According to defense officials, three of the drones were shot down in the past week — suggesting the militants’ targeting of the unmanned aircraft flying over Yemen has improved. The drones were doing attack runs or conducting surveillance, and they crashed both into the water and onto land, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

The U.S. has increased its attacks on the Houthis, launching daily strikes since March 15, when President Donald Trump ordered a new, expanded campaign. He promised to use “overwhelming lethal force” until the Houthis cease their attacks on shipping along a vital maritime corridor.

Central Command spokesman Dave Eastburn said Thursday night that the U.S. has struck more than 800 Houthi targets. “These strikes have destroyed multiple command-and-control facilities, air defense systems, advanced weapons manufacturing facilities, advanced weapons storage locations, and killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders,” Eastburn said.

Another defense official said that although hostile fire is likely the cause of the drone losses, the incidents are still under investigation. The official noted that the increase in U.S. strikes can add to the risk to aircraft, but said the U.S. will take every measure possible to protect troops, equipment and interests in the region. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to comment on sensitive military issues.

US forces strike Yemen oil port in ongoing campaign against Houthis

The sophisticated drones, built by General Atomics, cost about $30 million each, and generally fly at altitudes of more than 40,000 feet. Houthis leaders have consistently touted the strikes in public statements. One of the defense officials said the U.S. lost Reaper drones on March 31 and on April 3, 9, 13, 18, 19 and 22.

U.S. senators, meanwhile, are raising concerns about civilian casualties caused by the American strikes in Yemen. Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tim Kaine of Virginia wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday questioning whether the Trump administration is “abandoning the measures necessary to meet its obligations to reducing civilian harm.”

Specifically, they questioned reports that U.S. strikes at the Ras Isa fuel terminal in Yemen last week potentially killed more than 70 civilians.

“Military leaders agree that ingraining civilian harm mitigation practices within U.S operations leads to better outcomes and that civilian casualties actually undermine the mission that the military has been sent in to do,” their letter said.

In addition to downing the drones, the Houthis have been persistently firing missiles and one-way attack drones at U.S. military ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. They haven’t hit any.

US sends F-35s to Middle East as strikes on Houthis continue

The U.S. has been using an array of warships, fighter jets, bombers and drones to strike the Houthis, and aircraft can now launch from two Navy carriers in the region.

Hegseth decided in March to beef up the Navy warship presence in the Middle East, ordering the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman to extend its deployment there, as the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson steamed toward the area.

The Truman, along with two of the destroyers and a cruiser in its strike group, is now in the Red Sea. And the Vinson, along with two destroyers and a cruiser, is in the Gulf of Aden.

The third destroyer assigned to the Truman is in the Mediterranean Sea. And two other U.S. Navy destroyers are in the Red Sea, but aren’t part of the Truman’s group.

Hegseth is weighing whether to grant a request by U.S. Central Command to once again extend the Truman’s deployment. A decision to do that could keep the Truman and at least some of its strike group in the region for several more weeks.

It has been rare in recent years for the U.S. to have two aircraft carriers in the Middle East at the same time. Navy leaders have generally been opposed to the idea because it disrupts ship maintenance schedules and delays time at home for sailors strained by the unusually high combat tempo.

Last year, the Biden administration ordered the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower to remain in the Red Sea for an extended time, as U.S. warships waged the most intense running sea battle since World War II.

Prior to that, it had been years since the U.S. had committed that much warship power to the Middle East.

The Houthis have been waging persistent missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in the region in what the group’s leadership has described as an effort to end the Israeli war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

From November 2023 until this January, the Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four civilian sailors. That has greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion of goods move through it annually.

Hegseth will be in Manila on March 28-29 to meet his Philippine counterpart, Gilberto Teodoro, and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Talks will touch on increasingly assertive actions by Beijing in the South China Sea and “more significant support” to Philippine security forces by the Trump administration, Philippine Ambassador to the U.S. Jose Manuel Romualdez told The Associated Press.

Trump’s “America First” foreign policy thrust has triggered concerns about the scale and depth of U.S. commitment to the region under his new term.

“It’s a strong message to China on solid bilateral relations” between the U.S. and the Philippines,” Romualdez said of Hegseth’s upcoming visit.

China claims virtually the entire South China Sea, a major security and global trade route. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also lay overlapping claims to the resource-rich and busy waters, but confrontations have particularly spiked between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces in the last two years.

In his first telephone talk with Teodoro last month, Hegseth “reaffirmed the ironclad U.S. commitment to the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty and its importance for maintaining a secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” according to a readout provided by Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot after the Feb. 5 call.

“The leaders discussed the importance of reestablishing deterrence in the South China Sea, including by working with allies and partners,” Ullyot said. “They also discussed enhancing the capability and capacity of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.”

After major territorial faceoffs between Chinese and Philippine forces in the disputed waters, the previous Biden administration had repeatedly warned that the U.S. is obligated to help defend the Philippines under the treaty if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack in the Pacific, including in the South China Sea.

Beijing has warned Washington, in return, to stay out of what it calls a purely Asian dispute and stop actions that endanger regional harmony and stability.

The White House described it as the first step in a “movement to peace” it hopes will eventually include a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea and a full and lasting end to the fighting.

The White House added negotiations would “begin immediately” in the Middle East on those steps. Shortly after the call between Trump and Putin, air raid alerts sounded in Kyiv, followed by explosions in the city. Local officials urged people to seek shelter.

Putin says he supports US proposal for 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine

It was not immediately clear whether Ukraine is on board with the limited ceasefire plan.

Ukrainian officials had proposed a ceasefire covering the Black Sea and long-range missile strikes and the release of prisoners at their meeting with the U.S delegation in Saudi Arabia earlier this month.

“We agreed to an immediate Ceasefire on all Energy and Infrastructure, with an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a Complete Ceasefire and, ultimately, an END to this very horrible War between Russia and Ukraine,” Trump posted on social media following his call.

The Kremlin said Putin welcomed Trump’s calls for the maritime ceasefire and “agreed to begin negotiations to further work out specific details of such an agreement.”

Putin also told Trump that Russia and Ukraine are set to exchange 175 prisoners of war each on Wednesday, and Russia will also hand over to Ukraine 23 badly wounded soldiers, the Kremlin said.

Putin also called on Trump to end foreign military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine as the U.S. looks to bring an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the Kremlin.

The move comes as the White House pushes for Russia to sign off on its 30-day ceasefire proposal aimed at ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials last week agreed to the 30-day ceasefire proposal during talks in Saudi Arabia led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, however, remains skeptical that Putin is ready for peace as Russian forces continue to pound Ukraine.

The engagement is just the latest turn in dramatically shifting U.S.-Russia relations as Trump made quickly ending the conflict a top priority — even at the expense of straining ties with longtime American allies who want Putin to pay a price for the invasion.

In preparation for the Trump-Putin call, White House special envoy Steve Witkoff met last week with Putin in Moscow to discuss the proposal. Rubio had persuaded senior Ukrainian officials during talks in Saudi Arabia to agree to the ceasefire framework.

Putin last week said he agreed in principle with the U.S. proposal, but emphasized that Russia would seek guarantees that Ukraine would not use a break in hostilities to rearm and continue mobilization. The Russian president has also demanded that Ukraine renounce joining the NATO military alliance, sharply cut its army, and protect Russian language and culture to keep the country in Moscow’s orbit.

The U.S. president said this week that Washington and Moscow have already begun discussing “dividing up certain assets” between Ukraine and Russia as part of a deal to end the conflict.

Trump, who during his campaign pledged to end the war quickly, has at moments boasted of his relationship with Putin and blamed Ukraine for Russia’s unprovoked invasion, all while accusing Zelenskyy of unnecessarily prolonging the biggest land war in Europe since World War II.

Trump had said before the call that control of land and power plants would be part of the conversation, which came on the anniversary of Russia annexing Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula 11 years ago. That bold land grab by Russia set the stage for Russia to invade its neighbor in 2022.

Witkoff suggested that U.S. and Russian officials have discussed the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest — in southern Ukraine.

The plant has been caught in the crossfire since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in 2022 and seized the facility shortly after. The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly expressed alarm about it, fueling fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe.

The plant is a significant asset, producing nearly one-fourth of Ukraine’s electricity in the year before the war.

After a disastrous Feb. 28 White House meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump temporarily cut off some military intelligence-sharing and aid to Ukraine. It was restored after the Ukrainians last week signed off on the Trump administration’s 30-day ceasefire proposal.

Zelenskyy in his nightly video address on Monday made clear he remains doubtful that Putin is ready for peace.

“Now, almost a week later, it’s clear to everyone in the world — even to those who refused to acknowledge the truth for the past three years — that it is Putin who continues to drag out this war,” Zelenskyy said.

In his dealings with Zelenskyy and Putin, Trump has frequently focused on who has the leverage. Putin has “the cards” and Zelenskyy does not, Trump has said repeatedly.

Trump, who has long shown admiration for Putin, has also made clear he’d like to see the U.S.-Russia relationship return to a more normal footing.

The president during his recent contentious meeting with Zelenskyy grumbled that “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” a reference to the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in which he beat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Trump on Monday again underscored his view that Ukraine is not in a strong negotiating position. He said Russian forces have “surrounded” Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region — amplifying an assertion made by Russian officials that’s been disputed by Zelenskyy.

Ukraine’s army stunned Russia in August last year by attacking across the border and taking control of an estimated 500 square miles of land. But Ukraine’s forces are now in retreat and it has all but lost a valuable bargaining chip, as momentum builds for a ceasefire with Russia.

