The State Department’s review of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan has far more findings in it than the document about the withdrawal that the White House released Thursday afternoon, according to a source familiar with the report.
While the White House’s document focused on President Joe Biden having been “severely constrained” by the conditions created by former President Donald Trump, the State Department report has more than two dozen recommendations – some specifically related to how the department could have better prepared, including during the Biden administration, the source said.
“The Biden administration inherited a deadline without a clear plan of how to get there, but they then undertook their own review. And in April, Biden decided to go ahead with it and delayed the withdrawal timeline. So they did not exactly take the blueprint they were given in that regard. So some of that is a bit disingenuous to say that their hands were completely tied,” the source said, explaining their view on the need for the Biden administration to take some ownership for the conduct of the withdrawal.
The White House document does note that upon reflecting on the withdrawal, the State Department and the Pentagon “now prioritize earlier evacuations” when faced with a degrading security situation. But the document also defends the time for when the evacuation from Afghanistan occurred, citing interagency meetings and decision-making at the time.
The White House document also says that the US government now errs “on the side of aggressive communication about risks” when there is a destabilizing security environment.
But it is unclear why the White House document assessing the challenges and decisions surrounding the withdrawal did not cite the wide number of recommendations from the State Department report, which was the result of an intensive 90-day review. A spokesperson for the National Security Council, or NSC, said the document was a “separate product” that was “informed” by the various departments’ reviews.
The State Department’s much more detailed after-action report was sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday, but otherwise the department has not widely released any of the findings more than a year after the report’s completion. The report itself was launched by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in December 2021. Employees who worked on the chaotic evacuation have clamored for details as to what the department learned from the after-action report.
An NSC spokesperson said the department’s reviews “were not undertaken for public release but to improve internal processes.”
On Thursday, the department scrambled to put together a town hall for employees to discuss the report with Blinken and Undersecretary for Management John Bass, who was a key official in the Afghanistan withdrawal, according to three employees who attended the event.
Blinken described the report to employees without sharing it. He said that it detailed the processes, systems and mindsets that could have been improved, including the need for more urgent preparations for worst-case scenarios, employees said.
Blinken said contingency preparations were inhibited by concerns that they would be too visible and would prompt concerns by Afghan officials, employees told CNN. The top US diplomat also pointed to competing and conflicting views in Washington about how to prioritize categories of evacuees, and he acknowledged that the department’s database technology and communications infrastructure were inadequate.
The employees said that, according to Blinken, the report makes 34 recommendations. They include strengthening the department’s crisis-response capabilities, appointing a single senior official for future complex crises, enhancing crisis communications such as call centers, building a so-called red team to challenge assumptions and running more tabletop exercises, employees said.
But for many employees, the town hall only led to more frustrations about a lack of full transparency. The source familiar with the full report explained that the findings were purposefully not classified so they could be widely shared if the department chose to do so, but so far that has not happened.
At least one employee was emotional during the town hall, criticizing how hastily it was arranged and the decision not to share the full report. Blinken cited concerns about politicizing the report and looking backward instead of forward, employees said.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment regarding the town hall or any plans to share parts of the department’s report more widely.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping had one overriding message for his visiting French counterpart Emmanuel Macron this week: Don’t let Europe get sucked into playing America’s game.
Beijing is eager to avoid the EU falling further under U.S. influence, at a time when the White House is pursuing a more assertive policy to counter China’s geopolitical and military strength.
Russia’s yearlong war against Ukraine has strengthened the alliance between Europe and the U.S., shaken up global trade, reinvigorated NATO and forced governments to look at what else could suddenly go wrong in world affairs. That’s not welcome in Beijing, which still views Washington as its strategic nemesis.
This week, China’s counter-offensive stepped up a gear, turning on the charm. Xi welcomed Macron into the grandest of settings at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, along with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. This was in sharp contrast to China’s current efforts to keep senior American officials at arm’s length, especially since U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called off a trip to Beijing during the spy balloon drama earlier this year.
Both American and Chinese officials know Europe’s policy toward Beijing is far from settled. That’s an opportunity, and a risk for both sides. In recent months, U.S. officials have warned of China’s willingness to send weapons to Russia and talked up the dangers of allowing Chinese tech companies unfettered access to European markets, with some success.
TikTok, which is ultimately Chinese owned, has been banned from government and administrative phones in a number of locations in Europe, including in the EU institutions in Brussels. American pressure also led the Dutch to put new export controls on sales of advanced semiconductor equipment to China.
Yet even the hawkish von der Leyen, a former German defense minister, has dismissed the notion of decoupling Europe from China’s economy altogether. From Beijing’s perspective, this is yet another significant difference from the hostile commercial environment being promoted by the U.S.
Just this week, 36 Chinese and French businesses signed new deals in front of Macron and Xi, in what Chinese state media said was a sign of “the not declining confidence in the Chinese market of European businesses.” While hardly a statement brimming with confidence, it could have been worse.
For the last couple of years European leaders have grown more skeptical of China’s trajectory, voicing dismay at Beijing’s way of handling the coronavirus pandemic, the treatment of protesters in Hong Kong and Xinjiang’s Uyghur Muslims, as well as China’s sanctions on European politicians and military threats against Taiwan.
Then, Xi and Vladimir Putin hailed a “no limits” partnership just days before Russia invaded Ukraine. While the West rolled out tough sanctions on Moscow, China became the last major economy still interested in maintaining — and expanding — trade ties with Russia. That shocked many Western officials and provoked a fierce debate in Europe over how to punish Beijing and how far to pull out of Chinese commerce.
Beijing saw Macron as the natural partner to help avoid a nosedive in EU-China relations, especially since Angela Merkel — its previous favorite — was no longer German chancellor.
Macron’s willingness to engage with anyone — including his much-criticized contacts with Putin ahead of his war on Ukraine — made him especially appealing as Beijing sought to drive a wedge between European and American strategies on China.
Xi Jinping sees Macron as the natural to Angela Merkel, his previous partner in the West who helped avoid a nosedive in EU-China relations | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Not taking sides
“I’m very glad we share many identical or similar views on Sino-French, Sino-EU, international and regional issues,” Xi told Macron over tea on Friday, in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, according to Chinese state media Xinhua.
Strategic autonomy, a French foreign policy focus, is a favorite for China, which sees the notion as proof of Europe’s distance from the U.S. For his part, Macron told Xi a day earlier that France promotes “European strategic autonomy,” doesn’t like “bloc confrontation” and believes in doing its own thing. “France does not pick sides,” he said.
The French position is challenged by some in Europe who see it as an urgent task to take a tougher approach toward Beijing.
“Macron could have easily avoided the dismal picture of European and transatlantic disunity,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute. “Nobody forced Macron to show up with a huge business delegation, repeating disproven illusions of reciprocity and deluding himself about working his personal magic on Xi to get the Chinese leader to turn against Putin.”
Holger Hestermeyer, a professor of EU law at King’s College London, said Beijing will struggle to split the transatlantic alliance.
“If China wants to succeed with building a new world order, separating the EU from the U.S. — even a little bit — would be a prized goal — and mind you, probably an elusive one,” Hestermeyer said. “Right now the EU is strengthening its defenses specifically because China tried to play divide and conquer with the EU in the past.”
Xi’s focus on America was unmistakable when he veered into a topic that was a long way from Europe’s top priority, during his three-way meeting with Macron and von der Leyen. A week earlier the Biden administration had held its second Summit for Democracy, in which Russia and China were portrayed as the main threats.
“Spreading the so-called ‘democracy versus authoritarianism’ [narrative],” Xi told his European guests on Thursday, “would only bring division and confrontation to the world.”
Missed the second half of the story? The latest on Trump’s investigation, why it’s a “big mistake, politically”, for republicans to align with Trump, and Blinken speaks to Russia’s foreign minister.
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The powerful Mexican drug cartel responsible for the kidnapping of four U.S. citizens — and the death of two of them — could be designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a hearing in March that the department is considering the designation for the Mexican drug cartels, which could include the Gulf Cartel, the cartel responsible for the attack. The foreign terrorist (FTO) designation has been attracting interest as a tool to use against the cartel in recent years.
Why is it being considered?
The killing of the two American citizens crossed a “red line,” says Javed Ali, associate professor of practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
The Mexican drug cartels also traffic fentanyl, which is responsible for soaring opioid deaths in the U.S. — over 70,000 Americans died of synthetic opioid overdoses in 2021, most of them caused by fentanyl that comes from Mexico. Last year, the DEA seized enough fentanyl to kill every American, more than 50 million fentanyl-laced pills and over 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, the vast majority of it at the southern border.
Ali thinks now is the right time to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations, arguing that the U.S. is not currently using “all the tools we have” to counter them.
What makes a group a Foreign Terrorist Organization?
In order to be labeled an FTO a group or network has to meet three criteria:
Must be foreign-based
Engages in terrorist activity
The terrorist activity threatens U.S. citizens or U.S. national security.
How many Foreign Terrorist Organizations are there?
There are over 30 groups designated by the State Department, but none operate solely as drug cartels.
What would re-labeling a group as an FTO actually do?
An FTO designation unlocks the option for more foreign sanctions and a material support charge, which makes it much easier to indict someone on lesser charges if affiliated with the terrorist organization.
“It certainly stigmatizes them,” said Ali. “I would think the last thing a Mexican drug cartel wants is to be labeled by the United States as a terrorist organization. That’s bad for business.”
Does Congress have a role in categorizing a group as an FTO?
The secretary of state makes the designation, in coordination with the attorney general and treasury secretary. Then, it is sent to Congress for review and if it raises no issue with the designation, after seven days, it’s published in the Federal Register, making it official.
Rep. Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, has introduced legislation that asks Blinken to target several cartels for FTO designation: the Gulf Cartel, Cartel Del Noreste, Cartel de Sinaloa and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion. In February, 21 Republican attorneys general called on President Joe Biden and Blinken to declare Mexican drug cartels as FTOs.
How would the designation affect drug cartels?
It won’t stop the cartels, Ali says, but it would get their attention — and the attention of anyone working with them. Because of the material support charge available to the U.S. after an FTO designation, the charges would be far more severe for even a low-level offense, such as giving money to the cartel. Donating to an foreign terrorist organization can result in a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Officially labeling the Mexican drug cartels as terrorists emphasizes the national security threat they pose and confers authorizations the U.S. hopes would have a chilling effect.
Downsides to FTO designation?
But there are potential disadvantages to making the designation. It could adversely affect U.S.-Mexico relations.
“We have enormous authority already in dealing with drug trafficking organizations, in terms of all the policing capabilities we have to deal with them, particularly in the United States,” says Pamela Starr, an international relations professor at the University of Southern California. “What it would do, however, is undermine bilateral cooperation with Mexico, and that would dramatically undermine our capacity to deal with the challenges in Mexico.”
And the FTO designation might also damage Mexico’s appeal as a tourist destination by contributing to the perception that it’s less safe.
