USA
Federal officials confirm bird flu detected in New York
A highly pathogenic avian influenza has been detected in a non-commercial backyard flock of birds on Long Island in New York, federal authorities confirmed Saturday.
Samples from the flock were tested at the Cornell University Animal Health Diagnostic Center and confirmed at the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service laboratories in Ames, Iowa.
New York state officials have quarantined the site in Suffolk County and birds on the affected properties “will be depopulated to prevent the spread of disease,” said the USDA in a statement, noting that birds from the flock will not enter the food system.
READ: China reports human case of H10N3 bird flu, a possible first
The virus has been detected at commercial turkey farms in southern Indiana, a flock of commercial broiler chickens in Kentucky and a backyard flock of mixed species birds in northern Virginia.
State officials in Indiana confirmed Saturday the virus has been detected in a fourth commercial poultry flock in that state. Officials have begun euthanizing the 15,200 birds at the latest farm to prevent the spread of the disease.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says the recent detections of the bird flu do not present an immediate public health concern. No human cases of these viruses have been detected in the U.S., according to the USDA.
Man arrested in fatal shooting of student at SUNY-Potsdam
A music education student at the State University of New York in Potsdam campus died from gunshot wounds in what was described as an isolated incident, authorities said Saturday.
New York state police charged Michael J. Snow, 31, of Massena, NY, with one count of second-degree murder. He was arraigned in the town of Potsdam court and remanded to St. Lawrence County Jail with no bail, police said. It was unclear whether he had an attorney who could comment.
Potsdam police responded to a report of an unconscious woman shortly before 6 p.m. Friday when they found 21-year-old Elizabeth Howell of Patterson, N.Y., lying with gunshot wounds on the side of College Park Road in the village.
She was pronounced dead about an hour later after she was taken to Canton Potsdam Hospital, authorities said.
In a news release Saturday, SUNY Potsdam said it was “deeply saddened” to share that the victim of the shooting was a student at the school’s Crane School of Music who was in the Class of 2022. The school’s website calls the music school “one of the best public music programs in the country.”
“We mourn Beth’s loss as one campus community, and hold her family, friends, and loved ones in our hearts at this difficult time,” it said.
READ: 2 including journo arrested in DSA case in Satkhira
The school said it was canceling Monday classes “as we work to support each other through this tragedy.” It advised students that the College Counseling Center would offer drop-in support all weekend as it also posted crisis and suicide hotline numbers.
Earlier Saturday, the school had warned people in St. Lawrence County and neighboring Franklin County “to be vigilant, as there may still be an active threat to the community. Lock your doors, and report any suspicious activity.”
But a later news release copied language from the State Police report, saying “the preliminary investigation has determined that this appears to be an isolated incident.”
SUNY Potsdam, founded in 1816, was one of the country’s first 50 colleges. With fewer than 3,000 undergraduate students. Nearly half of its students pursue studies in the sciences, social sciences or mathematics.
The Village of Potsdam is located in the Town of Potsdam in the Adirondack foothills in St. Lawrence County, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the Canadian border.
State police said they were asked to lead the investigation.
Canadian police appear to end protesters’ siege of Ottawa
Hundreds of police in riot gear swept through Canada’s capital Saturday, retaking control of the streets around the Parliament buildings and appearing to end the siege of Ottawa after three weeks of protests.
Protesters, angry over the country’s COVID-19 restrictions and with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, retreated from the largest police operation in the country’s history, with police arresting or driving out demonstrators and towing away their trucks.
In Ottawa, Interim Police Chief Steve Bell said that some smaller protests continued but “this unlawful occupation is over. We will continue with our mission until it is complete.”
While some protesters vowed to stay on Ottawa’s streets, one organizer told reporters they had “decided to peacefully withdraw.”
“We will simply regroup as a grassroots movement,” Tom Marazzo said at a press conference.
READ: Canadian police arrest 2 leaders of protesting truckers
Police had been brought in from across the country to help in the clearance operation, Bell said, adding that 170 people were arrested Friday and Saturday and multiple investigations had been launched because of weapons seizures.
“We’re not going anywhere until you have your streets back,” he said at a press conference, vowing to go after protesters who don’t disperse with “financial sanctions and criminal charges.”By early Saturday afternoon, protesters were gone from the street in front of Parliament Hill, the collection of government offices that includes the Parliament buildings, which had the heart of the protests. It had been occupied by protesters and their trucks since late last month, turning into a carnival on weekends.
