Biden’s shift in policy added an uncertain, new factor to the conflict on the eve of the 1,000-day milestone since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022.

It also came as a Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions struck a residential area of Sumy in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people and injuring 84 others. Another missile barrage sparked apartment fires in the southern port of Odesa, killing at least 10 people and injuring 43, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.

Washington is easing limits on what Ukraine can strike with its American-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMs, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Sunday, after months of ruling out such a move over fears of escalating the conflict and bringing about a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

The Kremlin was swift in its condemnation.

“It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps, and they have been talking about this, to continue adding fuel to the fire and provoking further escalation of tensions around this conflict,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The scope of the new firing guidelines isn’t clear. But the change came after the U.S., South Korea and NATO said North Korean troops are in Russia and apparently are being deployed to help Moscow drive Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk border region.

Biden’s decision almost entirely was triggered by North Korea’s entry into the fight, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, and was made just before he left for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.

Russia also is slowly pushing Ukraine’s outnumbered army backward in the eastern Donetsk region. It has also conducted a devastating aerial campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine.

Peskov referred journalists to a statement from President Vladimir Putin in September in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly raise the stakes.

It would change “the very nature of the conflict dramatically,” Putin said at the time. “This will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia.”

Peskov claimed that Western countries supplying longer-range weapons also provide targeting services to Kyiv. “This fundamentally changes the modality of their involvement in the conflict,” he said.

Putin warned in June that Moscow could provide longer-range weapons to others to strike Western targets if NATO allowed Ukraine to use its allies’ arms to attack Russian territory. After signing a treaty with North Korea, Putin issued an explicit threat to provide weapons to Pyongyang, noting Moscow could mirror Western arguments that it’s up to Ukraine to decide how to use them.

“The Westerners supply weapons to Ukraine and say: ‘We do not control anything here anymore and it does not matter how they are used,’” Putin has said. “Well, we can also say: ‘We supplied something to someone — and then we do not control anything.’ And let them think about it.”

Putin has also reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness to use nuclear weapons if it sees a threat to its sovereignty.

Biden’s move will “mean the direct involvement of the United States and its satellites in military action against Russia, as well as a radical change in the essence and nature of the conflict,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, has raised uncertainty about whether his administration would continue military support to Ukraine. He has also vowed to end the war quickly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a muted response Sunday to the approval that he and his government have been requesting for over a year, adding, “The missiles will speak for themselves.”

“The longer Ukraine can strike, the shorter the war will be,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Monday ahead of a U.N. Security Council meeting marking the 1,000th-day milestone.

Asked whether the United Kingdom would follow the United States in authorizing use of its longer-range missiles, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who chaired the meeting, declined to comment. He said doing so would risk “operational security and can only play into the hands of Putin.”

Consequences of the new policy are uncertain. ATACMS, which have a range of about 300 kilometers (190 miles), can reach far behind the about 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line in Ukraine, but they have relatively short range compared with other types of ballistic and cruise missiles.

The policy change came “too late to have a major strategic effect,” said Patrick Bury, a senior associate professor in security at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom.

“The ultimate kind of impact it will have is to probably slow down the tempo of the Russian offensives which are now happening,” he said, adding that Ukraine could strike targets in Kursk or logistics hubs or command headquarters.

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, agreed the U.S. move would not alter the war’s course, noting Ukraine “would need large stockpiles of ATACMS, which it doesn’t have and won’t receive because the United States’ own supplies are limited.”

On a political level, the move “is a boost to the Ukrainians and it gives them a window of opportunity to try and show that they are still viable and worth supporting” as Trump prepares to take office, said Matthew Savill, director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

The cue for the policy change was the arrival in Russia of North Korean troops, according to Glib Voloskyi, an analyst at the CBA Initiatives Center, a Kyiv-based think tank.

“This is a signal the Biden administration is sending to North Korea and Russia, indicating that the decision to involve North Korean units has crossed a red line,” he said.

Russian lawmakers and state media bashed the West for what they called an escalatory step, threatening a harsh response.

“Biden, apparently, decided to end his presidential term and go down in history as ‘Bloody Joe,’” lawmaker Leonid Slutsky told Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of parliament, called it “a very big step toward the start of World War III” and an attempt to “reduce the degree of freedom for Trump.”

Russian newspapers offered similar predictions of doom. “The madmen who are drawing NATO into a direct conflict with our country may soon be in great pain,” Rossiyskaya Gazeta said.

Some NATO allies welcomed the move.

President Andrzej Duda of Poland, which borders Ukraine, praised the decision as a “very important, maybe even a breakthrough moment“ in the war.

“In the recent days, we have seen the decisive intensification of Russian attacks on Ukraine, above all, those missile attacks where civilian objects are attacked, where people are killed, ordinary Ukrainians,” Duda said.

