KYIV, UKRAINE — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he expects his mobilization of army reservists for combat in Ukraine to be completed in about two weeks, allowing him to end an unpopular and chaotic call-up meant to counter Ukrainian battlefield gains and solidify his illegal annexation of occupied territory.
Putin — facing domestic discontent and military setbacks in a neighboring country armed with increasingly advanced Western weapons — also told reporters he does not regret starting the conflict and “did not set out to destroy Ukraine” when he ordered Russian troops to invade nearly eight months ago.
“What is happening today is unpleasant, to put it mildly,” he said after attending a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Kazakhstan’s capital. “But we would have had all this a little later, only under worse conditions for us, that’s all. So my actions are correct and timely.”
Russia’s difficulties in achieving its war aims have become apparent in one of the four Ukrainian regions Putin illegally claimed as Russian territory last month. Anticipating an advance by Ukrainian forces, Moscow-installed authorities in the Kherson region urged residents to flee Friday.
Even some of Putin’s own supporters have criticized the Kremlin’s handling of the war and mobilization, increasing pressure on him to do more to turn the tide in Russia’s favor.
In his comments on the army mobilization, Putin said the action he ordered last month had registered 222,000 of the 300,000 reservists the Russian Defense Ministry set as an initial goal. A total of 33,000 of them have joined military units, and 16,000 are deployed for combat, he said.
Putin ordered the call-up to bolster the fight along a 1,100-km (684-mile) front line where Ukrainian counteroffensives have inflicted blows to Moscow’s military prestige. The mobilization was troubled from the start, with confusion about who was eligible for the draft in a country where almost all men under age 65 are registered as reservists.
Opposition to the order was so strong that tens of thousands of men left Russia, and others protested in the streets. Critics were skeptical the draft would end in two weeks. They predicted only a pause to allow enlistment offices to process regular conscripts during Russia’s annual fall draft for men aged 18-27, which was postponed from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1.
“Do not believe Putin about ‘two weeks.’ Mobilization can only be canceled by his decree. No decree – no cancellation,” Vyacheslav Gimadi, an attorney for imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, wrote on Facebook.
Asked about the possibility of an expanded mobilization, the Russian president said the Defense Ministry had not asked him to authorize one.
“Nothing further is planned,” Putin said, adding, ”In the foreseeable future, I don’t see any need.”
Putin and other officials stated in September the mobilization would affect some 300,000 people, but his enabling decree did not cite a specific number. Russian media reports have suggested it could be as high as 1.2 million.
Putin had also said only those with combat or service experience would be drafted. He later admitted military officials had made mistakes, such as enlisting reservists without the relevant background. Men who received minimal training decades ago were drafted in droves.
Reports also have surfaced that some recruits were sent to the front lines in Ukraine with little preparation and inadequate equipment. Several mobilized reservists were reported to have died in combat in Ukraine this week, just days after they were drafted.
Putin responded to the criticism Friday, saying all activated recruits should receive adequate training and that he would assign Russia’s Security Council “to conduct an inspection of how mobilized citizens are being trained.”
Before launching the invasion on Feb. 24, Putin questioned Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign nation, portraying the country as part of historic Russia. Asked about this on Friday, he repeated his claim that Russia was prepared for peace talks and again accused the Ukrainian government of quitting negotiations after Russian troops withdrew from Kyiv early in the war.
Ukraine rejected any possibility of negotiating with Putin after he illegally annexed Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk regions last month based on “referendums” that Kyiv and the West denounced as a sham.
The battlefield momentum has shifted toward Ukraine as its military recaptures cities, towns and villages that Russia took early in the war. After occupied Kherson’s worried Kremlin-backed leaders asked civilians to evacuate to ensure their safety and to give Russian troops more maneuverability, Moscow offered free accommodations.
Russia has characterized the movement of Ukrainians to Russia or Russian-controlled territory as voluntary, but in many cases they aren’t allowed to travel to Ukrainian-held territory, and reports have surfaced that some were forcibly deported to “filtration camps” with harsh conditions.
An Associated Press investigation found that Russian officials deported thousands of Ukrainian children — some orphaned, others living with foster families or in institutions — to be raised as Russian.
Ukrainian forces reported retaking 75 populated places in northern Kherson in the last month, according to Ukraine’s Ministry for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories. A similar campaign in eastern Ukraine resulted in most of the Kharkiv region returning to Ukrainian control, as well as parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the ministry said.
As they retreat, Russian forces are adding to their losses by abandoning weapons and ammunition. In the U.S., the Office of the Director of National Intelligence presented a slide deck Friday stating that at least 6,000 pieces of Russian equipment have been lost since the start of the war. The presentation outlines enormous pressure on Russia’s defense industry to replace its losses and says that because of export controls and international sanctions, Russia is expending munitions at an unsustainable rate.
Konstantin, a Kherson resident who spoke to the AP only if his last name was withheld for safety reasons, said columns of military trucks had moved around the region’s capital and eventually left. Most government offices have reduced working hours, and schools have closed, he said.
“The city is now in suspense. Primarily the Russian military from the headquarters and the family of collaborators are leaving,” Konstantin said. “Everyone is discussing the imminent arrival of the Ukrainian military and preparing for it.”
Russian forces on Friday carried out missile strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and in the Zaphorizhzhia region, home to Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant. The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has warned that fighting at or near the Russian-controlled Zaphorizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, now shuttered, could trigger a catastrophic radiation release.
Putin has vowed to retaliate if Ukraine or its allies strike Russian territory, including the annexed regions of Ukraine. Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine came under attack for a second day Friday. According to Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the shelling damaged an electric substation, five houses in the village of Voznesenovka and a power line, leaving several nearby villages temporarily without electricity. No casualties or injuries were reported.
Ukrainian shelling blew up an ammunition depot in the Belgorod region on Thursday, according to Russia’s Investigative Committee. Unconfirmed media reports said three Russian National Guard officers were killed and more than 10 were wounded.
Vowing to liberate all Russian-occupied areas, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, said in a video message Friday, “We have buried the myth of the invincibility of the Russian army.”
——
Yuras Karmanau contributed reporting from Tallinn, Estonia.
———
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A judge on Friday tossed out one of of five counts against a think-tank analyst charged with lying to the FBI about his role in the creation of a flawed dossier about former President Donald Trump.
The remaining four counts against Igor Danchenko will go to a jury Monday after prosecutors and the defense rested their cases Friday. But Judge Anthony Trenga reserved the right to toss out the other four counts regardless of what the jury decides.
In the count that was tossed out, prosecutors alleged that Danchenko lied to the FBI when he told an agent that he never talked with a Democratic operative named Charles Dolan about the information in the dossier.
As it turns out, there was evidence that Dolan and Danchenko had discussed the information over email. Defense attorneys argued that Danchenko’s response was literally true because they did not talk orally, and the question the FBI agent asked specifically referenced talking.
Trenga agreed, and he said that accepting the prosecution’s argument that the question had a broader context than mere talking would result in “divorcing words from their common meaning.”
In the remaining counts that will go forward, prosecutors argue that Danchenko fabricated interactions with a supposed source named Sergei Millian, who was a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of commerce.
Defense lawyers say Danchenko received an anonymous call from a person he believed to be Millian, and that Danchenko was forthright from the beginning that while he suspected the call came from Millian he was not certain.
Danchenko is being prosecuted by Special Counsel John Durham, who was appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate any misconduct in the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and its alleged ties to Russia.
Danchenko is the third person to be prosecuted by Durham. It is the first of Durham’s cases that delves deeply into the origins of the “Steele dossier,” which alleged connections between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin. and which Trump derided as fake news and a political witch hunt.
Durham’s other two cases resulted in an acquittal and a guilty plea with a sentence of probation.
Testimony this week at trial has highlighted Durham’s difficulty in proving his allegations. Two key FBI witnesses for the prosecution ended up providing testimony that was highly favorable to Danchenko, resulting in the unusual spectacle of Durham seeking to eviscerate the credibility of his own witnesses on re-direct.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he had “no regrets” over his deadly missile attacks on civilian targets across Ukraine earlier this week, but said there was no need for more “massive” strikes for now.
The wave of missile attacks on cities across Ukraine began on Monday in response to a blast on a strategically vital bridge connecting the annexed Crimean Peninsula to Russia over the weekend. It’s unclear what caused the explosion, but Putin on Monday blamed it on Kyiv and called it a “terrorist attack” that could not be left unanswered.
The intense bombardment that followed over the next two days killed at least 19 people and leveled civilian targets across the country, drawing global outrage. The strikes also caused major damage to power systems across Ukraine, forcing people to reduce consumption during peak hours to avoid blackouts.
Putin said that while he did not regret the strikes and believes that Russia’s actions were correct, he did recognize that “what is happening now is unpleasant.”
Putin also defended his partial mobilization of Russians that began in September, telling reporters it is expected to end in two weeks and that some 222,000 troops had already been drafted into the army.
