Zelensky meets Biden after US unveils Ukraine military aid surge

Zelensky meets Biden after US unveils Ukraine military aid surge
zelenUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Joe Biden at the White House Thursday to present his wartime “victory plan,” after the US president announced an $8 billion surge in military aid for Kyiv’s fight against Russia. (AFP/File)
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Updated 26 September 2024
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Zelensky meets Biden after US unveils Ukraine military aid surge

Zelensky meets Biden after US unveils Ukraine military aid surge
  • Zelensky’s visit was clouded by a blazing row with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump
  • “Russia will not prevail. Ukraine will prevail, and we’ll continue to stand by you every step of the way,” Biden said

WASHINGTON: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Joe Biden at the White House Thursday to present his wartime “victory plan,” after the US president announced an $8 billion surge in military aid for Kyiv’s fight against Russia.
But Zelensky’s visit was clouded by a blazing row with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that underscored how November’s US election could upend the support that Kyiv receives from its biggest backer.
“Russia will not prevail. Ukraine will prevail, and we’ll continue to stand by you every step of the way,” Biden said as he hosted Zelensky in the Oval Office, after thanking him for presenting the so-called victory plan.
Dressed in his trademark military-style outfit, Zelensky replied that “we deeply appreciate that Ukraine and America have stood side by side.”
Zelensky is looking to shore up support for his war effort at the same time as Biden tries to lock in aid for Ukraine, ahead of the white-knuckle vote pitting Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris against firebrand Trump.
The Democrat pledged nearly $8 billion in military aid in his announcement on Thursday, including $5.5 billion to be authorized before it expires at the end of the US fiscal year on Monday.
Biden said in a statement that the “surge in security assistance for Ukraine” would “help Ukraine win this war.”
Biden also announced Washington would provide Ukraine with the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) long-range munition and called a summit of allies in Germany in October.
The White House however played down Ukraine’s hopes that Zelensky’s visit would achieve his long-held goal of getting permission to fire long-range Western-made missiles into Russian territory.
“I’m not expecting there to be any new announcements on this particular action or a decision coming out of this meeting,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
Harris was due to meet Zelensky separately at the White House on Thursday.
Zelensky also visited the US Congress — where his government said he had also presented his victory plan — and gave a defiant address at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.
But Zelensky’s visit has prompted fresh nuclear saber rattling from Moscow, which has repeatedly warned the West against giving Ukraine long-range arms.
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced plans to broaden Moscow’s rules on the use of its atomic weaponry in the event of a “massive” air attack.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the nuclear threat “totally irresponsible” while EU foreign policy spokesman Peter Stano said Putin was making a “gamble with his nuclear arsenal.”
Kyiv faces an increasingly difficult battlefield situation two and a half years into Russia’s invasion, with Russian forces continuing to push into eastern Ukraine.
But the US presidential election means Washington’s support now hangs on the balance — and with Zelensky apparently at odds with Trump and the Republicans.
Trump had also been due to meet Zelensky during his US visit, but their talks now appear to be on ice.
Trump accused Zelensky on the eve of the visit of refusing to strike a deal with Moscow and once again questioned why the United States was giving billions of dollars to Kyiv.
At an election rally on Wednesday, the Republican called the Ukrainian president “probably the greatest salesman on Earth.”
Republicans were livid after Zelensky visited an arms factory in Biden’s hometown in the battleground state of Pennsylvania earlier this week, with House Speaker Mike Johnson calling for the Ukrainian ambassador to be sacked.
Zelensky also sparked fury in Republican ranks when he told The New Yorker magazine this week that Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance did not understand the war’s complexity.
Trump has echoed many of Putin’s talking points about previous US policy being to blame for the Russian invasion, and has been critical of Zelensky for years.
The United States has provided around $175 billion in both military and economic assistance to Ukraine during the war, despite frequent opposition from Republicans.