Easing restrictions on Ukraine was “a good thing,” said Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna of Russian neighbor Estonia.

“We have been saying that from the beginning — that no restrictions must be put on the military support,” he told senior European Union diplomats in Brussels. “And we need to understand that situation is more serious (than) it was even maybe like a couple of months ago.”

But Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, known for his pro-Russian views, described Biden’s decision as “an unprecedented escalation” that would prolong the war.

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Do you think that things have clarified somewhat over the last week since the Hamas massacres in Israel?

I get the feeling that our beloved leaders are caught, just a little, between a rock and a hard place. They would like to equivocate on the Palestinian Question, but the Hamas atrocities make it just a little more difficult. Our leaders like to be on the side of the Left-approved victims, and are embarrassed to support our friends — like Israel.

And you know what? I couldn’t be happier. The harder it becomes for our rulers to support fake victims, the happier it makes me.

Oh, I get it. Ever since Marx, lefty politicians have recognized that the royal road to political power is to pose as the savior of the victims, whether workers, women, blacks, gays, Palestinians. Never mind that most of the problems of the workers was due to government screwing up the economy with wars, inflations, deflations, and central bank incompetence. Never mind that, after the passage of the civil rights acts, pro-black politics is simple racism. Never mind that feminism has benefited high-born women and destroyed the traditional family that supports ordinary women. Never mind that the gay rights movement has morphed into the trans rights racket.

Never mind that our current leaders came to power upon the promise that they would administer an efficient and just state, replacing the horrors of the “spoils system” with educated and honest administration.

Can anyone doubt that our present rulers operate a “spoils system” that makes the 19th-century system seem like a walk in the park?

And the incompetence! Two world wars and a cold war. Two muffed credit crashes, in 1929 and 2008, when the central bank utterly failed. Two inflation episodes, in the 1970s and now the 2020s.

But… climate change and systemic racism.

And now our government is slow off the mark on the Hamas atrocities.

What exactly is the big idea in the Obama and Biden Iran negotiations? Maybe you chaps in the intelligence community can leak us a memo signed by 51 current and former intelligence chiefs to set us straight on Iran and Hamas and the $6 billion.

What exactly is the idea that Trump supporters are extremists and need deprogramming but Antifa rioters are mostly peaceful protesters that need to be bailed out of jail?

Why is it that bookstores all across the land feature Banned Books Week, that this year seems to be all about sexually explicit books to be used in elementary schools, while nobody talks about the “Books Banned by Amazon” over at unz.com. Not that Holocaust denialism is any more appetizing than gay sex instruction for the little kiddies.

Why is the confinement of the mentally ill in government mental institutions a scandal and Nurse Ratched a monster, but the confinement of children in government schools — government child custodial facilities — is okay and unionized teachers pushing trans propaganda are doing Gaia’s work?

We know why. Our ruling class has a Narrative on all kinds of issues, and you disagree with the Narrative at your peril. Our leaders have ways of suppressing disagreement, from mere marginalization of opposition figures to the development of government censorship agencies like CISA and its terrible MDM triplets: misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, to the active demonizing of nonconforming opinions as literally Hitler, as in “climate denialism.” In emergency, break glass and play the Race Card.

Really, we shouldn’t be that shocked that our rulers use their power to suppress their opponents. Rulers gotta rule.

But we the people should remember that politics is a gussied-up lie to get you to think that your neighbor is your enemy. Government is a gussied-up lie to get you to think that straight-up corruption is really public service. Activism is a gussied-up lie to get you to think that regime paramilitaries are really peacefully protesting against injustice.

All this may not be pretty, but it certainly tends to clarify the State of Things in America.

There is another way. It is founded on the notion that there is very little that government can do to Make Things Better, and an awful lot that every government does to Make Things Worse.

Once upon a time there was a woman writer, George Eliot, who concluded her most famous novel Middlemarch with the following words: [T]he growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Only half, Georgie? I’d say that nearly all the things that help make the world go round have nothing to do with politics and government.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various author’s articles on this Opinion piece or elsewhere online or in the newspaper where we have articles with the header “COLUMN/EDITORIAL & OPINION” do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints or official policies of the Publisher, Editor, Reporters or anybody else in the Staff of the Hemet and San Jacinto Chronicle Newspaper.

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian missile attack killed two civilians in an apartment building in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, local authorities said, as President Vladimir Putin dismissed the importance of a new U.S.-supplied weapon that Kyiv used to execute one of the most damaging attacks on the Kremlin’s air assets since the start of the war.

Putin told reporters that Russia “will be able to repel” further attacks by the U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS.

