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Tag: defense departments

  • Exclusive: Philippine defense secretary vows to stand up to ‘bully’ China | CNN

    Exclusive: Philippine defense secretary vows to stand up to ‘bully’ China | CNN


    Manila, Philippines
    CNN
     — 

    China is behaving like a schoolyard bully toward smaller countries, the Philippine defense secretary told CNN Friday during an exclusive interview in which he warned his nation, and the wider world, had to stand up to Beijing’s territorial expansion in the South China Sea.

    “I cannot think of any clearer case of bullying than this,” said Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr. “It’s not the question of stealing your lunch money, but it’s really a question of stealing your lunch bag, your chair and even enrollment in school.”

    His comments follow increasingly assertive moves by the Philippines to protect its claim to shoals in the South China Sea during more than a month of high-stakes maritime drama.

    While tensions between China and the Philippines over the highly-contested and strategic waterway have festered for years, confrontations have spiked this summer, renewing regional fears that a mistake or miscalculation at sea could trigger a wider conflict, including with the United States.

    The region is widely seen as a potential flashpoint for global conflagration and the recent confrontations have raised concerns among Western observers of potentially developing into an international incident if China, a global power, decides to act more forcefully against the Philippines, a US treaty ally.

    Recent incidents have involved stand offs between China’s coast guard, what Manila says are shadowy Chinese “maritime militia” boats and tiny wooden Philippine fishing vessels, Chinese water cannons blocking the resupply of a shipwrecked Philippine military outpost, and a lone Filipino diver cutting through a floating Chinese barrier.

    Teodoro characterized the Philippines’ refusal to back down in the waters within its 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone as a fight for the very existence of the Philippines.

    “We’re fighting for our fisherfolk, we’re fighting for our resources. We’re fighting for our integrity as an archipelagic state… Our existence as the Republic of the Philippines is vital to this fight,” Teodoro said in a sit down interview at the Department of National Defense in Manila. “It’s not for us, it’s for the future generations too.”

    Video purportedly shows Chinese ship firing water cannon at Filipino vessel in disputed waters

    “And if we don’t stop, China is going to creep and creep into what is within our sovereign jurisdiction, our sovereign rights and within our territory,” he said, adding that Beijing wont stop until it controls “the whole South China Sea.”

    Beijing says it is safeguarding its sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea and warned the Philippines this week “not to make provocations or seek troubles.” It accused Philippine fishing and coast guard vessels of illegal entry into the area.

    China claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea, and most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles from mainland China. Along with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan also hold competing claims.

    Over the past two decades China has occupied a number of reefs and atolls across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports, which the Philippines says challenges its sovereignty and fishing rights as well as endangering marine biodiversity in the resource-rich waterway.

    In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.

    But Beijing has ignored the decision and continues to expand its presence in the waterway.

    Philippine Coast Guard removes Chinese floating barrier in disputed area of the South China Sea.

    Video released of diver cutting China’s floating sea barrier

    In his first sit-down TV interview with an international news outlet since he took the position in June, Teodoro was keen to stress whatever happens in the South China Sea impacts the globe.

    Crucially, the waterway is vital to international trade with trillions of dollars in global shipping passing through it each year. It’s also home to vast fertile fishing grounds upon which many lives and livelihoods depend, and beneath the waves lie huge reserves of natural gas and oil that competing claimants are vying for.

    With nations already suffering from inflation brought about by Russia’s war in Ukraine, there are concerns that any slow-down in travel and transporting of goods in the South China Sea would result in significant impact to the global economy.

    “It will choke one of the most vital supply chain waterways in the whole world, it will choke international trade, and it will subject the world economy, particularly in supply chains to their whim,” Teodoro said, adding that if this were to happen, “the whole world will react.”

    The defense secretary warned that smaller nations, including regional partners, rely on international law for their survival.

    “Though they need China, they need Russia, they see that they too may become a victim of bullying. If they (China) close off the South China Sea, perhaps the next target may be the Straits of Malacca and then the Indian Ocean,” Teodoro said.

    This photo taken on February 14, 2020 shows a Filipino fisherman sailing off at sunset from the coast of Bacnotan, La Union province, in northwestern Philippines facing the South China Sea. (Photo by Romeo GACAD / AFP) (Photo by ROMEO GACAD/AFP via Getty Images)

    Why it matters who owns the seas (April 2021)

    Only a few years ago the Philippines was treading a much more cautious path with its huge neighbor China.

    But since taking office last year, Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr has taken a stronger stance over the South China Sea than his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte.

    Marcos has also strengthened US relations that had frayed under Duterte, with the two allies touting increased cooperation and joint patrols in the South China Sea in the future.

    In April, the Philippines identified the locations of four new military bases the US will gain access to, as part of an expanded defense agreement analysts say is aimed at combating China.

    Washington has condemned Beijing’s recent actions in the contested sea and threatened to intervene under its mutual defense treaty obligations if Philippine vessels came under armed attack there.

    US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Lindsey Ford reiterated Washington’s commitment to the mutual defense treaty in testimony before a US House subcommittee on Tuesday.

    She said the treaty covers not only the Philippine armed forces, but also its coast guard and civilian vessels and aircraft.

    “We have said repeatedly and continue to say that we stand by those commitments absolutely,” Ford said.

    A Philippine supply boat, center, maneuvers around Chinese coast guard ships as they tried to block its way near Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin Shoal, at the disputed South China Sea on August 22.

    Defense secretary Teodoro has concerns about a possible escalation “because of the dangerous and reckless maneuvering of Chinese vessels” but he was clear that any incident – accidental or otherwise – the blame would lie with China “squarely on their shoulders.”

    And he called global powers to help pressure Beijing over its moves in the South China Sea.

    “Peace and stability in that one place in the world will generate some relief and comfort to everyone,” he said.

    As part of the Marcos administration’s commitment to boost the Philippines defense and monitoring capabilities in the South China Sea, Teodoro said further “air and naval assets” have been ordered.

    “There will be more patrol craft coming in, more rotary aircraft and we are studying the possibility to acquiring multi-role fighters,” he said, adding that would “make a difference in our air defense capabilities.”

    Preferring cooler heads to prevail, Teodoro said that diplomacy would provide a way forward providing Chinese leader Xi Jinping complies with international law.

    “Filipinos I believe are always willing to talk, just as long that talk does not mean whispers in a back room, or shouting at each other, meaning to say there must be substantial talks, open, transparent and on a rules-based basis,” he said, while also adding that talks cannot be used as a delaying tactic by Beijing.

    The Philippines, he said, has “no choice” but to stand up to China because otherwise “we lose our identity and integrity as a nation.”

    But conflict, he added, was not the answer or desired outcome.

    “Standing up doesn’t mean really going to war with China, heavens no. We don’t want that. But we have to stand our ground when our ground is intruded into.”

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  • Fact check: The first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election | CNN Politics

    Fact check: The first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidates delivered a smattering of false and misleading claims at the first debate of the 2024 election – though none of the eight candidates on stage in Milwaukee delivered anything close to the bombardment of false statements that typically characterized the debate performances of former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner who skipped the Wednesday event.

    Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina inaccurately described the state of the economy in early 2021 and repeated a long-ago-debunked false claim about the Biden-era Justice Department. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie misstated the sentence attached to a gun law relevant to the investigation into the president’s son Hunter Biden. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis misled about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, omitting mention of his early pandemic restrictions.

    Below is a fact check of those claims and various others from the debate, some of which left out key context. In addition, below is a brief fact check of some of Trump’s claims from a pre-taped interview he did with Tucker Carlson, which was posted online shortly before the debate aired. Trump made a variety of statements that were not true.

    DeSantis and the pandemic

    DeSantis criticized the federal government for its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming it had locked down the economy, and then said: “In Florida, we led the country out of lockdown, and we kept our state free and open.”

    Facts First: DeSantis’s claim is misleading at best. Before he became a vocal opponent of pandemic restrictions, DeSantis imposed significant restrictions on individuals, businesses and other entities in Florida in March 2020 and April 2020; some of them extended months later into 2020. He did then open up the state, with a gradual phased approach, but he did not keep it open from the start.

    DeSantis received criticism in March 2020 for what some critics perceived as a lax approach to the pandemic, which intensified as Florida beaches were packed during Spring Break. But that month and the month following, DeSantis issued a series of major restrictions. For example, DeSantis:

    • Closed Florida’s schools, first with a short-term closure in March 2020 and then, in April 2020, with a shutdown through the end of the school year. (In June 2020, he announced a plan for schools to reopen for the next school year that began in August. By October 2020, he was publicly denouncing school closures, calling them a major mistake and saying all the information hadn’t been available that March.)
    • On March 14, 2020, announced a ban on most visits to nursing homes. (He lifted the ban in September 2020.)
    • On March 17, 2020, ordered bars and nightclubs to close for 30 days and restaurants to operate at half-capacity. (He later approved a phased reopening plan that took effect in May 2020, then issued an order in September 2020 allowing these establishments to operate at full capacity.)
    • On March 17, 2020, ordered gatherings on public beaches to be limited to a maximum of 10 people staying at least six feet apart, then, three days later, ordered a shutdown of public beaches in two populous counties, Broward and Palm Beach. (He permitted those counties’ beaches to reopen by the last half of May.)
    • On March 20, 2020, prohibited “any medically unnecessary, non-urgent or non-emergency” medical procedures. (The prohibition was lifted in early May 2020.)
    • On March 23, 2020, ordered that anyone flying to Florida from an area with “substantial community spread” of the virus, “to include the New York Tri-State Area (Connecticut, New Jersey and New York),” isolate or quarantine for 14 days or the duration of their stay in Florida, whichever was shorter, or face possible jail time or a fine. Later that week, he added Louisiana to the list. (He lifted the Louisiana restriction in June 2020 and the rest in August 2020.)
    • On April 3, 2020, imposed a statewide stay-home order that temporarily required people in Florida to “limit their movements and personal interactions outside of their home to only those necessary to obtain or provide essential services or conduct essential activities.” (Beginning in May 2020, the state switched to a phased reopening plan that, for months, included major restrictions on the operations of businesses and other entities; DeSantis described it at the time as a “very slow and methodical approach” to reopening.)

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale

    Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, said: “Donald Trump added $8 trillion to our debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us for this.”

    Facts First: Haley’s figure is accurate. The total public debt stood at about $19.9 trillion on the day Trump took office in 2017 and then increased by about $7.8 trillion over Trump’s four years, to about $27.8 trillion on the day he left office in 2021.

    It’s worth noting, however, that the increase in the debt during any president’s tenure is not the fault of that president alone. A significant amount of spending under any president is the result of decisions made by their predecessors – such as the creation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid decades ago – and by circumstances out of a president’s control, notably including the global Covid-19 pandemic under Trump; the debt spiked in 2020 after Trump approved trillions in emergency pandemic relief spending that Congress had passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

    Still, Trump did choose to approve that spending. And his 2017 tax cuts, unanimously opposed by congressional Democrats, were another major contributor to the debt spike.

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Katie Lobosco

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum claimed that Biden’s signature climate bill costs $1.2 trillion dollars and is “just subsidizing China.”

    Facts First: This claim needs context. The clean energy pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act – Democrats’ climate bill – passed with an initial price tag of nearly $370 billion. However, since that bill is made up of tax incentives, that price tag could go up depending on how many consumers take advantage of tax credits to buy electric vehicles and put solar panels on their homes, and how many businesses use the subsidies to install new utility scale wind and solar in the United States.

    Burgum’s figure comes from a Goldman Sachs report, which estimated the IRA could provide $1.2 trillion in clean energy tax incentives by 2032 – about a decade from now.

    On Burgum’s claim that Biden’s clean energy agenda will be a boon to China, the IRA was specifically written to move the manufacturing supply chain for clean energy technology like solar panels and EV batteries away from China and to the United States.

    In the year since it was passed, the IRA has spurred 83 new or expanded manufacturing facilities in the US, and close to 30,000 new clean energy manufacturing jobs, according to a tally from trade group American Clean Power.

    -From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

    With the economy as one of the main topics on the forefront of voters’ minds, Scott aimed to make a case for Republican policies, misleadingly suggesting they left the US economy in record shape before Biden took office.

    “There is no doubt that during the Trump administration, when we were dealing with the COVID virus, we spent more money,” Scott said. “But here’s what happened at the end of our time in the majority: we had low unemployment, record low unemployment, 3.5% for the majority of the population, and a 70-year low for women. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians had an all-time low.”

    Facts First: This is false. Scott’s claims don’t accurately reflect the state of the US economy at the end of the Republican majority in the Senate. And in some cases, his exaggerations echo what Trump himself frequently touted about the economy under his leadership.