Putin says Moscow will respond if West helps Ukraine to strike deep into Russia

Putin says Moscow will respond if West helps Ukraine to strike deep into Russia
Updated 13 sec ago
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Putin says Moscow will respond if West helps Ukraine to strike deep into Russia

Putin says Moscow will respond if West helps Ukraine to strike deep into Russia
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Putin says defense ministry exploring responses

*
Russia has changed nuclear doctrine

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Putin says NATO would have to help strikes by Ukraine

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Russian officials says Ukraine war in most dangerous phase
MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Russia’s defense ministry was working on different ways to respond if the United States and its NATO allies help Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with long-range Western missiles.
The 2-1/2-year-old
Ukraine war
has triggered the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War, and Russian officials say the war is now entering its most dangerous phase.
Russia has been signalling to the United States and its allies for weeks that if they give permission to Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory with Western-supplied missiles, then Moscow will consider it a major escalation.
Putin said on Sept. 12 that Western approval for such a step would mean “the
direct involvement
of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine” because NATO military infrastructure and personnel would have to be involved in the targeting and firing of the missiles.
Putin said that it was too early to say exactly how Russia would react to such a move but that Moscow would have to respond accordingly and different options were being examined.
“(The Russian defense ministry) is thinking about how to respond to the possible long-range strikes on Russian territory, it will offer a range of responses,” Putin told Russian state TV’s top Kremlin reporter, Pavel Zarubin.
With Russia advancing at the fastest rate in eastern Ukraine since the first months of the invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pleading with the West to allow Kyiv to fire deep into Russia with Western missiles.

HITTING RUSSIA
The United States has not said publicly if it will allow Ukraine to strike Russia, but some US officials are deeply skeptical that doing so would make a
significant difference
in the war.
Ukrainian forces already strike deep into Russia on a regular basis with long-range drones.




coal mining town of Selydove
in Ukraine’s Donetsk region just over a week after first storming the town, according to pro-Russian war bloggers.
Putin, who ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, casts the war as a battle between Russia and the declining West, which he says ignored Russia’s interests after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Ukraine and its Western allies say Putin unleashed an imperial-style war against its smaller neighbor and have repeatedly said that if Russia wins the war then autocratic countries across the world will be emboldened.
Just weeks before the US presidential election, Putin changed Russia’s
nuclear doctrine
in what the Kremlin said was an attempt to signal Russia’s concern over Western discussions about missile strikes from Ukraine.
Asked if the West had heard Russia’s warnings, Putin told Zarubin: “I hope they have heard. Because, of course, we will have to make some decisions for ourselves, too.”
Putin said that only NATO officers would be able to fire such weapons into Russia and that they would need to use Western satellite data for targeting the weapons so the question is really “whether they will allow themselves to strike deep into Russian territory or not. That is the question.”
US officials say the United States is not seeking to escalate the conflict.
How a new US president will approach the war is unclear: former US president Donald Trump has said he will end the Ukraine war while Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris says she will continue to support Ukraine.

Taiwan reports Chinese ‘combat patrol’ after Beijing slams US arms deal

Taiwan reports Chinese ‘combat patrol’ after Beijing slams US arms deal
Updated 14 min 42 sec ago
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Taiwan reports Chinese ‘combat patrol’ after Beijing slams US arms deal

Taiwan reports Chinese ‘combat patrol’ after Beijing slams US arms deal
  • The United States is bound by law to provide Chinese-claimed Taiwan with the means to defend itself despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties

TAIPEI/BEIJING: Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Sunday that Chinese warplanes and warships had carried out another “combat patrol” near the island, after Beijing threatened to take countermeasures in response to a $2 billion arms sale package by the United States.
The United States is bound by law to provide Chinese-claimed Taiwan with the means to defend itself despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, to the constant anger of Beijing.
The Pentagon said on Friday the United States had approved a potential $2 billion arms sale package to Taiwan, including the delivery for the first time to the island of an advanced air defense missile system battle-tested in Ukraine.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had detected 19 Chinese military aircraft, including Su-30 fighter jets, carrying out a “joint combat readiness patrol” around Taiwan in conjunction with Chinese warships starting on Sunday morning.
It said the Chinese aircraft flew in airspace to the north, center, southwest and east of Taiwan, and that Taiwanese forces were dispatched to keep watch.
China’s defense ministry did not answer calls seeking comment outside normal office hours.
China stages such patrols around Taiwan several times a month, but this was the first since Beijing held a new round of full-blown war games near the island this month.
In a statement late on Saturday, China’s foreign ministry said it strongly condemned and firmly opposed the latest US weapons sales and had lodged “solemn representations” with Washington.
China urges the United States to immediately stop arming Taiwan and stop its dangerous moves that undermine peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, it added.
“China will take resolute countermeasures and take all measures necessary to firmly defend national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity,” the ministry said, without elaborating.
China has over the past five years stepped up its military activities around democratically governed Taiwan, whose government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims.
Taiwan’s government has welcomed the new arms sale, the 17th to the island under US President Joe Biden’s administration.
“In the face of China’s threats, Taiwan is duty-bound to protect its homeland, and will continue to demonstrate its determination to defend itself,” Taiwan’s foreign ministry said on Saturday, responding to the arms sale.