Ukraine claimed it used those missiles to destroy nine Russian helicopters, as well as ammunition, an air defense system and other assets at two airfields in Russia-occupied regions on Tuesday.

That development came as the two sides looked to gain battlefield advantages and consolidate their positions ahead of the winter when the weather would hamper operations.

The ATACMS will shift the battlefield layout to some degree as Russia will need to disperse its aircraft and ammunition depots. It had used aircraft to stop Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive.

Putin, speaking to reporters during a visit to Beijing, conceded the ATACMS creates an additional threat but he insisted that the weapon would not change the situation along the 1,500-kilometer (932-mile) front line.

“For Ukraine, in this sense, there’s nothing good … it only prolongs the agony,” he said.

Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, described Washington’s decision to supply the ATACMS as “reckless” and “a grave mistake” that won’t alter the war’s outcome.

The fighting has ground largely to a stalemate, with a protracted war of attrition expected at least through next year.

The U.K. defense ministry said Wednesday that the Kremlin’s forces are currently trying to push forward in some parts of eastern Ukraine. However, the areas are well defended and it is “highly unlikely” the Russians will accomplish their goal of a major breakthrough, it said in an assessment posted on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Wednesday’s attack killed two Ukrainian civilians and wounded at least three others when a Russian missile struck a building in the central district of the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, the region’s Gov. Yurii Malashko said.

The attack apparently used six S-300 missiles, which took only 42 seconds to reach the city after being launched from Russian-controlled Ukraine land, according to Malashko.

Russia’s defense ministry, meanwhile, claimed its forces shot down 28 Ukrainian drones in the Belgorod and Kursk regions and in the Black Sea area. It did not provide further details.

It wasn’t immediately possible to verify the two sides’ battlefield claims.

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A fatal stabbing in Illinois, a gun pointed at protesters in Pennsylvania, vandalism at synagogues and harassment of staff at a Palestinian restaurant all are raising fears that the war between Israel and Hamas is sparking violence in the United States.

The tensions follow a familiar pattern of crimes against Jewish and Muslim communities rising when conflict erupts in the Middle East and Americans have been killed or taken hostage.

“We have a two pronged threat to American faith communities,” said Brian Levin, founding director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernadino.

While it’s too soon to say with certainty whether anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish crimes have increased during the war, hate crimes overall increased in the U.S. last year. In its annual report released Monday, the FBI estimated that hate crimes increased by 7% to 11,634 cases in 2022 compared to the previous year. With 1,124 incidents, anti-Jewish attacks were the second most reported hate crime, after anti-Black cases. There were 158 reported incidents of anti-Muslim attacks, and 92 reports of anti-Arab cases, according to the report.

Civil rights organizations, however, believe that even before the Hamas attacks in Israel, crime data didn’t reflect reality due to a lack of participation by local police departments and internalized fear among the Muslim population, said Robert McCaw, director of governmental affairs for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In 2021, the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, released a study in which 85% of those who were subjected to Islamophobia said they did not report it to authorities.

“The true number remains to be seen,” McCaw said.

In one of the most troubling recent incidents, a landlord in Plainfield, Illinois, is accused of attacking a Palestinian American tenant and her son with a knife on Saturday, purportedly because of their Muslim faith, stabbing the 6-year-old boy to death and injuring the mother. The sheriff, prosecutors and family all said the boy and his mother were targeted for being Muslim. More specifically, prosecutors said the landlord was “angry … for what was going on in Jerusalem” and his wife told police her husband feared they would be attacked by people of Middle Eastern descent.

In Pennsylvania, a man was charged with felony ethnic intimidation after police said he pointed a gun and yelled slurs at attendees of a pro-Palestinian rally near the state Capitol on Friday. In Boston, the word “Nazis” was spray-painted across the sign for the Palestinian Cultural Center for Peace.

“There’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of anxiety and uncertainty in everything that’s happening,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He said the group has received more than 100 reports including verbal harassment, threats, intimidation and physical attacks.

“It’s very reminiscent of the early days of post-9/11, where people didn’t want to go outside, they didn’t want to send their kids to school,” he said. “They’re just worried about being in public and being approached.”

In Dearborn, Michigan, which has the nation’s highest Muslim population per capita, community and faith leaders met outside the city’s police department Monday. The city has seen multiple threats of violence in recent days, including from a man accused of asking on social media if anyone in metro Detroit wanted to “go to Dearborn & hunt Palestinians.”

“We have to understand that these issues that are overseas are not just overseas, they are very much also issues here,” said Imran Salha, the imam of the Islamic Center of Detroit.

Historically, anti-Jewish hate crimes have increased during violent Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, said Levin, a professor emeritus at California State.

