WASHINGTON, June 13 (Reuters) – A vast majority of Republicans believe federal criminal charges against Donald Trump are politically motivated, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday that also showed him far ahead of his nearest rival in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
The polling, which began on Friday, a day after Trump was indicted, found that 81% of self-identified Republicans said politics was driving the case, reflecting the deep polarization of the U.S. electorate. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly said he has no involvement in the case brought by the Department of Justice.
The number of Republicans who believe the former president is being unfairly targeted vastly exceeds the 30-35% of Trump supporters who are estimated by political analysts to make up his core base.
Some 62% of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, including 91% of Democrats and 35% of Republicans, said it was believable that Trump illegally stored classified documents at his home in Florida as alleged by prosecutors.
The indictment did not appear to dent Trump’s standing in the Republican nominating contest for the 2024 presidential election. The specific charges, including obstruction of justice, became public on Friday afternoon when the indictment was unsealed.
Some 43% of self-identified Republicans said Trump was their preferred candidate, compared to 22% who picked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s closest rival.
In early May, Trump led DeSantis 49% to 19%, but that was before DeSantis formally entered the race.
The rest of the Republican field, which includes former Vice President Mike Pence who declared his candidacy last week, had low single-digit levels of support.
Trump flew to Miami on Monday to face federal charges of unlawfully keeping U.S. national security documents and lying to officials who tried to recover them. Trump, who will appear in court on Tuesday, has proclaimed his innocence and vowed to continue his campaign to regain the presidency in the November 2024 general election.
Many Republican contenders in the 2024 race have accused the U.S. Justice Department of political bias and say it is being “weaponized” against Biden’s biggest Republican challenger. The department says all investigative decisions are made without regard to partisan politics.
Trump also faces charges in New York in a state criminal case related to alleged hush money payments to a pornographic film star. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in March found that Republicans also saw that investigation as politically motivated.
Biden’s approval rating stood at 41% last week, close to the lowest level of his presidency. Trump had a 40% approval rating at this point in his 2017-2021 presidency.
The latest poll included responses from 1,005 adults nationwide and had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points for all voting-age Americans and between 6 and 7 percentage points for Republicans.
Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Andy Sullivan, Ross Colvin and Howard Goller
Hit finance ministry, president’s office, spy agency and others
Sources believe Beijing was seeking info on debt
NAIROBI, May 24 (Reuters) – Chinese hackers targeted Kenya’s government in a widespread, years-long series of digital intrusions against key ministries and state institutions, according to three sources, cybersecurity research reports and Reuters’ own analysis of technical data related to the hackings.
Two of the sources assessed the hacks to be aimed, at least in part, at gaining information on debt owed to Beijing by the East African nation: Kenya is a strategic link in the Belt and Road Initiative – President Xi Jinping’s plan for a global infrastructure network.
“Further compromises may occur as the requirement for understanding upcoming repayment strategies becomes needed,” a July 2021 research report written by a defence contractor for private clients stated.
China’s foreign ministry said it was “not aware” of any such hacking, while China’s embassy in Britain called the accusations “baseless”, adding that Beijing opposes and combats “cyberattacks and theft in all their forms.”
China’s influence in Africa has grown rapidly over the past two decades. But, like several African nations, Kenya’s finances are being strained by the growing cost of servicing external debt – much of it owed to China.
The hacking campaign demonstrates China’s willingness to leverage its espionage capabilities to monitor and protect economic and strategic interests abroad, two of the sources said.
The hacks constitute a three-year campaign that targeted eight of Kenya’s ministries and government departments, including the presidential office, according to an intelligence analyst in the region. The analyst also shared with Reuters research documents that included the timeline of attacks, the targets, and provided some technical data relating to the compromise of a server used exclusively by Kenya’s main spy agency.
A Kenyan cybersecurity expert described similar hacking activity against the foreign and finance ministries. All three of the sources asked not to be named due to the sensitive nature of their work.
“Your allegation of hacking attempts by Chinese Government entities is not unique,” Kenya’s presidential office said, adding the government had been targeted by “frequent infiltration attempts” from Chinese, American and European hackers.
“As far as we are concerned, none of the attempts were successful,” it said.
It did not provide further details nor respond to follow-up questions.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Britain said China is against “irresponsible moves that use topics like cybersecurity to sow discord in the relations between China and other developing countries”.
“China attaches great importance to Africa’s debt issue and works intensively to help Africa cope with it,” the spokesperson added.
THE HACKS
Between 2000 and 2020, China committed nearly $160 billion in loans to African countries, according to a comprehensive database on Chinese lending hosted by Boston University, much of it for large-scale infrastructure projects.
Kenya used over $9 billion in Chinese loans to fund an aggressive push to build or upgrade railways, ports and highways.
Beijing became the country’s largest bilateral creditor and gained a firm foothold in the most important East African consumer market and a vital logistical hub on Africa’s Indian Ocean coast.
By late 2019, however, when the Kenyan cybersecurity expert told Reuters he was brought in by Kenyan authorities to assess a hack of a government-wide network, Chinese lending was drying up. And Kenya’s financial strains were showing.
The breach reviewed by the Kenyan cybersecurity expert and attributed to China began with a “spearphishing” attack at the end of that same year, when a Kenyan government employee unknowingly downloaded an infected document, allowing hackers to infiltrate the network and access other agencies.
“A lot of documents from the ministry of foreign affairs were stolen and from the finance department as well. The attacks appeared focused on the debt situation,” the Kenyan cybersecurity expert said.
Another source – the intelligence analyst working in the region – said Chinese hackers carried out a far-reaching campaign against Kenya that began in late 2019 and continued until at least 2022.
According to documents provided by the analyst, Chinese cyber spies subjected the office of Kenya’s president, its defence, information, health, land and interior ministries, its counter-terrorism centre and other institutions to persistent and prolonged hacking activity.
The affected government departments did not respond to requests for comment, declined to be interviewed or were unreachable.
By 2021, global economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic had already helped push one major Chinese borrower – Zambia – to default on its external debt. Kenya managed to secure a temporary debt repayment moratorium from China.
