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
Afghanistan’s only luxury hotel closes as Taliban take over operations
- Serena Kabul Hotel was an exclusive property hosting mostly foreigners, diplomats
- It was the site of several Taliban attacks when US-led troops were in Afghanistan
KABUL: Afghanistan’s only luxury hotel, Serena Hotel in Kabul, closed down operations on Saturday as its management was taken over by a corporation run by the Taliban.
Set in landscaped gardens, overlooking the city’s Zarnegar Park in the Afghan capital’s downtown, it opened in 1945 as the Kabul Hotel.
Heavily damaged during decades of war, the five-star property was rebuilt by the Aga Khan Development Network in 2005, according to a design by Canadian architect Ramesh Khosla, who adhered to the classical Islamic architectural style.
Renamed Serena Kabul Hotel, it was inaugurated by former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, during whose term it endured two major attacks by the Taliban in 2008 and 2014.
The last attack took place under the rule of former president Ashraf Ghani in 2021, the year when Afghanistan’s Western-backed administration collapsed, US-led foreign troops withdrew after 20 years of war and occupation, and the Taliban took over the country.
“After nearly two decades of dedicated services to Afghanistan and its citizens ... Kabul Serena Hotel shall be closing its operations effective Feb. 1, 2025,” the hotel said in a notification on Friday.
“The operations of the hotel will, as from now on, be taken over by Hotel State Owned Corporation.”
The Taliban government-run corporation confirmed the takeover to Arab News, saying that the Serena Hotels group’s contract was terminated five years before it was due.
An official at the HSOC said it was fit to operate the hotel as it was “running several other hotels across the country.”
It was not clear whether the corporation would be able to uphold the five-star level of service as the hotel was the only luxury property in the country — an exclusive venue with expensive restaurants hosting mostly foreigners.
“Most Afghans couldn’t afford to spend the night or have a meal there, so they didn’t really have any attachment to it … there’s really only a select group of highly privileged people who have these fond memories of hours spent at the Serena. The average Afghan simply has no experience of it,” Ali Latifi, an Afghan American journalist based in Kabul, told Arab News.
It was also the subject of a famous blunder by an Indian news anchor, who in 2021 claimed that Pakistan’s intelligence agency had an office on the hotel’s fourth floor, despite the fact that the Serena Kabul has only two floors.
While the hotel was both famous and infamous, it had never been a symbol of Kabul and its society, Latifi said.
“It took a real level of privilege to even walk through the door there ... it was an elite place for privileged people.”
Mirwais Agha, a taxi driver who remembers construction works when the hotel was being rebuilt, had no idea how the property looked inside.
“I only saw the cement walls and big cars getting in through the doors every time I passed by the place,” he said.
“It was not for common people like us. It was for foreigners and some rich people. You had to pay dollars to get a meal in the hotel. It doesn’t really mean anything for us if it’s closing or its management is being charged. It never belonged to us.”
Pakistan separatist militants kill 18 paramilitaries in ambush
- The attack was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army
- The official said 17 troops were killed, along with another who came to their aid in the overnight attack on Friday near Mangochar
QUETTA, Pakistan: Pakistani separatist militants claimed on Saturday an attack on a highway in a volatile southwestern province that killed 18 paramilitaries and seriously wounded three others.
The attack was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army, a group behind rising violence in Balochistan province that borders Afghanistan and Iran.
A vehicle carrying unarmed border troops “came under gunfire from 70 to 80 armed assailants who had blocked the road,” a police official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official said 17 troops were killed, along with another who came to their aid in the overnight attack on Friday near Mangochar, a city close to the Afghan border.
The military said 18 paramilitaries were killed as they responded to militants who “attempted to establish roadblocks,” while 12 attackers were killed.
The BLA said in a statement it had killed 17 troops and had carried out multiple “operations.”
Attacks have increased in Balochistan province in recent months, often against security forces.
The BLA frequently claims deadly attacks against security forces or Pakistanis from other provinces, notably Punjabis in Balochistan.
The group has also targeted energy projects with foreign financing — most notably from China — accusing outsiders of exploiting the resource-rich region while excluding residents in the poorest part of Pakistan.
In November, the BLA claimed responsibility for a bombing at Quetta’s main railway station that killed 26 people, including 14 soldiers.
The group also said it was behind coordinated attacks by dozens of assailants in August that killed at least 39 people, one of the highest tolls in the region.
Violence has surged in Pakistan’s border regions since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.
Pakistan has accused the Taliban government of failing to rout out militants who launch attacks from Afghan soil, a charge it denies.
More than 1,600 people were killed in attacks in 2024 — the deadliest year in almost a decade — including 685 civil and military security forces, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based analysis group.
Indian troops kill eight Maoist rebels
- The gunfight broke out early on Saturday in the forested areas of Bijapur district
- “After a fierce gunbattle, bodies of eight Maoists were recovered today from the jungles of Bijapur district,” top police officer Sundarraj P. told AFP
RAIPUR, India: Indian commandos shot dead at least eight Maoist rebels in the dense jungles of central India on Saturday, as security forces ramp up efforts to crush the long-running conflict.
More than 10,000 people have been killed in the decades-long insurgency waged by the rebels, who say they are fighting for the rights of marginalized Indigenous people.
The gunfight broke out early on Saturday in the forested areas of Bijapur district in the state of Chhattisgarh, considered the heartland of the insurgency.
“After a fierce gunbattle, bodies of eight Maoists were recovered today from the jungles of Bijapur district,” top police officer Sundarraj P. told AFP.
Weapons recovered from the rebels included a grenade launcher and rifles, he said, adding that a search was still underway.
A crackdown by security forces has killed some 287 rebels in the past year, an overwhelming majority in Chhattisgarh, according to government data.
Amit Shah, India’s home minister, said last year the government expected to crush the rebellion by 2026.
The Maoists demand land, jobs and a share of the region’s immense natural resources for local residents.
They made inroads in a number of remote communities across India’s east and south, and the movement gained in strength and numbers until the early 2000s.
New Delhi then deployed tens of thousands of troops in a stretch of territory known as the “Red Corridor.”
The conflict has also seen a number of deadly attacks on government forces. A roadside bomb killed at least nine Indian troops last month.
Russian drone and missile attacks kill 6 in Ukraine
- A Russian missile strike on an apartment block in the Ukrainian city of Poltava killed at least five people and injured 13 more
- Some 22 people were rescued from the five-story building, which partially collapsed
KYIV: At least six people died overnight as Russian drone and missile strikes pounded Ukraine’s towns and cities, local officials said Saturday.
Meanwhile, Moscow’s troops continued their grinding advance through the country’s east.
A Russian missile strike on an apartment block in the Ukrainian city of Poltava killed at least five people and injured 13 more, including three children, Ukraine’s emergency services reported.
Some 22 people were rescued from the five-story building, which partially collapsed following the attack, said the Poltava region’s acting governor, Volodymyr Kohut. He also announced that the region would observe three days of mourning for the victims of the attack. Rescue teams remain at the site.
Elsewhere, a 60-year-old woman was killed by falling debris from a downed drone in the Kharkiv region, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote on social media.
The bombardment comes as Russian forces continue their monthslong campaign to capture the key Donetsk strongholds of Pokrovsk and nearby Chasiv Yar, fighting their way across farm fields and woodland and engulfing small rural settlements.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Saturday that its troops had taken control of Krymske, a suburb to the north of the contested frontline town of Toretsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Russian troops have been fighting for the settlement in a grinding assault throughout the winter of 2024. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said last week that it expected the Russians to take full control of Toretsk “within days.” “Last night, Russia launched an attack on our cities using various types of weapons: missiles, attack drones, and aerial bombs,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media Saturday.
“Every such act of terror proves that we need greater support in defending against Russian terror. Every air defense system, every interceptor missile, means a life saved.”
The full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine, which began nearly three years ago and shows no signs of ending, has killed more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations.
Many have been evacuated from areas along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line where Ukrainian defenses are straining to hold the bigger Russian army at bay.
Civilians have endured hardship caused by Russian attacks on the power grid that have denied them heating and running water. Saturday’s missile attack prompted emergency power grid shutdowns in seven Ukrainian regions, including Poltava, state energy company Ukrenergo said.
Ukrainian strikes also hit Russia, with air defenses intercepting nine drones across the country’s Bryansk, Belgorod and Saratov regions, Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement Saturday morning.
The Taliban have no legal right to multibillion dollar Afghan fund, says US watchdog
- SIGAR said President Donald Trump’s administration and Congress may want to examine returning nearly $4 billion earmarked for Afghanistan
- Although no payments benefiting Afghans have been made, the fund is aimed at protecting and stabilizing the economy on their behalf
WASHINGTON: The watchdog for US assistance to Afghanistan said the Taliban have no legal right to billions of dollars in funding set aside for the country because they are not recognized as its government and are under sanctions.
In its latest report issued Friday, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, also said President Donald Trump’s administration and Congress may want to examine returning nearly $4 billion earmarked for Afghanistan to the “custody and control” of the US government.
In 2022, the US transferred $3.5 billion in Afghan central bank assets previously frozen in America to the Swiss-based Fund for the Afghan People. The fund has grown to nearly $4 billion since then, according to the inspector general.
Although no payments benefiting Afghans have been made, the fund is aimed at protecting and stabilizing the economy on their behalf.
“The Taliban want these funds even though they have no legal right to them since they are not recognized by the United States as the government of Afghanistan, are on the US Specially Designated Global Terrorist list, and are under US and UN sanctions,” the report said.
Responding to the report Saturday, the Afghan Economy Ministry said more than $9 billion of Afghanistan’s foreign exchange reserves had been frozen and warned that any US action regarding the allocation, use or transfer of these reserves was unacceptable.
It urged the international community to return the money to the central bank to ensure the country’s stability.
The ministry also said that US expenditure had made no significant impact on the Afghan economy.
The SIGAR report follows Trump’s decision to freeze foreign aid for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether projects align with his policy goals.
According to the report, the US has spent nearly $3.71 billion in Afghanistan since withdrawing from the country in 2021. Most of that has gone to UN agencies.
Another $1.2 billion remains available in the pipeline for possible disbursement, the report said.
US humanitarian assistance may have “staved off famine” in the face of economic collapse, but it has not dissuaded the Taliban from taking Americans hostage, dismantling the rights of women and girls, censoring the media, allowing the country to become a “terrorist safe haven,” and targeting former Afghan government officials, added the watchdog.
The US remains the largest donor to Afghanistan, but the report said a lot of the money is taxed or diverted.
“The further the cash gets away from the source, the less transparency there is,” Chris Borgeson, the deputy inspector general for audits and inspections at the watchdog, told The Associated Press last August.
