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NATO Secretary General to Europe: ‘Get your act together’
08:04 – Source: CNN
• Ukraine war talks: US and Russian officials are meeting in Saudi Arabia for initial talks to end the war in Ukraine as President Donald Trump pushes for a deal. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said his government “knew nothing about (the talks)” and would not participate.
• Musk’s role at the White House: Court filings have revealed more details on Elon Musk’s role in the US government. The tycoon is neither the administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency, nor an employee. He is described as an adviser to the president and a special government employee. DOGE is pressing forward with sweeping federal cuts as it faces legal challenges.
• US government overhaul: As the Trump administration reshapes the federal government, heads at two agencies have quit. The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner has stepped down over DOGE requests to access data, according to sources. And FDA food chief Jim Jones has resigned over apparent disagreements with the Trump administration.
China has said it expects “all parties” to the Ukraine war to sit together for peace negotiations, as the top diplomats from the US and Russia met in Saudi Arabia for talks aimed at ending Moscow’s war on its neighbor — from which Kyiv and its European partners have been excluded.
“At the same time, China expects all parties involved and stakeholders to participate in the negotiation process in a timely manner.”
China has long sought to position itself as a potential peace broker in the conflict — promoting its own vaguely worded proposal to settle the war. But its bid has been overshadowed in the West by Beijing’s deepening ties with Moscow.
Russia launched an extensive drone attack on Ukraine just hours before US and Russian officials convened in Saudi Arabia for talks aimed at ending Moscow’s war on its neighbor.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 176 Shahed-type strike drones and decoy drones overnight, the latest barrage in near-daily aerial attacks aimed at weakening Ukrainian defenses and degrading the country’s energy infrastructure during the winter months.
More than 100 drones were shot down and nearly 70 decoy drones lost from radar without negative consequences, Ukraine’s air force said. It did not specify any damage or casualties from the attack.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are meeting in Saudi Arabia ahead of initial talks to end the Ukraine war, which will be held without Kyiv and its European supporters.
Other US officials in attendance for the talks in Riyadh include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff. On the Russian side are top-level political, intelligence and economic figures, including presidential aide Yury Ushakov and sovereign wealth fund chief Kirill Dmitriev, who played a key behind-the-scenes role in a recent US prisoner release deal.
Lavrov has said the talks will aim to end the “abnormal period” in relations between the two “great powers.” The discussion could also lay the foundations for a potential meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
European leaders, who have expressed alarm at being sidelined from the potentially pivotal talks, held an emergency meeting on Ukraine in Paris on Monday. Their gathering came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Europe to band together to create a united army and foreign policy, warning that the days of guaranteed US support for the continent are over.
Europe’s exclusion from the US-Russia talks today means “Ukraine has to go into those secondary talks playing by somebody else’s rules, playing mostly by Russia’s rules, which means the outcome is pretty foreordained before they even get to the table,” said analyst Matthew Schmidt.
Schmidt, an associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven, told CNN the talks raise the question of which potential peacekeepers could be accepted by both NATO and Russia.
Michael Bociurkiw, a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, told CNN that Ukraine has “very little leverage” right now and relies on the US for “critical intel” used on the battlefield.
President Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly asking for “extortionate” amounts of rare earth minerals located in Ukraine, he said, potentially worth billions of dollars.
Some context: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that he was open to signing a deal that would grant the US access to those rare earth minerals if Washington provides security guarantees to Kyiv in return.
Speaking to Fox News last week, Trump pointed to Ukraine’s “tremendously valuable land in terms of rare earth, in terms of oil and gas, in terms of other things. I want to have our money secured.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said late Monday that he had spoken to US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, emphasizing the need for strong security guarantees for Kyiv.
“Otherwise, there is a risk that this ceasefire will end like the Minsk agreements,” he added, referring to two deals struck in 2014 and 2015 during a conflict in eastern Ukraine that were never fully implemented.
Macron said that Europe would continue working to support Ukraine, and the continent must also invest more in its own security and defense. His comments come after repeated calls from The Trump administration for NATO allies in Europe to increase defense spending.
A White House readout described the 30-minute-long Macron-Trump call as “friendly.”
US and Russian officials will meet in Riyadh today for talks on ending the Ukraine war.
The US team: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz are expected to be at the talks.
On Russia’s team: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, presidential aide Yury Ushakov and sovereign wealth fund chief Kirill Dmitriev are expected to join the talks. Dmitriev said he has already met with several members of the US team in the Saudi capital.
What does the US say? Rubio framed the talks as an attempt to determine whether Russia is serious about ending its war in Ukraine. He also said if negotiations progressed, then Ukraine and European countries would be involved.
Keith Kellogg, the Trump administration’s Russia-Ukraine envoy, has discussed a “dual track” set of negotiations and is expected to visit Kyiv on Thursday.
What does Russia say? The Kremlin said the talks “will be dedicated primarily to the restoration of the entire complex of Russian-American relations.”
Lavrov said Trump and Putin want to leave behind an “abnormal period” in relations. He also implied that Moscow is unwilling to make compromises on Ukraine in the talks.
What does Ukraine say? Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said his government “knew nothing about (the talks)” and would not participate.
But Zelensky has repeatedly signaled his willingness to enter a deal that would grant the US access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals in exchange for security guarantees.
What have European leaders said? In an emergency meeting yesterday, European leaders focused on the potential deployment of their troops to Ukraine and upping defense spending. But NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said a US backstop was essential.
A dangerous fault line is opening as Donald Trump rushes to end the war in Ukraine.
The US president craves an early political triumph to fuel his claims to a Nobel Peace Prize. But an equitable end to the conflict may defy a quick fix since it poses existential issues for Ukraine and European security.
