Three people were killed when a large avalanche swept away a group of skiers in Canada, officials said.
The avalanche struck just before 1 p.m. on Monday when two groups of skiers had just finished skiing and were waiting in a staging area below the tree line of Clute Creek water shed in an alpine area on the east side of Kootenay Lake in the British Columbia backcountry, according to a statement from the Kaslo Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
“A transport helicopter was nearing the group when the pilot observed an avalanche and sounded the siren,” officials said. “One group of skiers was able to run out of harm’s way, while the other group of four was swept away into the tree line.”
Efforts to recover the men were immediately initiated but when officials located them, they found three of them deceased.
They were identified as “a 44-year-old man from Whistler BC, a 45-year-old man from Idaho USA and the 53-year-old guide from Kaslo BC.”
The fourth man, a 40-year-old from Nelson, British Columbia, was critically injured.
Avalanche Canada said the Kootenays have a high danger rating at all elevations and that rising temperatures can create avalanche conditions.
(GAZA CITY) — The Israeli government approved the establishment of an agency to facilitate the “voluntary” removal of residents from Gaza, drawing condemnation from across the region.
The agency, proposed by the Israeli Defense Ministry, was approved last weekend, but has not been formally established.
“We are working by all means to implement the vision of the U.S. president, and we will allow any Gaza resident who wishes to voluntarily move to a third country to do so,” Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.
President Donald Trump began to publicly push in February for the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza — a move that some, including the United Nations and U.S. allies like France and Germany, have said would be a violation of international law.
Despite Trump threatening to pull aid from Egypt and Jordan if they do not agree to take in the Palestinians living in Gaza, both countries remained steadfast in their opposition of the proposal.
The Arab Summit approved a draft proposal for a Gaza reconstruction plan that would not displace the Palestinians living in Gaza earlier this month. Under the proposal, Gaza would be governed by a committee of independent professionals and technocrats for six months until the Palestinian Authority resumes control over the enclave.
Egypt “strongly condemned” the establishment of an agency “tasked with the displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip” and the “recognition of 13 new settlements in West Bank,” in a statement Monday.
“Egypt affirms the denial the bases of the so-called ‘voluntary displacement’ that Israel claims it is targeting through this agency, stressing that leaving while under fire from strikes and war and the blockade preventing humanitarian aid and usage of starvation as a weapon is considered forced displacement, a crime and violation of international law and international humanitarian law,” the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement in Arabic.
Saudi Arabia also condemned the move. The country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a post on X Monday: “The Kingdom reiterates its firm rejection of Israel’s continuous violations of international law and international humanitarian law.”
“The Foreign Ministry expresses Saudi Arabia’s condemnation of the Israeli occupation authorities’ announcement on the establishment of an agency that aims to displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, as well as the approval of the separation of 13 illegal settlement neighborhoods in the West Bank in preparation for legitimizing them as colonial settlements,” the Saudi Arabian ministry added.
The proposal for the new Israeli agency comes days after the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza surpassed 50,000, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. At least 792 people were killed and 1,663 others were injured in Israeli strikes last week alone, after the ceasefire ended between Israel and Hamas, the ministry said.
(WASHINGTON) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday is set to visit the prison in El Salvador that took in migrants at the center of the deportation battle playing out in U.S. courts.
On Wednesday, Noem will visit the Terrorist Confinement Center with the Salvadorian minister of justice, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official, and will later meet with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.
“This week, I’m headed down to El Salvador,” Noem said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Monday. “I’ll be in the prison where we sent [Tren De Aragua] gang members. I’ll be meeting with the president and also Colombia and Mexico and talking about building these relationships so we can continue to get people out of this country that don’t belong here and take them home.”
She said the president talked to her about “sending the message worldwide” that people shouldn’t illegally be entering the United States.
The DHS has rolled out a $200 million advertising campaign to tell people who are thinking about coming to the U.S. illegally not to come and to urge those who are in the U.S. without legal status to leave.