Zelenskyy has acknowledged that the Ukrainians are on their back foot while disputing Russian claims that his troops are encircled in Kursk.

Trump suggested that he’s taken unspecified action that has kept Russia from slaughtering Ukrainian troops in Kursk.

“They’re surrounded by Russian soldiers, and I believe if it wasn’t for me they wouldn’t be here any longer,” Trump said.

The White House said the leaders also discussed the situation in the Middle East and agreed “Iran should never be in a position to destroy Israel.”

U.S. officials have previously said that Iran has provided Russia with short-range ballistic missiles and attack drones for the war in Ukraine. The U.S. has also said that Iran has assisted the Kremlin with building a drone-manufacturing factory.

Isachenkov reported from Moscow.

“The Iraqis continue their impressive victories over the forces of darkness and terrorism,” Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai, or “Abu Khadija,” was “deputy caliph” of the militant group and as “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world,” the statement said.

A security official said the operation was carried out by an airstrike in Anbar province in western Iraq. A second official said the operation took place Thursday night but that al-Rifai’s death was confirmed Friday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The announcement came on the same day as the first visit by Syria’s top diplomat to Iraq, during which the two countries pledged to work together to combat IS.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein said at a news conference that “there are common challenges facing Syrian and Iraqi society, and especially the terrorists of IS.” He said the officials had spoken “in detail about the movements of ISIS, whether on the Syrian-Iraqi border, inside Syria or inside Iraq” during the visit.

Hussein referred to an operations room formed by Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon at a recent meeting in Amman to confront IS, and said it would soon begin work.

The relationship between Iraq and Syria is somewhat fraught after the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad. Al-Sudani came to power with the support of a coalition of Iran-backed factions, and Tehran was a major backer of Assad. The current interim president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani and fought as an al-Qaida militant in Iraq after the U.S. invasion of 2003, and later fought against Assad’s government in Syria.

But Syrian interim Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani focused on the historic ties between the two countries.

“Throughout history, Baghdad and Damascus have been the capitals of the Arab and Islamic world, sharing knowledge, culture and economy,” he said.

Strengthening the partnership between the two countries “will not only benefit our peoples, but will also contribute to the stability of the region, making us less dependent on external powers and better able to determine our own destiny,” he said.

The operation and the visit come at a time when Iraqi officials are anxious about an IS resurgence in the wake of the fall of Assad in Syria.

While Syria’s new rulers — led by the Islamist former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — have pursued IS cells since taking power, some fear a breakdown in overall security that could allow the group to stage a resurgence.

The U.S. and Iraq announced an agreement last year to wind down the military mission in Iraq of an American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group by September 2025, with U.S. forces departing some bases where they have stationed troops during a two-decade-long military presence in the country.

When the agreement was reached to end the coalition’s mission in Iraq, Iraqi political leaders said the threat of IS was under control and they no longer needed Washington’s help to beat back the remaining cells.

But the fall of Assad in December led some to reassess that stance, including members of the Coordination Framework, a coalition of mainly Shiite, Iran-allied political parties that brought current Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani to power in late 2022.

Associated Press staff writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.

“So the idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it,” Putin told a news conference in Moscow. “But there are issues that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to discuss it with our American colleagues and partners.”

He noted the need to develop a mechanism to control possible breaches of the truce. Another issue, he said, is whether Ukraine could use the 30-day ceasefire to rearm.

“We agree with the proposals to halt the fighting, but we proceed from the assumption that the ceasefire should lead to lasting peace and remove the root causes of the crisis,” Putin said.

Putin made the remarks just hours after the arrival of Trump’s envoy in Moscow for talks on the 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine has accepted.

The diplomatic effort coincided with a Russian claim that its troops have driven the Ukrainian army out of a key town in Russia’s Kursk border region, where Moscow has been trying for seven months to dislodge Ukrainian troops from their foothold.

Putin said it appeared that the U.S. persuaded Ukraine to accept a ceasefire and that Ukraine is interested because of the battlefield situation, particularly in Kursk.

Referring to the Ukrainian troops in Kursk, he said: “Will all those who are there come out without a fight?”

Putin thanked U.S. President Donald Trump “for paying so much attention to the settlement in Ukraine.”

He also thanked the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa for their “noble mission to end the fighting,” a statement that signaled those countries’ potential involvement in a ceasefire deal.

Russia has said it will not accept peacekeepers from any NATO members to monitor a prospective truce.

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser said Putin planned to meet with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, later Thursday.

The Russian Defense Ministry’s claim that it recaptured the town of Sudzha, a Ukrainian operational hub in Kursk, came hours after Putin visited his commanders in Kursk. The claim could not be independently verified. Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.

The renewed Russian military push and Putin’s high-profile visit to his troops unfolded as Trump seeks a diplomatic end to the war, which began more than three years ago with Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The U.S. on Tuesday lifted its March 3 suspension of military aid for Kyiv after senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials reported making progress on how to stop the fighting during talks in Saudi Arabia.

Trump said Wednesday that “it’s up to Russia now” as his administration presses Moscow to agree to the ceasefire. The U.S. president has made veiled threats to hit Russia with new sanctions if it does not engage with peace efforts.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC Thursday that Trump is “willing to apply maximum pressure on both sides,” including sanctions that reach the highest scale on Russia.

Zelenskyy chides Russia for slow response

Ukraine has expressed its own concerns that Russia would use a truce to regroup and rearm.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy chided Russia on the Telegram messaging app Thursday for what he said was its slow response to the ceasefire proposal, accusing Moscow of trying to delay any peace deal. He said that Ukraine is “determined to move quickly toward peace” and hoped U.S. pressure would compel Russia to stop fighting.

The U.S. still has about $3.85 billion in congressionally authorized funding for future arms shipments to Ukraine, but the Trump administration has shown no interest so far in using that authority to send additional weapons as it awaits the outcome of peace overtures.

By signaling its openness to a ceasefire at a time when the Russian military has the upper hand in the war, Ukraine has presented the Kremlin with a dilemma — whether to accept a truce and abandon hopes of making new gains, or reject the offer and risk derailing a cautious rapprochement with Washington.

The Ukrainian army’s foothold inside Russia has been under intense pressure for months from the renewed effort by Russian forces, backed by North Korean troops. Ukraine’s daring incursion last August led to the first occupation of Russian soil by foreign troops since World War II and embarrassed the Kremlin.

Putin visits Russian military commanders

Speaking to commanders Wednesday, Putin said that he expected the military “to completely free the Kursk region from the enemy in the nearest future.”

Wearing military fatigues, Putin added that “it’s necessary to think about creating a security zone alongside the state border,” in a signal that Moscow could try to expand its territorial gains by capturing parts of Ukraine’s neighboring Sumy region. That idea could complicate a ceasefire deal.

Ukraine launched the raid in a bid to counter the unceasingly grim news from the front line, as well as to draw Russian troops away from the battlefield inside Ukraine and to gain a bargaining chip in any peace talks. But the incursion did not significantly change the dynamic of the war.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed late Wednesday that Russian forces were in control of Sudzha, a town close to the border that previously was home to about 5,000 people.

Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Russian aircraft had carried out an unprecedented number of strikes on Kursk and that as a result Sudzha had been almost completely destroyed. He did not comment on whether Ukraine still controlled the settlement but said his country was “maneuvering [troops] to more advantageous lines.”

Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Dmytro Krasylnykov, commander of Ukraine’s Northern Operational Command, which includes the Kursk region, was dismissed from his post, he told Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne on Wednesday. He told the outlet that he was not given a reason for his dismissal, saying “I’m guessing, but I don’t want to talk about it yet.”

Associated Press Writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it’s important not to “get ahead” of the question of responding to the ceasefire, which was proposed by Washington. He told reporters that Moscow is awaiting “detailed information” from the U.S. and suggested that Russia must get that before it can take a position. The Kremlin has previously opposed anything short of a permanent end to the conflict and has not accepted any concessions.

U.S. President Donald Trump wants to end the three-year war and pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to enter talks. The suspension of U.S. assistance happened days after Zelenskyy and Trump argued about the conflict in a tense White House meeting. The administration’s decision to resume military aid after talks Tuesday with senior Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia marked a sharp shift in its stance.

Trump said, “It’s up to Russia now,” as his administration presses Moscow to agree to the ceasefire.

“And hopefully we can get a ceasefire from Russia,” Trump said Wednesday in an extended exchange with reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Micheál Martin, the prime minster of Ireland. “And if we do, I think that would be 80% of the way to getting this horrible bloodbath” ended.

The U.S. president again made veiled threats of hitting Russia with new sanctions.

“We can, but I hope it’s not going to be necessary,” Trump said.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who led the American delegation to Saudi Arabia, where Ukraine consented to the U.S. ceasefire proposal, said Washington will pursue “multiple points of contacts” with Russia to see if President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate an end to the war. He declined to give details or say what steps might be taken if Putin refuses to engage.

The U.S. hopes to see Russia stop attacks on Ukraine within the next few days as a first step, Rubio said at a refueling stop Wednesday in Shannon, Ireland, on his way to talks in Canada with other Group of Seven leading industrialized nations.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that national security adviser Mike Waltz spoke Wednesday with his Russian counterpart.

She also confirmed that Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, will head to Moscow for talks with Russian officials. She did not say with whom Witkoff planned to meet. A person familiar with the matter said Witkoff is expected to meet with Putin later his week. The person was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Ukraine says ceasefire would allow time for planning end to war

Zelenskyy said the 30-day ceasefire would allow the sides “to fully prepare a step-by-step plan for ending the war, including security guarantees for Ukraine.”

