A helicopter crash near a kindergarten in the Kyiv region has killed at least 18 people, including Ukraine’s entire interior ministry leadership team, according to officials.
At least 29 others were injured in the incident on Wednesday in the city of Brovary, on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital, according to Oleksiy Kuleba, head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration.
Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky, First Deputy Minister Yevheniy Yenin and State Secretary Yuriy Lubkovychis died in the crash, Anton Geraschenko, a ministry adviser, confirmed on social media.
The nine people onboard the aircraft died, while the other casualties were locals “bringing their children to the kindergarten,” said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, head of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration.
Kuleba, speaking alongside Tymoshenko at the scene to reporters, added “there is currently no information on the number of missing children. Identification is ongoing. Parents are coming, lists are being compiled.”
A CNN team on the ground in the Kyiv region noted gray skies and very low visibility.
The helicopter that has crashed was a Eurocopter EC225 “Super Puma,” a CNN producer confirmed after seeing remnants of flight manuals among the debris.
It landed near a kindergarten and a residential building, Kuleba said earlier.
“At the time of the tragedy, there were children and the staff in the kindergarten. At the moment, everyone was evacuated,” he wrote on Telegram.
Paramedics, the police and firefighters are responding at the scene, Kuleba added.
In a written statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the crash “a terrible tragedy,” adding that he has ordered the Ukrainian Security Services to “to find out all the circumstances.”
Zelensky ended his statement by saying the officials were “true patriots of Ukraine. May they rest in peace! May all those whose lives were taken this black morning rest in peace!”
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, also paid tribute to Monastyrsky as “a great friend of the EU.” Michel tweeted that the European Union joins Ukraine “in grief following the tragic helicopter accident in Brovary.”
BERLIN — Olaf Scholz has once again rebooted his security policy, nominating a new defense minister to take the reins. But when it comes to his reluctance to send battle tanks to Ukraine, the German chancellor is still waiting for the U.S. to take the lead.
Tuesday’s nomination of Boris Pistorius puts an end to a growing government crisis that had left Europe’s biggest economy for several days effectively without clear military leadership. But Pistorius — whom Scholz hailed as having “the strength and calmness that is needed in view of the Zeitenwende,” Germany’s historic military revamp — will have little time to get adjusted to the new role.
Pressure is mounting on Germany to participate in a broader alliance of countries that would supply Ukraine’s army with modern Leopard 2 battle tanks. And moments after being sworn in on Thursday, the new defense minister is scheduled to meet U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who is coming to Berlin before a key meeting Friday in Germany where allies will discuss tank deliveries for Ukraine.
Pistorius is replacing Christine Lambrecht, a loyal defender of Scholz’s cautious tank stance who resigned on Monday after a series of gaffes and missteps that weighed on Berlin’s reputation.
That means expectations are high for the 62-year-old Pistorius, who is from Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Yet Social Democratic lawmakers say the appointment by itself won’t tilt the scales on supplying Ukraine with tanks.
“I don’t think one has anything to do with the other,” Wolfgang Hellmich, the SPD’s defense policy spokesperson, told POLITICO.
Kristian Klinck, an SPD member of the Bundestag’s defense committee and an army reserve officer, also said he didn’t see “any significant change in this regard because of the personnel change in the defense ministry.”
While stressing that Pistorius will play a role in deciding on further military aid for Ukraine, Klinck said “this very important question of the delivery of battle tanks” would be decided “primarily in the chancellor’s office” and in coordination with other allies.
Scholz himself reiterated his reluctant position during an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, saying that any decisions on further weapon supplies could only be taken in close coordination with allies.
That argument for holding back tank deliveries has started to sound less convincing, however, given the calls from allies like Poland to jointly send Leopards, and after the U.K. announced it would supply Ukraine with its own Challenger 2 battle tanks.
German officials have indicated, though, that Scholz would likely move if he received backing from the U.S., especially if Washington also agreed to send battle tanks.
During a call between Scholz and U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday, both leaders discussed “effective, sustainable and closely coordinated” military support for Ukraine, according to a German spokesperson. This has raised expectations that a breakthrough on tanks could still be feasible.
Pressure on Scholz
Green MP Anton Hofreiter, chair of the Bundestag’s European affairs committee and a long-standing critic of Scholz’s cautious position, said it was time for the chancellor to act.
“The decision to supply tanks ultimately rests with the chancellor. Behind him is his Social Democratic Party, which unfortunately is still often under the illusion that relations with Russia can be normalized again and that Moscow should therefore not be provoked too much,” Hofreiter told POLITICO.
Anton Hofreiter, co-head of the German Green Party Bundestag faction | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Hofreiter, whose Green party is part of Germany’s government coalition alongside Scholz’s SPD and the pro-business Free Democratic Party, argued Germany was presenting “an unclear, wavering and hesitant picture” of its military support for Ukraine.
“Allies are now watching Berlin very closely: If we continue to close our minds on the Leopard issue, Germany would be increasingly isolated in Europe,” he said.
Scholz’s vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, also from the Greens, upped the pressure on the chancellor last week, saying Berlin should not stand in the way if allies like Poland, Finland or Spain want to send their own Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine — an important demand because Berlin must authorize any re-export of the German-made battle tanks.
The government’s deputy spokesperson later clarified that there were “no differences” on the issue between Habeck and Scholz, suggesting the chancellor would support his deputy’s line.
The remarks raised expectations that Berlin may use Friday’s meeting to at least give its allies the green light on sending Leopard tanks. But it remains uncertain whether Scholz will join the coalition and offer Germany’s own tanks, either from the German army or defense industry stocks.
Scholz said Tuesday that he would not debate these questions in public.
There are also questions in Germany about whether the recent political crisis within the defense ministry has left Scholz weakened. Scholz personally chose Lambrecht and defended her until the end, despite concerns she had failed to properly spend a reject influx of defense funds and let Germany’s ammunition stockpiles run low (in addition to her gaffes and waning standing among the military).
The SPD’s Hellmich, however, expressed optimism that these shortcomings would now improve with the newly appointed minister.
“Boris Pistorius has been in the political business for a long time and is knowledgeable on the subject. He sits on the defense committee of the Bundesrat [Germany’s upper house of parliament] and is a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly,” Hellmich said.
“That’s why the troops are in good hands with him.”
This article was updated to include details of a call between Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden.
BERLIN — News this month that the number of German soldiers declaring themselves conscientious objectors rose fivefold in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine created little more than a ripple in Germany.
For many Germans it’s perfectly natural for members of the Bundeswehr, the army, to renege on the pledge they made to defend their country; if Germans themselves don’t want to fight, why should their troops?
Indeed, in Germany, a soldier isn’t a soldier but a “citizen in uniform.” It’s an apposite euphemism for a populace that has lived comfortably under the U.S. security umbrella for more than seven decades and goes a long way toward explaining how Germany became NATO’s problem child since the war in Ukraine began, delaying and frustrating the Western effort to get Ukraine the weaponry it needs to defend itself against an unprovoked Russian onslaught.
The latest installment in this saga (it began just hours after the February invasion when Germany’s finance minister told Ukraine’s ambassador there was no point in sending aid because his country would only survive for a few hours anyway) concerns the question of delivering main battle tanks to Ukraine. Germany, one of the largest producers of such tanks alongside the U.S., has steadfastly refused to do so for months, arguing that providing Ukraine with Western tanks could trigger a broader war.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also tried to hide behind the U.S., noting that Washington has also not sent any tanks. (Scholz has conveniently ignored the detail that the U.S. has provided Ukraine with $25 billion in military aid so far, more than 10 times what Germany has.)
Germany’s allies, including Washington, often ascribe German recalcitrance to a knee-jerk pacifism born of the lessons learned from its “dark past.”
In other words, the German strategy — do nothing, blame the Nazis — is working.
Of course, Germany’s conscience doesn’t really drive its foreign policy, its corporations do. While it hangs back from supporting Ukraine in a fight to defend its democracy from invasion by a tyrant, it has no qualms about selling to authoritarian regimes, like those in the Middle East, where it does brisk business selling weapons to countries such as Egypt and Qatar.
Despite everything that’s happened over the past year, Berlin is still holding out hope that Ukraine can somehow patch things up with Russia so that Germany can resume business as usual and switch the gas back on. Even if Germany ends up sending tanks to Ukraine — as many now anticipate — it will deliver as few as it can get away with and only after exhausting every possible option to delay.
