83% Of USAID Programs CUT After Rubio Makes MASSIVE Changes, Canadian Electricity Tariffs BEGIN
Judy Kurtz chats with The Hill's Niall Stanage as Secretary of State Marco Rubio Slashes more than 80% of USAID contracts. Niall also gives his take as the trade war with Canada escalates, a new Prime Minister enters the picture, and Republicans begin to break ranks with trump over tariffs. Also in your Debrief: Marco Rubio meets with a Ukrainian delegation in Saudi Arabia Monday, Measles makes its way to one of the busiest international airports in the United States, and the Lieutenant Governor of Texas works to rename an iconic cut of beef. Make sure to subscribe to get your Daily Debrief with top headlines from The Hill every weekday. Follow The Hill on Instagram and X @thehill #TheHillTV #Trump #News #Politics #Congress #Update #ForeignPolicy
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Trump blocks California rules for greener vehicles and gas-powered car ban
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40 minutes ago
Ukraine's Zelenskyy visits Austria for first time since Russia's invasion
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Yahoo
an hour ago
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I deserted my unit in Ukraine. Now I'm going back to war
In between last-ditch prayers to God, Volodymyr could only think of one person to blame for what he feared would be his final moments on earth. Russian mortars were hammering down on his hideout in an abandoned house on the front line in Ukraine's Donetsk region, while first-person view drones hunted for his exact position. 'I don't believe in God,' says the 23-year-old, but as the explosions shook the walls in the dead of night, he hedged his bets. Five hours earlier, he and a few other soldiers had been sent to reinforce a position they were told was 750 metres from the Russian lines, behind layers of Ukrainian defences. But when their armoured vehicle deposited them, the Russians were just 100m away – and the promised stocks of grenades, mortars and fellow infantry were nowhere to be seen. Under heavy fire, the men sprinted for cover. Internally, Volodymyr cursed his commander. This was the second poorly planned operation he had been ordered to carry out in weeks. After a bloody rescue following 12 hours of hiding, Volodymyr, known as 'Vova', told his commander to either transfer him to a different brigade or he would desert. The commander refused. So Vova simply walked away, hitch-hiking at first before taking a train home to his wife. In doing so, the former barista became one of tens of thousands of absconders, a number whose growing size has forced Ukraine to stretch its armed forces in new and elastic ways. Until September last year, soldiers who left their posts faced a prison sentence of up to 12 years. With their name added to a list for investigation by military police, they could be arrested at the post office, in the bar or trying to cross a checkpoint. Deserters from the front line faced harsher penalties than those who went AWOL from a base or on leave. But the situation on the battlefield means Ukraine must carefully husband its reserves of manpower. Vladimir Putin's forces outnumber the Ukrainian military by a factor of at least two to one, with around 2.35 million soldiers to 900,000. According to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, Moscow is now recruiting up to 50,000 men a month. With roughly a quarter of the population, Ukraine manages around 27,000. In response, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law allowing deserters to avoid punishment if they agreed to rejoin the army. Initially, they were given a deadline of Jan 1 2025. That was extended to the end of March, and then again recently to Aug 30. More than 100,000 cases of absconding have been registered with the prosecutor's office since the war began, with almost two-thirds in the last year. Kyiv cannot afford to jail so many able-bodied men – let alone shoot them, as Putin's forces have done. It has left deserters in a surprisingly powerful position, whether they present themselves to authorities – as around 6,000, including Vova, did in the first month – or are rounded up by police. Held in reserve battalions, they are visited by recruiters from various units in desperate need of manpower. Soon after the law changed, Ukraine's elite 47th Brigade published an advert specifically aimed at absconders. Men like Vova cannot be forced back to the front; they pick whichever unit makes them the best offer. In his office above a theatre in Kyiv, Roman sits back in his chair and flicks through his phone. The recruitment officer for the Da Vinci Wolves, part of the 59th Brigade, has a 'million' chats with deserters, he says. Once he has filtered the list, he will attempt to persuade the best of them to join the battalion, one of the most disciplined and respected in the armed forces. 