The Dictatorship
Russian drone attack injures 6, including children, in Ukraine just days after Zelensky-Trump meeting
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian drones blasted apartment buildings and the power grid in the southern Ukraine city of Odessa in an overnight attack that injured six people, including a toddler and two other children, officials said Wednesday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed confidence in his country’s eventual victory in the nearly four-year war against its neighbor.
Four apartment buildings were damaged in the Odesa bombardment, according to regional military administration head Oleh Kiper. The DTEK power provider said two of its energy facilities had significant damage. The company said 10 substations that distribute electricity in the region have been damaged in December.
Russia has escalated attacks on urban areas of Ukraine. As its invasion approaches a four-year milestone in February, it has also intensified targeting of energy infrastructureseeking to deny Ukrainians heat and running water in the bitter winter months.
Between January and November, more than 2,300 Ukrainian civilians were killed and more than 11,000 were injured, the United Nations said earlier in December. That was 26% higher than in the same period in 2024 and 70% higher than in 2023, it said.
Renewed diplomatic push to stop the fighting
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said he, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner had a “productive call” with the national security advisers of Britain, France, Germany and Ukraine “to discuss advancing the next steps in the European peace process.”
“We focused on how to move the discussions forward in a practical way on behalf of (Trump’s) peace process, including strengthening security guarantees and developing effective deconfliction mechanisms to help end the war and ensure it does not restart,” Witkoff said in a post on X.
He added that a main element of the conversation was the reconstruction of Ukraine and how to ensure its prosperity in the future.
Wednesday’s call comes after U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday and announced that a settlement is “closer than ever before.” European and Ukrainian officials plan to meet Saturday, lead Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov reaffirmed, adding that U.S. representatives were expected to join remotely.
Zelenskyy also is due to hold talks next week with European leaders supporting his efforts to secure acceptable terms.
Putin is convinced of victory
Despite progress in peace negotiations, which he didn’t mention, Putin reaffirmed his belief in Russia’s eventual success in its invasion during his traditional New Year’s address.
He gave special praise to Russian troops deployed in Ukraine, describing them as heroes “fighting for your native land, truth and justice.”
“We believe in you and our victory,” Putin said, as cited by Russian state news agency Tass.
The Russian Defense Ministry said 86 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight over Russian regions, the Black Sea and the illegally annexed Crimea peninsula.
Russia claims Putin’s residence was attacked
Russia’s Defense Ministry released a video of a downed drone that it said was one of 91 Ukrainian drones involved in an alleged attack this week on a Putin residence in northwestern Russia, a claim Kyiv has denied as a “lie.”
The nighttime video showed a man in camouflage, a helmet and a Kevlar vest standing near a damaged drone lying in snow. The man, his face covered, talks about the drone. Neither the man nor the Defense Ministry provided any location or date.
The video and claims could not be independently verified.
Kyiv has denied the allegations of an attack on Putin’s lakeside country residence and called them a ruse to derail progress in peace negotiations.
Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation said Wednesday the images could not be considered evidence of the attack as the origin of the damaged drone, as well as the time and location of the video itself, remained unknown.
“It took Russia more than two days to fabricate this ‘evidence’. The photographs of metal fragments laid out on the snow, published by the Russian Defense Ministry, do not prove anything in themselves,” the center said in a statement on its website.
“There is no video of air defense operations in the area of the residence, no recorded drone crashes in the claimed locations and no consistency even in its own figures, which have changed repeatedly.”
Maj. Gen. Alexander Romanenkov of the Russian air force claimed that the drones took off from Ukraine’s Sumy and Chernihiv regions. At a briefing where no questions were allowed, he presented a map showing the drone flight routes before they allegedly were downed by Russian air defenses over the Bryansk, Tver, Smolensk and Novgorod regions.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, called the Russian allegations “a deliberate distraction” from peace talks.
Ukraine weapons fund receives billions of dollars
Zelenskyy said Romania and Croatia are the latest countries to join a fund that buys weapons for Ukraine from the United States.
The financial arrangementknown as the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, pools contributions from NATO members, except the United States, to purchase U.S. weapons, munitions and equipment.
