Parliament backs amendments for implementing US minerals deal in 1st reading

The Ukrainian parliament supported Budget Code amendments to implement the minerals agreement with the U.S. in the first reading, lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak said on May 13.
This marks another step toward enacting the wide-ranging and long-contested economic agreement between Ukraine and the U.S.
The minerals deal, signed on April 30 and ratified by Ukraine on May 8, establishes a Reconstruction Investment Fund jointly managed by Kyiv and Washington and gives the U.S. special access to projects developing Ukraine's vast deposits of critical minerals, including lithium, titanium, and rare earth elements.
"Amendments to the Budget Code are needed to implement the provisions on funding the U.S.-Ukrainian Reconstruction Investment Fund," lawmaker Roksolana Pidlasa said.
Ukraine's contribution will consist of half of the funds received after the agreement enters into force and will be sourced from rents for resource extraction under new licenses and issuance of new permits, the lawmaker added.
The changes were supported by 286 lawmakers, Zhelezniak said, adding that the deadline for submitting additional amendments was cut short. Ukrainian legislation has to pass two readings in the parliament and receive presidential signature before entering into force.
Read also: 'Not what Putin was expecting' — What we know (and don't know) about Ukraine, Russia peace talks in Istanbul
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The Hill

42 minutes ago

• The Hill

The real scandal isn't Signalgate — it's our easily compromised mobile network

'Signalgate' — the disclosure that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared sensitive war plans over the app Signal from a personal device — was one of the early defining storylines of the Trump administration. There was no shortage of (largely justified) outrage at the passing of high-stakes information over commercial cellular channels. But the reality is that people, including government officials, have adopted cell phones as their primary means of communication for everything today, from grocery lists to ground invasions. In Ukraine, in spite of the risks, both sides of the conflict have heavily used commercial cellular networks throughout the war, because nothing beats them in terms of availability and efficiency. In early June, Ukraine scored its biggest win in months by launching drone attacks at Russian airfields, and in the process it laid bare the asymmetric vulnerabilities that cellular networks present to a major military power like the United States. Ukrainian handlers operated the drones from thousands of miles away by connecting over Russian commercial cell networks. Because Russia cannot simply turn off its commercial cellular networks, given the enormous social and economic consequences, it was left scrambling for ways to mitigate the threat. There is a lesson in this for us. We cannot turn back time to a world where strategic, essential communication only happens in a sensitive, compartmentalized information facility, or over private, dedicated networks. Rather than doubling down on outdated protocols, we need to fix the broken network on which the world runs — commercial cellular. Every time your phone connects to a tower, it leaves behind metadata that adversaries can potentially exploit. Your movements can be tracked, your contacts mapped, your calls and texts intercepted using flaws in decades-old signaling protocols. Hackers can take over your number with SIM swaps and hijack sensitive accounts (like Signal). Our adversaries understand this, and they have been exploiting the weaknesses in our commercial networks as a result. Volt Typhoon, a China-backed hacking operation, was designed to burrow into U.S. telecom infrastructure to cripple it during a future crisis. Salt Typhoon, a sweeping Chinese espionage campaign, breached at least nine U.S. telecoms and monitored the communications of both the Trump and Harris campaigns. The FBI told Americans to stop using SMS messages. Congressmen called it the worst telecom hack in history. Yet, we're still carrying on like nothing happened. The core of the problem is that our telecom infrastructure is old, stagnant and too comfortable with monopoly rents. The U.S. once led the world in 2G, 3G and 4G cellular networks. Now, Huawei leads the world in 5G and is already laying tracks for 6G, thanks to enormous support and billions in subsidization by the Chinese government. Modernizing U.S. telecom is no small task — the industry has invested roughly $2 trillion in communications infrastructure since 1996. We can't rip and replace the plumbing of the digital world overnight, but we can innovate on top of it. The rise of cloud computing has allowed rapid innovation by software-first upstarts disrupting traditional sectors, from travel to taxis to taxes. Software-defined cellular networks, which my company utilizes, now make it possible for nimble newcomers to innovate on top of towers and fiber, using modern security protocols and scalable infrastructure. But only if they're allowed to. The federal government should support privacy-first, software-based mobile infrastructure in the same way it once supported privacy-first internet infrastructure. And as it does so often in these ambitious projects, the Department of Defense should lead the way. The Tor browser began as a Navy research project. It's now a global tool for journalists and dissidents. Today's equivalent is investing in modern telecom — starting with efforts like the Department of Defense's 5G initiative, which should look beyond private network-based prototypes and address making the public, commercial cellular that we all use more secure, resilient and dynamic. Another example is the Navy's Spiral 4 program office, responsible for procuring cellular communications for the force, and is perfectly positioned to hold the industry more accountable for innovation and improvements over the status quo. 'Signalgate' and Ukraine's Spiderweb operation are wake-up calls. Mobile phones and the cellular network are the way everyone communicates now, and it's unrealistic to expect people, even those doing high-consequence work, to abandon the efficiencies of mobile communication. Fixing this requires more than an app. We need to lead innovation on private and secure cellular infrastructure as a strategic imperative. John Doyle is CEO and co-founder of the privacy-first mobile carrier Cape.