“They shouldn’t be coming here illegally,” Noem said. “So we are in several other countries around the world with a message right now that’s saying if you are thinking about coming to America illegally, don’t do it — you are not welcome. We have a legal process to become a United States citizen, and there are consequences if you come here illegally.”
The administration allegedly sent members of the Venezuelan Tren De Aragua gang to the infamous prison — even though a federal judge ordered officials not to do so.
“America has changed because we are putting Americans first,” Noem concluded during the meeting on Monday.
Noem will also meet with leaders from Colombia and with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum later in the week.
“President Trump and Secretary Noem have a clear message for criminal aliens considering entering America illegally: don’t even think about it. If you come to our country and break our laws, we will hunt you down, and lock you up,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary of Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “This trip underscores the importance of our partner countries to help remove violent criminal illegal aliens from the United States.”
(LONDON) — Increasingly squeezed by allies and enemies alike, Ukraine’s armed forces are still setting records in their stubborn defense against Russia’s 3-year-old invasion, which — if President Donald Trump’s peace talks bear fruit — may soon see a partial ceasefire.
Month after month, Ukraine has increased the size and scope of its drone assaults within Russia. The high watermark this month came on March 10 as Kyiv launched at least 343 drones into Russia — according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow — representing Kyiv’s largest ever such attack. More than 90 drones were shot down over Moscow, the capital’s mayor describing the assault as “massive.”
The timing was pointed, coming hours before American and Ukrainian officials gathered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for ceasefire talks.
While straining to prove to the White House they were ready to discuss peace with Moscow, the Ukrainians were also exhibiting their ever-evolving capability to wage war deep inside Russia.
“We keep developing a lot of different types of long-range deep strikes,” Yehor Cherniv — a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and the chairman of his country’s delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly — told ABC News.
“Our capacity is growing to destroy the capacity of Russia to continue this war,” he added.
Ukraine’s strikes against Russian critical infrastructure, energy facilities, military-industrial targets and military bases have mirrored Moscow’s own long-range campaign against Ukraine. Cross-border barrages in both directions have grown in size and complexity throughout the full-scale war.
Ukrainian short-range drones are harrying Russian forces on the devastated battlefields while long-range strike craft hit targets closer to home. Kyiv this month even claimed the first successful use of its domestically produced Neptune cruise missile, with a range of 600 miles.
Since the opening of U.S.-Russian talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 18, Russia’s Defense Ministry claims to have shot down a total of 1,879 long-range Ukrainian drones — an average of more than 53 each day. On four occasions, the ministry reported intercepting more than 100 drones over a 24-hour period.
“Ukraine is pulling every single lever that it can, as hard as it can, to get it the kind of lethal strike capability that it needs for both of those campaigns,” Nick Reynolds, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, told ABC News.
Three years of Russia’s full-scale war have supercharged drone innovation in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s armed forces and intelligence services have lauded what they call their “drone sanctions” — a tongue-in-cheek reference to drone attacks on Russian fossil fuel, military industrial and other infrastructure targets far beyond the front.
“Our Ukrainian production of drones and their continuous modernization are a key part of our system of deterrence against Russia, which is crucial for ensuring Ukraine’s security in the long term,” Zelenskyy said in a recent Telegram post.
Ukrainian drones have hit targets more than 700 miles inside Russia, have regularly forced the temporary closures of major Russian airports and have bombarded the power centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. At sea, Ukraine’s naval drones have confined Russia’s fleet to the eastern portion of the Black Sea and made its bases in Crimea untenable.
It is no longer unusual for more than 100 attack drones to cross into Russian territory in the course of one night. Meanwhile, Kyiv is pushing to replace its relatively low-tech propeller-driven unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, with more jet-powered craft — potentially extending range, payload and survivability. “The number of rocket drones production will grow just like our long-range strike drones production did,” Zelenskyy said last summer.
Kyiv’s strikes have particularly disrupted Russia’s lucrative oil refining and export industry, prompting concerns abroad — including in the U.S. — that the Ukrainian campaign is driving up oil prices globally.
Federico Borsari of the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank told ABC News that Ukraine’s evolving long-range strike industry represents a “strategic advantage,” especially if Kyiv is able to protect its industrial sites from Russian strikes and stockpile weapons for future use.
