Pakistan rolls out the red carpet Wednesday for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish leader will jointly hold the 7th session of the Pakistan-Turkey High Level Strategic Cooperation Council with Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif during his brief visit ending Thursday. VOA Pakistan bureau chief Sarah Zaman reports on key topics of discussion.
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WASHINGTON — A journalist with VOA’s sister outlet, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was released from Belarus on Wednesday, after spending more than three years imprisoned in a case that was widely viewed as politically motivated.

Andrey Kuznechyk, a journalist with RFE/RL’s Belarus service, was released from Belarus on Wednesday, the U.S. special envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, said. Two other individuals were also released, including a U.S. citizen, but Boehler did not specify their identities.

RFE/RL President Stephen Capus welcomed Kuznechyk’s release and thanked President Donald Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Lithuanian government for their help in securing the reporter’s release.

“This is a joyous day for Andrey, his wife, and their two young children. After more than three years apart, this family is together again thanks to President Trump. We are also grateful to Secretary Rubio and his team, and to the Lithuanian government for their support,” Capus said in a statement.

Boehler said that the release was unilateral, meaning no one was swapped with Belarus in exchange for the prisoners. Boehler attributed the release to Trump’s commitment to securing the freedom of wrongfully detailed Americans abroad.

“He has made bringing Americans home a top priority,” Boehler said. “The smartest thing you can do to curry favor with the president of the United States is bring Americans home.”

Kuznechyk had been jailed since November 2021. He was initially sentenced to 10 days in jail on hooliganism charges, which he rejected. When Kuznechyk was due to be released, authorities kept him in prison and added an additional charge of creating an extremist group.

In a trial that lasted only one day, a regional court found Kuznechyk guilty in June 2022 and sentenced him to six years in prison.

RFE/RL and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees RFE/RL and VOA, consistently rejected the charges against Kuznechyk and called for his release.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the prisoners’ release from Belarus “a remarkable victory.”

Natalia Belikova, head of international cooperation at Press Club Belarus, celebrated the news of Kuznechyk’s release. 

“I could hardly believe it,” Belikova told VOA. 

It’s rare for journalists to be released early from prison in Belarus, according to Belikova.  

“My joy at Andrey’s release is marred by the fact that 40 journalists are still behind bars in Belarus, many serving lengthy sentences,” she added. “Everyone, no matter where they live, should have the right to speak freely.”

Belarus ranks among the worst jailers of journalists in the world, with the Belarusian Association of Journalists counting 40 behind bars.

Another RFE/RL journalist — Ihar Losik — has been jailed in Belarus since 2020 on charges he and his employer reject.

“We remain hopeful that our journalist Ihar Losik will also be released and look to the Trump administration for its continued leadership and guidance,” Capus said in a statement.

Three other RFE/RL journalists are currently jailed in Russian-occupied Crimea, Russia and Azerbaijan, all on charges that are viewed as politically motivated.

The Belarusian government has embarked on a severe crackdown on independent journalists and other critics ever since longtime President Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory in a 2020 presidential election that was widely viewed as rigged.

More than 1,200 political prisoners are currently detained in Belarus, according to the rights group Viasna.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told NATO military allies on Wednesday that Ukraine’s hoped-for return to its 2014 borders is an “unrealistic objective,” and that the United States does not believe that Kyiv membership in NATO is a “realistic outcome” of a negotiated end to Russia’s three-year war on Ukraine.

Speaking in Brussels at NATO headquarters, Hegseth told his fellow defense chiefs, “We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

No peace talks have been scheduled, but Hegseth said any durable conclusion to the war must include “robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again.”

“The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” he said, which would invoke the military alliance’s mutual defense provision among NATO’s 32 member nations that requires each of them to help defend each other when they are attacked.  

Kyiv has long sought NATO membership, and the alliance’s other member nations have said they are committed to it, but not while the war rages on.  

Instead, Hegseth said security guarantees for Ukraine should be backed by “capable European and non-European troops.”

“If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5,” he said, referring to the alliance’s mutual defense clause.

Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, supported pro-Russian separatists fighting against Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine in the ensuing years and then launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022. It now controls about 20% of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory.

Before taking office to begin his second term in the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict even before being inaugurated. More recently, his aides say he hopes for a peace pact in the first 100 days of his new term, roughly by the end of April.

Under former President Joe Biden, the U.S. was Ukraine’s biggest military benefactor. Trump has often voiced skepticism of continued U.S. support, refusing to say at a political debate last year that he wanted Ukraine to win the war.

Now Trump appears intent on getting Europe to assume most of the financial and military responsibilities for the defense of Ukraine. He also has suggested that going forward, Ukraine should pay for continued U.S. support by giving the United States access to its rare earth minerals needed to produce technology products.