In March 1994, there was a spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes from 79 incidents to 147 a month after an American Israeli extremist opened fire on Palestinian Muslims in a mosque, he said, citing FBI statistics. In October 2000, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the U.S. surged from 81 to 204 compared to the month before after a series of violent protests in Arab villages in northern Israel. Levin observed a similar trend in May 2021, particularly in cities with significant Jewish populations such as New York and Los Angeles.

In California last week, flyers spreading anti-Jewish rhetoric were left in neighborhoods and on vehicles in the city of Orange. And in Fresno, police said a man suspected of breaking windows and leaving an anti-Jewish note at a bakery also is a “person of interest” in the vandalism of a local synagogue.

Julie Platt, chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, said synagogues and Jewish community centers around the country have been strengthening their security programs, but that she does not want to see members of her community duck for cover.

“I think the whole point of this is to terrorize us psychologically,” she said. “As long as I hear of no credible threats, I believe we should live our Jewish lives.”

Several Palestinian Americans interviewed Friday in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Arab population said the atmosphere has been tense in the last week.

Jumana Alkaram said she has not been personally threatened but that: “I know if I was to demonstrate my heritage or the Palestinian flag there would be some type of threat. Because the majority has the support of Israel and don’t have the full legit story about what’s happening in Gaza.”

In New York City, a Palestinian restaurant, Ayat, was forced to disconnect its phone after receiving “nonstop” threatening voicemails, according to co-owner, Abdul Elenani. The storefront features a mural of a crying Palestinian and its menu includes calls to “end the occupation.” On Friday, a man entered the dining room shouting “terrorist” at the people behind the counter, Elenani said.

Still, the hostile reception was overshadowed by the support he has received from his neighbors, many of whom are Jewish and share his views about minimizing civilian deaths, he said.

“In New York, we all live together, we work together, we grow together,” Elenani said. “And we all want this violence to stop.”

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Zaporizhzhia region of southeast Ukraine has become the most recent hot spot for battles in the 18-month war, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday, as Kyiv’s forces press ahead with their counteroffensive.

Shoigu told Russian military officers that Ukraine has brought up reserve brigades there that were trained by Kyiv’s Western allies. He offered no evidence for his claim, which could not be independently verified.

Fighting in the southeast could be one of the keys to the war. If Russian defenses there collapse, Ukrainian forces could push southward toward the coast and potentially split Russian forces into two.

Shoigu’s assertion was corroborated in part by other reports and assessments of Ukraine’s three-month-old effort to drive out the Kremlin’s troops.

The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank, citing geolocated footage, said Tuesday that Ukrainian light infantry has advanced beyond some of the anti-tank ditches and dense minefields that make up Russia’s layered defenses in Zaporizhzhia.

However, it said it was unable to state that the defense was fully breached, because no Ukrainian heavy armor has been witnessed in the area.

It is in the south that the Ukrainian brigades have made most recent battlefield gains as the counteroffensive inches forward under heavy fire.

Since the grinding counteroffensive began about three months ago, Ukraine has advanced 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian officials claim. Troops surmounted dense Russian fortifications last week to retake the village of Robotyne. That was Ukraine’s first tactically significant victory in that part of the country.

Ukrainian forces have made more progress in that area and were fortifying captured positions on Tuesday morning, according to Pavlo Kovalchuk, spokesman of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Neither side’s battlefield claims could be verified.

If Ukrainians progress just 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Robotyne, they could come within firing range of Russia’s east-west transport routes and potentially weaken Moscow’s combat capabilities, military observers say.

Ukrainian forces are advancing without air cover, making their progress harder and slower, while Russia has launched its own push in the northeast to pin down Ukrainian forces and prevent them being redeployed to the south.

Ukraine has adapted its counteroffensive tactics in recent weeks, moving from attempts to bludgeon its way through Russian lines using Western-supplied armor to better-planned tactical attacks that make incremental gains, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank.

“However, this approach is slow, with approximately 700–1,200 meters (2,300-4,000 feet) of progress every five days, allowing Russian forces to reset,” it said in an assessment Monday.

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BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union countries on Wednesday agreed on a new package of sanctions against Russia for its war against Ukraine aimed at countering sanctions circumvention through third countries and businesses.

The EU had previously imposed 10 rounds of sanctions on Russia since President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Banks, companies and markets have been hit — even parts of the sensitive energy sector. More than 1,000 officials are subject to asset freezes and travel bans.

Much work in the latest batch of sanctions has involved closing loopholes so that goods vital to Putin’s war effort don’t get through via nations that trade with the EU and have maintained a business-as-usual relationship with Moscow.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU’s executive arm, said the new package will “deal a further blow to Putin’s war machine with tightened export restrictions, targeting entities supporting the Kremlin.”

