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Tag: War and unrest

  • ‘Merchant of Death’ Viktor Bout now part of a deal himself

    ‘Merchant of Death’ Viktor Bout now part of a deal himself

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    MOSCOW — Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, swapped Thursday for WNBA star Brittney Griner, is widely known abroad as the “Merchant of Death” who fueled some of the world’s worst conflicts.

    In Russia, however, he’s seen as a swashbuckling businessman who was unjustly imprisoned after an overly aggressive U.S. sting operation.

    The 2005 Nicolas Cage movie “Lord of War” was loosely based on Bout, a former Soviet air force officer who gained fame supposedly by supplying weapons for civil wars in South America, the Middle East and Africa. His clients were said to include Liberia’s Charles Taylor, longtime Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and both sides in Angola’s civil war.

    On Thursday, the U.S. and Russia announced that Griner had been exchanged for Bout, and that he was headed home.

    Russia had pressed for Bout’s release for years and as speculation grew about such a deal, the upper house of parliament opened a display of paintings he made in prison – whose subjects ranged from Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to a kitten.

    The show of his art underlined Bout’s complexities. Though in a bloody business, the 55-year-old was a vegetarian and classical music fan who is said to speak six languages.

    Even the former federal judge who sentenced him in 2011 thought his 11 years behind bars was adequate punishment.

    “He’s done enough time for what he did in this case,” Shira A. Scheindlin told The Associated Press in July as prospects for his release appeared to rise.

    Griner, who was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February after vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her luggage, was sentenced in August to nine years in prison. Washington protested her sentence as disproportionate, and some observers suggested that trading an arms merchant for someone jailed for a small amount of drugs would be a poor deal.

    Bout was convicted in 2011 on terrorism charges. Prosecutors said he was ready to sell up to $20 million in weapons, including surface-to-air missiles to shoot down U.S. helicopters. When they made the claim at his 2012 sentencing, Bout shouted: “It’s a lie!”

    Bout has steadfastly proclaimed his innocence, describing himself as a legitimate businessman who didn’t sell weapons.

    Bout’s case fit well into Moscow’s narrative that Washington sought to trap and oppress innocent Russians on flimsy grounds.

    “From the resonant Bout case, a real ‘hunt’ by Americans for Russian citizens around the world has unfolded,” the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta wrote last year.

    Increasingly, Russia cited his case as a human rights issue. His wife and lawyer claimed his health deteriorated in the harsh prison environment where foreigners are not always eligible for breaks that Americans might receive.

    Bout had not been scheduled to be released until 2029. He was held in a medium-security facility in Marion, Illinois.

    “He got a hard deal,” said Scheindlin, the retired judge, noting the U.S. sting operatives “put words in his mouth” so he’d say he was aware Americans could die from weapons he sold in order to require a terrorism enhancement that would force a long prison sentence, if not a life term.

    Scheindlin gave Bout the mandatory minimum 25-year sentence but said she did so only because it was required.

    At the time, his defense lawyer claimed the U.S. targeted Bout vindictively because it was embarrassed that his companies helped deliver goods to American military contractors involved in the war in Iraq.

    The deliveries occurred despite United Nations sanctions imposed against Bout since 2001 because of his reputation as a notorious illegal arms dealer.

    Prosecutors had urged Scheindlin to impose a life sentence, saying that if Bout was right to call himself nothing more than a businessman, “he was a businessman of the most dangerous order.”

    Bout was estimated to be worth about $6 billion in March 2008 when he was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand. U.S. authorities tricked him into leaving Russia for what he thought was a meeting over a business deal to ship what prosecutors described as “a breathtaking arsenal of weapons — including hundreds of surface-to-air missiles, machine guns and sniper rifles — 10 million rounds of ammunition and five tons of plastic explosives.”

    He was taken into custody at a Bangkok luxury hotel after conversations with the Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation’s informants who posed as officials of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as the FARC. The group had been classified by Washington as a narco-terrorist group.

    He was brought to the U.S. in November 2010.

    The “Merchant of Death” moniker was attached to Bout by a high-ranking minister of Britain’s Foreign Office. The nickname was included in the U.S. government’s indictment of Bout.

    ———

    Associated Press writer Larry Neumeister in New York contributed.

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  • US Jews fear collision with expected Israeli government

    US Jews fear collision with expected Israeli government

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    JERUSALEM — Israel’s ties to the Jewish American community, one of its closest and most important allies, are about to be put to the test, with Israel’s emerging far-right government on a collision course with Jews in the United States.

    Major Jewish American organizations, traditionally a bedrock of support for Israel, have expressed alarm over the far-right character of the presumptive government led by conservative Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Given American Jews’ predominantly liberal political views and affinity for the Democratic Party, these misgivings could have a ripple effect in Washington and further widen what has become a partisan divide over support for Israel.

    “This is a very significant crossroads,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a liberal, pro-Israel group in Washington. “The potential for specific actions that could be taken by this government, these are the moments when the relationship between the bulk of American Jews and the state of Israel begins to really fray. So I’m very afraid.”

    Jewish-American leaders appear especially worried about the prominent role expected to be played by a trio of hard-line, religious lawmakers. The three have made racist anti-Arab statements, denigrated the LGBTQ community, attacked Israel’s legal system and demonized the liberal, non-Orthodox streams of Judaism popular in the U.S. All vehemently oppose Palestinian independence.

    “These are among the most extreme voices in Israeli politics,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish movement in the U.S. “What will be the trajectory of a new Israeli government with such voices in such key leadership roles is of deep, deep concern.”

    More centrist organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, which fights antisemitism and other forms of hatred, and the Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella group that supports hundreds of Jewish communities, have also spoken out.

    Though these groups, like J Street and the Reform movement, support a two-state solution with the Palestinians, their recent statements have focused on Israel’s democratic ideals. The Anti-Defamation League said that including the three far-right lawmakers in a government “runs counter to Israel’s founding principles.” The Federations called for “inclusive and pluralistic” policies.

    For decades, American Jews have played a key role in promoting close ties between the U.S. and Israel. They have raised millions of dollars for Israeli causes, spoken out in Israel’s defense and strengthened strong bipartisan support for Israel in Washington.

    But this longstanding relationship has come under strain in recent years — especially during Netanyahu’s 2009-2021 rule.

    Netanyahu’s hard-line policies toward the Palestinians, his public spats with Barack Obama over peacemaking and the Iranian nuclear issue and his close ties with Donald Trump put him at odds with many in the American Jewish community.

    Opinion polls show that roughly three-quarters of American Jews lean toward the Democratic Party. They tend to be more critical of the Israeli government and more sympathetic to the Palestinians than their Republican counterparts, with these divisions even wider among younger Jews in their 20s.

    These trends appear set to go into hyper-drive as Netanyahu prepares to return to power after a year and a half as opposition leader, this time flanked by some of the country’s most extremist politicians.

    After winning elections last month, Netanyahu and his allies are still forming their coalition. But he already has reached a number of deals that are setting off alarm bells overseas.

    Itamar Ben-Gvir, a lawmaker known for his anti-Arab vitriol and provocative stunts, has been offered the job of national security minister, a powerful position that will put him in charge of Israel’s national police force. This includes the paramilitary border police, a unit on the front lines of much of the fighting with Palestinians in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

    Ben-Gvir has labeled Arab lawmakers “terrorists” and called for deporting them. He wants to impose the death penalty on Palestinian attackers and grant soldiers immunity from prosecution.

    Netanyahu also has agreed to appoint the lawmaker Avi Maoz as a deputy minister overseeing a new authority in charge of “Jewish identity” and giving him responsibilities over Israel’s educational system.

    Maoz is known for his outspoken anti-LGBTQ positions and disparaging remarks about the Reform movement and other non-Orthodox Jews.

    He wants a ban on Pride parades, has compared gays to pedophiles and wants to allow some forms of conversion therapy, a discredited practice that tries to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQ children.

    Maoz hopes to change Israel’s “Law of Return,” which allows anyone with a single Jewish grandparent to immigrate to Israel, and replace it with a much stricter definition of who is a Jew. He also opposes non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism. This is an affront to liberal Jewish groups, which have less rigid views on Jewish identity.

    Bezalel Smotrich, a settler leader with a history of anti-gay and anti-Palestinian comments, has been granted widespread authority over settlement construction and Palestinian civilian life in the occupied West Bank.

    Netanyahu has been generous toward his allies because they support major legal reforms that could freeze or dismiss his corruption trial. Critics say such moves will imperil Israel’s democratic foundations.

    Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Netanyahu tried to play down such concerns as he vowed to safeguard democracy and LGBTQ rights. “I ultimately decide policy,” he said.

    Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said it is premature to judge a government that hasn’t yet taken office. But she acknowledged the concerns about issues like LGBTQ rights, Palestinian rights and respect for democracy – particularly with memories of the Trump administration still fresh.

