Biden Administration
US hits Putin allies, press secretary with new sanctions
The Biden administration ordered new sanctions blocking Russian business oligarchs and others in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle on Thursday in response to Russian forces' fierce pummeling of Ukraine.
President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke late Thursday as Russian forces shelled Europe’s largest nuclear plant, in the eastern Ukraine city of Enerhodar. The assault sparked a fire and raised fears that radiation could leak from the damaged power station.
The White House said Biden joined Zelenskyy in urging Russia to “cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site.”
Those targeted by the new U.S. sanctions include Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, and Alisher Burhanovich Usmanov, one of Russia’s wealthiest individuals and a close ally of Putin. The U.S. State Department also announced it was imposing visa bans on 19 Russian oligarchs and dozens of their family members and close associates.
"The goal was to maximize impact on Putin and Russia and minimize the harm on us and our allies and friends around the world,” Biden said as he noted the new sanctions at the start of a meeting with his Cabinet and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Also read: Russia takes aim at urban areas; Biden vows Putin will 'pay'
The White House said the oligarchs and dozens of their family members will be cut off from the U.S. financial system. Their assets in the United States will be frozen and their property will be blocked from use.
The White House described Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, as ”a top purveyor of Putin’s propaganda.”
The property of Usmanov and the others will be blocked from use in the United States and by Americans. His assets include his superyacht, one of the world’s largest, and his private jet, one of Russia’s largest privately owned aircraft.
The Usmanov superyacht, known as Dilbar, is named after Usmanov’s mother and has an estimated worth of between $600 million and $735 million, according to Treasury. Dilbar has two helipads and one of the world’s largest indoor pools ever installed on a yacht, and costs about $60 million per year to operate. The jet targeted is believed to have cost between $350 million and $500 million and was previously leased out for use by Uzbekistan’s president.
Others targeted Thursday include Nikolai Tokarev, a Transneft oil executive; Arkady Rotenberg, co-owner of the largest construction company for gas pipelines and electrical power supply lines in Russia; Sergei Chemezov, a former KGB agent who has long been close to Putin; Igor Shuvalov, a former first deputy prime minister and chairman of State Development Corp.; and Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Russian businessman with close ties to Putin.
Also read: Biden joins allies, bans Russian planes from US airspace
Prigozhin, who is known as “Putin's chef,” was among those charged in 2018 by the U.S. government as being part of a wide-ranging effort to sway political opinion in America during the 2016 presidential election.
According to the indictment then, Prigozhin and his companies provided significant funding to the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based group accused of using bogus social media postings and advertisements fraudulently purchased in the name of Americans to influence the White House race.
Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said Thursday that the Biden administration would continue to target Russian elites as it builds sanctions against the country. He said elites are already "attempting to get their money out of Russia, because the Russian economy is shrinking.”
“We’re going to make it hard for them to use the assets going forward," Adeyemo said at an event hosted by The Washington Post. He added, “Our goal then is to find that money and to freeze that money and to seize it.”
The Biden administration has been unveiling new sanctions targeting Russian individuals and entities daily since the start of last week's invasion, with officials saying they want to make certain Putin's decision to attack Ukraine will come with enormous cost to Russia's economy.
A notable aspect of the latest sanctions is the extent to which the U.S. penalized the family members of oligarchs and those closest to Putin. Recently passed anti-money-laundering legislation passed by Congress has helped Treasury unveil and target such people.
For example, the oil executive Tokarev’s family members — including his wife, Galina Tokareva, and daughter, Maiya Tokareva — have benefited from his proximity to Putin and Russian government and were hit by the sanctions. Maiya Tokareva’s real estate empire has been valued at more than $50 million in Moscow, according to Treasury.
Russian elites that have yet to be targeted by the U.S. or other Western countries have taken notice of the sanctions.
Faced with the threat of financial sanctions targeting Russians, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich announced Wednesday he is trying to sell the Premier League soccer club that became a trophy-winning machine thanks to his lavish investment. Abramovich made his fortune in oil and aluminum during the chaotic years that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Biden had thus far been reluctant to hit the Russia energy sector with sanctions out of concern that it would hurt the U.S. and its allies as well as the Russians.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “We don’t have a strategic interest in reducing the global supply of energy.”