“They are trying to push us all away,” said one protester, Jeremy Glass of Shelburne, Ontario, as authorities forced the crowds to move further from the Parliament buildings. “The main camp is seized now. We’re no longer in possession of it.”
Police said protesters remained “aggressive and assaultive” and that pepper spray had been used to protect officers. Authorities also said children had been brought right to the police lines, saying it was “putting the children at risk.”
Canadian authorities also announced they had used emergency powers to seize 76 bank accounts connected to protesters, totaling roughly $3.2 million ($2.5 million U.S.).
On Saturday, they also closed a bridge into the nation’s capital from Quebec to prevent a renewed influx of protesters.
Around midday, protest organizers said they had ordered truckers to move away from Parliament Hill, decrying the police’s actions as “abuses of power.”
“To move the trucks will require time,” organizers said in a statement. “We hope that (police) will show judicious restraint.”
Earlier, Ottawa police addressed the protesters in a tweet: “We told you to leave. We gave you time to leave. We were slow and methodical, yet you were assaultive and aggressive with officers and the horses. Based on your behavior, we are responding by including helmets and batons for our safety.”
Police said one protester launched a gas canister and was arrested as police advanced.
Earlier, Bell said most of the arrests were for mischief charges and that no protesters had been hurt. One officer had a minor injury, he said.
Those arrested included four protest leaders. One received bail while the others remained jailed.
Tow truck operators wearing neon-green ski masks, with their companies’ decals taped over on their trucks to conceal their identities, arrived under police escort and started removing hundreds of big rigs, campers and other vehicles parked shoulder to shoulder near Parliament. Police smashed through the door of at least one camper Friday before hauling it away.
The crackdown on the self-styled Freedom Convoy began Friday morning, when hundreds of police, some in riot gear and some carrying automatic weapons, descended into the protest zone and began leading demonstrators away in handcuffs through the snowy streets as holdout truckers blared their horns.
READ: Canadian judge orders an end to blockade at border bridge
The capital and its paralyzed streets represented the movement’s last major stronghold after weeks of demonstrations and blockades that shut down border crossings into the U.S. and created one of the most serious tests yet for Trudeau. They also shook Canada’s reputation for civility, with some blaming America’s influence.
The Freedom Convoy demonstrations initially focused on Canada’s vaccine requirement for truckers entering the country but soon morphed into a broad attack on COVID-19 precautions and Trudeau’s government.
Ottawa residents complained of being harassed and intimidated by the truckers and obtained a court injunction to stop their incessant honking.
Trudeau portrayed the protesters as members of a “fringe” element. Canadians have largely embraced the country’s COVID-19 restrictions, with the vast majority vaccinated, including an estimated 90% of the nation’s truckers. Some of the vaccine and mask mandates imposed by the provinces are already falling away rapidly.
The biggest border blockade, at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, disrupted the flow of auto parts between the two countries and forced the industry to curtail production. Authorities lifted the siege last weekend after arresting dozens of protesters.
But even as things were growing calmer in Ottawa, the Canadian border agency warned that operations at a key truck crossing from western Canada into the United States had been slowed by protesters, advising travelers to find a different route. The crossing near the town of Surrey remained open, officials said, but further details were not available.
The protests have been cheered on and received donations from conservatives in the U.S.
US defense chief: Russia ‘uncoiling and poised to strike’
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin assured the three Baltic nations Saturday that they would not be on their own if faced with security threats from Russia, but he stopped short of promising a permanent deployment of American troops in the former Soviet republics.
Austin was in Lithuania as a massive Russian troop buildup and other actions have Western officials saying that Moscow could invade Ukraine at any time, although Russia has denied planning an invasion.
“They are uncoiling and are now poised to strike,” Austin said Saturday about the readiness of Russia’s troops to attack Ukraine.
Lithuanian officials voiced concern that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alleged ambitions could expand to the entire region.
“The battle for Ukraine is a battle for Europe. If Putin is not stopped there, he will go further,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said during a joint news conference with Austin.
Also read: Ukraine-Russia crisis: What to know as tension grinds on
“They are choosing the way that is based on force. We need to send a very clear and unambiguous message that it would be faced by a very clear and swift response” Landsbergis said.
“I want everyone in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia to know - and I want President Putin and the Kremlin to know - that the United States of America stands with our allies,” Austin said during the news conference in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.