Much attention in recent years has focused on Nord Stream 2, the ill-fated Russo-German natural gas project. Yet tensions between the U.S. and Germany over the latter’s entanglement with Russian energy interests date back to the late 1950s, when it first began supplying the Soviet Union with large-diameter piping.
Throughout the Cold War, Germany’s involvement with NATO was driven by a strategy to take advantage of the protection the alliance afforded, delivering no more than the absolute minimum, while also expanding commercial relations with the Soviets.
In 1955, the weekly Die Zeit described what it called the “fireside fantasy of West German industry” to normalize trade relations with the Soviet Union. Within years, that dream became a reality, driven in large measure by Chancellor Willy Brandt’s détente policies, known as Ostpolitik.
Joe Biden, eager to reverse the diplomatic damage inflicted during the Trump years, reversed course and has gone out of his way to show his appreciation for all things German | Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images
That’s one reason the Germans so feared U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his hard line against the Soviets. Far from welcoming his “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” demand, both the German public and industry were terrified by it, worried that Reagan would upset the apple cart and destroy their business in the east.
By the time the Berlin Wall fell a couple of years later, West German exports to the Soviet Union had reached nearly 12 billion deutsche mark, a record.
That’s why Germany’s handling of Ukraine isn’t a departure from the norm; it is the norm.
Germany’s dithering over aid to Ukraine is a logical extension of a strategy that has served its economy well from the Cold War to the decision to block Ukraine’s NATO accession in 2008 to Nord Stream.
Just last week, as the Russians were raining terror on Dnipro, the minister president of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, called for the repair of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which was blown up by unknown saboteurs last year, so that Germany “keeps the option” to purchase Russian gas after war ends.
One can’t blame him for trying. If one accepts that German policy is driven by economic logic rather than moral imperative, the fickleness of its political leaders makes complete sense — all the more so considering how well it has worked.
The money Germany has saved on defense has enabled it to finance one of the world’s most generous welfare states. When Germany was under pressure from allies a few years ago to finally meet NATO’s 2 percent of GDP spending target, then-Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel called the goal “absurd.” And from a German perspective, he was right; why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Of course, the Germans have had a lot of help milking, especially from the U.S.
American presidents have been chastising Germany over its lackluster contribution to the Western alliance going as far back as Dwight D. Eisenhower, only to do nothing about it.
The exception that proves the rule is Donald Trump, whose plan to withdraw most U.S. troops from Germany was thwarted by his election loss.
Joe Biden, eager to reverse the diplomatic damage inflicted during the Trump years, reversed course and has gone out of his way to show his appreciation for all things German.
Biden’s decision to court the Germans instead of castigating them for failing to meet their commitments taught Berlin that it merely needs to wait out crises in the transatlantic relationship and the problems will fix themselves. Under pressure from Trump to buy American liquefied natural gas, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed in 2018 to support the construction of the necessary infrastructure. After Trump, those plans were put on ice, only to revive them amid the current energy crisis.
By virtue of its size and geographical position at the center of Europe, Germany will always be important for the U.S., if not as a true ally, at least as an erstwhile partner and staging ground for the American military.
Who cares that the Bundeswehr has become a punchline or that Germany remains years away from meeting its NATO spending targets?
In Washington’s view, Germany might be a bad ally, but at least it’s America’s bad ally.
And no one understands the benefits of that status better than the Germans themselves.
Prices for used cars have been high in recent years as inventory has been hampered by computer chip shortages and other pandemic-related woes. Luckily, for those who are currently shopping for a vehicle, many automakers are reporting they have more of the parts they need and are ramping up production – meaning used car prices will likely continue to plunge.
Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.
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After an onslaught of atmospheric rivers recently battered California with flooding, a much-needed break from the rain is finally in sight. Flood watches that covered millions in coastal Central California have expired, though crews will be busy cleaning up the damage over the next several weeks. The storm system is now advancing farther inland and is expected to bring heavy snowfall into the Four Corners Region. Up to two feet of new snow is expected in parts of Colorado by this evening, while rain is in the forecast for much of the Southwest. By midweek, the threat will be in the South. The Storm Prediction Center has already highlighted an area from East Texas to the Lower Mississippi Valley for the potential for strong storms.
Another spate of shootings this week is shaking up communities across the US. At least six people, including a mother and her 6-month-old baby, are dead after a “cartel-style execution” occurred Monday in the town of Goshen, California. The shooting appears to be gang-related, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office said. Separately, eight people were shot Monday at a block party in Fort Pierce, Florida, where the community was gathering to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. An investigation is ongoing to identify the shooter, authorities said. This incident marks the 30th mass shooting in the country this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. So far in 2023, the US is averaging about two mass shootings per day.
Following the discovery of misplaced classified documents from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president, House Republicans are demanding that the White House turn over more information – including any visitors logs to Biden’s private residence, where a batch of documents was found. The White House counsel’s office, however, said there are no visitors logs that track guests who come and go at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware. “Like every President across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” the counsel’s office said in a statement Monday. Some Republicans are crying foul, saying former President Donald Trump was treated differently when FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago residence last August. Meanwhile, the White House is labeling the Republican investigations into the documents as “shamelessly hypocritical.”
The Biden Administration has no visitor logs for Biden’s private home, where classified documents were found
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CNN
Cryptocurrencies are rebounding after getting pummeled by losses for the better part of last year. This is prompting speculation that the so-called crypto winter – the digital asset world’s equivalent of a bear market – is over. Bitcoin, the world’s most popular crypto, is up 25% over the past month, hovering above $20,000 for the first time since November, following the collapse of the crypto trading platform FTX. Ethereum, the No. 2 crypto, is up more than 30% over the past month, trading above $1,500 on Monday. Still, Bitcoin is substantially down from its peak in November 2021, just shy of $69,000. Two months ago, when FTX imploded and sent shock waves through the industry, bitcoin plummeted to a two-year low of $15,480.
Actor rips crypto as ‘largest Ponzi scheme in history’
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CNN
Some players at the Australian Open expressed irritation today after extreme heat postponed play for hours at the tennis tournament. As temperatures reached almost 97 degrees Fahrenheit, organizers announced at around 2 p.m. local time that matches on outdoor courts would come to a halt. Separately, a Russian flag that was displayed in the stands at the Grand Slam event has sparked controversy and a rules update from Tennis Australia. Fans will no longer be allowed to bring Russian or Belarusian flags to the site of the tournament, officials said, citing the conflict in Ukraine. The decision comes after Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia “strongly condemn[ed]” the Russian flag being displayed Monday during the first-round match between Ukraine’s Kateryna Baindl and Russia’s Kamilla Rakhimova.
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Gina Lollobrigida, a legend of Italian cinema, has died, according to members of her family. She was 95. Together with Sophia Loren, Lollobrigida came to symbolize the earthy sexuality of Italian actresses in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to appearing in several European films, she made her English-language film debut in 1953 in John Huston’s “Beat the Devil,” alongside Humphrey Bogart.
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That’s how many states have taken action to restrict TikTok on government devices, reflecting a wave of recent clampdowns by Republican and Democratic governors targeting the short-form video app. The accelerating backlash comes amid renewed security concerns about how the platform handles user data and fears that it could find its way to the Chinese government.
“We don’t talk about a collapse, but it can happen any second.”
– Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko, saying Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure remains severely threatened and could completely collapse if it were to be hit by Russian rockets. Klitschko’s warning comes as millions of Ukrainians continue to endure a winter without electricity, water, and central heating due to relentless Russian strikes.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Flags from Russia and Belarus were banned from the site of the Australian Open on Tuesday after more than one was brought into the stands by spectators on Day 1 of the year’s first Grand Slam tournament.
Normally, flags can be displayed during matches at Melbourne Park.
“Our initial policy was that fans could bring (flags) in but could not use them to cause disruption,” Tennis Australia said in a statement on Tuesday. “Yesterday we had an incident where a flag was placed courtside. We will continue to work with the players and our fans to ensure that this is the best possible environment to enjoy the tennis.”
One Russian flag was displayed during Ukrainian player Kateryna Baindl’s 7-5, 6-7 (8), 6-1 victory over Russian player Kamilla Rakhimova on Court 14 in the first round on Monday.
Another was offered to Russian player Daniil Medvedev to autograph after his 6-0, 6-1, 6-2 win over Marcos Giron in Rod Laver Arena on Monday night.