'When I start the conversations, nobody wants to fight,' he says. 'Who would?' Soldiers can be discharged if they have disabled parents or three children. Some prefer prison to returning to the front. In his early calls, Roman asks if the men have any STIs, heart problems or a history of trouble with the law. Then he will lay out his cards: men can be offered a different specialism, such as being a drone pilot, moving them back from the zero line. Roman understands only too well the horrors of that place. A combat medic built like a boxer, he has been temporarily reassigned to the recruitment office to recover from Bakhmut. 'There were just endless barrages of artillery fire, just pouring down on you,' he says. 'Planes, rockets, artillery, infantry, constant assaults.' He cannot count the number of men he treated. In one final assault before Ukraine retreated, he was the only man of 20 not to be killed or wounded. His brother was among the victims. 'After that, I kind of hit rock bottom,' he says. In this office role, he tries to understand those who fled 'just as a human being', while assessing whether he would be willing to fight alongside them when the time comes for him to return to the front. Vova's case is a relatively easy one. Stick thin, with large brown eyes and bony hands, the young man wants to fight – and is open to joining the Da Vinci Wolves. They fought near his position on the front, and he has seen social media clips of their exploits. In addition, Roman can offer him a return to the role of reconnaissance drone pilot. It was Vova's commander's decision to transfer him into the infantry that sparked his desertion. '[The commander] was in the infantry himself and didn't know anything about this business [drone warfare], to put it bluntly,' he says. Such shifts contribute to a fair amount of desertions. According to Ukrainian Pravda, a local news site, more than 1,200 members of the 155th Mechanised Brigade absconded over five months, after hundreds were forced into the infantry. Vova's paperwork is still incomplete; other units can still secure his signature. Outside a reserve battalion barracks, Roman tells Vova that if he does well, he might even be sent abroad for extra drone training. As the men speak, a soldier who goes by the call-sign 'Psycho' walks over. His combat style might be guessed by the tattoos that adorn his body: 'Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!' spirals manically up his right arm, towards a ring of assault rifles around his elbow. Given a lift to meet his girlfriend in town, Psycho speaks gently about deserters. He joined the army as a teenager in 2015 and has seen more war than all but a few of the surviving soldiers of that generation. When deserters join up, he asks why they left. One told him once that he had slept with a major's wife, he says, laughing. 'We are all human. If you're not scared, you're crazy.' Veterans recognise that conscripts – who just weeks ago may have been teachers or IT workers – can struggle to adapt to the front. In Psycho's case, he realised after his first assault in Luhansk, in 2015, that there would be 'dead people, meat and all that unpleasant stuff'. It helped to steel his mind for the next time. Like the deserters, the army itself is in a bind. Despite Western pressure, Mr Zelensky is unwilling to lower the conscription age to 18. Instead, the army now offers 18- to 24-year-olds large bonuses, including a $20,000 one-off payment, to sign up. Take-up has nevertheless been slow, admits Roman: perhaps 10 a month come to him in the recruitment office. Meanwhile, the government has repeatedly extended the term of existing soldiers, who have no end to their service in sight. One knock-on effect of the deserters' reform might be to gradually 'squeeze out and starve the worst of the brigades' through a process of 'natural selection', says Gil Barndollar, a former infantry officer in the US marines and a senior research fellow at the Catholic University of America. More soldiers now feel at liberty to quit poorly led battalions. 'It's better for these people to end up in good positions. But it does create a problem for the army and I suspect these worst brigades are going to get starved of men,' he added. Before he heads back into the barracks, Vova shakes hands with Roman. The meeting seems to have stiffened his resolve to sign up with the Da Vinci Wolves. Asked whether he felt relief when he walked away from the front line, he demurs. He will only feel relief when he's back 'serving in a brigade I want to'. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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