    By the time Trump left office and the Republicans lost the Senate majority in January 2021, US unemployment was not at a record low. The US unemployment rate dropped to a seasonally adjusted rate of 3.5% in September 2019, the country’s lowest in 50 years. While it hovered around that level for five months, Scott’s assertion ignores the coronavirus pandemic-induced economic destruction that followed. In April 2020, the unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% — the highest level since monthly records began in 1948. As of December 2020, the unemployment rate was at 6.7%.

    Nor was the unemployment rate for women at a 70-year low by the end of Trump’s time in office. It reached a 66-year low during certain months of 2019, at 3.4% in April and 3.6% in August, but by December 2020, unemployment for women was at 6.7%.

    The unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians were also not at all-time lows at the end of 2020, but they did reach record lows during Trump’s tenure as president.

    -From CNN’s Tara Subramaniam

    Scott said that the Justice Department under President Joe Biden is targeting “parents that show up at school board meetings. They are called, under this DOJ, they’re called domestic terrorists.”

    Facts First: It is false that the Justice Department referred to parents as domestic terrorists. The claim has been debunked several times – during the uproar at school boards over Covid-19 restrictions and anti-racism curriculums; after Kevin McCarthy claimed Republicans would investigate Merrick Garland with a majority in the House; and even by a federal judge. The Justice Department never called parents terrorists for attending or wanting to attend school board meetings.

    The claim stems from a 2021 letter from The National School Boards Associations asking the Justice Department to “deal with” the uptick in threats against education officials and saying that “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials” could be classified as “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” In response, Garland released a memo encouraging federal and local authorities to work together against the harassment campaigns levied at schools, but never endorsed the “domestic terrorism” notion.

    A federal judge even threw out a lawsuit over the accusation, ruling that Garland’s memo did little more than announce a “series of measures” that directed federal authorities to address increasing threats targeting school board members, teachers and other school employees.

    -From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

    Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, said the US is spending “less than three and a half percent of our defense budget” on Ukraine aid, and that in terms of financial aid relative to GDP, “11 of the European countries have given more than the US.”

    Facts First: This is partly true. Haley’s claim regarding the US aid to Ukraine compared to the total defense budget is slightly under the actual percentage, but it is accurate that 11 European countries have given more aid to Ukraine as a percentage of their total GDP than the US.

    As of August 14, the US has committed more than $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, according to the Defense Department. In comparison, the Fiscal Year 2023 defense budget was $858 billion – making aid to Ukraine just over 5% of the total US defense budget.

    As of May 2023, according to a Council of Foreign Relations tracker, 11 countries were providing a higher share in aid to Ukraine relative to their GDP than the US – led by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

    -From CNN’s Haley Britzky

    Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that the Trump administration “spent funding to backfill on the military cuts of the Obama administration.”

    Facts First: This is misleading. While military spending decreased under the Obama administration, it was largely due to the 2011 Budget Control Act, which received Republican support and resulted in automatic spending cuts to the defense budget.

    Mike Pence, a senator at the time, voted in favor of the Budget Control Act.

    -From CNN’s Haley Britzky

    Christie said President Biden’s son Hunter Biden was “facing a 10-year mandatory minimum” for lying on a federal form when he purchased a gun in 2018.

    Facts First: Christie, a former federal prosecutor, clearly misstated the law. This crime can lead to a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, but it doesn’t have a 10-year mandatory minimum.

    These comments are related to the highly scrutinized Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden, which is currently ongoing after a plea deal fell apart earlier this summer.

    As part of the now-defunct deal, Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and enter into a “diversion agreement” with prosecutors, who would drop the gun possession charge in two years if he consistently stayed out of legal trouble and passed drug tests.

    The law in question makes it a crime to purchase a firearm while using or addicted to illegal drugs. Hunter Biden has acknowledged struggling with crack cocaine addiction at the time, and admitted at a court hearing and in court papers that he violated this law by signing the form.

    The US Sentencing Commission says, “The statutory maximum penalty for the offense is ten years of imprisonment.” There isn’t a mandatory 10-year punishment, as Christie claimed.

    During his answer, Christie also criticized the Justice Department for agreeing to a deal in June where Hunter Biden could avoid prosecution on the felony gun offense. That deal was negotiated by special counsel David Weiss, who was first appointed to the Justice Department by former President Donald Trump.

    -From CNN’s Marshall Cohen

    Burgum and Scott got into a back and forth over IRS staffing with Burgum saying that the “Biden administration wanted to put 87,000 people in the IRS,” and Scott suggesting they “fire the 87,000 IRS agents.”

    Facts First: This figure needs context.

    The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last year without any Republican votes, authorized $80 billion in new funding for the IRS to be delivered over the course of a decade.

    The 87,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees with a nearly $80 billion investment over 10 years.

    While the funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees over time, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations.

    Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up most of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

    The IRS has not said precisely how many new “agents” will be hired with the funding. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000. And it’s worth noting that the IRS may not receive all of the $80 billion after Republicans were able to claw back $20 billion of the new funding as part of a deal to address the debt ceiling made earlier this year.

    -From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

    Trump repeated a frequent claim during his interview with Carlson that streamed during the GOP debate that his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House was “covered” under the Presidential Records Act and that he is “allowed to do exactly that.”

    Facts First: This is false. The Presidential Records Act says the exact opposite – that the moment presidents leave office, all presidential records are to be turned over to the federal government. Keeping documents at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency concluded was in clear contravention of that law.

    According to the Presidential Records Act, “upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.”

    The sentence makes clear that a president has no authority to keep documents after leaving the White House.

    The National Archives even released a statement refuting the notion that Trump’s retention of documents was covered by the Presidential Records Act, writing in a June news release that “the PRA requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations.”

    -From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

    While discussing electric vehicles, Trump claimed that California “is in a big brownout because their grid is a disaster,” adding that the state’s ambitious electric vehicle goals won’t work with the grid in such shape.

    Facts First: Trump’s claim that California’s grid is currently in a “big brownout” and is a “disaster” isn’t true. California’s grid suffered rolling blackouts in 2020, but it has performed quite well in the face of extreme heat this summer, owing in large part to a massive influx of renewable energy including battery storage. These big batteries keep energy from wind and solar running when the wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining. (Batteries are also being deployed at a rapid rate in Texas, a red state.)

    Another reason California’s grid has stayed stable this year even during extreme temperature spikes is the fact that a deluge of snow and rain this winter and spring has refilled reservoirs that generate electricity using hydropower.

    As Trump insinuated, there are real questions about how well the state’s grid will hold up as California’s drivers shift to electric vehicles by the millions by 2035 – the same year it will phase out selling new gas-powered cars. California state officials say they are preparing by adding new capacity to the grid and urging more people to charge their vehicles overnight and during times of the day when fewer people are using energy. But independent experts say the state needs to exponentially increase its clean energy while also building out huge amounts of new EV chargers to achieve its goals.

    -From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

    Trump and the border wall

    Trump claimed to Carlson, “I had the strongest border in the history of our country, and I built almost 500 miles of wall. You know, they’d like to say, ‘Oh, was it less?’ No, I built 500 miles. In fact, if you check with the authorities on the border, we built almost 500 miles of wall.”

    Facts First: This needs context. Trump and his critics are talking about different things when they use different figures for how much border wall was built during his presidency. Trump is referring to all of the wall built on the southern border during his administration, even in areas that already had some sort of barrier before. His critics are only counting the Trump-era wall that was built in parts of the border that did not have any previous barrier.

    A total of 458 miles of southern border wall was built under Trump, according to a federal report written two days after Trump left office and obtained by CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez. That is 52 miles of “primary” wall built where no barriers previously existed, plus 33 miles of “secondary” wall that was built in spots where no barriers previously existed, plus another 373 miles of primary and secondary wall that was built to replace previous barriers the federal government says had become “dilapidated and/or outdated.”

    Some of Trump’s rival candidates, such DeSantis and Christie, have used figures around 50 miles while criticizing Trump for failing to finish the wall – counting only the primary wall built where no barriers previously existed.

    While some Trump critics have scoffed at the replacement wall, the Trump-era construction was generally much more formidable than the older barriers it replaced, which were often designed to deter vehicles rather than people on foot. Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff tweeted in 2020: “As someone who has spent a lot of time lately in the shadow of the border wall, I need to puncture this notion that ‘replacement’ sections are ‘not new.’ There is really no comparison between vehicle barriers made from old rail ties and 30-foot bollards.”

    Ideally, both Trump and his opponents would be clearer about what they are talking about: Trump that he is including replacement barriers, his opponents that they are excluding those barriers.

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale

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  • China’s defense minister warns against ‘playing with fire’ on Taiwan during Russia meeting | CNN

    China’s defense minister warns against ‘playing with fire’ on Taiwan during Russia meeting | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    China’s defense minister Li Shangfu on Tuesday warned against “playing with fire” when it comes to Taiwan in a veiled jab at the United States as he addressed a security conference in Russia.

    Speaking at the Moscow Conference on International Security, Li said attempts to “use Taiwan to contain China,” would “surely end in failure,” according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

    Li’s comments echoed previous statements by Chinese officials but the location of his speech was significant and symbolic given Moscow’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

    China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan and has vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary. It has repeatedly castigated American interactions with the island, with which Washington does not have official diplomatic ties, including for the sale of US arms to Taipei.

    Li, who was sanctioned by the US in 2018 for purchases of Russian weapons, joined the Moscow security conference as he began a six-day trip to Russia and its close ally Belarus.

    Senior defense officials from more than 20 “friendly states,” including Belarus, Iran and Myanmar will also attend the forum, Russian state media previously reported, citing Moscow’s defense ministry, which organizes the annual event. No Western countries were invited, state media said.

    The visit is Li’s second to Russia since assuming his role as defense chief earlier this year. It comes as Beijing has continued to bolster its security ties with Moscow, despite its unrelenting assault on Ukraine, which has triggered a humanitarian disaster with global ramifications.

    In a pre-recorded message to the same Moscow conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the US of adding “fuel to the fire” of global conflicts, including through its support of Ukraine.

    China has used similar rhetoric in its own official comments about the conflict, despite maintaining that it remains a neutral party and a proponent of peace.

    Li on Tuesday also told attendees that China’s military was “a firm force in maintaining world peace,” and that Chinese leader Xi Jinping aimed to stabilize global security in “a world of chaos.”

    “We are willing to work with other militaries to strengthen mutual trust in military security strategies and practical cooperation in various specialized fields,” Li added, according to Xinhua.

    Russian state-run media Sputnik also cited Li as saying that military relations between China and Russia do not target any third party – a point Chinese officials have made in the past. The Xinhua report did not include the statement.

    Li met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu to discuss cooperation between the two countries’ militaries, Xinhua said. China and Russia regularly carry out joint exercises – including a joint naval patrol off the coast of Alaska in recent weeks.

    The Chinese defense chief also held bilateral meetings with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam and other countries’ defense departments and military leaders on the sidelines of the conference.

    Li’s comments on Taiwan come on the heels of a backlash from Beijing as Taiwan’s Vice President William Lai, a front-runner in the island’s upcoming presidential race, makes planned stopovers in the United States during travel for an official visit to Paraguay.

    China’s foreign ministry condemned the stopover on Sunday, calling Lai a “trouble maker through and through.”

    The US maintains an unofficial relationship with Taipei after formally establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979, but is bound by law to provide the democratic island with the means to defend itself.

    During a speech in New York, Lai declared Taiwan will “never back down” to threats from China.

    “No matter how great the threat of authoritarianism is to Taiwan, we absolutely will not be scared nor cower, we will uphold the values of democracy and freedom,” he said.

    China has in recent years ramped up its military intimidation of the island, including following meetings between Taiwanese leaders and US lawmakers.

    Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has also drawn increased attention to Taiwan as a potential security flashpoint in Asia.

    Despite broad differences with the geopolitical circumstances of Russia and Ukraine, the optics of a seemingly more powerful aggressor launching an attack driven by a vision of unification have heightened focus on China’s intentions toward Taiwan.

    Some analysts have suggested that China was watching Western reaction to Russian aggression in Ukraine with an eye to understanding possible responses to any potential, future moves against Taiwan.

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  • Republican congressman says Tuberville’s hold on military nominations is ‘paralyzing’ and a ‘national security problem’ | CNN Politics

    Republican congressman says Tuberville’s hold on military nominations is ‘paralyzing’ and a ‘national security problem’ | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul, a Republican, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s hold on military nominations is “paralyzing” and a “national security problem.”

    “The idea that one man in the Senate can hold this up for months … is paralyzing the Department of Defense,” McCaul said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

    “I think that is a national security problem and a national security issue,” the Texas congressman said.

    Tuberville, of Alabama, has delayed the confirmations of more than 300 top military nominees over his opposition to the Pentagon’s policy of reimbursing service members and their families who have to travel to receive abortion care. Tuberville says the Pentagon’s reproductive health policies violate the law, but Pentagon officials have pointed to a Justice Department memo that says the policies are lawful.