Daniil Medvedev of Russia autographs a Russian flag after defeating Marcos Giron of the U.S. in their first round match at the Australian Open.
Asked about the new flag ban, Belarusian player Aryna Sabalenka said after her first-round victory Tuesday that she would prefer that politics and sports remain separate, but understands the decision by Tennis Australia.
“I mean, if everyone feels better this way, then it’s OK,” said Sabalenka, a three-time Grand Slam semifinalist who is seeded No. 5 at Melbourne Park. “I have zero control on it. What can I say? They did it. OK. No flags? No flags.”
Sabalenka was among the athletes from Russia and Belarus who were barred from competing at Wimbledon and team events such as the Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup last year because of the war in Ukraine. Russia invaded, with help from Belarus, in February.
Russian and Belarusian players have been allowed to enter the other three Grand Slam tournaments but as “neutral” athletes, so their nationalities are not acknowledged on any official schedules or results for the event and their countries’ flags are not displayed on TV graphics.
Dozens of people, including children, were killed over the weekend in a Russian attack on an apartment building in Dnipro. Debora Patta has the latest.
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Food companies making big profits as inflation has surged should face windfall taxes to help cut global inequality, anti-poverty group Oxfam said Monday as the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting gets underway.
That’s one of the ideas in a report by Oxfam International, which has sought for a decade to highlight inequality at the conclave of political and business elites in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
The report, which aims to provoke discussions on panels featuring corporate and government leaders this week, said the world has been beset with simultaneous crises, including climate change, the surging cost of living, Russia’s war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, yet the world’s richest have gotten richer and corporate profits are surging.
Over the past two years, the world’s super-rich 1% have gained nearly twice as much wealth as the remaining 99% combined, Oxfam said. Meanwhile, at least 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation is outpacing their wage growth, even as billionaire fortunes are rising by $2.7 billion a day.
To combat these problems, Oxfam called for higher taxes on the rich, through a combination of measures including one-time “solidarity” taxes and raising minimum rates for the wealthiest. The group noted that billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s true tax rate from 2014 to 2018 was just over 3%.
A “true tax rate,” is defined by ProPublica as the amount in taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans annually versus the estimated growth in their wealth during that same time. For instance, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos paid $1.4 billion in personal federal taxes between 2006 to 2018 on $6.5 billion he reported in income, while his wealth increased by $127 billion during that same period. By ProPublica’s calculation, that reflects a true tax rate of 1.1%.
“A tax of up to 5% on the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year,” according to Oxfam. “Enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.”
Some governments have turned to taxing fossil fuel companies’ windfall profits as Russia’s war in Ukraine sent oil and natural gas prices soaring last year, squeezing household finances around the world.
Oxfam wants the idea to go further to include big food corporations, as a way to narrow the widening gap between the rich and poor.
“The number of billionaires is growing, and they’re getting richer, and also very large food and energy companies are making excessive profits,” said Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam International’s executive director.
“What we’re calling for is windfall taxes, not only on energy companies but also on food companies to end this crisis profiteering,” Bucher told The Associated Press.
Oxfam said wealthy corporations are using the war as an excuse to pass on even bigger price hikes. Food and energy are among the industries dominated by a small number of players that have effective oligopolies, and the lack of competition allows them to keep prices high, the group said.
At least one country has already acted. Portugal introduced a windfall tax on both energy companies and major food retailers, including supermarket and hypermarket chains. It took effect at the start of January and will be in force for all of 2023.
The 33% tax is applied to profits that are at least 20% higher than the average of the previous four years. Revenue raised goes to welfare programs and to help small food retailers.
Oxfam said its analysis of 95 companies that made excess, or windfall profits, found that 84% of those profits were paid to shareholders while higher prices were passed on to consumers.
Ukrainian soccer club Shakhtar Donetsk has launched a $25M project for Mariupol soldiers and their families, the club announced Monday.
The launch of the ‘Heart of Azovstal’ initiative comes after the club sold star player Mykhailo Mudryk to English Premier League side Chelsea.
“I am allocating the $25 million (UAH 1 billion) today to help our soldiers, defenders and their families. The money will be used to cover different needs – from providing medical and prosthetic treatment and psychological support to meeting specific requests,” Shakhtar president Rinat Akhmetov said in a statement.
“Their acts of bravery are unparalleled in modern history. It is them, their sacrifice and courage that helped contain the enemy in the first months of the war and let all of us feel the inevitability of the Victory of Ukraine now,” Akhmetov added.
Shakhtar said they will receive a Ukrainian record-breaking transfer fee of $75M for the 22-year-old with an additional $35M expected as a bonus payment, the club confirmed in a statement Sunday.
Mudryk scored three goals for Shakhtar in the Champions League group stages this season before the team was eliminated.
Many of Europe’s top clubs were interested in securing Mudryk’s signature but Chelsea ultimately won the race.
Akhmetov added that he is confident that Ukraine will win the war against Russia, and one day “we will play a friendly against Chelsea at Donbass Arena in a Ukrainian Donetsk.”
On Friday, Russian energy supplier Gazprom said it would not resume its supply of natural gas to Germany through the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline, blaming a malfunctioning turbine.
Hannibal Hanschke | Reuters
The European Union’s rejection of Russian energy commodities following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine won’t last forever, Qatar’s Energy Minister said during an energy conference over the weekend.
“The Europeans today are saying there’s no way we’re going back” to buying Russian gas, Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, energy minister and head of state gas company QatarEnergy, said at the Atlantic Council Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi.
“We’re all blessed to have to be able to forget and to forgive. And I think things get mended with time… they learn from that situation and probably have a much bigger diversity [of energy intake].”
Europe has long been Russia’s largest customer of most energy commodities, especially natural gas. EU countries have dramatically cut down their imports of Russian energy supplies, imposing sanctions in response to Moscow’s brutal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Gas exports from Russian state energy giant Gazprom to Switzerland and the EU fell by 55% in 2022, the company said earlier this month. The cut in imports has dramatically increased energy costs for Europe, sending leaders and oil and gas executives scrambling to develop new sources of energy and shore up alternative supplies.
“But Russian gas is going back, in my view, to Europe,” al-Kaabi said.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has so far taken tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives, destroyed entire cities, and exiled more than 8 million people as refugees. Russian missiles and drone strikes regularly hit and decimate residential buildings, schools, hospitals, and vital energy infrastructure, leaving millions of Ukrainians without power.
A residential building destroyed after a Russian missile attack on Jan. 15, 2023, in Dnipro, Ukraine.
Global Images Ukraine | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Europe has managed to avert a major crisis this winter, owing to mild weather and substantial stocks of gas amassed over the last year. Energy officials and analysts warn of a more precarious situation in late 2023, when these supplies run out.
“Luckily they [Europe] haven’t had a very high demand for gas due to the warmer weather,” al-Kaabi said. “The issue is what’s going to happen when they want to replenish their storages this coming year, and there isn’t much gas coming into the market until ’25, ’26, ’27 … So I think it’s going to be a volatile situation for some time.”
Later during the conference, CNBC spoke to the CEO of Italian energy company Eni, Claudio Descalzi, who pushed back on the Qatari minister’s comments.
“I think that the war is still there, and it is not easy to forgive anybody when you kill innocent people, women and children and bomb hospitals,” Descalzi told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble. “And so I think that more than forgive, we have to understand the sense of life for our words. For our modern war, because that is [what is] happening there. So, when we talk about energy security, we talk about financing how you allocate your money, how much in the gas, how much in the renewables, and you think that people are killing close to you or far from you… That is the priority, that is the thing we have to solve.”
“Otherwise,” the CEO added, “there is a big elephant in the room. We hide to ourselves this kind of stuff, and when we hide something [it] is coming back bigger and bigger. If you’re forgiving, it means you are not looking at that, you are not thinking we have to solve this kind of issue.”
Descalzi said that the war in Ukraine and energy security are front of mind for him and his industry. Italy has dramatically reduced its reliance on Russian gas by replacing it with energy sources from alternative producers, such as Algeria. On Sunday, Eni announced a new gas discovery in an offshore field in the eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Egypt.
“Honestly, energy security is a big problem… but I think that, in 2023, the priority is Ukraine,” Descalzi said. That’s from my point of view. It’s Russia. It’s the relationship with China.”