Starr also warns the designation could radicalize drug cartels further. “My real concern is that if you treat organized crime as if it were a terrorist organization, they might begin to employ terrorist tactics,” Starr said.
In a worst case scenario, the cartel could increase targeting of U.S. citizens, according to Ali.
But Ali argues the FTO designation for Mexican drug cartels is worthwhile. “This level of activity is absolutely having an impact on our national security, more from the flow of drugs in the U.S. than the targeting of Americans in Mexico. But it still gives you another tool. Why not use it when the status quo doesn’t seem to be working?”
DUBLIN — U.S. President Joe Biden will pay a five-day visit to both parts of Ireland next month to mark the 25th anniversary of the U.S.-brokered Good Friday peace accord, according to a provisional Irish government itinerary seen by POLITICO.
The plans, still being finalized with the White House, have the president arriving in Northern Ireland on April 11. That’s one day after the official quarter-century mark for the Good Friday Agreement, the peace deal designed to end decades of conflict that claimed more than 3,600 lives.
With Irish roots on both sides of his family tree, Biden has long taken an interest in brokering and maintaining peace in Northern Ireland. He has welcomed the recent U.K.-EU agreement on making post-Brexit trade rules work in the region — a breakthrough that has yet to revive local power-sharing at the heart of the 1998 accord.
According to two Irish government officials involved in planning the Biden visit itinerary, the president will start his stay overnight at Hillsborough Castle, southwest of Belfast, the official residence for visiting British royalty, as a guest of the U.K.’s Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris.
Then he’s scheduled to visit Stormont, the parliamentary complex overlooking Belfast, at the invitation of its caretaker speaker, Alex Maskey of the Irish republican Sinn Féin party.
That could prove controversial given that, barring a diplomatic miracle, the Northern Ireland Assembly and its cross-community government — a core achievement of the 1998 agreement — won’t be functioning due to a long-running boycott by the Democratic Unionists. That party has not yet accepted the U.K.-EU compromise deal on offer because it keeps Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the U.K., subject to EU goods rules and able to trade more easily with the rest of Ireland than with Britain. Nonetheless, assembly members from all parties including the DUP will be invited to meet Biden there.
The president is booked to officiate the official ribbon-cutting of the new downtown Belfast campus of Ulster University. During his stay in Northern Ireland he also is expected to pay a visit to Queen’s University Belfast, where former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton serves as chancellor.
Next, the Irish government expects the presidential entourage to cross the border into the Republic of Ireland, potentially by motorcade, the approach last adopted by Bill Clinton during his third and final visit to Ireland as president in 2000.
This would allow Biden to pay a visit to one side of his Irish family tree, the Finnegans, in County Louth. Louth is midway between Belfast and Dublin. Biden previously toured the area in 2016 as vice president, when he met distant relatives for the first time and visited the local graveyard.
In Dublin, it is not yet confirmed whether Biden will deliver a speech at College Green outside the entrance of Trinity College. That’s the spot where Barack Obama delivered his own main speech during a one-day visit as president in 2011.
A White House advance team is expected in Dublin this weekend to scout that and other potential locations for a speech and walkabout. He isn’t expected to hold any functions at the Irish parliament, which begins a two-week Easter recess Friday.
Members of Ireland’s national police force, An Garda Síochána, have been told by commanders they cannot go on leave during the week of April 10-16 in anticipation of Biden’s arrival. The Irish expect U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to accompany the president and take part in more detailed talks with Northern Ireland’s leaders.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar plans to host the president and Blinken at Farmleigh House, a state-owned mansion previously owned by the Guinness brewing dynasty, inside Dublin’s vast Phoenix Park.
The final two days of Biden’s visit will focus on the other side of his Irish roots, the Blewitts of County Mayo, on Ireland’s west coast, which he also visited in 2016. Distant cousins he first met on that trip have since been repeated guests of the White House, most recently on St. Patrick’s Day.
White House officials declined to discuss specific dates or any events planned, but did confirm that Biden would travel to Ireland “right after Easter.” This suggests an April 11 arrival in line with the Irish itinerary. Easter Sunday falls this year on April 9 and, in both parts of Ireland, the Christian holiday is a two-day affair ending in Easter Monday.
The US State Department on Monday imposed a visa sanction on a Syrian military official whom it says killed at least 41 unarmed civilians in a neighborhood of Damascus in April 2013.
Amjad Yousef, a military intelligence officer for the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and his immediate family will be blocked from entering the United States, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
Video evidence of the massacre in Tadamon, which Blinken described as being “carried out coldly and methodically,” publicly emerged in 2022 “after a long and comprehensive investigation by independent researchers.”
“Today, we are taking action to promote accountability for this atrocity,” the top US diplomat said.
The announcement of the visa restriction comes as a growing number of countries have renewed at least some level of contact directly with the Assad regime, particularly in the wake of last month’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
“The footage of this massacre, coupled with the ongoing killing and abuse of countless Syrians, serves as a sobering reminder for why countries should not normalize relations with the Assad regime absent enduring progress towards a political resolution,” Blinken said.
“The United States calls on the Assad regime to cease all violations and abuses of human rights, including but not limited to extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture,” he said.
Blinken noted that March “marks the twelfth year of conflict in Syria during which the Assad regime has committed innumerable atrocities, some of which rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
In an April 2022 article published in “New Lines Magazine,” the two researchers who helped expose the massacre said that the videos, which were “already shocking for their atrociousness, stand out in their brevity and callousness among the thousands of hours of footage that we have examined throughout our respective careers as researchers of mass violence and genocide in Syria and elsewhere.”
“Particularly shocking about the Tadamon videos is the fact that the intelligence officers who committed the massacre were on duty and in uniform; they report to President Bashar al-Assad himself, and yet they chose to show their faces in the incriminating footage. At several points during the video, they looked straight into the camera seemingly relaxed and smiling. In documenting their own actions, they used HD video quality,” Annsar Shahhoud and Uğur Ümit Üngör wrote.
Yousef, the official who was sanctioned by the State Department Tuesday, “is focused, stoic and precise, and he works efficiently toward completing the task within a matter of 25 minutes,” the researchers wrote.
“After a few months, we confronted him with the massacre and let him know that we had seen the footage,” the researchers described.
“First, he denied it was him in the video. Then, he said he was just arresting someone,” they wrote. “Finally, he settled on the justification that it was his job and expressed his content: ‘I am proud of my deeds.’”
NEW DELHI (AP) — Top diplomats from the Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations ended their contentious meeting in New Delhi on Thursday with no consensus on the Ukraine war, India’s foreign minister said, as discussions of the war and China’s widening global influence dominated much of the talks.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said there were “divergences” on the issue of the war in Ukraine “which we could not reconcile as various parties held differing views.”
“If we had a perfect meeting of minds on all issues, it would have been a collective statement,” Jaishankar said. He added that members agreed on most issues involving the concerns of less-developed nations, “like strengthening multilateralism, promoting food and energy security, climate change, gender issues and counterterrorism.”
China and Russia objected to two paragraphs taken from the previous G-20 declaration in Bali last year, according to a summary of Thursday’s meeting released by India. The paragraphs stated that the war in Ukraine was causing immense human suffering while exacerbating fragilities in the global economy, the need to uphold international law, and that “the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.”
Host India had appealed for all members of the fractured Group of 20 to reach consensus on issues of particular concern to poorer countries even if the broader East-West split over Ukraine could not be resolved. And while others, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, chose to highlight their roles in addressing world crises, the divide was palpable.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, center, speaks during the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi Thursday, March 2, 2023. (Olivier Douliery/Pool Photo via AP)
Last week, India was forced to issue a chair’s summary at the conclusion of a G-20 finance ministers’ meeting after Russia and China objected to a joint communique that retained language on the war in Ukraine drawn directly from last year’s G-20 leaders summit declaration in Indonesia.
Thursday’s talks began with a video address to the foreign ministers by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He urged them not to allow current tensions to destroy agreements that might be reached on food and energy security, climate change and debt.
“We are meeting at a time of deep global divisions,” Modi told the group, which included Blinken, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and their Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, saying their discussions would naturally be “affected by the geopolitical tensions of the day.”
“We all have our positions and our perspectives on how these tensions should be resolved,” he said. “We should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those we can.”
In a nod to fears that the increasingly bitter rift between the United States and its allies on one side and Russia and China on the other appears likely to widen further, Modi said that “multilateralism is in crisis today.”
An armed soldier stands guard during the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi on March 2, 2023. (Photo by Arun SANKAR / AFP) (Photo by ARUN SANKAR/AFP via Getty Images)
ARUN SANKAR via Getty Images
He lamented that the two main goals of the post-World War II international order — preventing conflict and fostering cooperation — were elusive. “The experience of the last two years — financial crisis, pandemic, terrorism and wars — clearly shows that global governance has failed in both its mandates,” he said.
Jaishankar then addressed the group in person, telling them that they “must find common ground and provide direction.”
Blinken, according to remarks released by the State Department, spent much of his time describing U.S. efforts to bolster energy and food security. But he also told the ministers pointedly that Russia’s war with Ukraine could not go unchallenged.
“Unfortunately, this meeting has again been marred by Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine, deliberate campaign of destruction against civilian targets, and its attack on the core principles of the U.N. Charter,” he said.
“We must continue to call on Russia to end its war of aggression and withdraw from Ukraine for the sake of international peace and economic stability,” Blinken said. He noted that 141 countries had voted to condemn Russia at the United Nations on the one-year anniversary of the invasion.
Several members of the G-20, including India, China and South Africa, chose to abstain in that vote.
NEW DELHI, INDIA – MARCH 02: A general view of the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in New Delhi, India on March 02, 2023. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also attended the meeting. The G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting started with a moment of silence for those who lost their lives in the earthquakes in Turkiye. (Photo by Cem Ozdel/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Blinken and Lavrov talked briefly Thursday in the first high-level meeting in months between the two countries. U.S. officials said Blinken and Lavrov chatted for roughly 10 minutes on the sidelines of the G-20 conference.
In addition to attending the G-20 and seeing Modi and Jaishankar individually on Thursday, Blinken met separately with the foreign ministers of Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa, and was also scheduled to hold talks with the foreign ministers of the Netherlands and Mexico.
As at most international events since last year, the split over the war in Ukraine and its impact on global energy and food security overshadowed the proceedings. But as the conflict drags on past 12 months, the divide has grown and now threatens to become a principal irritant in U.S.-China ties that were already on the rocks for other reasons.
A Chinese peace proposal for Ukraine that has drawn praise from Russia but dismissals from the West has done nothing to improve matters as U.S. officials have repeatedly accused China in recent days of considering the provision of weapons to Russia for use in the war.
Blinken said Wednesday that the Chinese plan rang hollow given its focus on “sovereignty” compared to its own recent actions.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a press conference on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi on March 2, 2023.
OLIVIER DOULIERY via Getty Images
“China can’t have it both ways,” Blinken told reporters in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, before traveling to New Delhi. “It can’t be putting itself out as a force for peace in public, while in one way or another, it continues to fuel the flames of this fire that Vladimir Putin started.”