    “Many of those concerns are based on our own experience with an administration that didn’t share our values,” said Soifer.

    Whether U.S. policy will be affected is unclear. The Biden administration has said it will wait to see policies, not personalities, of the new government.

    But Eric Alterman, author of “We Are Not One,” a new book about relations between Israel and American Jews, says the sides are moving in opposite directions.

    Progressive Democrats already have pushed for a tougher approach to Israel because of its treatment of the Palestinians.

    “It may come suddenly. It may come in pieces. But there’s simply a break coming between American Jews and Israeli Jews,” Alterman said.

    ———

    Associated Press writers Eleanor H. Reich in Jerusalem, Luis Henao in New York and Peter Smith in Pittsburgh contributed reporting.

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  • Report: 25 people detained in far-right raids across Germany

    Report: 25 people detained in far-right raids across Germany

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    BERLIN — German news agency dpa reports that 25 people have been detained as part of a series of raids against suspected far-right extremists across the country early Wednesday.

    Dpa cited federal prosecutors as saying officers conducted searches in 11 of Germany’s 16 states against members of the so-called Reich Citizens movement. Some members of the grouping reject Germany’s postwar constitution and have called for the overthrow of the government.

    Weekly Der Spiegel reported that locations searched include the barracks of Germany’s special forces unit KSK in the southwestern town of Calw. The unit has in the past been scrutinized over alleged far-right involvement by some soldiers.

    Federal prosecutors didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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  • Ukraine leader defiant as drone strikes hit Russia again

    Ukraine leader defiant as drone strikes hit Russia again

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Drones struck inside Russia’s border with Ukraine on Tuesday in the second day of attacks exposing the vulnerability of some of Moscow’s most important military sites, experts said.

    Ukrainian officials did not formally confirm carrying out drone strikes inside Russia, and they have maintained ambiguity over previous high-profile attacks.

    But Britain’s Defense Ministry said Russia was likely to consider the attacks on Russian bases more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) from the border with Ukraine as “some of the most strategically significant failures of force protection since its invasion of Ukraine.”

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian authorities will “take the necessary measures” to enhance protection of key facilities. Russian bloggers who generally maintain contacts with officials in their country’s military criticized the lack of defensive measures.

    A fire broke out at an airport in Russia’s southern Kursk region that borders Ukraine after a drone hit the facility, the region’s governor said Tuesday. In a second incident, an industrial plant 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the Ukrainian border was also targeted by drones, which missed a fuel depot at the site, Russian independent media reported.

    “They will have less aviation equipment after being damaged due to these mysterious explosions,” said Yurii Ihnat, spokesman for the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “This is undoubtedly excellent news because if one or two aircraft fail, then in the future, some more aircraft may fail in some way. This reduces their capabilities.”

    Moscow blamed Kyiv for unprecedented attacks on two air bases deep inside Russia a day earlier. The attacks on the Engels base in the Saratov region on the Volga River and the Dyagilevo base in the Ryazan region in western Russia were some of the most brazen inside Russia during the war.

    In the aftermath, Russian troops carried out another wave of missile strikes on Ukrainian territory that struck homes and buildings and killed civilians, compounding damage done to power and other infrastructure over weeks of missile attacks.

    Approximately half of households in the Kyiv region remain without electricity, the regional governor said Tuesday, while authorities in southern Odesa — which was hard hit Monday — say they have managed to restore power to hospitals and some vital services.

    In a new display of defiance, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled near the front line in the eastern Donetsk region. Marking Ukraine’s Armed Forces Day, he vowed to push Russian forces out of all of Ukraine’s territory.

    “Everyone sees your strength and your skill. … I’m grateful to your parents. They raised real heroes,” Zelenskyy said in a video address to Ukrainian forces from the city of Sloviansk, a key Ukrainian stronghold in the east.

    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking at a news conference in Washington, said the United States has “neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia.” But he said the U.S. is determined — along with many other countries that back Kyiv — to make sure that the Ukrainians have “the equipment that they need to defend themselves, to defend their territory, to defend their freedom.”

    Russia’s Defense Ministry’s charged that the attack was launched with Soviet-made drones. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which split Russia and Ukraine into separate countries, Ukraine inherited some Soviet-designed Tu-141 Strizh drones, which entered service in the 1970s and have a range of 1,000 kilometers (over 600 miles.)

    They were designed for reconnaissance duties, but can be fitted with a warhead that effectively turns them into a cruise missile. Unlike modern drones, the Strizh, or Swift, drones can stay in the air only for a limited amount of time and fly straight to a designated target. Their outdated technology makes the drones easily detectable by modern air defense systems — and easy to shoot down.

    A Russian pro-war blogger posting on the Telegram channel “Milinfolive” on Monday hit out at Russian military leadership, alleging that incompetence and lack of proper fortifications at the airbases made Ukrainian drone strikes possible.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry said three Russian servicemen were killed and four others wounded by debris, and that two aircraft were slightly damaged in the strikes Monday.

    After Ukrainian forces took control in November of the major Russian-occupied city of Kherson, neither side has made significant advances.

    But Ukrainian officials have indicated that the country plans to pursue counteroffensives during the winter when frozen ground is conducive to moving heavy equipment. Kherson city is still being hit by Russian rocket attacks but if Ukrainian forces establish firm control there it could be a bridgehead for advancing toward Crimea.

    Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov said the latest strikes by Ukraine “have raised questions about security of Russian military air bases.”

    The Engels base hosts Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers that have been involved in strikes on Ukraine. Dyagilevo houses tanker aircraft used for mid-air refueling.

    In a daily intelligence update on the war in Ukraine, Britain’s Defense Ministry said the bombers would likely be dispersed to other airfields.

    Speaking in a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Peskov said that “the Ukrainian regime’s course for continuation of such terror attacks poses a threat.”

    Peskov reaffirmed that Russia sees no prospects for peace talks now, adding that “the Russian Federation must achieve its stated goals.”

    Ukrainian rocket attacks killed six people in the separatist-held city of Donetsk, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of where Zelenskyy spoke, said Denis Pushilin, head of the Russia-backed Donetsk People’s Republic. He said one of those killed was a 29-year-old member of the DPR parliament.

    Russia, meanwhile, maintained intense attacks on Ukrainian territory, shelling towns overnight near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that left more than 9,000 homes without running water, local Ukrainian officials said.

    The towns lie across the Dnieper River from the nuclear plant, which was seized by Russian forces in the early stages of the war. Russia and Ukraine have for months accused each other of shelling at and around the plant.

    The head of Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, which borders Russia, said that Moscow launched over 80 missile and heavy artillery attacks on its territory. Governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky said the strikes damaged a monastery near the border town of Shalyhyne.

    Ihnat, the Ukrainian air force spokesman, said the country’s ability to shoot down incoming missiles is improving, noting there had been no recent reports of Iranian-made attack drones being used on Ukrainian territory.

    ———

    Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • China blasts US report, reiterates ‘no 1st use’ nuke policy

    China blasts US report, reiterates ‘no 1st use’ nuke policy

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    BEIJING — China strictly adheres to its policy of no first use of nuclear weapons “at any time and under any circumstances,” its Defense Ministry said Tuesday in a scathing response to a U.S. report alleging a major buildup in Beijing’s nuclear capabilities.

    The Pentagon last week released an annual China security report that warned Beijing would likely have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035, and that it has provided no clarity on how it plans to use them.

    That report “distorts China’s national defense policy and military strategy, makes groundless speculation about China’s military development and grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs on the issue of Taiwan,” ministry spokesperson Tan Kefei said in a statement.

    Tan accused the U.S. of being the “biggest troublemaker and destroyer of world peace and stability,” and repeated that Beijing has never renounced the use of force to conquer self-governing Taiwan, a U.S. ally that China considers part of its territory.

    Tan did not directly address the report’s allegations about a Chinese nuclear buildup, but blamed the U.S. for raising nuclear tensions, particularly with its plan to help Australia build a fleet of submarines powered by U.S. nuclear technology, which the French president has described as a “confrontation with China.”

    Australia has said it will not seek to arm the submarines with nuclear weapons. Tan also accused the U.S. of having the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, although that title is actually held by Russia, a close Chinese military, economic and diplomatic partner.

    As of 2022, Russia possesses a total of 5,977 nuclear warheads compared to 5,428 in the U.S. inventory, according to the Federation of American Scientists. China currently has 350 nuclear warheads, according to the federation.

    China has long adhered to what it calls a purely defensive national security strategy, including a claim that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. That stance has frequently been challenged at home and abroad, particularly if it comes to a confrontation over Taiwan.

