Zelenskyy: US moved ‘20,000 missiles’ to fight drones from Ukraine to the Middle East
ABC News
(WASHINGTON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz that his defense minister told him Friday the U.S. had transferred anti-drone weapons which defended against Russian attacks.
Zelenskyy said the U.S. would divert “20,000 missiles” from Ukraine’s arsenal to the Middle East, where it appears the U.S. would use them for its own force protection.
“Without the help of the United States, we will have more losses,” Zelenskyy told Raddatz in Kyiv last week.
The move comes as Russia ramps up its drone attacks and after Ukraine struck deep inside Russia with its own drones last week, shocking Russia in a clandestine operation.
Overnight Sunday, Russia launched 479 drones and 20 missiles into Ukraine in an attack the Ukrainian Air Force called an “absolute record” for a Russian aerial offensive.
The Pentagon declined to confirm the assets were being relocated.
The Ukrainian president said the assets were “not expensive, but [a] special technology” which specifically defended against Shahed drones.
The Shaheds are an inexpensive drone originally made by Iran and imported by Moscow. Russia now mass produces them.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Pentagon authorized a transfer of an anti-drone technology utilized by Ukraine to take down Russian drones.
“We counted on these 20,000 missiles,” Zelesnkyy told Raddatz in their exclusive Friday sit-down. He said that earlier in the day, “my Minister of Defense told me that United States moved it to the Middle East.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s plan to promote acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin, who has repeatedly defended Jan. 6 rioters, to the permanent position appears to face an uphill battle after a key Senate Republican said Tuesday he would not support the nomination.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina told ABC News that he will not support Trump’s nominee to become the next U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., a message he says has been relayed to the White House.
“At this point, I have indicated to the White House I wouldn’t support his nomination,” Tillis told ABC News.
Tillis met with Martin Monday evening after he publicly expressed reluctance about Martin’s nomination due to concerns about his work representing Jan. 6 defendants and past inflammatory comments about the riot.
Martin, Tillis said, did a “good job of explaining how there were people that probably got caught up in it,” but that it wasn’t enough to satisfy his concerns.
“I think anybody who breached the perimeter should have been in prison for some period of time,” Tillis said. “Whether it’s 30 days or three years is debatable, but I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January the sixth, and that’s probably where most of the friction was,” Tillis said.
Tillis is a key Republican vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee that will be responsible for determining whether to advance Martin’s nomination to a final vote on the Senate floor.
Martin has served as the interim U.S. attorney since the start of the administration but his term expires on May 20, meaning he would need to be confirmed by then to continue leading the office.
One path forward is for the chief judge of the D.C. District Court, Judge Jeb Boasberg, to pick the next nominee.
That is extremely unlikely given Trump’s apparent disdain for Boasberg who has overseen a number of Trump’s related cases.
Boasberg recently found probable cause that the Trump administration acted in contempt of court when officials in March ignored his order to turn around two planes carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador.
If Tillis votes with all Democrats to oppose the nomination and no other Republicans flip, the committee will tie, and Martin’s nomination won’t be sent to the floor for a final vote.
But there’s still a few ways to get around this. Tillis could choose to vote to advance without recommendation, allowing the nomination to go to the floor of the Senate even without Tillis’ support.
Losing any more Republicans on the panel could prove insurmountable.
The timing of a Judiciary Committee vote is also in flux at the moment, as a source close to the confirmation process confirms that Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has not listed a committee vote for Martin on the committee’s agenda this week amid growing concerns about his floundering support.
This delay could make it close to impossible for the Senate to take a final vote on Martin before May 20.
Martin, who has been vying to become the top prosecutor in one of the nation’s most important U.S. attorney’s offices, was a promoter of Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign and was himself seen on the Capitol grounds during the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
His tenure leading the office has been fraught with controversy.
Martin has moved to fire or demote dozens of top career attorneys who investigated the Capitol attack, he has sent threatening letters to top Democrats and other political opponents of President Trump suggesting he would target them with criminal investigations.
He recently had to apologize for his past praise of a Jan. 6 rioter who had a lengthy history of antisemitic statements and who infamously posted photos of himself dressed as Adolf Hitler.
Martin has also had to provide multiple supplemental letters to the committee in recent weeks after failing to disclose numerous media appearances on far-right outlets like InfoWars and Russian-propaganda networks Sputnik and RT.
Trump urged Republicans to vote for Martin, saying on his social media platform Monday evening that “if approved, HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon’s independent watchdog has announced it has agreed to a request from top senators and is launching a probe into the use of the commercial messaging app Signal by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior Trump administration officials to discuss a future U.S. military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen.
Last week, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., sent a letter to DOD acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins requesting an expedited inquiry into that Signal discussion.
“The purpose of this memorandum is to notify you that we are initiating the subject evaluation,” Stebbins wrote in a memo to the offices of the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense. “We are conducting this evaluation in response to a March 26, 2025 letter I received from the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, requesting that I conduct an inquiry into recent public reporting on the Secretary of Defense’s use of an unclassified commercially available messaging application to discuss information pertaining to military actions in Yemen in March 2025.”
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business. Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements,” Stebbins added in the memo.
“We may revise the objective as the evaluation proceeds. We plan to perform this evaluation in accordance with the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency ‘Quality Standards for Inspection and Evaluation,'” he said.
Last week, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed he had been added to a Signal text group that appeared to include senior Trump administration national security officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, discussing plans to strike against Houthi targets in Yemen in mid-March.
Senior Trump administration officials including Hegseth pushed back on The Atlantic’s description of the conversation and argued no classified war plans had been discussed.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Friday morning accused China of violating a recent trade agreement with the United States.
The sharp criticism appeared to cast doubt over the staying power of the accord, setting up the possibility of a rekindled trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
“China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US,” Trump said in a social media post Friday morning. “So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!”
Trump did not identify the action taken by China that had violated the agreement.
The remarks came hours after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent voiced pessimism about U.S.-China trade talks in an interview with Fox News on Thursday night.
“I would say that they are a bit stalled,” Bessent said when asked about the status of the trade talks. “I believe that we will be having more talks with them in the next few weeks, and I believe we may at some point have a call between the president and Party Chair Xi [Jinping].”
U.S. stocks fell slightly in early trading on Friday morning after the comments from Trump and Bessent.
A trade agreement between the U.S. and China earlier this month slashed tit-for-tat tariffs imposed by the two countries, triggering a surge in the stock market and softening recession forecasts on Wall Street.
The U.S. agreed to cut tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30%, while China committed to reduce tariffs on U.S. products from 125% to 10%. The lowered tariffs are set to remain in place for 90 days while the two sides negotiate a wider trade deal.
The remaining 30% tariffs imposed on Chinese goods faced a major setback this week, however, when a panel of federal judges struck down the legal justification for the levies.
The ruling from the U.S. Court of International Trade late Wednesday invalidated the China tariffs, along with a host of other levies on dozens of countries unveiled in a Rose Garden ceremony that Trump had dubbed “Liberation Day.”
A federal appeals court moved to temporarily reinstate the tariffs on Thursday, leaving the ultimate fate of the policy uncertain.