    A spokesperson for Tuberville said McCaul’s view “just isn’t accurate.”

    “No one can stop (Senate Majority Leader) Chuck Schumer from holding votes on these nominations. He just doesn’t want to,” spokesperson Steven Stafford wrote in an email to CNN. “It’s also inaccurate because acting officials are in all of these roles. In some cases these acting officials are the nominees for permanent roles. No jobs are open or going undone right now.”

    One senator can hold up nominations or legislation in the chamber, and Tuberville’s stance has left three military services to operate without a Senate-confirmed leader for the first time in history.

    It’s possible to confirm each nominee one by one, but Senate Democrats have argued that would take up valuable floor time – despite a five-week recess in August.

    McCaul said on Sunday that he wishes Tuberville would reconsider his stance and that the Republican Party is working on the abortion travel policy issue through the National Defense Authorization Act.

    “But to hold up the top brass from being promoted … I think is paralyzing our Department of Defense,” he said.

    The hold on promotions, which began in March, has been a growing source of public scrutiny. The three US military service secretaries told CNN last week that Tuberville’s blockage is aiding communist and autocratic regimes, and is being used against the US by adversaries such as China.

    In July, active-duty military spouses hand-delivered a petition to Schumer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Tuberville signed by hundreds of military family members who were “deeply concerned and personally impacted by Senator Tuberville blocking confirmation of senior military leaders.”

    Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told CNN’s Tapper on Sunday that if elected president, she would put an end to the reimbursement policy for travel for abortion care. Haley, whose husband is in the South Carolina Army National Guard, said military families should not be used as political pawns.

    “I’m not saying that Sen. Tuberville is right in doing this, because I don’t want to use them as pawns. But if you love our military and are so adamant about it, then go and make Congress, Republicans and Democrats, have to go through person by person,” the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador said.

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  • McCarthy says defense spending bill will get a vote this week ‘win or lose’ | CNN Politics

    McCarthy says defense spending bill will get a vote this week ‘win or lose’ | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Sunday that the Defense Department appropriations bill that was paused last week before it even made it to the floor for debate will come up for a vote this week “win or lose.”

    “We will do that this week,” McCarthy said on Fox News, adding “unfortunately I had a handful of members last week that literally stopped the Department of Defense appropriations coming forward,” referring to members of his right flank who have stymied two appropriations bills thus far.

    “I gave them an opportunity this weekend to try to work through this, and we’ll bring it to the floor win or lose,” McCarthy told Maria Bartiromo.

    House Republican leadership was hoping to put a series of standalone spending bills on the floor to try to build consensus and unite the conference, but it’s been a gamble. Leadership was left scrambling over the defense spending bill after one member of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, voted against the bill in the Rules Committee and another, Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, told CNN he would vote against the rule on the floor.

    Both the debate and the scheduled votes were pulled minutes before the chamber was due to gavel in Wednesday.

    McCarthy on Sunday pointed a finger at the Senate, saying not only does the House have to work with the upper chamber, but that the Senate “blew up last week too. They couldn’t pass anything.”

    “And unfortunately on the Senate side, the Republicans and Democrats over there are writing bills to spend more money. Ours are the most conservative, but if we don’t ask them, we’re weaker in the negotiations. So anytime a Republican wants to hold back and stop the floor from working when Republicans have the majority, that puts us in a weaker position to win in the end of the day,” he said.

    But McCarthy said a government shutdown “would only give strength to the Democrats. It would give the power to Biden.”

    With no serious progress on Capitol Hill as Congress stares down a spending deadline at the end of the month, lawmakers are acknowledging that at this point a government shutdown is not only possible, but may soon be inevitable.

    That’s particularly true if the political dynamics at play among McCarthy, the hardliners in his conference and the US Senate don’t change fast.

    “I want to make sure we don’t shut down. I don’t think that is a win for the American public and I definitely believe that will make (Republicans’) hand weaker,” McCarthy said.

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  • After the short-lived insurrection, questions swirl over top Russian commander and Prigozhin | CNN

    After the short-lived insurrection, questions swirl over top Russian commander and Prigozhin | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    One is known as “General Armageddon,” the other as “Putin’s chef.” Both have a checkered past and a reputation for brutality. One launched the insurrection, the other reportedly knew about it in advance. And right now, both are nowhere to be found.

    The commander of the Russian air force Sergey Surovikin and the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin have not been seen in public in days as questions swirl about the role Surovikin may have played in Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny.

    Kremlin has remained silent on the topic, embarking instead on an aggressive campaign to reassert the authority of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Here’s what we know about the two men in the spotlight.

    On Wednesday, the Russian-language version of the independent Moscow Times cited two anonymous defense sources as saying that Surovikin had been arrested in relation to the failed mutiny. CNN has been unable to independently verify that claim.

    A popular blogger going by the name Rybar noted on Wednesday that “Surovikin has not been seen since Saturday” and said nobody knew for certain where he was. “There is a version that he is under interrogation,” he added.

    A well-known Russian journalist Alexey Venediktov – former editor of the now-shuttered Echo of Moscow radio station – also claimed Wednesday Surovikin had not been in contact with his family for three days.

    But other Russian commentators suggested the general was not in custody. A former Russian member of Parliament Sergey Markov said on Telegram that Surovikin had attended a meeting in Rostov on Thursday, but did not say how he knew this.

    “The rumors about the arrest of Surovikin are dispersing the topic of rebellion in order to promote political instability in Russia,” he said.

    Adding further to the speculation, Russian Telegram channel Baza has posted what it says is a brief interview with Surovikin’s daughter, in which she claimed to be in contact with her father and insists that he has not been detained. CNN cannot confirm the authenticity of the recording.

    Surovikin has been the subject of intense speculation over his role in the mutiny after the New York Times reported on Wednesday that the general “had advance knowledge of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to rebel against Russia’s military leadership.” The paper cited US officials who it said were briefed on US intelligence.

    Surovikin released a video Friday, just as the rebellion was starting, appealing to Prigozhin to halt the mutiny soon after it began. The video message made it clear he sided with Putin. But the footage raised more questions than answers about Surovikin’s whereabouts and his state of mind – he appeared unshaven and with a halting delivery, as if reading from a script.

    Asked about the New York Times story, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “There will be now a lot of speculation and rumors surrounding these events. I believe this is just another example of it.”

    One European intelligence official told CNN there were indications that top Russian security officials had some knowledge of Prigozhin’s plans, and may not have passed on information about them, preferring instead to see how they played out.

    “They might have known, and might have not told about it, [or] known about it and decided to help it succeed. There are some hints. There might have been prior knowledge,” the official said.

    Documents shared exclusively with CNN suggest that Surovikin was a VIP member of the Wagner private military company. The documents, obtained by the Russian investigative Dossier Center, showed that Surovikin had a personal registration number with Wagner. Surovikin is listed along with at least 30 other senior Russian military and intelligence officials, whom the Dossier Center says are also VIP Wagner members.

    It is unclear what Wagner’s VIP membership entails, including whether there is a financial benefit. Wagner has not answered CNN’s request for a response.

    Prigozhin meanwhile, played the central role in the short-lived insurrection – it was he who ordered Wagner troops to take over two military bases and then march on Moscow.

    Why he did so depends on who you ask.

    The Wagner chief himself claimed the whole thing was a protest, rather than a real attempt to topple the government. In a voice message released Monday, he explained the “purpose of the march was to prevent the destruction of PMC Wagner.” The comment seemed to be a reference to a statement by the Russian Ministry of Defense that it would employ Wagner’s contractors directly, essentially forcing Prigozhin’s lucrative operations to shutter.

    He also said he wanted to “bring to justice those who, through their unprofessional actions, made a huge number of mistakes during the special military operation,” referring to Russia’s war on Ukraine with the Kremlin-preferred term “special military operation.”

    It is clear the Kremlin sees the events of last weekend differently. Putin assembled Russian security personnel in Moscow Tuesday, telling them they “virtually stopped a civil war” in responding to the insurrection.

    The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Western officials believe Prigozhin planned to capture Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and top army general Valery Gerasimov. When asked about the WSJ report, two European security sources told CNN that while it was likely Prigozhin would have expressed a desire to capture Russian military leaders, there was no assessment as to whether he had a credible plan to do so.

    Nobody knows. Prigozhin was last spotted leaving the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don Saturday, after abruptly calling off his troops’ march on Moscow.

    He released an audio message Monday, explaining his decision to turn his troops back. The Kremlin and the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko claimed on Saturday that Prigozhin agreed to leave Russia for Belarus.

    Lukashenko said he brokered a deal that would see Prigozhin exiled in Belarus without facing criminal charges. According to Lukashenko, the Wagner chief arrived in Belarus Tuesday. While there are no videos or photos showing Prigozhin in Belarus, satellite imagery of an airbase outside Minsk showed two planes linked to Prigozhin landed there on Tuesday morning.

    As for Surovikin, the commander of the Russian air force has not been seen in public since overnight on Friday when he issued the video.

    Not much. CNN has reached out to the Kremlin and Russian Ministry of Defense for comment on Surovikin’s whereabouts. The Kremlin said on Wednesday, “no comment,” and a defense ministry spokesperson said: “I can’t say anything.”

    When questioned whether Putin continued to trust Surovikin, Peskov said during his daily phone call with reporters: “He [Putin] is the supreme commander-in-chief and he works with the defense minister, [and] with the chief of the General Staff. As for the structural divisions within the ministry, I would ask you to contact the [Defense] Ministry.”

    Peskov also told journalists that he did not have information about the whereabouts of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.

    One Russian official has said that Surovikin is not being held in a pre-trial detention center in Moscow, as some independent media and blogs have suggested.

    “He is not in Lefortovo or any other pre-trial detention facility. I don’t even want to comment on the nonsense about “an underground detention facility in Serebryany Bor,” Alexei Melnikov, executive secretary of the Public Monitoring Commission in Russia, said on his Telegram channel.

    The Lefortovo facility is where suspects accused of espionage or other crimes against the state are often held.

    Prigozhin was once a close ally of Putin. Both grew up in St. Petersburg and have known each other since the 1990s. Prigozhin made millions by winning lucrative catering contracts with the Kremlin, earning him the moniker “Putin’s chef.”

    He then cast his net wider, becoming a shadowy figure tasked with advancing Putin’s foreign policy goals. He bankrolled the notorious troll farm that the US government sanctioned for interference in the 2016 US presidential election; created a substantial mercenary force that played a key role in conflicts from Ukraine’s Donbas region to the Syrian civil war; and helped Moscow make a play for influence on the African continent.

    He gained notoriety after Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022. The private military chief seemingly built influence with Putin over the course of the conflict, with his Wagner forces taking a leading role in the labored but ultimately successful assault on Bakhmut earlier this year. The capture of that city was a rare Russian gain in Ukraine in recent months, boosting Prigozhin’s profile further.

    His forces are known for their brutal tactics and little regard for human life and have been accused of several war crimes and other atrocities. Several former Wagner fighters have spoken of the brutality of the force. Prigozhin himself has previously told CNN that Wagner was an “exemplary military organization that complies with all the necessary laws and rules of modern wars.”

    Using his new-found fame, Prigozhin criticized Russia’s military leadership and its handling of the war in Ukraine – with few consequences. But he crossed numerous red lines with Putin over the weekend.

    Surovikin is known in Russia as “General Armageddon,” a reference to his alleged brutality.

    He first served in Afghanistan in the 1980s before commanding a unit in the Second Chechen War ​in 2004.

    That year, according to Russian media accounts and at least two think tanks, he berated a subordinate so severely that the subordinate took his own life.

    A book by the Washington DC-based Jamestown Foundation, a think tank, said that during the unsuccessful coup attempt against former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, soldiers under Surovikin’s command killed three protesters, leading to Surovikin spending at least six months in prison.

    As the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces during Russia’s operations in Syria, he oversaw Russian combat aircraft causing widespread devastation in rebel-held areas.

    In a 2020 report, Human Rights Watch named him as “someone who may bear ​command responsibility” for the dozens of air and ground attacks on civilian objects and infrastructure in violation of the laws of war​” during the 2019-2020 Idlib offensive in Syria. ​

    The attacks killed at least 1,600 ​civilians and forced the displacement of an estimated 1.4 million people, according to HRW​​, which cites UN figures.

    The general consensus among western officials and analysts is clear: in his entire 23 years in power, the Russian president has never looked weaker.

    US President Joe Biden told CNN on Wednesday that Putin has “absolutely” been weakened by the short-lived mutiny and said Putin was “clearly losing the war.”

    The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs said the Wagner rebellion showed Putin was “not the only master in town” and “has lost the monopoly of force.”

    Speaking to journalists in Brussels on Thursday, Josep Borrell cautioned that the global community has to be “very much aware of the consequences” adding that “a weaker Putin is a greater danger.”