    “What needs to be emphasized is that China firmly pursues the nuclear strategy of self-defense and defense, always adheres to the policy of no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances, and maintains its nuclear force at the minimum level required for national security,” Tan said in the statement, which was posted on the ministry’s website.

    His remarks came days after U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the U.S. is at a pivotal point with China and will need military strength to ensure that American values, not Beijing’s, set global norms in the 21st century.

    Austin’s speech Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum capped a week in which the Pentagon was squarely focused on China’s rise and what that might mean for America’s position in the world.

    China “is the only country with both the will and, increasingly, the power to reshape its region and the international order to suit its authoritarian preferences,” Austin said. “So let me be clear: We will not let that happen.”

    Austin was on hand Friday for a dramatic nighttime rollout of the U.S. military’s newest nuclear stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, which is being designed to beat the quickly growing cyber, space and nuclear capabilities of Beijing.

    The bomber is part of a major China-centric nuclear overhaul underway that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will cost $1.2 trillion through 2046.

    Already-tense relations between Washington and Beijing soured even more in August when U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. China responded by firing missiles over the island and holding wargames in what was seen as a rehearsal for a possible blockade of the island.

    While the U.S. and Taiwan have no formal diplomatic relations in deference to Beijing, the U.S. maintains informal relations and defense ties with Taiwan, along with a policy of “strategic ambiguity” over whether the U.S. would respond militarily if the island were attacked.

    Despite some moves to improve relations, China has shown an increasingly hard line on military affairs. Following a rare meeting last month between Austin and his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, the Chinese side issued a statement saying, “The responsibility for the current situation facing China-U.S. relations is on the U.S. side, not on the Chinese side.”

    In his remarks on Taiwan, Tan warned that, “The Chinese military has the confidence and capability to thwart any external interference and separatist plots for ‘Taiwan independence’ and realize the complete reunification of the motherland.”

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  • EXPLAINER: US power grid has long faced terror threat

    EXPLAINER: US power grid has long faced terror threat

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    WASHINGTON — Investigators believe a shooting that damaged power substations in North Carolina was a crime. What they haven’t named yet is a suspect or a motive.

    Whatever the reason, the shooting serves as a reminder of why experts have stressed the need to secure the U.S. power grid. Authorities have warned that the nation’s electricity infrastructure could be vulnerable targets for domestic terrorists.

    Tens of thousands of people lost their electricity over the weekend after one or more people opened fire on two Duke Energy substations in Moore County, which is roughly 60 miles southwest of Raleigh. Nobody has been charged in the shooting as of Monday.

    Here’s a look at what is known about the shooting and why it could have implications across the U.S.

    WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE SHOOTING?

    The outages in North Carolina began shortly after 7 p.m. on Saturday when one or more people opened fire on two power substations in Moore County, the county’s sheriff said. The outages left tens of thousands of people without electricity, and the equipment could take days to repair, according to Duke Energy.

    Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said at a Sunday news conference that authorities have not determined a motive. He said someone pulled up and “opened fire on the substation, the same thing with the other one.” The sheriff said that it appeared gates were breached at both sites. The Pilot newspaper in Southern Pines, North Carolina reported that a wooden post holding up a gate had been snapped at one of the substations and that it was lying in an access road Sunday morning.

    The sheriff noted that the FBI was working with state investigators to determine who was responsible. He also said “it was targeted.”

    “It wasn’t random,” Fields said.

    Duke Energy spokesman Jeff Brooks said that the company has multiple layers of security at each of its facilities but declined to provide specifics. He said that the company has planning in place to recover from events like the shooting and that they are following those plans.

    Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Ruth Clemens said the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has offered support to Duke Energy as it efforts the restoration of power.

    TARGETS FOR EXTREMIST GROUPS

    Federal authorities have warned that the power grid could be a prime target for extremist groups that embrace “accelerationism,” a fringe philosophy that promotes mass violence to fuel society’s collapse.

    In January, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report warned that domestic extremists have been developing “credible, specific plans” to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020. The DHS report warns that extremists “adhering to a range of ideologies will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks against electrical infrastructure.”

    The department wrote that attackers would be unlikely to produce widespread, multistate outages without inside help. But its report cautioned that an attack could still do damage and cause injuries.

    Members of white supremacist and antigovernment groups have been linked to plots to attack the power grid. In February, three men pleaded guilty to conspiring to attack U.S. energy facilities. Authorities said they were driven by white supremacist ideologies to “sow mayhem and division among Americans.”

    OTHER ATTACKS

    Fears of an attack on the nation’s electricity infrastructure are nothing new. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered grid operators to increase security following a still-unsolved April 2013 sniper attack on a California electric substation.

    The attack on the Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s Metcalf Transmission Substation in an isolated area near San Jose, California, caused power outages and led to calls for millions of people to conserve energy.

    The attack involved snipping fiber-optic phone lines and firing shots into the PG&E substation. The FBI said at the time that it found no evidence that it was an act of terrorism.

    Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, who chaired the Senate Energy Committee in 2014, said at the time that it was fortunate the attack didn’t cause a blackout in Silicon Valley, “the horrors of which could only be imagined.”

    In the wake of that attack, FERC and other agencies recommended utilities to take specific measures to protect vulnerable substations, like adding walls, sensors or cameras. Still, many remain exposed in rural areas of the U.S. And experts have warned for years that taking out a few substations could cause rolling blackouts in the U.S., leaving millions without power.

    A Utah man was arrested in 2016 and later sentenced to federal prison time after he used a rifle to shoot the cooling fins of a substation, rupturing the radiator piping and causing the substation to overheat and fail. Court documents said the man had planned to attack other substations as part of an effort to take down power in a large chunk of the western United States.

    WHAT’S THE CHALLENGE IN PROTECTING THE GRID?

    The vastness of American electricity infrastructure makes it difficult to defend. Power plants and substations like those targeted in North Carolina are dispersed in every corner of the country and connected by transmission lines that transport electricity through farmland, forests and swamps.

    “The grid is massive,” said Erroll Southers, a former FBI official and professor of homeland security at the University of Southern California.

    The targets also present an increasing challenge to secure because attackers don’t always have to get as close as they did in North Carolina in order to do damage, Southers said. With the right rifle, skill and line of sight a sniper could take a shot from as far as 1,500 meters (about 4,900 feet) away.

    Protecting substations against a long range rifle shot is “extremely challenging, if not impossible,” he said.

    Southers said all of these challenges mean that protecting the electricity infrastructure can come down to response and backup systems more than defense. “Those are the kinds of things that you put in place to protect, knowing that you may not be able to stop the rifle shot.”

    ———

    Kunzelman reported from Silver Spring, Maryland.

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  • US intel chief thinking ‘optimistically’ for Ukraine forces

    US intel chief thinking ‘optimistically’ for Ukraine forces

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    KYIV, Ukraine — The head of U.S. intelligence says fighting in Russia’s war in Ukraine is running at a “reduced tempo” and suggests Ukrainian forces could have brighter prospects in coming months.

    Avril Haines alluded to past allegations by some that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advisers could be shielding him from bad news — for Russia — about war developments, and said he “is becoming more informed of the challenges that the military faces in Russia.”

    “But it’s still not clear to us that he has a full picture of at this stage of just how challenged they are,” the U.S. director of national intelligence said late Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California.

    Looking ahead, Haines said, “honestly we’re seeing a kind of a reduced tempo already of the conflict” and her team expects that both sides will look to refit, resupply, and reconstitute for a possible Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring.

    “But we actually have a fair amount of skepticism as to whether or not the Russians will be in fact prepared to do that,” she said. “And I think more optimistically for the Ukrainians in that timeframe.”

    In recent weeks, Russia’s military focus has been on striking Ukrainian infrastructure and pressing an offensive in the east, near the town of Bakhmut, while shelling sites in the city of Kherson, which Ukrainian forces liberated last month after an 8-month Russian occupation.

    In his nightly address on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lashed out at Western efforts to crimp Russia’s crucial oil industry, a key source of funds for Putin’s war machine, saying their $60-per-barrel price cap on imports of Russian oil was insufficient.

    “It is not a serious decision to set such a limit for Russian prices, which is quite comfortable for the budget of the terrorist state,” Zelenskyy said, referring to Russia. He said the $60-per-barrel level would still allow Russia to bring in $100 billion in revenues per year.

    “This money will go not only to the war and not only to further sponsorship by Russia of other terrorist regimes and organisations. This money will be used for further destabilisation of those countries that are now trying to avoid serious decisions,” Zelenskyy said.

    Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, the United States and the 27-nation European Union agreed Friday to cap what they would pay for Russian oil at $60 per barrel. The limit is set to take effect Monday, along with an EU embargo on Russian oil shipped by sea.

    Russian authorities have rejected the price cap and threatened Saturday to stop supplying the nations that endorsed it.

