KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he has held further discussions with French President Emmanuel Macron about the possibility of Western troops deploying in Ukraine to safeguard any peace deal ending the nearly three-year war with Russia.
Zelensky’s disclosure came before an official visit to Kyiv on Tuesday by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. He arrived in Kyiv on an unannounced visit following a meeting in Warsaw on Monday with his counterparts from France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Poland.
Germany and the four other countries are Europe’s five top military spenders.
Pistorius told German news agency dpa that his visit to Kyiv aims to underscore Germany’s strong support for Ukraine at a time when US President-elect Donald Trump’s term beginning next week looks set to bring deep changes to Washington’s policy on the war.
Pistorius said that his visit “is a signal that Germany, as the biggest NATO country in Europe, stands by Ukraine — not alone, but with the group of five and many other allies.”
Trump has criticized the cost of the war for US taxpayers through major military aid packages for Ukraine, and vowed to bring the conflict to a swift end. He also has made it clear that he wants to shift more of the Ukraine burden onto Europe.
Macron prompted an outcry from other leaders, and he appeared isolated on the European stage, after his remarks almost a year ago floated the possibility of putting Western troops in Ukraine.
Pistorius told reporters in Kyiv that the Warsaw meeting didn’t discuss Macron’s remarks about troop deployments.
Zelensky has said that Ukraine needs security guarantees to bolster any peace agreement — an issue he said late Monday that he discussed with the French leader.
“As one of these guarantees, we discussed the French initiative to deploy military contingents in Ukraine,” Zelensky said. “We considered practical steps for its implementation, possible expansion and involvement of other countries in this process.”
Potentially sending European troops as peacekeepers to Ukraine is fraught with risk. Such a move may not deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again in the future, which is the fear of Ukrainian officials, and could drag European countries into a direct confrontation with Moscow. That, in turn, could pull NATO — including the United States — into a conflict.
Russia’s bigger army has largely pinned Ukrainian forces on the defensive along the around 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line. Ukraine’s defenses are creaking in the eastern Donetsk region amid a Russian onslaught.
Zelensky said Ukraine has more than 100 brigades on the battlefield and each of them requires equipment replenishment before increasing the number of troops through a wider mobilization.
Ukraine has built up a domestic arsenal of long-range drones and missiles that it uses to hit targets on Russian soil far behind the front line. The targets are usually infrastructure that supports the Russian war effort, such as arms depots, oil refineries and manufacturing plants.
Two industrial facilities in Russia’s western Saratov region were damaged after a “massive” Ukrainian drone attack, regional Gov. Roman Busargin said Tuesday.
He claimed that Russian air defenses downed “a large number” of drones and said that there were no casualties, offering no further details.
Ukrainian officials said the Saratov attack, which stretched over several days, “reduced the capabilities of (Russia’s) strategic aviation.”
Tanks holding aviation fuel for Tu-160 bombers caught fire at the Engels military airfield in Saratov, according to a statement on social media by the 14th separate regiment of the Unmanned Systems Forces of Ukraine.
Also, the Russian Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of firing six US-made ATACMS missiles, six UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles and 31 drones at Russia’s Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine.
All the missiles and drones were shot down by air defense systems, the ministry claimed in an online statement, but it said that the attack “will not go unanswered.”
Russia has repeatedly threatened Ukraine and the West with retaliation for the use of Western-supplied longer-range weapons to strike Russian soil.
Zelensky, Macron discuss Western troop deployment in Ukraine before German defense chief visits
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Zelensky, Macron discuss Western troop deployment in Ukraine before German defense chief visits
- Zelensky’s disclosure came before an official visit to Kyiv on Tuesday by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius
- Pistorius said that his visit “is a signal that Germany, as the biggest NATO country in Europe, stands by Ukraine — not alone, but with the group of five and many other allies”
Trump set to repeal scientific finding that serves as basis for US climate change policy
- The endangerment finding is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration on Thursday will revoke a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for US action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the White House announced.
The Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final rule rescinding a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding. That Obama-era policy determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will “formalize the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding” at a White House ceremony, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
The action “will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” she said. The bulk of the savings will stem from reduced costs for new vehicles, with the EPA projecting average per vehicle savings of more than $2,400 for popular light-duty cars, SUVs and trucks. Leavitt said.
The endangerment finding is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet. It is used to justify regulations, such as auto emissions standards, intended to protect against threats made increasingly severe by climate change — deadly floods, extreme heat waves, catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters in the United States and around the world.
Legal challenges would be certain for any action that effectively would repeal those regulations, with environmental groups describing the shift as the single biggest attack in US history on federal efforts to address climate change.
EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said the Obama-era rule was “one of the most damaging decisions in modern history” and said EPA “is actively working to deliver a historic action for the American people.”
Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” previously issued an executive order that directed EPA to submit a report on “the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans have long sought to undo what they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging rules to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
Zeldin, a former Republican congressman who was tapped by Trump to lead EPA last year, has criticized his predecessors in Democratic administrations, saying they were “willing to bankrupt the country” in an effort to combat climate change.
Democrats “created this endangerment finding and then they are able to put all these regulations on vehicles, on airplanes, on stationary sources, to basically regulate out of existence ... segments of our economy,″ Zeldin said in announcing the proposed rule last July. ”And it cost Americans a lot of money.”
Peter Zalzal, a lawyer and associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, countered that the EPA will be encouraging more climate pollution, higher health insurance and fuel costs and thousands of avoidable premature deaths.
Zeldin’s push “is cynical and deeply damaging, given the mountain of scientific evidence supporting the finding, the devastating climate harms Americans are experiencing right now and EPA’s clear obligation to protect Americans’ health and welfare,” he said.
Zalzal and other critics noted that the Supreme Court ruled in a 2007 case that planet-warming greenhouse gases, caused by burning of oil and other fossil fuels, are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Since the high court’s decision, in a case known as Massachusetts v. EPA, courts have uniformly rejected legal challenges to the endangerment finding, including a 2023 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Following Zeldin’s proposal to repeal the rule, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reassessed the science underpinning the 2009 finding and concluded it was “accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence.”
Much of the understanding of climate change that was uncertain or tentative in 2009 is now resolved, the NAS panel of scientists said in a September report. “The evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute,” the panel said.