The mobilization got off to a chaotic start last month, sparking rare protests throughout the country. Hundreds of thousands of people – mostly fighting-age men – fled Russia, pouring into neighboring countries like Georgia and Kazakhstan to avoid conscription.
Putin also said that Russia does not seek to “destroy” Ukraine, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Western leaders have previously alleged. His comments come seven months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion and as Moscow attempts to annex four Ukrainian regions in violation of international law.
The Russian leader was speaking at a rare news conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, where Putin had traveled for a meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a regional intergovernmental organization made up of former Soviet states.
When asked if he would meet with US President Joe Biden, Putin told a reporter that he “does not see the need for negotiations.”
Biden was asked a similar question in an exclusive interview with CNN earlier this week. The US President said he did not see “any rationale” for meeting his Russian counterpart, though he said he would perhaps make an exception to discuss the fate of imprisoned American basketball star Brittney Griner.
Russian authorities said civilian evacuations would begin Friday in the occupied southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, where the Kremlin has suffered a string of defeats at the hands of Ukrainian forces.
Further to the east, Russia’s embattled forces have managed to make some small gains in Donetsk, toward the city of Bakhmut, aided in large measure by Wagner mercenaries, or private military contractors. Moscow likely views the city a jumping-off point toward Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – the largest urban areas held by Ukraine in Donetsk, the British Defense Ministry said.
Bakhmut is currently under Ukrainian control, but it has been bombarded by Russian artillery for months. Reports from pro-Russian analysts and in Russian state media alleged that Kyiv had begun withdrawing some forces from the city, but CNN could not independently verify those claims. Ukrainian officials have not commented on them, but they have noted that Bakhmut is being fiercely contested.
Meanwhile, the outlook for Russian forces in Kherson and the northeastern region of Luhansk remain bleak. Kyiv has continued to make significant gains along the western side of the Dnipro River, a major waterway that flows across Ukraine and Eastern Europe, as they push toward the city of Kherson.
Fighting near Kherson city continued to rage on Friday. Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Russian-backed administration in Kherson, said Moscow’s forces were “courageously and professionally holding back the daily attempts of the militants of the Kyiv regime to break through the defenses.”
Though Stremousov said civilians should be at a “safe distance from the hostilities” and that Kherson residents appeared to have begun evacuating. The governor of the eastern Russian region of Rostov, Vasily Golubev, said Thursday that local authorities were preparing to receive residents of Kherson fleeing the front lines, Russian state news agency TASS reported. Golubev said the first group of evacuees would arrive on Friday.
Golubev’s comments came after Russia’s deputy prime minister confirmed Moscow would assist with evacuation efforts, heeding calls from the head of the Kremlin-backed administration in Kherson who had pleaded for help.
There is now concern that Ukrainian citizens in occupied territory may be forced to go to Russian territory against their will. Reports emerged early in the war of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians being forcibly sent to so-called “filtration centers” before being moved to Russia. Moscow denounced the claims as lies, alleging that Ukraine has hindered its efforts to “evacuate” people to Russia. But allegations of these centers stirred painful memories of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s forced deportation of millions from their homelands.
Over the summer, Ukrainian officials in the contested region of Zaporizhzhia appealed to citizens who were in Russian-occupied territory to move away from front lines and into other Ukrainian-controlled territory. If that option was not possible, they advised Ukrainians to use Crimea or Russian territory as a transit route toward Ukraine or a friendly country.
Those on the frontlines in Kherson are now being advised by Ukrainian officials to avoid traveling to Russia altogether.
“Under no circumstances should you go to the Russian Federation,” warned Oleksandr Samoylenko, a top Ukrainian official in the Kherson region, on Friday. Samoylenko said that Ukrainian forces were only targeting Russian positions and equipment using high-precision weapons.
Samoylenko’s and his deputy, Yurii Sobolevskyi, both accused Russia of trying to Ukrainian citizens out of the region so they could repopulate it with “zombies who are 100% loyal to Moscow.” Sobolevskyi alleged that a similar scheme was carried out in Crimea after Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
Kherson is one of four regions Russia is now attempting to annex from Ukraine. The others are Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine and Donetsk and Luhansk, two eastern Ukrainian regions where fighting against Russian-backed breakaway republics has raged since 2014.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — A 50-year-old Russian man has been detained in Arctic Norway with two drones and is suspected of flying the unmanned aerial vehicles somewhere in the country.
Numerous drone sightings have been reported near Norwegian offshore oil and gas platforms in recent weeks.
The Russian citizen, who was not identified, was detained on Tuesday.
Norwegian media reported that customs officers found two drones and several electronic storage devices in his luggage during a routine check at the Storskog border crossing, the sole crossing point between NATO-member Norway and Russia. Norway’s Arctic border with Russia is 198 kilometers (123 miles) long.
He is suspected of breaching sanctions which came into force after Russia went to war against Ukraine, prosecutor Anja Mikkelsen Indbjør told Norwegian broadcaster NRK. Under Norwegian law, it is prohibited for aircraft operated by Russian companies or citizens “to land on, take off from or fly over Norwegian territory.” Norway is not a member of the European Union but mirrors its moves.
The VG newspaper said that a local court on Friday ordered the man held for two weeks in custody. The man told the Indre and Oestre Finnmark District Court that he had been in Norway since August and had flown drones throughout the country, VG said. The seized material included 4 terabytes of stored images and files, with parts of them encrypted.
The man’s defense lawyer, Jens Bernhard Herstad, told Norwegian daily Dagbladet that his client has acknowledged flying the drones but has declined to say what he was doing in Norway.
Norwegian Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl said it was “too early to draw conclusions.”
“It is known that we have an intelligence threat against us which has been reinforced by what is happening in Europe,” Enger Mehl told NRK.
There is heightened security around key energy, internet and power infrastructure following last month’s underwater explosions that ruptured two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea that were built to deliver Russian gas to Germany.
The blasts and ruptures in the Baltic Sea happened in international waters off both Sweden and Denmark but within the countries’ exclusive economic zone. The damaged Nord Stream pipelines discharged huge amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the air.
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey and Russia have instructed their respective energy authorities to immediately begin technical studies on a Russian proposal that would turn Turkey into a gas hub for Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has floated the idea of exporting more gas through the Turk Stream gas pipeline running beneath the Black Sea to Turkey after gas deliveries to Germany through the Baltic Sea’s Nord Stream pipeline were halted.
Erdogan said Russian and Turkish energy authorities would work together to designate the best location for a gas distribution center, adding that Turkey’s Thrace region, bordering Greece and Bulgaria appeared to be the best spot.
“Together with Mr. Putin, we have instructed our Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources and the relevant institution on the Russian side to work together,” Erdogan said. “They will conduct this study. Wherever the most appropriate place is, we will hopefully establish this distribution center there.”
The destroyed barrack at a prison in Olenivka, Ukraine is seen on Friday, July 29.
(AP)
Ukraine is demanding that the International Committee of the Red Cross immediately send a delegation to the Russian prisoner of war camp at Olenivka in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region.
Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, published the call for a mission on the administration’s website.
“At the end of July, as a result of terrorist shelling by the Russian occupiers, more than 50 defenders of Ukraine were killed” at the camp, Yermak told the Red Cross, according to the public message.
The Russian Defense Ministry said a Ukrainian HIMARS rocket attack was responsible for the strike. The CNN investigation, based on analysis of video and photographs from the scene, satellite imagery from before and after the attack and the work of forensic and weapons experts, concluded the Russian version of events was very likely a fabrication.
In the aftermath of the attack, the Russian Defense Ministry said it was ready for the Red Cross to visit the camp. But, despite repeated requests from the organization, no visit was ever arranged.
Yermak said the conditions under which Ukrainian prisoners are held, and what they face in places of detention in the Russian Federation and in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, “is extremely important.”
“Therefore, I call for the Red Cross mission with international media representatives to arrive in Ukraine no later than in three days, even if you do not receive confirmation from Russia by this time. And we are sure that Russia is not interested in the truth being known.”
It’s unclear how any mission to Olenivka could happen without Russian consent, as the detention center is in Russian-occupied territory.
Since they first started arriving in Ukraine last spring, the Starlink satellite internet terminals made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been a vital source of communication for Ukraine’s military, allowing it to fight and stay connected even as cellular phone and internet networks have been destroyed in its war with Russia.
So far roughly 20,000 Starlink satellite units have been donated to Ukraine, with Musk tweeting on Friday the “operation has cost SpaceX $80 million and will exceed $100 million by the end of the year.”
But those charitable contributions could be coming to an end, as SpaceX has warned the Pentagon that it may stop funding the service in Ukraine unless the US military kicks in tens of millions of dollars per month.