“Members of this [Ukraine] contact group must meet the moment,” Hegseth said to the assembled group of about 50 member countries that have provided $126 billion worth of weapons and military assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

“We hear you,” British Defense Secretary John Healey said in response to Hegseth’s opening remarks.  

Hegseth said that NATO members must increase their defense spending to 5% of their national economies, a figure that no NATO country currently allocates.

The U.S. is at 3.4%, with Poland the highest NATO country at 4.12%. The current NATO defense spending goal is 2% of each country’s national economy, a figure that 23 of the 32 countries meet, up from six in 2021 after Trump chided other NATO countries about the issue during his first presidential term.

Hegseth would not commit the U.S. to the 5% figure, saying it was up to Trump.

“We live in fiscally constrained times,” Hegseth said, and need to be responsible with taxpayer money.

But the U.S. defense leader said, “The United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship [among NATO members] which encourages dependence [on the U.S.]; rather our relationship will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security.”

NATO leaders are expected to agree on new spending targets at their next planned summit, in The Hague, Netherlands, June 24-26.   

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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STATE DEPARTMENT — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to depart Thursday for Munich and later this week will visit the Middle East amid an intensive diplomatic push to end Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, as well as efforts to follow up on U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for the post-war Gaza Strip. 

Preparations are also underway for Rubio to hold talks with his counterparts from Japan and South Korea on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, according to people familiar with the plan who spoke with VOA on condition of anonymity. 

If the meeting takes place as expected, it would be the first U.S.-Japan-South Korea foreign ministerial trilateral under the Trump administration. 

Ukraine 

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches its third year, the U.S. is pursuing multiple diplomatic avenues to secure a peace deal. 

Although not directly linked to efforts to secure a peace deal, U.S. officials have described Russia’s Tuesday release of American schoolteacher Marc Fogel as “a show of good faith from the Russians” and “a sign that we are moving in the right direction to end” the brutal war in Ukraine. 

Rubio has said that the U.S. will reaffirm its determination to end the war during meetings at the Munich Security Conference, a high-profile international security forum running from Feb. 14 to 16.   

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are set to hold in-person talks in Munich. U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg and Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, will also attend the conference. 

Ukraine has said that its delegation will present its position on ending the war and outline its vision for achieving a lasting peace. Meanwhile, negotiations are in progress as Ukraine seeks security guarantees from the U.S. and Europe. 

Ukraine is willing to offer U.S. companies lucrative reconstruction contracts, Zelenskyy told The Guardian newspaper in an interview this week. He also said that if Trump manages to bring him and Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, he would offer a land swap: Ukrainian-occupied territory in Kursk in exchange for Russian-held land in Ukraine. 

Rare earth minerals 

Trump has expressed interest in making continued military aid conditional on access to Ukraine’s raw materials. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent visited Kyiv on Wednesday for talks on energy and rare earth minerals. He is the first cabinet-level official in the Trump administration to visit the country. 

More than four dozen minerals, including several types of rare earths, nickel and lithium, are considered critical to the U.S. economy and national defense. Ukraine has large deposits of uranium, lithium and titanium. 

Russia has gained control over a significant portion of Ukraine’s identified mineral resources in the territories it occupies. If Russia permanently seizes that land, Ukraine will lose access to those minerals and other reserves, which would be a blow to both European and U.S. security. 

First US-Japan-ROK trilateral 

Rubio’s expected talks with both Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul in Munich would take place amid concerns over North Korea’s military ties with Russia, China’s support for Russia’s defense industry, and security challenges in the Indo-Pacific. 

On Jan. 21, Rubio met with Iwaya in Washington to discuss strengthening U.S.-Japan cooperation against global security threats, including what officials describe as “China’s destabilizing actions” in the Indo-Pacific. The following day, he spoke with Cho by phone, where both emphasized the need to further trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Japan and South Korea. 

“We need to do more and strengthen relationships with our friends around the world,” said Republican Congressman Rob Wittman of Virginia during a discussion hosted by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, on Tuesday.   

“We should be concerned about China’s growing relationships with countries like Russia,” he added. Wittman serves as the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. 

He described the military cooperation between Russia and North Korea as “transactional,” adding that Moscow’s technology transfers to Pyongyang are not out of the “goodness of the heart.” 

The U.S.-Japan-ROK trilateral framework was established under former president Joe Biden’s administration.  

Experts, including former senior State Department official Rick Waters, note that such trilateral cooperation has become increasingly institutionalized, making it “hard to reverse” — even amid South Korea’s political turmoil following President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment over his brief martial law attempt last December. 

“I’d be very surprised if, in four years, we would see anything other than further consolidation” of existing U.S. alliance frameworks in the Indo-Pacific,” Waters said Tuesday at the CSIS event. 