“Ukraine has damaged Russian oil refining facilities hard since 2024 and destroyed several key storage bases of the artillery shells,” Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, told ABC News. “So, the Russians are highly concerned about this.”
“The amount of financial loss and material damage is huge,” Borsari added.
Drones of all ranges are expected to serve a key role in Ukraine’s future deterrence of repeat Russian aggression. Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, for example, said Kyiv is planning a 6- to 9-mile drone “kill zone” to buffer any future post-war frontier with Russia, “making enemy advances impossible.”
Ivan Stupak, a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine, told ABC News that Ukraine’s drone threat could also prove an important lever in ongoing negotiations with both Moscow and Washington, neither of which want continued — or expanded — drone strikes on Russian oil infrastructure and other sensitive targets.
The weapons could also be vital to future deterrence of repeat Russian aggression, Stupak said, as Ukraine pursues a “hedgehog” strategy by which the country would make itself too “prickly” for Moscow to attempt to swallow again.
Ukraine’s success has not gone unnoticed by its foreign partners. Kyiv appears to be carving out a potentially lucrative niche in providing long-range, low-cost strike platforms.
“There is immense interest from our friends around the world in Ukraine’s developments, our capabilities and our technological production,” Zelenskyy said recently.
Last fall, reports emerged indicating that Ukraine was considering lifting a wartime ban on drone exports, seeking to take advantage of growing demand worth as much as $20 billion annually, per an estimate by Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Marikovskyi.
Ukraine’s military and intelligence services collaborate with domestic and international private companies to expand their drone capabilities. Kyiv has estimated there are more than 200 domestic companies working in the sector. This year, Zelenskyy wants Ukraine to produce 30,000 long-range drones and 3,000 ballistic missiles.
This month’s brief U.S. aid and intelligence freeze has raised concerns within Ukraine’s domestic drone industry, arguably one of the most insulated and resilient areas of the country’s defense sector.
“The reality is that Western-provided intelligence — and the Americans are a big part of that — does feed into a better targeting picture,” Reynolds said. “The efficiency and effectiveness is, in part, tied to that.”
“Ukraine became partly blinded as to how and where Russian anti-aircraft and electronic warfare systems are being deployed,” Stupak said.
If such a freeze is repeated, “I suppose it will be more difficult for Ukraine to avoid anti-aircraft and electronic warfare systems and maybe we will see decreased levels of successful strikes,” he said.
Ukraine’s largest drone attack of the war thus far came days after the U.S. announced its intelligence sharing freeze. It is not clear whether Ukraine used previously shared intelligence to carry out the strike, in which scores of craft reached Moscow.
Some targets are easier to find than others. Airfields — like Engels strategic bomber air base — oil refineries, ports and the like are static and their locations known to Ukrainian military planners.
Still, a lack of intelligence would make it harder for Kyiv to locate and avoid Russian defensive systems. The pause in American intelligence sharing was brief, but for Ukrainians highlighted their level of reliance on U.S. assistance.
A long-lasting paucity of intelligence would represent “an important vulnerability,” Borsari said. “For very long-range targets, they require satellite information, satellite imagery — and most of the time this information comes from Western allies.”
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is facing scrutiny over the use of the commercially available app Signal to discuss plans for a U.S. military attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen, but did anyone break the law?
Inadvertently included on the chain was The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who recounted how he was texted information about weapons packages, targets and timing before the strike unfolded.
Goldberg’s report quickly sparked questions about the administration’s handling of sensitive defense information, including whether the chat violated the Espionage Act.
The 1917 law “is the primary statutory vehicle through which the government typically brings criminal prosecutions for mishandling or leaks of classified information,” said national security attorney Bradley Moss.
Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson soon after the U.S. entered World War I, the Espionage Act was aimed at cracking down on disloyal wartime activities.
Despite its title, Moss said “most of the statute has nothing to do with actual espionage and instead more broadly criminalizes the unauthorized storage, dissemination or modification of national defense information.”