Technical questions over how to effectively monitor a truce along the roughly 600-mile front line, where small but deadly drones are common, are “very important,” Zelenskyy told reporters Wednesday in Kyiv.

Arms deliveries to Ukraine have already resumed through a Polish logistics center, the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Poland announced Wednesday. The deliveries go through a NATO and U.S. hub in the eastern Polish city of Rzeszow that has been used to ferry Western weapons into neighboring Ukraine about 45 miles away.

The American military help is vital for Ukraine’s shorthanded and weary army, which is having a tough time keeping Russia’s bigger military force at bay. For Russia, the American aid spells potentially more difficulty in achieving war aims, and it could make Washington’s peace efforts a tougher sell in Moscow.

The U.S. government has also restored Ukraine’s access to unclassified commercial satellite pictures provided by Maxar Technologies through a program Washington runs, Maxar spokesperson Tomi Maxted told The Associated Press. The images help Ukraine plan attacks, assess their success and monitor Russian movements.

In other developments, officials acknowledged Wednesday that Kyiv no longer has any of the longer-range Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, missiles.

According to a U.S. official and a Ukrainian lawmaker on the country’s defense committee, Ukraine has run out of the ATACMs. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide military weapons details.

The U.S. official said the U.S. provided fewer than 40 of those missiles overall and that Ukraine ran out of them in late January. Senior U.S. defense leaders, including the previous Pentagon chief, Lloyd Austin, had made it clear that only a limited number of the ATACMs would be delivered and that the U.S. and NATO allies considered other weapons to be more valuable in the fight.

Russia steps up efforts to regain control of Kursk region

The developments came amid intensifying Russian efforts to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kremlin’s Kursk region that have yielded breakthroughs in recent days, Ukrainian soldiers told AP. The fighting has escalated as ceasefire talks come to a head, with Moscow intent on taking back its territory and Kyiv determined to hold onto it as a bargaining chip in any negotiations.

Ukrainian forces made a daring raid into the Russian region last August in the first foreign occupation of Russian territory since World War II. They have held on despite intense pressure from tens of thousands of Russian and North Korean troops.

Recent fighting reportedly has focused on the Kursk town of Sudzha, which is a key Ukrainian supply hub and operational base. Ukrainian soldiers said the situation is dynamic, and fighting continues in and around the town, but three of them conceded Russian forces were making headway.

Russian state news agencies RIA Novosti and Tass reported Wednesday that the Russian military has entered Sudzha. It was not possible to independently verify either side’s claims.

Inside Ukraine, Russian ballistic missiles killed at least five civilians, officials said Wednesday.

Russian officials are wary about the U.S.-Ukraine talks

Russian lawmakers signaled wariness about the prospect of a ceasefire.

“Russia is advancing [on the battlefield], so it will be different with Russia,” senior Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev noted in a post on the messaging app Telegram.

“Any agreements [with the understanding of the need for compromise] should be on our terms, not American,” Kosachev wrote.

Lawmaker Mikhail Sheremet told the state news agency Tass that Russia “is not interested in continuing” the war, but at the same time Moscow “will not tolerate being strung along.”

The outcome of the Saudi Arabia talks “places the onus on Washington to persuade Moscow to accept and implement the ceasefire,” said John Hardie, a defense analyst and deputy director of the Russia program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based research institute.

“Moscow will present itself as cooperative, but may push for agreement on basic principles for a final peace deal before agreeing to a ceasefire,” he said.

“Russia may also insist on barring Western military aid to Ukraine during the ceasefire and on Ukraine holding elections ahead of a long-term peace agreement.”

Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, reported Wednesday that the service’s chief, Sergei Naryshkin, spoke on the phone Tuesday with CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

The two discussed cooperation “in areas of common interest and the resolution of crisis situations,” according to a statement by the SVR.

Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Lolita Baldor in Washington, Stefanie Dazio in Berlin, Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

In a joint statement published soon after the talks ended, the U.S. and Ukraine agreed to an “immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire,” which could be extended but first hinges on Russia’s acceptance.

“The ball is now in their court,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of the Kremlin.

Ukraine-US talks on ending war with Russia start in Saudi Arabia

White House envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow this week to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the second such round of meetings. Rubio said Russia will receive the ceasefire terms through “multiple channels” for review.

“The deadline is we hope to do this as soon as possible,” Rubio said.

Last week, the U.S. paused hundreds of millions of dollars in American security assistance to Ukraine and stopped sharing intelligence, with President Donald Trump claiming Kyiv wasn’t “ready for peace.” The drastic step followed a catastrophic meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, which devolved into a shouting match.

If extended indefinitely, the pause could have sapped Ukraine’s stocks of ammunition while also hindering its ability to target Russian positions. European officials across the continent reacted to the decision with alarm and have begun multiple rounds of meetings on how they can sustain Ukraine’s self-defense without U.S. assistance.

Aside from the ceasefire proposal, U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said the U.S and Ukraine also discussed humanitarian concerns and what security guarantees Ukraine is seeking. To this point, Kyiv has sought an American military commitment to enforce any peace deal signed with Russia, which has broken past ceasefires and launched a full-scale invasion three years ago.

The Trump administration has been adamant that any security guarantees must come from Europe, part of an overall pivot away from U.S. military support for the continent. European countries have increased military spending in recent years but would still struggle to take on such an expansive role without American aid.

Meanwhile, Trump told reporters last week that America would question whether countries in NATO spent enough on defense before coming to their aid, a core part of the alliance.

“If you’re not going to pay your bills, we’re not going to defend you,” Trump said.

The talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah come after President Donald Trump paused U.S. military aid to Ukraine last week, along with some intelligence sharing, in an attempt to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to engage in negotiations to end the war against Russia.

Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to travel later this week to Moscow, where he could meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. The person cautioned that scheduling could change.

The mood across the room

Journalists were briefly allowed in a room where a senior Ukrainian delegation met with America’s top diplomat, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who smiled at the cameras and when asked about his expectations for the meeting, gave a thumbs-up and replied, “Good.”

Across the table, Ukrainian officials, including the country’s top diplomat and defense chief, showed no facial expressions as the meeting got underway at a luxury hotel. However, Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak told reporters that the most important thing was “how to achieve a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.” He said security guarantees were important to prevent Russia from invading again in the future.

It was the first meeting between the two sides since the Oval Office blowup between Trump and Zelenskyy last month.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister was also on hand as American, Saudi and Ukrainian flags could be seen in the background. Officials did not answer any of the journalists’ shouted questions.

The delegations met for about three hours in the morning before taking a break, and officials said the talks continued in the afternoon.

There was also no immediate comment from Ukrainian or U.S. officials on the massive attack in which 343 drones targeted 10 Russian regions, leaving three people dead and 18 wounded, including three children, officials said.

Meanwhile, Russia launched 126 drones and a ballistic missile at Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, as part of Moscow’s relentless pounding of civilian areas during the war.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the United States will inform Russia about the results of the Jeddah talks, which he described as “normal practice.”

Talks bring a chance to mend US-Ukraine relations

The meeting in Jeddah offered an opportunity for Kyiv officials to repair Ukraine’s relationship with the Trump administration after an unprecedented argument erupted during Zelenskyy’s Feb. 28 visit to the White House.

Critically, Ukraine needs to persuade Washington to end the U.S. suspension of military aid and intelligence sharing after the blowout. U.S. officials have said that positive talks in Jeddah could mean that the pause is short.

Ukrainian officials told The Associated Press on Monday that they will propose a ceasefire covering the Black Sea, which would bring safer shipping, as well as long-range missile strikes that have hit civilians in Ukraine, and the release of prisoners.

The two senior officials said Kyiv is also ready to sign an agreement with the United States on access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals — a deal that Trump is keen to secure.

While traveling to Jeddah, Rubio said the U.S. delegation would not be proposing any specific measures to secure an end to the conflict but rather wanted to hear from Ukraine about what they would be willing to consider.

“I’m not going to set any conditions on what they have to or need to do,” Rubio told reporters accompanying him. “I think we want to listen to see how far they’re willing to go and then compare that to what the Russians want and see how far apart we truly are.”

Rubio said the rare earth and critical minerals deal could be signed during the meeting, but he stressed it was not a precondition for the United States to move ahead with discussions with either Ukraine or the Russians.

He said it may make more sense to take some time to negotiate the precise details of the agreement, which is now a broad memorandum of understanding that leaves out many specifics.

The Kremlin is sticking to its conditions for peace

The Kremlin has not publicly offered any concessions. Russia has said it’s ready to cease hostilities on condition that Ukraine drops its bid to join NATO and recognizes regions that Moscow occupies as Russian. Russia has captured nearly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory.

Russian forces have held the battlefield momentum for more than a year, though at a high cost in infantry and armor, and are pushing at selected points along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, especially in the eastern Donetsk region, against Ukraine’s understrength and weary army.

Ukraine has invested heavily in developing its arms industry, especially high-tech drones that have reached deep into Russia.

Most of the Ukrainian drones fired overnight — 126 of them — were shot down over the Kursk region across the border from Ukraine, parts of which Kyiv’s forces control, and 91 were shot down over the Moscow region, according to a statement by Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said over 70 drones targeted the Russian capital and were shot down as they were flying toward it — the biggest single attack on Moscow so far in the war.

The governor of the Moscow region surrounding the capital, Andrei Vorobyov, said the attack damaged several residential buildings and a number of cars.

Flights were temporarily restricted in and out of six airports, including Domodedovo, Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo and Zhukovsky just outside Moscow, and airports in the Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod regions.