    In yet another show of Western support for Ukraine’s efforts to battle back Russian forces and cope with fallout from the war, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland on Saturday visited the operations of a Ukrainian aid group that provides support for internally displaced people in Ukraine, among her other visits with top Ukrainian officials.

    Nuland assembled dolls out of yarn in the blue-and-yellow colors of Ukraine’s flag with youngsters from regions including northeastern Kharkiv, southern Kherson, and eastern Donetsk.

    “This is psychological support for them at an absolutely crucial time,” Nuland said.

    “As President Putin knows best, this war could stop today, if he chose to stop it and withdrew his forces — and then negotiations can begin,” she added.

    ———

    Merchant reported from Washington, D.C.

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  • Survivors of Brussels suicide attacks seek closure at trial

    Survivors of Brussels suicide attacks seek closure at trial

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    BRUSSELS — Jaana Mettala was six months pregnant and on her way to work when the bomb exploded in the heart of Brussels’ European Union quarter. She suffered severe burns, but Mettala and her baby survived — 32 other people did not.

    It’s now more than six years since the deadliest peacetime attacks on Belgian soil. And Mettala yearns for closure as the trial of 10 men accused over the suicide bombings at Brussels airport and an underground metro station starts in earnest Monday.

    “I hope that the trial ends with a fair result and we can put this behind us,” Mettala said. “Even if there are after-effects that we will keep forever.”

    She is going to testify at the trial — which will be the biggest in Belgium’s judicial history with hundreds of plaintiffs. It is expected to last between six and nine months.

    The 10 defendants face charges including murder, attempted murder and membership, or participation in the acts of a terrorist group, over the morning rush hour attacks at Belgium’s main airport and on the central commuter line on March, 22, 2016.

    If convicted, some of them could face up to 30 years in prison.

    Among the accused is Salah Abdeslam — the only survivor among the Islamic State extremists who in 2015 struck the Bataclan theater in Paris, city cafes and France’s national stadium. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole over the atrocities in the French capital.

    He will be joined in the dock by his childhood friend, Mohamed Abrini, who walked away from Brussels’ Zaventem airport after his explosives failed to detonate.

    Abrini has been sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 22 years for charges including complicity to terrorist murder in the Paris attacks trial.

    Oussama Atar, who has been identified as a possible organizer of the deadly attacks on both Paris and Brussels, will be tried in absentia. He is believed to have died in the Islamic State’s final months of fighting in Iraq and Syria.

    Mettala hopes that facing most of the accused will help her leave behind the anguish.

    “It’s a step on the path toward another kind of serenity,” she said. “It will be very, very hard. But I’m not someone trying to avoid difficulty. Because you need confrontation to get stronger.”

    In addition to the 32 people who died in Brussels, some 900 were hurt or suffered mental trauma.

    Frederic — who asked to be identified only by his first name — was in the metro when the bomb went off. He said he was only slightly injured in the leg. But what he saw that day in the carriage where the device exploded keeps haunting him.

    “I’ll skip the macabre details,” he said. “These are the details that remain and that are hard to get rid of. This trial will be for me the possibility to heal, to go through the grief process.”

    When the bomb went off at the Maelbeek station at 9:11 a.m., Mettala was on the platform. She was badly hurt but did not lose consciousness. She sustained serious burn injuries to her face, legs and hands and was taken to the emergency room of a Brussels hospital where she was prepared for urgent surgery.

    She only woke up a couple of days later. Mettala was then transferred to a intensive care unit in another hospital in the nearby town of Louvain.

    “That’s when I realized that I could have died,” she recalled. “I did not think about it when (the attack) happened. I only thought about the baby in my belly. I did not think about my injuries, I was only focused on reaching the hospital to find out whether the baby was doing fine.”

    She and her newborn daughter were released from the hospital four months later.

    “She is 6 1/2 years old now. She is healthy.” Mettala said. “She knows I was injured when she was in my belly. And I always told her it’s she who gave me the strength.”

    The trial at NATO’s former headquarters was initially expected to start in October but was pushed back to allow sufficient time to replace individual glass boxes where the defendants were expected to sit. After defense lawyers argued that they could not consult with their clients and that the boxes make them look like animals in a cage, they have been replaced by one large cubicle shared by the defendants.

    The new set-up has been welcomed by lawyers with Life4Brussels, a group supporting victims.

    “The defendants were talking to each other (during the jury selection), it’s not a bad thing since it is extremely important for the victims that they are in good condition to explain, to address the court, and answer questions,” said Maryse Alié, a lawyer working with the group.

    Because of the delay, the trial now coincides with the beginning of the festive season.

    “When you have young children, there is a paradox between the ordeal of this trial and the end of year celebrations” Mettala said. “It’s a bit unfortunate that this is happening right now, in the pre-holiday season.”

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  • Today in History: December 4, the “Million Dollar Quartet”

    Today in History: December 4, the “Million Dollar Quartet”

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    Today in History

    Today is Sunday, Dec. 4, the 338th day of 2022. There are 27 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlights in History:

    On Dec. 4, 1956, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins gathered for the first and only time for a jam session at Sun Records in Memphis.

    On this date:

    In 1783, Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his Continental Army officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York.

    In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson left Washington on a trip to France to attend the Versailles (vehr-SY’) Peace Conference.

    In 1942, during World War II, U.S. bombers struck the Italian mainland for the first time with a raid on Naples. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the dismantling of the Works Progress Administration, which had been created to provide jobs during the Depression.

    In 1965, the United States launched Gemini 7 with Air Force Lt. Col. Frank Borman and Navy Cmdr. James A. Lovell aboard on a two-week mission. (While Gemini 7 was in orbit, its sister ship, Gemini 6A, was launched on Dec. 15 on a one-day mission; the two spacecraft were able to rendezvous within a foot of each other.)

    In 1978, San Francisco got its first female mayor as City Supervisor Dianne Feinstein (FYN’-styn) was named to replace the assassinated George Moscone (mahs-KOH’-nee).

    In 1980, the bodies of four American churchwomen slain in El Salvador two days earlier were unearthed. (Five Salvadoran national guardsmen were later convicted of murdering nuns Ita Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel, and lay worker Jean Donovan.)

    In 1986, both houses of Congress moved to establish special committees to conduct their own investigations of the Iran-Contra affair.

    In 1992, President George H.W. Bush ordered American troops to lead a mercy mission to Somalia, threatening military action against warlords and gangs who were blocking food for starving millions.

    In 1995, the first NATO troops landed in the Balkans to begin setting up a peace mission that brought American soldiers into the middle of the Bosnian conflict.

    In 2000, in a pair of legal setbacks for Al Gore, a Florida state judge refused to overturn George W. Bush’s certified victory in Florida and the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a ruling that had allowed manual recounts.

    In 2016, a North Carolina man armed with a rifle fired several shots inside Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C., pizzeria, as he attempted to investigate an online conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats were harboring child sex slaves at the restaurant; no one was hurt, and the man surrendered to police. (He was later sentenced to four years in prison.)

    In 2018, long lines of people wound through the Capitol Rotunda to view the casket of former President George H.W. Bush; former Sen. Bob Dole steadied himself out of his wheelchair to salute his old friend and one-time rival.

    Ten years ago: Two Australian radio disc jockeys impersonating Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles made a prank call to a London hospital and succeeded in getting a nurse to tell them the condition of the Duchess of Cambridge, who was being treated for acute morning sickness; another nurse who had put the call through would be found dead three days later in an apparent suicide.

    Five years ago: Declaring that “public lands will once again be for public use,” President Donald Trump scaled back two sprawling national monuments in Utah; it was the first time in a half century that a president had undone that type of land protection. The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to fully enforce a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries. Trump formally endorsed Republican Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race, looking past sexual misconduct allegations against the GOP candidate.

    One year ago: James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of a Michigan teen charged with killing four students at a high school earlier in the week, were arrested in a Detroit commercial building where police said they’d been hiding; a judge later imposed a combined $1 million bond for the couple, who pleaded not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the shooting rampage. CNN fired anchor Chris Cuomo less than a week after new information emerged about how he assisted his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, as the politician faced sexual harassment allegations earlier in the year. Country musician Stonewall Jackson, who sang on the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years and had No. 1 hits with “Waterloo” and others, died after a long battle with vascular dementia; he was 89.