President Donald Trump was charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified materials after his first term, allegations Trump denied. The case was dropped after the 2024 election, with the special counsel citing longstanding Justice Department policy not to prosecute sitting presidents.
The statute was also used in high-profile cases against Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira, who was sentenced last year to 15 years in prison for exposing defense information, and Chelsea Manning, who was imprisoned for the unauthorized release of hundreds of thousands of classified government documents to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Democrats have called for an investigation into the use of the Signal group chat to discuss a military operation and for some officials involved to be fired or resign.
The White House and top officials have sought to minimize the incident, stating in their defense that there was no classified material involved in the message chain.
“This was not classified. Now, if it’s classified information, it’s probably a little bit different,” Trump said as he was hit with questions on the matter during a meeting with some of his ambassadors on Tuesday afternoon.
The exact content of the messages is unclear. The administration denies they included “war plans” though Goldberg said it included operational details of strikes on Yemen, including information about targets and attack sequencing. National Security Council spokesman, in a statement to ABC News on Monday, said the message thread that was reported “appears to be authentic.”
The Espionage Act, though, predates the modern classification system.
“In this context, information related to national defense also has to be information the possessor has a reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation,” said Sam Lebovic, a historian of U.S. politics who has studied the century-old statute.
“And if, as has been alleged, operational details were in that information, I think you could make the case that would be information which could be used to the injury of the U.S. or to the advantage of a foreign nation. And technically, whether or not it’s classified doesn’t have bearing on that definition,” Lebovic said.
Still, the expansive nature of the Espionage Act — which Lebovic said could cover essentially any disclosure of information related to national defense to someone unauthorized to receive it — has resulted in it being relatively rarely used other than in the most egregious cases.
“They’re often not prosecuted because the law is so broadly written, it gives prosecutors a great deal of discretion to decide when to bring charges and when not to,” Lebovic said.
FBI Director Kash Patel was questioned by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner on Tuesday in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on whether his bureau would investigate the incident. Patel said he had just been briefed on the matter Monday night and Tuesday morning and didn’t have an update. Warner asked for one by the end of the day.
Officials with the White House’s National Security Council said they “are reviewing” how a reporter was added to the Signal chat, though the scope of the review, including whether it would attempt to determine why high-level discussions about military planning were taking place outside of official channels, was not immediately clear.
(TEL AVIV, Israel) — Three weeks ago, Hamdan Ballal stood on the stage at the Oscars, golden statue in hand, winner of the award for best documentary as the co-director of “No Other Land.” It was an inspiring moment of unity and coexistence.
On Tuesday, bloodied and bruised, he spoke to ABC News on the phone from a hospital bed in Hebron in the West Bank.
“I’m afraid,” Ballal said. “Really, I’m afraid. I feel, when they attack me, I will lose my life.”
Ballal said he was severely beaten at the hands of Jewish settlers at his home on Monday, just outside the village of Susiya.
Settlers had come into the village throwing stones and harassing residents, including his neighbor, something Ballal says had been happening with increasing frequency since his Oscar win earlier this month.
He started filming before rushing home to his family, trying to block settlers from coming into his house. That’s when the attack began, he said, with several men attacking his head and body, including hitting him with guns.
“It was a hard, hard attack,” Ballal said. “You know, I feel I will die, because this attack was so hard, I bleed from everywhere. I’m crying from deeply in my heart. I feel pain everywhere in my body. So, they continue attacking me like 15-20 minutes.”
He said that, in addition to a plainclothes settler, there were two men present he described as “soldiers with guns,” although he could not say for sure who they were or which Israeli authority they might have represented.
The Israel Defense Forces and Israel Police have denied being involved in any beating.
Israeli authorities said that Ballal was detained along with several others on suspicion of throwing stones, damaging property and compromising the security of the area. A Jewish settler was arrested, as well.
The Palestinians — including Ballal — were questioned, held overnight and ultimately released “on conditions that include not contacting other people involved and self-bail,” according to a police statement.
Police say the investigation is continuing, but Ballal strongly denies he did anything wrong.