Since it was established in August, 24 countries are now contributing to the fund, according to Zelenskyy. The fund has received $4.3 billion, with almost $1.5 billion coming in December, he said on social media.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Security Service carried out a drone strike on a major Russian fuel storage facility in the northwestern Yaroslavl region early Tuesday, according to a Ukrainian security official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Long-range drones struck the Temp oil depot in the city of Rybinsk, part of Russia’s state fuel reserve system, the official told The Associated Press. Rybinsk is about 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
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A previous version of this story was corrected to give the timing of the alleged attack on Putin’s residence as late Sunday and early Monday.
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Katie Marie Davies in Leicester, England, and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this story.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Rep. Julia Letlow won Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary runoff Saturday, defeating former Rep. John Fleming.
Her win comes as a victory for President Donald Trump, who has endorsed her repeatedly throughout the race — including before she was even officially running.
Letlow made history in 2021 when she became the first Republican woman to represent Louisiana in Congress. In that special election, she won the seat that her late husband, Luke Letlow, had won prior to dying of complications related to Covid-19 in December 2020.
Letlow had no political experience prior to running for her late husband’s seat. She holds a doctorate in communication from the University of South Florida and worked as an administrator for Tulane University and the University of Louisiana, according to her LinkedIn page. Nonetheless, she won the special election House race with nearly 65% of the vote.
In Congress, she has served on the appropriations and education committees, and has been a reliably MAGA Republican.
Letlow’s win also comes as a rebuke to Fleming, who loaned himself more than $11 million, according to the Federal Election Commission, and tried running for the same seat in 2016 only to finish in fifth place in the nonpartisan primary. (Letlow did not loan her campaign any money, and took in more than $5.35 million compared to Fleming’s more than $12.1 million, FEC filings show.)
Trump has played a key role in the race. In addition to backing Letlow early on, the president also helped tank Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy’s re-election campaign in last month’s primary, based on the senator’s record of bucking his party and voting in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. In the primaryLetlow earned nearly 45% of the vote, giving her a healthy lead over both Fleming, who received about 28% of the vote, and Cassidy, who earned nearly 25%.
Ahead of Saturday’s runoff, polling showed Letlow and Fleming in a close race, with Letlow retaining a small lead in several polls.
Letlow will now proceed to the November general election to face off against the Democratic nominee, farmer Jamie Davis, who came out on top in tonight’s Democratic primary runoff.
The state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, when Mary Landrieu won her last term in office.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligencehas stirred fear by choosing as his chief of staff a GOP election lawyer who oversaw a poll watching program that included Jack Posobiec and other conservative conspiracy theorists. The lawyer, Christina Norton, also appears to have no experience working in the intelligence community.
“It is horrifying,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW Saturday. “Not only does Norton have absolutely no background, experience or expertise in national security or intelligence, but her principal qualifications appear to be loyalty to Pulte and an embrace of absurd election-interference conspiracies.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has been a vocal critic of Pulte, also raised concerns about election integrity on Sunday while taking shots at the director of national intelligence and the office itself.
“We should eliminate the DNI, and we should eliminate Pulte from the DNI until that happens,” he said on BLN, adding, “I am concerned that we’re gonna continue to cast doubt on elections in November and erode what has been a 250-year tradition of a peaceful transition of power.”
Pulte’s choice of Norton is also likely to increase concerns among Democrats that President Donald Trump intends to use the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to interfere in the midterm elections. Pulte, a loyalist with no intelligence experience, has used his current position as head of federal mortgage agencies to refer political rivals of the president for federal criminal prosecution.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told MS NOW on Sunday that the choice “just confirms” that the “only job qualification is absolute political loyalty and devotion to Donald Trump.” But he expressed faith in the judicial system during an appearance on “The Weekend,” noting that “right now we have federal courts across the land that are rejecting their various attempts to take over the election process. Nine different federal courts have rejected the claim that the president, by executive order, can compel the states in the union to turn over all of their voter lists to Donald Trump and to the White House.”
The New York Times first reported Norton’s appointment.
The former senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation, told MS NOW the choice also “signals as clearly as could be that Pulte has been put at ODNI to misuse the awesome power of the U.S. intelligence community to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections.”
Norton, reached by MS NOW by telephone, declined to comment and referred questions to an ODNI spokesperson. The spokesperson declined to comment on Norton but defended Pulte’s tenure.