Atlantic

2 hours ago

• Atlantic

Trump Got This One Right

'Why are the wrong people doing the right thing?' Henry Kissinger is supposed to have once asked, in a moment of statesman-like perplexity. That question recurred as Donald Trump, backed by a visibly perturbed vice president and two uneasy Cabinet secretaries, announced that the United States had just bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. It is a matter of consternation for all the right people, who, as Kissinger well knew, are often enough dead wrong. The brute fact is that Trump, more than any other president, Republican or Democrat, has taken decisive action against one of the two most dangerous nuclear programs in the world (the other being North Korea's). The Iranian government has for a generation not only spewed hatred at the United States and Israel, and at the West generally, but committed and abetted terrorism throughout the Middle East and as far as Europe and Latin America. Every day, its drones deliver death to Ukrainian cities. The Iranian government is a deeply hostile regime that has brought misery to many. A nuclear-armed Iran might very well have used a nuclear weapon against Israel, which is, as one former Iranian president repeatedly declared, 'a one-bomb country.' Because Israel might well have attempted to forestall such a blow with a preemptive nuclear strike of its own, the question is more likely when an Iranian bomb would have triggered the use of nuclear weapons, not whether it would have done so. But even without that apocalyptic possibility, a nuclear-armed Iran would have its own umbrella of deterrence to continue the terror and subversion with which it has persecuted its neighbors. There is no reason to think the regime has any desire to moderate those tendencies. In his address to the nation on Saturday night, Trump was right to speak—and to speak with what sounded like unfeigned fury—about the American servicemen and servicewomen maimed and killed by Iranian IEDs in Iraq. It was no less than the truth. Shame on his predecessors for not being willing to say so publicly. When someone is killing your men and women, a commander in chief is supposed to say—and, more important, do—something about it. Trump was also right in making this a precise, limited use of force while holding more in reserve. Israel has done the heavy lifting here, but he has contributed an essential element—and no more. He was right as well (for the strikes were indeed an act of war) to threaten far worse punishment if Iran attempts to retaliate. The rush in many quarters—including right-wing isolationists and anguished progressives—to conjure up prospects of a war that will engulf the Middle East reflected their emotions rather than any analytic judgment. Iran, it cannot be said often enough, is a weak state. Its air defenses no longer exist. Its security apparatus has been thoroughly penetrated by Israeli, American, and other intelligence agencies. Its finances are a wreck and its people are hostile to their rulers. For that matter, anyone who has served in uniform in the Middle East during the past few decades knows that Iran has consistently conducted low-level war against the United States through its proxies. Could Iran attempt to attack shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz? Yes—and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy would die in large numbers in their speedboats or in their bases as they prepared to do so. The United States and its allies have prepared for that scenario for a long time, and Iranian sailors' desire for martyrdom has been overstated. Could Iran try to launch terror attacks abroad? Yes, but the idea that there is a broad silent network of Iranian terrorists just waiting for the signal to strike is chimerical. And remember, Iran's nuclear fangs have been pulled. True enough, not permanently, as many of the president's critics have already earnestly pointed out on television. But so much of that kind of commentary is pseudo-sophistication: Almost no strategic problem gets solved permanently, unless you are Rome dealing with Carthage in the Third Punic War, destroying the city, slaughtering its inhabitants, and sowing the furrows with salt. For some period—five years, maybe 10—Iran will not have a nuclear option. Its key facilities are smashed and its key scientists dead or living in fear of their lives. Similar complaints were made about the Israeli strike on the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981. The Israelis expected to delay the Iraqi program by no more than a year or two—but instead, the program was deferred indefinitely. As things go, crushing the facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, following a sustained Israeli campaign against similar targets, was a major achievement, and a problem deferred for five years may be deferred forever. As for Iran, in 1988 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini agreed to 'drink from the poisoned chalice' and accept a cease-fire with Iraq. He did so because the Iraq war was going badly, but also because he believed that the United States was willing to fight Iran: Operation Praying Mantis in 1988, following a mine explosion that damaged an American warship, involved the U.S. Navy sinking Iranian warships and destroying Iran's military installations. In 2003, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran reportedly paused its nuclear program. When American forces in Iraq finally picked up five elite Quds Force members in 2007, the Iranians pulled back from their activities in Iraq as well. The killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020 elicited only one feeble spasm of violence. The bottom line is that Iran's leaders do not relish the idea of tackling the United States directly, and that is because they are not fools. The president is an easy man to hate. He has done many bad things: undermining the rule of law, sabotaging American universities, inflicting wanton cruelty on illegal immigrants, lying, and engaging in corruption. With his fractured syntax and diction (including the peculiar signature 'Thank you for your attention to this matter' at the end of his more bombastic posts on Truth Social) he is easy to dismiss as a huckster. The sycophancy and boastfulness of his subordinates, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth when briefing the attack, are distasteful. But contempt and animosity, justified in some cases, are bad ways of getting into his mind and assessing his actions. Trump has surprised both friends and critics here. The isolationist wing of the MAGA movement was smacked down, although its members probably include the vice president and top media figures such as Tucker Carlson. Trump has confounded the posters of TACO ('Trump always chickens out') memes. He has disproved the notion that he takes his marching orders directly from the Kremlin, for the strikes were not in Russia's interest. He has left prominent progressives, including a dwindling band of Israel supporters, confused, bleating about war-powers resolutions that were deemed unnecessary when the Obama administration began bombing Libya. We live in a dangerous world, and one that is going to get more so—and indeed, in other respects worsened by the president's policies. But Trump got this one right, doing what his predecessors lacked the intestinal fortitude (or, to be fair, the promising opportunity) to do. He spoke with the brutal clarity needed in dealing with a cruel and dangerous regime. The world is a better place for this action and I, for one, applaud him for it.