Documents obtained by CNN show that last month Musk’s SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon saying it can no longer continue to fund the Starlink service as it has. The letter also requested that the Pentagon take over funding for Ukraine’s government and military use of Starlink, which SpaceX claims would cost more than $120 million for the rest of the year and could cost close to $400 million for the next 12 months.
“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales wrote to the Pentagon in the September letter.
Among the SpaceX documents sent to the Pentagon and seen by CNN is a previously unreported direct request made to Musk in July by the Ukrainian military’s commanding general, General Valerii Zaluzhniy, for almost 8,000 more Starlink terminals.
In a separate cover letter to the Pentagon, an outside consultant working for SpaceX wrote, “SpaceX faces terribly difficult decisions here. I do not think they have the financial ability to provide any additional terminals or service as requested by General Zaluzhniy.”
The documents, which have not been previously reported, provide a rare breakdown of SpaceX’s own internal numbers on Starlink, detailing the costs and payments associated with the thousands of terminals in Ukraine. They also shed new light on behind-the-scenes negotiations that have provided millions of dollars in communications hardware and services to Ukraine at little cost to Kyiv.
The letters come amid recent reports of wide-ranging Starlink outages as Ukrainian troops attempt to retake ground occupied by Russia in the eastern and southern parts of the country.
Sources familiar with the outages said they suddenly affected the entire frontline as it stood on September 30. “That has affected every effort of the Ukrainians to push past that front,” said one person familiar with the outages who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “Starlink is the main way units on the battlefield have to communicate.”
There was no warning to Ukrainian forces, a second person said, adding that now when Ukraine liberates an area a request has to be made for Starlink services to be turned on.
The Financial Times first reported the outages which resulted in a “catastrophic” loss of communication, a senior Ukrainian official said. In a tweet responding to the article, Musk didn’t dispute the outage, saying that what is happening on the battlefield is classified.
SpaceX’s suggestion it will stop funding Starlink also comes amid rising concern in Ukraine over Musk’s allegiance. Musk recently tweeted a controversial peace plan that would have Ukraine give up Crimea and control over the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky raised the question of who Musk sides with, he responded that he “still very much support[s] Ukraine” but fears “massive escalation.”
Musk also argued privately last month that Ukraine doesn’t want peace negotiations right now and that if they went along with his plan, “Russia would accept those terms,” according to a person who heard them.
“Ukraine knows that its current government and wartime efforts are totally dependent on Starlink,” the person familiar with the discussions said. “The decision to keep Starlink running or not rests entirely in the hands of one man. That’s Elon Musk. He hasn’t been elected, no one decided to give him that power. He has it because of the technology and the company he built.”
On Tuesday Musk denied a report he has spoken to Putin directly about Ukraine. On Thursday, when a Ukrainian minister tweeted that Starlink is essential to Ukraine’s infrastructure, Musk replied: “You’re most welcome. Glad to support Ukraine.”
More than seven months into the war, it’s hard to overstate the impact Starlink has had in Ukraine. The government in Kyiv, Ukrainian troops as well and NGOs and civilians have relied on the nimble, compact and easy-to-use units created by SpaceX. It’s not only used for voice and electronic communication but to help fly drones and send back video to correct artillery fire.
CNN has seen it used at numerous Ukrainian bases.
“Starlink has been absolutely essential because the Russians have targeted the Ukrainian communications infrastructure,” said Dimitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think tank. “Without that they’d be really operating in the blind in many cases.”
Though Musk has received widespread acclaim and thanks for responding to requests for Starlink service to Ukraine right as the war was starting, in reality, the vast majority of the 20,000 terminals have received full or partial funding from outside sources, including the US government, the UK and Poland, according to the SpaceX letter to the Pentagon.
SpaceX’s request that the US military foot the bill has rankled top brass at the Pentagon, with one senior defense official telling CNN that SpaceX has “the gall to look like heroes” while having others pay so much and now presenting them with a bill for tens of millions per month.
According to the SpaceX figures shared with the Pentagon, about 85% of the 20,000 terminals in Ukraine were paid – or partially paid – for by countries like the US and Poland or other entities. Those entities also paid for about 30% of the internet connectivity, which SpaceX says costs $4,500 each month per unit for the most advanced service. (Over the weekend, Musk tweeted there are around 25,000 terminals in Ukraine.)
In his July letter to Musk, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Gen. Zaluzhniy, praised the Starlink units’ “exceptional utility” and said some 4,000 terminals had been deployed by the military. However, around 500 terminals per month are destroyed in the fighting, Zaluzhniy said, before asking for 6,200 more terminals for the Ukrainian military and intelligence services and 500 per month going forward to offset the losses.
SpaceX said they responded by asking Zaluzhniy to instead take up his request to the Department of Defense.
On September 8 the senior director of government sales for SpaceX wrote the Pentagon saying the costs have gotten too high, approaching $100 million. The official asked the Department of Defense to pick up Ukraine’s new request as well as ongoing service costs, totaling $124 million for the remainder of 2022.
Those costs, according to the senior defense official, would reach almost $380 million for a full year.
SpaceX declined repeated requests for comment on both the outages and their recent request to the Pentagon. A lawyer for Musk did not reply to a request for comment. Defense Department spokesman Bob Ditchey told CNN, “The Department continues to work with industry to explore solutions for Ukraine’s armed forces as they repel Russia’s brutal and unprovoked aggression. We do not have anything else to add at this time.”
Early US support for Starlink came via the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) which according to the Washington Post spent roughly $3 million on hardware and services in Ukraine. The largest single contributor of terminals, according to the newly obtained documents, is Poland with payment for almost 9,000 individual terminals.
The US has provided almost 1,700 terminals. Other contributors include the UK, NGOs and crowdfunding.
The far more expensive part, however, is the ongoing connectivity. SpaceX says it has paid for about 70% of the service provided to Ukraine and claims to have offered that highest level – $4,500 a month – to all terminals in Ukraine despite the majority only having signed on for the cheaper $500 per month service.
The terminals themselves cost $1500 and $2500 for the two models sent to Ukraine, the documents say, while consumer models on Starlink’s website are far cheaper and service in Ukraine is just $60 per month.
That’s just 1.3% of the service rate SpaceX says it needs the Pentagon to start paying.
“You could say he’s trying to get money from the government or just trying to say ‘I don’t want to be part of this anymore,’” said the person familiar with Ukraine’s requests for Starlink. Given the recent outages and Musk’s reputation for being unpredictable, “Feelings are running really high on the Ukrainian side,” this person said.
Musk is the biggest shareholder of the privately-held SpaceX. In May, SpaceX disclosed that its valuation had risen to $127 billion and it has raised $2 billion this year, CNBC reported.
Last week, Musk faced a barrage of criticism on Twitter – including from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – after presenting in a series of tweets his peace plan to end the war. It would include giving Crimea to Russia and re-do referenda, supervised by the United Nations this time, in the four regions Russia recently illegally annexed.
It echoed comments he’d made last month at an exclusive closed-door conference in Aspen, Colorado called “The Weekend,” at which Musk told a room full of attendees that Ukraine should seek peace now because they’ve had recent victories.
“This is the time to do it. They don’t want to do it, that’s for sure. But this is the time to do it,” he said, according to a person in the room. “Everyone wants to seek peace when they’re losing but they don’t want to seek peace when they’re winning. For now.”
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
Hong Kong CNN
—
When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he inherited a country at a crossroads.
Outwardly, China seemed an unstoppable rising power. It had recently overtaken Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, the country still basking in the afterglow of the dazzling 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
But deep within the high walls of Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound where Xi spent time as a child visiting his late father Xi Zhongxun, a liberal-minded vice premier, China’s new leader saw a country in crisis.
Rampant corruption plagued the Communist Party and stoked popular discontent, chipping away at the legitimacy of a regime Xi’s father helped bring to power. The quest to get rich over decades of economic reform created a gaping wealth gap and hollowed out the official socialist ideology, fueling a crisis of faith. And as the Arab Spring toppled dictators in the Middle East, the rise of social media in China offered a rare space for public dissent, amplifying calls for social justice and political change.
Xi took these perceived challenges head on. Born a “princeling” – the offspring of revolutionary heroes who founded Communist China – the Chinese leader saw himself as savior, entrusted by the party to steer it away from threats to its survival.
But instead of following in the reformist footsteps of his father, Xi opted for a path of total control. Combining the old authoritarian playbook and new surveillance technology, he has eliminated his rivals, tightened his grip on the economy and made the party omnipresent in China – embedding his own cult of personality in daily life.
Xi also touted the “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation, offering a tempting vision to restore China to its past glory and reclaim its rightful place in the world.
“Xi Jinping sits on top of the party, the party sits on top of China, and China sits on top of the world. That’s basically the program,” said Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Australia.
Ten years on, Xi’s China is richer, stronger and more confident than ever, yet it is also more authoritarian, inward-looking and paranoid than it has been in decades. It has bolstered its international clout, at the expense of its relations with the West and many of its neighbors.