N. Korea confirms test of missile capable of striking Guam
North Korea confirmed Monday it test-launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. territory of Guam, the North’s most significant weapon launch in years, as Washington plans to respond to demonstrate it’s committed to its allies’ security in the region.
The official Korean Central News Agency said Sunday’s test of the Hwasong-12 missile was aimed at selectively evaluating the missile being produced and deployed and verify its overall accuracy.
It said a camera installed at the missile’s warhead took an image of Earth from space, and the Academy of Defense Science confirmed the accuracy, security and effectiveness of the operation of the weapons system.
Read:North Korea fires 2 suspected missiles in 6th launch in 2022
North Korea said the missile was launched toward the waters off its east coast and on a high angle to prevent it from overflying other countries. It gave no further details.
According to South Korean and Japanese assessment, the missile flew about 800 kilometers (497 miles) and reached a maximum altitude of 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) before landing in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
The reported flight details make it the most powerful missile North Korea tested since 2017, when the country launched Hwasong-12 and longer-range missiles in a torrid run of weapons firings to acquire an ability to launch nuclear strikes on U.S. military bases in North Asia and the Pacific and even the American homeland.
The Hwasong-12 missile is a nuclear-capable ground-to-ground weapon, whose maximum range is 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles) when it’s fired on a standard trajectory. It’s a distance sufficient to reach the U.S. territory of Guam. In August 2017, at the height of animosities with the then-Trump administration, North Korea’s Strategic Forces threatened to make “an enveloping fire” near Gaum with Hwasong-12 missiles.
In 2017, North Korea also test-fired intercontinental ballistic missiles called Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15 that experts say demonstrated their potential capacity to reach the mainland U.S.
In recent months, North Korea has launched a variety of weapons systems and threatened to lift a four-year moratorium on more serious weapons tests such as nuclear explosions and ICBM launches. Sunday’s launch was the North’s seventh round of missile launches in January alone, and other weapons tested recently include a developmental hypersonic missile and a submarine-launched missile.
Some experts say the boosted testing activity shows how North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is determined to modernize his weapons arsenals despite pandemic-related economic hardships and U.S.-led international sanctions. They say Kim also likely aims to wrest concessions from the Biden administration, such as sanctions relief or international recognition as a nuclear power.
After Sunday’s launch, White House officials said they saw the latest missile test as part of an escalating series of provocations over the last several months that have become increasingly concerning.
The Biden administration plans to respond to the latest missile test in the coming days with an unspecified move meant to demonstrate to the North that it is committed to allies’ security in the region, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.
Read:US hits NKorean officials with sanctions after missile test
The official said the administration viewed Sunday’s missile test as the latest in a series of provocations to try to win sanctions relief from the U.S. The Biden administration again called on North Korea to return to talks but made clear it doesn’t see the sort of leader-to-leader summits Donald Trump held with Kim as constructive at this time.
South Korean and Japanese officials also condemned Sunday’s launch, which violated U.N. Security Council resolutions that bans the country from testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Sunday’s missile launch brought North Korea to the brink of breaking its 2018 self-imposed weapons test moratorium.
U.S.-led diplomacy aimed at convincing North Korea to abandon its nuclear program largely remains stalled since a second summit between Kim and Trump collapsed in early 2019 due to disputes over U.S.-led sanctions on the North.
Observers say North Korea could halt its testing spree after the Beijing Winter Games begin Friday because China is its most important ally and aid benefactor. But they say North Korea could test bigger weapons when the Olympics end and the U.S. and South Korean militaries begin their annual springtime military exercises.
US should consider vaccine mandate for US air travel: Fauci
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said the nation should consider a vaccination mandate for domestic air travel, signaling a potential embrace of an idea the Biden administration has previously eschewed, as COVID-19 cases spike.
Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief science adviser on the pandemic response, said on Monday that such a mandate might drive up the nation's lagging vaccination rate as well as confer stronger protection on flights, for which federal regulations require all those age 2 and older to wear a mask.
“When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated," Fauci told MSNBC. “If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that’s something that seriously should be considered.”
Read:US officials recommend shorter COVID isolation, quarantine
The Biden administration has thus far balked at imposing a vaccination requirement for domestic air travel. Two officials said Biden’s science advisers have yet to make a formal recommendation for such a requirement to the president.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said a vaccine mandate on planes could trigger a host of logistical and legal concerns.