    Today’s Birthdays: Game show host Wink Martindale is 89. Pop singer Freddy Cannon is 86. Actor-producer Max Baer Jr. is 85. Actor Gemma Jones is 80. Rock musician Bob Mosley (Moby Grape) is 80. Singer-musician Chris Hillman is 78. Musician Terry Woods (The Pogues) is 75. Rock singer Southside Johnny Lyon is 74. Actor Jeff Bridges is 73. Rock musician Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd; the Rossington Collins Band) is 71. Actor Patricia Wettig is 71. Actor Tony Todd is 68. Jazz singer Cassandra Wilson is 67. Country musician Brian Prout (Diamond Rio) is 67. Rock musician Bob Griffin (formerly with The BoDeans) is 63. Rock singer Vinnie Dombroski (Sponge) is 60. Actor Marisa Tomei is 58. Actor Chelsea Noble is 58. Actor-comedian Fred Armisen is 56. Rapper Jay-Z is 53. Actor Kevin Sussman is 52. Actor-model Tyra Banks is 49. Country singer Lila McCann is 41. Actor Lindsay Felton is 38. Actor Orlando Brown is 35. MLB pitcher Joe Musgrove is 30. Actor Scarlett Estevez (TV: “Lucifer”) is 15.

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  • Israeli aircraft hit Gaza after rocket fire

    Israeli aircraft hit Gaza after rocket fire

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    GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli aircraft struck several military sites in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, hours after Palestinian militants fired a missile into southern Israel in a move apparently linked to rising tension in the occupied West Bank, Israel said.

    The Israeli military said the airstrikes targeted a weapons manufacturing facility and an underground tunnel belonging to Hamas, the militant group that has controlled Gaza since 2007. The military said more projectiles were fired over the border while warplanes were hitting the Gaza sites.

    No Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the Saturday evening rocket, which landed in an open area near the Gaza-Israel fence. The border has been quiet since August’s three-day blitz between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a powerful Gaza group that is smaller than the dominant Hamas.

    Hamas and other factions have largely honored the unofficial understandings that have kept the situation in the impoverished territory calm in exchange for thousands of Israeli work permits. Israel and Egypt maintain a blockade on Gaza to prevent Hamas from stocking up weapons.

    “The strike overnight continues the progress to impede the force build-up” of Hamas, the Israeli army said.

    Critics of the blockade say it is a form of collective punishment that harms Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

    While Gaza remained quiet, tension has been boiling for months in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority exerts limited self-rule in parts of the territory.

    Israel carried out near daily raids that it says targets wanted Palestinians involved in planning or taking part in attacks, prompted by a spate of Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the spring that killed 19 people.

    The military says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks, but the Palestinians say they entrench Israel’s open-ended occupation, now in its 56th year. A recent wave of Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets killed an additional nine people.

    More than 140 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting this year. The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting Israeli army incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.

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  • Ukraine urges tougher Western squeeze on Russian oil prices

    Ukraine urges tougher Western squeeze on Russian oil prices

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    KYIV, Ukraine — The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Saturday for a lower price cap on Russian oil than the one agreed to by Ukraine’s Western supporters, while Russian authorities called the $60-per-barrel cap harmful to free, stable markets.

    Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, wrote on social media that the price ceiling set by the European Union, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and the United States on Friday didn’t go far enough. The cap is set to take effect Monday, along with an EU embargo on Russian oil shipped by sea.

    “It would be necessary to lower it to $30 in order to destroy the enemy’s economy faster,” Yermak wrote on Telegram, staking out a position also favored by Poland — a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

    The Russian Embassy in Washington insisted that Russian oil “will continue to be in demand” and criticized the price limit as “reshaping the basic principles of the functioning of free markets.” A post on the embassy’s Telegram channel predicted the per-barrel cap would lead to “a widespread increase in uncertainty and higher costs for consumers of raw materials.”

    The price cap aims to put an economic squeeze on Russia and further crimp its ability to finance a war that has killed an untold number of civilians and fighters, driven millions of Ukrainians from their homes and weighed on the world economy for more than nine months.

    The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that since Friday Russia’s forces had fired five missiles, carried out 27 airstrikes and launched 44 shelling attacks against Ukraine’s military positions and civilian infrastructure.

    Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president’s office, said the attacks killed one civilian and wounded four others in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. According to the U.K. Defense Ministry, Russian forces “continue to invest a large element of their overall military effort and firepower” around the small Donestsk city of Bakhmut, which they have spent weeks trying to capture.

    In southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, whose capital city of the same name was liberated by Ukrainian forces three weeks ago following a Russian retreat, Gov. Yaroslav Yanushkevich said evacuations of civilians stuck in Russian-held territory across the Dnieper River would resume temporarily.

    Russian forces pulled back to the river’s eastern bank last month. Yanushkevich said a ban on crossing the waterway would be lifted during daylight hours for three days for Ukrainian citizens who “did not have time to leave the temporarily occupied territory.” His announcement cited a “possible intensification of hostilities in this area.”

    Kherson is one of four regions that Putin illegally annexed in September and vowed to defend as Russian territory. From their new positions, Russian troops have regularly shelled Kherson city and nearby infrastructure in recent days, leaving many residents without power. Running water remained unavailable in much of the city.

    The other regions annexed in violation of international law are Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.

    Ukrainian authorities also reported intense fighting in Luhansk and Russian shelling of northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which Russia’s soldiers mostly withdrew from in September.

    The mayor of the northeastern city of Kharkiv, said some 500 apartment buildings were damaged beyond repair, and nearly 220 schools and kindergartens were damaged or destroyed. He estimated the cost of the damage at $9 billion.

    ———

    Inna Varenytsia in Kherson, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

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  • Ukraine urges tougher Western squeeze on Russian oil prices

    Ukraine urges tougher Western squeeze on Russian oil prices

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    KYIV, Ukraine — The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Saturday for a lower price cap on Russian oil than the one agreed to by Ukraine’s Western supporters, while Russian authorities called the $60-per-barrel cap harmful to free, stable markets.

    Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, wrote on social media that the price ceiling set by the European Union, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and the United States on Friday didn’t go far enough. The cap is set to take effect Monday, along with an EU embargo on Russian oil shipped by sea.

    “It would be necessary to lower it to $30 in order to destroy the enemy’s economy faster,” Yermak wrote on Telegram, staking out a position also favored by Poland — a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

    The Russian Embassy in Washington insisted that Russian oil “will continue to be in demand” and criticized the price limit as “reshaping the basic principles of the functioning of free markets.” A post on the embassy’s Telegram channel predicted the per-barrel cap would lead to “a widespread increase in uncertainty and higher costs for consumers of raw materials.”

    The price cap aims to put an economic squeeze on Russia and further crimp its ability to finance a war that has killed an untold number of civilians and fighters, driven millions of Ukrainians from their homes and weighed on the world economy for more than nine months.

    The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that since Friday Russia’s forces had fired five missiles, carried out 27 airstrikes and launched 44 shelling attacks against Ukraine’s military positions and civilian infrastructure.

    Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president’s office, said the attacks killed one civilian and wounded four others in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. According to the U.K. Defense Ministry, Russian forces “continue to invest a large element of their overall military effort and firepower” around the small Donestsk city of Bakhmut, which they have spent weeks trying to capture.

    In southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, whose capital city of the same name was liberated by Ukrainian forces three weeks ago following a Russian retreat, Gov. Yaroslav Yanushkevich said evacuations of civilians stuck in Russian-held territory across the Dnieper River would resume temporarily.

    Russian forces pulled back to the river’s eastern bank last month. Yanushkevich said a ban on crossing the waterway would be lifted during daylight hours for three days for Ukrainian citizens who “did not have time to leave the temporarily occupied territory.” His announcement cited a “possible intensification of hostilities in this area.”

    Kherson is one of four regions that Putin illegally annexed in September and vowed to defend as Russian territory. From their new positions, Russian troops have regularly shelled Kherson city and nearby infrastructure in recent days, leaving many residents without power. Running water remained unavailable in much of the city.

    The other regions annexed in violation of international law are Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.

    Ukrainian authorities also reported intense fighting in Luhansk and Russian shelling of northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which Russia’s soldiers mostly withdrew from in September.

    The mayor of the northeastern city of Kharkiv, said some 500 apartment buildings were damaged beyond repair, and nearly 220 schools and kindergartens were damaged or destroyed. He estimated the cost of the damage at $9 billion.

    ———

    Inna Varenytsia in Kherson, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

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  • EXPLAINER: Can Ukraine pay for war without wrecking economy?

    EXPLAINER: Can Ukraine pay for war without wrecking economy?

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    FRANKFURT, Germany — Even as Ukraine celebrates recent battlefield victories, its government faces a looming challenge on the financial front: how to pay the enormous cost of the war effort without triggering out-of-control price spikes for ordinary people or piling up debt that could hamper postwar reconstruction.

    The struggle is finding loans or donations to cover a massive budget deficit for next year — and do it without using central bank bailouts that risk wrecking Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia.

    Economists working with the government say that if Ukraine can shore up its finances through the end of next year, it is Russia that could find itself in financial trouble if a proposed oil price cap by the U.S., European Union and allies saps Moscow’s earnings.

    Here are key facts about Ukraine’s economic battle against Russia:

    HOW HAS UKRAINE BEEN PAYING FOR ITS DEFENSE SO FAR?