Associated Press writers Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile firings, North Korea’s fifth missile launch event this year, were detected from the North’s southwestern Hwanghae province. It called the weapons close-range but didn’t say how far they flew. The military said South Korea bolstered its surveillance posture and is closely coordinating with the United States.

Earlier Monday, the South Korean and U.S. militaries began their annual Freedom Shield command post exercise, their first major combined training of President Donald Trump’s second term. The allies have already been engaging in diverse field training exercises in connection with the Freedom Shield training.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry warned Monday that the latest training risks triggering “physical conflict” on the Korean Peninsula. It called the drills an “aggressive and confrontational war rehearsal” and reiterated leader Kim Jong Un’s stated goals for a “radical growth” of his nuclear force to counter what he claims as growing threats posed by the U.S. and its Asian allies.

This year’s training came after the South Korean and U.S. militaries paused live-fire training while Seoul investigates how its fighter jets mistakenly bombed a civilian area during a warm-up drill last week.

About 30 people were injured, two of them seriously, when two South Korean KF-16 fighter jets mistakenly fired eight MK-82 bombs on a civilian area in Pocheon, a town near the North Korean border, on Thursday. The bombing occurred while South Korean and U.S. forces were engaging in a live-fire drill ahead of the Freedom Shield exercise.

The initial assessment from the South Korean air force was that one of the KF-16 pilots entered the wrong coordinates and failed to visually verify the target before proceeding with the bombing. The second pilot had the correct coordinates but focused only on maintaining flight formation and dropped the bombs on the first pilot’s instructions without recognizing the target was wrong, according to the content of the latest briefing provided to The Associated Press.

Gen. Lee Youngsu, chief of staff of the South Korean air force, bowed and apologized Monday over the injuries and property damage caused by the bombing, which he said “should have never happened and must never happen again.”

Both the South Korean and U.S. militaries have halted all live-fire exercises in South Korea following the mistake. South Korean military officials say live-fire training will resume after they complete the investigation of the bombing and form preventative steps.

The South Korean air force earlier suspended the training flights of all its planes too but lifted the steps on Monday, except aircraft affiliated with the unit the two KF-16s belong to.

Trump, in broad-ranging comments on the state of the conflict, said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin would accept European peacekeepers in Ukraine to keep the peace. He also expressed hope that the conflict could end within weeks and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would soon come to the U.S. to sign a deal to give the U.S. access to Ukraine’s critical minerals to help repay some of the $180 billion in American aid that’s been sent to Kyiv since the start of the war.

“It looks like we’re getting very close,” Trump told reporters at the start of his bilateral meeting with Macron. He added that Zelenskyy could potentially visit Washington this week or next to sign the deal.

Trump and Macron earlier on Monday participated in a virtual meeting with fellow Group of Seven leaders to discuss the war.

The talks come at a moment of deep uncertainty about the future of transatlantic relations, with Trump transforming American foreign policy and effectively tuning out European leadership as he looks to quickly end the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine is also looking for future security guarantees as part of any agreement. Trump, however, did not say whether the emerging deal would include American security guarantees.

“Europe is going to make sure nothing happens,” Trump said.

The anniversary — and talks — come at an unnerving moment for much of Europe witnessing a dramatic shift in American foreign policy with Trump's return to power.

Trump also has made demands for territory — Greenland, Canada, Gaza and the Panama Canal — as well as precious rare earth minerals from Ukraine. Just over a month into his second term, the “America First” president has cast an enormous shadow over what veteran U.S. diplomats and former government officials had regarded as America’s calming presence of global stability and continuity.

Macron at a joint press conference with Trump following their meeting said their talks were productive and acknowledged that European nations must do more to bolster defense on the continent. But Macron also warned against capitulating to Russia.

″This peace must not mean a surrender of Ukraine,” Macron said. “It must not mean a ceasefire without guarantees. This peace must allow for Ukrainian sovereignty.”

Trump said he believed Putin would accept European peacekeepers in Ukraine as part of a potential deal to end Russia’s war there.

“Yeah, he will accept it,” Trump said. “I have asked him that question. Look, if we do this deal, he’s not looking for more war.”

Putin said Monday that he has not discussed resolving the conflict in Ukraine in detail with Trump and nor did Russian and American negotiating teams when they met in Saudi Arabia last week. Putin also said Russia does not rule out European countries participating in a peace settlement.

Despite some hiccups, the military, economic and moral power of the United States has dominated the post-World War II era, most notably after the Cold War came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. All of that, some fear, may be lost if Trump gets his way and the U.S. abandons the principles under which the United Nations and numerous other international bodies were founded.

“The only conclusion you can draw is that 80 years of policy in standing up against aggressors has just been blown up without any sort of discussion or reflection,” said Ian Kelly, a U.S. ambassador to Georgia during the Obama and first Trump administration and now a professor at Northwestern University.

Visits start on anniversary of war in Ukraine

Trump is set to hold a meeting Thursday with another key European leader, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

The talks come after Trump shook Europe with repeated criticism of Zelenskyy for failing to negotiate an end to the war and rebuffing a push to sign off on a deal giving the U.S. access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which could be used in the American aerospace, medical and tech industries.

European leaders also were dismayed by Trump’s decision to dispatch top aides for preliminary talks with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia without Ukrainian or European officials at the table.

Meanwhile, the United States on Monday failed to get the U.N. General Assembly to approve its resolution urging an end to the war without mentioning Moscow’s aggression. The assembly approved a dueling European-backed Ukrainian resolution demanding Russia immediately withdraw from Ukraine.

On the minerals deal, Zelenskyy initially bristled, saying it was short on security guarantees for Ukraine. He said Sunday on X that “we are making great progress“ but noted that "we want a good economic deal that will be part of a true security guarantee system for Ukraine.”

The friction follows a public spat, with Trump calling Zelenskyy a “dictator” and falsely charging Kyiv with starting the war. Russia, in fact, invaded its smaller and lesser-equipped neighbor in February 2022.

Asked on Monday if he thought Putin was also a dictator, Trump demurred.

“I don’t use those words lightly,” Trump said.

Zelenskyy, who said Sunday in response to a question that he would trade his office for peace or to join NATO, then angered Trump by saying the U.S. president was living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.” Confronting Trump might not be the best approach, analysts say.

“The response to President Trump doing something to you is not to do something back right away. You tend to get this kind of reaction,” said retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

High-stakes talks between European and U.S. leaders

Macron said ahead of the meeting he intended to tell Trump it’s in the joint interest of Americans and Europeans not to show weakness to Putin during U.S.-led negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. He also suggested he’ll make the case that how Trump handles Putin could have enormous ramifications for U.S. dealings with China, the United States’ most significant economic and military competitor.

“You can’t be weak in the face of President Putin. It’s not you, it’s not your trademark, it’s not in your interest,” Macron said. “How can you then be credible in the face of China if you’re weak in the face of Putin?’”

Yet, Trump has shown a considerable measure of respect for the Russian leader. Trump said this month he”d like to see Russia rejoin what is now the Group of Seven major economies. Russia was suspended from the G8 after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

“I really believe he wants to make a deal,” Trump said. “I may be wrong, but I believe he wants to make a deal.

AP writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Emma Burrows in London and Sagar Meghani, Chris Megerian and Will Weissert contributed reporting.

In an interview with The Associated Press, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals: to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation.

He stressed, however, that the talks — which were attended by his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and other senior Russian and U.S. officials — marked the beginning of a conversation, and more work needs to be done down the road.

Trump says he and Putin agreed to begin talks on ending war in Ukraine

Lavrov echoed Rubio's remarks and told reporters that “the conversation was very useful.”

“We not only listened, but also heard each other,” he said.

No Ukrainian officials were present at the meeting, which came as the beleaguered country is slowly but steadily losing ground against more numerous Russian troops in a grinding war that began nearly three years ago.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country wouldn’t accept any outcome from the talks since Kyiv didn’t take part — and postponed his own trip to the kingdom scheduled for Wednesday.

European allies have also expressed concerns they are being sidelined.

Improving Russian-US relations

Ties between Russia and the U.S. have fallen to their lowest level in decades in recent years — a rift that has been widening ever since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and only worsened after Moscow's full-scale invasion.

The U.S., along with European nations, imposed a raft of sanctions on Russia in an effort to damage its economy. And embassies in Washington and Moscow have been hit hard by expulsions of large numbers of diplomats, as well as other restrictions.

Rubio said Tuesday that ending the war in Ukraine could “unlock the door” for “incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians geopolitically on issues of common interest and frankly, economically on issues that hopefully will be good for the world and also improve our relations in the long term.”

His comments were further evidence of the remarkable U.S. reversal on Russia after years in which Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, led international efforts to isolate Moscow.

Tuesday’s meeting was meant to pave the way for a summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. After the talks wrapped, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told Russia’s Channel One that no date has been set yet for that summit but that it was “unlikely” to take place next week.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Lavrov mentioned the same three goals as Rubio and said that Washington and Moscow agreed to appoint representatives to carry out “regular consultations” on Ukraine.

“I have reason to believe that the American side has started to better understand our position” the Russian foreign minister said.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, who accompanied Rubio at the talks together with U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz, said the meeting was “positive, upbeat, constructive. Everybody was there to get to the right outcome.”

The meeting marked the most extensive contact between the two countries since Moscow’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion. Lavrov and then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken talked briefly on the sidelines of a G-20 meeting in India nearly two years ago, but tensions remained high.

Concerns from allies they are being sidelined

The recent U.S. diplomatic blitz on the war has sent Ukraine and key allies scrambling to ensure a seat at the table amid concerns that Washington and Moscow could press ahead with a deal that won’t be favorable to them.