“I didn’t throw stones, I didn’t do any problems with the settlers,” Ballal said. “The settlers came attacking me and beating me. That’s it.”
Ballal’s Oscar-winning documentary focused on a community’s attempts to resist forced expulsion of Palestinians from a southern area of the West Bank by the Israeli government.
The number of Israeli settlers has dramatically increased in the West Bank in recent decades.
Palestinians, human rights groups and the United Nations have accused them of playing an unofficial role in the attempted displacement of Palestinians through the West Bank, with extremists carrying out violent attacks designed to intimidate, instill fear and ultimately force people out of a place they have called home for generations.
“The settler violence has worsened considerably since the war,” said Sari Bashi, a program director at Human Rights Watch. “The people whom the army doesn’t directly displace are left to fend for themselves among violent settlers who scare them off their land.”
Critics say the right-wing coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, at best, turned a blind eye to the violence and, at worst, outright encouraged it, with the ultimate goal, according to prominent settler activists and some far-right members of the government, of annexing the West Bank entirely.
The government has denied responsibility for settler violence and has primarily blamed Palestinians for the continued unrest, though sometimes it blames settlers as well. Netanyahu’s government, which refers to the West Bank by its biblical names of Judea and Samaria, argues that the area is replete with terrorist activity that targets Israelis both in West Bank settlements and inside Israel. The government argues its actions in the West Bank are necessary to keep Israelis safe.
Activists often say that the Israeli Police and the IDF, who have security control over most of the West Bank, fail to protect them from settler attacks or adequately prosecute cases of settler violence. The IDF intervenes when scuffles between settlers and activists escalate, but prosecuting settler violence is rare. From 2005 to 2024, only 3% of more than 1,000 investigations ended in convictions, according to the nongovernmental organization Yesh Din.
The settlers often cite a deep religious imperative for their actions. Others view attacks as vengeance for deadly Palestinian terror attacks. Many routinely deny responsibility for the West Bank acts of violence that have risen in recent years but have gone on for decades.
Ballal was released from the hospital on Tuesday. ABC News asked why he chose to speak publicly if he is afraid for his life.
“I’ve been afraid like this since I was born, until now,” Ballal said. “So, I have to speak. Yes, I’m afraid, but I live this situation all my life. So I hope, I hope, because I speak with [ABC News], it can change something.”
ABC News’ Guy Davies, Mike Pappano and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
(LONDON and JERUSALEM) — Palestinian Academy Award-winning filmmaker Hamdan Ballal was released from Israeli custody on Tuesday, friend and fellow filmmaker Yuval Abraham said, after Ballal was detained by Israeli security forces on Monday.
The co-director of “No Other Land” was detained by the Israel Police following a confrontation with Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Basel Adra — who shared the recent Oscar win — told ABC News that Ballal is believed to have been injured in what activists said was an attack by settlers on local Palestinian families.
Ballal was released on Tuesday, Abraham wrote on X. The filmmaker “is now free and is about to go home to his family,” he said.
Israel Police confirmed to ABC News that Ballal was among three people released “on conditions that include not contacting other people involved and providing a personal guarantee. The investigation is ongoing and additional arrests are expected.”
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said of Monday’s incident, “Several terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles” near Susiya, a village located to the south of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
“Following this, a violent confrontation broke out, involving mutual rock-hurling between Palestinians and Israelis at the scene,” the IDF said. “IDF and Israeli Police forces arrived to disperse the confrontation, at this point, several terrorists began hurling rocks at the security forces.”
“In response, the forces apprehended three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at them, as well as an Israeli civilian involved in the violent confrontation. The detainees were taken for further questioning by the Israel Police. An Israeli citizen was injured in the incident and was evacuated to receive medical treatment.”
Israel Police confirmed to ABC News in a statement that Ballal was arrested and taken to Kiryat Arba police station. The force said Ballal was under investigation.
“No Other Land,” which won best documentary at this year’s Oscars, details the efforts of the residents of Masafer Yatta to stop the demolition of their villages by the IDF and harassment by Israeli settlers. Both Ballal and Adra are residents of Masafar Yatta.