    In the first days of Russia’s invasion, the Ukrainian government turned to foreign help that came at irregular intervals. When it didn’t have enough, the central bank bought government bonds using newly printed money. The alternative would have been to stop paying people’s pensions and state salaries.

    Economists say printing money — while a badly needed stop-gap measure at the time — risks letting inflation get out of control and collapsing the value of the country’s currency if it continues.

    Ukraine has painful memories of hyperinflation from the early 1990s, economist Nataliia Shapoval said. As a child, she watched her parents use large bundles of bills for everyday purchases as the currency lost value day by day, before being replaced by today’s hryvnia.

    “Ukraine has been through this, so we know what inflation that is out of control looks like, and we don’t want this again,” said Shapoval, vice president for policy research at the Kyiv School of Economics. “The government and the central bank are already on the slippery slope by printing so much.”

    Price stability and the ability to pay pensions have enormous impact on ordinary people and society at a time when Russia is trying to demoralize the population by knocking out power and water heading into winter.

    With inflation already high at 27%, price hikes have made it hard for lower-income people to afford food.

    Bread that used to cost the equivalent of 50 U.S. cents has doubled, said Halyna Morozova, a resident of Kherson, a recently liberated southern city.

    “It is very depressing, and we are nervous. We were living on old stocks (of food), but now the light is turned off, the refrigerator doesn’t work and we have to throw away the food,” the 80-year-old said recently.

    She said the Russians kept paying her Ukrainian pension in rubles but since they started to withdraw in October, she has received nothing. She’s counting on the government to return any pension money that was lost, she said.

    Tetiana Vainshtein, also in Kherson, says natural gas is too expensive to keep her home heated. “I am cold. I like warmth, and I’m terribly cold,” the 68-year-old said.

    Bank closures during the Russian occupation kept her from getting her pension cash, forcing her to carefully ration every hryvnia for food, she said.

    HOW MUCH SUPPORT DOES UKRAINE NEED?

    President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine needs $38 billion in outright aid from Western allies like the U.S and 27-nation EU, plus $17 billion for a reconstruction fund for war damage.

    Economists associated with the Kyiv School of Economics say a lower overall total of $50 billion from donors would be enough to get Ukraine through the year.

    Defense spending is six times higher in the 2023 budget recently passed by the Ukrainian parliament compared to last year. Military and security spending will total 43% of the budget, or an enormous 18.2% of annual economic output.

    The 2.6 trillion hryvnia budget has a yawning 1.3 trillion hryvnia deficit, meaning the government needs to find $3 billion to $5 billion a month to cover the gap. Recent attacks on energy infrastructure since the budget passed will only increase the financing need because repairs can’t wait for postwar reconstruction and will hit this year’s budget.

    HOW COULD FINANCES AFFECT THE OUTCOME OF THE WAR?

    Despite Western sanctions, Russia’s economy has fared better than Ukraine’s because high oil and natural gas prices have bolstered the Kremlin’s budget.

    Plans by the EU and allies in the Group of Seven democracies to place a price cap on Russian oil sales aim to change that.

    The Kyiv school economists say “by the middle of next year, we believe that the economic situation will shift strongly in Ukraine’s favor, making strong partner support particularly important over the period until that point.”

    HOW MUCH FINANCING DOES UKRAINE HAVE ALREADY?

    The U.S. has been the leading donor, giving $15.2 billion in financial assistance and $52 billion in overall aid, including humanitarian and military assistance, through Oct. 3, according to the latest available data compiled by the Ukraine Support Tracker at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

    EU institutions and member countries have committed $29.2 billion, though “many of their pledges are arriving in Ukraine with long delays,” said Christoph Trebesch, who heads the tracker team.

    The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has proposed 18 billion euros in no-interest, long-term loans for next year, which still need approval from member governments. The U.S. will likely contribute more as well.

    Ukraine, however, is appealing for grants over loans. If all the financing comes as loans, debt would rise to over 100% of annual economic output from around 83% now and 69% before the war. That burden could hold back spending on the war recovery.

    The $85 billion in total global assistance to Ukraine, according to the Ukraine Support Tracker, is less than 15% of the support European governments have pledged to shield consumers from high energy costs resulting from Russia’s natural gas cutbacks.

    To get loans, the commission proposed requiring Ukraine to improve its record on corruption. Since 2014, Ukraine has raised its score on Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index from 26 to 32 out of 100 — not great, but improving.

    U.S. officials have praised Ukraine’s online procurement platform for introducing transparency in government contracts — one big source of corrupt dealings and collusion — and saving $6 billion.

    The prospect of EU membership also gives Ukraine incentive to clean up corruption.

    COULD THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND HELP?

    The IMF has given Ukraine $1.4 billion in emergency aid and $1.3 billion to cushion the shock from lost food exports.

    IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told The Associated Press that the Washington-based fund is working on more assistance in cooperation with the Group of 7 wealthy democracies, chaired this year by Germany.

    “We are on the way to come up with a sound and sizable program for Ukraine,” she said, “with the support specifically of the G-7 and the German leadership.”

    However, for a larger loan program of $15 billion to $20 billion, it goes against IMF practices to lend money where the debts are not sustainable, and the war raises questions about that. The organization has been reluctant to lend to countries that don’t control their territory, a condition Ukraine does not yet meet.

    The IMF “would have to seriously twist its existing framework or change it to provide substantial sums,” said Adnan Mazarei, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former deputy director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department.

    As a prelude to a possible assistance package, the IMF is holding a four-month period of consultation and enhanced monitoring of Ukrainian economic policies to help Kyiv establish a track record of good practice. That could build confidence for other donors to step in.

    ———

    Associated Press writer Sam Mednick contributed from Kherson, Ukraine.

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  • Official says over 10,000 Ukrainian troops killed in war

    Official says over 10,000 Ukrainian troops killed in war

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    KYIV, Ukraine — A top adviser to Ukraine’s president has cited military chiefs as saying 10,000 to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the country’s nine-month struggle against Russia’s invasion, a rare comment on such figures and far below estimates of Ukrainian casualties from Western leaders.

    Russian forces kept up rocket attacks on infrastructure and airstrikes against Ukrainian troop positions along the contact line, the Ukrainian general staff said Friday, adding that Moscow’s military push has focused on a dozen towns including Bakhmut and Avdiivka — key targets for Russia in the embattled east.

    At least three civilians were killed and 16 wounded in Ukraine in the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian president’s office reported on Friday. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the office’s deputy head, said on Telegram that Russian forces had attacked nine regions in the southeast of Ukraine using heavy artillery, rockets and aircraft.

    Late Thursday, Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, relayed new figures about Ukrainian soldiers killed in battle, while noting that the number of injured troops was higher and civilian casualty counts were “significant.”

    “We have official figures from the general staff, we have official figures from the top command, and they amount to between 10,000 and 12,500-13,000 killed,” Podolyak told Channel 24.

    The Ukrainian military has not confirmed such figures and it was a rare instance of a Ukrainian official providing such a count. The last dates back to late August, when the head of the armed forces said that nearly 9,000 military personnel had been killed. In June, Podolyak said that up to 200 soldiers were dying each day, in some of the most intense fighting and bloodshed this year.

    On Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive Commission, said 100,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed before her office corrected her comments — calling them inaccurate and saying that the figure referred to both killed and injured.

    Last month, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that as many as 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and “well over” 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war so far. He added that it was the “same thing probably on the Ukrainian side.”

    The U.N. human rights office, in its latest weekly update published Monday, said it had recorded 6,655 civilians killed and 10,368 injured, but has acknowledged that its tally includes only casualties that it has confirmed and likely far understates the actual toll.

    Ukrainians have been bracing for freezing winter temperatures as Russia’s campaign has recently hit infrastructure including power plants and electrical transformers, leaving many without heat, water and electricity.

    Ukraine has faced a blistering onslaught of Russian artillery fire and drone attacks since early October. The shelling has been especially intense in southern Kherson since Russian forces withdrew and Ukraine’s army reclaimed the southern city almost three weeks ago.

    Kherson’s regional governor said Friday that three people were killed and seven injured in shelling on Thursday. The Russian army hit residential areas of the city of Kherson, part of which remained without electricity after power was knocked out by Russian strikes Thursday.

    In the eastern Donetsk region, Ukrainian governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Russian shelling has intensified significantly. The Russian army is seeking to encircle the key town of Bakhmut by capturing several surrounding villages and cutting off an important road.

    Russian strikes targeting towns located across the Dnieper river from the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant also were reported. And in northeastern Kharkiv province, officials said that Russian shelling injured two women.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Security meeting overshadowed by Russia’s war, ban on Lavrov

    Security meeting overshadowed by Russia’s war, ban on Lavrov

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    LODZ, Poland — Europe’s largest security organization, one founded to maintain peace and stability on the continent, opened a meeting Thursday with strong denunciations of Russia’s war against Ukraine, a conflict that is among the greatest challenges the body has faced in its nearly half-century of existence.