At a key party congress beginning on Sunday, Xi is poised to be appointed to a norm-breaking third term. It will be his coronation as China’s most powerful leader since Chairman Mao Zedong, paving the way for potential lifelong rule.
But as Xi grapples with a sharp economic downturn, growing frustration with his uncompromising zero-Covid policy and surging tensions with the United States and its allies, the sense of crisis that beset his rise to power has continued to haunt him, and is set to shape his rule in the years – if not decades – to come.
Xi saw the party’s crisis up close during his ascent to the top in 2012, when a sensational scandal brought down a prominent political rival and threatened to derail the leadership handover.
Bo Xilai, a fellow “princeling” and charismatic leader of the mega city of Chongqing, was vying for promotion into the top leadership when his police chief attempted to defect to a US consulate, accusing Bo of trying to cover up his wife’s murder of a British businessman. Party leaders feuded over how to deal with the fallout. Eventually, Bo was investigated and expelled from the party weeks before the five-yearly power reshuffle. Bo and his wife are today both serving life in prison.
Having risen through the ranks in the bustling coastal provinces during China’s reform and opening up, Xi would have seen no shortage of local corruption. But the blatant abuse of power and deep rifts at the very top of the leadership exposed in Bo’s scandal likely aggravated Xi’s sense of peril for the party’s survival.
“Our party faces many grave challenges and there are many pressing problems within the party that need to be solved, in particular corruption,” Xi said in his first speech hours after being appointed the top leader.
Within weeks, he launched the most brutal and long-lasting “war on graft” the party had ever seen. The sweeping purges targeted not only the corrupt, but also Xi’s political enemies, including powerful leaders who were accused of plotting a coup with Bo to seize power.
The crackdown instilled discipline, loyalty and a culture of fear, stifling opposition as Xi moved to amass power into his own hands. He styled himself as a strongman, eschewing the collective rule that was alleged to have exacerbated factionalism under his comparably weak predecessor Hu Jintao. In just four years, Xi asserted himself as the “core” of the party leadership, demanding its 96 million members to “unify their thinking, willpower and action” around him.
“(Xi) thinks the only instrument with which he can rule China at home and make gains abroad is a unified, strong, and powerful Communist Party. So he has made it his mission to strengthen the party under his rule,” said McGregor at the Lowy Institute. “He’s both strengthened himself, and he’s strengthened the party as a vehicle for himself.”
Consolidating the party from within was only part of his plan. Xi also set out to fortify the party’s grasp over the country. “Government, the army, society and schools, east, west, south, north and center – the party leads them all,” he said at the party congress in 2017.
Under Xi, the party reasserted itself in all aspects of life. It revitalized once-dormant grassroots party cells and set up new branches in private and foreign companies. It tightened its grip on the media, education, religion and culture, strangled civil society, and unleashed harsh crackdowns on Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Xi also ramped up the party’s control of the economy, especially its once-vibrant private sector. His sweeping regulatory crackdown brought tycoons to heel and wiped out trillions of dollars of market value from Chinese firms.
In the online sphere, extensive censorship and real-life retaliation tamed social media. Instead of serving as a catalyst for social and political reforms, it became an amplifier for party propaganda and a breeding ground for nationalism.
The pervasive social control reached new heights during the pandemic. In the name of fighting Covid, 1.4 billion Chinese citizens lost their freedom of movement to the whims of the party and the prowess of the surveillance state. Cities across China are trapped in rolling, draconian lockdowns, sometimes for months on end, with millions of people confined to their homes or massive quarantine camps.
For Xi, safeguarding the party’s primacy is a painful lesson drawn from the Cultural Revolution, when the Communist establishment was attacked by Mao’s “red guards” and lost control over society.
Hundreds of thousands died in the turmoil, including Xi’s half-sister who was persecuted to death. Xi’s father was purged and tortured. Xi himself was incarcerated, publicly humiliated and sentenced to hard labor in an impoverished village at age 15.
“Arguably, his emphasis on party authority, and stopping individuals who disagree with the party from criticizing (it), is a result of his phobia of chaos because of what he saw happened to himself, his mother, his father and siblings,” said Joseph Torigian, an expert on Chinese politics at American University and author of an upcoming biography on the elder Xi.
Many Chinese who survived the Cultural Revolution – including some party elites – came away with a conviction to prevent a similar catastrophe from happening again, China needed the rule of law, constitutionalism and protection of individual rights. But Xi arrived at a very different conclusion.
“(He) believed that to achieve political order you needed to have a powerful leader, a powerful party, not creating a system in which people had rights that went too far, because they would only abuse them and hurt other individuals,” Torigian said.
So instead of turning against the party, Xi devoted himself to it. In interviews with state media, Xi spoke of how his seven years as a “sent-down youth” toughened him up and strengthened his resolve to serve the party and the people. “I was distilled and purified, and felt like a completely different man,” he told the People’s Daily in 2004.
Xi’s obsession for control was also shaped by the trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he has repeatedly cited as a cautionary tale for the Chinese Communist Party.
“Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and beliefs had been shaken,” Xi told senior officials in a speech months after taking the helm of the party.
To address China’s own crisis of faith, Xi cracked down on religion, reinvigorated the party’s official Marxist ideology and promoted his own eponymous philosophy. “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” is enshrined in the party charter and dominates party speeches and meetings. It also permeates billboards, newspaper front pages and cinema screens, and is taught in classrooms across the country – to children as young as 7.
At the center of “Xi Jinping Thought” is the notion of the Chinese dream: the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” – a vision Xi unveiled just weeks after coming to power.
It has since become a hallmark of his rule, shaping many of his policies at home and abroad.
“Xi Jinping is a man with a mission. He believes that he knows the ways to take China to the promised land of national rejuvenation,” said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London.
“He is going back to his mythical visions of Chinese history, when China was the greatest civilization and country in the world. And the rest of the world (should) just respect, admire and follow the leadership of China.”
To be sure, many Chinese are proud of their country’s achievements. Under Xi, China declared an end to extreme poverty, modernized its military, emerged as a leader in next-generation technology and greatly expanded its global influence. It is striving to become the dominant power in space, commands the world’s largest navy, and makes its weight felt as an emerging superpower.
For others, Xi’s Chinese dream has turned into their living nightmare. In the country’s far west, Muslim minorities are arbitrarily incarcerated, forcibly assimilated and closely surveilled. In Hong Kong, pro-democracy supporters saw their freedom and hope crushed in a city changed beyond recognition. Across the country, numerous rights lawyers, activists, journalists, professors and businessmen are languishing in jail, or silenced by fear. In Xi’s eyes, they are all perceived threats to his quest for a strong and unified nation, and thus must be remolded or eliminated.
But increasingly, the sheen of the Chinese dream is coming off for ordinary people, too – young professionals who chose to “lie flat” in the face of intense pressure, depositors who lost their life savings in rural banks, homebuyers who refused to pay mortgages on unfinished homes, as well as business owners, laid-off workers and residents pushed to the brink by Xi’s relentless zero-Covid lockdowns. Some of them might have previously rooted for Xi and his vision, but are now paying the price for his policies.
The most disillusioned are seeking a way out. “Run philosophy” has become a Chinese buzzword, advocating emigration to escape what some see as a doomed future under Xi’s rule. Xi has repeatedly touted that China is rising and the West is in decline – a conviction strengthened by America’s political polarization, and his belief that China’s superior political model has enabled it to fight Covid better than Western democracies. But the growing number of disciples of “run philosophy” is an outright rejection of that narrative, showing many Chinese have no faith in his promise to make China great again.
Underpinning Xi’s Chinese dream is a bitter sense of resentment toward the West, rooted in the nationalistic narrative that before the party took power, China suffered a “century of humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers and was invaded, carved up, occupied and weakened.
In recent years, American measures to counter China’s rising influence has only reinforced its sense of being under siege from Western powers, McGregor said.
“It has a visceral, emotional appeal in China. It’s very powerful. I think Xi understands that and he intends to harness that to his own ends,” he said.
As a leader-in-waiting, Xi had already shown a strong disdain for foreign criticism of China. “There are some foreigners with full bellies who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us,” Xi told members of the Chinese community in Mexico on a visit as vice-president in 2009. “China does not export revolution, hunger or poverty. Nor does China cause you headaches. Just what else do you want?”
But Xi’s starkest warning to the West came last summer, when he presided over a grand celebration marking the party’s centenary. Standing on top of Tiananmen, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the towering entrance to the Forbidden City palace of imperial China, Xi declared the Chinese nation will no longer be “bullied, oppressed or subjugated” by foreign powers. “Anyone who dares to try, will find their heads bashed bloody against a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” he said to thundering applause from the crowd.
Since coming to power, Xi has repeatedly warned against the “infiltration” of Western values such as democracy, press freedom and judicial independence. He has clamped down on foreign NGOs, churches, Western movies and textbooks – all seen as vehicles for undue foreign influence.