“I’m not a politician,” he added, “but I think you cannot manage and talk about money and talk about energy and industry — it’s clear that, if you are not looking at that, a lot of people are going to suffer. But from the other side you talk about freedom, democracy, and people that are dying.”
Joe Biden is, in several respects, far better positioned for a presidential reelection campaign than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were at similar points in their first terms. Unlike those two, Biden isn’t coming off a midterm thrashing; Republicans continue to marginalize themselves by playing to the right-wing fringe; and the economy, while uneven, seems poised for a rebound just as the 2024 campaign ramps up.
Yet probably the greatest challenge—and achievement—of Biden’s first term has gone underappreciated: the president’s success in helping Ukraine fight off Russia. The one-year anniversary of the war’s start is nearing; for all the tragic losses on the ground in Ukraine, the American response should be recognized as a highlight of Biden’s presidency so far. But the dynamics at home surrounding American involvement in the war are about to grow even more complicated, just as Biden launches a likely bid for a second term.
The president and Senate Democrats succeeded, at the end of 2022, in approving $45 billion in aid to Ukraine, money that should last through much of the New Year. Beyond that lies trouble. The new House Republican majority, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have been making noises about cutting or blocking American aid. “It would be an all-around disaster if that happens,” says Rhode Island Democratic senator Jack Reed, who traveled to Kyiv last week and met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “It would be a signal to our allies saying, ‘Hey, we’re disengaging, so we can’t call you to task,’ and on the ground it would deny the Ukrainians the equipment they need. The Ukrainians would continue to resist, I’m sure, but the Russians would feel emboldened to slaughter even more people.”
As the war drags into a second year and the battlefield remains unsettled, other pressures will grow on the president. Around the corner are perilous decisions about how to handle Ukraine’s push to join NATO and to reclaim Crimea. “This is a big year,” says Michael Allen, a White House national security specialist under former president George W. Bush. “Escalation management is important, but it feels like Biden talks himself out of stuff that they end up doing anyway, starting with fighter jets at the beginning of the war to not sending Abrams tanks now.”
The administration will need to extend the deftness with which it handled the first year of the war. Not only did Biden convince Congress to send Ukraine roughly $70 billion in aid, much of it in weaponry, but his team supplied Zelenskyy’s government with invaluable military intelligence. Perhaps most impressive, though, is that the president assembled and has held together an international coalition that has delivered everything from howitzers to economic sanctions, an effort that required Biden to rebuild the trust of allies that had been destroyed in the Trump years. “In some ways this crisis is uniquely suited to this president,” says Ivo Daalder, an expert in European security who was a top foreign policy adviser to Clinton and Obama. “It’s hard to see how anybody else could have done this, or could have done it better. Who would have thought that the Germans were going to cut off their dependence on Russian energy after 45 years? Yet that’s what they’ve done.”
How deeply American voters care about all this remains to be seen. Biden’s policy accomplishments in Ukraine may end up mattering less, politically, than the symbolic platform the war provides, especially because he would be the oldest president to ever seek a second term. “Biden’s actions on the global stage are more important for him than they were for past presidents. I think they’re actually critical,” says Cornell Belcher, a strategist who worked on both of Obama’s presidential runs. “It’s a unique opportunity to show strength and vitality, to show that he’s up to the task. When you stand on a stage with world leaders looking to you, looking to America once again, that leadership can help inoculate the president against the issue that is at the forefront of many American minds.”
There are, unfortunately, plenty of examples of the United States pouring money and guns into propping up dubious foreign actors. Ukraine is one of the rare times we’ve done it on behalf of the good guys. But foreign affairs are usually a low priority for American voters, unless US troops are at risk, and funding for Ukraine has increasingly become a partisan issue. Republicans have alreadytried to exploit that parochialism, arguing the billions being sent to Ukraine would be better spent at, say, the US Southern border. The stakes of that argument are highest for Ukraine, of course. But its national security will become increasingly entwined with Biden’s domestic political fortunes.
For now, the president’s team believes Republican opposition on Ukraine could be perversely helpful to the president. “Kevin McCarthy has been saying things like he supports Ukraine but not a blank check,” a Biden adviser says. “If they start mucking around, there’s a real opportunity for Biden to make this about a bigger issue—about protecting democracy and caving to autocrats and dictators.” If Vladimir Putin’s friend Donald Trump were to emerge as the Republican presidential nominee, the contrast would become even starker.
DNIPRO, Ukraine (AP) — The death toll from a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro rose to 30 Sunday, the national emergencies service reported as rescue workers scrambled to reach survivors in the rubble.
Emergency crews worked through the frigid night and all day at the multi-story residential building, where officials said about 1,700 people lived before Saturday’s strike. The reported death toll made it the deadliest attack in one place since a Sept. 30 strike in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project.
Russia also targeted the capital, Kyiv, and the northeastern city of Kharkiv during a widespread barrage the same day, ending a two-week lull in the airstrikes it has launched against Ukraine’s power infrastructure and urban centers almost weekly since October.
Russia on Sunday acknowledged the missile strikes but did not mention the Dnipro apartment building. Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians in the war.
Russia fired 33 cruise missiles on Saturday, of which 21 were shot down, according to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces. The missile that hit the apartment building was a Kh-22 launched from Russia’s Kursk region, according to the military’s air force command, adding that Ukraine does not have a system capable of intercepting that type of weapon.
Emergency workers clear the rubble after a Russian rocket hit a multistory building leaving many people under debris in the southeastern city of Dnipro, Ukraine, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
In Dnipro, workers used a crane as they tried to rescue people trapped on upper floors of the apartment tower. Some residents signaled for help with lights on their mobile phones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that at least 73 people were wounded and 39 people had been rescued as of Sunday afternoon. The city government in Dnipro said 43 people were reported missing.
“Search and rescue operations and the dismantling of dangerous structural elements continues. Around the clock. We continue to fight for every life,” Zelenskyy said.
Eternal memory to all whose lives were taken by 🇷🇺 terror! The world must stop evil. Debris clearance in Dnipro continues. All services are working. We’re fighting for every person, every life. We’ll find everyone involved in terror. Everyone will bear responsibility. Utmost. pic.twitter.com/zG4rIF8nzC
Ivan Garnuk was in his apartment when the building was hit and said he felt lucky to have survived. He described his shock that the Russians would strike a residential building with no strategic value.
“There are no military facilities here. There is nothing here,” he said. “There is no air defense, there are no military bases here. It just hit civilians, innocent people.”
Dnipro residents joined rescue workers at the scene to help clear the rubble. Others brought food and warm clothes for those who had lost their homes.
“This is clearly terrorism and all this is simply not human,” one local, Artem Myzychenko, said as he cleared rubble.
Rescue workers clear the rubble from an apartment building that was destroyed in a Russian rocket attack at a residential neighbourhood in the southeastern city of Dnipro, Ukraine, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Claiming responsibility for the missile strikes across Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that it achieved its goal.
“All designated targets have been hit. The goal of the attack has been achieved,” a ministry statement posted on Telegram said. It said missiles were fired “on the military command and control system of Ukraine and related energy facilities,” and did not mention the attack on the Dnipro residential building.
On Sunday, Russian forces attacked a residential area in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, regional Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevych said in a Telegram post. According to preliminary information, two people were wounded.
Russia’s renewed air attacks came as fierce fighting raged in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, where the Russian military has claimed it has control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar but Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting.
If the Russian forces win full control of Soledar it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut. The battle for Bakhmut has raged for months, causing substantial casualties on both sides.
Emergency workers carry a wounded woman after a Russian rocket hit a multistory building on Saturday in Dnipro, Ukraine, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Yevhenii Zavhorodnii)
With the grinding war nearing the 11-month mark, Britain announced it would deliver tanks to Ukraine, its first donation of such heavy-duty weaponry. Although the pledge of 14 Challenger 2 tanks appeared modest, Ukrainian officials expect it will encourage other Western nations to supply more tanks.
“Sending Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine is the start of a gear change in the U.K.’s support,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office said in a statement late Saturday. “A squadron of 14 tanks will go into the country in the coming weeks after the prime minister told President Zelenskyy that the U.K. would provide additional support to aid Ukraine’s land war. Around 30 AS90s, which are large, self-propelled guns, operated by five gunners, are expected to follow.”
Sunak is hoping other Western allies follow suit as part of a coordinated international effort to boost support for Ukraine in the lead-up to the 1-year anniversary of the invasion next month, according to officials.