    As for his domestic image, Putin appears to have embarked on a charm offensive, trying to reassert his authority.

    He has attended an unusually high number of meetings in the past few days and was even seen greeting members of public. That is a stark reversal of tactic. Putin has stayed in near-seclusion for the past three years.

    On Wednesday though, he flew for an official visit to Dagestan, meeting local officials and supporters in the streets of the city of Derbent, according to video posted by the Kremlin. On Thursday, he attended – once again in person – a business event in Moscow.

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  • Wagner chief to leave Russia for Belarus in deal that ends armed insurrection | CNN

    Wagner chief to leave Russia for Belarus in deal that ends armed insurrection | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, has agreed to leave Russia for Belarus, the Kremlin said Saturday, in a deal that ends an armed insurrection, which posed the greatest threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority in decades.

    In a conference call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said an agreement was struck with Prigozhin, referring to an apparent deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

    “You will ask me what will happen to Prigozhin personally?” Peskov said. “The criminal case will be dropped against him. He himself will go to Belarus.”

    The Wagner boss had earlier turned his troops around “toward our field camps, in accordance with the plan.” Peskov said those troops would face no “legal action” for marching to Moscow, and Wagner fighters will sign contracts with Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

    The announcement defuses a crisis that began when Wagner troops took control of a key military facility in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and some fighters advanced towards the capital.

    Prigozhin has been publicly critical of Russia’s military leadership and their handling of the war in Ukraine – with few consequences. But he crossed numerous red lines with Putin over the weekend.

    A somber-looking Russian president addressed the nation and called Wagner’s actions “a stab in the back of our country and our people.”

    The president described events as an insurrection and Moscow began to scale up its security measures.

    But by Saturday evening, Prigozhin’s calculus appeared to have changed, and the mercenary said his troops, who were 124 miles (200 kilometers) from Moscow, were stopping their advance in order to avoid bloodshed.

    Videos, authenticated and geolocated by CNN, also showed Prigozhin and Wagner forces withdrawing from their positions at Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don.

    In the video, Prigozhin is seen sitting in the backseat of a vehicle. Crowds cheer and the vehicle comes to a stop as an individual approaches it and shakes Prigozhin’s hand.

    Saturday’s dramatic events come off the back of Prigozhin’s very public and months-long feud with Russia’s military leadership. He has previously accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov of not giving his forces ammunition and was critical of their handling of the conflict, but has always defended the reasoning for the war.

    On Friday, Prigozhin accused Russian forces of striking a Wagner military camp and killing “a huge amount” of his fighters – a claim Russia’s Ministry of Defense has denied and called an “informational provocation.”

    The private military chief seemingly built influence with Putin over the course of the conflict, with his Wagner forces taking a leading role in the labored but ultimately successful assault on Bakhmut earlier this year. The capture of that city was a rare Russian gain in Ukraine in recent months, boosting Prigozhin’s profile further.

    But it appears that Prigozhin had turned not merely against the military leadership’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine, but also against the longtime Russian leader and his strategy.

    On Friday, he said Moscow invaded Ukraine under false pretenses devised by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and that Russia is actually losing ground on the battlefield.

    “There are 25,000 of us and we are going to find out why there is such chaos in the country. There are 25,000 of us waiting as a tactical reserve and a strategic reserve. It’s the whole army and the whole country, everyone who wants to, join us. We must end this debacle,” he said on Telegram.

    Wagner upped the gambit and went on to take control of military facilities in Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh, a city that lies some 600 kilometers (372 miles) to the north of Rostov. Russia’s domestic intelligence service, FSB, opened a criminal case against Prighozhin for his threats, accusing him of calling for “an armed rebellion.”

    Wagner troops were then reported to be moving towards the capital, prompting a major security operation in the Moscow region and a counter-terrorist regime being put in place, according to Russian officials.

    Russian security forces in body armor and equipped with automatic weapons took a position near a highway linking Moscow with southern Russia, according to photos published by Russian media. Monday was declared a non-working day and public and other large-scale events have been suspended until July 1 in the Moscow region, according to Russian state run media TASS.

    During his speech Saturday, Putin said Wagner’s “betrayal” and “any actions that fracture our unity,” are “a stab in the back of our country and our people.”

    Responding to Putin’s speech, Prigozhin said on Telegram that the president was “deeply mistaken.”

    “We are patriots of our Motherland, we fought and are fighting,” he said in audio messages.The Wagner chief claimed his forces seized the Russian Southern Military Headquarters in the city of Rostov-on-Don “without firing a single shot,” suggesting that “the country supports us.”

    The Rostov base plays a key role in Russia’s war on Ukraine, due to its proximity to the countries’ shared border.

    The temperature cooled following the deal apparently brokered by Belarus’ leader. Yet Prighozhin has provided scant details about his agreement to about-face.

    When asked what position Prigozhin would take in Belarus, Peskov said he “cannot answer the question.” Peskov said Lukashenko was able to draw on a personal relationship with Prigozhin to broker the deal.

    “The fact is that Alexander Grigoryevich [Lukashenko] has known Prigozhin personally for a long time, for about 20 years,” he said. “And it was his personal proposal, which was agreed with Putin. We are grateful to the President of Belarus for these efforts.”

    Many top Russian officials had rallied to Putin’s side over the past day. Russian intelligence official, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseev, posted a video about Prigozhin’s actions that day, describing it as a coup attempt.

    Sergei Naryshkin, who heads Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, described the events as an “attempted armed rebellion.”

    Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, another key player in the war, spoke of a “vile betrayal” by Prigozhin on Telegram. “The rebellion must be crushed, and if this requires harsh measures, then we are ready!” he said.

    Russian officials said detachments of Chechen special forces had been seen in Rostov to suppress the rebellion. However, CNN was unable to independently confirm that Chechen units have arrived in Rostov.

    Wagner fighters stand guard near the headquarters of the Southern Military District in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on June 24.

    The FSB also responded on Friday, urging Wagner fighters to detain their leader and opening a criminal case against the militia boss accusing him of “calling for an armed rebellion.”

    As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stalled earlier this year, top US officials said they saw indications of tensions between the Kremlin and the Prigozhin. Officials said the US determined as early as January there was an internal power struggle underway and have been gathering and closely monitoring intelligence on the volatile dynamic ever since.

    But US and Western officials are being careful not to weigh in on the events because of how Putin could weaponize any perceived outside involvement in the escalating crisis, sources familiar with the administration’s thinking told CNN.

    The Russian Foreign Ministry has warned Western countries against using Prigozhin’s rebellion “to achieve Russophobic goals.”

    The European Union, which borders Russia, has activated its crisis response center to coordinate between member nations in reaction to the developments in Russia.

    Meanwhile, Ukraine took advantage of Russia’s chaotic security situation on Saturday, launching simultaneous counter-offensives in multiple directions, Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy Defense Minister, said in a Telegram post.

    “The eastern grouping of troops today launched an offensive in several directions at the same time,” Maliar said, naming Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Bakhmut, Bohdanivka, Yahidne, Klishchiivka and Kurdyumivka among the places where the offensive was launched.

    Maliar said that “there is progress in all directions” without giving any further detail. Maliar said that “heavy fighting continues in all directions of the offensive in the south.” In the South “the enemy is on the defensive, making great efforts to stop our offensive actions,” Maliar added.

    A spokesperson for the Ukrainian military in eastern Ukraine earlier told CNN that Ukraine will benefit from the events in Russia. “The fact that Prigozhin took all his Wagner fighters into Russia now will definitely have an effect on our frontline,” Serhii Cherevatyi said.

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  • Putin vows to punish ‘armed uprising’ by Wagner militia as Russia is plunged into crisis | CNN

    Putin vows to punish ‘armed uprising’ by Wagner militia as Russia is plunged into crisis | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Vladimir Putin is facing the greatest threat to his authority in two decades after the head of the Wagner paramilitary group launched an apparent insurrection, claimed control of military facilities in two Russian cities, and warned that his troops would head for Moscow.

    Staring down a sudden and staggering escalation of internal tensions that have simmered for months, the Russian president said on Saturday that those on “path of treason” or armed rebellion would be punished.

    “It is a stab in the back of our country and our people,” he said in an address to the nation, threatening a harsh response for those planning “an armed rebellion.”

    Putin was speaking after the militia chief and his one-time ally Yevgeny Prigozhin dramatically stepped up his feud with Moscow’s security establishment over the handling of the invasion of Ukraine, throwing the country into crisis with a series of military moves that seemingly took Moscow by surprise.

    After Putin’s speech, Prigozhin said on Telegram that the president was “deeply mistaken.”

    “We are patriots of our Motherland, we fought and are fighting,” he said in audio messages. “And no one is going to turn themselves in at the request of the president, the FSB or anyone else.”

    Prigozhin, who heads private military group Wagner, said his forces had taken control of Russian military facilities in the city of Rostov-on-Don, an important operations base for Russia’s war in Ukraine. He threatened to march on Moscow if defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov did not meet with him in Rostov.

    The Wagner group also claimed to have seized Russian facilities in a second city, Voronezh, some 600 kilometers (372 miles) to the north of Rostov-on-Don. The governor of the Voronezh region, Alexander Gusev, said the Russian military were engaging in “combat measures” in the area.

    In its daily intelligence update, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Prigozhin’s insurrection “represents the most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times.”

    The briefing said some Russian forces had “likely remained passive, acquiescing to Wagner.”

    And it predicted that individual decisions to support or betray Putin could tip the balance of the showdown. “Over the coming hours, the loyalty of Russia’s security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be key to how the crisis plays out,” the report said.

    The developments leave Putin’s grip on power looking suddenly perilous, 16 months after he launched an invasion of Ukraine that has been beset by military setbacks, strategic failure and disorganization.

    In his remarks, Putin described events in Rostov as an insurrection. “The situation in Rostov-on-Don remains difficult during the armed uprising. In Rostov, the work of civil and military administration is basically blocked,” Putin said, adding that “decisive action” would be taken.

    Prigozhin has been notoriously critical of the Russian military hierarchy since the war in Ukraine started. But he had spared Putin from direct criticism, instead directing his ire towards the President’s commanders.

    The private military chief seemingly built influence with with Putin over the course of the conflict, with his Wagner forces taking a leading role in the labored but ultimately successful assault on Bakhmut earlier this year. The capture of that city was a rare Russian gain in Ukraine in recent months, boosting Prigozhin’s profile further.

    But his rhetoric on Friday and Saturday indicated that Prigozhin had turned not merely against the military leadership’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine, but also on the longtime Russian leader.

    On Friday, he said Moscow invaded Ukraine under false pretenses devised by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and that Russia is actually losing ground on the battlefield. That was a significant change from his previous criticism. In the past, he defended the reasoning for the war but was critical of how it was being done by the defense minister, Shoigu.

    “When we were told that we were at war with Ukraine, we went and fought. But it turned out that ammunition, weapons, all the money that was allocated is also being stolen, and the bureaucrats are sitting [idly], saving it for themselves, just for the occasion that happened today, when someone [is] marching to Moscow,” Prigozhin said in his Saturday Telegram messages.

    This dramatic escalation came after Prigozhin accused Russian forces of striking a Wagner military camp and killing “a huge amount” of his fighters – a claim Russia’s Ministry of Defense has denied and called an “informational provocation.”

    The militia chief, whose forces have played a key role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, warned of retribution in a series of Telegram messages Friday and Saturday, where he announced his forces were moving into the Rostov region neighboring Russian-occupied Ukraine, ready to “destroy everything” in their way.

    “There are 25,000 of us and we are going to find out why there is such chaos in the country. There are 25,000 of us waiting as a tactical reserve and a strategic reserve. It’s the whole army and the whole country, everyone who wants to, join us. We must end this debacle,” hte said, in a radical escalation of a longstanding feud with Russia’s military leaders.

    Russia’s domestic intelligence service, Federal Security Service (FSB), responded on Friday, urging Wagner fighters to detain their leader and opening a criminal case against the militia boss accusing him of “calling for an armed rebellion.” Authorities in the capital Moscow, meanwhile, tightened its security measures.

    Many officials quickly rallied to Putin’s side. Russian intelligence official, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseev, posted a video about Prigozhin’s actions that day, describing it as a coup attempt.

    “Only the president has the right to appoint the top leadership of the armed forces, and you are trying to encroach on his authority. This is a coup d’etat. There is no need to do this now, because there is no greater damage to the image of Russia and to its armed forces,” he added.

    Prigozhin denied his acts were a coup, saying instead they were a “march of justice” that would “not interfere with the troops in any way.”

    Another key figure, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov spoke of a “vile betrayal” by Prigozhin on Telegram. “The rebellion must be crushed, and if this requires harsh measures, then we are ready!” he said.

    But in Ukraine, authorities watched one of the most significant developments since the war began with intrigue and defiance. “The internal Russian confrontation… is a sign of the collapse of the Putin regime,” said Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.