    The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has been a rare international forum — along with the United Nations — where Russia and Western powers have been able meet to discuss security matters, and the meeting in Lodz, Poland, is the first high-level meeting of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

    But since the war began, the OSCE has been another forum for the bitter clash to play out between Russia and the West, even as the OSCE’s own powers to help resolve conflict have waned.

    Notably absent was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who wanted to join the meeting but was banned by Poland, the current chair of the OSCE, from entering the country. Poland is a member of the 27-member European Union, which has put Lavrov on a sanctions list.

    Lavrov himself denounced the ban on Thursday.

    “I can say responsibly that Poland’s anti-chairmanship of the OSCE will take the most miserable place ever in this organization’s history,” Lavrov said. “Nobody has ever caused such damage to the OSCE while being at its helm.”

    “Our Polish neighbors have been digging a grave for the organization by destroying the last remains of the consensus culture,” he said in a video call with reporters.

    The Polish chairman in office, Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau, said he had a responsibility to defend the OSCE’s “fundamental principles,” and argued that it was not Poland but Russia which has hollowed out the organization by blocking much of its work. He accused Russia of spreading disinformation against Poland.

    “I would say it’s outrageous to hear Russia accusing the chairmanship of pushing the OSCE into the abyss, destroying its foundations and breaking its procedural rules,” Rau said.

    The OSCE’s effectiveness has been harmed by the war in Ukraine. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the OSCE acted as a mediator in Ukraine, negotiating the peace deals for eastern Ukraine following a Russian-backed separatist war that began there in 2014.

    The Vienna-headquartered OSCE, founded in 1975, also is engaged in conflict prevention efforts in other places, including Moldova, the Western Balkans, the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

    Also missing from the meeting in Lodz was Belarus Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, who died suddenly last weekend at the age of 64 and was buried earlier this week. Belarusian authorities didn’t give the cause of Makei’s death, and he wasn’t known to suffer from any chronic illness, triggering speculation about possible foul play.

    Officials at the conference lamented the loss of the security order in Europe which had prevailed since the end of World War II.

    “For the first time since the end of World War II, we are dealing with such a glaring, armed act against the principles that we all voluntarily agreed to in order to prevent the outbreak of another war in Europe,” Polish President Andrzej Duda told the gathered representatives.

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  • 4 appear in court over terror attack at Ivory Coast beach

    4 appear in court over terror attack at Ivory Coast beach

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    ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Four of the defendants arrested in connection with a 2016 Islamic extremist attack that killed 19 people on an Ivory Coast tourist beach appeared in court Wednesday to face murder and terrorism charges.

    Authorities last week had released the names of 18 defendants accused in the Grand-Bassam killings, which were later claimed by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

    It was the nation’s first terror attack of its kind, and deepened fears that Islamic extremism was spreading further south from neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso. In the year after the killings, suspects also were arrested in those countries as well as in Senegal.

    Prosecutors did not address where the other defendants were on Wednesday or whether they might appear at a later date.

    Prosper Kouassi, a defense lawyer representing the detainees, could not provide an explanation either.

    “We were presented the four people, it is the four people we will defend,” Kouassi said.

    Grand-Bassam is linked by highway to Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial hub, and was a popular weekend destination for beach-goers. The victims that day included 11 Ivorians, four French, one German, one Lebanese, one Macedonian and one Nigerian.

    When gunfire broke out on the beach on that Sunday afternoon in 2016, many holidaymakers initially thought they were hearing fireworks. As the jihadis approached closer with their Kalashnikov assault rifles, terrified tourists and workers at the beachside bars and restaurants tried to seek refuge in nearby hotels. Some beachgoers who were in the ocean at the time of the attack were able to swim out against the waves to safety.

    Among those in the courthouse to watch the proceedings Wednesday was Odile Koko Kouamenan, whose son was there that day in 2016 and has never been the same since, she said.

    “The scene happened in front of him,” she recalled, “He was a witness on the ground and so traumatized that he left the city and went to the village for a year.”

    Her son needs follow-up care, which he hasn’t gotten, she added.

    “If the state can face him and help him, that’s all a mother wishes for her child.”

    ———

    Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed.

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  • Hong Kong official warns lockdown protests hurt security

    Hong Kong official warns lockdown protests hurt security

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    HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s security minister on Wednesday warned that the city’s protests against China‘s anti-virus restrictions were a “rudiment of another color revolution” and urged residents not to participate in activities that might hurt national security.

    Chris Tang said some events on university campuses and the city’s streets had attempted to incite others to target China’s central government in the name of commemorating a deadly fire in the country’s far west last week.

    “This is not a coincidence but highly organized,” he told reporters at the legislature.

    Protests erupted in major mainland cities over the weekend after the blaze that killed at least 10 in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, prompted angry questions about whether firefighters or victims trying to escape were blocked by COVID restrictions.

    Crowds angered by severe restrictions called for leader Xi Jinping to step down in the biggest show of public dissent in decades.

    Smaller protests also emerged at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong, and Central over the past two days. The participants included mainland Chinese students and residents as well as locals. They held up white papers and chanted slogans such as “No PCR tests but freedom!” and “Oppose dictatorship, don’t be slaves!”

    The gatherings were the biggest in the city in more than a year under rules imposed by Beijing to crush a pro-democracy movement in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, which has a separate legal system from the mainland.

    Tang alleged that some active members of the widespread rallies in 2019 also took part in the latest Hong Kong events, noting some people planned the recent protests via social media platforms including some “anti-China” sites.

    “I have previously mentioned that we face national security risks. Some people are unwilling to give up and always want to endanger our national security and Hong Kong’s security. This is exactly the situation I am talking about,” he said.

    He said the city has to guard against these risks if residents do not want to return to what happened in 2019.

    The 2019 protests were sparked by a since-withdraw extradition bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China. Critics worried the suspects would disappear into China’s opaque and frequently abusive legal system. Opposition morphed into months of violent unrest in the city as the protesters’ demands widened to include universal suffrage and other democratic aspirations.

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  • UN envoy: Military escalation in Syria is `dangerous’

    UN envoy: Military escalation in Syria is `dangerous’

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    UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. special envoy for Syria warned Tuesday that the current military escalation in Syria is dangerous for civilians and regional stability, and he urged Turkey and Kurdish-led forces in the north to de-escalate immediately and restore the relative calm that has prevailed for the last three years.

    Geir Pedersen told the Security Council that the U.N.’s call for maximum restraint and de-escalation also applies to other areas in Syria. He pointed to the upsurge in truce violations in the last rebel-held stronghold in northwest Idlib, airstrikes attributed to Israel in Damascus, Homs, Hama and Latakia, as well as reported airstrikes on the Syria-Iraq border and security incidents and fresh military clashes in the south.

    In northwest Idlib, he said, government airstrikes have killed and injured civilians who fled fighting during the nearly 12-year war and now live in camps. He said the attacks destroyed their tents and displaced hundreds of families.

    The al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, the most powerful militant group in Idlib, reportedly attacked government forces and government-controlled areas with civilian casualties, he added.

    But Pedersen said his major concern now is the slow increase in mutual strikes between the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main U.S.-backed Kurdish-led force in Syria, and Turkey and armed opposition groups across northern Syria, with violence spilling into Turkish territory.

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to order a land invasion of northern Syria targeting Kurdish groups following a Nov. 3, explosion in Istanbul that killed six people and wounded dozens, and the government has launched a barrage of airstrikes on suspected militant targets in northern Syria and Iraq in retaliation.

    The Kurdish groups have denied involvement in the bombing and say Turkish strikes have killed civilians and threatened the fight against the Islamic State group. But Pedersen cited reports of Syrian Democratic Forces attacks on Turkish forces including inside Turkish territory.

    The U.N. envoy said he came to New York to warn the Security Council of “the dangers of military escalation” taking place and of his fear of what a major military operation would mean for Syrian civilian and for wider regional security.

    “And I equally fear a scenario where the situation escalates in part because there is today no serious effort to resolve the conflict politically,” Pedersen said.

    He expressed concern that the committee comprising government, opposition and civil society representatives that is supposed to revise Syria’s constitution has not met for six months and reiterated his call for a meeting in Geneva in January.

    Russia had raised issues over Geneva as the venue, which Pedersen said were “comprehensively addressed” by Swiss authorities, but Moscow has now raised another issue — which he refused to disclose.

    “It is now the question of political will from Russia to move on or not to move on,” the U.N. envoy told reporters later. “And as I said to the council, the longer it takes before we meet again, the more problematic it will be. So, I really hope I will get some positive news on this.”