He also said there is “zero evidence” that Putin is genuinely prepared for diplomacy to end the war. “To the contrary, the evidence is all in the other direction,” he said.
China on Thursday hit back at those comments, accusing the U.S. of promoting war by supplying Ukraine with weapons and violating Chinese sovereignty with support for Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory.
“The U.S. says it wants peace, but it is waging wars around the world and inciting confrontation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing.
“While emphasizing the need to respect and maintain the international order, the U.S. has vigorously pursued illegal unilateral sanctions, putting domestic law above international law,” she said. “What the U.S. should do is to reflect on itself, stop confusing the public and making irresponsible remarks, earnestly shoulder its responsibilities, and do something to promote the de-escalation of the situation and peace talks.”
In the meantime, Moscow has been unrelenting in pushing its view that the West, led by the U.S., is trying to destroy Russia.
Ahead of the meeting, the Russian Foreign Ministry slammed U.S. policies, saying that Lavrov and his delegation would use the G-20 to “focus on the attempts by the West to take revenge for the inevitable disappearance of the levers of dominance from its hands.”
Associated Press writers Sheikh Saaliq and Krutika Pathi contributed to this report.
LONDON — Britain was rebuffed by the Biden administration after multiple requests to develop an advanced trade and technology dialogue similar to structures the U.S. set up with the European Union.
On visits to Washington as a Cabinet minister over the past two years, Liz Truss urged U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and senior Biden administration officials to intensify talks with the U.K. to build clean technology supply chains and boost collaboration on artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors.
After Truss became prime minister in fall 2022, the idea was floated again when Raimondo visited London last October, people familiar with the conversations told POLITICO. But fear of angering the U.S.’s European partners and the U.K.’s diminished status outside the EU post-Brexit have posed barriers to influencing Washington.
Businesses, lawmakers and experts worry the U.K. is being left on the sidelines.
“We tried many times,” said a former senior Downing Street official, of the British government’s efforts to set up a U.K. equivalent to the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council (TTC), noting Truss’ overtures began as trade chief in July 2021. They requested anonymity to speak on sensitive issues.
“We did speak to Gina Raimondo about that, saying ‘we think it would be a good opportunity,’” said the former official — not necessarily to join the EU-U.S. talks directly, “but to increase trilateral cooperation.”
Set up in June 2021, the TTC forum co-chaired by Raimondo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. trade chief Katherine Tai gives their EU counterparts, Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis, a direct line to shape tech and trade policy.
The U.S. is pushing forward with export controls on advanced semiconductors to China; forging new secure tech supply chains away from Beijing; and spurring innovation through subsidies for cutting-edge green technology and microprocessors.
The TTC’s 10 working groups with the EU, Raimondo said in an interview late last year, “set the standards,” though Brussels has rebuffed Washington’s efforts to use the transatlantic body to go directly after Beijing.
But the U.K. “is missing the boat on not being completely engaged in that dialogue,” said a U.S.-based representative of a major business group. “There has been some discussion about the U.K. perhaps joining the TTC,” they confirmed, and “it was kind of mooted, at least in private” with Raimondo by the Truss administration on her visit to London last October.
The response from the U.S. had been ‘’let’s work with what we’ve got at the moment,’” said the former Downing Street official.
Even if the U.S. does want to talk, “they don’t want to irritate the Europeans,” the same former official added. Right now the U.K.’s conversations with the U.S. on these issues are “ad hoc” under the new Atlantic Charter Boris Johnson and Joe Biden signed around the G7 summit in 2021, they said, and “nothing institutional.”
Last October, Washington and London held the first meeting of the data and tech forum Johnson and Biden set up | Pool photo by Olivier Matthys/AFP via Getty Images
Securing British access to the U.S.-EU tech forum or an equivalent was also discussed when CBI chief Tony Danker was in Washington last July, said people familiar with conversations during his visit.
The U.K.’s science and tech secretary, Michelle Donelan, confirmed the British government had discussed establishing a more regular channel for tech and trade discussions with the U.S., both last October and more recently. “My officials have just been out [to the U.S.],” she told POLITICO. “They’ve had very productive conversations.”
A U.K. government spokesperson said: “The U.K. remains committed to working closely with the U.S. and EU to further our shared trade and technology objectives, through the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the U.S.-U.K. Future of Atlantic Trade dialogues, and the U.K.-U.S. technology partnership.
“We will continue to advance U.K. interests in trade and technology and explore further areas of cooperation with partners where it is mutually beneficial.”
Britain the rule-taker?
Last October, Washington and London held the first meeting of the data and tech forum Johnson and Biden set up. Senior officials hoped to get a deal securing the free flow of data between the U.S. and U.K. across the line and addressed similar issues as the TTC.
They couldn’t secure the data deal. The U.K. is expected to join a U.S.-led effort to expand data transfer rules baked into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trading agreement as soon as this year, according to a former and a current British official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The next formal meeting between the U.K. and U.S. is penciled in for January 2024.
Ongoing dialogue “is vital to secure an overarching agreement on U.K.-U.S. data flows, without which modern day business cannot function,” said William Bain, head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC). “It would also provide an opportunity to set the ground rules around a host of other technological developments.”
In contrast, the U.S. and EU are always at work, with TTC officials in constant contact with the operation — though questions have been raised about how long-term the transatlantic cooperation is likely to prove, ahead of next year’s U.S. presidential election.
“Unless you have a structured system or set up, often overseen by ministers, you don’t really get the drive to actually get things done,” said the former Downing Street official.
Right now cooperation with the U.S. on tech issues is not as intense or structured as desired, the same former official said, and is “not really brought together” in one central forum.
Britain has yet to publish a formal semiconductor strategy | Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images
“This initiative [the TTC] between the world’s two regulatory powerhouses risks sidelining the U.K.,” warned lawmakers on the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in a report last October. Britain may become “a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker,” MPs noted, citing the government’s “ambiguous” position on technology standards. Britain has yet to publish a formal semiconductor strategy, and others on critical minerals — like those used in EV batteries — or AI are also missing.
Over the last two years, U.S. trade chief Tai has “spoken regularly to her three successive U.K. counterparts to identify and tackle shared economic and trade priorities,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. Trade Representative, adding “we intend to continue strengthening this partnership in the years to come.”
All eyes on Europe
For its part, the EU has to date shown little interest in closer cooperation with the U.K.
Three European Commission officials disregarded the likelihood of Britain joining the club, though one of those officials said that London may be asked to join — alongside other like-minded countries — for specific discussions related to ongoing export bans against Russia.
Even with last week’s breakthrough over the Northern Ireland protocol calming friction between London and Brussels, the U.K. was not a priority country for involvement in the TTC, added another of the EU officials.
“The U.K. was extremely keen to be part of a dialogue of some sort of equivalent of TTC,” said a senior business representative in London, who requested anonymity to speak about sensitive issues.
U.K. firms see “the Holy Grail” as Britain, the U.S. and EU working together on this, they said. “We’re very keen to see a triangular dialogue at some point.”
The U.K.’s haggling with the EU over the details of the Northern Ireland protocol governing trade in the region has posed “a political obstacle” to realizing that vision, they suggested.
Yet with a solution to the dispute announced in late February, the same business figure said, “there will be a more prominent push to work together with the U.K.”
TTC+
Some trade experts think the UK would increase its chances of accession to the TTC if it submitted a joint request with other nations.
But prior to that happening, “I think the EU-U.S. TTC will need to first deliver bilaterally,” said Sabina Ciofu, an international tech policy expert at the trade body techUK.
Representatives speak to the media following the Trade and Technology Council Meeting in Maryland | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
When there is momentum, Ciofu said, the U.K. should join forces with Japan, South Korea and other advanced economies to ask for a TTC+ that could include the G7 or other partners. At the last TTC meeting in December, U.S. and EU officials said they were open to such an expansion around specific topics that had global significance.
But not all trade experts think this is essential. Andy Burwell, director of international trade at the CBI, said he doesn’t “think it necessarily matters” whether the U.K. has a structured conversation with the U.S. like the TTC forum.
Off the back of a soon-to-be-published refresh of the Integrated Review — the U.K.’s national security and foreign policy strategy — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak should instead seize the opportunity, Burwell said, to pinpoint where Britain is “going to own, collaborate and have access to various aspects of the supply chains.”
The G7, Burwell said, “could be the right platform for having some of those conversations.”
Yet the “danger with the ad hoc approach with lots of different people is incoherence,” said the former Downing Street official quoted above.
Too many countries involved in setting the standards can, the former official said, “create difficulty in leveraging what you want — which is all of the countries agreeing together on a certain way forward … especially when you’re dealing with issues that relate to, for example, China.”
Additional reporting by Mark Scott, Annabelle Dickson and Tom Bristow
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov talked briefly Thursday at a meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 20 nations in the first high-level meeting in months between the two countries. U.S. officials said Blinken and Lavrov chatted for roughly 10 minutes on the sidelines of the G-20 conference in New Delhi. The short encounter came as relations between Washington and Moscow have plummeted over Russia’s war on Ukraine.
A senior U.S. official said Blinken used the discussion to make three points to Lavrov: That the U.S. would support Ukraine in the conflict for as long as it takes to bring the war to an end, that Russia should reverse its decision to suspend participation in the New START nuclear treaty and that Moscow should release detained American Paul Whelan.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, top center, walks past Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during the G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi, March 2, 2023.
Olivier Douliery/AP
The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation, said Blinken had “disabused” Lavrov of any idea Moscow might have that U.S. support for Ukraine was wavering.
The official declined to characterize Lavrov’s response but said Blinken did not get the impression there would be any change in Russia’s behavior in the near term.
Russia offered no immediate comment on the substance of the conversation, but Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Blinken had asked to speak to Lavrov.
It was the two senior diplomats’ first contact since last summer, when Blinken called Lavrov by phone about a U.S. proposal for Russia to release Whelan and formerly detained WNBA star Brittney Griner. Griner was later released in a swap for imprisoned Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout but Whelan remains detained in Russia after being accused of spying.
The last time Blinken and Lavrov met in person was in Geneva, Switzerland, in January 2022 on the eve of Russia’s invasion. At that meeting, Blinken warned Lavrov about consequences Russia would face if it went ahead with its planned military operation but also sought to address some complaints that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made about the U.S. and NATO.
Those talks proved inconclusive, and Russia moved ahead with its plans to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Blinken then canceled a scheduled follow-up meeting with Lavrov that had bee set for just two days before Moscow eventually invaded on Feb. 24, 2022.
The two men have attended several international conferences together since the war began, notably the last G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia, last year, but had not come face-to-face until Thursday.
CBS News correspondent Imtiaz Tyab reported Thursday from Kyiv that all eyes quickly shifted to China’s foreign minister, who met later on the sidelines of the same G-20 gathering with Lavrov. After their meeting, China’s foreign ministry released a statement which shed no new light on whether Beijing might answer Moscow’s request for lethal support in the form of weapons or ammunition for Putin’s war.