    He said the events are “a direct consequence of the Putin regime’s criminal military aggression against Ukraine.”

    Russia’s Ministry of Defense appealed to Wagner forces on Saturday to “safely return to their points of permanent deployment.”

    “You were tricked into Prigozhin’s criminal adventure and participation in an armed rebellion,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said in their official Telegram Channel.

    Russian security forces cordoned off Wagner’s headquarters in St. Petersburg on Saturday, as the state mobilized in response to Wagner’s moves.

    The Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee also announced the introduction of a counter-terrorist operation regime in Moscow, the Moscow region and Voronezh region.

    The counter-terrorist regime includes but is not limited to document checks, strengthened protection of public order, monitoring telephone conversations and restricting communications, restricting the movement of vehicles and pedestrians on the streets.

    Moscow officials said in a statement that entry and exit to the city are not being restricted, but said there “there may be difficulties with the movement of traffic.”

    Social media posts showed military vehicles were seen driving around the main streets of the Russian capital in the early hours of Saturday.

    Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communication regulator, said the government may restrict the internet in areas of the “counter-terrorist operation,” according to Russian state media agency TASS.

    Prigozhin has asserted that his forces would receive wide backing from Russian soldiers, claiming they were given a hero’s welcome when they entered the Rostov region and that by Saturday morning 60 to 70 had already joined up with his fighters.

    “The border guards came out to meet and hugged our fighters,” he claimed.

    Military activity became obvious in Rostov-on-don Saturday morning, when images began emerging on social media of military vehicles going through the streets and helicopters flying overhead, though it was not clear whose control they were in.

    Rostov region Governor Vasily Golubev earlier Saturday asked residents to stay calm and not leave their homes in a Telegram post. The Rostov region is about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Moscow. Its capital Rostov-on-Don has a population of around 1 million.

    In the first suggestion of open armed conflict between the two sides Saturday morning, Prigozhin on Saturday said his units were hit by a helicopter on a highway. It’s unclear exactly where the units were.

    “The Wagner units are intact, the helicopter is destroyed and is burning in the forest,” Prigozhin said, adding “we will take it as a threat and destroy everything around us.”

    He also claimed a second helicopter was downed after it attacked civilians. CNN has been unable to verify any of Prigozhin’s claims.

    Prigozhin added the alleged Wagner take-over of military facilities in Rostov would not impede military operations, saying his men are not stopping the officers from carrying out their duties.

    Wagner has played a prominent role in the Ukraine war, and Prigozhin, so far, has faced few consequences for his public feud with Russia’s military leadership.

    Prigozhin and Wagner have played an unusual and informal role in Putin’s Russia. He has known the president since the 1990s; both are from St. Petersburg. Prigozhin won valuable contracts as the Kremlin’s caterer and later set up the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency, whose mission was to interfere in the US 2016 election.

    Wagner fighters deployed in a street near the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, on June 24.

    The fallout from his comments also inspired a wave of schadenfreude in Ukraine.

    Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukraine’s presidential office on Saturday described the actions as exposing a deeper schism within the Russian establishment.

    “The split between the elites is too obvious. Agreeing and pretending that everything is settled won’t work,” Myhailo Podolyak tweeted. “Someone must definitely lose: either Prigozhin (with a fatal ending), or the collective ‘anti-Prygozhin.’”

    “Everything is just beginning in Russia,” he added.

    Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, added on Saturday that “Ukraine has become a few steps closer to complete Victory over Russia and complete return of its territories, including Crimea.” He called Prigozhin a “vile, but useful” monster, predicting that Putin’s hold on power “will crumble like a house of cards.”

    The impact of the events on the war in Ukraine remain murky, but it is difficult to see how Russia could emerge from the drama strengthened on the battlefield. Wagner’s forces have become essential to Russia’s war effort, and the possible redirection of Wagner troops toward the internal conflict would drastically weaken their ground campaign.

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  • US defense secretary says ongoing lack of communication with China could lead to incident that could ‘spiral out of control’ | CNN Politics

    US defense secretary says ongoing lack of communication with China could lead to incident that could ‘spiral out of control’ | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said it was “unfortunate” China declined a US offer to speak at a defense summit this week in Singapore and that the ongoing lack of communication could result in “an incident that could very, very quickly spiral out of control.”

    “(Y)ou’ve heard me talk a number of times about the importance of countries, with large, with significant capabilities, being able to talk to each other so you can manage crises and prevent things from spiraling out of control unnecessarily,” Austin said at a news conference Thursday in Japan with Japanese Minster of Defense Yasukazu Hamada.

    “And as we take a look at some of the things that China is doing in the international airspace in the region and international waterways, you know, the provocative intercepts of our aircraft and also our allies’ aircraft, that’s very concerning, and we would hope that they would alter their actions. But since they haven’t yet, I’m concerned about, at some point, having an incident that could very, very quickly spiral out of control,” Austin said, adding that he would “welcome any opportunity to engage” with China’s leadership.

    The Pentagon said earlier this week that China refused a US proposal for Austin to meet with his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore this week. China’s defense ministry blamed the US for their refusal, saying the responsibility for ongoing tension between the two countries’ militaries “lies entirely with the US side.”

    The comments come as Chinese President Xi Jinping told China’s national security officials to think about “worst case” scenarios and prepare for “stormy seas,” as the ruling Communist Party hardens efforts to counter any perceived internal and external threats.

    Relations between the two countries have been increasingly strained in recent months, especially after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to the self-governing island of Taiwan last August and the US’ decision to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon that transited over sensitive US military sites in February.

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  • Biden and McCarthy lean on holdouts in both parties to pass debt ceiling deal | CNN Politics

    Biden and McCarthy lean on holdouts in both parties to pass debt ceiling deal | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Party leaders in Washington are waging an urgent campaign Monday to convince Democrats and Republicans to get behind compromise legislation that would avert a first-ever national default, with each side proclaiming victory following marathon talks.

    Prospects for passage of the bill, based on the agreement struck between President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, grew Sunday as many centrist Democrats fell in line and Republicans maintained confidence that they would be able to carry the support of the majority of their House conference in a pivotal vote expected Wednesday.

    In both parties’ sights are those in the political middle, who leaders are wagering will swallow some provisions they disagree with in order to suspend the federal borrowing limit through January 1, 2025 – after the next presidential election – and avoid default. The bill caps non-defense spending, temporarily expands work requirements for some food stamp recipients and claws back some Covid-19 relief funds.

    The release of the bill text Sunday evening amounted to a consequential moment for both Biden and McCarthy, whose political futures could hinge on their ability to pass the legislation while also selling it as a victory for their respective parties.

    Speaking from the White House on Sunday, Biden hailed the agreement as critical to preventing economic disaster.

    “It’s a really important step forward,” he said from the Roosevelt Room. “It takes the threat of catastrophic default off the table, protects our hard-earned economic recovery, and the agreement also represents a compromise – which means no one got everything they want, but that’s the responsibility of governing.”

    The president shrugged off concerns from some Democrats who worry he gave away too much in his negotiations with Republicans.

    “They’ll find I didn’t,” he said.

    In a private call Sunday with House Democrats, Biden’s briefers defended their dealmaking with McCarthy, going into detail about what they had prevented from being added to the bill, according to multiple sources. They argued they stopped Republicans from pushing even stiffer work requirements and beat back efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and gut and gut Biden’s signature 2021 infrastructure law.

    After those briefings, many Democrats signaled that they were willing to support the plan simply because there’s no other viable option to avoid default, lawmakers told CNN.

    “It’s not a victory, but it’s a lot better (than) what might have happened if there were default,” one Senate Democrat told CNN after an evening briefing.

    Members of two major centrist groups – the New Democrat Coalition and Problem Solvers Caucus – are expected to largely support the plan, according to multiple sources. That represents roughly 100 Democrats, which could be enough to offset the losses from members of the hard-right who are furious over McCarthy’s dealmaking.

    Several members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus have already harshly criticized the plan, vowing to try blocking it from passage.

    McCarthy has insisted to House Republicans that Democrats “got nothing” in the negotiations, and he worked to amplify government spending caps and new work requirements for food stamps as critical wins long sought by the GOP.

    But like Biden, McCarthy acknowledged the agreement required concessions from both sides.

    “It doesn’t get everything everybody wanted,” McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol on Sunday. “But, in divided government, that’s where we end up. I think it’s a very positive bill.”

    For McCarthy, the first big test will come Tuesday in the House Rules Committee, a panel that must adopt a rule to allow the bill to be approved by a majority of the House. To win the speakership, McCarthy agreed to name three conservative hardliners – Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Chip Roy of Texas and Thomas Massie of Kentucky – to the committee, a major concession since usually the powerful panel is stacked with close allies of the leadership.

    Norman and Roy have emerged as sharp critics of the debt limit deal so far, while Massie was quiet while waiting for bill text to be released. If all three voted against the rule in committee, that would kill the bill – unless any Democrats vote to advance the rule.

    McCarthy’s allies sought to play down the conservative revolt.

    “When you’re saying that conservatives have concerns, it is really the most colorful conservatives,” Rep. Dusty Johnson said on “State of the Union.”

    Passing the bill through the House will not be the final step. The package must also clear the Senate, where any single senator could stall progress for several days. On Sunday, a handful of powerful Senate Republicans had raised concerns about the deal’s defense spending during a Senate GOP conference call, a source on the call said.

    But with the support of Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and expected backing of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, several Senate sources say there is a high likelihood there’ll be 60 votes to break a filibuster attempt. The timing of the final votes in the Senate could slip into Friday or the weekend.

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  • DOJ opens investigation into leaks of apparent classified US military documents | CNN Politics

    DOJ opens investigation into leaks of apparent classified US military documents | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the leaks of a trove of apparent US intelligence documents that were posted on social media in recent weeks.

    The investigation comes as new documents surfaced Friday covering everything from US support for Ukraine to information about key US allies like Israel, widening the fallout from an already alarming leak. The Pentagon on Thursday said it was looking into the matter after social media posts of apparently classified documents on the war in Ukraine had emerged.

    The additional leaked documents that were surfaced on Friday by open-source intelligence researchers appear to have been posted online in the past few weeks. The documents appear to contain classified information on topics ranging from the mercenary Wagner Group’s operations in Africa and Israel’s pathways to providing lethal aid to Ukraine, to intelligence about the United Arab Emirates’ ties to Russia and South Korean concerns about providing ammunition to the US for use in Ukraine.

    CNN could not independently verify that the documents have not been altered. But they are similar to a tranche of classified documents about Ukraine that have been circulating online in recent weeks, which US officials on Friday morning confirmed to CNN to be authentic.

    Much like those documents, Friday’s discoveries were also photos of printed-out, wrinkled documents. All bore classified markings, some top secret – the highest level of classification. They also all appear to have been produced between mid-February and early March.

    It is unclear who is behind the leaks and where, exactly, they originated.

    “The Department of Defense is actively reviewing the matter, and has made a formal referral to the Department of Justice for investigation,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said Friday.

    A Justice Department spokesperson told CNN that the department has “been in communication with the Department of Defense related to this matter and have begun an investigation,” declining to comment further.

    The leak has rattled Pentagon officials, particularly within the Defense Department’s Joint Staff, which comprises the DoD’s most senior uniformed leadership, whose role is to advise the president. Many of the documents had markings indicating that they were produced by the Joint Staff’s intelligence arm, known as J2, and appear to be briefing documents.

    Earlier Friday, US officials confirmed that similar documents about Ukraine were part of a larger daily intelligence briefing deck produced by the Pentagon about the war for senior leadership.

    US officials suggested that a leak investigation would look inward, at potential culprits inside the Pentagon. But a person familiar with US intelligence said a probe would likely not be limited to the Pentagon, given the large number of people across the government who have access to these kinds of documents. Some of the documents also have markings indicating that they were shared with countries in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

    Other markings indicate the inclusion of material from other agencies, such as the State Department’s intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency.

    Many of the documents, however, also have markings indicating they are sourced from human intelligence and not meant to be shared with foreign nationals, even the closest US allies.

    Some of documents reference classified information from the CIA. An agency spokesperson told CNN on Friday, “We are aware of the social media posts and are looking into the claims.”

    Images of some of the documents – which include estimates of Russian casualties and a list of Western weapons systems available to Ukraine – were posted to the social media platform Discord in early March, according to screenshots of the posts reviewed by CNN.

    “This sh*t was sitting in a Minecraft Discord server for a month and no one noticed,” Aric Toler, a researcher at investigative outlet Bellingcat who traced the timeline of the posted documents, told CNN. Minecraft is a popular video game.

    It wasn’t until this week that the leaked documents started to gain more attention after someone posted a portion of the documents to 4chan, a web forum popular with extremists, and then a Russian speaker posted an altered version of one of the documents on Telegram, Toler said.