    Pedersen said there is a way forward in the weeks ahead: stop the military escalation, renew cross-border aid deliveries to northwest Idlib which expire in January, resume constitutional committee meetings, prioritize work on Syrians detained and missing, and identify and implement step-for-step confidence-building measures.

    Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia hinted at Moscow’s concerns, saying decisions on further inter-Syrian dialogue in the constitutional committee “should be made by the Syrians themselves without external interference.”

    To that end, he said, Russia welcomes Pedersen’s contacts with Damascus and the opposition, but not his “step-by-step initiative,” saying this is not part of the special envoy’s mandate.

    Nebenzia called the overall situation in Syria tense, with terrorist threats persisting, and the north, northeast and south “exposed to illegal foreign military presence while the humanitarian and socioeconomic situation keeps deteriorating.” He blamed U.S. and European sanctions for making the situation worse.

    U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told the council in a video briefing that the gap between the needs of Syrians and available funding keeps growing.

    “The trend is clear: more people need our support each year to survive,” he said. “We expect to see a surge in the number of people needing humanitarian assistance from 14.6 million this year to over 15 million in 2023.”

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  • US-Iran match mirrored a regional rivalry for many Arab fans

    US-Iran match mirrored a regional rivalry for many Arab fans

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    BAGHDAD — The U.S. team’s victory over Iran at the World Cup on Tuesday was closely watched across the Middle East, where the two nations have been engaged in a cold war for over four decades and where many blame one or both for the region’s woes.

    Critics of Iran say it has fomented war and unrest across the Arab world by supporting powerful armed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories. Supporters view it as the leader of an “axis of resistance” against what they see as U.S. imperialism, corrupt Arab rulers and Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.

    The divide is especially intense in Lebanon and Iraq, where heavily armed Iran-backed political factions vie for political influence with opponents more oriented toward the West. In those countries, many believe Iran or the U.S. are due for comeuppance — even if only on the pitch.

    Others wished a plague on both their houses.

    “Both are adversaries of Iraq and played a negative role in the country,” Haydar Shakar said in downtown Baghdad, where a cafe displayed the flags of both countries hanging outside. “It’s a sports tournament, and they’re both taking part in it. That’s all it is to us.”

    A meme widely circulated ahead of Tuesday’s match between the U.S. and Iran jokingly referred to it as “the first time they will play outside of Lebanon.” Another Twitter user joked that whoever wins the group stage “takes Iraq.”

    The Iran-backed Hezbollah was the only armed group to keep its weapons after Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war. It says its arms are needed to defend the country from Israel and blames Lebanon’s economic crisis in part on U.S. sanctions. Opponents decry Hezbollah as an “Iranian occupation,” while many Lebanese accuse both the U.S. and Iran of meddling in their internal affairs.

    In Iraq, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion led to years of intense violence and sectarian strife, and Iran-backed political factions and militias largely filled the vacuum. While U.S. forces and Iran-backed militias found themselves on the same side against the Islamic State extremist group, they have traded fire on several occasions since its defeat.

    Both Lebanon and Iraq have had to contend with years of political gridlock, with the main dividing line running between Iran’s allies and opponents.

    In Yemen, the Iran-aligned Houthi militia captured the capital and much of the country’s north in 2014. The Houthis have been at war since then with an array of factions supported by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two U.S. allies.

    In Syria’s civil war, Iran supported President Bashar Assad’s government against rebels, some supported by the West. In the Palestinian territories, it backs Hamas and Islamic Jihad, militant factions that do not recognize Israel and have carried out scores of attacks over the years.

    Interviews with soccer fans in Beirut and Baghdad revealed mixed emotions about the match.

    In Beirut’s southern suburbs, a center of Hezbollah support, young men draped in Iranian flags gathered in a cafe hung with a “Death to America” flag to watch the match.

    “We are against America in football, politics and everything else,” Ali Nehme said. “God is with Lebanon and Iran.”

    Across the city on the seafront promenade, Beirut resident Aline Noueyhed said, “Of course I’m not with Iran after all the disasters they made. Definitely, I’m with America.” She added, however, that the U.S. also was “not 100% helping us.”

    The post-game reaction in the streets of Beirut after the U.S. defeated Iran 1-0, eliminating it from the tournament and advancing to the knockout round, was far more subdued than after the previous day’s win by Brazil — a fan favorite in Lebanon — over Switzerland.

    In Baghdad, Ali Fadel was cheering for Iran, because “it’s a neighboring country, an Asian country.”

    “There are many linkages between us and them,” he added.

    Nour Sabah was rooting for the U.S. because “they are a strong team, and (the U.S.) controls the world.”

    In Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north, fans also gave mixed reactions.

    Twenty-seven-year-old Zainab Fakhri was rooting for the U.S. to beat Iran “to punish the Iranian regime that has been oppressing the women’s revolution,” referring to recent protests there.

    At the same cafe, Aras Harb, 23, was backing Iran. “We prefer them because my family were able to flee there during the war, and the Iranian people are kind.”

    Saad Mohammad, 20, had been hoping for a tie, fearing that a win could worsen an already alarming security situation. If locals celebrate the win, he said, “I fear Iran will launch rockets at us.”

    Although the Iran supporters were visibly upset at their loss, the crowd filed out after the game without incident.

    Regional politics hovered over the last matchup, at the 1998 World Cup, when Iran famously defeated the U.S. 2-1, eliminating it from the tournament. That came less than two decades after Iran’s Islamic Revolution toppled the U.S.-backed shah and protesters overran the U.S. Embassy, leading to a prolonged hostage crisis.

    French riot police were on site at the stadium in Lyon that year, but they weren’t needed. The teams posed together in a group photo, and Iran’s players even brought white roses for their opponents.

    In this year’s matchup, allegiances have been scrambled by the nationwide protests gripping Iran, with some Iranians openly rooting against their own team. The players declined to sing along to their national anthem ahead of their opening match, in what was seen as an expression of sympathy for the protests, but reversed course and sang ahead of their next one.

    In some neighborhoods of Tehran, people chanted “Death to the dictator!” after the match, even though it was past midnight local time.

    Danyel Reiche, a visiting associate professor at Georgetown University Qatar who has researched the politics of sports, said World Cup fandom is not necessarily an indicator of political affiliation, even in countries with deep divisions.

    Local sports in Lebanon are “highly politicized,” with all the major basketball and soccer clubs having political and sectarian affiliations, he said. But when it comes to the World Cup — where Lebanon has never qualified to play — fans latch on to any number of teams.

    That’s true across the region, where fans sporting Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo jerseys can be found from Gaza to Afghanistan.

    “This is one of the few spheres where people have the liberty and freedom to choose a country that they simply like and not the country where they think there’s an obligation for them to be affiliated with it,” Reiche said.

    ———

    Sewell reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Fadi Tawil and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Irbil, Iraq and Joseph Krauss in Ottawa, Ontario contributed to this report.

    ———

    AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

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  • Russian diplomat says prisoner swap with US remains possible

    Russian diplomat says prisoner swap with US remains possible

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    MOSCOW — Russia and the United States have repeatedly been on the verge of agreement on a prisoner exchange, a senior Russian diplomat said Tuesday, adding that a deal is still possible before the year’s end.

    The Biden administration has been trying for months to negotiate the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner and another American jailed in Russia, Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, including through a possible prisoner swap with Moscow.

    Asked by reporters whether a swap is possible before the year’s end, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov responded that “there always is a chance.”

    “Regrettably, there have been a few occasions when it seemed that a decision in favor of it was about to be made, but it never happened,” he said without elaborating.

    “If that happened, if would undoubtedly send a positive signal that not everything is so utterly hopeless in Russian-U.S. relations,” Ryabkov added. “Such a signal would be appropriate, if we could work it out.”

    He reiterated Moscow’s call for the U.S. to discuss the issue discreetly and refrain from making public statements. He lamented that “Washington has been abusing ‘loudspeaker diplomacy’ instead of a quiet one, which didn’t help us to do business.”

    Earlier this month, Briner began serving a nine-year sentence for drug possession at a Russian penal colony in Mordovia, about 350 kilometers (210 miles) east of Moscow, after a Russian court had rejected her appeal of her August’s conviction.

    The all-star center with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and two-time Olympic gold medal winner was detained in February when customs agents said they found vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.

    At her trial, Griner admitted to having the canisters in her luggage but testified she packed them inadvertently in her haste to make her flight and had no criminal intent. Her defense team presented written statements saying she had been prescribed cannabis to treat chronic pain.

    Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence in Russia after being convicted on espionage charges that he denied.

    The Associated Press and other news organizations have reported that Washington has offered to exchange Griner and Whelan for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who is serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S. and once earned the nickname the “merchant of death.”

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