Blanche, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, has previously represented Trump ally Paul Manafort as well as Igor Fruman, a onetime associate of Rudy Giuliani who pleaded guilty in a campaign finance case brought by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office.
In particular, Blanche’s representation of Manafort may have caught Trump’s eye. Blanche led the successful effort to get mortgage fraud and other charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office dropped after arguing they would amount to double jeopardy because the state charges covered the same conduct for which Manafort had already been tried on a federal level.
Manafort was charged by the previous Manhattan district attorney, Cy Vance, a Democrat.
Blanche was vocal during that effort in calling the indictment of Manafort “politically motivated,” a charge Trump has also levied at the current district attorney, Alvin Bragg, also a Democrat.
In his resignation email, Blanche said he was unable to take Trump as a client while remaining at Cadwalader, New York City’s oldest law firm and one of its most elite. “Obviously, doing this as a partner at Cadwalader was not an option, so I have had to make the difficult choice to leave the firm.”
A spokesman for Cadwalader didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The addition to Trump’s legal team came as the former president is set to surrender Tuesday to the district attorney’s office to face criminal charges connected to his alleged role in a scheme to reimburse his former lawyer for a hush money payment made to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 presidential campaign. After he surrenders, Trump is expected to appear in court Tuesday afternoon to be arraigned.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
People who know them say the two lawyers have very different styles — she’s an understated tactician and he’s a colorful showman, “bombastic,” in his own words — but both have built their careers in New York courtrooms.
In separate interviews, Necheles and Tacopina said they have a productive working relationship — Tacopina described it as “harmonious,” adding that they would likely add a third member to the team who specializes in election law.
And both called their relationship with Trump “respectful.”
“Of course I’ve worked with difficult clients over the years in some cases, and you just try to make them have confidence in you,” Necheles said.
Still, Trump’s recent remarks about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — calling him an “animal” and “racist” — could complicate his lawyers’ ability to work productively with prosecutors.
Necheles dismissed any concerns, saying, “Trump is a little bit more verbal about it and out there” in his criticism of the office. But, she added: “Of course he doesn’t like them. They’re trying to ruin his life.”
Tacopina said the case is in some ways unremarkable and in others extraordinary. “On one hand, this is a belly-of-the-beast, 100 Centre Street, low-level case that should be treated this way. On the other hand, this is the former president of the United States, so we have to be cognizant of that,” he said, referring to the street address for Manhattan Criminal Court where Trump will be tried.
“I’m buckling my seatbelt,” he added. “Let’s put it that way.”
Neither lawyer would discuss their strategy for the Trump case, but both have a history of deploying creative gambits on behalf of their clients. Necheles once used a “divine defense” on behalf of a developer accused of fleecing ultra-orthodox Jewish clients, telling a jury he had received a blessing from a rabbi to build affordable housing. “It was a mitzvah to him, a Hebrew word that means a good deed and an obligation,” she said.
During the trial of a former New York state senator accused of theft, she showed jurors a blown-up image of an apple, while a piece of the fruit sat on the defense table in front of her client. “There’s something rotten about this case,” she told jurors.
Meanwhile, Tacopina helped a rapper named Sticky Fingaz, who faced a gun possession charge that was later dropped, slip into the courthouse undetected by paparazzi.
Tacopina accompanied his driver — who posed as the rapper by donning a hat and sunglasses — through the front entrance while the rapper slipped through another door. Tacopina laughed at the suggestion that he would try to pull a similar stunt with Trump. “I have no tricks up my sleeve here,” he said. “This is the Secret Service’s show here, not mine.”
Tacopina also has some experience navigating choppy relationships between Trump world and its investigators — though not always with favorable results for his clients. Last year, when he represented Guilfoyle before the Jan. 6 committee, Tacopina accused the committee of blindsiding them by allowing some of the panel’s Democratic members to attend the proceeding and she walked shortly after it started. Her premature departure resulted in the committee issuing a subpoena for Guilfoyle’s testimony that ultimately compelled her return for a lengthy interview about her involvement in planning and fundraising for Trump’s Jan. 6 rally.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Finland will formally become a full-fledged NATO ally on Tuesday, the alliance’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday.
“This is an historic week,” the NATO chief told reporters. “Tomorrow, we will welcome Finland as the 31st member of NATO, making Finland safer and our alliance stronger.”
A ceremony marking Finland’s accession is set to take place Tuesday afternoon.
