U.S. aid to Ukraine resumes as Russia amps up strikes
The Trump administration has worked for months without success to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Trump has participated in calls with both leaders since the month began, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of throwing "bulls--t" his way and said he'd be looking "very strongly" at sanctions legislation he once criticized as harsh.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he instructed Ukrainian leaders to "intensify all contacts with the American side" in a July 8 post on X.
Trump's decision to resume supplying Ukraine against an onslaught of Russian drone and missile attacks reverses a Pentagon decision made at the beginning of July amid concerns of dwindling stocks of crucial weapons.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said the pause in shipments to Ukraine and other countries was being done to assure military aid "aligns with our defense priorities."
What military aid does the U.S. supply to Ukraine?
Since the start of the war in 2022 through April 2025, the U.S. has sent over $75.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine, dwarfing military aid from any other country, according to The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German-based research institution.
Ukraine's air defense has particularly relied on Patriot interceptors, supplied by the U.S. Army, as well as artillery shells and anti-tank and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.
This is a developing story which may be updated.
CONTRIBUTING Karina Zaiets, Francesca Chambers, Tom Vanden Brook, Cybele Mayes-Osterman and Zac Anderson
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The National
an hour ago
- The National
Is ICE the first harbinger of a ‘secret police' in the US?
The Iceman Cometh, the 1939 drama by American writer Eugene O'Neill, has at various times been described by reviewers as set in a stark, ruthless world and a play that 'blisters with intensity'. In the eyes of some, such observations could just as easily apply to today's America, a country where, under the presidency of Donald Trump, there is an almost palpable sense of unease and potency. Today's America too is a country where that phrase 'The Iceman Cometh' has taken on an all too real and equally menacing connotation. For the ICE men of today's America – agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – have become the calling card of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. US president Donald Trump has in effect created a personal army, experts warnThough ICE now occupies a 'noble' place in Trump's hierarchy of law enforcement, its detractors view it very differently. A modern-day 'Gestapo' or 'domestic stormtroopers for the MAGA agenda', say some. 'Trump's de facto private army – his security state within the state and a threat to democracy', say others. What's certainly in no doubt is that Trump has propelled ICE into America's best-funded law enforcement agency. As the Financial Times (FT) US national editor Edward Luce, recently highlighted, Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' (BBB) signed into law by the president on July 4, lifted ICE's budget to an estimated $37.5 billion a year, a sum higher than Italy's entire defence budget and just below Canada's. Writing a message of 'THANK YOU!' to the ICE workforce over the Independence Day holiday, Trump made clear that the BBB spending commitment would give the agency 'ALL of the Funding and Resources that ICE needs to carry out the Largest Mass Deportation Operation in History'. The money set aside for ICE is eyewatering. The $37.5bn a year for operations aside, the spending bill includes a $170bn package for Trump's border-and-immigration crackdown, which includes $45bn for new detention facilities, including hiring thousands more officers and agents. READ MORE: Mhairi Black: Criticising Israel is not religious intolerance. Orange marches are In the eyes of Trump, ICE officers can do no wrong. 'The toughest people you'll ever meet,' he insists. His gushing reverence for ICE is also reflected in what Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, described as 'well-deserved bonuses'. Trump officials have said they'll provide $10,000 annual bonuses for ICE personnel as well as Border Patrol agents, along with $10,000 for new hires. As Nick Miroff, staff writer at The Atlantic magazine who covers immigration issues, recently pointed out, as far as Trump sees it, the '20,000 ICE employees are the unflinching men and women who will restore order. They're the Untouchables in his (Trump's) MAGA crime drama'. So just what is ICE, what exactly does it do, and perhaps more significantly, to what extent are fears over its growing power and perceived threat to democracy justified? Established in 2003, ICE is one of the agencies under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created in 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks. Initially, the DHS's focus was counterterrorism. But soon, the presence of certain foreign groups began to be framed as a national security issue. DHS encompasses two law enforcement directorates: Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). ERO is charged with enforcing US immigration laws and has 6100 deportation officers. HSI has about 6500 special agents who conduct transnational criminal investigations and do not usually participate in domestic immigration operations. ICE was also created alongside Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP controls the borders, while ICE operates inside the country and it's