Austin also met with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte and the defense ministers of Latvia and Estonia on his two-day visit to Lithuania.
Nauseda asked Washington for a permanent deployment of a rotating battalion in the Baltics, emphasizing that the situation in Eastern Europe continues to deteriorate.
“Russia’s military build-up on NATO’s eastern border changes the overall security situation. Therefore, the decision to reinforce security in the region with additional troops from the United States and to accelerate collaboration on military acquisitions is critical,” Nauseda said.
United States has deployed regular rotations of battle groups of about 500 soldiers and armored vehicles since 2019.
Also read: NATO: Russia misleads world on troop movements near Ukraine
Austin did not comment on the request to deploy permanent military units in Lithuania, Latvia, or Estonia.
“I do not have any announcements to make today. We will continue to assess situations and consult with our allies and make any necessary adjustments” Austin said.
AP sources: White House seeks another $30B for COVID battle
The Biden administration is telling Congress that it needs an additional $30 billion to press ahead with the fight against COVID-19, officials said Tuesday.
Two people familiar with the administration’s plan confirmed key details: $17.9 billion for vaccines and treatments, $4.9 billion for testing, $3 billion to cover coronavirus care for uninsured people, and $3.7 billion to prepare for future variants. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss deliberations between the administration and lawmakers over the supplemental funding.
Separately, Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri told reporters he’d spoken with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and that “I think they are going to be proposing a $30 billion supplemental.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki addressed the need for more money without specifying the amount being sought.
“While we continue to have sufficient funds to respond to the current omicron surge in the coming weeks, our goal has always been to ensure that we are well prepared to stay ahead of the virus,” she said.
According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Congress has already approved $5.8 trillion to battle the pandemi c in a series of major bills spanning the Trump and Biden administrations. That’s not counting actions by the Federal Reserve to help keep the economy going.
Psaki said most of the money from President Joe Biden’s 2021 coronavirus relief bill has been spent or allocated, with 90% going for such priorities as vaccines, testing and support for schools.
It’s unclear how the new request for supplemental funding will fare in Congress. Republicans would like to see more COVID-19 relief for businesses still struggling with the pandemic, while Democratic progressives want a major effort to vaccinate the rest of the world.
Blunt said senators had asked the administration how other COVID-19 dollars had been spent, “and frankly, in the categories they are asking for money, the other money has all been spent or committed.”
Humanitarian groups, along with dozens of Democratic lawmakers, have been pressing the Biden White House and key committee leaders in Congress to provide billions of dollars for global vaccination efforts. They argue that will help fend off another coronavirus variant that could race around the world with deadly consequences.
While vaccine doses are starting to become more plentiful, the infrastructure to put shots into arms remains inadequate in many poorer countries. It’s leading to vaccines being wasted, advocates say.
“Dose production is ramping up but there has not been a complementary investment in the health system to get those doses into arms,” Rachel Hall, who heads U.S. government advocacy for the aid group CARE, said in a recent interview. “We are about to see a global mess because we have not been investing in the delivery system.”
According to a CARE analysis, 32 out of 92 low-income countries that receive vaccine donations have used less than half the doses delivered. Among them are Nigeria, which has used 34% of doses delivered, Afghanistan, 46%, and Haiti, 39%.
Psaki acknowledged the problem at Tuesday’s White House briefing. “A big part of our effort right now, and where we have seen challenges is turning vaccines into vaccinations,” she said. The logistics involve “hyperlocal issues,” she said.
The administration’s plan to ask for more money was first reported by Axios.
Crashed plane carried 4 teens who’d been on hunting trip
Four teenagers and four adults returning from a hunting trip were on board a small plane that crashed off the coast of North Carolina over the weekend, authorities said Tuesday.
Everyone on board was from North Carolina. Six of the passengers lived in coastal Carteret County, a mostly rural area that includes tourist destinations and the southern edge of the Outer Banks.
Divers found the plane’s fuselage and cabin in the Atlantic Ocean about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from shore and in about 55 feet (17 meters) of water, Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck told reporters Tuesday.
Crews have been removing human remains as well as aviation equipment that could help investigators determine the crash’s cause, Buck said. The Coast Guard said Tuesday that it was suspending its search but would continue to work alongside local partners through ongoing recovery operations.