Abroad, Xi embarked on an aggressive foreign policy. “Xi thinks this is China’s moment. And to seize that moment, he has to be assertive and take risks,” McGregor said.
Under Xi, China has openly competed for global clout with the United states, leveraging its economic heft to gain geopolitical influence. Its ties with the West are at their most fraught since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre – and they were further soured by Beijing’s tacit support for Moscow following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Xi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin share a deep suspicion and hostility toward the US, which they believe is bent on holding China and Russia down. They also share a vision for a new world order – one that better accommodates their nations’ interests and is no longer dominated by the West.
But it remains to be seen how many countries are willing to join that alternative perspective. Views of China have grown more negative during Xi’s decade in power across many advanced economies, and in some, unfavorable views reached record highs in recent years.
Beijing’s sweeping claims of sovereignty have also antagonized many of its neighbors in the region. China built and militarized islands in the South China Sea, raised military tensions over a disputed island chain with Japan, and engaged in bloody border conflicts with India. It has also ramped up military intimidation of Taiwan, a self-governing democracy Xi has vowed to “reunify” with the mainland.
For its part, the US has awakened to the competition with China, and is working with allies and like-minded partners to take a raft of measures against Beijing on geopolitics, trade and technology.
That difficult international environment, along with the toll of zero-Covid and the economic headwinds, poses a big challenge for Xi in the years ahead.
But for the coming week, the party congress will be all about celebrating Xi’s victory. According to the party’s most updated official history, Xi has brought China “closer to the center of the world stage than it has ever been.”
Mao may have founded Communist China. But according to the party’s narrative, it is Xi who will lead the country to its rebirth as the new global superpower. Whether he can succeed will have a profound impact on the world.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that Saudi Arabia knew that the OPEC+ decision to cut oil production “would increase Russian revenues” and that the United States is reviewing “consequences” for that decision.
The top US diplomat also confirmed that American officials had urged the oil cartel to hold off its choice, saying the US suggested OPEC+ wait and see how markets reacted in the coming weeks.
The organization’s decision to slash production by two million barrels a day has sparked outrage from the Biden administration and US lawmakers and has prompted calls for a drastic shift in the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia.
Speaking at a press conference at the State Department, Blinken said that prior to the announcement of the decision, “the Saudis had conveyed to us both privately as well as publicly their intention to reduce oil production, which they knew would increase Russian revenues and potentially blunt the effectiveness of sanctions.”
“We made clear that that would be the wrong direction on that basis alone, the impact that it would have potentially on sanctions, but also because we’re in a global economic recovery,” he said. “The recovery is fragile. We’re dealing with headwinds from Covid. We’re also dealing with headwinds from the Russian aggression itself. And so now is not the time to take energy off the market.”
Blinken reiterated that the Biden administration believes energy supply needs to meet market demand, and said OPEC+ “presented no market basis for the cuts.”
“We suggested that if they did have concerns about prices going down significantly, if their objective was to keep prices at a certain level, they should they should wait and see how markets reacted over the coming weeks and wait at least until their next monthly meeting,” he said. “So that’s what we strongly urged them to do … they didn’t do it.”
“As the President’s made very clear, that decision has to have consequences and that’s something that we’re reviewing as we speak,” Blinken said, but noted that the US has “a multiplicity of interests in Saudi Arabia.”
The Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that the decision was not politically motivated and was “based purely on economic considerations.”
The statement said Saudi officials had conveyed to the US “that all economic analyses indicate that postponing the OPEC+ decision for a month, according to what has been suggested, would have had negative economic consequences.”
“The Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia affirms that any attempts to distort the facts about the Kingdom’s position regarding the crisis in Ukraine are unfortunate, and will not change the Kingdom’s principled position, including its vote to support UN resolutions regarding the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, based on the Kingdom’s position on the importance for all countries to adhere to the United Nations Charter, principles of international law, and the Kingdom’s rejection of any infringement on the sovereignty of countries over their territories,” the statement said.
On Thursday morning, US National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby accused the Saudi Foreign Ministry of trying to “spin or deflect.”
“Other OPEC nations communicated to us privately that they also disagreed with the Saudi decision, but felt coerced to support Saudi’s direction,” Kirby said.
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim al-Thani met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Thursday to “defuse tensions” between Moscow and Doha, a source familiar with the talks, but not authorized to speak about them publicly, told CNN.
The United States and the European Union were briefed on the meeting before it took place, said the source.
“The purpose of the meeting between Qatar’s Emir and President Putin was to defuse the tensions between Russia and Qatar, which have grown following several events,” the source said.
A strain in the relationship between the two countries has emerged in recent months. The source said tensions have increased several times: after the Emir held a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky on Monday; after Qatar criticized Russia’s planned annexation of Ukrainian territory; and after Qatar’s participation in a meeting with NATO +8 countries in Germany in April.
The deteriorating relationship is now complicating Qatar’s diplomatic efforts in the region, the source said.
Qatar was attempting to help the revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal by relaying messages between Tehran and Washington. Separately, the tiny Gulf country was working with Russia and Turkey under a trilateral consultation process aimed at helping to find a political solution to the ongoing conflict in Syria.
“Qatar needs cordial relations with Russia and others in the region in order to be able to continue on various mediation and diplomatic files,” the source said.
During the meeting, the Emir told Putin that there is opportunity to strengthen the “historic ties” between Qatar and Russia on a political level and that there are “prospects” in energy cooperation, the Kremlin said in a statement.
NEW YORK — The war in Ukraine has heightened fears about nuclear exposure — and interest in iodine pills that can help protect the body from some radiation.
Concerns have grown in recent weeks over periodic power cuts to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that have increased the risk of a meltdown. And threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin that he will use “all means necessary” to win the war in Ukraine has raised the specter of nuclear warfare.
Some countries in Europe have started stockpiling the tablets and pharmacies in Finland began to run low on the pills after that country’s health ministry recommended households buy a single dose in case of emergency.
But what are iodine pills? And what can they do — and what can’t they do — in the case of a nuclear leak or attack?
Potassium iodide, or KI, offers specific protection against one kind exposure. It prevents the thyroid — a hormone-producing gland in the neck — from picking up radioactive iodine, which can be released into the atmosphere in a nuclear accident.
This radioactive material can increase the risk of thyroid cancer if it gets into the body, for example by breathing it in or eating contaminated food. It’s especially dangerous for children, and its health risks can last for many years after exposure, according to the World Health Organization.
Iodine tablets work by filling up the thyroid with a stable version of iodine so that the radioactive kind can’t get in. If the thyroid is already packed with potassium iodide, it won’t be able to pick up the harmful iodine that’s left after a nuclear accident.
The pills are cheap and sold all over the world, and many countries, including the U.S., stockpile them.
But potassium iodide doesn’t protect against other kinds of radioactive threats. A nuclear bomb, for example, can release many different kinds of radiation and radioactive material that can harm many parts of the body.
Health authorities caution that potassium iodide should only be taken in certain nuclear emergencies, and works best if it’s taken close to the time of exposure. It shouldn’t be taken as a preventive measure ahead of time.
Potassium iodide doses can come with some side effects like rash, inflammation or an upset stomach. Those over 40 years old generally shouldn’t take iodine tablets unless their expected exposure is very high, according to guidelines from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
———
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during the 6th CICA Summit, October,13, in Astana, Kazakhstan.
(Getty Images)
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow is “making every effort to provide critical products” to countries impacted by recent volatility in prices, while speaking at a summit in Kazakhstan on Thursday.
“Other regional associations have to deal with many acute problems, including the increased volatility in world prices for energy resources, food, fertilizers, raw materials and other important goods,” Putin said while delivering remarks at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in the Kazakh capital Astana.
“This leads to a deterioration in the quality of life in developed and developing countries. Moreover, there is a real threat of famine and widespread social upheaval, especially in the poorest countries.”
“Russia, for its part, is making every effort to provide critical products to countries in need. We call for the elimination of all artificial, illegitimate barriers to the restoration of the normal functioning of global supply chains in order to address urgent food security challenges,” Putin said.
The Russian leader did not reference the war in Ukraine in his remarks. However, he again criticized NATO for the “failure of their policies,” referencing their role in Afghanistan.
“After more than 20 years of the military presence of the United States and NATO [in Afghanistan], the failure of their policies, was unable to independently resolve the problems associated with terrorist threats,” Putin said.
Putin said that, together with other Asian countries, Russia is looking to form a “system of equal and indivisible security based on the universally recognized principles of international law of the UN Charter.”
In the case of wheat, prices later fell back sharply after spiking to an all-time high in March, as investors cheered a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to restart exports of grain from key Ukrainian ports.
However, natural gas prices increased further as Russia toyed with supply to Europe via key pipelines and heat waves pushed up electricity usage, with the economic impact of the war in Ukraine still being felt around the world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during the 6th CICA Summit, October,13, in Astana, Kazakhstan.