Nasser Nawaja, a field researcher working for B’Tselem — a human rights organization based in Jerusalem — told ABC News on Monday that he was with Ballal before the filmmaker was arrested.
“For the past month, there have been attacks every single day,” Nawaja said. “The settlers are trying to pressure us to leave Susiya.”
Settler attacks began on Monday morning at around 7:30 a.m. local time, Nawaja said. “We called the Israeli police. When they arrived, they told us, ‘The settlers are allowed to graze here.’ But it’s our private land. It’s our homes.”
At around 6 p.m., Nawaja said the settlers “attacked” local families, throwing stones at a house and trying to “shoot the family’s sheep.”
Activist Anna Lippman told ABC News that she and a group of fellow activists were also attacked by stone-throwing Israeli settlers outside the village of Susiya on Monday evening after they arrived to come to the aid of Ballal.
The incident started at the house of Ballal’s neighbor, Lippman said, before moving on to Ballal’s house.
Adra said he saw two settlers with guns and that most of the attackers were masked.
“Hamdan was just standing there when the settlers came at him too,” Nawaja said. “They destroyed the water tanks. And not long after that, the soldiers arrested him. We haven’t heard anything about him since.”
“Hamdan ran home,” Nawaja added. “He got his wife and children inside, and stood in the doorway to protect them. That’s when the soldiers arrested him. I got close enough to film it. He was blindfolded, handcuffed, and taken away in a military vehicle — along with two other Palestinians.”
“Later, I spoke with Hamdan’s wife,” Nawaja said. “She told me he was beaten. But she’s too afraid to speak to journalists. Another journalist tried, and she said no.”
“He spent years documenting what was happening to us,” Nawaja said. “And now it’s happening to him. And we don’t even know where he is.”
The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents to be expelled, prompting a 20-year legal battle.
Israel’s Supreme Court upheld the expulsion order in 2022, though approximately 1,000 residents remain in place. Israeli forces regularly move in to demolish homes and other structures. Locals say Israeli settlers have also set up several outposts nearby since the court’s 2022 decision.
Both Ballal and Adra are residents of Masafar Yatta. The film also has two Israeli directors — Abraham and Rachel Szor.
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Ellie Kaufman, Chris Looft and Dragana Jovanovic contributed to this report.
Valeria Zarudna/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
(LONDON) — Following separate talks with the United States in Saudi Arabia this week, Russia and Ukraine have agreed to “eliminate the use of force” in the Black Sea, according to readouts from the White House.
Russia and Ukraine “have agreed to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea,” according to the readouts.
They both also agreed to “develop measures to implement the agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine,” according to the readouts.
All parties are working toward “achieving a durable and lasting peace,” they noted.
The White House made a specific agreement with Ukraine over the exchange of prisoners of war, according to a readout on the Ukrainian talks in Riyadh.
“The United States and Ukraine agreed that the United States remains committed to helping achieve the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children,” the readout stated.
The White House also made a specific agreement with Russia, focused on agriculture and maritime costs, according to a readout on the Russian talks in Riyadh.
“The United States will help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transaction,” the readout stated.
Monday’s closed-door talks with Russia in Riyadh lasted for 12 hours, a source told Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
Grigory Karasin, the chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, who took part in the talks in Riyadh, told Tass that “the dialogue was detailed and complex but quite useful for us and for the Americans.” Karasin added, “We discussed numerous issues.”
A source told the RIA Novosti state media agency that a joint statement on the negotiations was to be issued on Tuesday. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov subsequently said the details of talks between would not be made public.
The talks were expected to include discussions on a potential ceasefire in the Black Sea, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. That proposal, Peskov said, came from President Donald Trump and was agreed to by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A proposed pause in long-range attacks on energy and other critical infrastructure targets was also expected to be part of the discussions. Though Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy both agreed to the proposal in principle last week, cross-border strikes had continued.
The U.S.-Russia meeting on Monday came on the heels of a meeting between the American and Ukrainian teams in Riyadh on Sunday. U.S. and Ukrainian representatives also held talks after the American meeting with the Russian team concluded, a source familiar with the discussions told ABC News.