Politico

4 hours ago

• Politico

How Germany Changed Its Mind About America, Thanks to Donald Trump

Five days after his election victory in February, Friedrich Merz's world collapses. That's how he will describe it later. That Friday evening, he steps off the stage at a large conference center in Hamburg's port, where cruise ships usually moor. He has just been hailed as 'the future federal chancellor,' and more than a thousand party supporters have cheered on their chairman at a rally of the local chapter of the Christian Democratic Union, Germany's main center-right party. At around 8:15 p.m., he shakes a few hands in farewell, then drops into the backseat of his official car for the three-hour drive home. It is February 28, 2025. Merz checks his phone and notices a message from his spokesperson. He should watch a video, preferably immediately. Merz pulls out his iPad, opens the link, and recognizes a room familiar to anyone who follows politics. Two armchairs upholstered in gold damask sit in front of a fireplace with no fire burning. In front of the fireplace is a table made of fine wood inlaid with an oversized seal. It's the Oval Office in the White House. To Donald Trump's right sits a small, bearded man in a black military sweater embroidered with a stylized trident, the national symbol of Ukraine. It is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, a country invaded by Russia. Merz holds him in high esteem. Merz has visited Zelenskyy twice in Kyiv and, just a few days ago, accepted Zelenskyy's congratulations on his election victory. Ukraine has high hopes for Merz. The new chancellor is expected to finally provide the Taurus, a German cruise missile capable of penetrating bunkers, which Merz's more liberal predecessor as chancellor, Olaf Scholz, refused to provide throughout his time in office. In the video, Zelenskyy looks tired. Tired and helpless. Merz is dismayed as he watches the U.S. president humiliate his Ukrainian counterpart. Trump accuses him of endangering millions of lives and risking a third world war. When Zelenskyy retorts that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who started the war, Trump interjects harshly. In front of the cameras, Zelenskyy is scolded like a naughty child for several minutes. 'Did you ever say thank you?' Vice President JD Vance asks Zelenskyy, hurling this question at him several times. 'That was good television,' Trump says at the end of the meeting. The subsequent talks, which were supposed to be about security guarantees after a ceasefire, are canceled. A fully negotiated raw materials agreement is not signed. The celebratory lunch is canceled. Zelenskyy waits another 20 minutes in an adjoining room. Then, an official appears and simply sends him away. Merz has just finished watching the nearly 40-minute scene when he posts a solidarity message to Zelenskyy in English on X: 'We must never confuse the aggressor with the victim in this war!' He is on the phone nonstop in the car until he arrives in Sauerland and then for half the night. He also speaks with Scholz, who would still be chancellor for another two months. Scholz and his designated successor agree that something historic happened that day in Washington. The Americans are threatening not only to abandon Ukraine but also all their allies. Is Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which requires every member to come to the defense of every other member, still to be taken seriously? Would U.S. soldiers defend Germany against a Russian attack? Are American nuclear missiles still a credible deterrent? The two men agree that given these circumstances, Germany must rebuild its national defenses. As quickly as possible and at whatever cost. And it will cost a lot, between 1 and 1.5 trillion euros over the next 12 years — double the previous amount. Spending that much money on defense isn't easy. In Germany, the 'Schuldenbremse' or 'debt brake' is a fiscal rule enshrined in the Constitution. It is designed to limit the amount of new government debt to a maximum of 0.35 percent of gross domestic product. Before the elections, Merz campaigned on keeping the debt brake and insisted as chancellor he could do without extra debt. But in the coming days, Merz will flip his position and agree to this new borrowing. The humiliation of Zelenskyy has changed everything. This account of the election of Merz and his first days as Germany's incoming chancellor is based on more than 50 conversations with sources, some close to Merz, who were granted anonymity to speak freely. Merz's doubts about his prior convictions had been building for weeks. A few days before the general election, Merz met with Vance in Munich. Merz wanted to dissuade the American vice president from publicly urging Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. 