“Our anti-circumvention tool will prevent Russia from getting its hands on sanctioned goods,” she added.

It is the first time that plans have been announced to target trade via other countries, apart from sanctions against Iranians alleged to be supplying drones to Russia.

It also prohibits the transit via Russia of products and technologies which might help boost its defense and security sector.

Under the latest package, if the EU sees for example that exports of a certain computer chip increase five-fold to one nation, and then sees that such exports from the country increase by about the same amount to Russia, the bloc would be able to take tougher action to end the practice.

The new package specifically allows the implementation of measures restricting the sale, or export of sensitive dual-use goods and technology to third countries who could then transfer them to Russia. Under the new rules, the EU could exert much more pressure to end the practice than before.

“It does give a big stick with which the EU can say: ‘please don’t do it,’ and then, if it continues we go to restrictive measures,” said an official from an EU nation on condition of anonymity because the rules had yet to be published in the EU’s official journal.

The rules cannot be excessively rigid, since the EU does not want to immediately alienate nations.

“We need to look for a balance with nations. When we address their bad behavior, we have to make sure we don’t immediately drive them into the arms of Putin,” the official said.

The new package will also target 71 extra persons and 33 entities in relation with the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Also included is the prohibition to access to ports in the EU by vessels engaged in ship-to-ship transfers when there is a suspicion that a boat is not respecting the ban on importing seaborne Russian crude oil and petroleum products into the bloc.

In addition, the package extends the suspension of the broadcasting licenses in the EU of five Russian media outlets under state control.

Past sanctions have been agreed on in just months — extremely quickly for the EU. But new measures are becoming increasingly hard to endorse as they inflict damage on the economic and political interests of some member countries even as they aim for the Kremlin.

Hungary, for instance, had said earlier this week it wouldn’t allow EU measures targeting Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom, insisting on the importance of nuclear energy for Europe’s security and environmental goals.

Hungary signed new agreements in April to ensure its continued access to Russian energy, a sign of the country’s continuing diplomatic and trade ties with Moscow that have confounded some European leaders amid the war in Ukraine.

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — South African President Cyril Ramaphosa arrived in Ukraine on Friday as part of a delegation of African leaders and senior officials seeking ways to end Kyiv’s 15-month war with Russia.

Ramaphosa’s press service said that he was met by a Ukrainian special envoy and South Africa’s ambassador at a rail station near Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where bodies of civilians lay scattered in the streets following Russian forces’ withdrawal last spring.

The Bucha visit was symbolically significant, as its name has come to stand for the barbarity of Moscow’s military since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The brutal Russian occupation of Bucha left hundreds of civilians dead in the streets and in mass graves.

The African delegation also includes senior officials from Zambia, Senegal, Uganda, Egypt, the Republic of the Congo and the Comoro Islands.

Ramaphosa said last month that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to separate meetings with the delegation.

The delegation was set to travel to St. Petersburg later Friday, where Russia’s top international economic conference is taking place, and meet with Putin on Saturday.

Officials who helped prepare the talks said the African leaders not only aimed to initiate a peace process but also assess how Russia, which is under heavy international sanctions, can be paid for the fertilizer exports Africa desperately needs.

They are also set to discuss the related issue of ensuring more grain shipments out of Ukraine amid the war and the possibility of more prisoner swaps.

The African peace overture comes as Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas, using Western-supplied advanced weapons in attacks along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line. Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that the campaign could last a long time.

China has also been working on a peace proposal, but it appears to have few chances of success as the warring sides appear no closer to a cease-fire.

Ukrainian troops recorded successes along three stretches of the front line in the country’s south and east, a spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement Friday.

According to Andriy Kovalev, Ukrainian forces have moved forward south of the town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, in the direction of the village of Robotyne, as well as around Levadne and Staromaiorske, on the boundary between Zaporizhzhia and the Donetsk province further east.

Kovalev also said that Ukrainian troops advanced in some areas around Vuhledar, a mining town in Donetsk that was the site of one of the main tank battles in the war so far.

It wasn’t possible to indepenently verify the claims.

Russian shelling on Thursday and overnight killed two civilians and wounded two others in the southern Kherson region, its Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said.

Russian forces over the previous day launched 54 strikes across the province, using mortars, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, drones, missiles and aircraft, according to Prokudin.

Ten people were wounded over that same period in the eastern Donetsk region, local Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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BEIJING (AP) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping said Wednesday that Beijing will send an envoy to Ukraine to discuss a possible “political settlement” to Russia’s war with the country.

Beijing has previously avoided involvement in conflicts between other countries but appears to be trying to assert itself as a global diplomatic force after arranging talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March that led them to restore diplomatic relations after a seven-year break.