In early July 2021, the cybersecurity research reports shared by the intelligence analyst in the region detailed how the hackers secretly accessed an email server used by Kenya’s National Intelligence Service (NIS).
Reuters was able to confirm that the victim’s IP address belonged to the NIS. The incident was also covered in a report from the private defence contractor reviewed by Reuters.
Reuters could not determine what information was taken during the hacks or conclusively establish the motive for the attacks. But the defence contractor’s report said the NIS breach was possibly aimed at gleaning information on how Kenya planned to manage its debt payments.
“Kenya is currently feeling the pressure of these debt burdens…as many of the projects financed by Chinese loans are not generating enough income to pay for themselves yet,” the report stated.
A Reuters review of internet logs delineating the Chinese digital espionage activity showed that a server controlled by the Chinese hackers also accessed a shared Kenyan government webmail service more recently from December 2022 until February this year.
Chinese officials declined to comment on this recent breach, and the Kenyan authorities did not respond to a question about it.
‘BACKDOOR DIPLOMACY’
The defence contractor, pointing to identical tools and techniques used in other hacking campaigns, identified a Chinese state-linked hacking team as having carried out the attack on Kenya’s intelligence agency.
The group is known as “BackdoorDiplomacy” in the cybersecurity research community, because of its record of trying to further the objectives of Chinese diplomatic strategy.
According to Slovakia-based cybersecurity firm ESET, BackdoorDiplomacy re-uses malicious software against its victims to gain access to their networks, making it possible to track their activities.
Provided by Reuters with the IP address of the NIS hackers, Palo Alto Networks, a U.S. cybersecurity firm that tracks BackdoorDiplomacy’s activities, confirmed that it belongs to the group, adding that its prior analysis shows the group is sponsored by the Chinese state.
Cybersecurity researchers have documented BackdoorDiplomacy hacks targeting governments and institutions in a number of countries in Asia and Europe.
Incursions into the Middle East and Africa appear less common, making the focus and scale of its hacking activities in Kenya particularly noteworthy, the defence contractor’s report said.
“This angle is clearly a priority for the group.”
China’s embassy in Britain rejected any involvement in the Kenya hackings, and did not directly address questions about the government’s relationship with BackdoorDiplomacy.
“China is a main victim of cyber theft and attacks and a staunch defender of cybersecurity,” a spokesperson said.
Reporting by Aaron Ross in Nairobi, James Pearson in London and Christopher Bing in Washington
Additional reporting by Eduardo Baptista in Beijing
Editing by Chris Sanders and Joe Bavier
West & Central Africa correspondent investigating human rights abuses, conflict and corruption as well as regional commodities production, epidemic diseases and the environment, previously based in Kinshasa, Abidjan and Cairo.
Reports on hacks, leaks and digital espionage in Europe. Ten years at Reuters with previous postings in Hanoi as Bureau Chief and Seoul as Korea Correspondent. Author of ‘North Korea Confidential’, a book about daily life in North Korea. Contact: 447927347451
Award-winning reporter covering the intersection between technology and national security with a focus on how the evolving cybersecurity landscape affects government and business.
PUNTO FIJO, May 4 (Reuters) – More than half of the 22 oil tankers in Venezuela’s fleet are so run down that they should be immediately repaired or taken out of service, according to an internal report from state-run oil company PDVSA that was shared exclusively with Reuters.
The report by PDVSA’s maritime branch, entitled “Critical deficiencies and risks of PDV Marina’s tanker fleet,” said years of deferred maintenance had left the entire fleet with “low levels of reliability,” at risk of spills, sinking, fires, collisions or flooding.
“The ships currently lack seaworthiness classification and certifications by flag nations,” the report said.
PDVSA and PDV Marina did not respond to requests for comment.
The report, dated March 2023, was among eight documents shared with Reuters describing the state of PDVSA’s tanker fleet from the oil company’s corporate office, trading division and maritime branch, as well as Venezuela’s maritime authority. The existence of the documents has not been previously reported.
Dated from Jan. 2022 to March this year, the documents detail the condition of the company’s tankers; the costs of chartering third-party vessels and the status of shipbuilding contracts with companies in Argentina and Iran.
The deterioration of the fleet has forced PDVSA to charter tankers to move its oil, which provides the bulk of Venezuela’s hard currency, the analysis by PDVSA’s trade division said.
PDVSA and the oil ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
The reports were prepared amid a wide-ranging anti-corruption probe ordered by Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro last October after the discovery of billions of dollars in missing payments for petroleum exports. More than 60 people have been arrested and PDVSA’s chief executive and the nation’s oil minister have been replaced.
The report from PDV Marina recommended withdrawing five tankers from active use; sending seven to shipyards for major repairs and installing transponders, fire extinguishers and communication equipment in others. No actions have been taken as the audit on the company’s operations continues.
Five of PDVSA’s tankers are at least 30 years old, past their recommended lifespan, according to the PDV Marina report. The last major maintenance work on the fleet was five years ago, the report said.
“The tanker fleet is showing a decline in the quality of its operations due to advanced physical deterioration, which implies higher maintenance and repair costs. Planning for sending the tankers to dry docks has been very affected by lack of payment to shipyards and providers,” the PDV Marina report said.
Reuters has previously reported on an increase in tanker collisions, spill risks and fires in Venezuela.
PDVSA leased 41 vessels last year, the documents said, paying about double the market rate, between $14,000 and $36,500 per day, to tanker owners willing to work with Venezuela despite U.S. sanctions imposed in 2019.
DELAYED SHIPS
At least four tankers ordered from foreign shipyards have been held up because of payment delays, cost increases and sanctions, according to the documents reviewed by Reuters.
The audits ordered by PDVSA’s new CEO Pedro Tellechea as part of Maduro’s anti-corruption probe could bring further delays, a PDVSA executive said.
“All contracts are frozen,” the executive said on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation. PDVSA’s legal and supply and trade departments are asking PDV Marina for documentation on the contracts, he added.
Venezuela has paid shipyards in Iran and Argentina at least $300 million for six new vessels ordered as far back as 2005.
It has taken delivery of only two of them, according to the documents.