Kyiv’s absence at Tuesday’s talks has rankled many Ukrainians, and France called an emergency meeting of European Union countries and the U.K. on Monday to discuss the war. Kyiv’s participation in such talks was a bedrock of U.S. policy under Biden.

Rubio said Tuesday that ending the conflict would require concessions from all sides and that Europe would play a part — noting that they have also imposed sanctions on Russia. He said Washington “is not going to predetermine" would those concessions would be.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of winning all its territory back from Russia — two key items on Putin’s wish list.

Waltz said “the practical reality is that there is going to be some discussion of territory, and there’s going to be a discussion of security guarantees."

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said he spoke by phone to Trump and Zelenskyy following Monday's European meeting.

“We seek a strong and lasting peace in Ukraine,” Macron wrote on social media platform X. “To achieve this, Russia must end its aggression, and this must be accompanied by strong and credible security guarantees for the Ukrainians,” he said and vowed to “work on this together with all Europeans, Americans, and Ukrainians.”

Saudi Arabia's role

The meeting at the Diriyah Palace in the Saudi capital of Riyadh also highlights de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s efforts to be a major diplomatic player, burnishing a reputation severely tarnished by the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Saudi state media described the talks as happening at the prince’s direction. Like the neighboring United Arab Emirates, the prince has maintained close relations to Russia throughout its war on Ukraine, both through the OPEC+ oil cartel and diplomatically as well.

Saudi Arabia has also helped in prisoner negotiations and hosted Zelenskyy for an Arab League summit in 2023.

But Zelenskyy postponed his own trip to Saudi Arabia scheduled for this week, suggesting that he wanted to avoid his visit being linked to the talks since Ukrainian officials weren't invited. He visit was rescheduled for March 10.

War continues

Meanwhile, Russia continued to pummel Ukraine with drones, according to Kyiv's military. The Ukrainian air force said Russian troops launched a barrage of 176 drones at Ukraine overnight, most of which were destroyed or disabled by jamming.

One Russian drone struck a residential building in Dolynska in the Kirovohrad region, wounding a mother and her two children and prompting an evacuation of 38 apartments, the regional administration reported. Four more residential buildings were damaged by drone debris in the Cherkasy region of Ukraine, according to local officials.

Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia. Associated Press writers Baraa Anwer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.

The suspect in the deadly rampage, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, was shot dead at the scene during an exchange of gunfire with police. Weapons and a potential improvised explosive device, or IED, were found in Jabbar’s truck, the FBI said. Other potential IEDs were found around the city’s French Quarter.

President Joe Biden confirmed Wednesday night that Jabbar had served in the U.S. military. According an Army spokesperson, Jabbar was on active duty from March 2007 until January 2015 as a human resource specialist and information technology specialist. He deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010.

After leaving active duty, Jabbar joined the Army Reserve, where he worked as an IT specialist until July 2020, the spokesperson said. He held the rank of staff sergeant at the end of his military career. During his time in the military, Jabbar was awarded three Army Commendation Medals and four Army Achievement Medals.

The FBI is investigating the murders as an act of terrorism and working to learn of Jabbar’s affiliations with terrorist organizations, Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

Hours before the attack, Jabbar posted videos on social media expressing a desire to kill, Biden said during a public address about the attack. The videos indicated “he was inspired by ISIS,” Biden said.

“The situation is very fluid, and the investigation is at a preliminary stage,” Biden said. “The law enforcement and intelligence community is continuing to look for any connections, affiliations or co-conspirators.”

The rampage adds to a list of extremist attacks carried out by people with military backgrounds since 1990. The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, keeps a database of such attacks. Of the veterans and service members who were driven by extremist ideologies to commit crimes, 15% were connected to foreign Islamist extremist organizations, the data says.

Military service key factor in 3 decades of extremist attacks

Authorities confirmed Jabbar was born in the United States, after President-elect Donald Trump implied in a social media post Wednesday that the perpetrator was an immigrant.

Rich Groen, who says he was Jabbar’s commander in Afghanistan, posted a statement on X on Wednesday, describing Jabbar as a “great soldier” who worked “quietly and professionally” as a mail clerk.

“To think that the same individual who once embodied quiet professionalism could harbor so much hate, leading to such unspeakable atrocities, is incomprehensible and heartbreaking,” Groen wrote. “This transformation is a stark reminder of the dangers of unchecked anger, isolation, and hate.”

The package includes $1.25 billion in presidential drawdown authority, which allows the military to pull existing stock from its shelves and get weapons to the battlefield faster. It also has $1.22 billion in longer-term weapons packages to be put on contract through the separate Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI.

Biden said all longer-term USAI funds have now been spent and that he seeks to fully use all the remaining drawdown money before leaving office.

“I’ve directed my administration to continue surging as much assistance to Ukraine as quickly as possible,” Biden said in a statement. “At my direction, the United States will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war over the remainder of my time in office.”

In addition to the weapons support, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced Monday that the U.S. is also providing $3.4 billion in economic assistance to Ukraine to help pay for critical government services during its ongoing fight against Russia. The money will pay salaries for civilian government and school employees, health care workers and first responders.

The new military aid comes as Russia has launched a barrage of attacks against Ukraine’s power facilities in recent days, although Ukraine has said it intercepted a significant number of the missiles and drones. Russian and Ukrainian forces are also still in a bitter battle around the Russian border region of Kursk, where Moscow has sent thousands of North Korean troops to help reclaim territory taken by Ukraine.

The Biden administration is pushing to get weapons into Ukraine to give Kyiv the strongest negotiating position possible before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20. Trump has talked about getting some type of negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia and has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Many U.S. and European leaders are concerned that Trump’s talk of a settlement might result in a poor deal for Ukraine, and they worry that he won’t provide Ukraine with all the weapons funding approved by Congress.

The weapons systems being pulled from existing stockpiles through this latest weapons package include counter-unmanned aerial systems munitions, air defense munitions, ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, air-to-ground munitions, anti-armor systems, tube-launched missiles, fragmentation grenades and other items and spare parts.

Including Monday’s announcement, the U.S. has provided more than $65 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022.

Friday’s assessments by Rashad Nabiyev and White House national security spokesman John Kirby echoed those made by outside aviation experts who blamed the crash on Russian air defense systems responding to a Ukrainian attack. These statements raised pressure on Russia, where officials said a drone attack was underway in the region where the Azerbaijan Airlines flight was heading for a landing. They did not address statements blaming air defenses.

Kirby told reporters on Friday that the U.S. “[has] seen some early indications that would certainly point to the possibility that this jet was brought down by Russian air defense systems,” but refused to elaborate, citing an ongoing investigation.

Pressed on whether the U.S. has intelligence that helped lead to that conclusion, or was simply relying on informed speculation from experts based on visual assessments of the crash, Kirby characterized the short answer as “yes” but said he’d “leave it at that,” without providing further details.

The plane was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, on Wednesday when it turned toward Kazakhstan and crashed while making an attempt to land. The crash killed 38 people and left all 29 survivors injured.

Nabiyev, Azerbaijan’s minister of digital development and transportation, told Azerbaijani media that “preliminary conclusions by experts point at external impact,” as does witness testimony.

“The type of weapon used in the impact will be determined during the probe,” Nabiyev said.

Passengers and crew who survived the crash told Azerbaijani media that they heard loud noises on the aircraft as it was circling over Grozny.

Flight attendant Aydan Rahimli said that after one noise, the oxygen masks automatically released. She said that she went to perform first aid on a colleague, Zulfugar Asadov, and then they heard another bang.

Asadov said that the noises sounded like something hitting the plane from outside. Shortly afterward, he sustained a sudden injury like a “deep wound, the arm was lacerated as if someone hit me in the arm with an ax,” he added. He denied a claim from Kazakh officials that an oxygen canister exploded inside the plane.

Two other survivors recounted hearing explosions before the plane went down. Jerova Salihat told Azerbaijani television in an interview in the hospital that “something exploded” near her leg, and Vafa Shabanova said that “there were two explosions in the sky, and an hour and a half later the plane crashed to the ground.”

Dmitry Yadrov, head of Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia, said Friday that as the plane was preparing to land in Grozny in deep fog, Ukrainian drones were targeting the city, prompting authorities to close the area to air traffic.

Yadrov said that after the captain made two unsuccessful attempts to land, he was offered other airports but decided to fly to Aktau in Kazakhstan, across the Caspian Sea.

He didn’t comment on statements from some aviation experts, who pointed out that holes seen in the plane’s tail section suggested that it could have come under fire from Russian air defense systems.

Ukrainian drones have previously attacked Grozny and other areas in the Russian North Caucasus.

Azerbaijan Airlines blamed the crash on unspecified “physical and technical interference” and announced the suspension of flights to several Russian airports. It didn’t say where the interference came from or provide any further details.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the claims that the plane was hit by Russian air defenses, saying that it will be up to investigators to determine the cause of the crash.

“The air incident is being investigated, and we don’t believe we have the right to make any assessments until the conclusions are made as a result of the investigation,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.

If it’s proven that the plane crashed after being hit by Russian air defenses, it would be the second deadly civil aviation accident linked to fighting in Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed with a Russian surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people aboard, as it flew over the area in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in 2014.

Russia has denied responsibility, but a Dutch court in 2022 convicted two Russians and a pro-Russia Ukrainian man for their role in downing the plane with an air defense system brought into Ukraine from a Russian military base.

Investigators from Azerbaijan are working in Grozny as part of the probe of Wednesday’s crash, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s office said in a statement.

