moving our embassy to Jerusalem, the ancient, indigenous and biblical eternal capital of the Jewish people,” Huckabee’s prepared remarks say.
Trump’s pick for ambassador to Panama also testifying
Another nominee testifying before the committee on Tuesday is Kevin Cabrera, Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Panama, a country that has bristled at the Republican president’s repeated calls for the US to retake control of the Panama Canal for national security reasons due to potential threats from China. The status of the canal was one of the top items on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s agenda when he visited Panama City on his first trip as America’s top diplomat in February.
“One of the key aspects of our cooperation is ensuring the security of the Panama Canal, a critical international waterway that facilitates global trade and economic growth,” Cabrera will say according to remarks prepared for the hearing.
He plans to praise decisions by the Panamanian government to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and to review contracts with a China-based company that is running ports at both ends of the canal. The company has preliminarily agreed to sell its interests in the subsidiaries that run the ports, but the deal is not yet complete.
MSF condemns surge of violence in DR Congo’s Ituri province
- MSF said it had seen “a renewed spike in atrocities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province”
- More than half of the victims of violence that MSF treated at its clinic in the provincial capital, Bunia, up until mid-March were women and children
KINSHASA: Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Tuesday said civilians were suffering “horrific” wounds in a new surge in violence in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s turbulent Ituri province.
Gold-rich Ituri has long been hit by conflict between ethnic militia as well as attacks by the Daesh-linked group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
It lies just north of North and South Kivu provinces, where the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has seized large tracts of territory in recent months, but the fighting is not linked to the violence in Ituri.
The medical charity, known by its French acronym MSF, said it had seen “a renewed spike in atrocities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province, where its medical teams are providing care for civilians with horrific injuries.”
Citing UN figures, it said violence had displaced around 100,000 people since the beginning of the year, with attacks killing more than 200 people in January and February alone.
More than half of the victims of violence that MSF treated at its clinic in the provincial capital, Bunia, up until mid-March were women and children, it said.
“In February, MSF’s medical teams treated children as young as four and pregnant women for machete and gunshot wounds following militia attacks” in which sometimes other family members had been killed.
Healthcare facilities are also prey to attacks, MSF warned, saying threats by armed groups had forced a hospital to suspend its activities and evacuate patients this month. Other health centers have been destroyed.
The crisis in Ituri “is characterised by repeated displacement, in which violence forces civilians to pick up and start their lives over, again and again.
“What is worse, is that the stories patients and communities tell us represent only the tip of the iceberg,” the NGO said.
Ituri suffered a conflict between ethnic-based militias from 1999 to 2003 that killed thousands before the intervention of a European force.
In 2021, Uganda deployed troops with the DRC’s consent to Ituri, ostensibly to clear the area of the ADF.
The Ugandan army has also launched an operation this month against a militia known as the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (Codeco).
From staple to fusion: Malaysia’s Ramadan markets blend heritage and culinary trends
- With thousands spread across the country, Ramadan bazaars have become prominent in Malaysia
- Markets showcase country’s rich food landscape and beyond, from traditional dishes to international favorites
KUALA LUMPUR: Deeply rooted in Malaysia’s culture, night markets are teeming with life during Ramadan, when both Muslims and non-Muslims flock to these bustling venues to be greeted with culinary surprises that keep up with the latest food trends.
Over the years, the idea of bazaars during Ramadan has become prominent, with the capital’s biggest night markets — such as the one in Wangsa Maju area — featuring a long line of food stalls that stretch for hundreds of meters.
“We have been selling kuih muih and nasi lemak for many years now — the recipe is my grandmother’s,” Siti Amirah Hassan, who runs a stall at the Sri Sinar Bazaar in Kuala Lumpur’s Segambut district, told Arab News.
Kuih muih is a broad assortment of traditional bite-sized snacks, with the main ingredients being grated coconut, pandan leaves and palm sugar.
Hassan, a third-generation cook in her family, said that adapting to the customers’ changing preferences has meant transforming her family’s recipes to fit new trends, including adding fried lobsters to nasi lemak, which is traditionally served with fried chicken.
“Now we cannot get by just by selling the traditional nasi lemak or the Malay kuih muih … we have to keep doing new things. If I don’t do it, someone else will, then we lose the business,” she said.
As the bazaars have grown in both size and diversity over the years, they now showcase not only Malaysia’s rich food landscape, but also contemporary and viral food, artisanal products and modern takes on traditional dishes.
But the changes have also created opportunities for sellers like Arif Abdul Rahman, whose stall in Wangsa Maju offers molten chocolate and red velvet cakes.
“Ramadan bazaars changed a lot already; last time only the traditional things will sell,” he told Arab News.
“Malaysian mentality is very different now. Everyone is OK; they are open to trying new things,” he said. “Through this, we get an opportunity to build our business and establish it in our community.”
For Arif and his peers, Ramadan bazaars are a great source of income.
More than 65,000 stalls were opened for Ramadan bazaars, according to a 2023 report by Malaysia’s Department of Statistics, generating about 1.9 billion ringgit ($428 million) in total sales.
“Ramadan time (is) very lucrative, almost four times (sales for the) business,” Rahman said. “Hopefully this can continue for a long time.”
Under vibrant-colored canopies, sellers at the bazaars offer a variety of cuisines ranging from traditional Malay meals to Indian fusion dishes, while others have ventured into Western and Arabic fares.
Ramadan bazaars are also found in smaller neighborhoods throughout the capital, as many Malaysians consider them a must-visit during the holy month.
While Muslims would visit the markets as early as 4 p.m. each day to buy meals for iftar, the bazaars are also frequented by non-Muslims in search of good food.
The popularity of these bazaars is likely to continue, as for customers like Nina Fazliana Muhammad, visiting them is a family excursion.
“I have got three kids, all under the age of seven. They are always in a better mood after a walk through our neighborhood bazaar, firstly because of the variety of food, but also the fun of spending all that time together,” she told Arab News.
Some days, a trip to the bazaar also offered the 44-year-old entrepreneur a break from cooking.
“A 30-minute walk through the bazaar and I can have a delicious spread ready for a family break of fast. So, truly, it is a lifesaver.”
For Lee Kok Yong, the bazaars have become a tradition.
“Every year … at least once we will go … at this point it is like a family tradition. And, honestly, it is a very nice experience,” he said.
“It is like a one-stop where we get to not just eat our hearts out, but learn about new food traditions.”