PDVSA has paid almost 80% of the $160 million due for two tankers from Rio Santiago shipyard in Argentina, the documents showed.
Rio Santiago said it was not authorized to give information about that particular contract.
In addition, PDVSA paid almost 157 million euros (about $173 million), or 63% of a 248 million euros contract (about $272 million) to U.S.-sanctioned Iran Marine Industrial Company (Sadra) for four tankers, according to the documents.
Two of the four vessels were delivered after payment delays, difficulties with parts supplies and problems with insurance and certifications, according to the documents.
The payment delays generated extra costs for demurrage, the documents said.
Sadra did not reply to a request for comment.
Reporting by Mircely Guanipa; Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga in Houston, Eliana Raszewski in Buenos Aires and Parisa Hafezi in Dubai; Editing by Gary McWilliams and Suzanne Goldenberg
Copper plant is in Russian-annexed part of Ukraine
Area is subject to U.S. sanctions against Moscow
Russian ally China does not abide by U.S. measures
April 14 (Reuters) – A Chinese company bought at least $7.4 million worth of copper alloy ingots from a plant in a Russian-annexed region of Ukraine that is subject to Western sanctions, according to Russian customs data reviewed by Reuters.
China has not imposed any restrictions on trade with Russia, but the United States has threatened to blacklist companies round the world for violating its sanctions and warned Beijing against supplying Moscow with goods banned by U.S. export rules.
The customs information, drawn from one commercial trade data provider and cross-checked with two others, show some of the first evidence of Chinese trades with Russian-annexed regions of Ukraine since the war began on Feb. 24, 2022.
The Chinese firm, Quzhou Nova, bought at least 3,220 tons of copper alloy in ingots worth a total of $7.4 million from the Debaltsevsky Plant of Metallurgical Engineering between Oct. 8, 2022 and March 24, 2023, according to the data.
The plant is located in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, close to the border with Luhansk. Both Donetsk and Luhansk were among four Ukrainian regions that President Vladimir Putin claimed last September as part of Russia.
Quzhou Nova, a trading and manufacturing company based in the city of Quzhou in the eastern province of Zhejiang, told Reuters it does not have any import and export business related to the trade of copper alloy in ingots.
When Reuters showed details of the exports in the customs data to Quzhou Nova, the company said on March 23 that it “finds hard to understand the document, because this document is not stamped and signed”, and suggested contacting customs about the issue.
The database, which collects information on all shipments worldwide, does not display stamps or signatures on its information.
The Chinese customs service did not provide detailed information on imports. It said that “company trade data are not disclosed in our public information”.
China imported copper and copper alloys worth $852 million from Russia between October and February, according to public customs statistics.
A source at the Debaltsevsky plant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was a non-ferrous metallurgy workshop on the territory of the factory. The source declined to comment on the issue of copper alloy shipments to China, saying the information was a “trade secret”.
Contacted for comment, the Russian Federal customs service told Reuters that information on companies is confidential and is not disclosed by the service.
When asked about the matter on Friday, the Kremlin said it did not know whether the Reuters news story about the transaction was true or what proof was available. The Kremlin said it had no information about the subject itself.
The Debaltsevsky Plant did not respond to Reuters requests for comments by phone and in writing.
Ukraine, its Western allies and an overwhelming majority of countries at the U.N. General Assembly have condemned Russia’s declared annexation of the four regions as illegal.
SANCTIONS
U.S. sanctions imposed on Feb. 21, 2022, three days before Russia invaded Ukraine, prohibit U.S imports from or exports to the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.
Two days later, the European Union announced measures including an import ban on goods from the two regions.
While Chinese companies are free as far as their authorities are concerned to trade with firms in Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine, they do risk being added to Western blacklists.
Asked about the copper shipments data, the U.S. State Department said it was concerned about China’s alignment with the Kremlin.
“We have warned the PRC (People’s Republic of China) that assistance to Russia’s war effort would have serious consequences. We will not hesitate to move against entities, including PRC firms, that help Russia wage war against Ukraine or help Russia circumvent sanctions,” it added in a statement to Reuters, listing some Chinese companies already sanctioned.
The European Commision did not respond to Reuters’ questions as to whether Chinese companies cooperated with the Russian-annexed Ukrainian territories and what risks such activity posed.
China’s Ministry of Commerce did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment about the shipments of copper alloys from the Debaltsevsky Plant or cooperation with businesses in the Donetsk region.
The data seen by Reuters is based on shipping and customs documents like bill of lading and shipping bills and collected from several customs departments, government bodies and other partners.
Quzhou Nova says it specialises in the export of wrapping paper. According to its website, it manufactures and trades goods for the tobacco industry, including paper, aluminium foil and polypropylene film.
Reuters could not establish what use the copper alloy was intended for.
The Ukrainian plant, located in the city of Debaltseve 70 km (45 miles) from the Russian-controlled Ukrainian city of Donetsk, specializes in making equipment and spare parts for ferrous metallurgy, the mining industry and cement plants, and has steelmaking and metal casting workshops, according to its website.
Reuters was not able to find any data about the financial state of the company. It was added to the Russian state tax register in December 2022 and has yet to report financial data.
According to a Ukrainian register, the legal status of the plant in Debaltseve has been suspended by the Ukrainian authorities. The register does not indicate when or why this happened.
As of early 2023, its only owner was the Ukrainian Donetsk regional state administration.
The Ukrainian government, as well as the Russian-appointed Donetsk People’s Republic administration, did not immediately comment to Reuters about cooperation with Chinese companies and shipments of goods to China.
The copper alloy shipments from the plant were carried out via the port of Novorossiysk in southern Russia, according to the customs data.
Reporting by Filipp Lebedev and Gleb Stolyarov in Tbilisi; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Cawthorne
NEW DELHI, April 4 (Reuters) – India’s Bank of Baroda (BOB.NS) has stopped clearing payments for Russian oil sold above the price cap set by the West from this month, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, a move that could expedite transition to a rupee trade mechanism.
Some Indian refiners were paying in the United Arab Emirates dirham currency for Russian low-sulphur crude priced above the $60 a barrel cap using Bank of Baroda, mainly to Dubai-based traders, sources said.