The sheriff said the plane crash and recovery efforts have been “tremendously hard” because the community is so close-knit.
“Half my family’s from down here,” Buck said. “I know the people involved. And I know some of them very closely.”
The sheriff’s office identified the adults on board the plane as pilot Ernest Durwood Rawls, 67, of Greenville; Jeffrey Worthington Rawls, 28, of Greenville; Stephanie Ann McInnis Fulcher, 42, of Sea Level; and Douglas Hunter Parks, 45, of Sea Level.
The teenagers were identified as Jonathan Kole McInnis, 15, of Sea Level; Noah Lee Styron, 15, of Cedar Island; Michael Daily Shepard, 15, of Atlantic; and Jacob Nolan Taylor, 16, of Atlantic.
Carteret County includes communities such as Emerald Isle and Atlantic Beach as well as the Cape Lookout National Seashore. The tower of its iconic Outer Banks lighthouse is known for its black-and-white diamond pattern.
But the county also includes the waterfront town of Atlantic, which has a population of about 500 people and is located in a region called Down East.
Kendra Lewis, 29, organized a prayer vigil for Tuesday night in the parking lot of a shuttered grocery store.
“We’re just an old fishing community,” she said. “We’re used to banding together and taking care of one another.”
Read: US hasn’t verified Russian pullback of troops near Ukraine
Lewis watched the four boys who were on the plane grow up.
“They’re the definition of Down East people,” she said. “They hunted. They loved each other. They were just a part of the community. We’re all just a big family.”
The teenagers went to East Carteret High School, which has about 600 students, the school system said in a statement.
Following the news of Sunday’s crash, school counselors, psychologists and crisis team members arrived at the school, where students have begun “telling each other great stories of beautiful memories,” said Rob Jackson, the county schools’ superintendent.
“This is hard for adults,” Jackson said. “Harder still, I think, for teenagers who’ve grown up with their friends who are suddenly taken from them.”
Charlie Snow, a close friend of the pilot, said Ernest Rawls and Jeff Rawls were father and son. Jeff Rawls was a pilot as well, Snow said.
Snow said the elder Rawls was nicknamed “Teen.” Rawls had previously flown for Snow’s company, Outer Banks Airlines, and he and Rawls had also flown together. The elder Rawls was a highly trained and extremely capable pilot, not to mention a high-level aviation mechanic, said Snow, who is also a pilot.
“If anybody could get out of something, if it was possible to get out of it, he could have done it,” Snow said during a telephone interview. “So it makes me think that whatever happened was catastrophic. But you know, it’s just speculation.”
Snow said he and Ernest Rawls were like brothers and were friends for 20 years.
“I just don’t know many people in the world that I loved better than him,” Snow said. “He was just a great guy, a great pilot, a wonderful man — a fine Christian man.”
Snow said the plane that Rawls was flying was owned by Parks, one of the passengers. Fulcher, another passenger, was Parks’ girlfriend. Snow said the couple had taken the teens to a charity hunting event.
FlightAware listed a departure for that plane from Hyde County Airport at 1:35 p.m. Sunday. It noted that the plane was last seen near Beaufort, the Carteret County seat, around 2 p.m.
The Coast Guard said it received a report of a possible downed aircraft about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) east of Drum Inlet from a Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point air traffic controller. The air traffic controller reported that the aircraft was behaving erratically on radar, then disappeared from the screen.
The single-engine Pilatus PC-12/47 crashed about 18 miles (29 kilometers) northeast of Beaufort, according to an email from the Federal Aviation Administration. A preliminary accident notification on the FAA’s website noted that the aircraft “crashed into water under unknown circumstances.”
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
Over 130,000 Russian troops now staged outside Ukraine: US
Some airlines canceled flights to the Ukrainian capital and troops there unloaded fresh shipments of weapons from NATO members Sunday, as its president sought to project confidence in the face of U.S. warnings of possible invasion within days by a growing number of Russian forces.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to President Joe Biden for about an hour, insisting that Ukrainians had the country under “safe and reliable protection” against feared attack by a far stronger Russian military, aides said afterward. The White House said both agreed to keep pushing both deterrence and diplomacy to try to stave off a feared Russian military offensive.
The Biden administration has become increasingly outspoken about its concerns that Russia will stage an incident in the coming days that would create a false pretext for an invasion of Ukraine.