Following Wednesday’s suspension of flights from Baku to Grozy and Makhachkala, Azerbaijan Airlines announced Friday that it would also halt service to eight more Russian cities.

The company will continue to operate flights to six Russian cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg. Those cities also have been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian drone strikes in the past.

Kazakhstan’s Qazaq Air also announced Friday that it was suspending flights from Astana to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains for a month.

FlyDubai also halted flights to Sochi and Mineralnye Vody in southern Russia for the next few days.

The day before, Israel’s El Al carrier suspended flights from Tel Aviv to Moscow citing “developments in Russia’s airspace.” The airline said it would reassess the situation next week.

Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Washington and Aida Sultanova in London contributed to this report.

The Sichuan, the first ship of the Type 076, is China’s largest such ship yet, displacing 40,000 tons and equipped with an electromagnetic catapult that will allow fighter jets to launch directly off its deck, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The ship is designed to launch ground troops in landing crafts and provide them with air support.

Developed by Chinese researchers, it’s also equipped with an “arrestor technology” that allows fighter jets to land on its deck.

China’s first amphibious assault ships, the Type 075, launched in 2019.

China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN, has been working on modernizing its forces for more than a decade, with the aim of being able to operate globally rather than being restricted to waters near the Chinese mainland. China first managed to launch fighter jets with the new electromagnetic technology on its indigenously made aircraft carrier, the Fujian, which launched two years ago.

Chinese military expert Song Zhongping compared the Sichuan to a “light aircraft carrier,” according to the Global Times.

The ship will undergo further testing, including sea trials.

China has the largest navy in the world and is consistently trying to upgrade its fleet. Recently, researchers found that the country is working on designing a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which would allow it to deploy its ships in distant waters without needing a base to refuel.

The U.S. currently has 11 aircraft carriers, all nuclear powered, allowing it to keep multiple strike groups deployed around the world at all times, including in the Asia-Pacific.

AP researcher Yu Bing contributed to this report from Beijing.

After the past four years, experts in extremism prevention deemed those efforts incremental at best and perfunctory at worst. Political opposition “very much slowed things down,” said Kate Bitz, a senior organizer at the Western States Center, and lawmakers from both parties protested there was too much “gray area” in new anti-extremism policies.

But even the piecemeal progress since 2021 is more than can be expected out of Pentagon leadership in 2025, said Bitz, as well as leaders from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and Human Rights First.

President Donald Trump’s administration will “take the military back to the days when extremism in its entirety was ignored,” said Wendy Via, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

Extremism stand-down checked a box with no lasting result, critics say

Efforts to dismantle systems that track and report instances of extremism in the military could be led by Pete Hegseth, a staunch opponent of diversity, equity and inclusion policies — and Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary. Hegseth has compared the Pentagon’s extremism policies to a “purge” and a “sham.” Hegseth said he intends to fire “woke” military leaders, a plan that Via believes will create an environment of distrust inside the Pentagon.

His opposition to the Pentagon’s extremism-prevention efforts is partly personal. The Associated Press reported that a fellow service member flagged Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran, as an “insider threat” because one of his tattoos was associated with the white supremacist movement.

“In the future when it comes to the DOD’s approach, there’s every possibility that extremist elements will not just be ignored, but to some degree embraced,” Witz said. “These are groups that intentionally attempt to recruit veterans who bring military skills into bigoted movements. And many white nationalist and anti-democracy groups also advocate that members enter the military in order to gain these kind of skills. So, I suppose that’s a rather bleak picture.”

The Defense Department Office of Inspector General reported in 2023 that the Pentagon investigated 183 allegations of extremist activity among service members that year, including 78 cases of troops advocating for the overthrow of the U.S. government. The watchdog prefaced the report by flagging that the services weren’t tracking and reporting data accurately, which meant those numbers didn’t include all cases.

Army imposes stricter rules for addressing extremism among troops

This summer, the services took steps to standardize the system for how it reports cases of extremism to the IG’s office. Hanah Stiverson, the associate director of democracy protection at Human Rights First, worries that funding to that system will be cut.

“Clear data and implementation of anti-extremism efforts is critical for national security,” Stiverson said.

Before Trump takes office next month, Congress is already poised to defund at least some of the Pentagon’s extremism-prevention initiatives. The House and Senate approved the annual military spending package this month, which includes a measure to prohibit leaders from spending any of the $895 billion going to the military on the Countering Extremism Working Group. President Joe Biden signed the measure into law Monday.

The Countering Extremism Working Group was formed after Jan. 6, 2021, and it offered dozens of recommendations to the Pentagon for how to address extremism in the ranks. Via thinks it’s likely the recommendations will not be implemented.

“There’s no question that the 2024 NDAA contributes to the undermining of the idea that extremism in the military needs to be appropriately addressed,” Via said.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

“We do assess that North Korean soldiers have engaged in combat in Kursk alongside Russian forces. We do have indications that they have suffered casualties, both killed and wounded,” said Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder in a briefing with reporters.

The Pentagon estimates 12,000 North Korean soldiers have traveled to the region, after the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, offered to send reinforcements earlier this fall. Until recently, though, they hadn’t yet entered combat, even as Russia continues to take more than 1,000 casualties per day across the front line, per U.S. figures.

Ryder said the troops entered the fight sometime last week and integrated into Russian formations, adding that their use was so far restricted to Kursk.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency first reported the development earlier Monday, claiming that around 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded in fighting against the Ukrainian army at the weekend in Russia’s Kursk border region.

The North Korean casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a Ukrainian incursion, the agency, known by its acronym GUR, said in a public post on the Telegram messaging app.

At least three North Korean servicemen went missing around another Kursk village, GUR said.

It was not possible to independently verify the Ukrainian claims, which are the first reports of North Korean casualties in the almost 3-year war.

Pentagon chief Austin announces $1 billion in long-term Ukraine aid

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov referred questions about the claims to the Russian Defense Ministry, which didn’t comment.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has pledged unwavering support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor under a mutual defense pact.

Military analysts say the language barrier has bedeviled combat coordination between Russian and North Korean troops.

“The poor integration and ongoing communication problems between Russian and North Korean forces will likely continue to cause friction in Russian military operations in Kursk … in the near term,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said late Sunday.

Ukrainian officials said Nov. 5 their forces had for the first time engaged with North Korean units that had been recently deployed to help Russia.

Ukraine seized land in Russia’s Kursk border region last August in what was the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II. The operation embarrassed the Kremlin and aimed to counter unceasingly glum news from the front line.

The incursion hasn’t significantly changed the war’s dynamics. Over the past year, Russia has been on the front foot with the exception of Kursk and has been grinding deeper into eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region despite heavy losses.

Kevin Loftus, a 56-year-old veteran of the U.S. Army, was stopped from boarding an Oct. 28 flight from Dallas to Tbilisi, Georgia, by way of Istanbul, Turkey, when Turkish Airlines identified a “security flag” associated with him, according to federal prosecutors.

Loftus didn’t have the court’s permission to travel internationally or to drive from Texas to Iowa, where the FBI arrested him three days after his flight plans fell apart, prosecutors said.

Veterans involved in Jan. 6 riot expect Trump to keep pardon promise

Loftus told the FBI that he had hoped to secure a 90-day visa to travel to Russia, where he intended to apply for temporary residency. Loftus said he had used the Telegram messaging platform to communicate with a man who would connect him with the Russian Territorial Defense Unit, a volunteer military corps.

“Loftus said he had already sent the man approximately $1200 to purchase equipment for Russian soldiers,” prosecutors wrote. “Loftus said his intent was to fight for Russia and against Ukraine.”

Loftus declined to address the court before U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich sentenced him for the probation violation. The judge said Loftus has repeatedly violated court orders.

“He doesn't think these rules should apply to him,” Friedrich said. “He wants to be above the law.”

Defense attorney Benjamin Schiffelbein said Loftus wanted to enlist in the Russian military because he “felt bad” for Russian soldiers and wanted to help them.

“He had no idea whether they could make use of him," the lawyer said.

Loftus, a six-year Army veteran, intended to permanently relocate to another country, according to prosecutors.

“And his planned travel was for the express purpose of joining a foreign army to take up arms against one of this country’s allies and in opposition to this country’s foreign policy,” they wrote.

In January 2021, Loftus traveled from Wisconsin to Washington, D.C., to attend then-President Donald Trump's “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House. After joining the mob of Trump supporters at the Capitol, he entered the building and took photographs. He spent approximately five minutes inside the Capitol.

Loftus was arrested at his Wisconsin home several days after the riot. He pleaded guilty in October 2021 to a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

After his arrest, Loftus posted comments about his case on social media, referring to himself as “famous” and a “hero” for taking part in the Jan. 6 attack.

“Loftus also stated that he gained that fame by ‘standing up for all Americans’ because he ‘broke the law,’ and he would file lawsuits against unidentified persons after the criminal case was over,” prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors recommended 30 days of imprisonment for Loftus, but Friedrich initially sentenced him to three years of probation.

For his probation violation, prosecutors requested a six-month prison sentence. They noted that Loftus, while on probation, also was arrested in December 2023 and charged with driving while intoxicated in Richardson, Texas. Loftus was required to attend a substance abuse program, but he avoided jail time for that violation.

Over 1,500 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related crimes. More than 1,000 of them have been convicted and sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving a term of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years.

Trump has repeatedly vowed to pardon Capitol rioters, but the district court judges in Washington, D.C., typically have refused to postpone sentencings, plea hearings and trials until after the president-elect returns to the White House.

Travis Timmerman, 29, was flown to Jordan on a U.S. military helicopter, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing operation.