The Group of Seven economies, the European Union and Australia, set the price cap late last year to bar Western services and shipping from trading Russian oil unless sold at an enforced low price to deprive Moscow of funds for its Ukraine war.
“Bank of Baroda is extremely cautious in settling payments for Russian oil bought (at levels) above the price cap,” one of the sources said.
“They have told us no for settling payments for above-cap barrels,” the person said.
The state-run lender told refiners last month that it would not settle payment from Russian barrels bought above the price cap, the three sources said.
Bank of Baroda did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
Before the Ukraine war, Indian refiners rarely bought oil from Russia due to higher freight costs. After Western sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, Indian refiners have been gorging on discounted Russian oil.
Russia has replaced Iraq as the top oil supplier to India in the last few months, data from trade sources showed.
Sources anticipate that prices of Russian sweet crude such as Sokol and ESPO Blend, which was sold near $60 a barrel in recent weeks, could breach the price cap due to a sharp spike in global oil prices triggered by Sunday’s OPEC+ decision to cut output.
Some refiners, mainly private operators, have been clearing payments in dirhams for Russian crude through private lender Axis Bank (AXBK.NS), sources told Reuters last month. It was not clear if Axis Bank had also stopped settling trades for Russian oil sold above the price cap.
Axis Bank did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Although Indian refiners buy Russian oil on a delivered basis, copies of invoices reviewed by Reuters also show shipping charges, which helps in calculating the price of crude at Russian ports.
Sources said that problems in settling trade for Russian oil could push sellers to accept rupee payments, at least for barrels that exceed the price cap.
“We have neither stopped nor reduced purchases of Russian oil after Bank of Baroda’s decision … we will consider using rupees to pay for oil purchased above the price cap,” another source said.
India does not recognise the Western price cap on Russian oil, a senior oil ministry source said last month.
SETTLEMENT MECHANISM
India set up a mechanism to settle its international trade in rupees last year. Some Russian banks later opened vostro accounts with banks in India to facilitate rupee trade.
The mechanism has not yet started given the lack of Russian appetite for rupees and India’s trade deficit with Moscow.
However, during a visit last week to India, Igor Sechin, chief executive of Russian oil major Rosneft, discussed ways to expand cooperation with India across the hydrocarbons value chain, including the possibility of making payments in national currencies.
A switch to rupee payments would help wean Russia from dollars and would save foreign exchange for India.
Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Additional reporting by Siddhi Nayak in Mumbai; Editing by Tony Munroe and Jacqueline Wong
Soldiers assaulted family soon after invasion, prosecutors say
Ukraine accuses Russian army of widespread sexual assaults
President Vladimir Putin’s government denies atrocities
KYIV, March 14 (Reuters) – Ukraine has accused two Russian soldiers of sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl and gang raping her mother at gunpoint in front of her father, as part of widespread allegations of abuse during the more than one-year-long invasion.
According to Ukrainian prosecution files seen by Reuters, the incidents were among a spree of sex crimes Russian soldiers of the 15th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade committed in four homes of Brovary district near the capital Kyiv in March 2022.
Russia’s Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Phone numbers listed for the brigade were out of order. Two officials at the Samara Garrison, of which the brigade is a part, said they were unable to give contacts for the unit when contacted by Reuters, with one saying they were classified.
During Moscow’s failed push to capture Kyiv after its Feb. 24 invasion, soldiers entered Brovary a few days later, looting and using sexual violence as a deliberate tactic to terrorise the population, the Ukrainian prosecutors said.
“They singled out the women beforehand, coordinated their actions and their roles,” said the prosecutors, whose 2022 documents were based on interviews with witnesses and survivors.
Most of the alleged atrocities took place on March 13, when soldiers “in a state of alcoholic intoxication, broke into the yard of the house where a young family lived,” the prosecutors alleged.
The father was beaten with a metal pot then forced to kneel while his wife was gang raped. One of the soldiers told the four-year-old girl he “will make her a woman” before she was abused, the documents said.
The family survived, though prosecutors said they are investigating additional crimes in the area including murders during the same period.
President Vladimir Putin’s government, which says it is fighting Western-backed “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine, has repeatedly denied allegations of atrocities. It has also denied that its military commanders are aware of sexual violence by soldiers.
The soldiers were both snipers, aged 32 and 28, the files said, adding that the former had died while the younger, named as Yevgeniy Chernoknizhniy, returned to Russia.
When Reuters asked for the identities of both soldiers, prosecutors provided only the name of the younger man. When Reuters called a number in online databases for him, a person saying he was Chernoknizhniy’s brother said he was deceased.
“He died. There’s no way you can get hold of him,” said the man, crying. “That’s all that I can say.”
Reuters was unable to independently confirm his assertion.
GROWING ACCUSATIONS
The two snipers were among six suspects accused in the Brovary assaults, which prosecutors say is one of the most extensive investigations of sexual abuse since the invasion.
After the alleged attack on the girl and her parents, the two soldiers entered the house of an elderly couple next door, where they beat them, prosecutors said, also raping a 41-year-old pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl.
At another location where several families lived, the soldiers forced everyone into the kitchen and gang raped a 15-year-old girl and her mother, they said.
All the victims survived, prosecutors said, and were receiving psychological and medical assistance.
A pre-trial investigation is ongoing into the possible role of superior officials in the Brovary attacks, prosecutors said, in a case adding to growing allegations of systematic sexual abuse by Russian soldiers.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office says it is investigating more than 71,000 reports of war crimes received since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops over the border.
Ukrainian investigators know the probability of finding and punishing suspects is low and potential trials would be mainly in absentia, but there are also international efforts to prosecute war crimes including by the International Criminal Court.
While suspects are unlikely to be surrendered by Moscow, anyone convicted in absentia may be placed on international watchlists, which would make it difficult to travel.
A U.N. human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine has said that most of the dozens of sexual violence accusations pointed at the Russian military.
So far, Ukrainian prosecutors have convicted 26 Russians of war crimes – some prisoners of war, some in absentia – of which one was for rape.
