Ukraine war: Putin thought his enemies would ‘roll over’ but he was wrong, Biden says
Vladimir Putin thought his enemies would “roll over” but instead he “met the iron will of America and nations everywhere who refused to accept a world governed by fear”, Joe Biden has said.
The US president gave a speech from the gardens of Warsaw’s Royal Castle in Poland a day after he made a highly-secretive and historic visit to Kyiv in Ukraine.
“I can report: Kyiv stands strong, Kyiv stands proud, it stands tall and, most important, it stands free,” Mr Biden said this evening.
He continued: “When Russia invaded it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested, the whole world faced a test for the ages… all democracies were being tested.
“The questions we faced were as simple as they were profound. Would we respond or would we look the other way?
“Would we be strong or would we be weak?”
Pic: AP
‘Democracy was too strong’
Mr Biden continued: “One year later we know the answer.
“We did respond, we would be strong, we would be united, and the world would not look the other way.”
The US president spoke hours after Mr Putin blamed the West for starting the war in Ukraine and claimed his country responded with force “in order to stop it” in a state of the nation address today.
Mr Biden said: “President Putin ordered his tanks to roll into Ukraine, he thought we would roll over. He was wrong.
“The Ukrainian people were too brave. America, Europe, a coalition of nations from the Atlantic to the Pacific, we were too unified.
“Democracy was too strong. Instead of the easy victory he perceived and predicted, Putin left with burnt out tanks and Russia’s forces in disarray.
“He thought he would get the Finlandization of NATO, instead he got the NATO-isation of Finland and Sweden.”
The term Finlandization has been used to refer to the decision of a country not to challenge a more powerful neighbour in foreign politics while maintaining national sovereignty.
“He thought NATO would fracture and divide. Instead, NATO was more united and more unified ever than ever before,” Mr Biden continued.
“He thought autocrats like himself were tough and leaders of democracy were soft, and then he met the iron will of America and nations everywhere who refused to accept a world governed by fear and force.”
Pic: AP
Mr Biden continued: “President Putin is confronted with something today that he didn’t think was possible a year ago.
“The democracies of the world have grown stronger not weaker, but the autocrats of the world have grown weaker not stronger.”
Putin accuses Ukraine and US of ‘playing a dirty game’
In his surprise trip to Ukraine on Monday, Mr Biden said Washington would provide Kyiv with a new military aid package worth $500m (£412m) as he was pictured walking in the city with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
It came before Mr Putin said in his address today that Ukraine was in talks with the West about weapon supplies before Russia invaded its neighbour on 24 February last year.
“I would like to emphasise when Russia tried to find a peaceful solution they were playing with the lives of people and they were playing a dirty game,” Mr Putin said.
He said Russia decided to “protect its people and history” by conducting a “special military operation step-by-step” – as he warned that Moscow will “continue to resolve the objectives that are before us”.
The Russian president has always referred to the invasion as a “special military operation” since it began last year.
“I would like to repeat, they started the war and we used force in order to stop it,” he said in the address.
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Putin’s state of the nation address
Mr Putin also announced that Russia was suspending its participation in a key nuclear treaty with the US which limits the two sides’ strategic nuclear arsenals.
The New START treaty with the US caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the US and Russia can deploy.
Mr Putin said Russia was not fully withdrawing from the treaty and said Moscow must stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the US does so.
NATO is most ‘consequential alliance in history’
Meanwhile, earlier in his visit to Poland today, Mr Biden reaffirmed the United States’ dedication to European security as he met Polish President Andrzej Duda during a series of consultations with allies to prepare for an even more complicated stage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We have to have security in Europe,” he said at the presidential palace in Warsaw on Tuesday.
“It’s that basic, that simple, that consequential.”
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US president Biden arrives in Poland
Mr Biden described NATO as “maybe the most consequential alliance in history” and he said it is “stronger than it’s ever been” despite Mr Putin’s hopes it would fracture over the war in Ukraine.
Mr Duda praised Mr Biden’s trip to Kyiv as “spectacular”, saying it “boosted (the) morale of Ukraine’s defenders”.
In his speech in Kyiv on Monday, Mr Biden said Mr Putin had believed Ukraine was “weak and the West was divided” and “thought he could outlast us” but added – “he was dead wrong”.
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Biden condemns ‘barbaric’ invasion on visit to Kyiv
Mr Zelenskyy said he discussed long-range weapons with Mr Biden and described negotiations as “very fruitful”.
The US president had travelled to Kyiv on a 10-hour train ride from Poland after a journey from Washington DC that was shrouded in secrecy.
The only two journalists allowed on the trip were sworn to secrecy and had their phones taken off them.
An email telling the journalists when to arrive at the relevant air base was disguised as an invite to a golf “tourney”.
New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.
The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.
Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.
Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.
“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.
Pics: AP
Smoke covers a building that collapses following the strike. Pic: AP
Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up
Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.
The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.
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Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.
Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
Residents check the site of the airstrike in Tayouneh, Beirut. Pic: AP
More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.
About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.
The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
And in a post on X, the official DOGE account put out a call to arms for people to sign up and help “dismantle government bureaucracy”.
The post said: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE.
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators.
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.
“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
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Elon Musk speaking at an event held at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Pic: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.
“What a great deal!”
When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
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