U.S. officials have said Beijing is considering adding such support to its current non-lethal aid for Russia’s war machine, but China has not given any indication of its plans. Last week, Beijing published a vague 12-point plan to end the war in Ukraine, but Putin said “now was not the time” for such discussions.
In its statement on the meeting held Thursday by Qin Gang, China’s second-highest ranking diplomat, with Lavrov, the Chinese Foreign ministry said Beijing continued to oppose “sabotage of peace talks… sanctions and pressure.”
“China supports all efforts conducive to persuading peace and promoting talks, and will continue to play a constructive role in this regard,” the statement said, adding: “Lavrov appreciated China’s objective and fair position and constructive role, and said that Russia has always been open to negotiations and dialogue.”
Amid the geopolitical maneuvering, Tyab said the war was still raging, with particularly intense fighting in and around the eastern Ukrainian mining town of Bakhmut. Russian forces, aided by Wagner Group mercenaries, have mounted a massive offensive which has seen at least one Ukrainian military unit pull out of the area, but Ukrainian troops continue to hold at least some of the city.
Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have described the situation there as “extremely tense.”
Russian and Russian-backed forces have been trying to seize control of Bakhmut, which was once home to 70,000 people but now lays largely in ruins, for seven months. If they succeed, it will be a rare territorial gain for the Kremlin after months of grisly but largely futile fighting. While it would be a hugely symbolic achievement for Moscow, the strategic value of Bakhmut remains an open question.
While controlling the town could enable Russian forces in other areas of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region more easily resupply, some military analysts have said the strategic importance of the decimated city is far from clear, and there have been many questions over why the Kremlin has invested so much blood and treasure in its campaign there.
Foreign ministers from the world’s biggest economies convened in New Delhi Thursday in what was seen as a grand test for Indian diplomacy, which ultimately didn’t succeed in reaching a consensus because of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
In the second high-level ministerial meeting under India’s Group of 20 (G20) presidency this year, foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, methis American, Chinese and Russian counterparts, hoping to find enough common ground to deliver a joint statement at the end of the summit.
But amid festering divisions over Moscow’s war, New Delhi was unable to convince the leaders to put their differences aside, with Jaishankar admitting the conflict had struggled to unite the group.
India, the world’s largest democracy with a population of more than 1.3 billion, has been keen to position itself as a leader of emerging and developing nations – often referred to as the Global South – at a time when soaring food and energy prices as a result of the war are hammering consumers already grappling with rising costs and inflation.
Those sentiments were front and center during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s opening remarks earlier Thursday, when he spoke of multiples crises the world faces, with less wealthy nations hit especially hard.
“The experience of the last few years, the financial crisis, climate change, the pandemic, terrorism and wars clearly shows that global governance has failed,” Modi said.
“We must also admit that the tragic consequences of this failure are being faced most over by the developing countries,” who he says are most affected by global warming “caused by richer countries”.
Eluding to the war in Ukraine, Modi acknowledged the conflict was causing “deep global divisions.” But he encouraged the foreign ministers to put differences aside during their meeting Thursday.
“We should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those we can,” he said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the summit, according to a State Department official traveling with Blinken.
Blinken and Lavrov spoke for roughly 10 minutes, the same official said.
Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed to CNN that the meeting took place but played down its significance.
“Blinken asked for contact with Lavrov. On the go, as part of the second session of the twenty, Sergey Viktorovich (Lavrov) talked. There were no negotiations, meetings, etc,” she said.
Deep disagreements over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine played out in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru last month as well, when G20 finance chiefs failed to agree on a statement after their meeting.
Both Russia and China declined to sign the joint statement, which criticized Moscow’s invasion. That left India to issue a “chair’s summary and outcome document” in which it summed up the two days of talks and acknowledged disagreements.
Analysts say that throughout the war New Delhi has deftly balanced its ties to Russia and the West, with Modi emerging as a leader who has been courted by all sides.
But as the war enters its second year, and tensions continue to rise, pressure could mount on countries, including India, to take a firmer stand against Russia – putting Modi’s statecraft to the test.
Arguably India’s most celebrated event of the year, the G20 summit has been heavily promoted domestically, with sprawling billboards featuring Modi’s face plastered across the country. Roads have been cleaned and buildings freshly painted ahead of the dignitaries’ visit.
Taking place in the “mother of democracies” under Modi’s leadership, his political allies have been keen to push his international credentials, portraying him as a key player in the global order.
Last year’s G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, Indonesia, issued a joint declaration that echoed what Modi had told Russian President Vladimir Putin weeks earlier on the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan.
“Today’s era must not be of war,” it said, prompting media and officials in India to claim India had played a vital role in bridging differences between an isolated Russia and the United States and its allies.
India, analysts say, prides itself on its ability to balance relations. The country, like China, has refused to condemn Moscow’s brutal assault on Ukraine in various United Nations resolutions. Rather than cutting economic ties with the Kremlin, India has undermined Western sanctions by increasing its purchases of Russian oil, coal and fertilizer.
But unlike China, India has grown closer to the West – particularly the US – despite ties with Russia.
New Delhi’s ties with Moscow date back to the Cold War, and the country remains heavily reliant on the Kremlin for military equipment – a vital link given India’s ongoing tensions with China at its shared Himalayan border.
The US and India have taken steps in recent months to strengthen their defense partnership, as the two sides attempt to counter the rise of an increasingly assertive China.
Daniel Markey, senior adviser, South Asia, for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), said while India’s leaders “would like to facilitate an end to this conflict that preserves New Delhi’s relations with both Washington and Moscow and ends the disruption of the global economy,” India did not have “any particular leverage” with Russia or Ukraine that would make a settlement likely.
“I believe that other world leaders are equally interested in playing a peace-making diplomatic role. So when and if Putin wishes to come to the table to negotiate, he will have no shortage of diplomats hoping to help,” he said.
Still, as Putin’s aggression continues to throw the global economy into chaos, India has signaled an intention to raise the many concerns faced by the global South, including climate challenges and food and energy security, according to Modi’s opening speech earlier Thursday.
“The world looks upon the G20 to ease the challenges of growth, development, economic resilience, disaster resilience, financial stability, transnational crime, corruption, terrorism, and food and energy security,” Modi said.
While Modi’s government appears keen to prioritize domestic challenges, experts say these issues could be sidelined by the tensions between the US, Russia and China, which have increased recently over concerns from Washington that Beijing is considering sending lethal aid to the Kremlin’s struggling war effort.
Speaking to reporters last week, Ramin Toloui, the US assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, said while Secretary of State Antony Blinken would highlight its efforts to address food and energy security issues, he would also “underscore the damage that Russia’s war of aggression has caused.”
Blinken will “encourage all G20 partners to redouble their calls for a just, peaceful, and lasting end to the Kremlin’s war consistent with UN Charter principles,” Toloui said.
At the same time, Russia in a statement Wednesday accused the US and the European Union of “terrorism,” stating it was “set to clearly state Russia’s assessments” of the current food and energy crisis.
“We will draw attention to the destructive barriers that the West is multiplying exponentially to block the export of goods that are of critical importance to the global economy, including energy sources and agricultural products,” Russia said, hinting at the difficulties New Delhi might face during the meeting.
India has “worked very hard not to be boxed into one side or the other,” Markey said. The country could not “afford to alienate Russia or the US and Modi doesn’t want discussion of the war to force any difficult decisions or to distract from other issues, like green, sustainable economic development,” he added.
But with plummeting ties between Washington and Beijing after the US military shot down what it says was a Chinese spy balloon that flew over American territory, New Delhi will have to carefully drive difficult negotiations between conflicting viewpoints.
China maintains the balloon, which US forces downed in February, was a civilian research aircraft accidentally blown off course, and the fallout led Blinken to postpone a planned visit to Beijing.
As differences played out during the ministerial meeting Thursday, analysts say while India will be disappointed at the outcome, they were in a very difficult position to begin with.
“It will be a disappointment for Modi, but not one that cannot be managed,” Markey said. “Nor would it be India’s fault, as it would primarily be a reflection of the underlying differences over which Modi has very little control.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov talked briefly Thursday at a meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 20 nations in the first high-level meeting in months between the two countries.
U.S. officials said Blinken and Lavrov chatted for roughly 10 minutes on the sidelines of the G-20 conference in New Delhi. The short encounter came as relations between Washington and Moscow have plummeted while tensions over Russia’s war with Ukraine have soared.
A senior U.S. official said Blinken used the discussion to make three points to Lavrov: that the U.S. would support Ukraine in the conflict for as long as it takes to bring the war to an end, that Russia should reverse its decision to suspend participation in the New START nuclear treaty and that Moscow should release detained American Paul Whelan.
The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation, said Blinken had “disabused” Lavrov of any idea they might have that U.S. support for Ukraine is wavering.
The official declined to characterize Lavrov’s response but said Blinken did not get the impression that there would be any change in Russia’s behavior in the near term.
Russia had no immediate comment on the substance of the conversation, but Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Blinken had asked to speak to Lavrov.
It was their first contact since last summer, when Blinken called Lavrov by phone about a U.S. proposal for Russia to release Whelan and formerly detained WNBA star Brittney Griner. Griner was later released in a swap for imprisoned Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout but Whelan remains detained in Russia after being accused of spying.
The last time Blinken and Lavrov met in person was in Geneva, Switzerland, in January 2022 on the eve of Russia’s invasion. At that meeting, Blinken warned Lavrov about consequences Russia would face if it went ahead with its planned military operation but also sought to address some complaints that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made about the U.S. and NATO.
Those talks proved to be inconclusive as Russia moved ahead with its plans to invade and Blinken then canceled a scheduled followup meeting with Lavrov that was set for just two days before Moscow eventually invaded on Feb. 24, 2022.
The two men have attended several international conferences together since the war began, notably the last G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia, last year, but had not come face-to-face until Thursday.
The US Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed sanctions on three companies and two individuals for “illicitly” generating income for the North Korean government.
The sanctions come after months of internationally condemned missile launches by Pyongyang – the most recent of which took place last month.
North Korea’s “unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs threaten international security and regional stability,” Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement. “The United States remains committed to targeting the regime’s global illicit networks that generate revenue for these destabilizing activities.”
According to a news release from the Treasury, the agency sanctioned Chilsong Trading Corporation and Korea Paekho Trading Corporation “for being agencies, instrumentalities, or controlled entities of the Government of North Korea or the Workers’ Party of Korea.”
“Chilsong is subordinate to the Government of North Korea, which uses trading companies like Chilsong to earn foreign currency, collect intelligence, and provide cover status for intelligence operatives” and “Paekho has generated funds for the DPRK government since the 1980s by conducting art and construction projects on behalf of regimes throughout the Middle East and Africa,” the news release said.
