Russia says Ukraine violated moratorium on energy infrastructure strikes six times in past day
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's defence ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that Ukraine had carried out six attacks on Russian energy infrastructure over the past day, in violation of a U.S.-brokered moratorium on hitting energy infrastructure targets.
Ukraine and Russia agreed to pause strikes on each other's energy facilities last month, but both sides have repeatedly accused each other of breaking the moratorium.
In statements published on the Telegram messenger app, the ministry said that Kyiv had damaged energy infrastructure in Russia's Rostov and Kursk regions, as well as in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region.
It also said that Ukraine had mounted two failed strikes in Russia's Krasnodar region, including on a compressor station serving the TurkStream pipeline, which sends gas from Russia to Turkey via the Black Sea.
Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield reports.
(Writing by Felix Light; Editing by Bernadette Baum/Guy Faulconbridge)
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New York Post
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- New York Post
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USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
UN nuclear watchdog's board declares Iran in breach of non-proliferation obligations
UN nuclear watchdog's board declares Iran in breach of non-proliferation obligations VIENNA, June 12 (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog's 35-nation Board of Governors declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations on Thursday for the first time in almost 20 years, raising the prospect of reporting it to the U.N. Security Council. The major step is the culmination of several festering stand-offs between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran that have arisen since President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of a nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers in 2018 during his first term, after which that deal unravelled. Since Iran bristles at resolutions against it and this is the most significant one in years, it is likely to respond with a nuclear escalation, as it has said it will. That could complicate the current talks between Iran and the U.S. aimed at imposing new curbs on Iran's accelerating atomic activities. More: 'Constructive' and 'positive': What to know about the rare US-Iran nuclear talks The resolution also comes at a time of particularly heightened tension, with the staff out of the Middle East, and Trump warning the region could become dangerous and saying Washington would not let Iran have nuclear weapons. Diplomats at the closed-door meeting said the board passed the resolution submitted by the United States, Britain, France and Germany with 19 countries in favour, 11 abstentions and three states - Russia, China and Burkina Faso - against. DAMNING REPORT The text, seen by Reuters, declares Iran in breach of its obligations given a damning report the IAEA sent to member states on May 31. "The Board of Governors… finds that Iran's many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the Agency with full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran … constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with the Agency," the text said. A central issue is Iran's failure to provide the IAEA with credible explanations of how uranium traces detected at undeclared sites in Iran came to be there despite the agency having investigated the issue for years. The May 31 IAEA report, a board-mandated "comprehensive" account of developments, found three of the four locations "were part of an undeclared structured nuclear programme carried out by Iran until the early 2000s and that some activities used undeclared nuclear material". More: What countries are on Trump's travel ban list? 12 countries include Haiti, Iran U.S. intelligence services and the IAEA have long believed Iran had a secret, coordinated nuclear weapons programme it halted in 2003, though isolated experiments continued for several years. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said this week the findings were broadly consistent with that. Iran denies ever having pursued nuclear weapons. While the resolution alluded to reporting Iran to the U.N. Security Council, diplomats said it would take a second resolution to send it there, as happened the last time it was declared in non-compliance in September 2005, followed by referral in February 2006. (Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Ed Osmond)
Vox
an hour ago
- Vox
Trump is frustrated by his own success on immigration
is a senior correspondent at Vox. He covers a wide range of political and policy issues with a special focus on questions that internally divide the American left and right. Before coming to Vox in 2024, he wrote a column on politics and economics for New York Magazine. The primary cause of this unrest has been less visible, but no less disorderly or disruptive. Behind the tensions in LA lies a radical escalation in the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants. To accelerate deportations, top White House adviser Stephen Miller instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in late May to dispense with norms and legal niceties that had previously constrained its activities, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Since then, the agency has deprioritized the removal of immigrants implicated in crimes, opting instead to target undocumented workers at random. It has stopped drafting lists of immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally and started arresting day laborers at businesses like Home Depot and 7-Eleven en masse, ensnaring some US citizens in the process. One such raid ignited the LA protests. Under Joe Biden, ICE had generally refrained from raiding schools, churches, and hospitals. Now it is reportedly arresting new mothers in maternity wards and then denying them their right to legal counsel. Most alarmingly, some ICE agents have allegedly embraced violent and unconstitutional tactics, according to the Journal's report. A union organizer for Washington farmworkers