'These are not friends of America,' Merz said, 'but partisans of Putin.' Vance nodded in apparent agreement. Just a few hours later, during his speech at the Munich Security Conference, Vance stunned the audience. He declared that restrictions on freedom of speech in the EU are a greater threat than Russia or China. He called for firewalls to be torn down across Europe and for right-wing populists to be included in politics. The vice president did not mention the AfD by name. However, a few hours later, reports circulated that Vance had met with not only Merz, but also with AfD leader Alice Weidel at his hotel before the speech. He had not told Merz about this meeting. Even then, two weeks before Zelenskyy's humiliation in the Oval Office and one week before the Bundestag elections, Merz had begun privately considering the need for Germany to take on additional billions in debt. 'What the new American president, Donald Trump, has said in Washington these last few days…' he told the audience from the campaign stage in Hamburg, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing a fundamental shift in the global political landscape.' Following the Munich Security Conference, Merz discreetly asked former Constitutional Court judge Udo Di Fabio to explore whether it would be possible to amend Germany's Basic Law with the votes of the outgoing Bundestag. The 'Basic Law' is Germany's equivalent of a constitution. It can only be changed by a two-thirds majority in parliament. That also applies to the debt brake. Getting a two-thirds vote would be possible with the old Bundestag, but not the new Bundestag that was expected to have a higher representation of AfD and other fringe parties. Shortly afterwards, Di Fabio sent him his expert opinion. Amendments to the Basic Law with the votes of MPs who had already been voted out of office were possible up to 30 days after the election. That would be March 25, the same day the new Bundestag would be seated. Merz would have less than a month to execute an about-face. On the day of the election, Merz gave the first public signal that his thinking was changing when he appeared with other candidates on the Berliner Runde, a television program in which party leaders comment on the election as soon as the polls close. 'For me, it will therefore be an absolute priority to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,' he said. Independence from the USA? Scholz, sitting right next to Merz on TV, could hardly believe it. Until now, European politicians had carefully avoided suggesting that Europe could manage its defense without the Americans. Germany, which has neither its own nuclear weapons nor a robust army, needs American troops and their nuclear umbrella more than anyone. Merz, considered a staunch transatlanticist, was giving up on the USA? 'Since U.S. President Donald Trump's statements last week, it has been clear to me that this administration is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,' Merz continued. A summit of the transatlantic military alliance is scheduled for the end of June. 'Will we even be talking about NATO in its current form then?' he asked. 'Or will we then have to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly?' The next day, when the election results had been tallied, Merz praised the outcome in a press conference: 29 percent was much less than the Christian Democrats had hoped for, but Merz argued it was a success if you look at the number of votes rather than percentage points. The Christian Democrats gained 2.5 million votes compared to the previous Bundestag election, and the Christian Socialists gained 500,000, he noted. What he failed to mention is that the AfD gained over 6 million votes. After an election campaign more polarizing than any in decades, more people turned out to vote than in previous years, and the AfD was the beneficiary. Merz was genuinely outraged by the scene in the Oval Office. But he also knew he could use this indignation to his advantage. After all, he would need a credible narrative to justify the political turnaround, the astronomical increase in defense spending, that will take place under his leadership. The election results meant that, for the first time since World War II, centrist parties no longer have a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Without a two-thirds majority, centrist parties cannot elect judges to the Federal Constitutional Court, declare war on an invader or amend the Basic Law. For example, to reform the debt brake. The situation is reminiscent of the late phase of the Weimar Republic. At that time, the National Socialists and Communists together held over 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, preventing the Social Democrats, Liberals and Christian Democrats from governing effectively — thus fueling growing frustration with democracy. This created a vicious circle that led to the collapse of the first