Security official confirms US cut intelligence sharing with Ukraine
US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said that the US 'had taken a step back' with sharing intelligence with Ukraine, adding that the two countries were engaged in talks to move forward a minerals deal.
Published On 5 Mar 2025
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
44 minutes ago
- Al Jazeera
Ukraine's F-16 pilot killed repelling massive Russian air attack
Ukraine has lost an F-16 aircraft and its pilot while repelling a Russian missile and drone strike, according to the war-torn country's air force. After shooting down seven air targets, the plane was damaged and lost altitude overnight, the Ukrainian military said in a statement published on Telegram on Sunday. 'This night, while repelling a massive enemy air attack, a pilot of the 1st class, Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Ustimenko, born in 1993, died on an F-16 aircraft,' it said. In a separate statement, the air force said Russia launched 537 projectiles against Ukraine, including Shahed drones, cruise and ballistic missiles. Ukraine claimed to have intercepted 475 of them. According to the Kyiv Independent newspaper, the sound of explosions and strikes was reported in multiple areas across the country, including in southern Mykolaiv, southeastern Zaporizhia and western Lviv. Ihor Taburets, the governor of central Ukraine's Cherkasy region, said at least six people were injured and civilian infrastructure was damaged in attacks. Three multistorey buildings and a college were damaged in the attack, he said. Industrial facilities were hit in the southern Ukrainian region of Mykolaiv and the central Dnipropetrovsk region, officials say. Local authorities published photos of high-rise residential buildings with charred walls and broken windows, and rescuers evacuating people. In Russia, the Ministry of Defence said its forces destroyed three Ukrainian drones in the border regions of Kursk and Rostov, and in Ukraine's annexed Crimean Peninsula. The latest wave of violence comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he intended to scale back military expenditure and also indicated he was ready for a new round of peace negotiations with Ukraine. In the past months, Moscow and Kyiv have sent delegations twice to the Turkish city of Istanbul for peace talks, but have made no progress towards ending the conflict, which started after Russia invaded its neighbour more than three years ago. However, both sides agreed upon and showed cooperation on prisoners' swap.
Al Jazeera
5 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Senate Republicans vote to advance Trump's ‘Big, Beautiful Bill'
The Republican-controlled Senate of the United States has voted to take President Donald Trump's so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill' into the next phase of discussion, making it more likely to pass in the coming days. The measure, which is Trump's top legislative goal, passed its first procedural hurdle in a 51 to 49 vote on Saturday, with two Republican senators joining all Democrats in voting against it. The result came after several hours of negotiation as Republican leaders and Vice President JD Vance sought to persuade last-minute holdouts in a series of closed-door negotiations. Trump has pushed his party to get the bill passed and on his desk for him to sign into law by July 4, the US's Independence Day. He was monitoring the vote from the Oval Office late into the night, according to a senior White House official. One Big Beautiful Bill Act Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC, said the 940-page 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' was released shortly before midnight on Friday, and senators are still attempting to understand exactly what it means. 'One of the clear things in the bill is that it provides a $150bn boost to military spending. It also adds funding for mass deportations and building that border wall. Now, in order to get this money, what has happened is that there are cuts to Medicare, as well as to the Clean Energy funding programme,' he said. 'The other issue is that there are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats in the Senate. Now all the Democrats are opposed to the bill. That means every single Republican vote will count,' Hanna added. The procedural vote on Saturday, which would start a debate on the megabill, began after hours of delay. It then remained open for more than three hours of standstill as three Republican senators – Thom Tillis, Ron Johnson and Rand Paul – joined Democrats to oppose the legislation. Three others – Senators Rick Scott, Mike Lee and Cynthia Lummis – negotiated with Republican leaders into the night in hopes of securing bigger spending cuts. In the end, Wisconsin Senator Johnson flipped his no vote to yes, leaving only Paul and Tillis opposed among Republicans. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Republicans unveiled the bill 'in the dead of night' and are rushing to finish the bill before the public fully knows what is in it. He immediately forced a full reading of the text in the Senate, which would take an estimated 15 hours. 'Future generations will be saddled with trillions in debt. Debt is abstract, but what does it mean for the average American? Raising your costs, raising your costs to buy a home, raising your costs to buy a car, raising your costs on credit card bills. And why are they doing all this?' he asked. 'Why are they doing the biggest Medicaid cuts in history? Now it's getting close to a trillion dollars, just in Medicaid alone, all to cut taxes for the ultra-rich and special interests.' Elon Musk renews criticism If passed in the Senate, the bill would go back to the House of Representatives for approval, where Republicans can only afford to lose a handful of votes – and are facing stiff opposition from within their own ranks. Republicans are split on the Medicaid cuts, which will threaten scores of rural hospitals and lead to an estimated 8.6 million Americans being deprived of healthcare. The spending plan would also roll back many of the tax incentives for renewable energy that were put in place under Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden. Nonpartisan analysts estimate that a version of Trump's tax cut and spending bill would add trillions to the $36.2 trillion US government debt. They also say that the bill would pave the way for a historic redistribution of wealth from the poorest 10 percent of Americans to the richest. The bill is unpopular across multiple demographic, age and income groups, according to extensive recent polling. On Saturday, billionaire Elon Musk, with whom Trump had a public falling out this month over his criticism of the bill, again doubled down on his criticism of the draft legislation. The Tesla and Space X CEO called the package 'utterly insane and destructive'. 'The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,' he wrote on X. 'It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.' He later posted that the bill would be 'political suicide for the Republican Party.'
Al Jazeera
7 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,221
Here is how things stand on Sunday, June 29: A Russian drone attack killed a teacher and her husband in Ukraine's Odesa, and wounded 14 others, according to Ukrainian officials. Three of the victims, including a child, were in critical condition. At least two others were killed in another Russian attack on the villages of Kostiantynivka and Ivanopillia in the eastern region of Donetsk on Friday, according to Governor Vadym Filashkin. Explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Saturday night, with Mayor Vitali Klitschko warning residents to take shelter from Russian drones 'heading for the city', according to the official Ukrinform news agency. Russia's Ministry of Defence said Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Chervona Zirka in Donetsk. The ministry later said it had also seized the area between the Vovcha and Mokri Yaly rivers. Top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskii also said on Telegram that Russia's military was 'surging towards' the key city of Kostiantynivka in Donetsk, but that 'apart from sustaining numerous losses, [it] has achieved nothing'. In Russia, a Ukrainian drone attack caused several injuries to a 43-year-old man, including a traumatic brain injury, in the village of Glushkovo in the Kursk region, the TASS news agency reported, citing a local official. Ukraine's SBU security service said Ukrainian forces using special drones attacked the Kirovske military airfield in Russian-occupied Crimea, destroying three attack helicopters and an anti-aircraft missile system. Russia's military said it destroyed 64 Ukrainian drones over western Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea overnight and into Saturday. Politics and diplomacy Poland's outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, during a visit to Kyiv, asked Ukraine to 'please be patient' during the handover to his nationalist successor, Karol Nawrocki. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters he would 'of course' invite Nawrocki to Ukraine after he assumed office. Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker and chairperson of the Ukrainian Parliament, told Ukraine's ongoing marathon television broadcast that a bill is being drafted to hold elections after the war, Ukrinform reported.