“We will raise the Finnish flag for the first time here at the NATO headquarters,” Stoltenberg said, adding: “It will be a good day for Finland’s security, for Nordic security, and for NATO as a whole.”
The move comes after Hungary and Turkey ratified Finland’s membership bid last week, removing the last hurdles to Helsinki’s accession.
Sweden’s membership aspiration, however, remains in limbo as Budapest and Ankara continue to withhold support.
Speaking ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Stoltenberg reiterated that he believes Stockholm is still on its way to ultimately joining the alliance as well.
“All allies,” he said, “agree that Sweden’s accession should be completed quickly.”
At their meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, ministers will discuss the alliance’s defense spending goals and future relationship with Kyiv.
They will also attend a session of the NATO-Ukraine Commission together with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and meet with partners from Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
In his press conference, the NATO chief also addressed multiple challenges facing the transatlantic alliance, including Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that Russia will deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.
Putin’s announcement is “part of a pattern of dangerous, reckless nuclear rhetoric” and an effort to use nuclear weapons as “intimidation, coercion to stop NATO allies and partners from supporting Ukraine.”
“We will not be intimidated,” the NATO boss said.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin of Finland | Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images
The alliance “remains vigilant, we monitor very closely what Russia does,” he said. “But so far,” he added, “we haven’t seen any changes in their nuclear posture” that require any change in NATO’s nuclear stance.
In a statement Monday, the Finnish president’s office said that, “Finland will deposit its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty with the U.S. State Department in Brussels on Tuesday” before the start of NATO foreign ministers’ session.
Sanna Marin, the prime minister when Finland applied to join NATO, suffered defeat in a national election on Sunday. Her Social Democrats finished third, with the center-right National Coalition Party coming out on top.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
A man sentenced to two years in prison in a case launched against him after his daughter drew an anti-war picture at school is on the run from the authorities, a spokeswoman for a provincial court told journalists.
Earlier Tuesday, a judge in the town of Yefremov in Russia’s Tula region, south of Moscow, found Alexei Moskalyov guilty of discrediting the Russian army on social media and sentenced him to two years in a penal colony.
Moskalyov was not present at the hearing.
Once the proceedings were over, a court spokeswoman, responding to inquiries as to Moskalyov’s whereabouts, said: “The defendant, Mr. Moskalyov, was not present when the verdict was announced because he fled house arrest last night.”
Her words were met with applause and several cries of “Bravo!” from some of those in attendance.
Formally, Moskalyov was sentenced for two comments he made on social media in which he described Russian soldiers as rapists and Russia’s leadership as “terrorists.”
But Moskalyov’s defense team and rights activists have argued his persecution is in fact retribution for a drawing made by his daughter Masha at school in April last year, when she was 12.
In the drawing, a woman and child stand next to a flag reading “Glory to Ukraine” in the path of a rocket shower coming from the direction of a Russian tricolor flag labeled: “No to war.”
According to an interview given by Moskalyov to independent media before his arrest, Masha’s teacher informed the director of the school, who then got the police involved, triggering a chain of interrogations that he claimed involved threats and beatings.
Moskalyov was eventually detained in early March and his daughter, now 13, taken into state care. While Moskalyov was soon released under house arrest, Masha remains in what the authorities call “a social rehabilitation center” and has been denied any communication with the outside world.
The ruling on Tuesday, though not a surprise, has been decried as a further crackdown on those who oppose Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and described by some as a return to the Stalinist practice of targeting the children of “enemies of the state.” А petition calling for Masha’s release has received more than 140,000 signatures.
Speaking to journalists outside the court on Tuesday, Moskalyov’s lawyer Vladimir Biliyenko said he had been unaware of his client’s plan to flee. He said the last time they saw each other was at a court hearing a day earlier.
In another development, Moskalyov’s supporters on Tuesday attempted to visit Masha at the so-called social rehabilitation institution where she is supposedly being held, only to be told that she was not there.
According to comments from the center’s director cited by independent Russian media, Masha was attending a “culinary tournament” out of town, fueling speculation about her actual location.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Already, House Majority PAC, the Democratic Party’s main House-specific political action committee, is budgeting $45 million to compete in New York next cycle. And the group’s president, Mike Smith, firmly declared that “the path to a Democratic House Majority runs through New York.”
How able Democrats are in turning the ‘24 election cycle into a referendum on abortion policy will go a long way toward determining the party’s success at the ballot box. Advocates believe that Republicans may just play into their hands.