U.S. and European intelligence findings in recent days have sparked worries that Russia may try to target a scheduled Ukrainian military exercise slated for Tuesday in eastern Ukraine to launch such a “false-flag operation,” according to two people familiar with the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about it.
Read: War, peace, stalemate? Week ahead may decide Ukraine’s fate
American intelligence officials believe targeting the military exercise is just one of multiple options that Russia has weighed as a possibility for a false-flag operation. The White House has underscored that they do not know with certainty if President Vladimir Putin has made a final determination to launch an invasion.
Moscow’s forces are massing on Ukraine’s north, east and south in what the Kremlin insists are military exercises.
A U.S. official updated the Biden administration’s estimate for how many Russian forces are now staged near Ukraine’s borders to more than 130,000, up from the more than 100,000 the U.S. has cited publicly in previous weeks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s conclusions.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly played down the U.S. warnings, questioning the increasingly strident statements from U.S. officials in recent days that Russia could be planning to invade as soon as midweek.
“We understand all the risks, we understand that there are risks,” he said in a broadcast Saturday. “If you, or anyone else, has additional information regarding a 100% Russian invasion starting on the 16th, please forward that information to us.”
But while Zelenskyy has urged against panic that he fears could undermine Ukraine’s economy, he and his civilian and military leaders also are preparing defenses, soliciting and receiving a flow of arms from the U.S. and other NATO members.
A military cargo aircraft carrying U.S.-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and ammunition from NATO member Lithuania landed Sunday, bolstering the country’s defenses against any attack by air.
Zelenskyy wore military olive drab at a drill with tanks and helicopters near Ukraine’s border with Russian-annexed Crimea this weekend. In the nearby city of Kalanchak, some expressed disbelief that Putin would really send his troops rolling into the country.
“I don’t believe Russia will attack us,” said resident Boris Cherepenko. “I have friends in Sakhalin, in Krasnodar,” he said, naming Russian regions. “I don’t believe it.”
In Kyiv, others expressed uncertainty whether any Russian move would be economic, military, or happen at all. One woman, Alona Buznitskaya, speaking on a central street of the capital bearing a few signs declaring, “I love Ukraine,” said she was calm.
“You should always be ready for everything, and then you will have nothing to be afraid of,” she said.
The U.S. largely has not made public the evidence it says is underlying its most specific warnings on possible Russian planning or timing.
“We’re not going to give Russia the opportunity to conduct a surprise here, to spring something on Ukraine or the world,” Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, told CNN on Sunday, about the U.S. warnings.
“We are going to make sure that we are laying out for the world what we see as transparently and plainly as we possibly can,” he said.
The Russians have deployed missile, air, naval and special operations forces, as well as supplies to sustain an invasion. This week, Russia moved six amphibious assault ships into the Black Sea, augmenting its capability to land on the coast.
Putin denies any intention of attacking Ukraine. Russia is demanding that the West keep former Soviet countries out of NATO. It also wants NATO to refrain from deploying weapons near its border and to roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe — demands flatly rejected by the West.
Biden and Putin spoke for more than an hour Saturday, but the White House offered no suggestion that the call diminished the threat of an imminent war in Europe.
Read:Biden warns Putin of ‘severe costs’ of Ukraine invasion
Reflecting the West’s concerns, Dutch airline KLM has canceled flights to Ukraine until further notice, the company said. The Ukrainian charter airline SkyUp said Sunday its flight from Madeira, Portugal, to Kyiv was diverted to the Moldovan capital.
And Ukraine’s air traffic safety agency Ukraerorukh issued a statement declaring the airspace over the Black Sea to be a “zone of potential danger” and recommended that planes avoid flying over the sea Feb. 14-19.
The Putin-Biden conversation, following a call between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron earlier in the day, came at a critical moment for what has become the biggest security crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. U.S. officials believe they have mere days to prevent an invasion and enormous bloodshed in Ukraine.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will fly to Kyiv on Monday to meet with Zelenskyy and Moscow on Tuesday to meet with Putin.
While the U.S. and NATO have made clear they do not intend to send troops to Ukraine to fight Russia, any invasion and resulting punishing sanctions promised by the U.S. and other countries could reverberate far beyond the former Soviet republic, affecting energy supplies, global markets and the power balance in Europe.
The United States was pulling most of its staff from the embassy in Kyiv and urged all American citizens to leave Ukraine immediately. Britain joined other European nations in telling its citizens to leave.