Reporting by Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam and Stefaniia Bern in Kyiv;
Additional reporting by Anton Zverev and Maria Tsvetkova;
Editing by Alison Williams and Andrew Cawthorne
WASHINGTON, Dec 14 (Reuters) – The Biden administration plans to remove some Chinese entities from a red flag trade list, a U.S. official told Reuters on Wednesday amid closer cooperation with Beijing.
The plan to remove them soon from the so-called “unverified” list is thanks to greater willingness from the Chinese government to permit U.S. site visits, the person said.
The Commerce Department declined to comment.
Reuters could not determine the number or names of entities designated for removal.
The decision signals a degree of renewed cooperation between Washington and Beijing, the world’s largest economies which are locked in a heated trade and technology war.
The decision, which mean U.S. exporters will no longer have to conduct additional due diligence before sending goods to the Chinese entities, may not herald a broader thaw.
Asked about the decision at a Chinese foreign ministry briefing on Thursday, spokesman Wang Wenbin said they urged the United States to stop taking unfair and discriminatory practices against certain Chinese companies.
“China will continue to uphold the legitimate and justified interests of Chinese companies,” he said.
The Biden administration is also expected to add Chinese memory chipmaker YMTC to a tougher export control list as soon as this week, according to another person familiar with the matter.
YMTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Companies are added to the unverified list because the United States cannot complete on-site visits to determine whether they can be trusted to receive sensitive U.S. technology exports. Such U.S. inspections in China require the approval of China’s commerce ministry.
Under new rules announced in October, if a government prevents U.S. officials from conducting site checks at companies on the unverified list, Washington may after 60 days add them to the entity list, which means much tougher penalties.
“The goal of (that rule) was to drive better behavior from countries that were not allowing end-use checks,” U.S. export control chief Alan Estevez said at an event earlier this month. “We are seeing better behavior,” he said, specifically singling out Beijing.
In October, YMTC was added to the unverified list along with dozens of other Chinese entities, fueling widespread speculation that the company would be added to the entity list. Suppliers are barred from shipping U.S. technology to entity-listed companies unless the suppliers can attain a difficult-to-obtain license.
A person familiar with the matter said YMTC was among some companies that received site visits in late November, suggesting that the chipmaker’s expected addition to the entity list may be related to other matters.
YMTC was already under investigation by the Commerce Department over allegations it violated U.S. export rules by supplying chips to entity-listed Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei without a license.
U.S. lawmakers from both political parties have called on the Biden administration to add YMTC to the list. Its planned addition was first reported by the Financial Times.
Reporting by Alexandra Alper and Karen Freifeld; Additional reporting by Eduardo Baptista in Beijing; Editing by Chris Sanders, Howard Goller and Raissa Kasolowsky
RIYADH, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Representatives from Russia and Ukraine met in the United Arab Emirates last week to discuss the possibility of a prisoner-of-war swap that would be linked to a resumption of Russian ammonia exports, which go to Asia and Africa, via a Ukrainian pipeline, three sources with knowledge of the meeting said.
The sources said the talks were being mediated by the Gulf Arab state and did not include the United Nations despite the U.N.’s central role in negotiating the ongoing initiative to export agricultural products from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Ammonia is used to make fertilizer.
However the talks aim to remove remaining obstacles in the initiative extended last week and ease global food shortages by unblocking Ukrainian and Russian exports, they added.
The sources asked not to be named in order to freely discuss sensitive matters.
The Russian and Ukrainian representatives travelled to the UAE capital Abu Dhabi on Nov. 17 where they discussed allowing Russia to resume ammonia exports in exchange for a prisoner swap that would release a large number of Ukrainian and Russian prisoners, the sources said.
Reuters could not immediately establish what progress was made at the talks.
The Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey, Vasyl Bodnar, told Reuters that “releasing our prisoners of war is part of negotiations over opening Russian ammonia exports”, adding “Of course we look for ways to do that at any opportunity”. Bodnar said he was unaware if a meeting took place in the UAE.
Putin said on Wednesday that Russian officials would work to unblock Russian fertilisers stuck in European ports and to resume ammonia exports.
The UAE’s foreign ministry did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Lana Nusseibeh, UAE’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said Abu Dhabi remains firmly committed to help keep channels of communication open, encourage dialogue and support diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine.
“In times of conflict, our collective responsibility is to leave no stone unturned towards identifying and pursuing paths that bring about a peaceful and swift resolution of crises,” Nusseibeh said in a statement carried by state news agency WAM.
Russia and Ukraine’s defence and foreign ministries did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Asked if the United Nations were involved in the talks, a spokesperson for the organisation declined to comment.
WESTERN PRESSURE
The export of Russian ammonia would be via an existing pipeline to the Black Sea.
The pipeline was designed to pump up to 2.5 million tonnes of ammonia gas per year from Russia’s Volga region to Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Pivdennyi, known as Yuzhny in Russian, near Odesa for onward shipment to international buyers. It was shut down after Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The export of ammonia was not part of the renewal of the U.N.-backed grains corridor deal that restored commercial shipping from Ukraine.
Last week, Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of U.N. agency UNCTAD, who leads the negotiations on fertiliser, said she was optimistic Russia and Ukraine could agree to the terms for the export of Russian ammonia via the pipeline, without giving details.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has publicly set several conditions before allowing Russia to resume its ammonia exports via the pipeline, including a prisoner swap and reopening of Mykolaiv port in the Black Sea.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine have released official figures on how many prisoners of war they have taken since Russia invaded in February. On Oct. 29, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy said that since March, Russia had freed a total of 1,031 prisoners.
Russia and Ukraine have disclosed few details about direct meetings between representatives from the two countries following the abandonment of ceasefire talks in the first few weeks following Moscow’s invasion on February 24.
Abu Dhabi’s efforts follow in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia, which scored a diplomatic win by securing freedom for foreign fighters captured in Ukraine in September.
The UAE, like Saudi Arabia, is a member of the OPEC+ oil alliance that includes Russia and has also maintained good ties with Moscow despite Western pressure to help isolate Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls its “special military operation”.
UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan visited Moscow last month where he discussed with President Vladimir Putin the possibility of Abu Dhabi mediating for an ammonia deal, two of the sources said.