    US officials believe someone altered that document to make the estimated number of Ukrainians killed in the war far higher than it actually is.

    The Pentagon said Thursday that it was aware of the social media posts and it was investigating the matter.

    On Discord on Friday, speculation and paranoia were rife, with some users wondering if they could get in trouble for re-posting the documents now that the US government is investigating the matter. A user who posted photos of the documents on March 1 appeared to have deleted his accounts on Twitter and Discord.

    “The fact that unedited and edited – doctored – versions of some files are available online makes me skeptical that this is a professional Russian intelligence operation,” Thomas Rid, an expert on state-backed information operations, told CNN.

    Historically, if an intelligence agency has access to classified material from an adversary and decides to falsify some of the material, they typically don’t make both versions of those documents public, said Rid, who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

    “That only makes it easier to detect the facts, and thus defeats the purpose,” Rid said.

    There is concern, however, that the leaked documents could have real-world impact.

    “If real, the leaking of these documents can do significant damage to Ukrainian counteroffensive since this information effectively provides Russia with Ukrainian order of battle — extensive information on capabilities of brigades that would be involved in upcoming counteroffensive,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, a Russia analyst who is executive chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator.

    This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.

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  • Biden to highlight US-Canadian unity in first presidential trip to Ottawa | CNN Politics

    Biden to highlight US-Canadian unity in first presidential trip to Ottawa | CNN Politics


    Ottawa, Canada
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden will make a long-awaited trip to America’s northern neighbor Thursday evening, a 24-hour whirlwind visit where he will press to elevate a concerted effort to repair a bilateral relationship as the two nations confront growing geopolitical challenges.

    Despite the brief nature of the trip, White House officials say the crowded agenda underscores the relationship’s importance – and the substantial shift away from the fractures that developed during former President Donald Trump’s time in office. Still, they acknowledge there are a series of economic, trade and immigration challenges that must be navigated between the two governments.

    Biden’s visit includes a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, an address to the nation’s parliament in Ottawa, and a cozy reception at an elaborate gala dinner. For Biden, who last traveled to Ottawa shortly after Trump was elected in 2016, the visit will also mark a moment to underscore close ties and the critical role Canada has played in the Western alliance that has supported Ukraine since Russia’s invasion more than a year ago.

    “This visit is about taking stock of what we’ve done, where we are, and what we need to prioritize for the future,” said White House National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby.

    The two leaders and political allies are expected to discuss North American supply chains and critical minerals, climate change, the opioid crisis and critical defense cooperation – including efforts to modernize the North American Aerospace Defense Command. And while no major breakthroughs are expected, thornier issues like the deteriorating situation in Haiti, immigration and trade are also expected to be on the agenda.

    “We’re going to talk about our two democracies stepping up to meet the challenges of our time. That includes taking concrete steps to increase defense spending, driving a global race to the top on clean energy, and building prosperous and inclusive economies,” Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.

    Biden will “reaffirm the United States’ commitment to the US-Canada partnership and promote our shared security, shared prosperity, and shared values,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote in a statement announcing the trip earlier this month.

    The two men are also expected to discuss Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Trudeau, the longest-serving leader in the G7, has been an ally to Biden in providing military and financial assistance to the country during the Kremlin’s invasion.

    “This is a meaningful visit. Canada is one of the United States’ closest allies and friends and has been now for more than 150 years,” Kirby added.

    Vincent Rigby, a former national security and intelligence adviser to Trudeau and current senior adviser at CSIS, told CNN that as Biden travels to Ottawa with “the world on his mind,” the current geopolitical environment in the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Europe means that Canadian security contributions will be a key topic in Friday’s bilateral meeting.

    “I think the big question is going to be, OK, Canada, where do you stand on all this? And I would suggest that Canada has been struggling to match some of its allies over the last number of years in responding to this unstable security environment. So it will probably be the elephant in the room to a certain extent,” he told CNN.

    Rigby noted that while efforts to increase Canadian defense spending, modernize NORAD or contain China are not new, it’s an issue that has garnered a greater public profile the last few months following the Chinese spy balloon’s incursion into North American airspace and recent allegations about Beijing attempting to interfere in Canadian elections.

    While Canada has announced $3.8 billion in spending to help upgrade NORAD and has recently purchased F-35s, Canada’s overall percentage of GDP spent on defense remains well below the 2% asked of NATO members.

    “I think that the prime minister needs to reassure the president that he’s going to do what’s necessary to have a military in Canada that’s ready to respond to these kinds of threats, particularly on the international stage,” Rigby added. “This isn’t just about blindly following the United States’ lead. It’s about doing what’s right for Canada and Canada’s national interest.”

    Preparations for the president’s visit were already well-underway on Wednesday with American and Canadian flags draped along Wellington Street across the way from the Parliament complex, and Canadian security services – buttressed by police units from neighboring cities like Toronto – conducting practice runs for expected motorcade routes.

    Biden’s travel agenda will kick into gear from the moment he lands at Ottawa International Airport on Thursday night, when he will hold a bilateral meeting with the governor general of Canada – the country’s apolitical and ceremonial head of state – followed by a meet and greet at Trudeau’s official residence.

    On Friday, Biden makes the short trip from his hotel to Parliament Hill where will have a bilateral with Trudeau, an expanded meeting with their respective staff, and then Biden’s address to Parliament. The two leaders will then hold a joint news conference in the afternoon before Friday evening’s dinner ahead of a late evening flight back to the US.

    First lady Dr. Jill Biden – who is accompanying her husband in Ottawa – will also take part in additional events with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the prime minister’s wife.

    Despite being fellow liberals and political allies who are closely aligned on many issues, Prime Minister Trudeau and President Biden have had their share of disagreements. Early on in Biden’s administration, Trudeau expressed disappointment over the president’s unwillingness to back off his decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and the Canadians have previously raised concerns over the impact of “Buy American” measures on trade between the two countries.

    And while Friday’s meetings will heavily feature areas of cooperation between the two countries, there will also be discussions on more complicated issues like immigration, trade and Haiti.

    As both leaders face an influx of migrants and mounting political pressure, they will be pressed to finalize changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement. Trudeau has been facing blowback domestically over hundreds of migrants crossing Roxham Road, a remote street that connects Champlain, New York, with Hemmingford, Quebec.

    “The only way to effectively shut down, not just Roxham Road but the entire border, to these irregular crossings is to renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement,” Trudeau said at a news conference last month, pointing to the thousands of kilometers of shared unguarded border between the US and Canada and adding that people will cross elsewhere even if the Roxham Road access point is closed.

    Signed in 2002, the agreement applies to people transiting through a country where they could have claimed asylum because it’s deemed safe. It means that anyone entering a land port of entry could be ineligible to make a claim and therefore returned to the US. But Roxham Road is not an official crossing, meaning that people who transit there could still seek protections in Canada even though they passed through the US.

    Biden and Trudeau have previously touted their relationship on a slew of issues, including in accepting refugees, and CNN reported earlier this month that it’s unlikely the latest migration trend along the northern border will damage that bond.

    Kirby, a top White House official, said Wednesday the US is “well aware” of Canadian concerns regarding migration and that he has “no doubt” the two leaders will discuss it.

    “We’ll be talking about issues of migration, which affects us both. There are more people on the move in this hemisphere than there have been since World War Two and that affects both our countries,” he said.

    Fueling the increase in immigration this year and also expected to be brought up in Friday’s talks are discussions on the ongoing crisis in Haiti where the government is edging closer to becoming a failed state as criminal gangs in the capital become increasingly violent and the country faces interlocking health, energy and security crises.

    United Nations officials are warning that the situation “continues to spiral out of control,” and in the first two weeks of March, the gang violence has killed 208 people, injured 164 others and led to 101 kidnappings, according to the UN. Last year there were 2,183 homicides and 1,359 kidnappings in Haiti, which nearly doubles the statistics from the previous year, according to the UN.

    Late last year the United States drafted a UN Security Council resolution, following calls from the Haitian government for outside intervention, to support the deployment of a rapid action force to Haiti to help the government’s national police wrest back control of the crisis-ridden country.

    While the US has no plans to lead such a force, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in January that Canada had “expressed interest in taking on a leadership role.” Although Kirby on Wednesday said that they’re not yet at a point where all the players involved can make any definitive decisions and that the two leaders will continue their discussions.

    “We have continued to stand with the people of Haiti, and we will continue to. Obviously, this current situation is heart wrenching and we need to continue to be there for the people of Haiti. But we need to make sure that the solutions are driven by the people of Haiti themselves,” Trudeau said in January, pointing to the military and financial support Canada and the US have already provided.

    Part of the calculus for Canada, according to Rigby, is that any sort of military intervention could potentially become a “quagmire” and would require distinct objectives and goals. But also, as Canada’s top general has publicly acknowledged, the Canadian armed forces may lack the capacity to lead such a mission.

    “It might be a bridge too far for them to go into Haiti. So that’s why I think you’re seeing a little bit of reluctance on the part of the Canadian government to engage on Haiti as much as I think they’d like to help,” Rigby told CNN.

    American presidents typically visit Canada as one of their first trips abroad, but the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine at the beginning of Biden’s administration complicated matters and delayed Biden’s first visit North. Instead, the newly minted US president in early 2021 opted for his first phone call and virtual bilateral meeting to be with Trudeau.

    “When we work together, as the closest of friends should, we only make each other stronger,” Biden said at the time.

    Since then, the Bidens have hosted the Trudeaus at the White House and the two men have met repeatedly in other international fora and on the sidelines of other multilateral settings, including most recently in January at a summit of North American leaders.

    Biden and Trudeau have known each other for years and describe their relationship as a close one that has only grown more critical in the year since Russia’s invasion.

    One of Biden’s final trips as vice president was to attend a state dinner held in his honor in Ottawa; during his toast, Biden recounted the call he received from Trudeau’s father Pierre – then serving as prime minister – when his first wife and daughter died in a car accident.

    It’s a personal element that helped animate a level of warmth Biden attempted to convey at the time despite the trepidation among US allies about what the next administration would mean for relations.

    “The friendship between us is absolutely critical to the United States, our well-being, our security, our sense of ourselves,” Biden said at the time.

    But he also implicitly framed what would become a turbulent four years ahead – and pointed directly to the younger Trudeau as someone who would become a critical player during that period.

    “The world’s going to spend a lot of time looking to you, Mr. Prime Minister, as we see more and more challenges to the liberal international order than any time since the end of World War II,” Biden told Trudeau at the time.

    Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump visited Canada only once for a Group of 7 summit in Quebec. The two leader’s bad blood was on full display afterward when Trump revoked his signature from a joint statement and called Trudeau “very dishonest and weak” on Twitter.

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  • Taiwan says soldier who went missing has been found in China | CNN

    Taiwan says soldier who went missing has been found in China | CNN


    Taipei, Taiwan
    CNN
     — 

    A Taiwanese soldier who went missing last week from an island near the Chinese coast has been found in mainland China, a Taiwan official said on Monday, raising the possibility of a highly unusual defection amid heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

    Speaking to reporters, Chiu Tai-san, minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, said China had notified Taiwan that the soldier, surnamed Chen, is currently in mainland China.

    Chen was reported missing on Erdan island following a roll call, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday, adding it had set up a special task force to locate him.

    Erdan, part of the Taipei-controlled Kinmen islands, is located less than 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) from the Chinese port city of Xiamen in southeastern Fujian province.

    In recent years, Beijing has ramped up economic, diplomatic and military pressure on Taiwan – a self-ruling democracy the Chinese Communist Party claims as its own despite having never governed it.

    China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) frequently sends aircraft and warships close to Taiwan, in a campaign aimed at intimidating the island and wearing down its equipment.

    On Monday, Chiu said the Taiwanese Defense Ministry has existing mechanisms to determine whether the soldier should be identified as a deserter.

    He added that the Taiwanese and Chinese sides have communication channels to handle emergency situations and combat crime. “The defense ministry and coast guard administration are actively understanding the relevant progress and situation,” Chiu said.

    CNN has reached out to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry for comment.

    While defection between the two sides has been rarely heard of in recent years, it used to be a more common occurrence.

    In 2002, Taiwan’s then-minister of defense said the Taiwanese military saw 20 cases of defections to China between 1949 and 1989.

    Defectors from both sides were seen as huge propaganda wins – and sometimes rewarded in cash.

    In 1981, China paid a reward of $370,000 to a Taiwanese Air Force major who defected to the mainland with an American-built reconnaissance plane – a valuable asset for the PLA at the time.

    Other defectors would swim between China and Kinmen. The closest distance between the main island of Kinmen and the Chinese coast, at low tide, is less than 2 kilometers (1.6 miles).

    In 1979, Justin Lin, a Taiwanese ground force captain and company commander, swam across that channel to defect to China. He went on to study at the prestigious Peking University and become a high-profile economist.