They believe they can spotlight a continued appetite for anti-abortion legislation in a GOP-led House, as well as a looming court case that could restrict abortion even in states where it is protected by state laws.
The House has already voted on one bill that would make it a felony to not provide medical assistance to an infant that survives an attempted abortion (which is already illegal), and it has promised a speedy vote on a second that would put stricter bans on federal funding for the procedure.
The newly elected Republicans from New York — Reps. Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro, George Santos, Nick LaLota, and Brandon Williams — all voted in favor of the first bill, which passed the House.
These members are all targets of the Democratic congressional campaigns spending group, House Majority PAC. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, chaired by Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), has not yet released its target list.
D’Esposito, Molinaro, LaLota, and Williams did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Lawler’s office denied an interview request and he denied a request made in person. The National Republican Congressional Committee also declined to comment on this issue.
Abortion rights advocates are also anticipating that a federal judge will rescind the FDA’s approval of a popular abortion drug, in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, significantly restricting access to abortion. The decision is still pending, but such a move would bring the issue to the fore for many voters, even in states with strong protections for abortion. Some national drugstore chains like Walgreens have voluntarily pulled the drug from their shelves in anticipation of a decision in the case.
That is just one component of the abortion access tug-of-war. Stitzlein, of NARAL, said while the FDA case is the current battle, he believes the anti-abortion movement will continue challenging access on other fronts.
“I remain convinced that there’s going to be a move to a national abortion ban by Republicans in the House and in the Senate. And nothing I’ve seen dissuades me of that,” said Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), who represents an upstate battleground district, in an interview with POLITICO. “The protections that are offered in states like New York and California, if there’s a national abortion ban, won’t be a way to protect women anymore.”
Morelle, who’s race was considered a toss up last cycle, said he not only talked about his support for abortion access on the trail but made it a “centerpiece” of his campaign.
“Incumbents here, they’re going to have to make a decision about whether or not they’re going to adhere to the national agenda that has been established by, frankly, pretty extreme members of the Republican Party,” Morelle said. Or if “they’re going to represent the interests of people in their communities that are much more moderate.”
Advocates and Democratic lawmakers believe even the threat of a national ban will activate voters in New York in the same way the initial Dobbs decision did for voters in purple and red states, from Michigan to Kansas, in the midterms.
“This is an issue that’s not going away because Republicans are going to keep pushing the envelope and keep pushing the envelope,” House Majority PAC Executive Director Abby Curran Horrell said in an interview with POLITICO.
In 2024, Republicans in congressional races in reliably blue states will also be running alongside whomever ends up being the GOP presidential nominee. Nearly all the candidates have already declared support for abortion restrictions or bans.
Former President Donald Trump has said Republicans should have moderated their anti-abortion stance in the 2022 cycle, but he also takes credit for putting in place the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. Former Vice President Mike Pence supports an outright national abortion ban. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign a six-week abortion ban into law in his state.
“The fact that they will presumably support [the nominee] will be showing that they are objectively anti-choice,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) about the frontline Republicans in New York. “Any anti-choice vote they make will obviously come back to bite them.”
If there’s any success in restricting access, Nadler said, “in New York, I think the Republicans are going to pay very dearly.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Netanyahu’s dismissal of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant signaled that the prime minister and his allies will barrel ahead this week with the overhaul plan. Gallant had been the first senior member of the ruling Likud party to speak out against it, saying the deep divisions were threatening to weaken the military.
In a brief statement, Netanyahu’s office said late Sunday the prime minister had dismissed Gallant. Netanyahu later tweeted “we must all stand strong against refusal.”
Tens of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets in protest after Netanyahu’s announcement, blocking Tel Aviv’s main artery, transforming the Ayalon highway into a sea of blue-and-white Israeli flags and lighting a large bonfire in the middle of the road.
Demonstrations took place in Beersheba, Haifa and Jerusalem, where thousands of people gathered outside Netanyahu’s private residence. Police scuffled with protesters and sprayed the crowd with a water cannon.
Inon Aizik, 27, said he came to demonstrate outside Netanyahu’s private residence in central Jerusalem because “bad things are happening in this country,” referring to the judicial overhaul as “a quick legislative blitz.”
Netanyahu’s decision came less than a day after Gallant, a former senior general, called for a pause in the controversial legislation until after next month’s Independence Day holidays, citing the turmoil in the ranks of the military.
Gallant had voiced concerns that the divisions in society were hurting morale in the military and emboldening Israel’s enemies. “I see how the source of our strength is being eroded,” Gallant said.