this operation across America that has become the focus of controversy. According to the agency's own website, ICE, along with its ERO officials, are tasked with identifying, arresting, detaining, and removing immigrants without authorisation in the US. Back during his 2024 presidential campaign, when outlining his vision for deportations of undocumented migrants, Trump said he would focus on expelling those with criminal records. But since entering office, this has rapidly widened to include anyone without legal status, ICE officers, often masked and not wearing uniforms or displaying badges, have now been arresting people outside courtroom hearings, during traffic stops in workplace sweeps, and even from hospitals. The agency's aggressive tactics are striking terror throughout America's immigrant communities, especially in Democrat-run cities. Just these past weeks, Trump ordered ICE to step up its arrests and deportation efforts in Democratic strongholds, doubling down on a politicised anti-immigration drive after major protests against ICE in Los Angeles. 'We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America's largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,' Trump said on his Truth Social platform. (Image: Win McNamee, Getty Images) 'These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Centre,' Trump claimed, citing debunked right-wing conspiracy theories that undocumented immigrants are voting in US elections in significant numbers. With every week that passes, ICE operation are gathering momentum. For its part, the administration says its moves – which include hundreds of deportation flights, the expansion of third-country removals, and Trump's invocation of the seldom-used 1798 Alien Enemies Act – are necessary to stem unauthorised immigration to the United States. The law is a wartime authority that gives the president sweeping powers to detain or deport noncitizens with little or no due process, and ICE have become its enforcers, much to the disquiet of many Democrat politicians, human rights activists and ordinary citizens. ICE is now arresting four times as many non-criminals as those with criminal convictions each week, according to David Bier of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that was cited by the FT. The number of immigrants in detention with no criminal charges or convictions jumped 1300% from January to mid-June, he wrote in an analysis. Numbers matter here, for ICE is under tremendous pressure to make more arrests to meet quotas set by senior White House aide Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's immigration crackdown. Miller set an aggressive quota of 3000 arrests per day in late May, and the efforts to meet that goal have pushed ICE officers into more communities and businesses. Not everyone within the ranks of ICE are happy with this and other aspects of the policy. According to The Atlantic magazine's immigration writer Nic Miroff, who has interviewed many current and former ICE agents who spoke on condition of anonymity, many described 'a workforce on edge, vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more'. READ MORE: Patrick Harvie: 'Never again' seems to not apply to Palestinians Some ICE employees according to Miroff 'believe that the shift in priorities is driven by a political preoccupation with deportation numbers rather than keeping communities safe'. With deportations becoming a top domestic priority for the Trump administration, some Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) officers along with those from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have been put on immigration enforcement duties. It's a shift in duties many do not agree with. One veteran HSI agent complained to Miroff that his division which usually focuses on cartel drug-trafficking operations have had agents moved to immigration-enforcement arrests as part of ICE operations. 'No drug cases, no human trafficking, no child exploitation,' the agent told Miroff. 'It's infuriating,' adding that he is thinking of quitting rather than having to continue 'arresting gardeners'. But complain as some ICE agents do, many Americans currently reserve their sympathies for those being targeted by the agents. Stories emerging from detention facilities where those arrested by ICE are being held are only adding to that sympathy as well as a sense of outrage. Earlier this month, Trump held a tour of one facility that's been dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz'. Its name is a reference to both the local reptile population and the former maximum-security Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California. An aerial view of the migrant detention centre dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz' (Image: Chandan Khanna/AFP) Constructed in a little over eight days and meant to accommodate up to 3000 detainees, since then accounts and reports from the facility point to appalling conditions. They suggest too that the design of the site is flawed and will compromise the safety of people being held there. Stories relayed to the Miami Herald by the wives of detainees housed in the makeshift Florida detention centre for migrants in the Everglades made for grim reading about the conditions detainees endure. 