Wednesday’s sanctions also targeted Hwang Kil Su and Pak Hwa Song, and their Democratic Republic of the Congo-based company Congo Aconde SARL for generating revenue for the North Korean government.
In a separate statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted that Wednesday’s “action further aligns U.S. sanctions with our international partners.”
“The European Union previously designated Chilsong, Paekho, Pak, and Hwang for engaging in sanctions evasion and being responsible for supporting the DPRK’s unlawful nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” he said.
In mid-February, North Korea said it conducted a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), its third known test of the long-range weapon in less than a year. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that the missile landed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
In remarks at the Munich Security Conference the day of that missile test, Blinken, Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa and South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin all condemned the launch.
Blinken called it “yet again a provocative act by North Korea in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions.”
“We’ve made clear over many, many months that we were prepared to engage with North Korea without any preconditions. The response from North Korea has been missile launch after missile launch,” he said. “We have been very clear that our commitment to the security of our close allies and partners – South Korea and Japan – is ironclad. And beyond making that clear, we have been working very closely together in full coordination to take appropriate steps to strengthen even more our deterrence and defense capacity.”
“And so the result of these actions by North Korea is simply to even further solidify the work that we do together, the alliance that we share, and our commitment to the defense of our partners and allies,” Blinken said.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says that the military alliance has seen “some signs” that China may be planning to support Russia in its war in Ukraine, and strongly urged Beijing to desist from what would be a violation of international law.
Stoltenberg also told The Associated Press in an interview that the alliance, while not a party to the war, will support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” He spoke to The AP in Warsaw, following a meeting of NATO’s nine eastern flank members with U.S. President Joe Biden on the region’s security.
Asked whether NATO has any indication that China might be ready to provide arms or other support to Russia’s war, Stoltenberg said, “We have seen some signs that they may be planning for that, and of course NATO allies, the United States, have been warning against it because this is something that should not happen. China should not support Russia’s illegal war.”
Stoltenberg said potential Chinese assistance would amount to providing “(direct) support to a blatant violation of international law, and of course (as) a member of the U.N. security council China should not in any way support violation of the U.N. charter, or international law.”
On Saturday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Blinken said in an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan that China is actively considering providing lethal support, including weapons and ammunition to aid Moscow in its war against Ukraine. But Blinken spoke only in general terms about the type of lethal aid the Chinese are considering.
“There’s a whole gamut of things that — that fit in that category, everything from ammunition to the weapons themselves,” he said.
Notably, China’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, told other leaders at the Munich Security Conference this week that China is working on a peace proposal to end the conflict. That public position runs contrary to what U.S. intelligence has indicated.
Blinken pointed out, “We have seen them provide non-lethal support to Russia for use in Ukraine.” He went on to say that “the concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship.”
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official — Wang Yi — raising concern in the West that Beijing might be ready to offer Moscow stronger support in the almost year-old war.
China has pointedly refused to criticize the invasion of Ukraine while echoing Moscow’s claim that the U.S. and NATO were to blame for provoking the Kremlin. China, Russia and South Africa are holding naval drills in the Indian Ocean this week.
But State Department Counselor Derek Chollet said the U.S. has assessed that China has not yet decided to provide lethal assistance to Russia.
“Our assessment is they have not yet made that decision up to this point,” Chollet told CBS News contributor Michael Morell on his podcast “Intelligence Matters” this week. “But there are just increasing indications that this is something on their minds. And that’s a concern to us.”
Stoltenberg stressed that while NATO “is no party” to the Ukraine conflict, its tasks are to “ensure that Ukraine prevails” and to “prevent this war from escalating beyond Ukraine and becoming a full-fledged war between Russia and NATO.”
He said the main message from the meeting in Warsaw was that “we will provide support to Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
It would be a “tragedy for the Ukrainians if President Putin wins in Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said, and also “dangerous for all of us” because it would “send the message to all authoritarian leaders that when they use military force, they get what they want.”
The Russian attack on Ukraine has prompted Sweden and neighboring Finland to abandon decades of nonalignment and apply to join the 30-nation alliance. But their bids — particularly Sweden’s — are being delayed by Turkey, which wants the two countries to crack down on mostly Kurdish groups Ankara regards as terrorists.
Stoltenberg told the AP that following talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week he could see Turkey “is moving closer to being ready to ratify and (to) welcome Finland into the alliance. But (Ankara continues) to have some challenges with Sweden.”
He said he welcomed the fact that he and Erdogan agreed to a meeting soon “of experts and officials in Brussels” from the three countries involved “to look into how we can make progress also on the ratification of Sweden as a full NATO ally.”
“I woke at 5 o’clock,” the Estonian prime minister recalled recently. The phone was ringing. Her Lithuanian counterpart was on the line.
“Oh my God, it’s really happening,” came the ominous words, according to Kallas. Another call came in. This time it was the Latvian prime minister.
It was February 24, 2022. War had begun on the European continent.
The night before, Kallas had told her Cabinet members to keep their phones on overnight in anticipation of just this moment: Russia was blitzing Ukraine in an attempt to decapitate the government and seize the country. For those in Estonia and its Baltic neighbors, where memories of Soviet occupation linger, the first images of war tapped into a national terror.
“I went to bed hoping that I was not right,” Kallas said.
Across Europe, similar wakeup calls rolled in, as Russian tanks barrelled into Ukraine and missiles pierced the early morning sky. In recent weeks, POLITICO spoke with prime ministers, high-ranking EU and NATO officials, foreign ministers and diplomats — nearly 20 in total — to reflect on the war’s early days as it reaches its ruinous one-year mark on Friday. All described a similar foreboding that morning, a sense that the world had irrevocably changed.
Within a year, the Russian invasion would profoundly reshape Europe, upending traditional foreign policy presumptions, cleaving it from Russian energy and reawakening long-dormant arguments about extending the EU eastward.
But for those centrally involved in the war’s buildup, the events of February 24 are still seared in their memories.
In an interview with POLITICO, Charles Michel — head of the European Council, the EU body comprising all 27 national leaders — recalled how he received a call directly from Kyiv as the attacks began.
“I was woken up by Zelenskyy,” Michel recounted. It was around 3 a.m. The Ukrainian president told Michel: “The aggression had started and that it was a full-scale invasion.”
Michel hit the phones, speaking to prime ministers across the EU throughout the night.
Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell speak to the press on February 24, 2022 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
By 5 a.m., EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was in his office. Three hours later, he was standing next to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the duo made the EU’s first major public statement about the dawning war. Von der Leyen then convened the 27 commissioners overseeing EU policy for an emergency meeting.
Elsewhere in Brussels, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg was on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who were six hours behind in Washington, D.C. He then raced over to NATO headquarters, where he urgently gathered the military alliance’s decision-making body.
The mood that morning, Stoltenberg recalled in a recent conversation with reporters, was “serious” but “measured and well-organized.”
In Ukraine, missiles had begun raining down in Kyiv, Odesa and Mariupol. Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to social media, confirming in a video that war had begun. He urged Ukrainians to stay calm.
These video updates would soon become a regular feature of Zelenskyy’s wartime leadership. But this first one was especially jarring — a message from a president whose life, whose country, was now at risk.
It would be one of the last times the Ukrainian president, dressed in a dove-gray suit jacket and crisp white shirt, appeared in civilian clothes.
Europe’s 21st-century Munich moment
February 24, 2022 is an indelible memory for those who lived through it. For many, however, it felt inevitable.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, an annual powwow of defense and security experts frequented by senior politicians.
It was here that the Ukrainian leader made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions, hitting out at Germany for promising helmets and chiding NATO countries for not doing enough.
“What are you waiting for?” he implored in the highly charged atmosphere in the Bayerischer Hof hotel. “We don’t need sanctions after bombardment happens, after we have no borders, no economy. Why would we need those sanctions then?”
The symbolism was rife — Munich, a city forever associated with appeasement following Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated attempt to swap land for peace with Adolf Hitler in 1938, was now the setting for Zelenskyy’s last appeal to the West.
Zelenskyy, never missing a moment, seized the historical analogy.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, where he made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions | Pool photo by Ronald Wittek/Getty Images
“Has our world completely forgotten the mistakes of the 20th century?” he asked. “Where does appeasement policy usually lead to?”
But his calls for more arms were ignored, even as countries began ordering their citizens to evacuate and airlines began canceling flights in and out of the country.
A few days later, Zelenskyy’s warnings were coming true. On February 22, Vladimir Putin inched closer to war, recognizing the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine. It was a decisive moment for the Russian president, paving the way for his all-out assault less than 48 hours later.
The EU responded the next day — its first major action against Moscow’s activities in Ukraine since the escalation of tensions in 2021. Officials unveiled the first in what would be nine sanction packages against Russia (and counting).
In an equally significant move, a reluctant Germany finally pulled the plug on Nord Stream 2, the yet unopened gas pipeline linking Russia to northern Germany — the decision, made after months of pressure, presaged how the Russian invasion would soon upend the way Europeans powered their lives and heated their homes.
Summit showdown
As it happened, EU leaders were already scheduled to meet in Brussels on February 24, the day the invasion began. Charles Michel had summoned the leaders earlier that week to deal with the escalating crisis, and to sign off on the sanctions.
Throughout the afternoon, Brussels was abuzz — TV cameras from around the world had descended on the European quarter. Helicopters circled overhead.
European leaders gathered in Brussels following the invasion | Pool photo by Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images
Suddenly, the regular European Council meeting of EU leaders, oftena forum for technical document drafting as much as political decision-making, had become hugely consequential. With war unfolding, the world was looking at the EU to respond — and lead.
The meeting was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. As leaders were gathering, news came that Russia had seized the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Moldova had declared a state of emergency and thousands of people were pouring out of Ukraine. Later that night, Zelenskyy announced a general mobilization:every man between the ages of 18 and 60 was being asked to fight.
Many leaders were wearing facemasks, a reminder that another crisis, which now seemed to pale in comparison, was still ever-present.
Just before joining colleagues at the Europa building in Brussels, Emmanuel Macron phoned Putin — the French president’s latest effort to mediate with the Russian leader. Macron had visited Moscow on February 7 but left empty-handed after five hours of discussions. He later said he made the call at Zelenskyy’s request, to ask Putin to stop the war.
“It did not produce any results,” Macron said of the call. “The Russian president has chosen war.”
Arriving at the summit, Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš captured the gravity of the moment. “Europe is experiencing the biggest military invasion since the Second World War,” he said. “Our response has to be united.”
But inside the room, divisions were on full display. How far, leaders wondered, could Europe go in sanctioning Russia, given the potential economic blowback? Countries dug in along fault lines that would become familiar in the succeeding months.
The realities of war soon pierced the academic debates. Zelenskyy’s team had set up a video link as missile strikes encircled the capital city, wanting to get the president talking to his EU counterparts.
One person present in the room recalled the percolating anxiety as the video feed beamed through — the image out of focus, the camera shaky. Then the picture sharpened and Zelenskyy appeared, dressed in a khaki shirt and looking deathly pale. His surroundings were faceless, an unknown room somewhere in Kyiv.