While several other Likud members had indicated they might follow Gallant, the party quickly closed ranks on Sunday, clearing the way for his dismissal.
Galit Distal Atbaryan, Netanyahu’s public diplomacy minister, said that Netanyahu summoned Gallant to his office and told him “that he doesn’t have any faith in him anymore and therefore he is fired.”
Gallant tweeted shortly after the announcement that “the security of the state of Israel always was and will always remain my life mission.”
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said that Gallant’s dismissal “harms national security and ignores warnings of all defense officials.”
Israel’s consul general in New York City, Assaf Zamir, resigned in protest.
Avi Dichter, a former chief of the Shin Bet security agency, is expected to replace him. Dichter had reportedly flirted with joining Gallant but instead announced Sunday he was backing the prime minister.
Netanyahu’s government is pushing ahead for a parliamentary vote this week on a centerpiece of the overhaul — a law that would give the governing coalition the final say over all judicial appointments. It also seeks to pass laws that would grant parliament the authority to override Supreme Court decisions with a basic majority and limit judicial review of laws.
Netanyahu and his allies say the plan will restore a balance between the judicial and executive branches and rein in what they see as an interventionist court with liberal sympathies.
But critics say the constellation of laws will remove the checks and balances in Israel’s democratic system and concentrate power in the hands of the governing coalition. They also say that Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, has a conflict of interest.
Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets over the past three months to demonstrate against the plan in the largest demonstrations in the country’s 75-year history.
Leaders of Israel’s vibrant high-tech industry have said the changes will scare away investors, former top security officials have spoken out against the plan and key allies, including the United States and Germany, have voiced concerns.
In recent weeks discontent has even surged from within Israel’s army – the most popular and respected institution among Israel’s Jewish majority. A growing number of Israeli reservists, including fighter pilots, have threatened to withdraw from voluntary duty in the past weeks.
Israel’s military is facing a surge in fighting in the occupied West Bank, threats from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group and concerns that archenemy Iran is close to developing a nuclear-weapons capability.
Violence both in Israel and the occupied West Bank has escalated over the past few weeks to heights unseen in years.
Manuel Trajtenberg, head of an influential Israeli think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies, said, “Netanyahu can dismiss his defense minister, he cannot dismiss the warnings he heard from Gallant.”
Meanwhile, an Israeli good governance group on Sunday asked the country’s Supreme Court to punish Netanyahu for allegedly violating a conflict of interest agreement meant to prevent him from dealing with the country’s judiciary while he is on trial for corruption.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a fierce opponent of the overhaul, asked the court to force Netanyahu to obey the law and sanction him either with a fine or prison time for not doing so. It said he was not above the law.
“A prime minister who doesn’t obey the court and the provisions of the law is privileged and an anarchist,” said Eliad Shraga, the head of the group, echoing language used by Netanyahu and his allies against protesters opposed to the overhaul. “The prime minister will be forced to bow his head before the law and comply with the provisions of the law.”
The prime minister responded saying the appeal should be dismissed and said that the Supreme Court didn’t have grounds to intervene.
Netanyahu is barred by the country’s attorney general from directly dealing with his government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary, based on a conflict of interest agreement he is bound to, and which the Supreme Court acknowledged in a ruling over Netanyahu’s fitness to serve while on trial for corruption. Instead, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, a close confidant of Netanyahu, is spearheading the overhaul.
But on Thursday, after parliament passed a law making it harder to remove a sitting prime minister, Netanyahu said he was unshackled from the attorney general’s decision and vowed to wade into the crisis and “mend the rift” in the nation. That declaration prompted the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, to warn that Netanyahu was breaking his conflict of interest agreement.
The fast-paced legal and political developments have catapulted Israel into uncharted territory and toward a burgeoning constitutional crisis, said Guy Lurie, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.
“We are at the start of a constitutional crisis in the sense that there is a disagreement over the source of authority and legitimacy of different governing bodies,” he said.
Netanyahu is on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate affairs involving wealthy associates and powerful media moguls. He denies wrongdoing and dismisses critics who say he will try to seek an escape route from the charges through the legal overhaul.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The government’s plan to increase its control over the judiciary has sparked the largest protest movement in Israeli history and triggered a grave national crisis, including even warnings from the president of civil war.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets as they have every week since the start of the year — in many cases bringing parts of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to a standstill. It has also raised the hackles of Israel’s closest allies, testing its ties with the United States.
