In response to the West's increasing military support for Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced plans to station tactical atomic weapons in Belarus. The U.S. has not seen any indications that Russia is preparing to use its weapons, but Ukraine has called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to "counter the Kremlin's nuclear blackmail." It is unclear how the U.N. Security Council meeting will address the situation.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a deal with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, a move that is likely to further escalate tensions between Russia and the United States. The European Union has expressed opposition to the move, calling on Russia to adhere to its international commitments and refrain from any actions that could destabilize the region. Putin has said the agreement will see Russia construct a special storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by the beginning of July.
Two people are dead and 10 others hospitalized after an unknown medical emergency on board a freight train in Uvalde County, Texas, on Friday. The incident is being investigated as a suspected human smuggling operation, and Union Pacific, the railway company operating the train, said four of the 10 hospitalized patients were flown to facilities in San Antonio. The cause of the medical emergency is still unknown, and the incident has raised concerns about the safety of migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a Russian intelligence officer, has been charged in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for acting as an illegal agent of a Russian intelligence service. He had been living in the US under the alias Victor Muller Ferreira since 2018, and was gathering information on U.S. foreign policy before his cover was blown. The Justice Department has warned that foreign intelligence services are increasingly targeting the U.S. and its allies.
A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump's claims of executive privilege, ordering several of his former aides to testify before a grand jury as part of a criminal investigation into his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House Chief of Staff, is among the aides ordered to testify, and documents are also being requested from other unnamed aides. This ruling is seen as a major setback for Trump and could have implications for the outcome of the investigation.
President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held bilateral meetings in Ottawa, Canada, to mark the President's first trip to the country. The two leaders discussed topics such as China, Haiti, and NORAD vulnerabilities, and announced a plan to turn away asylum-seekers who cross U.S. and Canadian borders without authorization. The visit is seen as a sign of the strong relationship between the two countries, and a commitment to working together to address global issues.
The U.S. Department of Defense has announced that President Biden has authorized precision airstrikes against facilities in eastern Syria used by groups affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in response to an attack on a coalition base in northeast Syria that resulted in the death of one U.S. contractor and the injury of five U.S. service members and one other U.S. contractor. The U.S. Central Command forces retaliated with “precision airstrikes” against the facilities and the Department of Defense is still assessing the damage caused and working to identify the perpetrators of the attack.
The U.S. and Canada have reached an agreement to restrict certain migrants from seeking protections in Canada in response to the sharp increase of people crossing into Canada from the US. The agreement would require migrants to request asylum in the first safe country they enter, which in this case would be the United States. It is unclear how the agreement will affect the number of illegal crossings into the U.S. from Canada.