Biden has bolstered the U.S. military presence in Europe as reassurance to allies on NATO’s eastern flank. The 3,000 additional soldiers ordered to Poland come on top of 1,700 who are on their way there. The U.S. Army also is shifting 1,000 soldiers from Germany to Romania, which like Poland shares a border with Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly leader was driven from office by a popular uprising. Moscow responded by annexing the Crimean Peninsula and then backing a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed over 14,000 people.
A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany helped halt large-scale battles, but regular skirmishes have continued, and efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled.
War, peace, stalemate? Week ahead may decide Ukraine’s fate
Even if a Russian invasion of Ukraine doesn’t happen in the next few days, the crisis is reaching a critical inflection point with European stability and the future of East-West relations hanging in the balance.
A convergence of events over the coming week could determine whether the stalemate is resolved peacefully or Europe is at war. At stake are Europe’s post-Cold War security architecture and long-agreed limits on the deployment of conventional military and nuclear forces there.
“This next 10 days or so will be critical,” said Ian Kelly, a retired career diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Georgia who now teaches international relations at Northwestern University.
The Biden administration on Friday said an invasion could happen at any moment, with a possible target date of Wednesday, according to intelligence picked up by the United States, and Washington was evacuating almost all of its embassy staff in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
Read:Biden warns Putin of ‘severe costs’ of Ukraine invasion
A phone call between President Joe Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Saturday did nothing to ease tensions. Biden and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, spoke on Sunday.
Even before the latest U.S. warnings and diplomatic moves, analysts saw this as a critical week for the future of Ukraine.
“Russia and the United States are approaching a peak of the conflict of their interests regarding a future shape of the European order,” Timofei Bordachev, said head of the Center for European Research at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. “The parties may take action against each other that will go much farther than what was considered admissible quite recently,” he said in a recent analysis.
In the week ahead, Washington and NATO are expecting Moscow’s formal response after they rejected its main security demands, and major Russian military drills in Belarus, conducted as part of a deployment near Ukraine, are to end. The fate of the Russian troops now in Belarus will be key to judging the Kremlin’s intentions.
At the same time, the Winter Olympics in China, often cited as a potential deterrent to immediate Russian action, will conclude Feb. 20. Although U.S. officials have said they believe an invasion could take place before then, the date is still considered important.
And an important international security conference is taking place in Munich next weekend, with Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and top European officials planning to attend.
Putin has warned the West that he will not back down on his demand to keep Ukraine out of NATO. While Ukraine has long aspired to join, the alliance is not about to offer an invitation.
Still, he contends that if Ukraine becomes a member and tries to use force to reclaim the Crimean Peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, it would draw Russia and NATO into a conflict.
His foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, has asked Western nations to explain how they interpret the principle of the “indivisibility of security” enshrined in international agreements they signed. The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday that it would not accept a collective response from the European Union and NATO, insisting on an individual response from each country.
Seeking to counter NATO’s argument that every nation is free to choose alliances, Moscow has charged that NATO violated the principle and jeopardized Russia’s security by expanding eastward.
“Russia’s bold demands and equally blunt U.S. rejection of them have pushed the international agenda toward the confrontation more than ever since the height of the Cold War,” Bordachev said.
He argued that closer relations with China have strengthened Moscow’s hand. “Whatever goals Russia could pursue now, it can plan its future in conditions of a full rupture of ties with the West,” Bordachev said.
Russian officials have emphasized that negotiating a settlement over Ukraine depends squarely on the United States and that Western allies just march to Washington’s orders.
In the past, Russia had sought to build close contacts with France and Germany in the hope that friendly ties with Europe’s biggest economies would help offset the U.S. pressure. But those ties were strained by the poisoning in 2020 of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who spent five months in Germany convalescing from what he described as a nerve agent attack he blamed on the Kremlin. Russia has denied its involvement.
More recently, Russian officials have criticized the position of France and Germany in the deadlocked peace talks on eastern Ukraine, holding them responsible for the failure to persuade Ukrainian authorities to grant broad self-rule to the Russia-backed separatist region, as required by a 2015 agreement.
In a break with diplomatic rules, the Russian Foreign Ministry last fall published confidential letters that Lavrov exchanged with his French and German counterparts in a bid to prove their failure to help make progress in talks.
