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Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Russia’s Saratov airport lifts flight curbs after Ukraine drone attack

Russia’s Saratov airport lifts flight curbs after Ukraine drone attack
Emergency personnel work at the scene in the aftermath of a Ukrainian drone attack which damaged homes and wounded a woman in Saratov Region, Russia on Aug. 26, 2024. (Roman Basurgin via Telegram/via Reuters)
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Updated 26 August 2024
Reuters
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Russia’s Saratov airport lifts flight curbs after Ukraine drone attack

Russia’s Saratov airport lifts flight curbs after Ukraine drone attack
  • A residential complex in the city had been damaged by falling debris from drones destroyed by Russia’s air defense systems
  • Air defense systems destroyed nine drones over the Saratov region, which lies some 900km away from the Ukraine border
Updated 26 August 2024
Reuters
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Russia’s Saratov regional airport lifted flight curbs on Monday imposed after homes were damaged as a result of Ukraine’s drone attack that wounded a woman, Russian officials and news agencies said.
The lifting of the curbs at the Saratov regional airport, at about 9:30 a.m. (0530 GMT), was reported by Russia’s RIA news agency, which had earlier reported the clampdown, citing the airport’s press service.
A residential complex in the city had been damaged by falling debris from drones destroyed by Russia’s air defense systems, regional governor Roman Basurgin said on the Telegram messaging app.
“A woman was hospitalized in serious condition,” Basurgin said. “Doctors are fighting for her life.”
Russia’s defense ministry said its air defense systems destroyed nine drones over the Saratov region, which lies some 900 kilometers (560 miles) away from the border with Ukraine.
Earlier, Basurgin said emergency services had fanned out at affected sites in Saratov and Engels, key cities in the region several hundred kilometers southeast of the capital.
Russia has a strategic bomber military base in Engels that Ukraine has attacked numerous times since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in Feb. 2022.
There was no immediate information on damage at the base, or the scale of the Ukrainian attack on the region, which is several hundred kilometers away from the border with Ukraine.
Video posted on Telegram by the Russian news SHOT channel showed what it identified as a high-rise residential building in Saratov, with a damaged side and several windows blown out across three floors.
In Engels, the top floor of a residential building was damaged, it added.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Both sides deny targeting civilians in their attacks, which they say aim to destroy infrastructure key to war efforts.

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict Russia Ukraine

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Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump

Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump
Updated 46 sec ago
AFP
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Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump

Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump
  • Smith cited the long-standing Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president in his motions to have the cases dismissed
Updated 46 sec ago
AFP

WASHINGTON: A judge on Monday granted a request by prosecutors to dismiss the election subversion case against Donald Trump because of a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to the request by Special Counsel Jack Smith to dismiss the case against the president-elect “without prejudice,” meaning it could potentially be revived after Trump leaves the White House four years from now.
“Dismissal without prejudice is appropriate here,” Chutkan said, adding in the ruling that “the immunity afforded to a sitting President is temporary, expiring when they leave office.”
Trump, 78, was accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden and removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House, but the cases never came to trial.
Smith also moved on Monday to drop his appeal of the dismissal of the documents case filed against the former president in Florida. That case was tossed out earlier this year by a Trump-appointed judge on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed.
The special counsel paused the election interference case and the documents case this month after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 presidential election.
Smith cited the long-standing Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president in his motions to have the cases dismissed.
“The Government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed,” Smith said in the filing with Chutkan. “But the circumstances have.”
“It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President,” Smith said.
“As a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”
In a separate filing, Smith said he was withdrawing his appeal of the dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump but pursuing the case against his two co-defendants, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.

Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said the cases were “empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”
“Over $100 Million Dollars of Taxpayer Dollars has been wasted in the Democrat Party’s fight against their Political Opponent, ME,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before.”
Trump was accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding — the session of Congress called to certify Biden’s win, which was violently attacked on January 6, 2021 by a mob of the then-president’s supporters.
Trump was also accused of seeking to disenfranchise US voters with his false claims that he won the 2020 election.
The former and incoming president also faces two state cases — in New York and Georgia.
He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.
However, Judge Juan Merchan has postponed sentencing while he considers a request from Trump’s lawyers that the conviction be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court ruling in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution.
In Georgia, Trump faces racketeering charges over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in office.

 

Topics: US

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No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties

No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties
Updated 11 min 3 sec ago
AFP
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No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties

No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties
  • Merkel, who speaks Russian, also defends her engagement over the years with Putin, who speaks German — despite her misgivings about the former KGB agent who once allowed a labrador into a meeting between them, apparently playing on her fear of dogs
Updated 11 min 3 sec ago
AFP

BERLIN: Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel gives a spirited defense of her 16 years at the helm of Europe’s top economy in her memoir “Freedom,” released in 30 languages on Tuesday.
Since she stepped down in 2021, Merkel has been accused of having been too soft on Russia, leaving Germany dangerously reliant on cheap Russian gas and sparking turmoil and the rise of the far right with her open-door migrant policy.
Her autobiography is released as wars rage in Ukraine and the Middle East, Donald Trump is headed back to the White House and Germany faces snap elections after its ruling coalition collapsed this month.
Merkel, 70, remembered for her calm and unflappable leadership style, rejects blame for any of the current turmoil, in the 736-page autobiography co-written with longtime adviser Beate Baumann.
After years out of the public eye, she has given multiple media interviews, reflecting on her childhood under East German communism and tense encounters with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, who she felt “was captivated by politicians with autocratic and dictatorial tendencies.”
In the full memoir, she gives further insights into her thoughts and actions — including during the 2015 mass refugee influx, which came to define the final years of her leadership.

Critics have charged that Merkel’s refusal to push back large numbers of asylum-seekers at the Austrian border led to more than one million arrivals and fueled the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Merkel, who at the time posed for a selfie with one Syrian refugee, says she “still does not understand ... how anyone could have assumed that a friendly face in a photo would be enough to encourage entire legions to flee their homeland.”
While affirming that “Europe must always protect its external borders,” she stresses that “prosperity and the rule of law will always make Germany and Europe ... places where people want to go.”
In addition, she writes in the French edition of the book, fast-aging Germany’s “lack of manpower makes legal migration essential.”
Her bold declaration at the time — “wir schaffen das” in German or “we can do this” — was a “banal” statement with the message that “where there are obstacles, we must work to overcome them,” she argues.
And on the AfD, she cautions Germany’s mainstream parties against adopting their rhetoric “without proposing concrete solutions to existing problems,” warning that with such an approach mainstream movements “will fail.”

Merkel, who speaks Russian, also defends her engagement over the years with Putin, who speaks German — despite her misgivings about the former KGB agent who once allowed a labrador into a meeting between them, apparently playing on her fear of dogs.
She describes the Russian leader as “a man perpetually on the lookout, afraid of being mistreated and always ready to strike, including by playing at exercising his power with a dog and making others wait.”
Nevertheless, she says that “despite all the difficulties” she was right “not to let contacts with Russia be broken off ... and to also preserve ties through trade relations.”
The reality is, she argues, that “Russia is, with the United States, one of the two main nuclear powers in the world.”
She also defends her opposition to Ukraine joining NATO at a 2008 Bucharest summit, considering it illusory to think that candidate status would have protected it from Putin’s aggression.
After the summit, she remembers flying home with the feeling that “we in NATO had no common strategy for dealing with Russia.”

Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, cut Germany off from cheap Russian gas, with the taps’ closure a key driver of its ongoing economic malaise.
But Merkel rejects criticism for having allowed the Baltic Sea pipelines in the first place, pointing out that Nord Stream 1 was signed off on by her predecessor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder, long a friend of Putin.
On Nord Stream 2, which she approved after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, she argues that at the time it would have been “difficult to get companies and gas users in Germany and in many EU member states to accept” having to import more expensive liquefied natural gas from other sources.
Merkel says the gas was needed as a transitional energy source as Germany was pursuing both a switch to renewable energy and the phase-out of nuclear power following Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster.
On nuclear power itself, she argues that “we do not need it to meet our climate goals” and that the German phase-out can “inspire courage in other countries” to follow suit.

 

Topics: Angela Merkel President Vladimir Putin Russia Germany

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Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul

Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul
Updated 26 November 2024
AFP
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Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul

Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul
  • Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar
Updated 26 November 2024
AFP

KABUL: Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu visited Afghan government officials on Monday, assuring them Moscow will soon remove the Taliban from its list of banned organizations, Kabul said.
Since the Taliban surged back to power in 2021 visits by foreign officials have been infrequent because no nation has yet formally recognized the government of the former insurgent group.
Taliban government curbs on women have made them pariahs in many Western nations but Kabul is making increasing diplomatic overtures to its regional neighbors, emphasising economic and security cooperation.
Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar.
He “expressed Russia’s interest in increasing the level of bilateral cooperation with Afghanistan,” Baradar’s office said in a statement released on social media site X.
“He also announced that, to expand political and economic relations between the two countries, the Islamic Emirate’s name would soon be removed from Russia’s blacklist.”
The Islamic Emirate is the name the Taliban government uses to refer to itself.
Russian news agencies quoted Shoigu as saying he wanted “constructive” ties with Kabul, without saying if he had floated Moscow removing the Taliban from its list of banned groups.
“I confirm the readiness to build a constructive political dialogue between our countries, including in order to give momentum to the process of the internal Afghan settlement,” Shoigu said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
He also said Russian companies plan to take part in projects in Afghanistan on extracting natural resources.
Analysts say Moscow may be eying cooperation with Kabul to counter the threat from Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) — the Afghan-based branch of the Sunni militant group.
In March, more than 140 people were killed when IS-K gunmen attacked a Moscow concert hall.
Taliban authorities have repeatedly said security is their top domestic priority and have pledged militants staging foreign attacks will be ousted from Afghanistan.
“The Taliban certainly are our allies in the fight against terrorism,” Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, said in July.
“They are working to eradicate terrorist cells.”

Topics: Russia Taliban Sergei Shoigu Afghanistan

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Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal

Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal
Updated 26 November 2024
Reuters
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Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal

Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal
  • President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it
Updated 26 November 2024
Reuters

WASHINGTON: A Republican senator has blocked the promotion of US Army Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, who commanded the military’s 82nd Airborne Division during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and was the last American soldier to leave the country in 2021.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hold had been placed by Senator Markwayne Mullin, who did not respond to a request for comment on why he blocked the promotion.
The Pentagon on Monday said it was aware of the hold on Donahue, who had been nominated for a fourth star by President Joe Biden to lead the US Army in Europe and Africa.
“We are aware that there is a hold on Lt. Gen. Donahue,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.
President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it. In August, Trump said he would ask for the resignation of every senior official “who touched the Afghanistan calamity.”
“You have to fire people when they do a bad job. We never fire anybody,” Trump has said.
Reuters has reported that Trump’s transition team is drawing up a list of military officers to be fired, in what would be an unprecedented shakeup at the Pentagon.
While the image of Donahue, carrying his rifle down by his side as he boarded the final C-17 transport flight out of Afghanistan on in August 2021, has become synonymous with the chaotic withdrawal, he is seen in the military as one of the most talented Army leaders.
“The finest officer I ever served with, Chris Donahue is a generational leader who is now being held up for political purposes. At the tip of the spear defending this country for over three decades, he is now a political pawn,” Tony Thomas, the former head of US Special Operations Command, posted on X.
Under Senate rules, one lawmaker can hold up nominations even if the other 99 all want them to move quickly.