Ukraine is a major producer of grains and oilseeds. Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter and a major supplier of fertilisers to global markets.
Since July, Moscow has repeatedly said its shipments of grain and fertilisers, though not directly targeted by sanctions, are constrained because sanctions make it harder for exporters to process payments or to obtain vessels and insurance.
Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi in Riyadh, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev and Jonathan Saul in London, additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Jon Boyle
LONDON/WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Thousands of smartphone applications in Apple (AAPL.O) and Google’s (GOOGL.O) online stores contain computer code developed by a technology company, Pushwoosh, that presents itself as based in the United States, but is actually Russian, Reuters has found.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States’ main agency for fighting major health threats, said it had been deceived into believing Pushwoosh was based in the U.S. capital. After learning about its Russian roots from Reuters, it removed Pushwoosh software from seven public-facing apps, citing security concerns.
The U.S. Army said it had removed an app containing Pushwoosh code in March because of the same concerns. That app was used by soldiers at one of the country’s main combat training bases.
According to company documents publicly filed in Russia and reviewed by Reuters, Pushwoosh is headquartered in the Siberian town of Novosibirsk, where it is registered as a software company that also carries out data processing. It employs around 40 people and reported revenue of 143,270,000 rubles ($2.4 mln) last year. Pushwoosh is registered with the Russian government to pay taxes in Russia.
On social media and in U.S. regulatory filings, however, it presents itself as a U.S. company, based at various times in California, Maryland and Washington, D.C., Reuters found.
Pushwoosh provides code and data processing support for software developers, enabling them to profile the online activity of smartphone app users and send tailor-made push notifications from Pushwoosh servers.
On its website, Pushwoosh says it does not collect sensitive information, and Reuters found no evidence Pushwoosh mishandled user data. Russian authorities, however, have compelled local companies to hand over user data to domestic security agencies.
Pushwoosh’s founder, Max Konev, told Reuters in a September email that the company had not tried to mask its Russian origins. “I am proud to be Russian and I would never hide this.”
Pushwoosh published a blog post after the Reuters article was issued, which said: “Pushwoosh Inc. is a privately held C-Corp company incorporated under the state laws of Delaware, USA. Pushwoosh Inc. was never owned by any company registered in the Russian Federation.”
The company also said in the post, “Pushwoosh Inc. used to outsource development parts of the product to the Russian company in Novosibirsk, mentioned in the article. However, in February 2022, Pushwoosh Inc. terminated the contract.”
After Pushwoosh published its post, Reuters asked Pushwoosh to provide evidence for its assertions, but the news agency’s requests went unanswered.
Konev said the company “has no connection with the Russian government of any kind” and stores its data in the United States and Germany.
Cybersecurity experts said storing data overseas would not prevent Russian intelligence agencies from compelling a Russian firm to cede access to that data, however.
Russia, whose ties with the West have deteriorated since its takeover of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine this year, is a global leader in hacking and cyber-espionage, spying on foreign governments and industries to seek competitive advantage, according to Western officials.
Reuters Graphics
HUGE DATABASE
Pushwoosh code was installed in the apps of a wide array of international companies, influential non-profits and government agencies from global consumer goods company Unilever Plc (ULVR.L) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to the politically powerful U.S. gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and Britain’s Labour Party.
Pushwoosh’s business with U.S. government agencies and private companies could violate contracting and U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) laws or trigger sanctions, 10 legal experts told Reuters. The FBI, U.S. Treasury and the FTC declined to comment.
Jessica Rich, former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said “this type of case falls right within the authority of the FTC,” which cracks down on unfair or deceptive practices affecting U.S. consumers.
Washington could choose to impose sanctions on Pushwoosh and has broad authority to do so, sanctions experts said, including possibly through a 2021 executive order that gives the United States the ability to target Russia’s technology sector over malicious cyber activity.
Pushwoosh code has been embedded into almost 8,000 apps in the Google and Apple app stores, according to Appfigures, an app intelligence website. Pushwoosh’s website says it has more than 2.3 billion devices listed in its database.
“Pushwoosh collects user data including precise geolocation, on sensitive and governmental apps, which could allow for invasive tracking at scale,” said Jerome Dangu, co-founder of Confiant, a firm that tracks misuse of data collected in online advertising supply chains.
“We haven’t found any clear sign of deceptive or malicious intent in Pushwoosh’s activity, which certainly doesn’t diminish the risk of having app data leaking to Russia,” he added.
Google said privacy was a “huge focus” for the company but did not respond to requests for comment about Pushwoosh. Apple said it takes user trust and safety seriously but similarly declined to answer questions.
Keir Giles, a Russia expert at London think tank Chatham House, said despite international sanctions on Russia, a “substantial number” of Russian companies were still trading abroad and collecting people’s personal data.
Given Russia’s domestic security laws, “it shouldn’t be a surprise that with or without direct links to Russian state espionage campaigns, firms that handle data will be keen to play down their Russian roots,” he said.
‘SECURITY ISSUES’
After Reuters raised Pushwoosh’s Russian links with the CDC, the health agency removed the code from its apps because “the company presents a potential security concern,” spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said.
“CDC believed Pushwoosh was a company based in the Washington, D.C. area,” Nordlund said in a statement. The belief was based on “representations” made by the company, she said, without elaborating.
The CDC apps that contained Pushwoosh code included the agency’s main app and others set up to share information on a wide range of health concerns. One was for doctors treating sexually transmitted diseases. While the CDC also used the company’s notifications for health matters such as COVID, the agency said it “did not share user data with Pushwoosh.”
The Army told Reuters it removed an app containing Pushwoosh in March, citing “security issues.” It did not say how widely the app, which was an information portal for use at its National Training Center (NTC) in California, had been used by troops.
The NTC is a major battle training center in the Mojave Desert for pre-deployment soldiers, meaning a data breach there could reveal upcoming overseas troop movements.
U.S. Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee said the Army had suffered no “operational loss of data,” adding that the app did not connect to the Army network.
Some large companies and organizations including UEFA and Unilever said third parties set up the apps for them, or they thought they were hiring a U.S. company.