Xi told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a phone call that a Chinese envoy, a former Chinese ambassador to Russia, would visit Ukraine and “other countries” to discuss a possible political settlement, according to a government statement.

It made no mention of Russia or last year’s invasion of Ukraine and didn’t indicate whether the Chinese envoy might visit Moscow.

The Xi-Zelenskyy phone call was long anticipated after Beijing said it wanted to serve as a mediator in the war.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

China is the only major government that has friendly relations with Moscow as well as economic leverage as the biggest buyer of Russian oil and gas after the United States and its allies cut off most purchases.

Beijing, which sees Moscow as a diplomatic partner in opposing U.S. domination of global affairs, has refused to criticize the invasion and used its status as one of five permanent U.N. Security Council members to deflect diplomatic attacks on Russia.

Zelenskyy earlier said he welcomed a Chinese offer to mediate.

WHY DID CHINA DO THIS?

Xi’s government has pursued a bigger role in global diplomacy as part of a campaign to restore China to what the ruling Communist Party sees as its rightful status as a political and economic leader and to build an international order that favors Beijing’s interests.

That is a sharp reversal after decades of avoiding involvement in other countries’ conflicts and most international affairs while it focused on economic development at home.

In March, Saudi Arabia and Iran issued a surprise announcement, following talks in Beijing, that they would reopen embassies in each other’s capitals following a seven-year break. China has good relations with both as a big oil buyer.

Last week, Foreign Minister Qin Gang told his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts that his country is ready to help facilitate peace talks.

Wednesday’s statement warned against the dangers of nuclear war, suggesting Beijing might also have been motivated by what it sees as the growing danger of a more destructive conflict.

Mediating between Ukraine and Russia would increase China’s presence in Eastern Europe, where Beijing has tried to build ties with other governments. That has prompted complaints by some European officials that China is trying to gain leverage over the European Union.

Political science professor Kimberly Marten of Barnard College at Columbia University in New York doubted China would succeed in a peacemaker role.

“I have a hard time believing that China can act as peacemaker,” she said, adding that Beijing has been “too close to Russia.”

WHAT ARE CHINA’S RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA?

China is the closest thing President Vladimir Putin’s isolated government has to a major ally.

Xi and Putin issued a joint statement ahead of the February 2022 invasion that said their governments had a “no limits friendship.”

Beijing has tried to appear neutral but has repeated Russian justifications for the invasion.

Xi received a warm welcome from Putin during a visit to Moscow in March. The Chinese defense minister visited Russia this month.

China has stepped up purchases of Russian oil and gas for its energy-hungry economy, helping to offset lost revenue resulting from Western sanctions. In exchange, China gets lower prices, though details haven’t been disclosed.

Marten said the Xi-Zelenskyy call was “kind of a slap at Russia, because Russia has been very keen to portray China as its ally.” She said the direct China-Ukraine contact “indicates China is taking at least a step away from Russia.”

WHAT ARE CHINA’S RELATIONS WITH UKRAINE?

China was Ukraine’s biggest trading partner before the invasion, though on a smaller scale than Chinese-Russian trade.

In 2021, Ukraine announced plans for Chinese companies to build trade-related infrastructure.

Zelenskyy’s government was more ambivalent toward Beijing after it was clear Xi wouldn’t try to stop Putin’s war, but the two sides have remained amicable.

“Before the full-scale Russian invasion, China was Ukraine’s number one trading partner. I believe that our conversation today will give a powerful impetus to the return, preservation and development of this dynamic at all levels,” an official Ukrainian readout of the call reported.

Qin, the foreign minister, promised this month China wouldn’t provide arms to either side, a pledge that benefits Ukraine, which has received tanks, rockets and other armaments from the United States and European governments.

The Chinese ambassador to France set off an uproar in Europe when he suggested former Soviet republics — a group that includes Ukraine — might not be sovereign nations. That was in line with Putin’s comments denying Ukrainian sovereignty.

Beijing then reassured former Soviet states it respected their sovereignty and said the ambassador’s comments were a personal opinion, not official policy.

Elizabeth Wishnick, of the U.S.-based think tank CNA and Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute, said in an email: “I wonder if Xi’s call was set up quickly to deflect attention” from the uproar over the Chinese ambassador’s remarks.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that the U.S. will send 31 M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, reversing months of persistent arguments that the tanks were too difficult for Ukrainian troops to operate and maintain.

The U.S. decision came on the heels of Germany agreeing to send 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks from its own stocks. Germany had said the Leopards would not be sent unless the U.S. put its Abrams on the table, not wanting to incur Russia’s wrath without the U.S. similarly committing its own tanks.

Biden said that in total European allies have agreed to send enough tanks to equip two Ukrainian tank battalions, or a total of about 62 tanks.