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  • China’s new defense minister is a general the US sanctioned for buying Russian weapons | CNN

    China’s new defense minister is a general the US sanctioned for buying Russian weapons | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    China on Sunday appointed a US-sanctioned general as its new defense minister.

    The country’s rubber-stamp legislature unanimously confirmed the appointment of General Li Shangfu, a veteran of the People’s Liberation Army’s modernization drive, during a session on Sunday.

    Experts said the appointment would be closely watched by Washington given Li’s background, even though the post is viewed as largely diplomatic and ceremonial.

    In 2018, the administration of former US President Donald Trump sanctioned Li and China’s Equipment Development Department – which he was in charge of at the time – for purchasing Russian weapons, including a Su-35 combat aircraft and a S-400 surface-to-air missile system.

    His appointment was one of a series confirmed by China’s National People’s Congress during its Sunday sitting. Other senior appointments included four new vice premiers – Ding Xuexiang, He Lifeng, Zhang Guoqing, and Liu Guozhong.

    Following their nomination by the new premier Li Qiang, all four will serve as vice premiers on the State Council, the body responsible for reviving China’s economy after three years of strict zero-Covid restrictions.

    The appointment of Li Shangfu as defense minister comes at a time of increasingly strained relations between Beijing and Washington.

    Defense experts told Reuters that his appointment likely reflected a reward for his work in modernizing China’s military.

    In 2016, Li was named deputy commander of the PLA’s then-new Strategic Support Force, an elite body tasked with accelerating the development of China’s space and cyber warfare capabilities. He was then appointed head of the Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission (CMC), China’s governing defense body, headed by the country’s leader Xi Jinping, Reuters reported.

    Defense experts said Li’s history as a technocrat and aerospace engineer who worked in China’s satellite program would play a key part in his new role.

    “The operational and technological background of the next Chinese defense minister is especially pertinent given that the PLA aims to become a world-class military by 2049,” James Char from Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies told Reuters.

    “I think he has been elevated to this position because he’s delivered for Xi Jinping in key areas of modernisation,” Singapore-based security analyst Alexander Neill from Hawaii’s Pacific Forum think-tank told Reuters.

    “This is someone who will have to hold their own in front of an international audience.”

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  • Parents of sailor who died by suicide urge Pentagon to implement mental health measure named in his honor that became law over a year ago | CNN Politics

    Parents of sailor who died by suicide urge Pentagon to implement mental health measure named in his honor that became law over a year ago | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    More than a year after Congress signed into law a bill meant to help service members struggling with severe mental health problems, the Pentagon still has not issued guidance to the services to put the bill into practice.

    “We hear the rhetoric all the time, but we need action,” said Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, who co-sponsored the Brandon Act. “They’ve been sitting on their hands and more Americans die every day as a result.”

    The Brandon Act is named after Brandon Caserta, a young sailor whose parents described him as a “very charismatic and upbeat young man” who “always helped everyone he could.”

    But in June 2018, Caserta took his own life at Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia. In letters to his parents and to his friends, Caserta said he was constantly hazed and bullied in the Navy, and he saw no other way out.

    He notified his commanders he was depressed but they took no action and showed no sympathy, according to Brandon Caserta’s father Patrick, who served 22 years in the Navy.

    “They said, ‘Suck it up and get back to work,’” Patrick Caserta told CNN. “You can’t have that. That’s now how you deal with it.”

    The Brandon Act was included in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. If a service member seeks mental health services or self-reports a problem, the Act requires a mental health evaluation. It also allows service members to seek confidential help outside the chain of command.

    “His letter led us to this,” Teri Caserta, Brandon’s mother, told CNN. “He wanted us to do something about suicide and the toxicity that happens in our military system. That’s why we created the Brandon Act.”

    But 15 months after it was passed the law has not been implemented and the Defense Department hasn’t followed through its requirements and issued guidance for the military. Therefore, the mental health evaluations and the confidential reporting required by the law are still not available to service members.

    In 2021, the latest year for which numbers are available, 519 US service members died by suicide. Though a slight decrease from the previous year’s 582 suicides, the trend over the last decade and more has been increasing.

    Last year, three sailors assigned to the USS George Washington died by suicide in a single week. Then, in December, four sailors at a faculty in Norfolk, Virginia died by suicide in one month.

    “DoD needs to do this,” said Moulton bluntly. “Active-duty service members don’t have a way to report mental health issues outside the chain of command because DoD just hasn’t gotten out of their own bureaucratic way to implement this act. It just requires the Secretary of Defense and his department to do their job.”

    The issue of military suicides has plagued the Department of Defense for decades. According to a 2021 study from Brown University, more than 30,000 active-duty personnel and veterans died by suicide during the 20-year War on Terror, which is more than four times the number of combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

    The Defense Department is currently working on implementing the requirements of the Brandon Act, according to a spokesperson.

    “Due to the complexity of the requirement, publication of policy to establish self-initiated referrals for a mental health evaluation via a commander or supervisor is currently in development,” said Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, who stressed that there are mental health services available for members of the military seeking help or an evaluation.

    “A full continuum of mental health and wellness support is available worldwide to ensure access to care,” Schwegman said, including specialty and primary care clinics, as well as virtual health platforms.

    Last month, the Pentagon’s Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee unveiled 127 recommendations to combat military suicides, including a waiting period for gun purchases on base and raising the minimum age for buying firearms on base.

    The Pentagon said it would review the recommendations closely.

    “Even one suicide is too many, and we will exhaust every effort to promote the wellness, health, and morale of our total force,” said Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder after the release of the recommendations.

    But for the parents of Brandon Caserta, the committee’s recommendations and the Pentagon’s promises to review its report smack of more waiting and less action.

    “As painful as this has been, had someone else done this before us, our son would still be alive,” said Patrick Caserta. “We want to be that person that saves lives later on.”

    Editor’s Note: If you or a loved one have contemplated suicide, call The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to connect with a trained counselor.

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  • China to increase defense spending 7.2%, sets economic growth target of ‘around 5%’ for 2023 | CNN Business

    China to increase defense spending 7.2%, sets economic growth target of ‘around 5%’ for 2023 | CNN Business


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    China has set an official economic growth target of “around 5%” for 2023, as it seeks to revive the world’s second-largest economy after a year of tepid growth because of pandemic measures.

    It will also expand its defense budget 7.2%, marking a slight increase over growth the previous year.

    Both figures for the coming year were released at the opening of the annual gathering of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s rubber-stamp legislature, which draws nearly 3,000 delegates to Beijing for the next eight days.

    “China’s economy is staging a steady recovery and demonstrating vast potential and momentum for further growth,” outgoing Premier Li Keqiang told delegates while delivering a government work report at the opening of the congress on Sunday.

    The economy added more than 12 million urban jobs last year, with the urban unemployment rate falling to 5.5%, according to the work report, which emphasized China’s focus on ensuring stable growth, employment and prices amid global inflation and set the GDP target.

    China also unveiled its annual military budget for 2023, which will increase 7.2% to roughly 1.55 trillion yuan ($224 billion) in a draft budget report released Sunday morning.

    The spending increase marks the second year in a row that the annual hike in military spending has exceeded 7% and tops last year’s 7.1% growth, amid rising geopolitical tensions and a regional arms race. As with other recent years, the figure stays well below the symbolically significant double-digit expansion.

    “The armed forces should intensify military training and preparedness across the board, develop new military strategic guidance, devote greater energy to training under combat conditions and make well-coordinated efforts to strengthen military work in all directions and domains,” Li’s work report said.

    The GDP target and military spending are among the most closely watched in the opening day proceedings, with the GDP target figure in particular being monitored this year as China emerges from its economically draining zero-Covid policy. The new figure appears modest against what some analysts had predicted could be a more robust aim for the year ahead.

    The NPC meeting is a key yearly political event that occurs alongside a gathering of China’s top political advisory body, with the events together known as the Two Sessions.

    This is the first Two Sessions since Chinese leader Xi Jinping secured a norm-breaking third term atop the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy in October. Xi is set to enter his third term as President, a largely ceremonial title, during the congress.

    China’s GDP expanded by just 3% in 2022, widely missing the official target of “around 5.5%” mainly due to prolonged Covid restrictions. It was the second lowest annual growth rate since 1976, behind only 2020 – when the initial Covid outbreaks nearly paralyzed the economy.

    In December, after the Communist Party abruptly ended its zero-Covid policy, a massive wave of infections swept across the country, throwing supply chains and factories into chaos. But the disruptions started to fade away in January, and the economic recovery picked up pace last month.

    Official data released Wednesday showed China’s factories had their best month in nearly 11 years in February, underscoring how quickly economic activity has bounced back following the end of the Covid exit wave. The services and construction industries also had their best performance in two years.

    Moody’s Investors Service has since raised its China growth forecast to 5% for both 2023 and 2024, up from 4% previously, citing a stronger than expected rebound in the short term.

    Analysts had predicted a difficult track to recovery for China amid global headwinds, which may have also been reflected in the conservative 2023 target of “around 5%” announced Sunday.

    The global economy will weaken further this year as rising interest rates and Russia’s war in Ukraine continue to weigh on activity, the International Monetary Fund estimated in January. Global growth will likely slow from 3.4% in 2022 to 2.9% in 2023.

    China is set to release its import and export data for the first two months of this year on Tuesday, which will provide a glimpse into demand for global trade.

    During the congress, the ruling Communist Party’s new economic team, including various ministers and financial chiefs, will be unveiled with other key appointments – already selected by the Communist Party leadership – also approved. Premier Li’s replacement will be formally appointed during the meeting, which runs until March 13.

    The new economic team will face the tough task of reviving the Chinese economy as it navigates a growing array of challenges, including sluggish consumption, rising unemployment, a historic downturn in real estate, and increasing tension with the United States over technology sanctions.

    The 7.2% increase in planned defense spending marks the first time in the past decade that the budget growth rate has increased for three consecutive years, as Beijing continues to modernize and build-up its military, while asserting pressure on Taiwan – the self-governing island democracy the Chinese Communist Party claims as its own despite never having ruled.

    China now controls the world’s largest navy by size and continues to advance its fleet of nuclear submarines and stealth fighter jets.

    The military budget expanded 7.1% to 1.45 trillion yuan in 2022, compared with 6.8% the previous year. The last year China’s annual defense spending grew by double digits was 2015. The size of this year’s budget is more than double that of ten years ago.

    Chinese officials have repeatedly sought to portray their military spending as reasonable relative to other countries like the United States – part of China’s bid to present itself as a peaceful power, despite its aggression in the region including its militarization of the South China Sea and heavy patrolling around Taiwan.

    During a press conference Saturday ahead of the opening day, NPC spokesperson Wang Chao said China’s defense budget maintained a “relatively moderate and reasonable growth rate.”

    “China’s defense expenditure as a percentage of GDP has remained stable over the years. It remains basically stable, lower than the world average,” Wang said.

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  • Pentagon’s suicide prevention committee recommends age limit and waiting period for on-base gun purchases | CNN Politics

    Pentagon’s suicide prevention committee recommends age limit and waiting period for on-base gun purchases | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A suicide prevention committee that was established by the Pentagon last year is recommending instituting a waiting period for gun purchases on bases and raising the minimum age for buying firearms in an attempt to reduce the number of suicides among service members.

    The Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee (SPRIRC) announced the suggested measures as part of a broader set of 127 recommendations to reverse the current trend of suicides in the military, which has steadily increased over the last 15 years.

    The committee recommended putting in place a seven day waiting period for gun purchases on Defense Department facilities and a four day waiting period for ammunition purchases.

    The committee was created by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in May 2022 to review the Department of Defense’s ongoing suicide prevention efforts. The committee submitted a first set of 10 recommendations to Austin in December before submitting its latest report.

    Dr. Craig Bryan, one of the members of the committee, said a high percentage of suicides on base involved guns purchased at base military exchanges.

    “There’s a very strong scientific basis showing that waiting period, even as short as seven days, significantly reduce suicide rates,” said Bryan, a lethal means safety expert, in urging the Defense Department to “follow the science.”

    The committee also recommended raising the minimum age to purchase weapons on base to 25 years old.

    “There’s arguably only one thing that all researchers agree on,” said Bryan, “and that one thing is that taking steps to slow down convenient access to highly lethal methods like firearms is the single most effective strategy for saving lives.”

    According to the Defense Department’s annual report, 519 service members died by suicide in 2021, the most recent number for which numbers are available. Though the latest figure is a slight decrease from the previous year’s 582 suicides, the overall number has still been trending upward.

    “We will review those closely,” said Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder of the latest recommendations. “I don’t have anything to announce today in terms of what steps we may take, but again this is a very important topic to the Secretary and to the entire Department of Defense.”