“Acting Director Pulte and his team are focused on carrying out President Trump’s national security priorities while faithfully executing ODNI’s statutory mission,” the spokesperson told MS NOW. “We are leading the Intelligence Community to provide President Trump with elite, apolitical intelligence that keeps America safe.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, said his objection to Pulte is “that he used personal information to target a political enemy of the president,” a reference to New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“You should not be using the force of government to crash upon somebody just because the person in charge does not like them or finds them inconvenient. The fact that Bill did that is disqualifying for someone to be the director of national intelligence,” Cassidy said.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Friday that Congress would ensure that the ODNI under Pulte will “report on legitimate foreign threats to elections, not Donald Trump’s imaginary ones.”
Himes warned that, “Trump was explicit when he appointed Bill Pulte to a job he had no qualifications for that he had elections in mind.”
Trump has said in interviews with the news media that he would like to see Pulte shrink the size of the ODNI and investigate election fraud. Pulte’s predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, participated in investigations in Georgia and Puerto Rico to find proof of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Democrats and some former intelligence officials say they worry that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates in the midterms.
Pulte could falsely claim foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines, they say, and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats during the midterms. Or Trump could instruct Pulte to be present if FBI agents seize ballots and election records in November as they did earlier this year in Fulton County, Georgia.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned in a statement on Friday that Pulte should not use his position to spread Trump’s false election conspiracy theories.
“The mission of ODNI is to identify and counter foreign threats, not to import election denialism into the Intelligence Community,” Warner said. “Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
Having lived with Donald Trump’s infamous and baseless insult against them — “they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats” — Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are bracing for a far bigger injury.
More than 10,000 Haitians across Ohio and hundreds of thousands more around the country who had Temporary Protected Status now face the imminent prospect of deportation. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can halt those legal protections for Haitians and Syrians and resume forcing them to leave.
Justice Samuel Alito’s opinionfor the court’s Republican-appointed majority curbed the power of courts to review government decisions to terminate protections under the TPS program.
“They side with him on everything that he says or everything that he does, which means there is no check and balance,” said Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian TPS holder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, a town Trump catapulted into a maelstrom of misinformation about immigrants when he was running to retake the White House in 2024.
“The president has that freeway in front of him to do whatever he wants to do, unfortunately, and most of the time to a minority group of people,” added Dorsainvil, who has lived in the United States since 2020.
In a country rife with political and economic instability, Haitians returning from the U.S. are in danger of being killed or kidnapped, said Dorsainvil’s colleague at the Haitian Support Center, Rose Thamar Joseph.
“There is this perception in Haiti that if you are living here in the United States, you have money, so you are living your good life, so sending people back to Haiti will put them in real danger,” Joseph said.
Staying in the U.S. without legal status creates a different crisis.
“We received calls this morning from people saying that, unfortunately, starting on July 1, they won’t be able to go to work anymore,” Joseph said Friday.
Joseph predicted that families would be separated during the deportation process.
“We know that there will be separation,” she said. “A lot of those parents with TPS … they have kids who were born in the United States, so we know that it will happen, not for everybody, not for all the families, but it will happen,” she said.
The oncoming nightmare for the Haitian community in Springfield was, in many ways, predictable after Trump notoriously targeted them on the debate stage against then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the fall of 2024.
“They are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said without a shred of evidence, greatly amplifying an unfounded rumor that had been confined to smaller corners of social media.
That rhetoric continued Trump’s track record of racist languageparticularly when it comes to immigration, including during his first White House stint when he referred during his first to Haiti and other majority non-white nations as “shithole” countries.
Dorsainvil argued that the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday proved his beliefs are institutionalized, calling it “a validation of all those bad rhetorics of the president against us.”
Asked by MS NOW if those with TPS should expect to be deported, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said, “Well, of course. If you no longer have status in this country, then you’re supposed to be deported.”
Miller, the architect of the administration’s immigration policy, went on to single out the Haitian population by name.
But the outcry against the court’s ruling blurs party lines in Ohio.
“Changing the immigration status of these individuals is not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio,” Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said.
Springfield’s Republican mayorRob Rue, has denounced Trump’s misinformation about his community as dangerous from the start.
“Many of the individuals affected by this decision are our neighbors, coworkers, business owners, taxpayers, and parents,” Rue said in a statement after the ruling came down. “They contribute to our local economy, support our schools, strengthen our neighborhoods, and have become part of the fabric of Springfield.”
Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.
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