Russia launches drone attack on Kyiv for second night, Ukraine says

Russia launches drone attack on Kyiv for second night, Ukraine says
Updated 27 October 2024
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Russia launches drone attack on Kyiv for second night, Ukraine says

Russia launches drone attack on Kyiv for second night, Ukraine says

Russia launched a multi-wave drone attack on Kyiv for the second straight night, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital said on Sunday.
“It seems that now every night, without long breaks, the Russian armed forces attack the peaceful city of Kyiv,” Serhiy Popko, head of the military administration said on Telegram messaging app.
“Last night, the enemy made another attack on the capital.”
He added that Russia launched around 10 drones in several waves, from different directions and at different heights, but Ukrainian air defense units destroyed all of the weapons on their approach to the city.
No injuries or major damage were reported, Popko added. He said that the Air Force will release data on the full-scale of the overnight attack on Ukraine later on Sunday. 
Meanwhile, Moscow's defence ministry said on Sunday that Russia shot down 51 Ukrainian drones from above several regions, including near the border.
Eighteen were intercepted in the Tambov region, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the Ukrainian border, and 16 in the area of the border town Belgorod, the ministry said in a statement on Telegram.
The others were shot down in the regions of Oryol, Briansk, Lipetsk and Voronej.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia started with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But thousands of civilians have died, the vast majority of them Ukrainians.
Russia’s drone attack on Kyiv on Saturday killed one and damaged high-rise residential building.


Death toll in Philippine storm rises to 100

Death toll in Philippine storm rises to 100
Updated 27 October 2024
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Death toll in Philippine storm rises to 100

Death toll in Philippine storm rises to 100

MaANLA: Rescuers in the Philippines were diving into a lake and scouring isolated villages on Sunday to locate dozens of missing people as the death toll from Tropical Storm Trami hit 100.
Trami, which rammed into the Philippines on October 24, was among the deadliest storms to hit the Southeast Asian country this year.
According to the national disaster agency, it forced more than half a million people to flee their homes and at least 36 people remain missing.
Police in the hardest-hit Bicol region have recorded 38 deaths, most due to drowning.
“We are still receiving many calls and we are trying to save as many people as we can,” Bicol regional police director Andre Dizon told AFP.
“Hopefully, there will be no more deaths.”
Dizon added that “many residents” in the region’s Camarines Sur province are still trapped on roofs and the upper floors of their homes.
The death toll in Batangas, south of Manila, has risen to 55, provincial police chief Jacinto Malinao told AFP.
Two were reported dead in separate incidents of electrocution and drowning in Cavite province, police said.
Five more bodies were recovered in other provinces, bringing the total to 100, according to an AFP tally based on official police and disaster agency sources.
“A higher death toll is possible in the coming days since rescuers can now reach previously isolated places,” Edgar Posadas of the Civil Defense Office told AFP.
The police, coast guards and a Marines diving team were searching on Sunday for a family of seven at Taal Lake in Batangas.
“The waters from the mountains hit their home in Balete town, causing it to be swept away with them possibly inside,” Malinao, the provincial police chief, said.
Most of the deaths in Batangas have been attributed to rain-induced landslides.
More than 20 bodies were pulled from heaps of mud, boulders and fallen trees, while police said at least another 20 people in the province are still missing.
“We will continue searching until all bodies are retrieved,” Malinao said.
The national disaster agency said Sunday that about 560,000 people had been displaced by floods, which submerged hundreds of villages in swaths of the northern Philippines.
About 20 big storms and typhoons hit the archipelago nation or its surrounding waters each year, damaging homes and infrastructure and killing dozens of people.
A recent study showed that storms in the Asia-Pacific region are increasingly forming closer to coastlines, intensifying more rapidly and lasting longer over land due to climate change.