“We don’t have a direct relationship with Pushwoosh,” Unilever said in a statement, adding that Pushwoosh was removed from one of its apps “some time ago.”
UEFA said its contract with Pushwoosh was “with a U.S. company.” UEFA declined to say if it knew of Pushwoosh’s Russian ties but said it was reviewing its relationship with the company after being contacted by Reuters.
The NRA said its contract with the company ended last year, and it was “not aware of any issues.”
Britain’s Labour Party did not respond to requests for comment.
“The data Pushwoosh collects is similar to data that could be collected by Facebook, Google or Amazon, but the difference is that all the Pushwoosh data in the U.S. is sent to servers controlled by a company (Pushwoosh) in Russia,” said Zach Edwards, a security researcher, who first spotted the prevalence of Pushwoosh code while working for Internet Safety Labs, a nonprofit organization.
Roskomnadzor, Russia’s state communications regulator, did not respond to a request from Reuters for comment.
FAKE ADDRESS, FAKE PROFILES
In U.S. regulatory filings and on social media, Pushwoosh never mentions its Russian links. The company lists “Washington, D.C.” as its location on Twitter and claims its office address as a house in the suburb of Kensington, Maryland, according to its latest U.S. corporation filings submitted to Delaware’s secretary of state. It also lists the Maryland address on its Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.
The Kensington house is the home of a Russian friend of Konev’s who spoke to a Reuters journalist on condition of anonymity. He said he had nothing to do with Pushwoosh and had only agreed to allow Konev to use his address to receive mail.
Konev said Pushwoosh had begun using the Maryland address to “receive business correspondence” during the coronavirus pandemic.
He said he now operates Pushwoosh from Thailand but provided no evidence that it is registered there. Reuters could not find a company by that name in the Thai company registry.
Pushwoosh never mentioned it was Russian-based in eight annual filings in the U.S. state of Delaware, where it is registered, an omission which could violate state law.
Instead, Pushwoosh listed an address in Union City, California as its principal place of business from 2014 to 2016. That address does not exist, according to Union City officials.
Pushwoosh used LinkedIn accounts purportedly belonging to two Washington, D.C.-based executives named Mary Brown and Noah O’Shea to solicit sales. But neither Brown nor O’Shea are real people, Reuters found.
The one belonging to Brown was actually of an Austria-based dance teacher, taken by a photographer in Moscow, who told Reuters she had no idea how it ended up on the site.
Konev acknowledged the accounts were not genuine. He said Pushwoosh hired a marketing agency in 2018 to create them in an attempt to use social media to sell Pushwoosh, not to mask the company’s Russian origins.
LinkedIn said it had removed the accounts after being alerted by Reuters.
Reporting by James Pearson in London and Marisa Taylor in Washington
Additional reporting by Chris Bing in Washington, editing by Chris Sanders and Ross Colvin
WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Economic sanctions, the primary means the United States has used for years to try to exert pressure on North Korea, have abjectly failed to halt its nuclear and missile programs or to bring the reclusive northeast Asian state back to the negotiating table.
Instead, North Korea’s ballistic missile program has become stronger and it has carried out a record-breaking testing regime of multiple types of weapons this year – including of intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland. Expectations are that it may soon end a self-imposed five-year moratorium on nuclear bomb testing.
Now, U.S. policy makers and their predecessors can do little more than pick through the wreckage and seek to determine what went wrong, and who might be to blame.
“We’ve had a policy failure. It’s a generational policy failure,” said Joseph DeThomas, a former U.S. diplomat who worked on North Korea and Iran sanctions and served in the administrations of Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
“An entire generation of people worked on this. It’s failed … so alright, now we have to go to the next step, figure out what we do about it.”
Biden administration officials concede that sanctions have failed to stop North Korea’s weapons programs – but they maintain they have at least been effective in slowing North Korea’s nuclear program.
“I would disagree with the idea that sanctions have failed. Sanctions have failed to stop their programs – that’s absolutely true,” a senior administration official told Reuters. “But I think that if the sanctions didn’t exist, (North Korea) would be much, much further along, and much more of a threat to its neighbors to the region and to the world.”
The State Department, U.S. Treasury and White House’s National Security Council did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Former officials and experts say sanctions were never imposed robustly enough for long enough and blame faltering U.S. overtures to North Korea as well as pressures like Russia’s war in Ukraine and U.S-China tensions over Taiwan for making them ineffective and easy for North Korea to circumvent.
North Korea has long been forbidden to conduct nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches by the U.N. Security Council.
The Security Council has imposed sanctions on North Korea since 2006 to choke off funding for it nuclear and ballistic missile programs. They now include exports bans coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, and capping imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products.
However U.N. experts regularly report that North Korea is evading sanctions and continuing to develop its programs.
Russia and China backed toughened sanctions after North Korea’s last nuclear test in 2017, but it is not clear what U.N action – if any – they might agree to if Pyongyang conducts another nuclear test.
Anthony Ruggiero, who headed North Korea sanctions efforts under former President Donald Trump, said they were only pursued vigorously enough from the last year of the Obama administration to early in Trump’s second year. They then dropped off in the ultimately vain hope of progress in summit negotiations between Trump and Kim.
Some critics like sanctions expert Joshua Stanton fault both the Trump and Biden administrations for failing to exert maximum pressure to stop China allowing North Korea’s sanctions evasion. They point to the powerful option of imposing sanctions on big Chinese banks that have facilitated this.
“The sanctions we don’t enforce don’t work, and we haven’t been enforcing them since mid-2018,” Stanton said, noting that history had shown a correlation between stronger enforcement and North Korea willingness to engage diplomatically.
“The Biden administration’s most significant failure is its failure to prosecute or penalize the Chinese banks we know are laundering Kim Jong Un’s money,” he said.
Some experts like DeThomas argue that taking what some call the “nuclear option” of going after Chinese banks could exclude huge Chinese institutions from the international financial system and have catastrophic consequences not just for the Chinese, but for the U.S. and global economies – something Stanton considers unfounded.
