WASHINGTON: The United States and NATO on Sunday condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order to put his nuclear forces on high alert as dangerous and unacceptable, while the White House said it was considering imposing new sanctions on Russia’s energy sector.
In issuing the order to prepare Russia’s nuclear weapons for increased readiness for launch, Putin cited “aggressive statements” from NATO allies and widespread sanctions imposed by Western nations that have already disrupted his country’s economy.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program that Putin’s actions had escalated the conflict and were “unacceptable.”
Thomas-Greenfield said the United States welcomed the news that Russian and Ukrainian officials would meet for talks on the border Belarus, but that it “remains to be seen” if Russia is acting in good faith.
Asked if there was a threat of chemical and biological weapons being used by Russia, Thomas-Greenfield said of Putin, “Certainly nothing is off the table with this guy. He’s willing to use whatever tools he can to intimidate Ukrainians and the world.”
“This is dangerous rhetoric. This is a behavior which is irresponsible,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program, referring to Russia’s nuclear alert status.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Putin was responding to an imaginary threat.
“We’ve seen him do this time and time again. At no point has Russia been under threat from NATO, has Russia been under threat from Ukraine,” Psaki said on ABC’s “This Week” program.
“This is all a pattern from President Putin and we’re going to stand up to it. We have the ability to defend ourselves, but we also need to call out what we’re seeing here from President Putin,” Psaki added.
Ukraine said Putin’s order regarding Russian nuclear forces was calculated to put pressure at the start of talks but that Kyiv would not be cowed.
The United States also has not taken sanctions targeting Russia’s energy sector off the table, Psaki said.
“We want to take every step to maximize the impact of consequences on President Putin while minimizing the impact on the American people and the global community. And so energy sanctions are certainly on the table. We have not taken those off. But we also want to do that and make sure we’re minimizing the impact on the global marketplace and do it in a united way,” Psaki said.
The United States is open to providing additional assistance to Ukraine, Psaki said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday announced $54 million in new humanitarian aid for Ukrainians affected by the invasion, which was in addition to the $350 million sent by the United States last week.
“This includes the provision of food, safe drinking water, shelter, emergency health care, winterization, and protection,” Blinken said in a statement.
US and NATO condemn Putin nuclear alert order
https://arab.news/p4vtp
US and NATO condemn Putin nuclear alert order
- US Ambassador to the UN : “Nothing is off the table with this guy — he’s willing to use whatever tools he can to intimidate Ukrainians and the world”
- Stoltenberg: “This is dangerous rhetoric (referring to Russia’s nuclear alert status) — this is a behavior which is irresponsible”
Trump takes unconventional approach to communicating to the public about war in Iran
- The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war
Typical of an unconventional presidency, the Trump administration waited more than 48 hours to make any live, public communication to the American people about why it had decided to go to war with Iran.
President Donald Trump discussed why he launched the attack prior to a White House ceremony honoring military heroes on Monday but took no questions from reporters. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine briefed journalists at the Pentagon.
The two days previous, Trump delivered two pretaped statements that were released on Truth Social, the social media site owned by the president’s media company, and granted telephone interviews to more than a dozen journalists — several of which produced fragmented responses that, to some, clouded as much as they cleared up.
The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war, even as the American military suffered its first casualties. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has teamed with the US against Iran, delivered two statements the day the war began and addressed reporters Monday at the site of a missile attack that killed nine people. The Israeli military has held multiple press briefings each day.
“The American people need a commander in chief, and he has been absent in that role,” Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama, said on CNN Monday. Emanuel, a Democrat, is contemplating a run for the presidency in 2028.
An unconventional strategy leads to criticism
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote on social media that “after Trump launched a new war on Iran, he did not rush back to the White House to make an Oval Office address to rally the nation as other presidents have done. He stayed at Mar-a-Lago to attend a glitzy political fundraiser.”
That post provoked a response from Steven Cheung, White House communications director. “Imagine being a reporter so consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome that he wants President Trump to mimic the failed policies of the past. The truth is that President Trump spent the majority of his time monitoring the situation in a secure facility, in constant contact with world leaders, and made multiple addresses to the nation that garnered hundreds of millions of views. He also took dozens of calls with reporters.”
The calls included one with Baker’s colleague at The Times, Zolan Kanno-Youngs. Trump’s mobile phone number is known to many of the reporters who cover him, and the president often takes their calls for on-the-spot interviews. Besides The Times, he spoke in the aftermath of the attack to journalists for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Axios, Politico and an Israeli television station.
Most of the calls were brief and marginally illuminating; Politico’s Dasha Burns said Trump answered but said he was too busy to talk. The public couldn’t hear what Trump said in the interviews and was dependent upon what the journalists chose to report on the conversations.
“I spoke to President Trump today and he told me that the operation in Iran is going to go very fast,” Libby Alon, a reporter for Channel 14 News in Israel, wrote about her interview on X. “It’s doing very well, and (will) make the people of Israel very happy, and the people of the world very happy.”
The Times reported that in its six-minute chat, Trump “offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.”
In one of his two conversations with Trump, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl said when he asked about the death of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the president said: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first.” CNN’s Jake Tapper went on the air minutes after his conversation Monday, saying Trump told him “the big one is coming soon,” an apparent reference to a future attack.
Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: “President Trump is the most transparent and accessible president in American history. The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a president of the United States than they have with President Trump.”
Hegseth briefing concentrates on friendly reporters
Pentagon reporters learned late Sunday about Hegseth’s briefing. Reporters from The Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and Stars & Stripes were permitted into the briefing room, but Hegseth did not call on them. Instead, he took questions from NewsNation and Trump-friendly outlets like the Daily Caller, Daily Wire, One America News and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Most mainstream news outlets left their regular stations at the Pentagon last fall rather than agree to Hegseth’s rules restricting their work.
Hegseth denounced the “foolishness” of people wanting to know details of the operation in advance, such as whether Americans would commit to more than air power, and said the operation would continue as long as it took to achieve objections. He initially ignored NBC News’ Courtney Kube when she called out a question: “President Trump put a four-week time limit on it. Are you saying he’s wrong?”
Later, Hegseth denounced Kube for asking “the typical NBC sort of gotcha-type question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it might take — four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up, it could move back. We’re going to execute at his command the objectives he set out to achieve.”
Unlike Pentagon briefings in past administrations, reporters were given assigned seats, with the Trump-friendly outlets seated in front. Jennifer Griffin, Hegseth’s former colleague at Fox News Channel who left the Pentagon with other reporters after not accepting his new rules, was seated in the last row.
