Ukraine seeks surge in domestic arms production as US diverts Swiss order for Patriots to Kyiv

NEW YORK: President Donald Trump stood among several hundred law enforcement officers, National Guard troops and federal agents at a US Park Police operations center in one of Washington, D.C.’s most dangerous neighborhoods. As the cameras rolled, he offered a stark message about crime, an issue he’s been hammering for decades, as he thanked them for their efforts.

“We’re not playing games,” he said. “We’re going to make it safe. And we’re going to then go on to other places.”

The Republican president is proudly promoting the work of roughly 2,000 National Guard troops in the city, loaned by allied governors from at least six Republican-led states. They’re in place to confront what Trump describes as an out-of-control crime wave in the Democratic-run city, though violent crime in Washington, like dozens of cities led by Democrats, has been down significantly since a pandemic high.

Trump and his allies are confident that his stunning decision to dispatch troops to a major American city is a big political winner almost certain to remind voters of why they elected him last fall.

Democrats say this is a fight they’re eager to have.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, an Army veteran, cast Trump’s move as a dangerous political stunt designed to distract the American people from his inability to address persistent inflation, rising energy prices and major health insurance cuts, among other major policy challenges.

“I’m deeply offended, as someone who’s actually worn the uniform, that he would use the lives of these men and women and the activation of these men and women as political pawns,” Moore told The Associated Press.

Trump’s extraordinary federal power grab comes as the term-limited president has threatened to send troops to other American cities led by Democrats, even as voters voice increasing concern about his authoritarian tendencies. And it could be a factor for both sides in elections in Virginia and New Jersey this fall — and next year’s more consequential midterms.

Inside the White House strategy

The president and White House see Trump’s decision to take over the D.C. police department as a political boon and have been eager to publicize the efforts.

The White House offered a livestream of Trump’s Thursday evening appearance, and on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a surprise visit to Union Station, D.C.’s busy transit hub, to thank members of the National Guard over Shake Shack burgers.

Each morning, Trump’s press office distributes statistics outlining the previous night’s law enforcement actions, including total arrests and how many of those people are in the country illegally.

The strategy echoes Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, which has often forced Democrats to come to the defense of people living in the country illegally, including some who have committed serious crimes.

A White House official, speaking on background to discuss internal deliberations, dismissed concerns about perceptions of federal overreach in Washington, saying public safety is a fundamental requirement and a priority for residents.

Trump defended his efforts during an interview on “The Todd Starnes Show” Thursday.

“Because I sent in people to stop crime, they said, ‘He’s a dictator.’ The real people, though, even Democrats, are calling me and saying, ‘It’s unbelievable’ how much it has helped,” he said.

The White House hopes to use its actions in D.C. as a test case to inspire changes in other cities, though Trump has legal power to intervene in Washington that he doesn’t have elsewhere because the city is under partial federal control.

“Everyday Americans who support commonsense policies would deem the removal of more than 600 dangerous criminals from the streets of our nation’s capital a huge success,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers. “The Democrats continue to be wildly unpopular because they oppose efforts to stop violent crime and protect law-abiding citizens.”

Democrats lean in

Moore, Maryland’s Democratic governor, suggested a dark motivation behind Trump’s approach, which is focused almost exclusively on cities with large minority populations led by Democratic mayors of color.

“Once again, we are seeing how these incredibly dangerous and biased tropes are being used about these communities by someone who is not willing to step foot in them, but is willing to stand in the Oval Office and defend them,” Moore said.

Even before Trump called the National Guard to Washington, Democratic mayors across the country have been touting their success in reducing violent crime.

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, who leads the Democratic Mayors Association, noted that over half of the 70 largest Democratic-led cities in the country have seen violent crime decrease so far this year.

“He’s stoking racial division and stoking fear and chaos,” Bibb said. “We need someone who wants to be a collaborator, not a dictator.”

Democratic strategists acknowledge that Trump’s GOP has enjoyed a significant advantage in recent years on the issues of crime and immigration — issues Trump has long sought to connect. But as Democratic officials push back against the federal takeover in Washington, party strategists are offering cautious optimism that Trump’s tactics will backfire.

“This is an opportunity for the party to go on offense on an issue that has plagued us for a long time,” said veteran Democratic strategist Daniel Wessel. “The facts are on our side.”

A closer look at the numbers

FBI statistics released this month show murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in the US in 2024 fell nearly 15 percent from a year earlier, continuing a decline that’s been seen since a coronavirus pandemic-era crime spike.

Meanwhile, recent public polling shows that Republicans have enjoyed an advantage over Democrats on the issue of crime.