The U.K. defense secretary plans to travel to Estonia and Germany this week to work with NATO allies, and the foreign secretary is scheduled to visit the U.S. and Canada to discuss closer coordination.
Meldrum reported from Kyiv. Sylvia Hui in London contributed reporting.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the tiny island country of Cyprus has been a destination for Russian oligarchs looking to hide their wealth. But with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, officials are working to seize those assets.
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Last fall, as Ukraine won back large swaths of territory in a series of counterattacks, it pounded Russian forces with American-made artillery and rockets. Guiding some of that artillery was a homemade targeting system that Ukraine developed on the battlefield.
A piece of Ukrainian-made software has turned readily available tablet computers and smartphones into sophisticated targeting tools that are now used widely across the Ukrainian military.
The result is a mobile app that feeds satellite and other intelligence imagery into a real-time targeting algorithm that helps units near the front direct fire onto specific targets. And because it’s an app, not a piece of hardware, it’s easy to quickly update and upgrade, and available to a wide range of personnel.
US officials familiar with the tool say it has been highly effective at directing Ukrainian artillery fire onto Russian targets.
The targeting app is among dozens of examples of battlefield innovations that Ukraine has come up with over nearly a year of war, often finding cheap fixes to expensive problems.
Small, plastic drones, buzzing quietly overhead, drop grenades and other ordinance on Russian troops. 3D printers now make spare parts so soldiers can repair heavy equipment in the field. Technicians have converted ordinary pickup trucks into mobile missile launchers. Engineers have figured out how to strap sophisticated US missiles onto older Soviet fighter jets such as the MiG-29, helping keep the Ukrainian air force flying after nine months of war.
Ukraine has even developed its own anti-ship weapon, the Neptune, based off Soviet rocket designs that can target the Russian fleet from almost 200 miles away.
This kind of Ukrainian ingenuity has impressed US officials, who have praised Kyiv’s ability to “MacGyver” solutions to its battlefield needs that fill in important tactical gaps left by the larger, more sophisticated Western weaponry.
While US and other Western officials don’t always have perfect insight into exactly how Ukraine’s custom-made systems work – in large part because they are not on the ground – both officials and open-source analysts say Ukraine has become a veritable battle lab for cheap but effective solutions.
“Their innovation is just incredibly impressive,” said Seth Jones, director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has also offered the United States and its allies a rare opportunity to study how their own weapons systems perform under intense use – and what munitions both sides are using to score wins in this hotly fought modern war. US operations officers and other military officials have also tracked how successfully Russia has used cheap, expendable drones that explode on impact, provided by Iran, to decimate the Ukrainian power grid.
Ukraine is “absolutely a weapons lab in every sense because none of this equipment has ever actually been used in a war between two industrially developed nations,” said one source familiar with Western intelligence. “This is real-world battle testing.”
For the US military, the war in Ukraine has been an incredible source of data on the utility of its own systems.
Some high-profile systems given to the Ukrainians – such as the Switchblade 300 drone and a missile designed to target enemy radar systems – have turned out to be less effective on the battlefield than anticipated, according to a US military operations officer with knowledge of the battlefield, as well as a recent British think tank study.
But the lightweight American-made M142 multiple rocket launcher, or HIMARS, has been critical to Ukraine’s success – even as officials have learned valuable lessons about the rate of maintenance repair those systems have required under such heavy use.
How Ukraine has used its limited supply of HIMARS missiles to wreak havoc on Russian command and control, striking command posts, headquarters and supply depots, has been eye-opening, a defense official said, adding that military leaders would be studying this for years.
Another crucial piece of insight has been about the M777 howitzer, the powerful artillery that has been a critical part of Ukraine’s battlefield power. But the barrels of the howitzers lose their rifling if too many shells are fired in a short time frame, another defense official said, making the artillery less accurate and less effective.
The Ukrainians have also made tactical innovations that have impressed Western officials. During the early weeks of the war, Ukrainian commanders adapted their operations to employ small teams of dismounted infantry during the Russian advance on Kyiv. Armed with shoulder-mounted Stinger and Javelin rockets, Ukrainian troops were able to sneak up on Russian tanks without infantry on their flanks.
The US has also closely studied the conflict for larger lessons on how a war between two modern nations might be waged in the 21st century.
The operations officer said that one lesson the US may take from this conflict is that towed artillery – like the M777 howitzer system – may be a thing of the past. Those systems are harder to move quickly to avoid return fire – and in a world of ubiquitous drones and overhead surveillance, “it’s very hard to hide nowadays,” this person said.
When it comes to lessons learned, “there’s a book to be written about this,” said Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
US defense contractors have also taken note of the novel opportunity to study – and market – their systems.
BAE Systems has already announced that the Russian success with their kamikaze drones has influenced how it is designing a new armored fighting vehicle for the Army, adding more armor to protect soldiers from attacks from above.
And different parts of the US government and industry have sought to test novel systems and solutions in a fight for which Ukraine needed all the help it could get.
In the early days of the conflict, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency sent five lightweight, high-resolution surveillance drones to US Special Operations Command in Europe – just in case they might come in handy in Ukraine. The drones, made by a company called Hexagon, weren’t part of a so-called program of record at the Defense Department, hinting at the experimental nature of the conflict.
Navy Vice Adm. Robert Sharp, the head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at the time, even boasted publicly that the US had trained a “military partner” in Europe on the system.
“What this allows you to do is to go out underneath cloud cover and collect your own [geointelligence] data,” Sharp told CNN on the sidelines of a satellite conference in Denver last spring.
Despite intense effort by a small group of US officials and outside industry, it remains unclear whether these drones ever made it into the fight.
Meanwhile, multiple intelligence and military officials told CNN they hoped that creating what the US military terms “attritable” drones – cheap, single-use weapons – has become a top priority for defense contractors.
“I wish we could make a $10,000 one-way attack drone,” one of these officials said, wistfully.
After Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies responded with sanctions targeting companies, oligarchs and officials with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Headlines trumpeted the trophies of Russian oligarchs seized throughout Europe – yachts in Italy, villas in the south of France and priceless art in Germany – but those fixed assets are relatively easy to locate. Finding the billions of dollars oligarchs have stashed around the world is proving to be more difficult.
How do you hide that much money from an international community that says it’s determined to find it?The question led us to Cyprus – a tiny Mediterranean island at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Today, the once bustling vacation spot is in the middle of an international game of hide and seek.
A poet once described Cyprus as a “golden green leaf thrown into the sea.” The island, just 140 miles long, is wrapped in sandy beaches, and a rich history.
The Cyprus coastline
These turquoise waters, according to legend, were the birthplace of Aphrodite. But today, the “playground of the gods” has become a playland for wealthy Russians.
We headed down the southern coast of the island to Limassol. Before the war, it was a favorite spot for Russians to thaw. A three-hour flight from Moscow, Limassol’s mix of designer shops, fur stores, cyrillic signs and stores serving caviar earned it the nickname, “Moscow on the Med.”
But Alexandra Attalides, a member of the Cyprus Parliament, says after the fall of the Soviet Union, the oligarchs who descended on the island weren’t here for the beaches.
Alexandra Attalides: There are beautiful beaches in Spain, in Portugal, in Greece. There are a lot of beautiful beaches. I think that they found a fertile ground here that helped them.
Sharyn Alfonsi: How did the Russian oligarchs use Cyprus?
Alexandra Attalides: After 1989 when they stole the property of the Russian people and they started to build their empires. And then maybe they were afraid that someday something will happen, so they wanted their assets to be safe outside Russia. So they were looking for tax havens, and we had a very low tax rate at the time.
Sharyn Alfonsi: They got a place to hide their assets.
Alexandra Attalides: Yeah.
Maira Martini: Cyprus historically built a financial system to attract overseas wealth.
Maira Martini is an analyst for Transparency International, a nonprofit that tracks money laundering around the world. She says for decades, if you were an oligarch or just a shady character looking to hide your rubles, Cyprus, was hard to beat.
Maira Martini: It offers the secrecy and still security and that’s what criminals and corrupt individuals are usually looking for.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What do you mean it offers secrecy?
Maira Martini: So in Cyprus, for many years you could open a bank account without having a lot of questions asked. You can open a company without having a lot of questions asked, meaning you can put the money there without needing to tell who you are, where the money comes from.
Cyprus became as famous for it’s opaque banking as its clear water. Soon, like sun-starved tourists, foreign money started pouring into the island.