    However, Dr. Rajeev Ramchand, an epidemiologist with the RAND corporation and another member of the SPRIRC, told reporters on Friday that service members the committee spoke with said they felt the Defense Department’s “current approach … was more of a check-the-block approach” and that suicide prevention was “not discussed frequently.”

    Ramchand gave an example of a series of required suicide prevention trainings that took place over a course of several days, saying service members sat in a dark auditorium where many of them fell asleep or “were on their phones.”

    “It’s hard to think this is having an effect,” Ramchand said.

    In addition to gun safety regulations, the committee also urged the Defense Department to address the lack of mental health services available for service members, including hiring psychologists and other mental health specialists quickly.

    “When service members were getting into care, they might not be seen for their second visit for about 6 weeks,” said Rebecca Blais, a sexual assault and suicide expert who is on the committee.

    Often, when job openings in mental health services were posted, the hiring process could drag out over a year, at which point the psychologist or other professional was no longer available, Blais said.

    In cases where mental health services were not available or already booked, the committee urged the Defense Department to increase insurance payments so service members could seek mental health experts outside of the military’s healthcare system.

    Editor’s Note: If you or a loved one have contemplated suicide, call The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to connect with a trained counselor.

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  • Pentagon investigating how internal emails leaked for 2 weeks without its knowledge | CNN Politics

    Pentagon investigating how internal emails leaked for 2 weeks without its knowledge | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Pentagon is investigating how a trove of internal US Special Operations Command emails was apparently exposed publicly online and leaked unclassified data for nearly two weeks without the military’s knowledge, a Pentagon spokesperson told CNN.

    The Department of Defense’s chief information officer and the US military’s Cyber Command are investigating the root cause of the incident and “why this problem was not detected sooner,” US Navy Commander Jessica McNulty, a Pentagon spokesperson, told CNN Thursday night.

    The investigation follows an independent cybersecurity researcher’s discovery of three terabytes of Department of Defense unclassified emails sitting on the public internet, apparently due to a misconfiguration of a computer server and dating to February 8. That amount is equivalent to dozens of standard smart phones’ storage.

    CNN reported earlier this week that the military had launched a probe into the researcher’s report.

    Samples of the emails that the researcher, Anurag Sen, shared with CNN dated back years and included standard information about US military contracts and requests by Department of Defense employees to have their paperwork processed.

    It is not uncommon for large organizations to inadvertently expose internal data to the internet, but the fact that this was a Department of Defense email server will give US officials cause for concern.

    Special Operations Command is an elite Pentagon command responsible for counterterrorism and hostage rescue missions around the globe.

    The involvement of Cyber Command in the investigation underscores the greater prominence it has taken in securing the US military’s sprawling set of computer networks in recent years. More than a decade since its formation, the command has taken on a bigger role in hacking cybercriminal networks and foreign governments, but also in helping with defense of military computer networks.

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  • US defense secretary tells CNN he hasn’t spoken to Chinese counterpart for a ‘couple of months’ | CNN Politics

    US defense secretary tells CNN he hasn’t spoken to Chinese counterpart for a ‘couple of months’ | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CNN that he and his Chinese counterpart have not spoken for a “couple of months,” with Chinese Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe refusing to take a call in the wake of the US shootdown of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon.

    “The last time that I talked to him was a couple of months ago,” Austin in an interview with Kaitlan Collins for “CNN This Morning” on Thursday.

    “I think we’ll continue … to stress how important it is and hopefully Minister Wei will schedule that call,” Austin added. “He knows where to find me.”

    The confirmation leaders of the two largest militaries in the world are not in direct contact comes as the two countries continue to build up their forces in Asia. CNN reported Thursday that the US is planning to increase the number of US troops training Taiwanese forces on the self-governing island in the coming months, something Austin declined to confirm. In recent weeks China accused the US of undermining peace and stability in the region after it strengthened its posture around Taiwan by bolstering forces in nearby Okinawa and Guam.

    And tensions significantly escalated at the beginning of the month when a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was drifting tens of thousands of feet up across the continental United States. President Joe Biden eventually ordered it shot down off the coast of South Carolina after officials determined that the risk the balloon would pose to civilians and property on the ground if shot down outweighed the intelligence collection risk it presented.

    Chinese officials claimed that the balloon was a “civilian airship” for research and weather purposes which had drifted off course, though the US reaffirmed it had surveillance capabilities.

    Austin told CNN that it’s possible Chinese President Xi Jinping did not know about the balloon, but he would “let the Chinese speak for themselves.”

    Austin did emphasize that that while he and Wei haven’t spoken during that period, it doesn’t mean the US doesn’t have other lines of communications open with different Chinese officials.

    “You just saw [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] talk to his counterpart in Munich,” he said Thursday. “And so there are diplomatic lines of communication open. But I think for the military, it’s really, really important that we maintain open lines of communication.”

    On top of existing tensions, US officials have begun warning partners and allies of intelligence that showed China could provide lethal military aid to Russia’s military in Ukraine. The issue was even raised at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend in a conversation between Blinken and his counterpart, Wang Yi.

    “The Secretary was quite blunt in warning about the implications and consequences of China providing material support to Russia or assisting Russia with systematic sanctions evasion,” a senior State Department official previously told reporters.

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been ongoing for a year now, with no signs of slowing. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels last week that Russia is “now a global pariah” since its invasion of Ukraine, and has lost “strategically, operationally, and tactically.”

    Austin added last week from Brussels that they expect to see Ukraine conduct an offensive in the spring against Russia.

    Thus far, China has not appeared to actually go through with sending lethal aid to Russia, Austin said in the interview, but it has not been “taken off the table.”

    “[T]here’s reputational risk, and of course, I’m sure China would love to enjoy a good relationship with all the countries in Europe,” he said. “And again, if you just look at the numbers of countries around the world, that really think that what Russia has done is horrible, I mean, adding to that, I think China – it would be a very ill-advised step for China to take.”

    China has a “lot of capability in terms of munitions and weapons,” Austin added, “and if they provide the substantial support to Russia, it prolongs the conflict.”

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  • Russia’s economy is hurting despite Putin’s bluster | CNN Business

    Russia’s economy is hurting despite Putin’s bluster | CNN Business


    London
    CNN
     — 

    When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine one year ago, Western countries hit back with unprecedented sanctions to punish Moscow and pile pressure on President Vladimir Putin. The aim: to deal an economic blow so severe that Putin would reconsider his brutal war.

    Russia’s economy did weaken as a result. But it also showed surprising resilience. As demand for Russian oil fell in Europe, Moscow redirected its barrels to Asia. The country’s central bank staved off a currency crisis with aggressive capital controls and interest rate hikes. Military expenditure supported the industrial sector, while the scramble to replace Western equipment and technology lifted investment.

    “The Russian economy and system of government have turned out to be much stronger than the West believed,” Putin said in a speech to Russia’s parliament Tuesday.

    Yet cracks are starting to show and they will widen over the next 12 months. The European Union — which spent more than $100 billion on Russian fossil fuels in 2021 — has made huge strides in phasing out purchases. The bloc, which dramatically reduced its dependence on Russian natural gas last year, officially banned most imports of Russian crude oil by sea in December. It enacted a similar block on refined oil products this month.

    Those measures are already straining Russia’s finances as it struggles to find replacement customers. The government reported a budget deficit of about 1,761 billion rubles ($23.5 billion) for January. Expenditure jumped 59% year-over-year, while revenue plunged 35%. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced that Russia would cut oil production by about 5% starting in March.

    “The era of windfall profits from the oil and gas market for Russia is over,” Janis Kluge, an expert on Russia’s economy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told CNN.

    Meanwhile, the ruble has slumped to its weakest level against the US dollar since last April. The currency’s weakness has contributed to high inflation. And most businesses say they can’t conceive of growing right now given high levels of economic uncertainty, according to a recent survey by a Russian think tank.

    These dynamics place the country’s economy on a trajectory of decline. And they will force Putin to choose between ramping up military spending and investing in social goods like housing and education — a decision that could have consequences both for the war and the Russian public’s support of it.

    “This year could really be the key test,” said Timothy Ash, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, a think tank.

    In a bid to bring Russia to heel for its aggression, Western countries have used their sway over the global financial system, unveiling more than 11,300 sanctions since the invasion and freezing some $300 billion of the country’s foreign reserves. At the same time, more than 1,000 companies, ranging from BP

    (BP)     to McDonald’s

    (MCD)     and Starbucks

    (SBUX)    , have exited or curtailed operations in the country, citing opposition to the war and new logistical challenges.

    Russia’s economic output duly contracted by 2.1% last year, according to a preliminary estimate from the government. But the hit was more limited than forecasters initially expected. When sanctions were first imposed, some economists predicted a contraction of 10% or 15%.

    One reason for Russia’s unexpected pluck was its push toward self-sufficiency following Putin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Through a policy known as “Fortress Russia,” the government boosted domestic food production and policymakers forced banks to build up their reserves. That created a degree of “durability,” said Ash at Chatham House.

    The swift intervention of Russia’s central bank, which jacked up interest rates to 20% after the invasion and implemented currency controls to buttress the ruble, was also a stabilizing force. So was the need for factories to increase production of military goods and replace items that had been imported from the West.

    But the greatest support came from high energy prices and the world’s continued thirst for oil and other commodities.

    Russia, the world’s second-largest exporter of crude, was able to send barrels that would have gone to Europe to countries like China and India. The European Union, which imported an average of 3.3 million barrels of Russian crude and oil products per day in 2021, was also still buying 2.3 million barrels per day as of November, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

    “It’s a question of natural resources,” Sergey Aleksashenko, Russia’s former deputy minister of finance, said at an event last month hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. That meant the economy experienced a decline, but “not a collapse,” he added.

    In fact, Russia’s average monthly oil export revenues rose by 24% last year to $18.1 billion, according to the IEA. Yet a repeat performance is unlikely, presaging increasingly tough decisions for Putin.

    The price of a barrel of Urals crude, Russia’s main blend, fell to an average of $49.50 in January after Europe’s oil embargo — as well as a Group of Seven price cap — took effect. By comparison, the global benchmark stood around $82. That suggests that customers like India and China, seeing a smaller pool of interested buyers, are negotiating greater discounts. Russia’s 2023 budget is based on a Urals price of more than $70 per barrel.

    Finding new buyers for processed oil products, which are also subject to new embargoes and price caps, won’t be easy either. China and India have their own network of refineries and prefer to buy crude, noted Ben McWilliams, an energy consultant at Bruegel.

    Meanwhile, gas exports to Europe have plunged since Russia shut its Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

    A motorcyclist rides past an oil depot in New Delhi, India, on Sunday, June 12, 2022.

    Russia’s government relied on the oil and gas sector for 45% of its budget in 2021. As it plans to maximize defense spending, lower revenues inevitably mean trade-offs. Spending plans for 2023 finalized in December involved a decrease in expenditure on housing and health care, as well as a category that includes public infrastructure.

    “Whatever energy resources are obtained, they’ll be spent on military needs,” said Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, acting director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London.

    The International Monetary Fund still expects Russia’s economy to expand by 0.3% this year and 2.1% the next. Yet any outlook is contingent on what happens in Ukraine.

    “Whether the economy shrinks or expands in 2023 will be determined by developments in the war,” Tatiana Orlova, an economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. Shortages of workers tied to military conscription and emigration pose a key risk, she noted.

    The impact of Western sanctions is poised to develop into a crisis over time. Bloomberg Economics estimates that Putin’s war in Ukraine will slash $190 billion off Russia’s gross domestic product by 2026 compared with the country’s prewar path.

    Sectors that rely on imports have been particularly vulnerable. Domestic car makers such as Avtovaz, which manufactures the iconic Ladas, have struggled with shortages of key components and materials.

    A man talks on his phone near a closed H&M store on December 15, 2022 in Moscow, Russia.

    Russia’s auto industry was already weakened after companies such as Volkswagen

    (VLKAF)    , Renault

    (RNLSY)    , Ford

    (F)     and Nissan

    (NSANF)     halted production and began to sell their local assets last year. Chinese firms have stepped up their presence, part of a broader trend. Even so, sales of new cars dropped 63% year-over-year in January, according to the Association of European Businesses.

    Across sectors, firms are struggling to plan for the future. A survey of more than 1,000 Russian businesses by the Stolypin Institute of Economic Growth in November found that almost half plan to maintain production over the next one to two years and aren’t thinking about growth. The group said this contributed to a high risk of “long-term stagnation of the Russian economy.”

    Given Putin’s ideological commitment to subsuming Ukraine, he’s unlikely to back down, according to Sharafutdinova at King’s College London. But his war chest “is likely, inevitably, to diminish,” she added.

    Prioritizing military spending will also come at a social cost, with a “slow and creeping” erosion of living standards, she added.

    “In normal times, we might have said that the population would protest against that,” Sharafutdinova said. “But of course, these are not normal times.”

    — Clare Sebastian and Olesya Dmitracova contributed reporting.

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