Read: Putin, Biden plan high-stakes phone call in Ukraine crisis
Speaking after the latest fruitless round of those talks, Kremlin representative Dmitry Kozak bemoaned the failure by French and German envoys to persuade Ukraine to commit to a dialogue with the separatists, as the agreement stipulated.
Despite the tensions with both Paris and Berlin, Putin spent more than five hours talking to French President Emmanuel Macron last Monday and will host German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday. Putin said he was grateful to Macron for trying to help negotiate a way to ease the tensions and said they would talk again.
Moscow also just reopened a window for diplomatic contacts with Britain, hosting the foreign and defense secretaries for the first round of talks since ties were ruptured by the 2018 poisoning in Britain of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
Lavrov’s meeting with Liz Truss was frosty, but British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace’s talks with Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, appeared more businesslike, with the parties emphasizing the need to maintain regular contact to reduce the threat of military incidents.
Kodak Black reportedly among 4 shot outside Super Bowl party
Four people were shot and wounded early Saturday after a fight broke out outside a Los Angeles restaurant hosting a party that followed a Justin Bieber concert, police said.
The gunfire erupted outside The Nice Guy restaurant, striking and injuring four men ages 60, 22, 20 and 19, LAPD Officer Lizeth Lomeli said. Their names were not released, but NBC News reported rapper Kodak Black was among the wounded.
Officers who responded to the scene found two victims. Paramedics took them to the hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries, police said in an updated statement Saturday afternoon.
Two additional victims went to hospitals on their own, according to the statement. All four victims were listed in stable condition.
Detectives asked witnesses to come forward to help them identify the gunman.
Videos posted on TMZ.com and on social media show Black posing for photos with a group of people outside the restaurant when the brawl broke out. Black is among several people involved in the brawl when shots rang out, sending everyone at the scene running for cover.
Law enforcement sources told NBC News that Black, whose legal name is Bill Kapri, was among the people shot and injured. A message to his publicist at Atlantic Records has not been returned.
The party followed Bieber’s private concert at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California as part of a Super Bowl-week party dubbed “Homecoming Weekend.” The guests at the star-studded event included Jeff Bezos, his girlfriend TV host Lauren Sánchez, “Hamilton” actor Anthony Ramos and NFL Hall-of-Famer Tony Gonzalez.
Also read: Police: 1 dead in Washington state grocery store shooting
The Hollywood Reporter reports that Bieber and his wife Hailey Baldwin, Drake, Khloe Kardashian and Tobey Maguire were also among the celebrities seen entering the afterparty.
Biden warns Putin of ‘severe costs’ of Ukraine invasion
President Joe Biden told Russia’s Vladimir Putin that invading Ukraine would cause “widespread human suffering” and that the West was committed to diplomacy to end the crisis but “equally prepared for other scenarios,” the White House said Saturday. It offered no suggestion that the hourlong call diminished the threat of an imminent war in Europe.
Biden also said the United States and its allies would respond “decisively and impose swift and severe costs” if the Kremlin attacked its neighbor, according to the White House.
The two presidents spoke a day after Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, warned that U.S. intelligence shows a Russian invasion could begin within days and before the Winter Olympics in Beijing end on Feb. 20.
Read: US: Civilian toll in Syria raid may be higher than thought
Russia denies it intends to invade but has massed well over 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border and has sent troops to exercises in neighboring Belarus, encircling Ukraine on three sides. U.S. officials say Russia’s buildup of firepower has reached the point where it could invade on short notice.
The conversation came at a critical moment for what has become the biggest security crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. U.S. officials believe they have mere days to prevent an invasion and enormous bloodshed in Ukraine. And while the U.S. and its NATO allies have no plans to send troops to Ukraine to fight Russia, an invasion and resulting punishing sanctions could reverberate far beyond the former Soviet republic, affecting energy supplies, global markets and the power balance in Europe.
“President Biden was clear with President Putin that while the United States remains prepared to engage in diplomacy, in full coordination with our Allies and partners, we are equally prepared for other scenarios,” the White House statement said.
Also read: British envoy in Moscow to try to ease Ukraine crisis
The call was “professional and substantive” but produced “no fundamental change in the dynamic that has been unfolding now for several weeks,” according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters following the call on condition of anonymity.
The official added that it remains unclear whether Putin has made a final decision to move forward with military action.
Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign policy aide, said that while tensions have been escalating for months, in recent days “the situation has simply been brought to the point of absurdity.”