“Everyone was silent, the atmosphere was completely tense,” said the official who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Zelenskyy, shaken and utterly focused, told leaders that they may not see him again — the Kremlin wanted him dead.
Black smoke rises from a military airport in Chuguyev near Kharkiv on February 24, 2022 | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
“If you, EU leaders and leaders of the free world, do not really help Ukraine today, tomorrow the war will also knock at your door,” he warned, invoking an argument he would return to again and again: that this wasn’t just Ukraine’s war — it was Europe’s war.
Within hours, EU leaders had signed off on their second package of pre-prepared sanctions hitting Russia. But a fractious debate had already begun about what should come next.
The Baltic nations and Poland wanted more — more penalties, more economic punishments. Others were holding back. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi aired their reluctance about expelling Russian banks from the global SWIFT payment system. It was needed to pay for Russian gas, after all.
How quickly that would change.
Sanctions were not the only pressing matter. There was a humanitarian crisis unfolding on Europe’s doorstep. The EU had to both get aid into a war zone and prepare for a mass exodus of people fleeing it.
Janez Lenarčič, the EU’s crisis management commissioner, landed in Paris on the day of the invasion, returning from Niger. Officials started making plans to get ambulances, generators and medicine into Ukraine — ultimately comprising 85,000 tons of aid.
“The most complex, biggest and longest-ever operation” of its kind for the EU, he said.
By that weekend, there was also a plan for the refugees escaping Russian bombs. At a rare Sunday meeting, ministers agreed to welcome and distribute the escaping Ukrainians — a feat that has long eluded the EU for other migrants. Days later, they would grant Ukrainians the instant right to live and work in the EU — another first in an extraordinary time. Decisions that normally took years were now flying through in hours.
Looming over everything were Ukraine’s repeated — and increasingly dire — entreaties for more weapons. Europe’s military investments had lapsed in recent decades, and World War II still cast a dark shadow over countries like Germany, where the idea of sending arms to a warzone still felt verboten.
There were also quiet doubts (not to mention intelligence assessments). Would Ukraine even have its own government next week? Why risk war with Russia if it was days away from toppling Kyiv?
“What we didn’t know at that point was that the Ukrainian resistance would be so successful,” a senior NATO diplomat told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “We were thinking there would be a change of regime [in Kyiv], what do we do?”
That, too, was all about to change.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed Germany on the night of Russia’s invasion | Pool photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images
By the weekend, Germany had sloughed off its reluctance, slowly warming to its role as a key military player. The EU, too, dipped its toe into historic waters that weekend, agreeing to help reimburse countries sending weapons to Ukraine — another startling first for a self-proclaimed peace project.
“I remember, saying, ‘OK, now we go for it,’” said Stefano Sannino, secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic arm.
Ironically, the EU would refund countries using the so-called European Peace Facility — a little-known fund that was suddenly the EU’s main vehicle to support lethal arms going to a warzone.
Over at NATO, the alliance activated its defense plans and sent extra forces to the alliance’s eastern flank. The mission had two tracks, Stoltenberg recounted — “to support Ukraine, but also prevent escalation beyond Ukraine.”
Treading that fine line would become the defining balancing act over the coming year for the Western allies as they blew through one taboo after another.
Who knew what, when
As those dramatic, heady early days fade into history, Europeans are now grappling with what the war means — for their identity, for their sense of security and for the European Union that binds them together.
The invasion has rattled the core tenets underlying the European project, said Ivan Krastev, a prominent political scientist who has long studied Europe’s place in the world.
“For different reasons, many Europeans believed that this is a post-war Continent,” he said.
Post-World War II Europe was built on the assumption that open economic policies, trade between neighbors and mild military power would preserve peace.
“For the Europeans to accept the possibility of the war was basically to accept the limits of our own model,” Krastev argued.
The disbelief has bred self-reflection: Has the war permanently changed the EU? Will a generation that had confined memories of World War II and the Cold War to the past view the next conflict differently?
And, perhaps most acutely, did Europe miss the signs?
Ukrainian refugees gather and rest upon their arrival at the main railway station in Berlin | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
“The start of that war has changed our lives, that’s for sure,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. It wasn’t, however, unexpected, he argued. “We are very attentive to what happens in our region,” he said. “The signs were quite clear.”
Aurescu pointed back to April 2021 as the moment he knew: “It was quite clear that Russia was preparing an aggression against Ukraine.”
Not everyone in Europe shared that assessment, though — to the degree that U.S. officials became worried. They started a public and private campaign in 2021 to warn Europe of an imminent invasion as Russia massed its troops on the Ukrainian border.
In November 2021, von der Leyen made her first trip to the White House. She sat down with Joe Biden in the Oval Office, surrounded by a coterie of national security and intelligence officials. Biden had just received a briefing before the gathering on the Russia battalion buildup and wanted to sound the alarm.
“The president was very concerned,” said one European official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “This was a time when no one in Europe was paying any attention, even the intelligence services.”
But others disputed the narrative that Europe was unprepared as America sounded the alarm.
“It’s a question of perspective. You can see the same information, but come to a different conclusion,” said one senior EU official involved in discussions in the runup to the war, while conceding that the U.S. and U.K. — both members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — did have better information.
Even if those sounding the alarm proved right, said Pierre Vimont, a former secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic wing and Macron’s Russia envoy until the war broke out, it was hard to know in advance what, exactly, to plan for.
“What type of military operation would it be?” he recalled people debating. A limited operation in the east? A full occupation? A surgical strike on Kyiv?
Here’s where most landed: Russia’s onslaught was horrifying — its brutality staggering. But the signs had been there. Something was going to happen.
“We knew that the invasion is going to happen, and we had shared intelligence,” Stoltenberg stressed. “Of course, until the planes are flying and the battle tanks are rolling, and the soldiers are marching, you can always change your plans. But the more we approached the 24th of February last year, the more obvious it was.”
Then on the day, he recounted, it was a matter of dutifully enacting the plan: “We were prepared, we knew exactly what to do.”
“You may be shocked by this invasion,” he added, “but you cannot be surprised.”
Clea Caulcutt and Cristina Gallardo contributed reporting.
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion, senior Ukraine opposition politicians and former ministers were brimming with frustration. They’d been imploring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet with them — something he’d not done since his landslide election nearly two years before.
They’d also been urging him to boost funding for the country’s armed forces for months, clamoring for Ukraine’s reservists to be called up as America’s warnings of an invasion intensified — an invasion Zelenskyy still thought unlikely. They wanted intensive war-planning, including the drafting and publication of civil defense orders, so people would know what to do when the guns roared.
“Ukraine is trapped with a national leader who does not think strategically,” Lesia Vasylenko, a lawmaker and member of the liberal and pro-European political Holos party, had told me five days before the invasion.
“I think that’s the thing he will be blamed for later. It’s not about knowing everything. It’s about refusing to have in your entourage experts who know what questions to ask, and having advisers who can contradict and challenge you, and we may pay a price for that,” she’d fumed.
Of course, Zelenskyy’s missteps — as Vasylenko and many other opposition lawmakers see them — have since been forgiven, but they have not been forgotten. And these missteps form the basis of their worries for post-war Ukraine. They see a pattern that will become even more troubling when the guns fall silent, arguing that the president’s strengths as a lionhearted wartime leader are ill-suited for peacetime.
War hasn’t done anything to temper Zelenskyy’s impatience with governing complexities or with institutions that don’t move as fast as he would like or fall in line fast enough. He prefers the big picture, ignores details and likes to rely on an inner circle of trusted friends.
But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now — even hero-worshipped — by a starstruck West for his inspirational wartime rhetoric, spellbinding oratory and skill at capturing the hearts of audiences from Washington to London and Brussels to Warsaw, Zelenskyy floundered as president before Russia invaded. Few gave him much chance of being reelected in 2024, as his poll numbers were plummeting — his favorability rating was at 31 percent by the end of 2021.
He had promised a lot — probably too much — but achieved little.
“Ukraine has two main problems: the war in the Donbas and the fear of people investing in the country,” Zelenskyy had said shortly after his election win. But his anti-corruption efforts stalled and were unhurried, while his promise to solve the problem of the Donbas went nowhere. And in his early eagerness to clinch a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who declined a sit-down, some criticized Zelenskyy for thinking too much of his powers of persuasion and charisma.
“He thought peace would be easy to establish because all you needed to do was to ‘look into Putin’s eyes’ and talk to him sincerely,” said lawmaker Mykola Kniazhytskyi.
“He became president without any political experience, or any experience in managing state structures. He thought running a state is actually quite simple. You make decisions and they have to be implemented,” Kniazhytskyi told me. And when things went wrong, his reaction was always, it’s “the fault of predecessors, who need to be imprisoned,” Kniazhytskyi said.
But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now, he floundered as president before Russia invaded | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Yet, Zelenskyy’s transformation from disappointing peacetime leader to, in the hyperbolic words of French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, “a new, young and magnificent founding father” of the free world, has been startling.
Even his domestic critics doff their caps to him for his strengths as a superb communicator: His daily addresses to Ukrainians have steadied them, given direction and boosted morale, even when spirits understandably flag. And they acknowledge he likely saved the country by declining U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s offer for “a ride” out of Kyiv.
“He has become a compelling leader,” said Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the upcoming “Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the Russian War.” According to Karatnycky, Zelenskyy’s strengths as a communicator match the times. “He’s good at channeling public opinion, but he’s more effective now because the country is much more united and surer about its identity, interests and objectives. He’s still the same guy he was — an actor and performer — but that makes him an ideal war leader because he’s able to embody the public impulse,” he added.
But when normal politics are in play and the public isn’t united, Zelenskyy’s an inconsistent leader who switches the script and recasts the story to chase the vagaries and whims of public opinion. “When the public purpose is clear, he has great strength, and in wartime, he has behind him the absolute power of the state. But when the carriage turns into a pumpkin again, he’s going to have to cope with a very different world,” Karatnycky concluded.
And that world hasn’t really gone away.
Domestic political criticism is mounting — though little noted by an international media still enraptured by Zelenskyy’s charismatic appeal and enthralled by the simple story of David versus Goliath.
Meanwhile, in the Verkhovna Rada — the country’s parliament — frustration is building, with lawmakers complaining they’re being overlooked by a government that was already impatient of oversight before the war and now shuns it almost entirely. Zelenskyy has only met with top opposition leaders once since Russia invaded — and that was nearly a year ago.
“The routine of ministers being questioned by the Rada has been abandoned,” said opposition lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a member of the European Solidarity party and former deputy prime minister in the previous government of former President Petro Poroshenko.
“Wartime does call for urgent decisions to be taken quickly, and it calls for shortened procedures. And so that’s kind of understandable,” she said. “But we are seeing decisions being increasingly centralized and concentrated in fewer hands, and this is having an impact on the balance of political power, and [it’s] damaging to the system of governance we are trying to develop and the strengthening of our democratic institutions in line with the criteria laid out by the EU for convergence.”