It’s unclear where Timmerman may go next. He thanked his rescuers for freeing him but has told American officials that he would like to stay in the region, according to another person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly.

US believes Marine vet is alive after disappearing in Syria in 2012

Timmerman was detained after he crossed into Syria while on a Christian pilgrimage from a mountain along the eastern Lebanese town of Zahle in June.

He told The Associated Press in an interview earlier Friday that he was not ill-treated while in Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility operated by Syrian intelligence.

In his prison cell, Timmerman said, he had a mattress, a plastic drinking container and two others for waste. He said the Friday calls to prayers helped keep track of days.

Timmerman said he was released Monday morning alongside a young Syrian man and 70 female prisoners, some of whom had their children with them, after rebels seized control of Damascus and forced Assad from power in a dramatic upheaval.

He said he was freed by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer.” He had been held separately from Syrian and other Arab prisoners and said he didn’t know of any other Americans held in the facility.

Timmerman is from Urbana, Missouri, about 50 miles north of Springfield in the southwestern part of the state. He earned a finance degree from Missouri State University in 2017.

His mother, Stacey Gardiner, said she was told that he was being taken to a military base in Jordan. The family still had not spoken to him.

Mouaz Moustafa, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition activist who worked with rebels to arrange Timmerman’s transfer back to safety, tweeted a photo of the freed American standing next to a man in U.S. military uniform in the flat desert of the region.

“Safe and sound and back in American hands,” Moustafa wrote.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, are continuing their search for Austin Tice, an American journalist and Marine Corps veteran who disappeared 12 years ago near Damascus.

Nizar Zakka, president of the U.S.-based Hostage Aid Worldwide that was commissioned by Tice's family to search for him, said he called Tice’s mother and sister after receiving a tip Thursday from a Syrian near where Timmerman was found. The caller thought the foreigner was Tice.

“We asked them for videos, we ask them for voice (recordings) to make sure,” Zakka said. “We had the feeling from the minute, especially from the age, that it’s not correct. But we sent it to the mom. It was 3 a.m. (in the U.S.), and we woke the sister, and she said to me one thing. She said that definitely it’s not Austin.”

In the search for Tice, Zakka said he had visited detention centers and the houses of prominent figures in Assad’s circle, but the search had so far not produced results.

The three possible scenarios, Zakka said, are that “we will find him somewhere in Damascus, in the jail that he was left in or in the house, in the safe house where he is”; that a high-ranking member of Assad’s circle took Tice along while escaping the country “as a security for his life”; or that Tice’s captors killed him and other prisoners to erase evidence of their crimes.

He criticized the U.S. for announcing a $10 million reward for information leading to Tice, saying that it had led to a flood of false tips and caused confusion.

AP writers Abby Sewell in Damascus, Eric Tucker in Washington, Matthew Lee in Aqaba, Jordan, and Nick Ingram in Urbana, Missouri, contributed to this report.

Troops from the Syrian Democratic Forces, a key ally for the United States in its fight against the Islamic State, were conducting operations in the region when they downed the MQ-9, a U.S. official familiar with the situation confirmed to Defense News.

How the US is countering ISIS during Syria’s upheaval

The MQ-9 was operating over Syria to support the campaign against the remnants of the Islamic State, known as Operation Inherent Resolve.

U.S. forces recovered the parts of the drone that needed to be salvaged and destroyed the rest, the official said.

“U.S. Air Forces Central [Command] is actively assessing the actions that led to the incident and will adjust tactics, techniques and procedures to safeguard U.S., coalition, and partner forces and their associated assets,” the official said.

The SDF’s position in Syria has grown precarious in the days since the ouster of President Bashar Assad. Turkey, which borders Syria to the north, has accused the SDF of having ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Turkey views as a terrorist group.

The Telegraph reported the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army began advancing toward the Syrian Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij earlier this week, before the U.S. helped broker a ceasefire between the SNA and SDF.

U.S. forces, including B-52 Stratofortress bombers, A-10 Warthog attack planes and F-15 fighters, pounded 75 ISIS targets in dozens of strikes shortly after the rapid fall of the Assad regime.

Trump won’t do a blanket pardon for everyone, he stipulated. Rather, he plans to issue pardons on a case-by-case basis, he told Time Magazine in an interview published Thursday. Time chose Trump as the magazine’s 2024 “Person of the Year.”

“Well, we’re going to look at each individual case, and we’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office,” Trump said.

Of the approximately 1,400 people who have faced charges for their involvement in the Capitol breach, 222 have military backgrounds, according to data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. That number includes two veterans convicted of orchestrating the attack, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers leader Stuart Rhodes. Tarrio was sentenced to 17 years in prison, and Rhodes received 22 years.

Some veterans are among a wave of Jan. 6 defendants who asked the courts in November to delay their cases until after Trump’s inauguration, expecting the incoming president to follow through on promises to pardon them.

On the campaign trail this year, Trump referred to the people convicted for their participation on Jan. 6 as “hostages.” At a conference of the National Association of Black Journalists in July, he said they were convicted “by a very tough system.” Trump reiterated those sentiments in the Time Magazine interview.

“They’ve suffered greatly, and in many cases they should not have suffered,” he said.

Veterans involved in Jan. 6 riot expect Trump to keep pardon promise

Trump said he would look at each case to determine if the individuals were “non-violent,” implying that people convicted or charged with violent crimes might not receive a pardon. However, he felt that “a vast majority of them should not be in jail.”

“I’m going to look if there’s some that really were out of control,” Trump said.

As of August, 547 defendants had been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 163 individuals who were charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer, according to the Justice Department.

Eleven people faced charges associated with assaulting a member of the media or destroying their equipment, and 87 defendants were charged with destruction of government property.

Joseph Biggs, an Army veteran and Proud Boys leader, is among those seeking relief from Trump. Biggs led other Proud Boys members in their march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, where he tore through a fence and was among a group that pushed through police lines, according to prosecutors.

In a call from jail that aired on MSNBC last year, Biggs said, “I do believe Donald J. Trump will pardon us, and he should. We didn’t do anything. We’re his supporters. We went there when he asked.”

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

The U.S. is preparing to send Ukraine an additional $725 million in military assistance, including counter-drone systems and munitions for its High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, which could indicate more of the longer-range missiles are headed to the battlefield.

It was unclear whether the munitions for the HIMARS are the coveted ATACMS — the Army Tactical Missile System — but Ukraine has been pressing for more of the longer-range missiles to strike additional targets inside Russia.

Pentagon to send Ukraine anti-personnel mines ‘soon,’ US says

The package, announced Monday by the State Department, also includes more of the anti-personnel land mines that Ukraine is counting on to slow Russian and North Korean ground forces in Russia’s Kursk region.

President Joe Biden has pledged to spend all of the military assistance funds Congress approved earlier this year for Ukraine before the end of his administration on Jan. 20, which before Monday's news included about $7.1 billion in weapons that would be drawn from the Pentagon’s stockpiles.

There is widespread speculation about what the new Trump administration will mean for Ukraine as the incoming president has promised to end the conflict. In a major shift, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signaled on Friday that an offer of NATO membership to territory under Kyiv’s control could end “the hot stage of the war.”

As of Monday morning, the Pentagon had the authority to send $6.8 billion in equipment to Ukraine and around $5 billion to replace what it sent, though those figures don’t account for the latest package. It also has another $2.2 billion in long-term security aid through a separate program intended to sustain support over time.

“The bottom line is, at the president’s direction, we will spend every dollar that Congress has appropriated for Ukraine and to replenish our stockpiles,” said Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder in a Monday briefing with reporters.

Still, at the current pace of one security package every two to three weeks, the U.S. is not on pace to spend that money by Jan. 20, when Trump will take office. The Pentagon is limited by the size of its inventories, which can’t dip below a certain level lest it jeopardize its own ability to fight in a crisis.

When asked about that rate, Ryder wouldn’t discuss the possibility that money is leftover.

“We’ll continue to do everything we can to ensure that Ukraine is getting the aid,” he said.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart early Monday, discussing the front lines and Russia’s attack on the city of Dnipro with an intermediate-range ballistic missile, designed to carry a nuclear warhead.

“Secretary Austin provided Minister [Rustem] Umerov with an update on the continued surge of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine to provide the capabilities it needs to defend against Russian aggression,” the Pentagon said in a readout of their call.

The U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet said in a statement a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft flew through the strait’s international space “in accordance with international law.” The transit upheld navigational rights for all nations and “demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” it added.

The U.S. is Taiwan’s most important supporter and arms provider, and American military ships and aircraft regularly transit the waterway separating China from self-ruled Taiwan. Beijing claims the East Asian island as its own territory and threatens to annex it, by force if necessary.

China says it tailed a US military plane through the Taiwan Strait

China criticized the U.S. mission and said it endangered regional peace and stability, according to a statement by Col. Cao Jun, spokesperson for the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command Air Force.

China sends military ships or planes near Taiwan almost daily. On Monday, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry reported a Chinese balloon over the sea north of the island.

Last month, China sent a record one-day total of 153 aircraft, 14 navy vessels and 12 Chinese government ships near the island as part of military drills in reaction to Taiwan’s president rejecting Beijing’s claims of sovereignty.

Trump announced Nov. 12 he intended to nominate Army veteran and conservative commentator Pete Hegseth as his next secretary of defense. Hegseth has compared the Pentagon’s extremism policies to a “purge,” said he wants to fire “woke” military leaders and doesn’t believe women should serve in combat roles.