Middle East 

Rubio will travel to the Middle East after holding talks with his counterparts in Munich. 

On Tuesday, he spoke with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan ahead of his visit to Abu Dhabi, the country’s capital, next week. 

They “discussed the ceasefire agreement in Gaza and the importance of ensuring that Hamas releases all hostages, including American citizens,” according to the State Department. 

Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said that the two also “highlighted the imperative of ensuring that Hamas can never rule Gaza or threaten Israel again” during the call. 

Trump said this week the Hamas militant group must release all hostages held in Gaza by midday Saturday, or he will propose canceling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. 

Rubio is scheduled to travel to Munich, Jerusalem, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi from Feb. 13-18.
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Ukrainian officials said Wednesday Russian forces launched overnight attacks involving ballistic missiles and more than 120 drones, killing at least one person in Kyiv.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that three other people also were injured as a result of the attacks.

Kyiv emergency services reported fires and other damage at buildings in four districts in the city.

Ukraine’s military said missiles also targeted the city of Kryvyi Rih, located in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

The regional governor, Serhiy Lysak, said on Telegram that Russian attacks damaged a school, hotel, administrative building and three apartment buildings.

Ukrainian air defenses shot down six missiles and 71 of the 123 drones that Russian forces deployed, the Ukrainian air force said.

Drone intercepts took place over the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Sumy and Zhytomyr regions.

“Putin is not preparing for peace – he continues to kill Ukrainians and destroy cities,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app. “Right now, we need the unity and support of all our partners in the fight for a just end to this war.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday it shot down three Ukrainian drones over the Belgorod region.
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Some of the 300 Russian fishermen stranded on an ice floe drifting in the Sea of Okhotsk in the Western Pacific have refused evacuation, Russia’s emergency ministry said on Wednesday.

A rescue operation with helicopters and vessels has brought 109 of the fishermen ashore, but some refused to be rescued, the ministry said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

“Some extreme sports enthusiasts are not going to leave without a catch, under any circumstances,” the ministry said.

It posted a video showing fishermen walking on snowy ice away from the rescuers. It was unclear why so many fishermen had gathered at the location.

About a 10-meter ice crack formed from the Russian village of Malki to the mouth of the Dolinka River in the Sakhalin region, setting the fishermen adrift in the Sea of Okhotsk, the ministry said earlier.

Winters in the Sakhalin region in Russia’s Far East, which comprises the Sakhalin Island and the chain of the Kuril Islands, are cold, snowy and long, often lasting more than five months.
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Marc Fogel, an American teacher detained in Russia since August 2021 for bringing medically prescribed marijuana into the country, was freed by Moscow on Tuesday and headed back to the United States, the White House announced.

The 63-year-old history teacher, who had been serving a 14-year sentence, was expected to be reunited with his family in the eastern state of Pennsylvania by the end of the day.

He left Russian airspace aboard the personal aircraft of Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign affairs envoy who helped negotiate his release.

Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, said the U.S. and Russia “negotiated an exchange” to free Fogel but gave no details about what the U.S. side of the bargain entailed. In such deals in recent years, the U.S. has often released Russian prisoners that Moscow wanted in exchange.

Instead, Waltz cast the deal for Fogel’s release in broader geopolitical terms, saying it was “a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine,” an invasion Russia launched against its neighbor in February 2022, with hundreds of thousands killed or wounded on both sides.

Trump had vowed to broker an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine before taking office Jan. 20, but his aides more recently have said he hopes to do it within the first 100 days of his new administration, roughly by the end of April.

“Since President Trump’s swearing-in, he has successfully secured the release of Americans detained around the world, and President Trump will continue until all Americans being held are returned to the United States,” Waltz said. The recent release of six Americans held in Venezuela and Fogel’s freeing are the only publicly known instances.

Fogel had been traveling with a small amount of medically prescribed marijuana to treat back pain. Once convicted by a Russian court, he began serving his 14-year sentence in June 2022, with the outgoing administration of former President Joe Biden late last year classifying him as wrongfully detained.

Witkoff is a billionaire New York real estate executive and close friend of Trump’s. He previously had helped negotiate the six-week Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza initiated by Biden in the last months of his presidency.

Witkoff also had been secretly negotiating the deal for Fogel’s release. Online flight trackers spotted his presence in Moscow when he flew there on his private jet.

With the U.S. leading the way in the West’s opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was the first known trip to Moscow by a senior U.S. official since William Burns, then the Central Intelligence Agency director, flew to the Russian capital in November 2021, in an unsuccessful attempt to keep Russia from invading Ukraine.
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The U.S. State Department has determined that dual U.S.-Russian national Ksenia Karelina, also known as Ksenia Khavana, was wrongfully detained in Russia.

Karelina was jailed by a Russian court for 12 years for donating $51 to a Ukrainian charity. The new determination will enable U.S. authorities to operate more actively in securing her release. Karelina’s civil partner remains optimistic that efforts by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump will eventually get her out of the Russian prison in which she is being held.

Click here for the full story in Russian.

 
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The 27-nation European Union and Canada quickly vowed Tuesday to stand firm against U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to impose 25% tariffs on their steel and aluminum exports, verbal sparring that could lead to a full-blown trade war between the traditionally allied nations.

“The EU will act to safeguard its economic interests,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. “Tariffs are taxes — bad for business, worse for consumers.

“Unjustified tariffs on the EU will not go unanswered — they will trigger firm and proportionate countermeasures,” she said.

Trump said the steel and aluminum tariffs would take effect on March 12. In response, EU officials said they could target such U.S. products as bourbon, jeans, peanut butter and motorcycles, much of it produced in Republican states that supported Trump in his election victory.

The EU scheduled a first emergency video on Wednesday to shape the bloc’s response.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, which holds the EU presidency, said it was “important that everyone sticks together. Difficult times require such full solidarity.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a conference on artificial intelligence in Paris that Trump’s steel and aluminum levy would be “entirely unjustified,” and that “Canadians will resist strongly and firmly if necessary.”

Von der Leyen is meeting Tuesday with U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Paris, where they are expected to discuss Trump’s tariff orders.

“We will protect our workers, businesses and consumers,” she said in advance of the meeting.

Trump imposed the steel and aluminum tariff to boost the fortunes of U.S. producers.

“It’s a big deal,” he said. “This is the beginning of making America rich again.”

Billionaire financier Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department, said the tariff on the imports could bring back 120,000 U.S. jobs.

As he watched Trump sign an executive order, Lutnick said, “You are the president who is standing up for the American steelworker, and I am just tremendously impressed and delighted to stand next to you.”

Trump’s proclamations raised the rate on aluminum imports to 25% from the previous 10% that he imposed in 2018 to aid the struggling sector. And he restored a 25% tariff on millions of tons of steel and aluminum imports.

South Korea — the fourth-biggest steel exporter to the United States, following Canada, Brazil and Mexico — also vowed to protect its companies’ interests but did not say how.

South Korean acting President Choi Sang-mok said Seoul would seek to reduce uncertainties “by building a close relationship with the Trump administration and expanding diplomatic options.”

The spokesperson of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said London was “engaging with our U.S. counterparts to work through the detail” of the planned tariffs.

In Monday’s executive order, Trump said “all imports of aluminum articles and derivative aluminum articles from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Mexico, EU countries and the UK” would be subject to additional tariffs.

The same countries are named in his executive order on steel, along with Brazil, Japan and South Korea.

“I’m simplifying our tariffs on steel and aluminum,” Trump said. “It’s 25% without exceptions or exemptions.”

Bernd Lange, the chair of the European Parliament’s international trade committee, warned that previous trade measures against the U.S. were only suspended and could legally be easily revived.

“When he starts again now, then we will, of course, immediately reinstate our countermeasures,” Lange told rbb24 German radio. “Motorcycles, jeans, peanut butter, bourbon, whiskey and a whole range of products that of course also affect American exporters” would be targeted, he said.

In Germany, the EU’s largest economy, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told parliament that “if the U.S. leaves us no other choice, then the European Union will react united.”

But he warned, “Ultimately, trade wars always cost both sides prosperity.”

The European steel industry expressed concerns about the Trump tariffs.

“It will further worsen the situation of the European steel industry, exacerbating an already dire market environment,” said Henrik Adam, president of the European Steel Association.

He said the EU could lose up to 3.7 million tons of steel exports. The United States is the second-largest export market for EU steel producers, representing 16% of the total EU steel exports.

“Losing a significant part of these exports cannot be compensated for by EU exports to other markets,” Adam said.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
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Paris — U.S. Vice President JD Vance told Europeans on Tuesday their “massive” regulations on artificial intelligence could strangle the technology, and rejected content moderation as “authoritarian censorship.”

The mood on AI has shifted as the technology takes root, from one of concerns around safety to geopolitical competition, as countries jockey to nurture the next big AI giant.

Vance, setting out the Trump administration’s America First agenda, said the United States intended to remain the dominant force in AI and strongly opposed the European Union’s far tougher regulatory approach.

“We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry,” Vance told an AI summit of CEOs and heads of state in Paris.

“We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship,” he added.

Vance criticized the “massive regulations” created by the EU’s Digital Services Act, as well as Europe’s online privacy rules, known by the acronym GDPR, which he said meant endless legal compliance costs for smaller firms.

“Of course, we want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet, and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation,” he said.

European lawmakers last year approved the bloc’s AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology.

Vance is leading the American delegation at the Paris summit.

Vance also appeared to take aim at China at a delicate moment for the U.S. technology sector.

Last month, Chinese startup DeepSeek freely distributed a powerful AI reasoning model that some said challenged U.S. technology leadership. It sent shares of American chip designer Nvidia down 17%.

“From CCTV to 5G equipment, we’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes,” Vance said.

But he said that “partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure. Should a deal seem too good to be true? Just remember the old adage that we learned in Silicon Valley: if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product.”

Vance did not mention DeepSeek by name. There has been no evidence of information being able to surreptitiously flow through the startup’s technology to China’s government, and the underlying code is freely available to use and view. However, some government organizations have reportedly banned DeepSeek’s use.

Speaking after Vance, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he was fully in favor of trimming red tape, but he stressed that regulation was still needed to ensure trust in AI, or people would end up rejecting it. “We need a trustworthy AI,” he said.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen also said the EU would cut red tape and invest more in AI.

In a bilateral meeting, Vance and von der Leyen were also likely to discuss Trump’s substantial increase of tariffs on steel.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was expected to address the summit on Tuesday. A consortium led by Musk said on Monday it had offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit controlling OpenAI.

Altman promptly posted on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

The technology world has closely watched whether the Trump administration will ease recent antitrust enforcement that had seen the U.S. sue or investigate the industry’s biggest players.

Vance said the U.S. would champion American AI — which big players develop — he also said: “Our laws will keep Big Tech, little tech, and all other developers on a level playing field.”
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WASHINGTON — The U.S., U.K. and Australia on Tuesday sanctioned a Russian web-hosting services provider and two Russian men who administer the service in support of Russian ransomware syndicate LockBit.  

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and its U.K. and Australian counterparts sanctioned Zservers, a Russia-based bulletproof hosting services provider — which is a web-hosting service that ignores or evades law enforcement requests — and two Russian nationals serving as Zservers operators.  

Treasury alleges that Zservers provided LockBit access to specialized servers designed to resist law enforcement actions. LockBit ransomware attacks have extracted more than $120 million from thousands of victims around the world.  

LockBit has operated since 2019, and is the most deployed ransomware variant across the world and continues to be prolific, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.  

The Treasury Department’s Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Bradley T. Smith, said Tuesday’s action “underscores our collective resolve to disrupt all aspects of this criminal ecosystem, wherever located, to protect our national security.” 

LockBit has been linked to attacks on airplane manufacturer Boeing, the November 2023 attack against the Industrial Commercial Bank of China, the U.K.’s Royal Mail, Britain’s National Health Service, and international law firm Allen and Overy.  

Ransomware is the costliest and most disruptive form of cybercrime, crippling local governments, court systems, hospitals and schools as well as businesses. It is difficult to combat as most gangs are based in former Soviet states and out of reach of Western justice.  

Tammy Bruce, a State Department spokeswoman, said Tuesday’s sanctions “underscore the United States’ commitment, along with our international partners, to combating cybercrime and degrading the networks that enable cyber criminals to target our citizens.” 
…

Russia and Ukraine attacked each other’s energy infrastructure overnight, just days before U.S. and Ukrainian officials were set to discuss steps toward ending the nearly three-year war sparked by Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Russian strikes damaged natural gas production facilities in Ukraine’s Poltava region overnight, using a combined attack of 19 cruise, ballistic and guided missiles, the Ukrainian air force said.

As a result of the attack, Ukraine imposed emergency power restrictions on Tuesday, according to Ukraine energy minister German Galushchenko.

“The enemy launched an attack on gas infrastructure overnight,” Galushchenko said in a post on social media. “As of this morning, the energy sector continues to be under attack.”

Russia, which previously focused its missile and drone attacks on the Ukrainian electricity sector, recently stepped-up attacks on gas storage and production facilities, Reuters reported.

The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday that it had struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Saratov region overnight, causing a fire.

It said the refinery produces more than 20 types of petroleum products and is involved in supplying the Russian forces.

Saratov regional Governor Roman Busargin posted on the Telegram messaging app that a fire at an industrial facility in the region had been extinguished. He did not name the facility.

Russia’s defense ministry said air defense units intercepted and destroyed 40 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.

Eighteen of the drones were destroyed over the Saratov region, the ministry said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. The rest were downed over four other regions in Russia’s south and west, it said.

The Russian military also said its forces had taken control of the settlement of Yasenove in eastern Ukraine.

Talks between US and Ukraine

As U.S. Vice President JD Vance prepares for a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later this week, President Donald Trump suggested that Ukraine “may be Russian someday.”

Trump talked about the war in a Fox News interview that aired Monday.

“They may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday,” he said.

Trump also discussed trading Ukraine’s natural resources, such as rare minerals, in exchange for U.S. military support.

“We are going to have all this money in there, and I say I want it back. And I told them that I want the equivalent, like $500 billion worth of rare earth,” Trump said. “And they have essentially agreed to do that, so at least we don’t feel stupid.”

Trump’s senior advisers are expected to meet with Zelenskyy this week on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg are traveling to Germany for the summit.

“Knowing how the process works, it would probably be better for Zelenskyy if we all met together and talked through it as a group,” Kellogg said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Trump on Monday said he’d “probably” speak with Zelenskyy this week.

Information from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse was used in this report.
…

PARIS — Europe will invest an additional $51.5 billion to bolster the bloc’s artificial intelligence ambition, European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday.

It will come on top of the European AI Champions Initiative, that has already pledged 150 billion euros from providers, investors and industry, von der Leyen told the Paris AI Summit.

“Thereby we aim to mobilize a total of 200 billion euros for AI investments in Europe,” she said.

Von der Leyen said investments will focus on industrial and mission-critical technologies.

Companies which have signed up to the European AI Champions initiative, spearheaded by investment company General Catalyst, include Airbus, ASML, Siemens, Infineon, Philips, Mistral and Volkswagen.
…

Senior advisers in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump are preparing to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, according to an Associated Press interview with retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg.

Kellogg, a special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, said planning continues for talks with Zelenskyy at the annual conference. 

Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kellogg are among those who could participate in the sideline conversations with Ukraine’s president, AP reported. 

Trump has been critical about how much the war is costing the U.S. and has said European countries should repay the U.S. for helping Ukraine. 

During his campaign, Trump said if he were elected president, he would bring a swift end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, but he did not specify how he would accomplish that. 

Recently, he has said that he wants to make a deal with Ukraine to continue U.S. support in exchange for access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.  

On Monday, AP reported the president said there are people currently working on a money-for-minerals-deal with Ukraine.  

“We have people over there today who are making a deal that, as we give money, we get minerals and we get oil and we get all sorts of things,” Trump said. 

Kellogg told AP that “the economics of that would allow for further support to the Ukrainians.”

Meanwhile, Russian drone attacks caused a fire in Kyiv, injured a woman in Sumy and damaged several homes, according to Ukrainian officials. 

The Russian military reported downing 15 Ukrainian drones overnight, including seven in the Krasnodar region.

Nobody was hurt as a result of the fire in Kyiv, which was sparked in a non-residential building, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Five houses were damaged and a woman was reportedly injured in the northeastern city of Sumy, regional governor Ihor Kalchenko said on Telegram.

 

Material from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse was used in this report.
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PARIS — In front of political and tech leaders gathered at a summit in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a strategy on Monday to make up for the delay in France and Europe in investing in artificial intelligence (AI) but was faced with a “counter-summit” that pointed out the risks of the technology. 

The use of chatbots at work and school is destroying jobs, professions and threatening the acquisition of knowledge, said union representatives gathered at the Theatre de la Concorde located in the Champs-Elysees gardens, less than a kilometer from the venue of the Summit for Action on Artificial Intelligence. 

Habib El Kettani, from Solidaires Informatique, a union representing IT workers, described an “automation already underway for about ten years,” which has been reinforced with the arrival of the flagship tool ChatGPT at the end of 2022. 

“I have been fighting for ten years to ensure that my job does not become an endangered species,” said Sandrine Larizza, from the CGT union at France Travail, a public service dedicated to the unemployed. 

She deplored “a disappearance of social rights that goes hand in hand with the automation of public services,” where the development of AI has served, according to her “to make people work faster to respond less and less to the needs of users, by reducing staff numbers.” 

Loss of meaning 

“With generative AI, it is no longer the agent who responds by email to the unemployed person but the generative AI that gives the answers with a multitude of discounted job offers in subcontracting,” said Larizza. 

This is accompanied by “a destruction of our human capacities to play a social role, a division into micro-tasks on the assembly line and an industrialization of our professions with a loss of meaning,” she said, a few days after the announcement of a partnership between France Travail and the French startup Mistral. 

“Around 40 projects” are also being tested “with postal workers,” said Marie Vairon, general secretary of the Sud PTT union of the La Poste and La Banque Postale group. 

AI is used “to manage schedules and simplify tasks with a tool tested since 2020 and generalized since 2023,” she said, noting that the results are “not conclusive.” 

After the implementation at the postal bank, La Banque Postale, of “Lucy,” a conversational robot handling some “300,000 calls every month,” Vairon is concerned about a “generative AI serving as a coach for bank advisers.” 

‘Students are using it’ 

On the education side, “whether we like it or not, students are using it,” said Stephanie de Vanssay, national educational and digital adviser of the National Union of Autonomous Unions (UNSA) for primary and secondary school. 

“We have indifferent teachers, worried teachers who are afraid of losing control and quality of learning, skeptics, and those who are angry about all the other priorities,” she said. 

Developing the critical thinking of some 12 million students is becoming, in any case, “an even more serious concern and it is urgent to explain how to use these tools and why,” de Vanssay said. 

The Minister of National Education Elisabeth Borne announced on Thursday the launch of a call for tenders for an AI for teachers, as well as a charter of use and training for teachers. 

“No critical thinking without interactions and without helping each other to think and progress in one’s thinking, which requires intermediation,” said Beatrice Laurent, national secretary of UNSA education. “A baby with a tablet and nursery rhymes will not learn to speak.”
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French President Emmanuel Macron wants Europe to become a leader in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, he told a global summit of AI and political leaders in Paris Monday where he announced that France’s private sector has invested nearly $113 billion in French AI.

Financial investment is key to achieving the goal of Europe as an AI hub, Macron said in his remarks delivered in English at the Grand Palais.

He said the European bloc would also need to “adopt the Notre Dame strategy,” a reference to the lightning swift rebuilding of France’s famed Notre Dame cathedral in five years after a devastating 2019 fire, the result of simplified regulations and adherence to timelines.

“We showed the rest of the of the world that when we commit to a clear timeline, we can deliver,” the French leader said.

Henna Virkkunen, the European Union’s digital head, indicated that the EU is in agreement with simplifying regulations. The EU approved the AI Act last year, the world’s first extensive set of rules designed to regulate technology.

European countries want to ensure that they have a stake in the tech race against an aggressive U.S. and other emerging challengers. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen is scheduled to address the EU’s ability to compete in the tech world Tuesday.

Macron’s announcement that the French private sector will invest heavily in AI “reassured” Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, a U.S. company with French co-founders that is a hub for open-source AI, that there will be “ambitious” projects in France, according to Reuters.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s head, told the gathering that the shift to AI will be “the biggest of our lifetimes.”

However, such a big shift also comes with problems for the AI community. France had wanted the summit to adopt a non-binding text that AI would be inclusive and sustainable.

“We have the chance to democratize access [to a new technology] from the start,” Pichai told the summit.

Whether the U.S. will agree to that initiative is uncertain, considering the U.S. government’s recent moves to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance is attending the summit and expected to deliver a speech on Tuesday. Other politicians expected Tuesday at the plenary session are Chinese Vice Premier Zhan Guoqing and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. About 100 politicians are expected.

There are also other considerations with a shift to AI. The World Trade Organization says its calculations indicate that a “near universal adoption of AI … could increase trade by up to 14 percentage points” from what it is now but cautions that global “fragmentation” of regulations on AI technology and data flow could bring about the contraction of both trade and output.

A somewhat frightening side effect of AI technology is that it can replace the need for humans in some sectors.

International Labor Organization leader Gilbert Houngbo told the summit Monday that the jobs that AI can do, such as clerical work, are disproportionately held by women. According to current statistics, that development would likely widen the gender pay gap.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — Europe’s Euclid space telescope has detected a rare halo of bright light around a nearby galaxy, astronomers reported Monday. The halo, known as an Einstein ring, encircles a galaxy 590 million light-years away, considered close by cosmic standards.  

A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. Astronomers have known about this galaxy for more than a century and so were surprised when Euclid revealed the bright glowing ring, reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.  

An Einstein ring is light from a much more distant galaxy that bends in such a way as to perfectly encircle a closer object, in this case a well-known galaxy in the constellation Draco.  

The faraway galaxy creating the ring is more than 4 billion light-years away. Gravity distorted the light from this more distant galaxy, thus the name honoring Albert Einstein. The process is known as gravitational lensing.

“All strong lenses are special, because they’re so rare, and they’re incredibly useful scientifically. This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful,” lead author Conor O’Riordan of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics said in a statement.

Euclid rocketed from Florida in 2023. NASA is taking part in its mission to detect dark energy and dark matter in the universe.
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VOA Russian speaks to Yevgeniya Chirikova, a coordinator of the Activatica initiative that tracked down the Kremlin’s system of mass torture and violence on Ukrainian territories occupied by the Russian army. Using the blueprint that Moscow previously used in Chechnya, Activatica says Russian forces kidnap civilians they deem dangerous and put them in illegal detention centers where they are subjected to systematic torture sanctioned by the authorities in Moscow.

Click here for the full story in Russian.

 
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Bucharest, Romania — Romanian President Klaus Iohannis announced his resignation on Monday following mounting pressure from populist opposition groups, two months after a top court annulled a presidential election in the European Union country.

“To spare Romania from this crisis, I am resigning as president of Romania,” he said in an emotional address, adding that he will leave office on Feb. 12.

Iohannis, 65, held the presidential role since 2014 and served the maximum of two five-year terms. But his presidency was extended in December after the Constitutional Court canceled the presidential race two days before a Dec. 8 runoff.

That came after the far-right populist Calin Georgescu unexpectedly won the first round, after which allegations emerged of Russian interference and electoral violations.

Several opposition parties, including the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), the nationalist SOS party and the Party of Young People — but also some members of the reformist Save Romania Union party — sought Iohannis’ ouster through a motion filed to Parliament. Some lawmakers from the governing coalition were also expected to vote in favor.

“This is a useless endeavor because, in any case, I will leave office in a few months after the election of the new president,” Iohannis said. “It is an unfounded move because I have never — I repeat, never — violated the constitution. And it is a harmful endeavor because … everyone loses, and no one gains.”

He added that the consequences of his ouster would be “long-lasting and highly negative” for Romania, an EU member since 2007, and a NATO member since 2004. “None of our partners will understand why Romania is dismissing its president when the process for electing a new president has already begun,” he said.

New dates have been set to rerun the presidential vote with the first round scheduled for May 4. If no candidate obtains more than 50% of the ballot, a runoff would be held two weeks later, on May 18. It is not yet clear whether Georgescu will be able to participate in the new election.

After his resignation announcement, clashes broke out between Georgescu supporters and police in front of the government building in the capital, Bucharest.
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PRISTINA, Kosovo — Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s leftwing party won most seats in the weekend parliamentary election but was left without a majority in the house, forcing it to look for an ally to form the next government, according to preliminary results released Monday.

The vote on Sunday was key in determining who will lead Kosovo as talks on normalizing ties with rival Serbia remain stalled and foreign funding for one of Europe’s poorest countries is in question.

The election marked the first time since independence in 2008 that Kosovo’s parliament completed a full four-year mandate. It was the ninth parliamentary vote in Kosovo since the end of the 1998-1999 war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists that pushed Serbian forces out following a 78-day NATO air campaign.

Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence.

With 88% of the votes counted, Kurti’s Self-Determination Movement Party, or Vetevendosje!, had won 41.3%, according to the Central Election Commission, the election governing body.

The Democratic Party of Kosovo, or PDK, whose main leaders are detained at a Netherlands-based international criminal tribunal in The Hague and accused of war crimes, won 21.8% of the vote.

Next, with 17.8% support is the Democratic League of Kosovo, or LDK, the oldest party in the country. The LDK lost much of its support after the death in 2006 of its leader, Ibrahim Rugova. The Alliance for Kosovo’s Future of former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj garnered 7.7% of the votes.

Still, Kurti was upbeat, though his remarks gave nothing away about who he plans to ask to join his coalition government.

“The people won. Vetevendosje! won. We are the winners who will form the next Cabinet,” Kurti told journalists as his supporters took to the streets to celebrate.

The commission’s webpage was down temporarily on Sunday as it was overloaded “due to the citizens’ high interest to learn the results,” election body said. Results were collected manually.

A preliminary turnout after 92% of the votes counted was 40.6% — about 7% lower than four years ago.

The new 120-seat parliament reserves 20 seats for minorities regardless of election results, 10 of them for the Serb minority.

Kurti’s new term will face multiple challenges after Washington recently announced it was freezing foreign aid and the European Union, almost two years ago, suspended funding for some projects and initiatives. He also is under pressure to increase public salaries and pensions, improve education and health services, and fight poverty.

Kosovo, with a population of 1.6 million, is one of the poorest countries in Europe with an annual gross domestic product of less than $6,000 per person.

Kurti also is likely to try and repair ties with Western powers, at odds since his Cabinet took several steps that raised tensions with Serbia and Kosovo’s ethnic Serbs, including the ban on the use of the Serbian currency, the dinar, and dinar transfers to Kosovo’s Serbs.

Kosovo’s ethnic Serb minority depends on Belgrade’s social services and payments.

The United States, the European Union and the NATO-led stabilization force in Kosovo, or KFOR, have urged the government in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, to refrain from unilateral actions, fearing the revival of inter-ethnic conflict.

In Sunday’s election, Srpska Lista, the main party of the ethnic Serb minority, won 2.8% of the vote — just over half of its winnings four years ago.

The party’s leader, Zlatan Elek, said it was “the absolute winner of this election,” and thanked Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic for the “strong support for our people.”

KFOR had increased its presence in Kosovo after last year’s tensions with Serbia, as well as ahead of the election.

A team of 104 observers from the EU, 18 from the Council of Europe and about 1,600 others from international or local organizations, monitored the vote.
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