'Toilets that didn't flush. Temperatures that went from freezing to sweltering. Giant bugs. And little or no access to showers or toothbrushes, much less confidential calls with attorneys,' were among some of the accounts detailed by the Miami Herald. The newspaper also told of lights being left on inside the facility 24 hours a day, with detainees saying there are no clocks and there is scant sunlight coming through the heavy-duty tents, making it difficult for them to know whether it is day or night. Currently, ICE is holding nearly 60,000 people in custody, the highest number ever, even though funding until the latest boost was available for only 41,000 detention beds. This means that processing centres are packed with people sleeping on floors in short-term holding cells. Worrying as such reports are, it's the growth of ICE, its increasingly politicised role and the fact that it appears beyond accountability that concerns many Americans. Earlier this year, ICE's in-house watchdog was scrapped and for the time being, America's lower courts are hamstrung in their efforts to rein it in. As the FT's national editor Edward Luce recently observed, given that the Supreme Court last year gave Trump sweeping immunity from 'official' acts he takes as president … 'that makes ICE Trump's de facto private army – his security state within the state'. Though ICE is ostensibly still bound by constitutional limits, the way it has been operating bears the hallmarks of a secret police force in the making, insist some experts on authoritarian regimes. Lee Morgenbesser is an associate professor with the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, Brisbane, and fellow with the Australian Research Council. Having studied historical and contemporary secret police forces, Morgenbesser says they typically meet five criteria. First, they're a police force targeting political opponents and dissidents. Second, they're not controlled by other security agencies and answer directly to the dictator. Third, the identity of their members and their operations are secret. Fourth, they specialise in political intelligence and surveillance operations. And finally, they carry out arbitrary searches, arrests, interrogations, indefinite detentions, disappearances and torture. In a recent article in the online platform The Conversation, and using these criteria to assess how close ICE is to becoming a secret police force, Morgenbesser concludes that 'overall, the evidence shows ICE meets most of the criteria". While ICE has yet to target political opponents, which Morgenbesser defines narrowly as members of the Democratic Party, and it is not directly controlled by Trump, he maintains that ICE's 'current structure provides him with plausible deniability.' In short, he says that while ICE is 'far from resembling history's most feared secret police forces, there have so far been few constraints on how it operates'. 'When combined with a potential shift towards targeting US citizens for dissent and disobedience, ICE is fast becoming a key piece in the repressive apparatus of American authoritarianism,' Morgenbesser warns. As ICE makes its presence felt in a growing number of American communities, the controversy over its role is likewise certain to escalate. While a majority of Americans support deporting violent criminals, they also back allowing migrants who came to the country as children or who arrived many years ago to stay. Americans polled by The Economist and YouGov in mid-June showed that only 42% viewed ICE favourably – an eight percentage-point drop from February and the start of Trump's term. For now, the ICE men continue to cometh and America, a nation of immigrants, faces an altogether different reckoning over its future democratic credentials.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Australia won't commit in advance to joining hypothetical US-China conflict, Pat Conroy says
Australia will refuse any US request to join a 'hypothetical' conflict with China over Taiwan and won't make any advance commitment, the defence industry minister, Pat Conroy, has said, amid reports Washington is seeking such promises in discussions over the Aukus submarines. Conroy called on China to be more transparent about its military buildup, but said any commitment to war would be the sole power of the Australian government of the day. It came after multiple reports this week that the Pentagon was seeking guarantees from Australia and other allies about how they would respond in the event of a conflict in the Indo-Pacific. The Financial Times reported on Saturday that Elbridge Colby – the US under-secretary of defence for policy, who is also undertaking a review of the Aukus pact which would see America share nuclear-powered submarines with Australia – was asking Japan and Australia to reveal how they would act in a potential US-China war over Taiwan. The Sydney Morning Herald separately quoted a senior US defence official, who reportedly said Washington was seeking 'a clear sense of what we can expect from Australia'. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email The Pentagon was contacted for comment. Colby shared a post on X on Sunday (AEST) which referenced the FT article. In his post, he wrote that the US policy position included 'urging allies to step up their defense spending and other efforts related to our collective defense'. 'This has been a hallmark of President Trump's strategy - in Asia as in Europe where it has already been tremendously successful. 'Of course, some among our allies might not welcome frank conversations. But many, now led by NATO after the historic Hague Summit, are seeing the urgent need to step up and are doing so.' Conroy, a cabinet minister whose portfolio deals heavily with preparing to build the Aukus submarines, rebuked the idea Australia would commit in advance to any conflict. 