(Getty Images)
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow is “making every effort to provide critical products” to countries impacted by recent volatility in prices, while speaking at a summit in Kazakhstan on Thursday.
“Other regional associations have to deal with many acute problems, including the increased volatility in world prices for energy resources, food, fertilizers, raw materials and other important goods,” Putin said while delivering remarks at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in the Kazakh capital Astana.
“This leads to a deterioration in the quality of life in developed and developing countries. Moreover, there is a real threat of famine and widespread social upheaval, especially in the poorest countries.”
“Russia, for its part, is making every effort to provide critical products to countries in need. We call for the elimination of all artificial, illegitimate barriers to the restoration of the normal functioning of global supply chains in order to address urgent food security challenges,” Putin said.
The Russian leader did not reference the war in Ukraine in his remarks. However, he again criticized NATO for the “failure of their policies,” referencing their role in Afghanistan.
“After more than 20 years of the military presence of the United States and NATO [in Afghanistan], the failure of their policies, was unable to independently resolve the problems associated with terrorist threats,” Putin said.
Putin said that, together with other Asian countries, Russia is looking to form a “system of equal and indivisible security based on the universally recognized principles of international law of the UN Charter.”
In the case of wheat, prices later fell back sharply after spiking to an all-time high in March, as investors cheered a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to restart exports of grain from key Ukrainian ports.
However, natural gas prices increased further as Russia toyed with supply to Europe via key pipelines and heat waves pushed up electricity usage, with the economic impact of the war in Ukraine still being felt around the world.
Ukraine has received additional emergency funding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), according to the Ukrainian prime minister.
“Ukraine received $1.3 billion of additional emergency financing support from the International Monetary Fund. The funds will be used to finance priority needs: Strengthening defense capabilities, paying pensions, social programs and supporting the economy,” said Denys Shmyhal.
“In total, the IMF has provided our country with $2.7 billion since the beginning of the full-scale war,” he said.
On October 7, the IMF executive board approved the additional funds “under the food shock window of the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) to help meet Ukraine’s urgent balance of payments needs.”
“The scale and intensity of Russia’s war against Ukraine that started more than seven months ago have caused tremendous human suffering and economic pain,” the IMF said in a press release last week.
“This disbursement under the RFI (equivalent to 50 percent of Ukraine’s quota in the IMF) will help meet urgent balance of payment needs, including due to a large cereal export shortfall, while playing a catalytic role for further financial support from Ukraine’s creditors and donors,” the IMF added.
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s capital region was struck by Iranian-made kamikaze drones early Thursday, officials said, sending rescue workers rushing to the scene as residents awoke to air raid sirens for the fourth consecutive morning following Russia’s major assault across the country earlier this week.
Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said the strike occurred in the area around the capital. It wasn’t yet clear if there were any casualties.
Deputy head of the presidential office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Telegram that “critical infrastructure facilities” in the area were hit, without offering any details on which ones.
In the southern city of Mykolaiv, overnight shelling destroyed a five-story apartment building as fighting continued along Ukraine’s southern front.
Mykolaiv regional governor Vitali Kim said that an 11-year-old boy was rescued from under the rubble, where he had spent six hours, and rescuers on Thursday morning were searching for seven more people, Kim said.
He said that the building was hit by an S-300 missile which is ordinarily used for targeting military aircraft, but Russians have apparently been increasingly using them for unprecise ground strikes.
Early morning attacks on Ukraine’s southern front have become a daily occurrence in Russia’s war as Kyiv’s forces push a counteroffensive aimed at recapturing territory occupied by Moscow.
Attacks on Kyiv had become rare before the capital city was hit at least four times during Monday’s massive strikes, which killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 100 across the country.
Western leaders this week pledged to send more weapons to Ukraine, including air defense systems and weapons Kyiv has said are critical to defeating the invading Russian forces.
Britain said Thursday that it will provide missiles for advanced NASAM anti-aircraft systems that the Pentagon plans to send to Ukraine in coming weeks. It’s also sending hundreds of additional aerial drones for information gathering and logistics support, plus 18 more howitzer artillery guns.
U.K. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said that “these weapons will help Ukraine defend its skies from attacks and strengthen their overall missile defense alongside the U.S. NASAMS.”
The systems, which Kyiv has long wanted, will provide medium- to long-range defense against missile attacks.
The offer comes as NATO defense ministers meet in Brussels, aiming to help bolster Ukraine’s aerial defenses after Monday’s widespread Russian assault.
Ukraine’s military said this week that its current air defenses have shot down dozens of incoming Russian missiles and Shahed-136 drones, the so-called kamikaze drones that have played an increasingly deadly role in the war.
———
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir said his country partnered with Russia to slash oil production in order to stabilize markets and denied that there were political motives behind the decision, which has enraged US leaders and sparked calls to rethink ties with Riyadh.
“We’re trying to make sure we don’t have erratic swings in prices,” al-Jubeir, one of Saudi Arabia’s top diplomats, told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Wednesday. “Our track record has been clear – we have always worked assiduously to maintain stability in the oil markets.”
Last week, OPEC+, the oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, agreed to slash production by 2 million barrels per day, twice as much as analysts had predicted, in the biggest cut since the Covid-19 pandemic.
The move came despite an intense pressure campaign from the United States, which had warned Arab allies that such a move would increase prices and help Russian President Vladimir Putin continue to fund his war in Ukraine. Experts also fear that continued high oil prices could make it more difficult for the US to tamp down inflation, which has already skyrocketed this year.
Al-Jubeir, who is also the country’s climate minister, denied that there were any political motives to the decision and said the production cut was made to avoid major swings in the price of oil, which can affect consumers worldwide, and pointed to the fact that the price of oil has gone down since the reduction was announced last week.
“Saudi Arabia is not siding with Russia,” he told CNN. “Saudi Arabia is taking the side of trying to ensure the stability of the oil markets.”
“Saudi Arabia does not politicize oil. We don’t see oil as a weapon. We see oil as our commodity. Our objective is to bring stability to the oil market,” al-Jubeir said.
US President Joe Biden told CNN on Tuesday that Washington must now “rethink” its relationship with Riyadh following the cut. The decision was a particular affront for Biden because of his efforts over the summer to repair ties with Saudi Arabia, despite the kingdom’s woeful human rights record and the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Bin Salman denied involvement in the murder, which captured international headlines in part due to the lurid details of the killing.
“I am in the process, when the House and Senate gets back, they’re going to have to – there’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done with Russia,” Biden said.
Watch the full exclusive interview with President Joe Biden
On Wednesday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden would examine all aspects of US ties with Saudi Arabia, including arms sales, as administration officials begin quiet discussions with members of Congress and congressional aides about how the US could impose consequences on the kingdom following the oil output cut.
“There is a range of interests and values that are implicated in our relationship with that country,” Sullivan told reporters. “The President will examine all of that. But one question he’s going to ask is: Is the nature of the relationship serving the interest and values of the United States and what changes would make it better serve the interests and values?”
Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al-Saud said in an interview with Saudi TV earlier Wednesday that OPEC+ needed to be proactive as central banks in the West moved to tackle inflation with higher interest rates, a move that could raise prospects of a global recession, which could in turn reduce demand for oil and drive its price down. Cutting production would ensure a smaller supply of oil, keeping its price higher. While that would protect the Saudi economy by ensuring it receives a steady flow of income from oil sales, it would force consumers across the world to pay more for energy and gas, further fueling inflation.
Saudi officials have insisted that the production cut is being done to protect the country’s economic interests. Because of its heavy dependence on oil revenues, the Saudi economy has a history of falling victim to boom and bust cycles in the oil market, where high prices bring in a flow of cash followed by downturns.
In the United States, however, the cut could have massive political ramifications ahead of next month’s midterm elections. After reaching highs over the summer, gas prices in the United States had been steadily decreasing, providing Biden and his top aides a potent talking point in the lead-up to the elections.
But a combination of factors, including rising demand and maintenance at some US refineries, has caused prices to begin ticking back up. The OPEC+ decision is likely to aggravate those factors.
The decision set off bipartisan fury in Washington when it was first announced last week. Saudi Arabia is now being accused of filling the Kremlin’s coffers with oil revenues just days after President Putin’s regime began carrying out large-scale missile attacks on civilian targets across Ukraine
“What Saudi Arabia did to help Putin continue to wage his despicable, vicious war against Ukraine will long be remembered by Americans,” tweeted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, on Friday.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut on Wednesday called for immediate action on his bill that would stop US arm sales to Saudi Arabia.
“The Saudis actions aid and abet a murderous and brutal criminal invasion by Russia,” Blumenthal said.
When asked about growing calls in Washington to limit ties with Saudi Arabia, al-Jubeir said he hoped that such talk was motivated by domestic politics ahead of the midterms.