He said Biden mentioned the possible sanctions that could be imposed on Russia, but “this issue was not the focus during a fairly long conversation with the Russian leader.”
Before talking to Biden, Putin had a telephone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with him in Moscow earlier in the week to try to resolve the crisis. A Kremlin summary of the call suggested that little progress was made toward cooling down the tensions.
Putin complained in the call that the United States and NATO have not responded satisfactorily to Russian demands that Ukraine be prohibited from joining the military alliance and that NATO pull back forces from Eastern Europe.
In a sign that American officials are getting ready for a worst-case scenario, the United States announced plans to evacuate most of its staff from the embassy in the Ukrainian capital. Britain joined other European nations in urging its citizens to leave Ukraine.
Canada has shuttered its embassy in Kyiv and relocated its diplomatic staff to a temporary office in Lviv, located in the western part of the country, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said Saturday. Lviv is home to a Ukrainian military base that has served as the main hub for Canada’s 200-soldier training mission in the former Soviet country.
The timing of any possible Russian military action remained a key question.
The U.S. picked up intelligence that Russia is looking at Wednesday as a target date, according to a U.S. official familiar with the findings. The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and did so only on condition of anonymity, would not say how definitive the intelligence was.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he told his Russian counterpart Saturday that “further Russian aggression would be met with a resolute, massive and united trans-Atlantic response.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to project calm as he observed military exercises Saturday near Crimea, the peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
“We are not afraid, we’re without panic, all is under control,” he said.
Ukrainian armed forces chief commander Lt. Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny and Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov issued a more defiant joint statement.
“We are ready to meet the enemy, and not with flowers, but with Stingers, Javelins and NLAWs” — anti-tank and -aircraft weapons, they said. “Welcome to hell!”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, also held telephone discussions on Saturday.
Further U.S.-Russia tensions arose on Saturday when the Defense Ministry summoned the U.S. Embassy’s military attache after it said the navy detected an American submarine in Russian waters near the Kuril Islands in the Pacific. The submarine declined orders to leave, but departed after the navy used unspecified “appropriate means,” the ministry said.
Adding to the sense of crisis, the Pentagon ordered an additional 3,000 U.S. troops to Poland to reassure allies.
The U.S. has urged all American citizens in Ukraine to leave the country immediately, and Sullivan said those who remain should not expect the U.S. military to rescue them in the event that air and rail transportation is severed after a Russian invasion.
The Biden administration has been warning for weeks that Russia could invade Ukraine soon, but U.S. officials had previously said the Kremlin would likely wait until after the Winter Games ended so as not to antagonize China.
Sullivan told reporters on Friday that U.S. intelligence shows that Russia could take invade during the Olympics. He said military action could start with missile and air attacks, followed by a ground offensive.
“Russia has all the forces it needs to conduct a major military action,” Sullivan said, adding that “Russia could choose, in very short order, to commence a major military action against Ukraine.” He said the scale of such an invasion could range from a limited incursion to a strike on Kyiv, the capital.
Russia scoffed at the U.S. talk of urgency.
“The hysteria of the White House is more indicative than ever,” said Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. “The Anglo-Saxons need a war. At any cost. Provocations, misinformation and threats are a favorite method of solving their own problems.”
Zakharova said her country had “optimized” staffing at its own embassy in Kyiv in response to concerns about possible military actions from the Ukrainian side.
In addition to the more than 100,000 ground troops that U.S. officials say Russia has assembled along Ukraine’s eastern and southern borders, the Russians have deployed missile, air, naval and special operations forces, as well as supplies to sustain a war. This week, Russia moved six amphibious assault ships into the Black Sea, augmenting its capability to land marines on the coast.
Biden has bolstered the U.S. military presence in Europe as reassurance to allies on NATO’s eastern flank. The 3,000 additional soldiers ordered to Poland come on top of 1,700 who are on their way there. The U.S. Army also is shifting 1,000 soldiers from Germany to Romania, which like Poland shares a border with Ukraine.
Russia is demanding that the West keep former Soviet countries out of NATO. It also wants NATO to refrain from deploying weapons near its border and to roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe — demands flatly rejected by the West.
Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly leader was driven from office by a popular uprising. Moscow responded by annexing the Crimean Peninsula and then backing a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed over 14,000 people.
A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany helped halt large-scale battles, but regular skirmishes have continued, and efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled.