US submarine deployment follows Russia-China war games
In retaliation to US President Donald Trump moving submarines closer to Russia, Putin has begun 'war game training' with China in a bleak display of their allied force. Last night, Trump confirmed two US Navy nuclear submarines are 'getting closer to Russia', after an online spat with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev - now deputy chairman of Russia's National Security Council.
Russia and China, which signed a 'no-limits' strategic partnership shortly before Russia went to war in Ukraine in 2022, conduct regular military exercises to rehearse coordination between their armed forces and send a deterrent signal to adversaries. Although they were pre-planned, the joint naval exercises came just a day after Trump moved submarines packed with nuclear warheads towards Russian waters following his argument with Mr Medvedev on social media.
On Telegram, an encrypted social media app, the deputy chairman of Russia's National Security Council said Russia could invoke 'Dead Hand' – a doomsday program with the ability to automatically launch a nuclear counterstrike against major US cities, even if Moscow and President Vladimir Putin are wiped out. His post read: 'As for the talk about the "dead economies" of India and Russia, and "entering dangerous territory" - maybe he should recall his favourite movies about "the walking dead", and also remember how dangerous the so-called "Dead Hand", that does not exist in nature, could be. 'He should remember two things: 1: Russia isn't Israel or even Iran. 2: Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country. Don't go down the Sleepy Joe [a reference to former President Joe Biden] road!'
Responding in a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump said: 'Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions. Words are very important and can often lead to unintended consequences. I hope this will not be one of those instances. A threat was made… so we have to be very careful. We're going to protect our people. He's entering very dangerous territory!' On Friday, in an interview with cable channel Newsmax, Mr Trump added: 'The subs are getting closer to Russia. We always want to be ready. I want to make sure his words are only words and nothing more than that.'
Despite Russia and China both claiming no third country is being targeted by their military cooperation, Japan has objected to the joint drills - stating greater strategic coordination between Beijing and Moscow poses a 'strong concern' for its national security. Whilst announcing the drills on Wednesday, Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesman for Beijing's defence ministry, criticised US Air Force drills with Japan and others in the western Pacific. Mr Xiaogang said: 'The US has been blindly flexing its muscles in the Asia-Pacific region and attempting to use military drills as a pretext to gang up, intimidate and pressure other countries, and undermine peace and stability in the region.' China and Russia have held military exercises together for over 20 years, with 'Joint Sea' exercises beginning in 2012.
However, their cooperation, which was once sporadic, has deepened over the past decade, with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping having met more than 40 times. Last night, the White House, Pentagon and Downing Street refused to comment on the escalating tensions, which come just days before Mr Trump's August 8 deadline for Putin to declare a ceasefire in the war against Ukraine. The US President has vowed to impose 'devastating' sanctions on Russia and her closest trading partners if his demands are not met. A source close to the President told the MoS: 'Trump is running out of patience with Russia. He promised to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office and clearly that has not happened. Now he's threatening to impose sanctions if Putin doesn't declare a ceasefire and come to the negotiating table to discuss peace.'
While the location of the subs is unknown, the US Navy has 71 nuclear-powered submarines in its fleet, all of which can travel thousands of miles without resurfacing. By comparison, the Russian Navy fields fewer than 30 nuclear‑powered submarines. Military experts said Mr Trump will most likely have deployed two Ohio -class vessels. Each is armed with up to 20 Trident II D5 missiles that can deliver multiple thermonuclear warheads with a range of up to 7,000 miles. Sources last night told the Washington Post that Russia is 'seeking clarity' from America about Mr Trump's 'actions and intentions', with Russian officials scrambling to assess the significance of the subs' deployment.
RIA Novosti, a state-controlled news agency which has been called 'Putin's mouthpiece', confirmed it had sent enquiries to the White House, Pentagon, US Central Command and the National Security Council, but had not received a response. Mr Trump's dramatic doubling down came after the deadliest Russian air strike on Kyiv this year, when 31 people were killed in a single missile strike on an apartment block in the early hours of Thursday morning. Five children, the youngest aged just two, were among the dead. Mr Trump called the air strike 'disgusting' and announced he was sending his special envoy Steve Witkoff to the region to try and negotiate a ceasefire.
Russian lawmaker Viktor Vodolatsky said there are enough Russian nuclear submarines in the high seas to tackle the two American subs. 'The number of Russian nuclear submarines in the world's oceans is significantly higher than the American ones, and the subs that US President Donald Trump ordered to be redirected to the appropriate regions have long been under their control,' he said yesterday. 'So no response from the Russian Federation to the American leader's statement about the submarines is required.' Retired US Marine Colonel Mark Cancian called Mr Trump's announcement that he had sent subs steaming towards Russian waters 'highly unusual'. He said: 'This is signalling in its purest form.'
Others urged restraint, saying Mr Medvedev does not speak for Putin. Oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now a Putin critic living in London, said: 'When you see his [Mr Medvedev's] latest apocalyptic tweet about turning European capitals to dust, remember: this isn't strategic communication from the Kremlin. It's the rambling of a man drowning his terror in vodka.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
7 minutes ago
- The Independent
Trump wants to roll back $7 billion in grants for solar projects in low-income communities
The Trump administration is reportedly considering terminating a $7 billion grant program aimed at helping low- and moderate-income families install home solar panels, part of the White House's larger campaign to claw back billions in Biden-era climate spending. The Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of drafting termination letters to the 60 state agencies, nonprofit groups, and Native American tribes awarded the funding through the Solar for All initiative, part of the Biden administration's landmark 2022 climate law. The agency said Tuesday it has not made a final decision about the grants. Environmental groups say if Trump does go through with the cancellation, the effort will face legal challenges. Wiping away the grants would halt many projects before they were complete. The first Solar for All projects, efforts to install residential solar and battery storage systems for tribal communities in Montana and South Dakota, went online in October 2024. 'One in five households on reservations lack access to electricity, and this program was an opportunity to close that gap,' Cody Two Bears, the chief executive of Indigenized Energy, told The New York Times, which first reported on the cancellation effort. 'But those were just two kickoff projects to show what was coming for the next five years.' Critics of the Trump administration and climate experts said cancelling the grants, which were projected to serve about 900,000 people, would be bad public policy that hurts low-income families and the climate. 'Solar for All is laser focused on helping nearly a million low-income families afford electricity at a time when their bills keep going up,' Zealan Hoover, the EPA's former director of implementation, told The Washington Post. 'If the Trump administration is serious about energy abundance and affordability, then they should be working hard to accelerate — not terminate — these grants.' 'Solar for All means lower utility bills, many thousands of good-paying jobs and real action to address the existential threat of climate change,' Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who championed the program, said in a statement on Tuesday. 'At a time when working families are getting crushed by skyrocketing energy costs and the planet is literally burning, sabotaging this program isn't just wrong — it's absolutely insane.' In March, the EPA said it was terminating a separate pot of $20 billion in climate funding, prompting a legal challenge. In April, a federal judge issued an injunction siding with grant recipients. The administration's One, Big Beautiful Bill spending package, signed in July, repealed the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the single largest portion of climate money under the Biden law, and ordered any unassigned funds back to the U.S. Treasury. There is an ongoing legal battle between grantees and the federal government over the fate of much of the IRA's climate funding. Grantees say much of the funds were legally obligated before Trump took office and immune from presidential action, while the administration claims it claw the funds back.
The Guardian
8 minutes ago
- The Guardian
China's cyber-abuse scandal: is the government unwilling to crack down on exploitation of women online?
When Ming* found a hidden camera in her bedroom, she prayed for a reasonable explanation, wondering whether her boyfriend had placed it there to record memories of their 'happy life' together. But hope quickly turned to horror. Ming's boyfriend had been secretly taking sexually exploitative photos of not just Ming and her female friends, but also of other women in other locations, then using AI technology to generate pornographic images of them. After Ming confronted him, he 'begged for mercy' but became angry when she refused to forgive him, Ming reportedly told Chinese news outlet Jimu News. Ming is just one of many women in China who have been covertly photographed or filmed – both in private and public spaces, including toilets – by voyeurs who have then circulated or sold the images online without consent. The sexually explicit pictures – often taken using pinhole cameras hidden in ordinary objects – are then shared online in massive groups. The scandal has left China reeling and raised questions about the government's ability – and willingness – to crack down on such behaviour. One such group on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, is named 'MaskPark tree hole forum' and reportedly had more than 100,000 mostly male members. 'The MaskPark incident exposes the extreme vulnerability of Chinese women in digital spaces,' Li Maizi, a prominent Chinese feminist now based in New York, told the Guardian. 'What's even more insidious and shocking is the prevalence of perpetrators known to the victims: partners, boyfriends, even fathers committing sexual violence against underage girls.' The scandal has sparked fury on Chinese social media and triggered discussions on the challenges of combating online harassment in the country. Although Chinese regulators have the power to clamp down on sexual harassment and abuse online, the system is currently focused on restricting the flow of information deemed politically sensitive, says Eric Liu, a former content moderator at the Chinese social platform Weibo who is now a US-based editor at China Digital Times. Since the scandal broke, Liu has seen 'large-scale' censorship of the MaskPark incident on the Chinese internet, where posts seen as having a social impact – including feminist content – are often scrubbed by censors. 'If the Chinese government wanted to shut down the groups, they definitely could,' Liu says, referring to previous cases of Chinese authorities infiltrating online spaces overseas. 'The scale of [MaskPark] is massive. I can't think of a similar incident of this scale in recent years. But Liu says he is not surprised. 'There's always been this type of content on the Chinese internet.' In China, those who are found guilty of distributing pornographic content can be sentenced to up to two years in prison, while people who take photos without the subject's consent can be detained for up to 10 days and fined. The country also has regulations protecting people against sexual harassment, domestic violence and cyber-abuse. But advocates say the current legal framework is insufficient. Often the burden falls on victims to gather evidence to build their cases, which can be difficult to do for crimes that take place online, according to Xirui*, a Chinese lawyer in Beijing who specialises in cases of gender-based harm. 'The behaviour itself also needs to meet certain elements of the crime, such as a specified number of clicks and subjective motives,' Xirui says. 'There's also the problem of the statute of limitations, which is only six months for public security cases. Once that's exceeded, the police will not file the case.' The Guardian contacted China's ministry of foreign affairs for comment. Beyond the legal hurdles, victims of crimes of a sexual nature often grapple with shame, which prevents many from speaking out. 'I've seen similar cases where landlords install cameras to spy on female tenants. This type of situation is generally treated as a privacy violation, subject to administrative detention, with victims seeking civil compensations,' Xirui says. To tackle the problem, the government could implement more specialised legislation, improve gender-based training of law enforcement officials and encourage courts to issue guidance that includes examples of relevant cases, the lawyer says. For Li, the recent incident reveals a widespread tolerance and lack of meaningful law enforcement on the issue in China. Rather than tackling the proliferation of sexist and abusive content online, authorities appear more focused on detaining female writers of homoerotic fiction and censoring victims of digital abuse, she says. 'With the rise of deepfake technologies and rapid online circulation of surreptitiously filmed content, women's bodies are being digitally exploited at an unprecedented scale,' Li says. 'But I believe if authorities are truly willing, and invest the necessary resources, it's entirely possible to trace and prosecute these crimes. We need to hold the Chinese government accountable.' * Names have been changed Additional research by Lillian Yang and Jason Tzu Kuan Lu
Reuters
8 minutes ago
- Reuters
NYC faces $64 million cut in security funds from Trump administration
WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - The Trump administration said it would cut terrorism prevention funding for New York City, according to a grant notice posted days after a gunman killed four people inside a Manhattan skyscraper. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said in a grant notice, opens new tab posted on Friday that New York City would receive $64 million less this year from its urban area security fund. The U.S. Congress created the program to help cities prevent terrorist and other violent attacks. Manhattan has been the site of two attacks on high-profile corporate executives in the last year. The most recent attack occurred in late July when a gunman armed with an assault-style rifle killed four people inside an office building that houses the headquarters of the NFL and several major financial firms. 'It makes absolutely no sense, and no justification has been given to cut NY's allocation given the rise in the threat environment,' a spokesperson for the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services said in a statement. A spokesperson for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday defended the move, saying New York City had not spent all of its counter-terrorism money from previous years. Reuters could not independently verify that assertion. Governor Kathy Hochul highlighted the latest attack in a letter, opens new tab to Noem in July that asked why the Trump administration had not announced the amounts each city would receive from the program this year. DHS is the parent agency of FEMA. The agency uses 'an analysis of relative risk of terrorism' to decide how much money each city will receive, according to the grant notice posted on Friday. The agency may change the amounts later, according to the notice. In 2023, the agency considered city visitor counts, population density and proximity to international borders, among other factors, to determine the totals, according to a report signed by then-FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. FEMA has been decreasing terrorism prevention money for New York City each year since at least fiscal year 2022. The drop is much more drastic this year at 41% year-over-year. The New York City Police Department has used the funding in the past to pay for the Domain Awareness System, a network of cameras, license plate readers and detection devices, according to a 2016 statement, opens new tab from former Mayor Bill de Blasio's office.