Klympush-Tsintsadze is worried the recent wave of anti-corruption arrests was more an exercise in smoke and mirrors in the run-up to February’s EU-Ukraine summit — and one that might be used as an opportunity to centralize power even further. “If someone thinks that centralization of power is the answer to our challenges, that someone is wrong,” she added. “I think it is important to watch very closely how anti-corruption cases develop, and whether there will be transparent investigations, and whether the rule of law will be closely observed.”
According to Kniazhytskyi, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Zelenskyy is a populist politician and shares the personality-focused flaws of this breed. However, what cheers the opposition lawmaker is how Ukrainian civil society has bloomed during the war, how local self-government has been strengthened because of wartime volunteering and mutual assistance and how some state bodies have performed — notably, the railways and the energy sector.
It is this — along with a strong sense of national belonging forged by the conflict — that will form the foundation of a strong post-war Ukraine, he said.
BRUSSELS — It would be a “red line” for the European Union if China sends arms to Russia, the EU’s foreign policy chief said Monday.
Josep Borrell’s warning came two days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed “deep concern” that China was considering providing potentially “lethal assistance” to Russia for its war against Ukraine.
Recalling a meeting he held on Saturday with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, Borrell told reporters: “I expressed our strong concern about China providing arms to Russia. I asked him not to do that, and expressing not only our concern, but the fact that for us, it would be a red line in our relationship.
“He told me that they’re not going to do it, that they don’t plan to do it,” Borrell said, adding: “But we will remain vigilant.”
Other EU foreign ministers attending a Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels also warned Beijing not to cross that line.
“If such a decision is taken [by China] it will definitely have consequences, of course,” Tobias Billström, foreign minister of Sweden, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, said. “We stand side by side with the United States on that message.”
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the EU would be on the same page as the U.S. should Chinese arms end up in Russian hands.
“There were those who expected the West … not to be united when it came to the Russian attack on Ukraine, but we were united. So I would think that, drawing from this lesson, there would be enough arguments for China not to assist Russia in its genocidal war in Ukraine,” Landsbergis said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also urged China to remain “pragmatic.”
“I personally have appealed to the Chinese leadership through direct channels and publicly not to offer any support to the Russians in this war. My hope is that Beijing will maintain a pragmatic attitude, because otherwise we are risking World War III, I think they are well aware of that,” he said in an interview with Italian media. “Our relationship with China has always been excellent, we have had intense economic relations for many years, and it is in everyone’s interest that they do not change.”
Chinese state-owned defense companies were found to be shipping navigation equipment, jamming technology and jet-fighter parts to sanctioned Russian government-owned defense companies, Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday announced $100 million in disaster relief aid for Turkey and Syria as the countries grapple with the aftermath of a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake that has killed at least 46,000 people.
The top US diplomat, who took a helicopter tour Sunday of some of the hardest-hit areas alongside Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, later told reporters at Incirlik Air Base that it was “really hard to put into words” the devastation he saw during the tour but said, “We are here to stand with the people of Turkey and Syria.”
The new round of funding includes $50 million under the Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Funds for emergency response efforts and an additional $50 million in humanitarian assistance through the State Department and USAID, according to the State Department.
The latest funding brings the total American assistance to $185 million. Private US nongovernmental organizations have already contributed another $66 million to response efforts thus far, according to a fact sheet provided by the State Department.
“Immediately after the earthquake hit, the United States and other countries jumped in,” Blinken said.
Efforts to retrieve survivors have been hampered by a cold winter spell across quake-stricken regions, while authorities grapple with the logistical challenges of transporting aid into northwestern Syria amid an acute humanitarian crisis compounded by years of political strife.
Blinken acknowledged that relief efforts in Syria were “very, very challenging” but vowed, “We’ll do everything we can, including making sure, for example, there’s absolutely no doubt that whatever sanctions against Syria do not affect the provision of humanitarian assistance.”
“They never have, but we’re going to make sure that we clear up any doubts about that so that anyone who’s able to can make sure they’re helping out in getting the aid to the folks who need it in Syria,” he said.
Blinken also met Sunday with representatives of the Syria Civil Defense volunteer organization, known as the White Helmets, in southern Turkey and committed US support to the group and other organizations “providing life-saving aid in response to this tragedy,” he said in a tweet.
The White Helmets have been doing the heavy lifting in the search, rescue and recovery operations in the rebel-controlled areas in north and northwestern Syria.
The group tweeted Sunday that members briefed Blinken on the response to the earthquake and the current situation in northwestern Syria, along with “the humanitarian situation, ways to support affected civilians, and mechanisms for achieving early recovery.”
Turkey’s disaster management authority said Sunday it had ended most search and rescue operations nearly two weeks after the earthquake struck as experts say the chances of survival for people trapped in the rubble this far into the disaster are unlikely.
Some efforts remain in the provinces of Kahramanmaraş and Hatay. On Saturday, a couple and their 12-year-old child were rescued in Hatay, 296 hours after the earthquake, state news agency Anadolu reported.
Blinken told reporters at Incirlik Air Base that it was “going to take a massive effort to rebuild, but we’re committed to supporting Turkey in that effort.”
“The most important thing right now is to get assistance to people who need it to get them through the winter and get them back on their feet,” he added.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made clear that the US has no doubt China was seeking to surveil the US via the balloon that was ultimately shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month.
“I can’t say dispositively what the original intent was, but that doesn’t matter because what we saw when it was over the United States was clearly an attempt to surveil very sensitive military sites,” Blinken said on ABC’s “This Week” in an interview taped Saturday.
“The balloon went over many of them. It, in some cases, loitered,” he added. “We took measures to protect that information. We took measures to get information about the balloon. And I think we’ll know more when we … actually get the remains.”
Following the downing of the suspected Chinese spy balloon, the US military downed three subsequent objects that were much smaller and are now believed to have not been tied to any country’s surveillance program, President Joe Biden said last week. Instead, they were likely used for weather or research purposes by private entities.
US officials have said that the Chinese balloon, in contrast, had a payload – or the equipment it was carrying – the size of roughly three buses and was capable of collecting signals intelligence and taking photos. The balloon traveled over sensitive sites in Montana, officials have said, but the administration has said it tracked the balloon’s path and worked to minimize its intelligence collection capabilities.
The US has said that the balloon was part of a large fleet controlled by the Chinese military that has conducted surveillance over at least 40 countries across five continents in recent years.
“There’s absolutely no doubt in our minds about what the balloon, once over the United States, was attempting to do. And no doubt in our minds about this surveillance balloon program that China has, and again, has been used over more than 40 countries around the world,” Blinken told ABC.
On the topic of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the top US diplomat said Sunday he has concerns over China’s support of Russia’s military, specifically that Beijing is considering supplying Moscow with “lethal support.”
CNN previously reported that the US has begun seeing “disturbing” trendlines of late in China’s support for Russia’s military, and there are signs that Beijing wants to “creep up to the line” of providing lethal military aid to Russia without getting caught, according to US officials familiar with the intelligence.
The officials would not describe in detail what intelligence the US has seen suggesting a recent shift in China’s posture but said US officials have been concerned enough that they shared the intelligence with allies and partners at the Munich Security Conference in Germany over the past several days.
“We’ve been watching this very closely,” Blinken told “Face the Nation” on CBS while in Munich.
“The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship,” Blinken said.
As the attempted Russian takeover of Ukraine nears its one-year mark, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS News on Saturday that China is actively considering providing lethal support, including weapons and ammunition to aid Moscow in its war against Ukraine.
“We’ve been concerned from day one about that possibility,” Blinken said in an interview with “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan on Saturday. Pressed on the type of lethal aid China is considering, Blinken spoke in general terms.
“There’s a whole gamut of things that — that fit in that category, everything from ammunition to the weapons themselves.”
Notably, China’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, told other leaders at the Munich Security Conference this week that China is working on a peace proposal to end the conflict. That public position runs contrary to what U.S. intelligence has indicated.
“We have seen them provide non-lethal support to Russia for use in Ukraine. The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the 2023 Munich Security Conference on Feb. 18, 2023 in Munich, Germany.
Johannes Simon / Getty Images
Blinken confirmed that Chinese companies are already providing non-lethal support to the Russian effort. He noted the relationship between Chinese companies and the Chinese government, saying, “To date, we have seen Chinese companies and of course, in China, there’s really no distinction between private companies and the state.”
Blinken is also in Germany for the Munich Security Conference, an annual event attended by top officials worldwide on defense, human security, and the global order. There, he spoke face to face with Yi on the consequences China would face if they were to provide weapons, ammunition, or other lethal aid to Russia.
Brennan asked Blinken if Wang offered an apology for the Chinese surveillance balloon that floated over U.S. airspace several weeks ago. Blinken said that there was no apology, but the hour-long meeting was useful.
“We have to make sure that the competition that we’re clearly engaged in, does not veer into conflict,” Blinken said. “But at the same time, we will very resolutely stand up for our interests.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned at the conference that Beijing “is watching closely to see the price Russia pays — or the reward it receives — for its aggression,” according to Politico.
In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping released a joint statement declaring a partnership without limits.
Blinken also said that Iran and Russia are expanding their military relationship.
“We’ve seen Iran provide drones that Russia is using in Ukraine to attack civilian infrastructure, to kill civilians,” Blinken said, adding that Iran’s assistance to Russia has “been going on for months.”
But now, Russia may also arm Iran, which is designated by the U.S. to be the largest state sponsor of terrorism.
“There’s an increasingly noxious relationship between Russia and Iran,” Blinken added. “Russia is also providing military equipment to Iran, including, it looks like, sophisticated fighter planes. That’s something that looks like it may be happening, which would make Iran an even greater threat, if it acquires that technology. So this is something that we’ve been talking about with allies and partners around the world. That relationship is a growing concern.”
Since the outset of the war, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has supported Putin’s military attack on Ukraine, stating the actions were justified as NATO’s expansion posed a “serious threat” to the stability of the region.
Blinken also commented on Vice President Kamala Harris’s announcement in Munich that the U.S. had formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine.
“The determination that — that we made crimes against humanity, that the vice president announced today, is unfortunately, starkly clear,” Blinken said. “And we’ve seen that almost from day one. We saw it in Bucha, when the Russian tide receded, we saw what was left in its wake. And it’s horrific. And we continue to see it across the country, the fact that they’re targeting civilians, targeting civilian infrastructure, so that people freeze to death,don’t have the lights on.”
President Biden has used the term genocide to refer to Russia’s actions. When asked if the State Department was working on legal determination of genocide, Blinken responded: “We will look at every possible termination, but we’re going to follow the facts, and we’re going to follow the law. These are very serious determinations, and we will engage in them very seriously.”
The following is a transcript of an interview with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that’s scheduled to air Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023, on “Face the Nation.”
MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is in Germany attending the Munich Security Conference. Mr. Secretary, I know you just met with your Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, who has publicly said the U.S. response to the spy balloon was ‘absurd,’ ‘hysterical,’ and an ‘effort to divert attention away from domestic problems.’ Was he that dismissive to you in private?
SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: Margaret, I don’t want to characterize what he said, I can tell you what I said. I made very clear to him that China sending a surveillance balloon over the United States, in violation of our sovereignty, in violation of international law, was unacceptable, and must never happen again. We also had an opportunity to talk about what’s happening here in Munich, the focus of the conversation of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and concerns that we have the China’s considering providing lethal support to Russia, in its efforts in Ukraine. And I was able to share with him, as President Biden had shared with President Xi, the serious consequences that would have for our relationship. Finally, it was important for me to underscore that we believe having lines of communication, engaging in direct diplomacy, is very important. We have a responsibility to manage our relationship in a responsible manner. That’s part of what this evening was about.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Does that mean their defense minister will pick up the next phone call from Secretary Austin instead of refusing it?
SEC. BLINKEN: Well, it’s one of the things that we talked about. The importance of having lines of communication, including military-to-military lines of communication. It’s vital to making sure that there aren’t miscommunications, misunderstandings, especially if you’ve got a crisis or some other situation on your hands. And so I tried to impress upon my Chinese counterpart the importance of having those contacts, including military-to-military.
MARGARET BRENNAN: A senior Pentagon official said last week that President Xi Jinping was caught by surprise by the surveillance balloon and that he doesn’t trust his own military. Did the left and right hand of the Chinese government not know what was going on?
SEC. BLINKEN: I can’t speak to that, Margaret. But what I can- what I can tell you is this. It doesn’t matter in the sense that China is responsible for this action. And ultimately, as the leader of the country, President Xi is responsible. It’s one of the reasons it was important for me on behalf of President Biden to share directly with the most senior Chinese foreign policy official, the very clear determination that this must not happen again.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, if Colin Kahl, this Pentagon officials’ comments are accurate, that would raise the risk of miscalculation if China doesn’t have control over its own military. That’s why I wanted you to clarify that.
SEC. BLINKEN: So Margaret, I can’t again- I can’t speak to the- the Chinese views on this. I can only imagine that China must be in the process of trying to draw its own lessons from this incident. And of course, we’re not the only- the only ones concerned, Chinese use these surveillance balloons over more than 40 countries across five continents. So one of the things I’m hearing here in Munich, is real concern about the surveillance balloon program. I suspect the fact that it’s been exposed by us is going to have to cause China to take another look at this.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I’m going to come back to what you mentioned in terms of providing support to Russia. There is open-source reporting that Chinese companies are providing surveillance equipment to that mercenary group, the Wagner group fighting in Ukraine. Does the U.S. consider this to be providing military support to Russia?
SEC. BLINKEN: We’ve been concerned from day one about- about that possibility. In fact, if you go back to the very first conversations that President Biden and President Xi had about Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, just a couple of weeks into the war, President Biden shared with with President Xi our deep concern about the possibility China would provide lethal support to Russia to- to Russia in this effort, as well as engaged in the systematic evasion of sanctions. And the reason for that concern was just weeks before the aggression, you’ll remember that President Xi and President Putin had a meeting in which they just talked about a partnership with no limits. And we were concerned that among those- among the lack of limits would be Chinese support for Russia in the war. We’ve been watching this very closely. To date, we have seen Chinese companies and of course, in China, there’s really no distinction between private companies and the state. We have seen them provide non-lethal support to Russia for use in Ukraine. The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Lethal support, what would that entail? What do you think–
SEC. BLINKEN: Weapons. Weapons.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s ammunition, that’s–
SEC. BLINKEN: Primarily weapons.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Primarily–
SEC. BLINKEN: There’s a whole gamut of things that- that fit in that category, everything from ammunition to the weapons themselves.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Iran is also accused of providing more weaponry to Russia here. So they are–
SEC. BLINKEN: That’s right. We’ve seen Iran provide–
MARGARET BRENNAN: They are building an alliance.
SEC. BLINKEN: We’ve seen Iran provide drones that Russia is using in Ukraine to attack civilian infrastructure, to kill civilians. This is something that’s been going on for months. We’ve been working to expose that, to take action against it, to sanction it. There’s an increasingly noxious relationship between Russia and Iran. And it’s actually a two way street. Not only is Iran providing this- this equipment to Russia, but Russia is also providing military equipment to Iran, including, it looks like, sophisticated fighter planes. That’s something that looks like it may be happening, which would make Iran an even greater threat, if it acquires that technology. So this is something that we’ve been talking about with allies and partners around the world. That relationship is a growing concern.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And that would make them party to this conflict directly. In other words, this isn’t just a war between Russia and Ukraine.
SEC. BLINKEN: Well, what we’ve seen with Iran is that the malicious activities that it’s engaged in, through – throughout the region, and it’s been engaged in for years, we now see that expanding out to other parts of the world, and particularly in this case, to Russia’s war against Ukraine. And that’s, of course, a real concern. We’ve also seen them targeting opponents of the regime, including in the United States, as you know, some individuals were arrested just a short while ago for trying to assassinate an Iranian journalist in New York, who opposes the regime.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So from your conversation with your Chinese counterpart, do I understand that usually, when you say it’s a direct conversation, that’s “diplo-speak” for it didn’t go very well? It was pretty heated? Or did you make plans to visit Beijing in the near future?
SEC. BLINKEN: It’s “diplo-speak” for saying it was very important to speak very clearly, very directly, about the deep concerns we have. The concerns that we have about this surveillance balloon, and the entire program, the concerns we have about the possibility that China will provide lethal material support to Russia and its war effort against Ukraine–
MARGARET BRENNAN: But there was no apology?
SEC. BLINKEN: And it’s important that- again, don’t want to characterize what they said, although it’s safe to say there was no apology. But again, it’s also important, and this is why it was also useful to have this meeting this evening, also important to have these direct lines of communication, to make sure that- that we are talking to engage in diplomacy. We have to manage this relationship responsibly. We have to make sure that the competition that we’re clearly engaged in, does not veer into conflict, into a- into a new Cold War. It’s not in our interest, I won’t speak to theirs, but it’s not in ours. But at the same time, we will very resolutely stand up for our interests. We will resolutely stand up for our values. That’s what we’ve been doing over the last couple of years and that’s what we’ll continue to do.
MARGARET BRENNAN: In terms of Russia’s war, 97% of its military is already engaged in this fight in Ukraine, according to the UK, but they have substantial airpower they haven’t tapped into yet. Do you see evidence that Russia is preparing an aerial attack on Ukraine?
SEC. BLINKEN: Russia’s losses have been horrific. You’re right that 90- 97 percent or so of their ground forces have been engaged in this war, which is extraordinary. And the losses to date have been horrific. Public figures suggest 200,000 casualties, that is a combination of those killed, and those wounded. The destruction of their war machine itself, the tanks, the armored vehicles, the missile launchers, etc, has also been extensive. In terms of airpower, they tried some of this early on. Ukraine’s air defenses were actually successful in shooting down a lot of Russian aircraft. So they backed off of using aircraft. That doesn’t mean that they won’t try to do that going forward. But at least to date, Ukraine has had air defenses that have allowed it to pose such a threat to Russian aircraft that they haven’t really been flying.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So do you see a change in the U.S. position to greenlight other countries to provide fighter jets to Ukraine? Do you expect any policy change when President Biden visits Poland in the days to come?
SEC. BLINKEN: Margaret, what we’re focused on is trying to the best of our ability to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs, when it needs it, to deal with the challenge it faces in the moment. And all along, we’ve been very clear that we shouldn’t fixate or focus on any particular weapons system, because it’s not just the weapon system. You’ve got to make sure that the Ukrainians are trained to use it, you’ve got to make sure they have the capacity to maintain it, because if they’re not trained to use it, it’s not going to do them a lot of good. If they can’t maintain it and it falls apart in a week, it’s not going to do them a lot of good. And so, some of these weapons systems of one kind or another, are highly sophisticated, things that they haven’t used in the past, we’ve got to make sure that- that they have the capacity to use them and use them effectively–
MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re talking about U.S. jets there, it sounds like, versus- versus the Soviet-era jets–
SEC. BLINKEN: Well, I’m talking about any- any–
MARGARET BRENNAN: that Poland has, for example, that could be transferred, that they’ve offered to transfer–
SEC. BLINKEN: I’m talking about any sophisticated piece of military equipment that the Ukrainians haven’t had practice using in the past. But the other thing is this, we’re also very focused on the here and now and the months to come. Right now, what’s going on is this. The Russians are engaged in an offensive along the eastern front, and they’re putting a huge amount into it and they are suffering terribly for that effort, as I said, losing a huge number of forces, using- losing a huge number of pieces of equipment. And the Ukrainians are doing everything that they can with our assistance to withstand that, and they’re doing that very, very well. But in the months ahead, we fully anticipate that Ukraine will engage in its own counter offensive. And what’s vitally important is that they have what they need for that counter offensive, not what they may need in a year or two years. We’re working on that too, but the focus now has to be on what would they be able to use right now to defend themselves against the Russian offensive, and to engage in their own offensive to take back more of the land that was seized by Russia by force.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I’m going to ask you, lastly, about this designation of crimes against humanity that the Vice President announced. She cited horrific things like a four-year-old girl being raped by Russian soldiers, thousands of Ukrainian children being taken from their families, to say that this constitutes legally crimes against humanity. President Biden has already used the term genocide. Is the State Department working on a genocide determination?
SEC. BLINKEN: We will, as always, look at every legal possibility when it comes to going after the atrocities that Russia is committing in Ukraine. The determination that- that we made crimes against humanity that the Vice President announced today is unfortunately, starkly clear. And we’ve seen that almost from day one. We saw it in Bucha, when the Russian tide receded, we saw what was left in its wake, and it’s horrific. And we continue to see it across the country, the fact that they’re targeting civilians, targeting civilian infrastructure, so that people freeze to death, don’t have the lights on.This practice that, as a parent, is almost impossible to fathom, of literally seizing Ukrainian children, sending them to Russia, sending them to centers, there are about 43 of them that we found. There was a project undertaken by Yale University with our support that has documented this, to 43 centers in Russia and some in Ukrainian territory that Russia now holds. Some of these places are closer to Alaska than they are to Ukraine. Separating them from their families and then having them adopted by Russians. This is in and of itself, horrific. It also speaks to the fact that President Putin has been trying from day one to erase Ukraine’s identity, to erase its future. That’s what’s going on, and that too, is a crime against humanity.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Some of what you described is consistent with the statutory basis for the Genocide Convention. So I’m hearing what you’re saying as you are potentially looking at that?
SEC. BLINKEN: We will look at every possible determination, but we’re going to follow the facts, and we’re going to follow the law. These are very serious determinations, and we will engage in them very seriously.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Secretary Blinken, thank you for your time today.
SEC. BLINKEN: Good to be with you. Thanks, Margaret.