This tension was exacerbated by the president’s decision to exclude officials from Kyiv and European powers from US-Russia talks taking place in Saudi Arabia.
The fate of his push to end the war will ultimately rest on whether his swift pace can accommodate critical details of a peace that allows Ukraine to survive, secures the borders and security of Europe and avoids rewarding Russia’s illegal invasion.
Trump has shown little obvious concern for any of these three goals – one reason why his strategy is a gamble.
There’s a chance that Trump’s urgency and power could change the dynamics of the war of attrition.
Trump is, for instance, only voicing a reality that many US and European officials have shared privately for months: that Ukraine can no longer win the war and eject Russia from all the territory it has seized.
The stakes are huge. A hurried peace deal that strengthens Russia and weakens European security by validating Putin’s expansionism would likely sow the seeds for an even worse future war.
Saudi Arabia will host top US and Russian officials today for a high-stakes rapprochement meeting — a role that underlines the kingdom’s aspirations to become a global actor capable of mediating conflicts.
Another likely aim: added leverage for Riyadh in future talks on the fate of postwar Gaza.
At the meeting, the kingdom expects to play a mediation role, a Saudi official told CNN. The Saudi team will be led by the country’s national security adviser.
The location for these talks is widely considered a win for the kingdom’s 39-year-old de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He’s on a mission to transform his oil-rich country and its fundamentalist Islamist past, into a nation that can cultivate soft power from immense wealth.
Saudi Arabia has realigned its policies towards neutrality in global conflicts with the hope of attracting billions of investments that could help achieve the crown prince’s plan to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil.
Prince bin Salman has significantly pulled back from Yemen after years of war with neighboring Houthis, he is mending ties with regional rival Iran and has maintained a relationship with China – all while preserving the close Saudi relationship with the West.
The crown prince’s ascension as a powerbroker in the talks stems from his close relationship with US President Donald Trump, who supported the young royal when he was internationally shunned following the killing of columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents.
The crown prince also has warm ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The crown prince resisted Western pressure to alienate Moscow after Ukraine’s invasion and continued coordinating with Putin to control global oil supply.
American Kalob Byers, 28, who was recently arrested in Russia, has been released after several days in detention, according to a senior Trump administration official.
Byers, who was arrested at a Russian airport 10 days ago, was freed hours before talks between senior US and Russian officials over the war in Ukraine were set to commence in Saudi Arabia.
As the Associated Press earlier reported, Byers was detained on February 7 at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport after customs officials allegedly found cannabis-laced marmalade in his baggage. Byers had traveled from Istanbul with his Russian fiancee, who was also reportedly detained. The authorities said he had attempted to smuggle a “significant amount” of drugs into the country and put him in custody on the charges of drug smuggling, punishable by a prison term of up to 10 years.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday in response to a question about Byers that Moscow expects “to discuss restoring the entire complex of Russian-American relations” at the talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, “so certain events can be viewed in this context.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Byers’ fiancee was also released. Russian media reports identified her as Naida Mambetova and said she was placed in pretrial detention on the same charges.
Byers’ release comes less than a week after that of Marc Fogel, an American teacher detained for more than three years in Russia.
The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner has stepped down from her role at the agency over Department of Government Efficiency requests to access Social Security recipient information, according to two people familiar with the official’s departure who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Acting Commissioner Michelle King’s departure from the agency over the weekend – after more than 30 years of service – was initiated after King refused to provide DOGE staffers at the SSA with access to sensitive information, the people said Monday.
The White House has replaced her as acting commissioner with Leland Dudek, who currently works at the SSA, the people said.
King’s exit from the administration is one of several departures of high-ranking officials concerned about DOGE staffers’ potential unlawful access to private taxpayer information.
DOGE has accessed Treasury payment systems and is attempting to access Internal Revenue Service databases.
Since President Donald Trump has retaken the White House, his billionaire adviser Elon Musk has rapidly burrowed deep into federal agencies.
Jim Jones, who oversaw food safety and nutrition at the US Food and Drug Administration, has resigned from the agency over apparent disagreements with the Trump administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Jones joined the FDA in September 2023 as the agency’s first deputy commissioner for human foods, overseeing policy changes including a new rule for labeling foods as “healthy” and banning the use of red dye No. 3.
Jones’ resignation comes amid deep cuts across health agencies, including at the FDA.
The Department of Homeland Security is launching a multi-million-dollar ad campaign aimed at telling undocumented immigrants that they are not welcome in the US, according to the agency.
This series of ads will run on radio, broadcast, and digital, in multiple countries and regions in various dialects, the agency’s statement read. Ads will be hyper-targeted, including through social media, text message, and digital, to reach illegal immigrants in the US and potential immigrants internationally.
New court filings from the Trump administration said Elon Musk is neither the administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency, nor is he a DOGE employee.
He is described as an adviser to the president working within the White House as a special government employee.
The court filings also claim that DOGE has no power to order personnel decisions at various agencies that came up at hearing today in DC federal court.
His designation as a special government employee means billionaire tech entrepreneur Musk is not a volunteer but also not a full-time federal employee.
A special government employee is “anyone who works, or is expected to work, for the government for 130 days or less in a 365-day period,” according to a Justice Department summary. Musk is not being paid, and he has a top-secret security clearance.
Some context: Musk, who is the world’s richest man and became an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump’s during the campaign, has an office on the White House campus. Within weeks of Trump taking office, Musk has shown he has a broad mandate to carry out his government efficiency initiative.
The designation also makes Musk subject to many government ethics standards, but not all of them. It remains to be seen if Musk’s designation requires him to file a financial disclosure that will be made public.