Police unleashed water cannons on masses of protesters who whistled and waved Israeli flags as they marched down Ayalon highway in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. “Shame! Shame!” they chanted in Hebrew. As the protesters advanced, officers on horseback violently rammed into the crowds. “Haven’t the Jewish people suffered enough?” read one protester’s sign.
The judicial proposal has drawn intensifying criticism from across Israeli society — including from former prime ministers and defense officials, high-tech business leaders, Israel’s attorney general and American Jews.
In recent weeks, discontent over the overhaul has even surged from within Israel’s army — the country’s most popular and respected institution, which has historically been an apolitical unifier. A growing number of Israeli reservists have threatened to withdraw from voluntary duty in the past weeks, posing a broad challenge to Netanyahu as he defiantly plows ahead with the judicial changes while on trial for corruption.
“The events taking place in Israeli society do not spare the Israel Defense Forces — from all sides, feelings of anger, pain and disappointment arise, with an intensity I have never encountered before,” Gallant said. “I see how the source of our strength is being eroded.”
In security-minded Israel, the unrest has prompted concern about the Israeli military’s stability as it maintains its 55-year-old occupation of the West Bank and faces threats from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group and from its archenemy Iran.
Violence both in Israel and the occupied West Bank has escalated over the past few weeks to heights unseen in years. On Saturday, a Palestinian shot and wounded two Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank town of Hawara, the site of a violent settler rampage last month.
“This is a clear, immediate and tangible danger to the security of the state,” he said, referring to the judicial plans. “I will not take part in this.”
Gallant stopped short of saying what, if anything, he would do if Netanyahu ignored his plea. But his strong statement of concern for the polarized nation marked the first crack in Netanyahu’s coalition, the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in Israeli history.
Despite mounting dissent, the government passed a key part of the overhaul on Thursday, approving legislation that would protect the Israeli leader from being deemed unfit to rule because of his trial and claims of a conflict of interest. Critics say the law is tailor-made for Netanyahu and encourages corruption.
That day, Gallant met with Netanyahu, reportedly to voice concerns that protests by Israeli reservists and other security forces were hurting Israel’s international image and power of deterrence. After the meeting, Netanyahu nonetheless announced that he would become directly involved in the overhaul, declaring his hands “untied.”
Israel’s attorney general issued a sharp rebuke on Friday, warning that Netanyahu had broken the law by announcing his direct involvement in the overhaul while facing criminal charges — a stern statement that raised the specter of a constitutional crisis.
Netanyahu is on trial for fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of scandals involving wealthy associates and powerful media moguls. He denies wrongdoing and dismisses critics who say he could find an escape route from the charges through the legal overhaul his government is advancing.
Supporters of the judicial overhaul — which includes plans to increase the coalition’s control over judicial appointments and diminish the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down laws passed by Parliament — say it will restore power to elected legislators and make the courts less interventionist. Critics say the move upends Israel’s system of checks and balances and pushes it toward autocracy.
In spite of the backlash, Netanyahu has dismissed offers for a compromise, including from Israel’s mainly ceremonial president earlier this month.
“For the sake of our security, for the sake of our unity, it is our duty to return to the arena of dialogue,” Gallant said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Officials in Kyiv and Berlin condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Moscow would station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus.
The Kremlin “took Belarus as a nuclear hostage,” Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, tweeted on Sunday.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, added that the move was a violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, something that Putin denied in his announcement on Saturday. Podolyak tweeted that Putin “is afraid of losing & all he can do is scare [us] with tactics.”
Putin said on Saturday that Russia would construct a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by July. He likened the plans to the U.S. stationing its nuclear weapons in Europe, and said Russia would retain control of the nuclear arms stationed in Belarus.
“The United States has been doing this for decades,” Putin was quoted as saying. “They deployed their tactical nuclear weapons long ago on the territories of their allies, NATO countries, in Europe,” he said.
Saturday evening, the German Federal Foreign Office told national media that the decision was akin to a “further attempt at nuclear intimidation.”
“The comparison made by President Putin on the nuclear participation of NATO is misleading and cannot serve to justify the step announced by Russia,” the Foreign Office was quoted as saying.
The Biden administration in the U.S. said it would “monitor the implications” of Putin’s announcement but would not adjust its nuclear weapons strategy.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. “We remain committed to the collective defense of the NATO alliance.”
Russia used Belarus as a staging ground to send troops into Ukraine for Putin’s invasion. And Moscow and Minsk have maintained close military ties as the Kremlin continues its war on Ukraine.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Moscow would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russian state media reported.
Russia will “complete construction of a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus on July 1,” Putin said, according to a report by Ria Novosti.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has agreed to the deployment, which won’t violate obligations under nuclear nonproliferation agreements, Putin was quoted as saying. Moscow would not transfer control of the nuclear arms to Minsk, according to the reports.
“We agreed with Lukashenko that we would place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus without violating the nonproliferation regime,” Putin said, according to Tass.
“The United States has been doing this for decades,” Putin was quoted as saying. “They deployed their tactical nuclear weapons long ago on the territories of their allies, NATO countries, in Europe,” he said.
“We have agreed [with Belarus] that we will do the same. I stress that this will not violate our international agreements on nuclear non-proliferation,” Putin said.
Russia has already stationed 10 aircraft in Belarus capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons, he said.
The U.S. said it would “monitor the implications” of Putin’s plan but would not adjust its nuclear weapons strategy.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. “We remain committed to the collective defense of the NATO alliance.”
The development came as intense fighting continued around the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, which Russia has been trying to capture for months. The Russian forces’ assault on the town has “largely stalled,” the British Defense Ministry said on Saturday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Saturday evening that Moscow “must lose” in its war of aggression against Ukraine. “We are doing everything possible and everywhere so that Russian revanchism loses in every element of its aggression against Ukraine and the freedom of nations in general,” he said.
“Russia must lose on the battlefield, in the economy, in international relations, and in its attempts to replace the historical truth with some imperial myths,” Zelenskyy said. “It is the full-scale defeat of Russia that will be a reliable guarantee against new aggressions and crises.”
The U.K. Defense Ministry said there was “extreme attrition” on the Russian side around Bakhmut, but that “Ukraine has also suffered heavy casualties” in its defense of the area, which has become a focal point of the war.
Moscow may be shifting its operational focus following “inconclusive results from its attempts to conduct a general offensive since January 2023,” the ministry said.
Gabriel Gavin contributed reporting.
This story has been updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The Hungarian parliament ratified Finland’s NATO membership on Monday, putting Helsinki one step closer to joining the alliance but leaving Sweden waiting in the wings.
Members of Hungary’s parliament voted by a margin of 182 to 6 in favor of Finnish accession.
Helsinki now only needs the Turkish parliament’s approval — expected soon — to become a NATO member.
Hungary’s move comes after repeated delays and political U-turns.
Hungarian officials spent months telling counterparts they had no objections and their parliament was simply busy with other business.
Budapest then changed its narrative last month, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — who has an iron grip over his ruling Fidesz party — arguing the point that some of his legislators had qualms regarding criticism of the state of Hungarian democracy.
Finland and Sweden have been at the forefront of safeguarding democratic standards in Hungary, speaking out on the matter long before many of their counterparts.
But earlier this month — just as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that he will support Finland’s NATO membership — the Fidesz position flipped again, with its parliamentary group chair then announcing support for Helsinki’s bid.
Turkey’s parliament is expected to ratify Finnish membership soon. But it is keeping Sweden in limbo, as Turkish officials say they want to see the country implement new anti-terror policies before giving Ankara’s green light.
Following in Turkey’s footsteps, Hungary is now also delaying a decision on Sweden indefinitely — prompting criticism from Orbán’s critics.
Attila Ara-Kovács, a member of the European Parliament from Hungary’s opposition Democratic Coalition, said that Orbán’s moves are part of a strategy to fuel anti-Western attitudes at home.
The government’s aim is “further inciting anti-Western and anti-NATO sentiment within Hungary, especially among Orbán’s fanatical supporters — and besides, of course, to serve Russian interests,” he said.
“This has its consequences,” Ara-Kovács said, adding that “support for the EU and NATO in the country is significantly and constantly decreasing.”
A recent Eurobarometer poll found that 39 percent of Hungarians view the EU positively. A NATO report, published last week, shows that 77 percent of Hungarians would vote to stay in the alliance — compared to 89 percent in Poland and 84 percent in Romania.
But Hungarian officials are adding the spin that they do support Sweden’s NATO membership.
The Swedish government “constantly questioning the state of Hungarian democracy” is “insulting our voters, MPs and the country as a whole,” said Balázs Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister’s political director (no relation to the prime minister).
It is “up to the Swedes to make sure that Hungarian MPs’ concerns are addressed,” he tweeted on Sunday. “Our goal,” he added, “is to support Sweden’s NATO accession with a parliamentary majority as broad as possible.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