Topics: Republican senator US Army general Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue US Troops Withdrawal from Afghanistan

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US prosecutors seek to drop federal criminal cases against Trump

US prosecutors seek to drop federal criminal cases against Trump
Updated 26 November 2024
Reuters
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US prosecutors seek to drop federal criminal cases against Trump

US prosecutors seek to drop federal criminal cases against Trump
  • Policy against prosecuting sitting presidents cited
  • Courts must approve the two dismissal requests
Updated 26 November 2024
Reuters

WASHINGTON: US prosecutors moved on Monday to drop the two federal criminal cases against Donald Trump involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and his handling of classified documents, citing Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
The steps by prosecutors working with Special Counsel Jack Smith in the two cases represent a big legal victory for the Republican president-elect, who won the Nov. 5 US election and is set to return to office on Jan. 20.
The Justice Department policy that the prosecutors cited dates back to the 1970s. It holds that a criminal prosecution of a sitting president would violate the US Constitution by undermining the ability of the country’s chief executive to function. Courts will still have to approve both requests from prosecutors.
The prosecutors in a filing in the election subversion case said the department’s policy requires the case to be dismissed before Trump returns to the White House.
“This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.
Smith’s office similarly moved to end its attempt to revive the case accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified documents when he left office in 2021 after his first term as president. But the prosecutors signaled they will still ask a federal appeals court to bring back the case against two Trump associates who had been accused of obstructing that investigation.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung hailed what he called “a major victory for the rule of law.”
Trump had faced criminal charges in four cases — the two brought by Smith and two in state courts in New York and Georgia. He was convicted in the New York case while the Georgia case is in limbo.
In a post on social media, Trump railed on Monday against the legal cases as a “low point in the History of our Country.” The moves by Smith, who was appointed in 2022 by US Attorney General Merrick Garland, represents a remarkable shift from the special prosecutor who obtained indictments against Trump in two separate cases accusing him of crimes that threatened US election integrity and national security. Prosecutors acknowledged that the election of a president who faced ongoing criminal cases created an unprecedented predicament for the Justice Department.
It shows how Trump’s election victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris was not just a political triumph, but also a legal one. Trump pleaded not guilty in August 2023 to four federal charges accusing him of conspiring to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump, who as president will again oversee the Justice Department, was expected to order an end to the federal 2020 election case and to Smith’s appeal in the documents case.
Florida-based Judge Aileen Cannon, who Trump appointed to the federal bench, had dismissed the classified documents case in July, ruling that Smith was improperly appointed to his role as special counsel.
Smith’s office had been appealing that ruling and indicated on Monday that the appeal would continue as it relates to Trump personal aide Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, a manager at his Mar-a-Lago resort, who had been previously charged alongside Trump in the case. Both Nauta and De Oliveria have pleaded not guilty, as did Trump.
In the 2020 election case, Trump’s lawyers had previously said they would seek to dismiss the charges based on a US Supreme Court ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution over official actions taken while in the White House. Smith attempted to salvage the case following that ruling, dropping some allegations but arguing that the rest were not covered by presidential immunity and could proceed to trial.
Judge Tanya Chutkan had been due to decide whether the immunity decision required other portions of the case to be thrown out. A trial date originally set for March 2024 had not been rescheduled.
The case was brought following an investigation led by Smith into Trump’s attempts to retain power following his 2020 election defeat, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters following his inflammatory speech near the White House.
Trump denied wrongdoing and argued that the US legal system had been turned against him to damage his presidential campaign. He vowed during the campaign that he would fire Smith if he returned to the presidency.
Trump in May became the first former president to be convicted of a crime when a jury in New York found him guilty of felony charges relating to hush money paid to a porn star before the 2016 election. His sentencing in that case has been indefinitely postponed.
The criminal case against Trump in Georgia state court involving the 2020 election is stalled.

Topics: Trump Returns US Donald Trump

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