Al-Jubeir said the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia remains “robust.”
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US have had a very strong relationship for eight decades … and we look forward to this relationship continuing for the next eight decades,” he added.
It’s never going to feel normal to hear a president discussing the danger of “Armageddon” – especially now, on camera.
But Joe Biden used an exclusive CNN interview on Tuesday to send another careful, yet clear and chilling message to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the disastrous consequences of using nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.
The first president since the 1980s to really have to game out calculations about nuclear arsenals and deterrence, Biden was asked by Jake Tapper whether he thought that Putin – who has warned he is prepared to use every option in Russia’s arsenal – might consider detonating one of the world’s most heinous weapons as an act of desperation in a losing war.
Biden replied: “I don’t think he will.”
But the President, who first touched on this subject at an off-camera fundraiser in New York last week, made crystal clear he was sending a public message to Putin about the dangers of thinking that using a lower yield, tactical nuclear bomb would be an isolated event.
“What I am talking about, I am talking to Putin. He, in fact, cannot continue with impunity to talk about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon as if that’s a rational thing to do,” Biden said, before warning of dangerous consequences of such a move.
“The mistakes get made, the miscalculation could occur, no one could be sure what would happen and it could end in Armageddon,” he said, again stressing that a nuclear blast that kills thousands of people could lead to events barreling way out of control.
Biden is stating the fear of some strategists who warn about a ladder of escalation that could occur if a nuclear bomb is used and triggers reprisals by the West – even though any initial US response would certainly go no further than conventional military action.
He also appears to be trying to create a narrative of deterrence around the specific situation in Ukraine. The logic of the US and Russia’s long-range strategic nuclear arsenals is that the use of them is deterred because a conflict would be suicidal for both sides. That equation does not exist in Ukraine, since the country has no nuclear arsenal and it’s hard to conclude that it represents a vital national interest that would lead Washington to respond in kind to Putin going nuclear. By stressing that even a tactical device – which could be small enough to destroy an airbase or large enough to reduce a city to ruins – could lead to something worse, Biden seems to be almost seeking to create a new chain of calculations in Putin’s mind.
Two moments in Tapper’s interview brought home the burden now borne by the man who is followed everywhere he goes by a military officer carrying the nation’s nuclear codes.
First the CNN anchor asked the President to state the US red line for the US and NATO in Ukraine and what Washington would do if Putin bombed a nuclear plant in Ukraine or set off a tactical nuclear weapon.
“It would be irresponsible for me to talk about what we would or wouldn’t do,” Biden said.
Then, Tapper prodded the President over whether the Pentagon had gamed out scenarios. Biden soberly replied: “The Pentagon didn’t have to be asked.”
Watch the full exclusive interview with President Joe Biden
Most experts and strategists estimate that there are many reasons why Putin would stop short of using a nuclear weapon – among them the possible risk of radioactive fallout crossing into Russia or the fact that the use of a tactical nuclear weapon may not actually be a sensible strategic option in the war.
But the fact he’s pushed himself into a corner, along with his obliviousness to civilian loss of life underscored again by his callous assaults on Ukrainian cities this week, suggests that a humanitarian impulse is unlikely to be part of his calculation. And Biden himself said in the interview that while he believed Putin was a “rational actor,” he had made significant miscalculations and his objectives were not rational. That leaves open the possibility of even more decisions that appear irrational to the West but may seem reasonable in Putin’s warped logic.
That is why Biden and experts who have dedicated their careers to staving off a nuclear apocalypse say the possibility that Putin may go nuclear must be taken so seriously – even if the chances remain very low and the US would likely be able to detect well ahead of time if Russia’s atomic devices were on the move.
“It’s not a probable event. It’s not even likely,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear non-proliferation expert and former president of the Plowshares Fund, said on CNN’s “Newsroom” on Tuesday.
“But this is a low probability, high consequence event. If he uses even one nuclear weapon, he’s bringing us into a whole new world. He’s causing massive damage. And he’s running the risk of escalation with exchanges from the West that could lead to further exchanges, et cetera.”
Cirincione explained that even if Putin’s saber rattling represented a political threat designed to scare the West, it cannot be discounted.
“He has the means. He has the doctrine that allows him to use it. And he has the motive. He is losing this war. He has to do something to try to turn the tide of battle in desperation. He might turn to a nuclear weapon.”
While some critics have faulted the President for mentioning words like “Armageddon” and comparing his rhetoric to that of Putin, the motivations of the two men are very different. At a minimum, the Russian leader is boasting about nuclear weapons to scare the world. Biden is speaking publicly to stave off the possibility of disaster.
One reason the war in Ukraine is so dangerous is that nearly eight months in, there remains no prospect of any genuine diplomatic process that could defuse it. Ukraine’s forces, using US and allied weapons systems, are making remarkable progress on the battlefield and are determined to repel an unprovoked invasion that has caused carnage and extensive destruction. Putin has thrown so much personal prestige and Russian blood into the war he can hardly afford any outcome he cannot spin as a win, despite his autocratic grip on Russia.
Biden signaled in the Tapper interview that he saw no real rationale to meet Putin when both leaders are expected to be at the G20 summit in Indonesia next month. But he did leave one intriguing door open to the Russian leader, saying he’d sit down with Putin if he were willing to discuss the fate of US basketball star Brittney Griner, who was sentenced in August to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to drugs smuggling. The US says Griner and another American, former US Marine Paul Whelan, have been wrongfully detained. Washington has offered to swap jailed Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout for the two Americans.
“Look, I have no intention of meeting with him, but look, if he came to me at the G20 and said, ‘I want to talk about the release of Griner,’ I would meet with him, but that would depend,” Biden said.
The President also downplayed the idea that more generally there was anything to talk about.
“He’s acted brutally, I think he’s committed war crimes, and so I don’t… see any rationale to meet with him now.”
As tensions between China and Taiwan simmer at their highest point in decades, officials in both places have clashed in recent days over an unsolicited idea from billionaire Elon Musk.
The world’s richest man suggested in an interview that hostilities between the two could be resolved if Taipei handed some control of the democratically governed island to Beijing, prompting praise from China and predictable outrage in Taiwan.
“My recommendation … would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan that is reasonably palatable, probably won’t make everyone happy,” Musk told the Financial Times in an interview published on Friday. “And it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”
China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, thanked Musk for his suggestion in a tweet Saturday, calling for “peaceful unification and one country, two systems.”
ButTaiwan’s representative to the US, Bi-khim Hsiao, wrote: “Taiwan sells many products, but our freedom and democracy are not for sale.”
China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party views Taiwan as part of its territory, despite having never governed it, and has long vowed to “reunify” the island with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary. Taiwan, a democracy of 23 million people, strongly objects to Beijing’s claims to the island.
Beijing has offered Taiwan a “one country, two systems” system of governance, similar to Hong Kong, but that has been rejected by all of the island’s mainstream political parties and the proposal has received very little public support.
In a briefing on October 7, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the “Taiwan question is China’s internal affair.”
“China’s position on resolving the Taiwan question is consistent and clear. We remain committed to the basic principle of peaceful reunification and ‘one country, two systems,’” she said. “At the same time, we will resolutely defeat attempts to pursue the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist agenda, push back interference by external forces, and safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Wang Ting-yu, a senior lawmaker for Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, slammed Musk in a Facebook post on Saturday. “Musk’s solution is all about victim concessions,” he said.
Musk’s comments about Taiwan come days after he angered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for tweeting a “peace” plan between Russia and Ukraine, proposing that Kyiv permanently cede Crimea to Moscow and hold new referendums in regions annexed by Russia – this time under the supervision of the United Nations.
“Which Elon Musk do you like more?” Zelensky asked his Twitter followers, using the social media platform’s poll function.
“One who supports Ukraine,” or “One who supports Russia.”
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces recaptured five settlements in the southern Kherson region, according to the southern Operational Command.
The villages of Novovasylivka, Novohryhorivka, Nova Kamianka, Tryfonivka and Chervone in the Beryslav district were retaken as of Oct. 11, according to the speaker of the southern command Vladislav Nazarov.
The settlements are in one of the four regions recently annexed by Russia.
Meanwhile, Russia’s top domestic security agency said Wednesday it arrested eight people on charges of involvement in the bombing of the main bridge linking Russia to Crimea, while an official in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia said Russian forces carried out more strikes there.
The Federal Security Service, known by the Russian acronym FSB, said it arrested five Russians and three citizens of Ukraine and Armenia over Saturday’s attack that damaged the Kerch Bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula — a crucial thoroughfare for supplies and travel whose much-ballyhooed construction under Russian President Vladimir Putin cost billions.
A truck loaded with explosives blew up while driving across the bridge, killing four people and causing two sections of one of the two automobile links to collapse.
Ukrainian officials have lauded the explosion on the bridge, but stopped short of directly claiming responsibility for it.