republic at the beginning of the 1930s. Is this a bold comparison? The AfD and other fringe parties already control a blocking minority in the state parliaments of three German states: Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. The same will be true in the Bundestag when the new MPs are seated March 25. Scholz also played a role in urging Merz's turnaround. In meetings unnoticed by the public, Scholz and Merz met several times in the chancellor's office after the Bundestag elections, sometimes with other center-right politicians present. At one of these meetings, Scholz presented intelligence service findings on the immense scale of the Russian arms buildup. Despite the enormous losses in Ukraine, Putin would have considerably more tanks and missiles in just a few years than before the invasion. The intelligence suggested he is preparing to wage another war, this time against Europe. Scholz, who campaigned as a peace chancellor, advised his successor to do the opposite: to massively rearm. Germany's new government coalition joined Merz's Christian Democrats with Scholz's Social Democrats. In the days after the election, the coalition partners convened private negotiations to reach a spending plan they could implement before March 25. In those talks, the sums involved increased by the hour. On March 4, when the partners reappeared in public to announce their deal, there was great astonishment. There were no longer any limits to rearmament. Merz secured special funds for a defense build-up over the next 10 years that were five times larger than an increase Scholz negotiated just three years ago. An additional special fund of 500 billion euros had been agreed upon for rebuilding the country's infrastructure. Why was Merz, the avowed debt hawk, now so willing to push Germany so deep into debt? 'In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent, the same must now apply to our defense: Whatever it takes!' Merz said at a press conference. The saying was a quote from Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, who used this slogan in 2012 to scare off speculators who wanted to bet on a breakup of the eurozone. Now Merz used the same quote to explain his rearmament plan. At a parliamentary group meeting later that day, Merz reported that he would be traveling to Brussels to take part in the meeting of the heads of state and government of the EU Council. And then he said something curious: 'If Trump announces his withdrawal from NATO tonight, then we, the Federal Republic of Germany, will be the first to have reacted correctly in advance.' There was horror among the MPs. Merz was deadly serious. The total turnaround in financial policy began after the shock appearance by Vance at the Munich Security Conference. Merz justified it by pointing to the humiliation of Zelenskyy at the White House. But now he was talking about an imminent U.S. withdrawal from NATO. How did Merz get this idea? Trump was set to give his first speech to a joint session of Congress that same night. Merz explained to close allies later that he had received information from an American source indicating that Trump would use the speech to announce a U.S. withdrawal from the Western defense alliance. He had reason to trust his source. Two weeks earlier, the source had provided him with advance information on Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference. Merz held a conference call the night before the speech and warned Christian Democratic leaders that Vance would shake the transatlantic friendship and launch a rhetorical attack on Europe. That is exactly what happened. Merz and his allies were prepared. Warned once again, Merz expected the worst from Trump's speech to Congress. During conversations and phone calls with confidants, he made it even clearer than he had in the parliamentary group meeting that if Trump announced a NATO withdrawal that night, Putin might react immediately with an attack on the Baltic states. During those hours when he agreed Germany should take on a trillion-euro debt, Merz was acting on the belief that a new war in Europe was possible and NATO was on the brink of collapse. His vote in favor of the record debt came against this dramatic backdrop. As we know, things turned out differently. Trump delivered his congressional speech but did not mention a withdrawal from NATO. To this day, Merz does not believe that his Washington source misinformed him. The NATO withdrawal announcement had been prepared, he believes. Trump changed his mind at the last minute. (POLITICO Magazine asked the White House to respond to the assertion that Trump had considered using his March 4 speech to a joint session of Congress to announce a U.S. withdrawal from NATO. In an emailed statement, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, 'Such an announcement was never included in any draft of any speech.')