By 2012, the country of about a million residents had amassed bank deposits of nearly 72 billion euros. About 30% of those bank deposits came from Russian nationals.
But in 2013, the tide turned. The debt crisis in neighboring Greece, threatened to sink the Cyprus economy.
Lawmakers, fearing the country would lose all that Russian capital, pushed a scheme other countries had used to attract wealth – a “citizenship by investment” program.
Alexandra Attalides: From the beginning, for me, this was unacceptable.
Here’s how it worked. Any foreigner who invested more than 2 million euros in the country, typically buying real estate, could get a Cypriot passport, a coveted possession because Cyprus is part of the European Union.
Alexandra Attalides: So the people who are buying the passport of Cyprus, they were buying the European passport. They were buying an open door to 27 countries.
From 2013 to 2020, Cyprus issued almost 7,000 of those “golden passports” – nearly half to Russians.
Suddenly, the skyline of Limassol was injected with high-rise luxury apartments, its port with mega yachts and its stores with uber-wealthy Russians.
Alexandra Attalides: You could see them walking around like princesses, moving in the most expensive shops. They have their business, they have their houses, they have luxury houses.
But in 2020, an undercover investigation by Al Jazeera revealed corruption in the passport program.
Cyprus had illegally issued hundreds of “golden passports,” some tocriminals and fugitives.
After protests and under pressure from the EU, the Cyprus government shuttered the program weeks later. But the passports were still out there.
Alexandra Attalides: When you give passports to people that later we realize that they are criminals, then you open the door of Europe to criminals.
Alexandra Attalides
The golden passports also opened the door of Europe to Russian elites. 60 Minutes has learned that at least a dozen of these now-sanctioned Russian oligarchs – were issued – “golden passports.”
Among them: Igor Kesaev who owned a Russian arms factory.
Billionaire Alexander Ponomarenko, who was the chairman of the board of Russia’s biggest airport and who the U.S. government calls one of Putin’s “enablers.”
And aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska, part of Putin’s inner circle. According to the U.S. Treasury, he’s been investigated internationally for, among other things, money laundering, illegal wiretapping and extortion, accusations he denies.
Maira Martini told us a Cypriot passport could make it easier for those sanctioned oligarchs to buy property and move assets and that the cozy relationship between wealthy Russians and Cyprus is raising concern internationally.
Maira Martini: If you’re a small country that is very dependent on foreign money coming from one single country, this also even might create a conflict, right?
Sharyn Alfonsi: Really sanctions are only as strong as the weakest link. Is Cyprus the weakest link here?
Maira Martini: I think Cyprus is one of the weakest links.
Maira Martini
Cyprus Minister of Finance Constantinos Petrides disagrees. We first spoke to him in September. His office oversees efforts to freeze the Cyprus assets of anyone sanctioned by the EU.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Who has been sanctioned, specifically, individuals within Cyprus?
Constantinos Petrides: Regarding the citizenship, I think about ten people were found under restrictive measures. And the Council of Ministers has initiated a process to revoke their passports.
Sharyn Alfonsi: The ten people that have been sanctioned, who are they?
Constantinos Petrides: I don’t have any, any names now.
Sharyn Alfonsi: But would you be able to provide us with that list of names if we asked for it?
Constantinos Petrides: I’m not sure. I would have to, I would have to see.
We sent Minister Petrides a request for those names and the list of any assets of sanctioned Russians that Cyprus has seized or frozen.
In a series of e-mails over the last three months, Petrides’ office responded that due to European data protection rules, “no detailed list can be made public.” But other EU countries have publicized detailed lists of their actions.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So is the expectation that everyone should just trust the Cyprus government that they’re implementing the sanctions that they’re supposed to on Russians?
Constantinos Petrides: I’m not saying that everybody should trust the Cyprus government. The Cyprus government does not need somebody to trust it. We have the reports of the mutual assessment for Cyprus 2019 that shows all the progress made in the past years. I think that we have proved as Cyprus that we are a reliable member of the, of the EU. We do admit that in the past there have been mistakes. But Cyprus has also been unfairly stigmatized.
Constantinos Petrides
Petrides told us the passports of sanctioned oligarchs are in the “process” of being revoked and said Cyprus has seized 105 million euros of Russian deposits. A big number, but just a fraction of the estimated 5.6 billion euros of Russian deposits made in Cyprus last year. We also asked Minister Petrides about this, the dozens of Cyprus properties and active shell companies we were able to trace back to sanctioned Russians.
He told us any Cypriot company with an EU-sanctioned oligarch listed as the owner has been placed under “increased scrutiny.”
But often, Russian oligarchs don’t list their names anywhere near their assets.
Take the case of Roman Abramovich and his planes. According to U.S. investigators, they were hidden under five shell companies, stacked like Russian nesting dolls, with addresses in the BVI and British island of Jersey, all leading to an anonymous trust in Cyprus.
But it wasn’t Cyprus authorities who ultimately moved to seize the planes. It was prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Lisa Monaco: There’s always been dark corners of the international financial system. And kind of like water finding a crack, that’s where the criminal networks will go.
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco is in charge of the Department of Justice’s “Kleptocapture Unit,” tasked with finding the assets of sanctioned oligarchs hidden around the world.
Sharyn Alfonsi: It used to be, you know, the guy fleeing with suitcases of money. That’s not the case anymore.
Lisa Monaco: It is not.
Sharyn Alfonsi: It is crypto. It is planes. It is yachts. It is layered. And so how do you keep up with it?
Lisa Monaco: Even the most notorious actors, whether it’s the mafia, whether it’s rogue regimes, the best tool we have is following the money.
Lisa Monaco
The money has led DOJ investigators around the world and closer to home.
It turns out, like the tourists who visit Cyprus, dirty money doesn’t stay on the island forever. Typically, it’s “washed” and invested in other, western economies.
Investigators say that’s one way Oleg Deripaska has been able to skirt sanctions.
Lisa Monaco: What the task force exposed was the network of enablers, and money launderers, and facilitators who helped him hide his wealth in real estate here in Washington D.C. and in Manhattan.
Sharyn Alfonsi: In the United States?
Lisa Monaco: In the United States, in artwork, in vanity businesses, including a music studio in Beverly Hills.
In their case, the DOJ alleges that in 2020, Oleg Deripaska arranged for one of his children to be born in the United States, even though he was under U.S. sanctions.
Sharyn Alfonsi: He has a child that’s a U.S. citizen now?
Lisa Monaco: He was able to do that in one instance. And then in the second instance, that was not accomplished.
Because U.S. Customs stopped it. The government case details how, as the war in Ukraine intensified, Deripaska used a “Cyprus” company to arrange “travel on a private jet from Russia to Los Angeles” for his pregnant girlfriend, moving money to rent a home for her in Beverly Hills. But when she landed in Los Angeles this summer, she was stopped by customs officers.
Deripaska, his girlfriend and the U.S. resident who helped him are now charged with sanctions evasion. They are not in custody, but the DOJ has announced plans to seize his U.S. properties worth an estimated $70 million.
Since the start of the war, the U.S. has moved to seize more than a billion dollars of sanctioned assets around the world.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So what should happen to those assets?
Lisa Monaco: We are seeking the authority from Congress to allow us to use the proceeds for the benefit of the Ukrainian people.
Oleg Deripaska has publicly criticized the economic impact the war in Ukraine could have on Russia. But U.S. investigators maintain he is a “Putin cronie” who is “propping up Russia’s war machine.”
Back in Cyprus, 60 Minutes found a villa in this seaside complex, offices in this building and more than a dozen “active” shell companies linked to Oleg Deripaska. The Cyprus government will not say whether it has frozen any of those assets.
Produced by Oriana Zill de Granados. Associate producer, Emily Gordon. Broadcast associate, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Michael Mongulla.
Missed the second half of the show? The latest on how classified documents should be handled; Chris Whipple, the author of “The Fight of His Life,” about the first two years of President Biden’s White House; and Russian missiles hit Dnipro as Ukraine asks for advanced air defenses.
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A local man examines a damaged house after Russian attacks at Karabell Island in Kherson, Ukraine, on Dec. 12, 2022. The Ukrainian city of Kherson and the surrounding villages have been repeatedly bombarded daily by Russian troops from the left bank of the Dnipro river.
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
The death toll from Russia’s missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro has climbed to 18, officials said on Sunday, while Britain said overnight it will soon send a squadron of its main battle tanks to help Ukraine’s defence.