The FSB alleged that the suspects were working on orders of Ukraine’s military intelligence to secretly move the explosives into Russia and forge the accompanying documents.
It said the explosives were moved by sea from the Ukrainian port of Odesa to Bulgaria before being shipped to Georgia, driven to Armenia and then back to Georgia before being transported to Russia in a complex scheme to secretly deliver them to the target.
Putin alleged that Ukrainian special services masterminded the blast, calling it “an act of terrorism,” and responded by ordering a barrage of missile strikes on Ukraine.
Russia’s onslaught continued in the Zaporizhzhia region and eponymous city on Wednesday, shattering windows and blowing out doors in residential buildings, municipal council secretary Anatoliy Kurtev said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, though Kurtev warned locals of the possibility of a follow-up attack.
Zaporizhzhia, which sits fairly near the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces, has been repeatedly struck with often deadly attacks in recent weeks. It is part of a larger region, including Europe’s largest nuclear power plant now in Russian control, that Moscow has said it has annexed in violation of international law. The city itself remains in Ukrainian hands.
To the south, in a Russian-controlled area of the region, a powerful blast struck the city of Melitopol — sending a car flying into the air, mayor Ivan Fedorov. There was no word on casualties.
The new clashes came two days after Russian forces began pummeling many parts of Ukraine with more missiles and munition-carrying drones, killing at least 19 people on Monday alone in an attack the U.N. human rights office described as “particularly shocking” and amounting to potential war crimes.
Tuesday marked the second straight day when air raid sirens echoed throughout Ukraine, and officials advised residents to conserve energy and stock up on water. The strikes knocked out power across the country and pierced the relative calm that had returned to the capital, Kyiv, and many other cities far from the war’s front lines.
“It brings anger, not fear,” Kyiv resident Volodymyr Vasylenko, 67, said as crews worked to restore traffic lights and clear debris from the capital’s streets. “We already got used to this. And we will keep fighting.”
The leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers condemned the bombardment and said they would “stand firmly with Ukraine for as long as it takes.” Their pledge defied Russian warnings that Western assistance would prolong the war and the pain of Ukraine’s people.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the G-7 leaders during a virtual meeting Russia fired more than 100 missiles and dozens of drones at Ukraine over two days. He appealed for “more modern and effective” air defense systems — even though he said Ukraine shot down many of the Russian projectiles.
The Pentagon on Tuesday announced plans to deliver the first two advanced NASAMs anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine in the coming weeks. The systems, which Kyiv has long wanted, will provide medium- to long-range defense against missile attacks.
In a phone call with Zelenskyy on Tuesday, President Joe Biden “pledged to continue providing Ukraine with the support needed to defend itself, including advanced air defense systems,” the White House said.
Ukraine’s defense minister tweeted that four German IRIS-T air defense systems had just arrived, saying a “new era” of air defense for Ukraine had begun.
———
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
“I think he is a rational actor who has miscalculated significantly,” Biden told Jake Tapper as Russian bombardments on civilian targets in Ukraine signaled another turning point in the months-long war.
Coming as the conflict in Ukraine approaches its eighth month, the interview with Biden provided fresh insight into his thinking as top US officials watch the fighting unfold in Ukraine with escalating concern.
Biden, who warned last week the risk of “nuclear Armageddon” was at its highest level in 60 years, said in the interview that threats emanating from Russia could result in catastrophic “mistakes” and “miscalculation,” even as he declined to spell out how precisely the United States would respond if Putin deploys a tactical nuclear device on the battlefield in Ukraine.
And he said there would “consequences” for Saudi Arabia after it partnered with Moscow to announce a cut in oil production, a move that could cause gas prices to increase as November’s midterm elections approach.
Biden, his top officials and fellow Western leaders have spent the past several months debating what steps Putin may take as his troops suffer embarrassing losses on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Whether Putin is acting rationally has been a subject of intense debate as leaders work to predict his next steps. While Biden said Tuesday he believed Putin himself was rational, he characterized the Russian leader’s aims in Ukraine – which Putin laid out in an angry speech as he launched the war in February – as ridiculous.
“You listen to what he says. If you listen to the speech he made after when that decision was being made, he talked about the whole idea of – he was needed to be the leader of Russia that united all of Russian speakers. I mean, it’s just I just think it’s irrational,” Biden said.
Going further, Biden said Putin wrongly believed Ukrainians would submit to Russian invasion – a misjudgment that’s been disproved by fierce resistance inside the country.
“I think the speech, his objectives were not rational. I think he thought, Jake, I think he thought he was going to be welcomed with open arms, that this was the home of Mother Russia in Kyiv, and that where he was going to be welcomed, and I think he just totally miscalculated,” Biden said.
Indeed, a counteroffensive launched by Ukraine last month was successful in retaking territory previously held by the Russians, including critical transportation hubs. The losses proved the latest major embarrassment for Russia, whose military has struggled over the course of the seven-month war.
This week, however, Russia launched one of its fiercest bombing campaigns since invading in late February. At least 19 people have been killed and more than 100 wounded across the country, as far away as the western city of Lviv, hundreds of miles from the war’s main theaters in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Asked whether he would meet Putin at next month’s Group of 20 summit in Indonesia, Biden said he didn’t see a good reason for a sit-down.
“It would depend on specifically what he wanted to talk about,” Biden said, adding if Putin wanted to discuss the jailed American basketball star Brittney Griner then he would be open to talking.
“But look, he’s acted brutally, he’s acted brutally,” Biden said. “I think he’s committed war crimes. And so I don’t, I don’t see any rationale to meet with him now.”
Watch the full exclusive interview with President Joe Biden
After Biden warned last week the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” was at its highest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis, he told Tapper he didn’t believe Putin would ultimately take that step.
“I don’t think he will,” Biden said when asked by Tapper whether the Russian leader would use a tactical nuclear weapon – a prospect US officials have watched with concern as Russian troops suffer embarrassing losses on the battlefield.
“I think it’s irresponsible for him to talk about it, the idea that a world leader of one of the largest nuclear powers in the world says he may use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine,” Biden added.
Biden said even Putin’s threats have a destabilizing effect, and warned of the potential errors in judgment that could ensue.
“The whole point I was making was it could lead to just a horrible outcome,” he told Tapper. “And not because anybody intends to turn it into a world war or anything, but just once you use a nuclear weapon, the mistakes that can be made, the miscalculations, who knows what would happen.”
“He, in fact, cannot continue with impunity to talk about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon as if that’s a rational thing to do,” Biden added later. “The mistakes get made. And the miscalculation could occur, no one can be sure what would happen and could end in Armageddon.”
Biden refused to disclose what a US response would look like should Putin follow through on his nuclear threats. But he said the Department of Defense had proactively developed contingencies should the scenario come to pass.
“What is the red line for the United States and NATO, and have you directed the Pentagon and other agencies to game out what a response would be if he did use a tactical nuclear weapon or if he bombed the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine or anything along those lines?” Tapper asked.
“There’s been discussions of that, but I’m not going to get into that. It would be irresponsible of me to talk about what we would or wouldn’t do,” Biden said.
“Have you asked the Pentagon to game it out, though?” Tapper asked.
“The Pentagon didn’t have to be asked,” Biden said.
Zelensky told the meeting that “common efforts to create an air shield for Ukraine” must be intensified amid a barrage of Russian cruise missile and drone attacks.
White House officials have said the US is prepared to further bolster Ukraine’s air defenses, including through missile defense systems that Biden expedited delivery of over the summer.
Yet Russia’s intense aerial assault of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and on civilian infrastructure suggested Putin could be employing new tactics meant to terrorize Ukrainians as the winter approaches.
Biden told Tapper he believed it was time to “rethink” the US relationship with Saudi Arabia after the kingdom partnered with Russia to cut oil production, a rebuke after intensive White House efforts to prevent such a decision.
“I am in the process, when the House and Senate gets back, they’re going to have to – there’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done with Russia,” Biden said.
The decision by the Saudi-led OPEC+ oil cartel to cut production last week prompted anger at the White House, where officials said Biden was personally disappointed by what they called a “shortsighted” decision.
The move, which came three months after Biden visited Saudi Arabia and met its de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has the potential to raise gas prices in the weeks ahead of November’s midterm elections.
“Let’s get straight why I went,” Biden said. “I didn’t go about oil, I went about making sure that we made sure that we weren’t going to walk away from the Middle East.”
After reaching highs over the summer, gas prices had been steadily decreasing, providing Biden and his top aides a potent talking point in the lead-up to the elections.
But a combination of factors, including rising demand and maintenance at some US refineries, has caused prices to begin ticking back up. The OPEC+ decision is poised to aggravate those factors.
For Biden, the decision was a particular affront because of his efforts over the summer to repair ties with Saudi Arabia, despite the kingdom’s woeful human rights record and bin Salman’s role in the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
This story has been updated with more from the interview with Biden.