“With spring approaching, Ukrainian forces are working to defend the territory they hold and preparing for additional counter offenses,” Biden said in his announcement of his decision to send the tanks. “To liberate their land, they need to be able to counter Russia’s evolving tactics and strategy on the battlefield in the very near term.”

The announcement ends a standoff between Germany and the United States. Biden administration officials on Wednesday sought to downplay any friction between the two countries as both unveiled their plans.

Both sides had participated in “good diplomatic conversations” that had made the difference and were part of the “extraordinary shift in Germany’s security policy” over providing weapons to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February, said a senior administration official, who briefed reporters Wednesday on the condition of anonymity to describe the new tank package before the announcement.

The $400 million package announced Wednesday also includes eight M88 recovery vehicles — tank-like tracked vehicles that can tow the Abrams if it gets stuck.

Altogether, France, the U.K., the U.S., Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden will send hundreds of tanks and heavy armored vehicles to fortify Ukraine as it enters a new phase of the war and attempts to break through entrenched Russian lines.

The U.S. tanks will be purchased through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which means it will take some time for the Ukrainian forces to receive the tanks and be able to deploy them on the battlefield. The Pentagon plans soon to begin training Ukrainian forces on the system outside of Ukraine.

The U.S. has thousands of Abrams in stock. Still, it does not have “excess stock,” said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. He said Ukraine’s military will have to go through significant preparation to learn to operate, maintain and sustain the Abrams. It’s a process that will take some months.

Using the assistance initiative funding route, instead of dipping into the existing U.S. stockpile, means it is unlikely the tanks will be available to Ukraine before Russia’s anticipated spring offensive.

Kirby declined to pinpoint when the Abrams will be delivered, but said the German-made Leopards are expected to make their way to Ukrainian forces more quickly. The deployment also suggests that the U.S., and allies, are girding to support Ukraine for a long war that shows no signs of coming to an end.

Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, said the U.S. stock includes both the older variants and newer M1A2 Abrams variants, and when a “new” tank is needed, it starts with an older hull.

“We don’t produce any tanks from scratch anymore,” Bush said. “We have a large stock of older M1s that we use as seed vehicles. Were we to ever run out of those, sure we would build new. But right now, no matter which option we go, we don’t have to build completely new.”

The Russian ambassador to Germany, Sergey Nechayev, called Berlin’s decision to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine “extremely dangerous” and said it “shifts the conflict to a new level of confrontation.”

Biden insisted the decision to provide the tanks should not be seen as an escalation by Russia.

“It is not an offensive threat to Russia,” he said. “There is no offensive threat to Russia. If Russian troops return to Russia, where they belong, this war would be over today.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy applauded Biden for the “powerful decision to provide Abrams,” declaring on Twitter that “the free world is united as never before” in the 11-month-old war.

Until now, the U.S. had resisted providing its own M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, citing extensive and complex maintenance and logistical challenges with the high-tech vehicles. Washington believes it will be more productive to send the German Leopards since many allies have them and Ukrainian troops will need less training than on the more difficult Abrams.

Biden in an exchange with reporters bristled at the notion that Germany, which had declined to provide tanks until the U.S. agreed to provide its Abrams, forced his hand.

“Germany didn’t force me to change (my) mind,” Biden said. “We wanted to make sure we were all together.”

For the Abrams to be effective in Ukraine, its forces will require extensive training on combined arms maneuver — how the tanks operate together on the battlefield — and on how to maintain and support the complex, 70-ton weapon. The Abrams tanks use a turbine jet engine to propel themselves that burns through at least two gallons a mile (about 4.7 liters a kilometer) regardless of whether they are moving or idling, which means that a network of fuel trucks is needed to keep the line moving.

“When they get there, we want to make sure that they fall on ready hands, and that the Ukrainians know how to use them, they know how to keep them running, and they’ve got the supply chain in place for spare parts and supplies, and anything else they need so that they can be more effective on the battlefield,” Kirby said.

___

Associated Press writer Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

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On the night of 9/12/2001, my phone was ringing as I walked in the door after two days on standby at my fire department. I was an Ashburn, VA firefighter/EMT. We had sent one fire truck and ambulance already to the Pentagon that terrible morning of 9/11; I was on the second engine crew waiting to respond. All that day and night and the next day we watched the TV coverage of the attack on the Towers in New York and on the Pentagon, and the crash in Pennsylvania. The night after the plane flew into the Pentagon, it was declared a recovery and we were stood down. 

On the phone was a woman who boarded a horse with me. She complained that she’d been trying to call me for two days, said she knew I had connections in Washington, and that I must stop President Bush from reacting violently to the events of the previous day. I was stunned. Later I learned that she and her husband were Quakers.