Netanyahu hoping for Trump’s triumph in US presidential race, say analysts

Netanyahu hoping for Trump’s triumph in US presidential race, say analysts
Updated 27 October 2024
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Netanyahu hoping for Trump’s triumph in US presidential race, say analysts

Netanyahu hoping for Trump’s triumph in US presidential race, say analysts
  • An isolationist, Trump as a Republican president might give Netanyahu more freedom to navigate the conflicts that continue to rage in Gaza and Lebanon
  • “His experience with Republicans is very good... unlike with the Democrats who are much tougher on him,” says former Netanyahu chief of staff

JERUSALEM: With the US presidential election heading into the home stretch, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely be hoping for Donald Trump to return to the White House.
Trump’s last time in office was good for Netanyahu, and in the lead-up to the November 5 vote, the former president has sent mixed messages on his Middle East policy.
His remarks have ranged from encouraging Netanyahu to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities — which Israel refrained from in its strikes Saturday — to criticizing the Israeli leader, saying “the October 7 attack would never have happened if I was president” and that he will pressure Israel to end the wars.
Yet it is these unclear policies, combined with Trump’s “make America great again” campaign slogan, that analysts say Netanyahu is hoping for.
An isolationist, Trump as a Republican president might give Netanyahu more freedom to navigate the conflicts that continue to rage in Gaza and Lebanon.
“One of Netanyahu’s milestones is the US election. He is praying for a Trump victory, which he thinks will give him a lot of freedom of movement, which will let him do what he aspires,” Gidon Rahat, political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told AFP.
Aviv Bushinsky, a political commentator and Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, similarly said: “His experience with Republicans is very good... unlike with the Democrats who are much tougher on him.”

Pro-Israel moves

In 17 years as prime minister, Netanyahu has only served opposite one Republican leader, Trump.
During his presidency, Trump went ahead with several moves that boosted Netanyahu’s domestic standing while upending some long-standing US policies on Israel, its conflict with the Palestinians and the wider region.
The Republican president moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its undivided capital, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, and oversaw the normalization of ties between three Arab states and Israel.
Trump also withdrew from a landmark nuclear deal with Israel’s arch-foe Iran and reimposed tough economic sanctions on the Islamic republic.
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has long had a frosty relationship with Netanyahu despite insisting on his “ironclad support” for Israel.
Unlike Trump, Biden had warned Netanyahu against striking Iran’s oil production and nuclear facilities.
Trump and Netanyahu also enjoy a close personal relationship, with the former US president boasting this week of having had frequent phone calls with the Israeli premier.
“We have a very good relationship,” Trump said at a rally in Georgia. “We’re going to work with them very closely.”
Those positives will outweigh any concerns, said Bushinsky.
“I think Netanyahu would be willing to take the risk of Trump’s unpredictability,” he said.

Trump popular with Israeli public

Trump is popular not just with Netanyahu but with the Israeli public.
An opinion poll conducted in September by Mitvim, the Israel Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, said 68 percent of Israelis see Trump as the candidate who will best serve Israel’s interests.
Only 14 percent chose Vice President Kamala Harris, despite her repeatedly declaring her support for Israel and its right to defend itself.
“In Israel, more than any other liberal democracy outside the United States, Trump is more popular than Harris,” said Nadav Tamir, a former Israeli diplomat to the United States and a member of Mitvim’s board of directors.
A new Trump administration, though, could come with surprises, according to Tamir.
The former president has increasingly surrounded himself with Republicans “who are isolationists and don’t want America to be the leader of the free world or international alliances,” he said.

No better choice for Palestinians
Among Palestinians there is little enthusiasm for either candidate, said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist and pollster.
“Palestinians distrust both candidates and see little difference between them,” he said.
Taher Al-Nunu, a Hamas official, told AFP that he believed “successive US administrations have always been biased” toward Israel.
On the street, Palestinians said no matter who wins, life in their territories will not improve.
“I do not believe that the American elections will have a positive impact on our political reality,” said Leen Bassem, a 21-year-old student at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank.
Hassan Anwar, 42, a sound engineer, also said he did not believe there was any difference, “because American policy is completely clear in its support and backing of Israel.”