'The sole power to commit Australia to war, or to allow our territory to be used for a conflict, is the elected government of the day. That is our position. Sovereignty will always be prioritised and that will continue to be our position,' Conroy told the ABC's Insiders program. Conroy said he would not comment on the nature of confidential discussions with the US over Aukus, but said the government would not 'discuss hypotheticals' around what Australia could do in the event of a potential future military engagement. 'The decision to commit Australian troops to a conflict will be made by the government of the day, not in advance but by the government of the day,' he stressed. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, arrived in China on Saturday night for a six-day visit, which includes meetings with president Xi Jinping and premier Li Qiang, with the government saying the trip was about advancing Australia's security and economic interests. On Sky News on Sunday, the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, described the Australia-China relationship as 'full of opportunity but not short of complexity either'. It is unclear when the US may give any further public clarity on Colby's review of Aukus, which was initially described as a 30-day process. The start date of the review is unclear, but it is now 30 days since it was publicly announced. On Insiders, Conroy also declined to respond to reports that Trump may seek further costs from Canberra to fulfil the Aukus submarine deal, which would see the US sell several older ships to Canberra before new assets are constructed onshore in Australia. 'Let's see what the review finds. I'm confident it will support Aukus, just as our review of Aukus found, just as the UK review of Aukus found that. It's in the national interest of all three countries. It will contribute to deterrence as well as grow 20,000 jobs in Australia. Let's see what the US review comes forward with, then we'll react accordingly,' he said. Guardian Australia reported this week that Labor sources don't expect the review to be completed for months, while a Pentagon spokesperson said last week there was no public timeline for the work. Conroy said he didn't believe the report had been completed. The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, met her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at the Asean summit in Malaysia on Friday. Government sources said she raised a number of Australian concerns with Beijing, including the circumnavigation of Australia by a Chinese naval taskforce and live-fire exercises, as well as unsafe actions in the South China Sea. Wong also raised concerns about the detention of Dr Yang Hengjun, Australia's opposition to the death penalty, and human rights in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Australia will not commit troops in advance to any conflict, minister says
SYDNEY, July 13 (Reuters) - Australia will not commit troops in advance to any conflict, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said on Sunday, responding to a report that the Pentagon has pressed its ally to clarify what role it would play if the U.S. and China went to war over Taiwan. Australia prioritises its sovereignty and "we don't discuss hypotheticals", Conroy said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "The decision to commit Australian troops to a conflict will be made by the government of the day, not in advance but by the government of the day," he said. The Financial Times reported on Saturday that Elbridge Colby, the U.S. under-secretary of defence for policy, has been pushing Australian and Japanese defence officials on what they would do in a Taiwan conflict, although the U.S. does not offer a blank cheque guarantee to defend Taiwan. Colby posted on X that the Department of Defense is implementing President Donald Trump's "America First" agenda of restoring deterrence, which includes "urging allies to step up their defense spending and other efforts related to our collective defense". China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own and has not ruled out the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. Taiwan President Lai Ching-te rejects China's sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwan's people can decide their future. Australia's largest war-fighting exercise with the United States, involving 30,000 troops from 19 countries, opens on Sunday on Sydney Harbour. Conroy said Australia was concerned about China's military buildup of nuclear and conventional forces, and wants a balanced Indo-Pacific region where no country dominates. "China is seeking to secure a military base in the region and we are working very hard to be the primary security partner of choice for the region because we don't think that's a particularly optimal thing for Australia," he said, referring to the Pacific Islands. Security is expected to be on the agenda when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets China's leaders this week. He arrived in Shanghai on Saturday for a six-day visit. The Talisman Sabre exercise will span 6,500 km (4,000 miles), from Australia's Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island to the Coral Sea on Australia's east coast. Conroy said it was possible China's navy would be watching the exercise to collect information, as it had done in the past. The United States is Australia's major security ally. Although Australia does not permit foreign bases, the U.S. military is expanding its rotational presence and fuel stores on Australian bases, which from 2027 will have U.S. Virginia submarines at port in Western Australia. These would play a key role in supporting U.S. forces in any conflict over Taiwan, analysts say.