Members of Protect our Defenders and Human Rights First have advocated for stronger diversity and anti-extremism policies within the Defense Department, such as required training for troops about prohibited extremist activities and gender-affirming health care for service members. Now, they expect that Trump and Hegseth will work with their allies in Congress to roll back those policies and others.

“The individual who President-clect Trump has tapped to be the next Secretary of Defense – it seems like he’s very much trying to unwind those policies,” said Josh Connolly, senior vice president of Protect Our Defenders. “It seems like he has a very clear bias to dismantle efforts to address these issues.”

Women in combat ‘proficient,’ SecDef says, dismissing calls for change

Hegseth targets ‘woke’ initiatives

On a podcast interview that aired two days after the election, Hegseth said the Pentagon’s focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, erodes military values.

“The dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is ‘Our diversity is our strength,’” Hegseth said.

Hegseth, if he’s confirmed to lead the Pentagon, is likely to have allies in Congress in his effort to strip away those programs. Some GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, have vowed to expunge “wokeism” from the military, referring to what they see as a rise in radically progressive policies at the Pentagon.

Opposition to the Pentagon’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, or DEI, has spiked among select conservative lawmakers since 2020, when Congress expanded such programs and mandated the Defense Department’s hiring of a chief diversity officer, said Liz Yates, an associate director with Human Rights First.

Since then, some lawmakers have attempted to dismantle the programs. Congress is currently considering the annual defense authorization bill for 2025, a large legislative package that determines military spending. Both the House and Senate versions of the bill contain several provisions that limit the Pentagon’s diversity initiatives, including one that would eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion offices. Nine veteran and military organizations wrote a letter to lawmakers opposing the measures.

Congress considers ‘very severe rollback’ of military’s DEI programs

Opponents of the Pentagon’s DEI programs claim they harm recruitment efforts by deterring people with conservative views. Those who support the programs argue they can improve recruitment by showing would-be recruits that the military doesn’t tolerate discrimination.

According to a study published in 2021 by Blue Star Families, a nonprofit that supports military families and veterans, about 30% of service members identify as minorities. By 2027, most recruitable adults in the United States will be people of color, the study said. National security experts have increasingly viewed women, too, as having an important role to play in reversing the military’s recruitment woes.

“This is something that has just been incredibly politicized, when in reality these are the kinds of programs that have been supported by people throughout the services who see them as useful to the mission of trying to create a more lethal force and improve recruitment,” Yates said.

Little evidence exists, meanwhile, that DEI initiatives play much of a role in recruitment. The Pentagon’s Inspector General reported last year that the majority of would-be recruits are not enlisting because of fear of death in combat, having grown up hearing about casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is also increased competition between the military and the private sector for top talent, and private companies offer higher pay on average, the report states.

A ‘full-court press’ to undo extremism prevention

In his book, “War on Warriors,” Hegseth downplayed the role of service members in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and he argued that military leaders remain distracted by efforts to root out extremism from the ranks.

His opposition to the Pentagon’s anti-extremism efforts is partly personal, he revealed on the podcast interview Nov. 7. During the interview, he said he had been removed from National Guard duty at President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 because of a tattoo. The Associated Press reported that a fellow service member flagged Hegseth as an “insider threat” because one of his tattoos was associated with the white supremacist movement.

If Hegseth becomes the Secretary of Defense, the agency will likely “put their head in the sand” on the issue of extremism, Connolly said.

When it became known that some service members were part of the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a military-wide stand down against extremism. During the past four years, the Justice Department has charged 24 service members and 198 veterans for their participation in the riot, according to data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, known as START.

Recent research by START revealed that the number of violent extremists among the veteran and military population is small, but the group has an outsized impact once radicalized. From 1990 through 2022, 451 people with military backgrounds committed extremist offenses. Of those, 170, or nearly 38%, either plotted or followed through with a deadly terrorist attack, the research shows.

Military service key factor in 3 decades of extremist attacks

To address extremism in the ranks, the Pentagon updated its definition of prohibited extremist activities. This summer, each service branch adopted new rules to ensure troops are trained about those off-limits activities and require commanders to act when they spot extremism in their units. A law passed by Congress in 2021 mandates the services to report allegations of extremism to the Inspector General’s Office – a process the Pentagon has been working to streamline over the past few years.

U.S. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said that extremist activities “damage the nation’s trust and confidence in the Army as an institution,” “undermine morale” and “reduce combat readiness.”

Liz Yates, the associate director at Human Rights First, said she expected Trump to launch a “full-court press” to undo the new measures.

“It’s taken a lot of advocacy and it had been a long road, but we had seen some progress,” Yates said. “We’re concerned about that progress halting with this new administration. We expect this will be under attack.”

Connolly guessed the rollback of anti-extremism policies would have a negative effect on recruitment.

“The prevailing majority of individuals that serve in our military are not extremists, and if there’s a complicity or acceptance of extremist attitudes and behaviors, that does not produce an environment people want to serve in,” Connolly said.

There are already efforts underway in Congress to end the Pentagon’s focus on extremism. The annual defense authorization bill for 2025 includes a measure that prohibits leaders from using defense dollars on extremism-prevention efforts that were recommended by the Countering Extremist Activity Working Group. Lawmakers are expected to work on the bill in December.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

Brock, a former lieutenant colonel who served in Afghanistan, was carrying a pair of zip-tie handcuffs. He was arrested only four days later. Prosecutors said Brock believed the false conspiracy theory promoted by Donald Trump that he, not President Joe Biden, won the election in 2020. Before the Jan. 6 attack, Brock posted on social media about an insurrection and wrote, “We need to execute the traitors that are trying to steal the election,” The Associated Press reported.

Brock was convicted in 2022 of six crimes, including one felony of obstructing an official proceeding. The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year about that particular felony, determining it must include proof of a defendant trying to tamper with or destroy documents – a decision that affected hundreds of Jan. 6 criminal cases, including Brock’s. He’s currently waiting to hear about the possibility of a retrial.

Now, Brock is among the wave of Jan. 6 defendants asking the courts to delay their cases until after Trump’s inauguration, expecting the incoming president to follow through on promises to pardon them. On the campaign trail this year, Trump referred to the people convicted for their participation on Jan. 6 as “hostages.” At a conference of the National Association of Black Journalists in July, he said they were convicted “by a very tough system.”

“Former President Trump explicitly campaigned on justice for the January 6 defendants,” wrote Brock’s attorney, Charles Burnham, in a Nov. 11 request to push their next meeting about Brock’s retrial from November to after Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Of the approximately 1,400 people who have faced charges for their involvement in the Capitol breach, 222 have military backgrounds, according to data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. That number includes two veterans convicted of orchestrating the attack, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers leader Stuart Rhodes. Tarrio was sentenced to 17 years in prison, and Rhodes received 22 years.

Both far-right extremist groups targeted veterans for recruitment, experts have said. Twenty-one of the veterans and service members charged for their roles on Jan. 6 were part of the Oath Keepers, and 27 were Proud Boys members, according to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

Joseph Biggs, an Army veteran and Proud Boys leader who was charged with Tarrio, is among those seeking relief from Trump. Biggs helped lead other Proud Boys members in their march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, where he tore through a fence and was among a group that pushed through police lines, according to prosecutors.

His attorney, Norm Pattis, wrote a letter that he’s trying to get into Trump’s hands, he told Military Times. In the letter, he argues that Biggs and other Jan. 6 defendants should be pardoned in the same way confederates were pardoned after the end of the Civil War, stating that the “broader public interest would be served.”

“Mr. President, the time for a pardon is past due,” the letter reads. “We ask you to make the pardon of Mr. Biggs a top priority in your administration. We make this appeal directly to you because we believe in the power of justice and the ability of a courageous leader to make a real and sustaining difference in American life.”

The attorneys for both Biggs and Brock claimed their clients’ military service was among the reasons they should receive full pardons. Burnham, Brock’s attorney, wrote in his motion that Brock had served his country honorably as an Air Force officer.

“We would go so far as to say there is not a single January 6 defendant whose treatment by the government was so far out of proportion to his or her service to the country,” Burnham wrote. “It is obvious that Larry Brock will be at the top of any pardon list.”

In his letter, Pattis said Biggs served with distinction and because of his conviction has been “deprived of a military pension that he risked his life in service of this country to earn.”

Some Jan. 6 defendants, as well as their supporters, celebrated Trump’s win on social media sites like Telegram, Gab and X. The group Proud Boys USA posted on Telegram, “FREE ENRIQUE TARRIO!!! FREE ALL J6 PRISONERS NOW!!! PARDON EVERYONE!!!” Another post read, “I cant wait to see all of these prisoners freed and vindicated. Next we take down and penalize everyone involved in persecuting these fine Patriots.”

In a call from jail that aired on MSNBC last year, Biggs said, “I do believe Donald J. Trump will pardon us, and he should. We didn’t do anything. We’re his supporters. We went there when he asked.”

It remains uncertain whether Trump will follow through on his promises to pardon Jan. 6 defendants, or how he might go about it. The Constitution gives the president the power to grant full pardons, which completely expunge legal punishments for criminal convictions. Presidents can also grant commutations, which reduce penalties from convictions.

Presidents can issue sweeping pardons, which grant clemency to groups of people all at once. However, since Trump’s election, his transition team has told multiple news outlets Trump would handle pardons on a case-by-case basis.

Extremism prevention experts have expressed concern about the potential pardons, arguing they could embolden people to commit political violence.

“Pardoning the January 6 participants will make a mockery of our justice system, and it will send the message to his followers that violence is a legitimate response to political outcomes they don’t like,” the Global Project on Hate and Extremism said in a statement.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.