US temporarily suspends all military aid to Ukraine after Trump-Zelenskyy faceoff
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New York/Washington (PTI): US President Donald Trump has temporarily suspended, with immediate effect, the delivery of all American military aid to Ukraine, just days after an unprecedented showdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.
A report in The New York Times quoted a senior administration official as saying that Trump temporarily suspended the delivery of all US military aid to Ukraine and that the order takes effect immediately, affecting "more than $1 billion in arms and ammunition in the pipeline and on order”.
The report said Trump’s decision to halt military aid “resulted from a series of meetings” at the White House between the US leader and his senior national security aides.
The official said "the order would be in effect until” Trump determined that Ukraine had demonstrated a commitment to peace negotiations with Russia.
The order also pauses “hundreds of millions of dollars in aid through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provides funds that Kyiv can use only to buy new military hardware directly from US defence companies.”
According to the US State Department, Washington has till date provided USD 65.9 billion in military assistance since Russia launched its premeditated, unprovoked, and brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and approximately USD 69.2 billion in military assistance since Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
This latest setback for Ukraine in the third year of its war with Russia comes just days after Trump and Vice President J D Vance had a heated verbal exchange with Zelensky, who was visiting the White House last Friday and the two countries were all set to sign a rare mineral deal.
But talks between Trump and Zelensky unravelled in a heated exchange that played out in front of the global media.
Towards the end of the about 50-minute press conference, Vance told the Ukrainian leader, "I think it's disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media. ... you should be thanking the president for trying to bring you into this conference.”
As the conversation grew heated, Trump told Zelenskyy, “You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War Three. You're gambling with World War Three, and what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that's backed you far more than a lot of people say they should.”
Trump and Vance also criticised Zelensky for not being grateful enough for the support that the US had given so far to Ukraine in its war with Russia. As leaders from Europe and around the world took to social media website X to rally behind Zelenskyy and underscore their support for Kyiv, the Ukrainian leader responded to everyone with the same message - “Thank you for your support.”
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Gurugram Police arrest BJP Yuva Morcha member for spreading fake murder story on social media
New Delhi: Gurugram Police have arrested BJP Yuva Morcha member Hariom Mishra, for allegedly spreading a fabricated and communally sensitive story on social media about the murder of a college student in Gurugram.
Mishra who is also known as Shaurya Mishra had shared a collage of four photographs on his X handle earlier this month. He claimed that a 24-year-old college student, identified as Nikita Agarwal, had been murdered by her classmate Arif Khan in Gurugram. In the post, he alleged that the woman was blackmailed, forced into prostitution, gangraped, and eventually killed. He also claimed that Arif dumped her body in a forest. The claims were presented as being based on police sources.
The post went viral and garnering over 1.5 lakh views, and was amplified by several right-wing social media handles across X, Facebook and Instagram. A verification of the claims revealed that no such incident had taken place in Gurugram. A search of credible news reports showed no record of any such murder. The police said this news would have inevitably attracted media attention if it were true.
On December 11, Gurugram Police publicly refuted the claims through their official X handle. They stated that the information which was being circulated was completely false. The police warned that legal action would be taken against those spreading misinformation. Despite the warning, Mishra neither deleted the post nor issued any clarification.
Police in Gurugram confirmed Mishra's arrest on December 16. The police said a FIR was filed after he continued to spread false information about the alleged murder of a Hindu woman by Muslim man. Police said Mishra, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi district, is now being investigated.
Gurugram Police spokesperson Sandeep Singh told The Print that the accused had deliberately misrepresented facts and used objectionable content to spread hatred along religious lines. “Such posts can create serious disturbances in society, and the police take these matters very seriously,” he said.
A reverse image search conducted by fact-checkers at Alt News, revealed that the photographs used in the viral post were unrelated to the claims, while two of the images were traced to a Pinterest account belonging to influencer Maulik Chopra and another image was sourced from an Instagram post by influencer Shivam Thakur featuring a woman named Deepanshi Rawat. The fourth image was found on an unrelated Instagram page. The images depicted different individuals and had no connection to any crime.
Police said they are also investigating Mishra’s motive behind sharing the false and provocative content.