Seventy-three people were injured with 40 in hospital including four in intensive care, Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region in central eastern Ukraine, wrote at 7:25 a.m. local time (0525 GMT) on the Telegram messaging app.
Rescuers toiled through the night searching for survivors. Emergency workers said earlier they had heard people screaming for help from underneath piles of debris.
“The rescue operation is ongoing. The fate of more than 40 people remains unknown,” Reznichenko said, adding that the attack had destroyed 72 apartments and damaged more than 230.
Ukraine’s top military command said on Sunday that Russia launched three air strikes, 57 missile strikes and carried out 69 attacks from heavy weapon rocket salvo systems on Saturday. Ukrainian forces shot down 26 rockets.
There was no immediate comment from Moscow about the attacks, which represent Russia’s largest wave of strikes in two weeks and which came as Ukraine was observing the traditional Old New Year or the Orthodox New Year.
The Saturday strikes hit also critical infrastructure in Kyiv and other places. Officials warned this would restrict power supply for the capital and large swathes of the country over the next few days.
As ground fighting continued in Ukraine’s east, Britain followed France and Poland with promises of further weapons, saying it would sent 14 of its Challenger 2 main battle tanks as well as other advanced artillery support in the coming weeks.
The first dispatch of Western-made tanks to Ukraine is likely to be viewed by Moscow as escalation of the conflict. The Russian embassy in London said the tanks would drag out the confrontation.
Germany is now expected to come under pressure to follow suit as Kyiv continues to plea for advanced military equipment.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his advisers have “analyzed the military picture, looked at the strategic impact of the UK’s support and identified a window where he thinks the UK and its allies can have maximum impact,” a government spokesperson said in a statement.
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what Moscow calls “a special military operation”, but which Ukraine and its allies say is an unprovoked aggression that has since killed thousands, displaced millions and turned much of cities like Dnipro into rubble.
The vertically shot video published last November shows no weapons, battlefield atrocities or even soldiers. But the sound of a patriotic Russian song reverberating through a church on Kyiv’s famous Lavra monastery grounds seemed to open a new front in Ukraine’s war with Russia.
The church belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – which, despite the name, has traditionally been loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church, and whose current leader Patriarch Kiril has openly supported Moscow’s brutal invasion. Splitting with Kiril, the leadership of the UOC denounced Russia’s attack, and last May, declared its independence from Russia.
In a sermon days after the split, Patriarch Kiril said he was praying that “no temporary external obstacles will ever destroy the spiritual unity of our people.”
Days after the video surfaced, masked members of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) conducted a raid on the Lavra – officially, to prevent it being used for “hiding sabotage and reconnaissance groups” or “storing weapons.”
By December, a handful of church leaders had been sanctioned, and dozens more churches across the country were raided by the SBU – though the searches turned up little more than a few Russian passports, symbols and books.
“There was no mention in the findings of weapons or saboteurs. What they said they found was printed matter, documents, which are not prohibited under Ukrainian law,” UOC Bishop Metropolitan Klyment told CNN in an interview.
There is plenty of gray area, however. In a statement the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told CNN that it’s not illegal to store Russian propaganda, but it is to distribute it. “If such literature is in the library of the diocese or on the shelves of a church shop, it is obvious that it is intended for mass distribution,” the statement read.
It insisted that the raids on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church “are aimed exclusively at national security issues. This is not a matter of religion.” Vladimir Legoyda, a spokesperson for the Russian Orthodox Church, however, slammed the searches as an “act of intimidation.”
Professor Viktor Yelenskyi, Ukraine’s newly appointed religious freedom watchdog, said that for more than 30 years the UOC leadership has been “poisoning people with the ideas of the Russian world.” He defended the SBU’s raids, comparing them to the crackdown on Islamic extremism after 9/11. “Ukraine is still a safe haven for religious freedom.”
Yet, at the end of 2022, the government declined to renew the church’s lease on its massive, central Lavra cathedral and turned over the keys to the similarly named, but completely separate Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). The rival OCU celebrated Orthodox Christmas (on January 7) mass there for the first time this year.
Speaking outside the church on Christmas Day, Alla, who declined to give her last name, said, “I think it should’ve been done a long time ago.”
“We’ve been tolerating this [UOC] evil and closing our eyes as we thought we should be tolerant, but the war brought it all to surface.”
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church held this year’s Christmas mass at a smaller church down just steps from the cathedral. Kyrylo Serheyev, a student at the lavra seminary, said this year especially, he’s praying for Ukrainian troops. And despite government sanctions and scrutiny of his church, he insists “our patriotism is not becoming less.”
Viktoria Vinnyk said she was sad not to have mass in the central cathedral this year. Though she speaks Russian, she’s never been to Russia.
“I hope for better in my country. And I hope that the situation will change,” she said.
The cathedral isn’t the only holy site to change hands. Outside Kyiv, in the village of Vita Poshtova, a small church has sat perched on a hillside above the frozen lake since the Soviet era. It’s the only one in the village. In September the congregation voted to convert the church from UOC to the independent OCU. Parishioner Olha Mazurets says she was uncomfortable with any connection to Russia.
“It’s a matter of identity and self-preservation. We must identify our enemy too,” she told CNN.
Father Pavlo Mityaev, the newly appointed priest says before war, “people didn’t pay attention to whether it was a Ukrainian or Russian-speaking church, they were coming to God. But when the war started, everything changed.”
According to Klyment, up to 400 of the UOC’s 12,000 churches in Ukraine have converted to the OCU since the war began.
The security services says that since the full-scale invasion began, 19 church clergy have been charged and five have been convicted.
In December, UOC priest Andriy Pavlenko was sentenced to 12 years for passing information about Ukrainian battlefield positions in the Donbas to the Russians. A week later, he was sent to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange.
Klyment acknowledges that priest’s guilt but dismisses other cases – like the Vinnytsia priest indicted just this week for disseminating pro-Russian propaganda – as hollow accusations. He thinks the wider church is being unfairly tarnished.
“Members of the Ukrainian Orthodox … are citizens of Ukraine, and sometimes among the best citizens of Ukraine, proving their patriotism with their own lives,” he said referring to UOC members fighting on the front lines.
In his nightly address on December 1, President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated he was prepared to go beyond raids – proposing a law to ban churches with “centers of influence” in Russia from operating in Ukraine – all in the name of “spiritual independence.”
“We will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul,” he said.
But Klyment believes that law would merely push his church underground.
“What else do you call persecution if not this?” he asked.
As President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met privately in Tokyo last year, Biden delivered a message that was as strategic as it was genuine.
US support for a more assertive defense and security posture from Japan was understood, but Biden made clear that if there was anything he could offer to bolster – or provide cover for – that effort, it should be considered on the table.
Eight months later, the product of that one-on-one meeting was marked by another. This time the backdrop was the Oval Office.
“Let me be crystal clear,” Biden said as he sat beside Kishida surrounded by cameras. “The United States is fully, thoroughly, completely committed to the alliance.”
For Biden and his national security team, Kishida’s visit serves as equal parts culmination and continuation of a foundational effort pursued since the opening days of the administration. It’s one that extends beyond a single bilateral relationship at a moment when geopolitical tensions and risks have converged with an approach to reshape the security posture of allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
China has rapidly expanded its military capabilities, while also being increasingly clear about its territorial ambitions. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set off the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. Throughout, North Korea has rapidly accelerated missile tests and its own provocative actions.
For Biden, a geopolitical climate trending toward instability has created an opportunity to support allies in their efforts to build out their security and defense capabilities – one that national security adviser Jake Sullivan framed as a new version of a central concept of President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy.
“For Reagan, it was peace through American strength,” Sullivan said in an interview with CNN. “For Biden, it’s peace through American and allied strength.”
As the administration enters its third year, the groundwork laid has shown tangible, if sometimes uneven, advances with Germany, Australia and, most definitively, Japan.
In December, Kishida unveiled a new national security plan that signals the country’s biggest military buildup since World War II, doubling defense spending and veering from its pacifist constitution in the face of growing threats from regional rivals, including China.
The decision marked a dramatic shift for both the nation and the US security alliance in the Indo-Pacific region.
“We believed that we could get significant movement, but I don’t think that anybody thought it would be this far, this fast,” a senior administration official told CNN.