A CNN/SSRS poll conducted in May found that about 4 in 10 US adults said the Republican Party’s views were closer to their own on crime and policing, while 3 in 10 said they were more aligned with Democrats’ views. About 3 in 10 said neither party reflected their opinions. Other polls conducted in the past few years found a similar gap.

Trump also had a significant edge over Democrat Kamala Harris on the issue in the 2024 election. About half of voters said Trump was better able to handle crime.

At the same time, Americans have expressed more concern about the scope of presidential power since Trump took office for a second time in January.

An AP-NORC poll conducted in April found that about half of US adults said the president has “too much” power in the way the US government operates these days, up from 32 percent in March 2024.

The unusual military presence in a US city, which featured checkpoints across Washington staffed in some cases by masked federal agents, injected a sense of fear and chaos into daily life for some people in the nation’s capital.

At least one day care center was closed Thursday as childcare staff feared the military action, which has featured a surge in immigration enforcement, while local officials raised concerns about next week’s public school openings.

Moore said he would block any push by Trump to send the National Guard into Baltimore.

“I have not seen anything or any conditions on the ground that I think would justify the mobilization of our National Guard,” he said. “They think they’re winning the political argument. I don’t give a s— — about the political argument.”

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow on Thursday of shirking a meeting between him and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, despite US-led attempts to arrange a summit to end the war.

US President Donald Trump is trying to end Russia’s three-and-a-half year invasion of Ukraine by bringing both Zelensky and Putin to the negotiating table.

But despite high-profile talks with Putin in Alaska last week and separate meetings with Zelensky and European leaders in Washington on Monday, there has been little tangible progress toward a peace deal.

Zelensky said Russia was “trying to wriggle out of holding a meeting.”

“Frankly speaking, the signals coming from Russia are simply outrageous... They don’t want to end this war,” the Ukrainian leader said during an evening address.

“They continue their massive attacks on Ukraine and their ferocious assaults along the front line,” he said.

Zelensky has signalled willingness to meet with Putin, but only after his allies agree on security guarantees for Ukraine to deter future Russian attacks once the fighting stops.

He has also said any meeting should take place in a “neutral” European country — ruling out a summit in Moscow — and rejected the idea of China helping to guarantee Ukrainian security.

Russia, meanwhile, said that Ukraine did not appear to be interested in “long-term” peace, accusing Kyiv of seeking guarantees incompatible with Moscow’s demands.

Trump has set a two-week time frame for assessing the chances of a peace agreement, telling the right-wing media outlet Newsmax that Washington would “have to maybe take a different tack” if the talks fell through.

Zelensky also warned that both Moscow and Kyiv were preparing for further fighting.

Russia was building up troops on the southern front line, and Ukraine was test-launching a new long-range cruise missile, he said.

His comments came after Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles against Ukraine overnight — the biggest barrage since mid-July — killing one person in the western city of Lviv and wounding many others.

Russian missiles also targeted an American-owned factory complex in the town of Mukachevo in western Ukraine, wounding 23 people, the head of the regional military administration said.

The president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, Andy Hunder, said that Moscow aimed to “destroy and humiliate” US businesses in the country.

Zelensky called the attack “a deliberate strike specifically on American-owned property.”

A later shelling of the city of Kherson killed one person and wounded more than a dozen, a local official said.

And in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, two people were killed and at least 21 wounded after Ukrainian shelling, the Russian-installed regional chief, Denis Pushilin, said.

On the front lines, Russia said it had captured the village of Oleksandro-Shultyne in the eastern Donetsk region, the latest in a long string of territorial gains.

The village lies less than eight kilometers (five miles) from Kostiantynivka, a fortified town in the Donetsk region that Russia has been pressing toward on both sides.

France condemned the overnight strikes as showing Moscow’s “lack of will to seriously engage in peace talks.”

A group of allies led by Britain and France are putting together a military coalition to support security guarantees for Ukraine.

Zelensky said Kyiv hoped to “have an understanding of the security guarantees architecture within seven to 10 days,” in comments to reporters released for publication on Thursday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of making unrealistic security demands.

Any deployment of European troops to the country would be “absolutely unacceptable,” he said, accusing Ukrainian officials of showing no interest in a “sustainable, fair, long-term settlement.”

Zelensky also announced that Ukraine had successfully tested a long-range cruise missile, known as Flamingo, that can strike targets as far as 3,000 kilometers away and could be in mass production by February.

Russian forces have been slowly but steadily gaining ground in recent months.

Zelensky said Russia was building up troops along the front in the Zaporizhzhia region, which Moscow claims as its own, along with four other Ukrainian regions.