was driving his wife to her job at a tulip farm, when ICE agents stopped him, smashed in his car windows, and pulled him from the vehicle, all without showing badges or identification. A Russian man with a pending asylum case was reporting for his scheduled check-in at an ICE office, when a team of agents arrested him and then allegedly beat him. And ICE has not merely been targeting undocumented immigrants, but also those who exercise their First Amendment rights on the undocumented immigrants' behalf. In Irvine, California, ICE sent a 'phalanx of military vehicles' into an Orange County suburb to arrest a man who had allegedly posted fliers warning neighbors that ICE was in their area. The Trump administration's decision to greenlight such tactics might seem like an act of desperation — unable to stem the tide of undocumented immigration by conventional means, the White House is resorting to radical ones. But the opposite may be closer to the truth: The Trump administration is escalating its war on migration because it is winning that conflict. Unfortunately, the fruits of Donald Trump's victory appear to be weaker economic growth and more social unrest. Related The LA protests reveal what actually unites the Trump right Trump's bid to deter immigration has been wildly successful Trump campaigned on a promise to end the Biden-era surge in unauthorized immigration and restore order at the border. He has largely done so. Border crossings were already slowing during Biden's final year in office, after his administration tightened rules around asylum last summer. But inflows have plunged even further under Trump. Through belligerent rhetoric and restrictionist policies, the president has successfully deterred both legal and illegal migration into the United States. Over the past two months, America witnessed the largest decline in its foreign-born workforce since the pandemic in 2020. This contraction was driven partly by a collapse in unauthorized border crossings. Between January 2022 and June 2024, US Customs and Border Protection encountered an average of 200,000 people per month at America's Southwest border. According to an analysis of government data from Deutsche Bank, that figure has fallen to just 12,000 people per month since Trump's inauguration. How Trump's success on immigration is fueling his radicalism Yet the Trump administration has found little satisfaction in this success. And for a simple reason: The slowdown in border crossings has made it more difficult for the president to exceed Biden's deportation numbers. When border control was encountering 200,000 migrants each month, it was easy for the government to rack up high deportation totals. Such new arrivals possessed fewer legal protections than longtime US residents and were already in the government's custody. Although many qualified for the asylum process, border control could swiftly expel those who did not. Trump's success in deterring border crossings has therefore reduced the pace of deportations. Headlines earlier this year spotlighted the fact that Trump was deporting immigrants at a slower rate than Biden. Shortly after Trump took office, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy posted on X, 'In the first week, Trump removed 7,300 people. On average, Biden was removing 15,000 a week…These guys are terrible at everything.' Such unfavorable comparisons apparently displeased Trump. The Wall Street Journal suggests that it was Trump's failure to exceed 'the number of daily deportations carried out by the Biden administration in its final year' that led Stephen Miller to give ICE its new, draconian marching orders. Unable to generate flashy deportation statistics by turning away new arrivals at the border, the administration has opted to ramp up enforcement against law-abiding, long-time US residents throughout the country — and to do so in a violent and seemingly lawless manner. Trump's handling of immigration has been economically and socially destructive (but politically popular) If Trump's success at deterring immigration has brought him little contentment, it has brought his country little discernible benefit. The slowdown in new arrivals is hurting the US economy. Compared to native-born workers, immigrants are more willing to relocate to US communities that have labor shortages, or to enter industries suffering from chronic shortfalls of workers, such as construction, food processing, and childcare. The mass entrance of migrants into the US during the Biden administration therefore helped to mitigate supply chain disruptions and reduce inflationary pressures in key sectors. This immigration surge was also immensely beneficial for economic growth and the national debt. America has an aging population. As a result, we need immigrants to sustain the growth of our workforce and shore up funding for Medicare and Social Security. Partly for these reasons, the Biden-era surge in immigration increased America's projected economic growth over the coming decade by upwards of $8.9 trillion, while reducing its expected federal deficits by $900 billion, according to an analysis from the Dallas Federal Reserve. Trump's successful deterrence of immigration threatens to reverse these gains, slowing growth and exacerbating labor shortages in construction, agriculture, and other key industries. According to Deutsche Bank, the collapse of immigration under Trump 'represents a far more sustained negative supply shock for the economy than tariffs.' Although immigration restriction is bad for the economy, many have argued that it's beneficial for political stability and social peace. After all, large surges of immigration tend to induce nativist backlashes. And Biden's failure to avert a historically large jump in migration plausibly helped Trump return to the White House. For the moment, however, the collapse in border crossings appears to be increasing social tension and political unrest. The migration slowdown has translated into lower deportation figures, which has led the administration to embrace radical enforcement tactics, which have predictably sown mass protest and clashes between civilians and agents of the state. We are therefore getting all the economic harms of immigration restriction, without its theoretical benefits for social harmony.