“Going full bore against the Chinese over North Korea is always a possibility, but it’s a high-risk option,” said DeThomas, arguing that such a measure should be reserved for an even more pressing scenario, such as deterring any move by China to all-out support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“You want them to be thinking about that. And you can’t fire that gun twice,” he said. “And even if you sanctioned the Chinese banks, you wouldn’t get the North Koreans to change.”
Some U.S. academic experts argue that Washington should recognize North Korea for what it is – a nuclear power that is never going to disarm – and use sanctions relief to incentivize better behavior.
“I do think we can buy things other than disarmament with our economic leverage,” Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies told a conference in Ottawa this week.
“I do think we can buy things other than disarmament with our economic leverage,” Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told a conference in Ottawa this week.
The senior Biden administration official said maintaining sanctions was not just punitive, but about the international community showing it is united.
He rejected the idea that Washington should recognize North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.
“There is an extraordinarily strong global consensus … that the DPRK should not, and must not, be a nuclear nation,” he said. “No country is calling for this … the consequences of changing policy, I think would be profoundly negative.”
Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Michelle Nichols
Editing by Alistair Bell
WASHINGTON/LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – The Group of Seven rich nations and Australia have agreed to set a fixed price when they finalize a price cap on Russian oil later this month, rather than adopting a floating rate, sources said on Thursday.
U.S. officials and G7 countries have been in intense negotiations in recent weeks over the unprecedented plan to put a price cap on sea-borne oil shipments, which is scheduled to take effect on Dec. 5 – to ensure EU and U.S. sanctions aimed at limiting Moscow’s ability to fund its invasion of Ukraine do not throttle the global oil market.
“The Coalition has agreed the price cap will be a fixed price that will be reviewed regularly rather than a discount to an index,” said a coalition source, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “This will increase market stability and simplify compliance to minimize the burden on market participants.”
The initial price itself has not been set, but should be in coming weeks, multiple sources said. Coalition partners agreed to regularly review the fixed price and revise it as needed, the source said, without disclosing further details.
Pegging the price as a discount to some index would have resulted in too much volatility and potential price swings, the source added.
The coalition worried that a floating price pegged below the Brent international benchmark might enable Russian President Vladimir Putin to game the mechanism by reducing supply, a second source with knowledge of the discussions said.
Putin could benefit from a floating price system because the price for his country’s oil would also rise if Brent spiked due to a cut in oil from Russia, one of the world’s largest petroleum producers. The downside of the agreed fixed price system is that it will require more meetings of the coalition and bureaucracy to review it regularly, the source said.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other G7 officials argue the price cap, set to begin Dec. 5 on crude and Feb. 5 on oil products, will squeeze funding to Russia without cutting supply to consumers. Russia has said it will refuse to ship oil to countries that set price caps.
Shipping services are eager to see more details about the G7 plan which is due to take effect in a month.
A steady price cap could enable insurers to more confidently roll over contracts and initiate new ones without fear that the price could be adjusted by the countries buying Russian oil, which could have potentially exposed insurers to sanctions.
No immediate comment was available from Treasury or the embassies of coalition members, which include the G7 rich nations, the European Union and Australia.
Separately, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the United States and its allies had agreed on further details on which sales of Russian oil will face the price cap.
Each load of seaborne Russian oil will only be subject to the price cap when first sold to a buyer on land, the countries determined. Reuters could not immediately verify the report which cited people familiar with the matter.
Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Timothy Gardner in Washington and Noah Browning in London; editing by Heather Timmons and Matthew Lewis
WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (Reuters) – The United States hopes to soon relocate around 150 U.S.-trained Afghan Air Force pilots and other personnel detained in Tajikistan for more than two months after they flew there at the end of the Afghan war, a U.S. official said.
The State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to offer a timeline for the transfer but said the United States wanted to move all of those held at the same time. The details of the U.S. plan have not been previously reported.
Reuters exclusively reported first-person accounts from 143 U.S.-trained Afghan personnel being held at a sanatorium in a mountainous, rural area outside of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, waiting for a U.S. flight out to a third country and eventual U.S. resettlement.
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Speaking on smuggled cell phones kept hidden from guards, they say they have had their phones and identity documents confiscated.
There are also 13 Afghan personnel in Dushanbe, enjoying much more relaxed conditions, who told Reuters they are also awaiting a U.S. transfer. They flew into the country separately.
The Afghan personnel in Tajikistan represent the last major group of U.S.-trained pilots still believed to be in limbo after dozens of advanced military aircraft were flown across the Afghan border to Tajikistan and to Uzbekistan in August during the final moments of the war with the Taliban.
In September, a U.S.-brokered deal allowed a larger group of Afghan pilots and other military personnel to be flown out of Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.
Two detained Afghan pilots in Tajikistan said their hopes were lifted in recent days after visits by officials from the U.S. embassy in Dushanbe.
Although they said they had not yet been given a date for their departure, the pilots said U.S. officials obtained the biometric data needed to complete the process of identifying the Afghans. That was the last step before departure for the Afghan pilots in Uzbekistan.
PREGNANT AFGHAN PILOT
U.S. lawmakers and military veterans who have advocated for the pilots have expressed deep frustration over the time it has taken for President Joe Biden’s administration to evacuate Afghan personnel.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was pressed on the matter in Congress last month, expressing concern at a hearing for the pilots and other personnel.
Reuters had previously reported U.S. difficulties gaining Tajik access to all of the Afghans, which include an Afghan Air Force pilot who is eight months pregnant.
In an interview with Reuters, the 29-year-old pilot had voiced her concerns to Reuters about the risks to her and her child at the remote sanatorium. She was subsequently moved to a maternity hospital.
“We are like prisoners here. Not even like refugees, not even like immigrants. We have no legal documents or way to buy something for ourselves,” she said.
The pregnant pilot would be included in the relocation from Tajikistan, the U.S. State Department official said.
Even before the Taliban’s takeover, the U.S.-trained, English-speaking pilots had become prime targets of the Taliban because of the damage they inflicted during the war. The Talibantracked down the pilotsand assassinated them off-base.
Afghanistan’s new rulers have said they will invite former military personnel to join the revamped security forces and that they will come to no harm.
Afghan pilots who spoke with Reuters say they believe they will be killed if they return to Afghanistan.
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Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Grant McCool
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