It also came at a moment when Kishida faces his own political challenges at home – challenges Biden was more than willing to try and help assuage.
Kishida’s visit served as a window into two years of carefully calibrated work by Biden’s team, senior administration officials said – one that created an environment for dramatic shifts to bolster US alliances at an increasingly fraught moment.
“We began laying the foundation for all of this long before Putin crossed the border of Ukraine,” Sullivan told CNN. “Above all, this has been a huge diplomatic priority.”
It was a directive handed down by Biden at the start of the administration, with Sullivan as its central architect. The administration sought to build on existing alliances, both bilaterally and regionally, as officials urged their counterparts to accelerate spending and updates to their own security and defense spending strategies.
They would ensure that it was understood that the US would be there to assist in any process undertaken, whether through boosts to defense capabilities, shifts in US force posture or Biden himself, with a clear statement of support, political cover or – in the case of Kishida – a coveted White House meeting.
The convergence of geopolitical events dovetailing with that strategy has reshaped security strategies in ways that in prior years may have unsettled allies concerned about increasing regional tensions, or unsettled adversaries willing to match action with escalation.
Yet the approach has managed to navigate a new willingness to test prior regional risk assessments. That hasn’t been lost on allies, Sullivan said.
“We’re giving them the confidence that as they go out on a limb, we are not going to saw off that limb,” Sullivan said.
In the days before Kishida’s visit, the US and Japan announced a significant strengthening of their military relationship and upgrade of the US military’s force posture in the region, including the stationing of a newly revamped Marine unit with advanced intelligence, surveillance capabilities and the ability to fire anti-ship missiles.
It is one of the most significant adjustments to US military force posture in the region in years, one official said, underscoring the Pentagon’s desire to shift from the wars of the past in the Middle East to the region of the future in the Indo-Pacific.
It also sent an unequivocal signal about the durability of US support for Japan’s strategic shift – one that administration officials made clear was a critical component of their regional strategy for years to come.
“When you think about it in terms of longer-term impact, this is a huge increase in net security capability in a place that (is) geographically important,” the official said.
For a president and an administration intensely focused on China, tending to – and building up – the long-standing critical alliance with Japan was a focal point from the start. Biden invited Kishida’s predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, for the first foreign leader visit of his presidency.
The decision was made to elevate the Quad – the informal alliance made up of the US, Japan, India and Australia – to the leader level. The US included Japan in consultations over the Indo-Pacific strategy. Administration officials have looked for places across economic and technological sectors to find new areas of cooperation, officials said.
But if China’s actions had started the steady shift in Japan’s overall posture, Russia’s actions accelerated it to a different level.
Japan, throughout the US effort to rally allies in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has served a steadfast partner. Kishida has been explicit about his views of Russia’s actions not just in the context of Europe, but also for the Indo-Pacific.
“I myself have a strong sense of urgency that Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” Kishida said in a keynote address in Singapore last June that offered broad outlines of the security strategy shift he was weighing.
By the time Kishida met Biden in November in Cambodia, he would lay out the specific details to the US president during another one-on-one meeting.
He also made clear he would take Biden up on his offer during their private meeting in Tokyo. The Biden administration would need to immediately put out a statement in support of the proposal.
Biden agreed, and the day Kishida publicly announced his plans, an official statement from Sullivan followed in short order, calling it a “bold and historic step.”
Kishida also requested an invitation to the White House shortly after the December 16 announcement.
On January 3, the White House publicly announced plans for Kishida’s visit.
Less than two weeks later, Biden was waiting outside the White House as Kishida pulled up in a black SUV.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a time when we’ve been closer to Japan in the United States,” Biden said shortly afterward, as the two sat together in the Oval Office.
Moscow targeted multiple Ukrainian cities for the first time in nearly two weeks in renewed missile attacks Saturday.
At least nine people were killed and 64 others wounded in the southeastern city of Dnipro, where a Russian missile strike destroyed a section of an apartment building, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office.
Infrastructure facilities were also hit in the western Lviv region and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, in the Odesa region on the Black Sea and in northeastern Kharkiv. Kyiv, the capital, was also targeted.
A car and a residential building that were destroyed by a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Jan. 14, 2023.
VITALII MATOKHA/AFP/Getty Images
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Saturday promised to provide tanks and artillery systems to Ukraine. Sunak made the pledge to provide Challenger 2 tanks and other artillery systems after speaking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday, the British leader’s Downing Street office said in a statement.
It didn’t say when the tanks would be delivered or how many. British media have reported that four British Army Challenger 2 main battle tanks will be sent to Eastern Europe immediately, with eight more to follow shortly after, without citing sources.
Zelenskyy tweeted his thanks to Sunak on Saturday “for the decisions that will not only strengthen us on the battlefield, but also send the right signal to other partners.”
Ukraine has for months sought to be supplied with heavier tanks, including the U.S. Abrams and the German Leopard 2 tanks, but Western leaders have been treading carefully.
The Czech Republic and Poland have provided Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Ukrainian forces. Poland has also expressed readiness to provide a company of Leopard tanks, but President Andrzej Duda stressed during his recent visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv that the move would be possible only as an element in a larger international coalition of tank aid to Kyiv.
Earlier this month, France said it would send AMX-10 RC armored combat vehicles to Ukraine, designated “light tanks” in French. The U.S. and Germany announced the same week that they would send Bradley fighting vehicles and Marder armored personnel carriers, respectively, for the first time.
Sunak’s announcement came as Russian forces fired missiles at Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine on Saturday in the first major barrage in days.
In Dnipro, rescuers were using a crane to try to evacuate people trapped in the apartment building’s upper stories, some of whom were signaling with the flashlights on their mobile phones, Tymoshenko said on Telegram. He also said there were likely people under the rubble.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said two Russian missiles hit an infrastructure object again on Saturday afternoon, following a similar attack in the morning, In the city of Kharkiv, the subway suspended operations amid the attacks, according to its Telegram channel.
Another infrastructure facility was hit in the western Lviv region, according to Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi.
Air defense systems were activated in other regions of Ukraine, as well, and as another round of air raid sirens sounded across the country in the afternoon, regional officials urged local residents to seek shelter.
Vitali Kim, governor of the southern Mykolaiv region, hinted in a Telegram post that some missiles have been intercepted over his province.
Military top commander Valeri Zaluzhny said that Russia fired 33 cruise missiles overall on Saturday, of which 21 were shot down.
Earlier in the day, explosions also rocked the capital, Kyiv. The blasts occurred before air sirens sounded, which is unusual. It’s likely the explosions came ahead of the warning sirens because the attack was by ballistic missiles, which are faster than cruise missiles or drones.
According to Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat, Russia attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles flying from the north.
“The ballistics are not easy for us to detect and shoot down,” he told local media. The warning about the missile threat was late because of the lack of radar data and information from other sources.
An infrastructure target was hit in the morning missile attack, according to Ukrainian officials.
Explosions were heard in the Dniprovskyi district, a residential area on the left bank of the Dnieper River, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Klitschko also said that fragments of a missile fell on a nonresidential area in the Holosiivskyi district on the right bank, and a fire briefly broke out in a building there. No casualties have been reported so far.
This was the first attack on the Ukrainian capital since Jan. 1.
On Saturday morning, two Russian missiles hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. The strikes with S-300 missiles targeted “energy and industrial objects of Kharkiv and the (outlying) region,” governor Syniehubov said. No casualties have been reported, but emergency power cuts in the city and other settlements of the region were possible, the official said.
In the city of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine where fighting is most intense, three people were killed in Russian artillery attacks on Saturday, mayor Vitalii Barabash said. One person died in a rocket attack in Kryvyi Rih, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Reznichenko said.
The attacks follow conflicting reports on the fate of the fiercely contested salt mining town of Soledar, in Ukraine’s embattled east. Russia claims that its forces have captured the town, a development that would mark a rare victory for the Kremlin after a series of humiliating setbacks on the battlefield.
Ukrainian deputy defense minister Hanna Malyar said Saturday that the “fiece battles for Soledar are continuing.”
Moscow has painted the battle for the town and the nearby city of Bakhmut as key to capturing the eastern region of the Donbas, which comprises of partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and as a way to grind down the best Ukrainian forces and prevent them from launching counterattacks elsewhere.
But that cuts both ways, as Ukraine says its fierce defense of the eastern strongholds has helped tie up Russian forces. Western officials and analysts say the two towns’ importance is more symbolic than strategic.