On Monday, responding to another round of Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, Zelenskyy wrote on social media that “the war was brought from Russia and it is to Russia that the war must be pushed back. They must be the ones forced into peace. They are the ones who must be pressured to ensure security.”
On Monday night into Tuesday morning, Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched one missile and 139 drones into the country, of which 78 drones were shot down and 34 lost in flight without causing damage.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces shot down five Ukrainian drones over occupied Crimea.
ABC News’ Anna Sergeeva, Oleksiy Pshemyskiy, Will Gretsky, Ellie Kaufman and Guy Davies contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg joined ABC News Live to discuss the moment he realized he had been added to a Signal group chat with top government officials discussing a U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen.
“My reaction was, I think I’ve discovered a massive security breach in the United States national security system,” Goldberg told Prime’s Linsey Davis on Monday.
This comes after the White House confirmed on Monday that the Signal group chat that inadvertently included Goldberg “appears to be authentic.”
“It’s almost automatically true that if the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic is being given access to this kind of information, weapon systems and packages and timing and weather in Yemen and all kinds of information about sequencing of particular events, then obviously there’s a security breach,” Goldberg told Davis.
Goldberg said he initially thought it might have been a “spoof” or “hoax,” but that “it became sort of overwhelmingly clear to me that this was a real group” once the attack occurred.
He said he removed himself from the chat and is “no longer privy to what, if anything, is going on in the chat.”
“I watched this Yemen operation go from beginning to apparent end, and that was enough for me to learn that there’s something wrong in the system here that would allow this information to come so dangerously close to the open, to the wild,” he said.
White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes shared with ABC News the statement he provided to The Atlantic confirming the veracity of a Signal group chat, which Goldberg said appeared to include Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among others.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security,” Hughes said in the statement.
Hegseth denied how the story was characterized, saying, “nobody was texting war plans.”
“I’ve heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told reporters on Monday.
In the wake of the Signal chat’s surfacing, top Democrats have called for an investigation into the incident.
“The leak of sensitive national security information by the Trump administration on a non-classified system is completely outrageous and shocks the conscience,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement.
Valeria Zarudna/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
(LONDON) — The details of talks between the U.S. and Russia that took place in Saudi Arabia on Monday will not be made public, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
“After all, this is about technical talks,” Peskov said, as quoted by Russia’s state-run Tass news agency. The discussions, he added, went “into details so, certainly, the content of these talks will not be made public for sure. This is something that should not be expected.”
“Currently, the reports made [by the delegations] to their capitals are being analyzed, and only later it will be possible to speak of any understanding,” Peskov added.
Monday’s closed-door talks in Riyadh lasted for 12 hours, a source told Tass. A source told the RIA Novosti state media agency that a joint statement on the negotiations was to be issued on Tuesday.
Grigory Karasin, the chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, who took part in the talks in Riyadh, told Tass that “the dialogue was detailed and complex but quite useful for us and for the Americans.” Karasin added, “We discussed numerous issues.”
The talks were expected to include discussions on a potential ceasefire in the Black Sea, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. That proposal, Peskov said, came from President Donald Trump and was agreed to by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A proposed pause in long-range attacks on energy and other critical infrastructure targets was also expected to be part of discussions. Though Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy both agreed to the proposal in principle last week, cross-border strikes have continued.
U.S. and Ukrainian representatives held talks after the American meeting with the Russian team concluded, a source familiar with the discussions told ABC News.
On Monday, responding to another round of Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, Zelenskyy wrote on social media that “the war was brought from Russia and it is to Russia that the war must be pushed back. They must be the ones forced into peace. They are the ones who must be pressured to ensure security.”
On Monday night into Tuesday morning, Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched one missile and 139 drones into the country, of which 78 drones were shot down and 34 lost in flight without causing damage.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces shot down five Ukrainian drones over occupied Crimea.
ABC News’ Anna Sergeeva, Oleksiy Pshemyskiy, Will Gretsky, Ellie Kaufman and Guy Davies contributed to this report.