Libertarians and pacifists have something in common: They don’t want to engage in overseas wars. There the comparison pretty much stops. Quakers don’t want any war anywhere anytime. Noble sentiment. Nor do any good people of sound mind, including and especially warfighters. Libertarians are not antiwar, they’re for war if our country is invaded, but only if our country is invaded, and only on our own territory.

There’s a big problem with that philosophy, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

A few days after the 9/11 attack, I got summoned to a meeting in a military association headquarters in Washington. Cato Institute wanted to meet with leadership of conservative/military organizations, so half a dozen of us met with the two Libertarian intellectuals. The Cato men argued that the United States absolutely must not respond to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Not one U.S. soldier, airman, sailor, or Marine on the ground, in the air or on the sea of a foreign shore. We had been invaded, yes, but the people who did it were dead. The end.

The problem with Libertarian war policy is that by the time an invading force gets to the territorial U.S., countless people elsewhere have been killed or displaced, their countries devastated. There’s nobody left to help us, and now it’s our turn to die or be displaced, our own country to be devastated by war. And where would our refugees go? As President Reagan said, America is the last best hope for mankind.

Woodrow Wilson (WWI) and FDR (WWII) campaigned on the promise that they would not “send your sons to war.” Lyndon B. Johnson (Vietnam) swore in his 1964 presidential campaign, “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

President Joe Biden has made clear that the U.S., despite promises made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, American troops will not be sent to the war in Ukraine. (Except for Biden’s telling 82d Airborne troops in Poland that they would soon see the war in Ukraine for themselves.)

We do go to war on foreign shores, but after our allies-to-be were bled white with the enemy in control of Europe in the cases of World War I, and both Europe and Asia in the case of WWII. How much sooner would those wars have ended had America joined the fight at the outset? How much blood and treasure would have been saved?

Truman’s response to Korea was timely, but with insufficient and untrained, poorly armed and badly equipped occupation troops stationed in Japan. Vietnam should never have been our war, and was criminally mismanaged by politicians and bureaucrats in Washington. Afghanistan and Iraq I & II are the definition of “just war.” We (or our national interests in Gulf One) were attacked, and we responded, going after the enemy on his home ground.

In our interests, cold rationalism says that it is better to fight a war somewhere else rather than in our own land, on our own streets. That sounds callous, but the war is already on elsewhere, and the enemy must be contained as quickly as possible where he is, and defeated decisively. It won’t help the hapless victims over there if we wait for the enemy to crush them before moving on to our own shores. It’s a case of feeding the crocodile in the hopes it will eat you last, to paraphrase Churchill.

Most wars could be prevented by fearlessly decisive action at the first move of an aggressor, or by preemption. Hitler admitted that the West could have stopped his war plans dead in their tracks over Sudetenland. But we didn’t.

Deterrence is even better. Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. “If you desire peace, prepare for war.” (Vegetius, Roman general)

In the American system of government, elected politicians must make the decision to go to war. They must set the broad parameters, right or wrong, as Truman did in Korea. But then they must allow the military to fight to win an absolute victory. If they do not, more war is inevitable. In WWII we had total victory, and our former enemies are our allies now. In WWI we had an armistice — a ceasefire. It led to WWII twenty years later. We did not achieve a victory in Korea — we signed a ceasefire that can explode into war again at any time. LBJ and Robert Strange McNamara, his Secretary of Defense, had no intention to winning the Vietnam War, only not to lose it under their watch. American involvement ended in a cut and run after the pernicious Paris Peace Accords ignominiously ended American involvement in the war and abandoned those Vietnamese, Hmong, Montagnard, Cambodian, and Lao allies who had trusted us to their terrible fates. And then there’s Afghanistan, Biden’s treacherous abandonment of people and assets.

If Putin crushes Ukraine, he will not stop there — history tells us that the crocodile will only have had another appetizer. His appetite has already been whetted with Georgia, Crimea, and Chechnya. The U.S., UK, and, ironically, Russia guaranteed Ukraine’s security and sovereignty. Russia’s definition of the guarantee, of course, is not the same as that of American, British, and Ukrainian understanding. Will we stalwartly stand by those guarantees? Will our resolve be unwavering?

Apologists argue that Russia needs and has a right to a “buffer.” That buffer, like the universe, is ever-expanding. Maybe it will stop when it reaches the seas. Even now, Russia is expanding its Arctic strategic zone and its military infrastructure.

Our politicians — POTUS and Congress — must decide whether to wait for a new world war or to do whatever is necessary to stop Putin right there and now, and destroy his ability to make aggressive war. Our leadership, unfortunately, will not want to have to make that hard decision. They’d rather obsess over climate change and pronouns, and then be surprised when war demands our participation.

War is looking for us, and if it finds us, it likely will find us with our pants down again.

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