The U.S. currently mandates that most foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, though citizens and permanent residents only need to show proof of a negative test taken within a day of boarding.
Federal rules don’t require people travelling by air within the U.S. to show a negative test. Hawaii requires travelers to test or show proof of vaccination to avoid a mandatory quarantine.
Biden did not respond to questions on whether he was considering implementing a domestic air travel vaccination requirement, but he told reporters the subject was discussed on a call with the nation's governors Monday morning.
“They asked Dr. Fauci some more questions about everything from whether or not he thought he was going to move to test at home — I mean, on air flights and that kind of thing,” Biden said of the call before departing the White House for his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
During the virtual meeting with governors, Biden pledged the full support of the federal government to states facing surges in COVID-19 cases from the more-transmissible omicron variant and a run on at-home tests that dominated headlines over the holiday season.
“My message is: If you need something, say something, and we’re going to have your back any way we can," Biden said. He acknowledged long lines and chaotic scenes as Americans sought out testing amid the case surge and as they looked to safely gather with family and friends over the holiday.
“Seeing how tough it was for some folks to get a test this weekend shows that we have more work to do,” he said. He referenced his administration’s plan to make 500 million rapid tests available to Americans beginning next month through an as-yet-to-be-developed website.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the National Governors Association chairman, raised concerns Biden's plan could get in the way of state efforts to boost supply of tests.
“That dries up the supply chain for what we might offer as governors,” he said, saying the lack of supply “has become a real challenge.”
Biden assured Hutchinson that the federal effort won’t interfere with state actions. “This gets solved at the state level,” he said.
A White House official said the new tests would come from new manufacturing capacity and wouldn’t interfere with existing supply chains.
Earlier this year the White House explored a domestic vaccination requirement for flights, or one requiring either vaccination or proof of negative test. But officials have not been eager to mandate vaccination for domestic air travel because they expected it to face immediate legal challenges, mitigating its potential effectiveness as a tool to drive up vaccinations.
Pressed last week on why Biden had not mandated vaccinations for domestic air travel, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told MSNBC that “we know that masking can be, is, very effective on airplanes."
Read: Biden signs $768.2 billion defense spending bill into law
“We also know that putting in place that additional restriction might delay flights, might have additional implications,” she added. "We would do it, though, if the health impact was overwhelming. So we rely always on the advice of our health and medical experts. That isn’t a step at this point that they had determined we need to take.”
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show more than 241 million Americans, about 77% of the eligible population age 5 and over, have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. Officials believe, though, that there is some overcount in the figures due to record-keeping errors in the administration of booster shots.
Since the summer, the Biden administration has embraced various vaccination requirements as a way to get unvaccinated Americans to roll up their sleeves. It has instituted requirements that federal workers, federal contractors and those who work in health care get their shots, and that employers with 100 or more employees institute vaccination-or-testing requirements for their workers.
Those vaccination requirements have been mired in legal wrangling, with the Supreme Court set to hear arguments Jan. 7 in cases seeking to overturn them.
US expected to toughen testing requirement for travelers
The Biden administration is expected to take steps in the coming days to toughen testing requirements for international travelers to the U.S., including both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, amid the spread of the new omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The precise testing protocols were still being finalized ahead of a speech by President Joe Biden planned for Thursday on the nation’s plans to control the COVID-19 pandemic during the winter season, according to a senior administration official who said some details could still change. Among the policies being considered is a requirement that all air travelers to the U.S. be tested for COVID-19 within a day of boarding their flight. Currently those who are fully vaccinated may present a test taken within three days of boarding.
Read: India announces new travel rules amid Omicron scare
“CDC is evaluating how to make international travel as safe as possible, including pre-departure testing closer to the time of flight and considerations around additional post-arrival testing and self-quarantines,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s plans before the announcement, said options under consideration also include post-arrival testing requirements or or even self-quarantines.
The expected move comes just weeks after the U.S. largely reopened its borders to fully vaccinated foreign travelers on Nov. 8.
Much remains unknown about the new variant, which has been identified in more than 20 countries but not yet in the U.S., including whether it is more contagious, whether it makes people more seriously ill, and whether it can thwart the vaccine. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said more would be known about the omicron strain in two to four weeks as scientists grow and test lab samples of the virus.
As he sought to quell public concern about the new variant, Biden said that in his Thursday remarks, “I’ll be putting forward a detailed strategy outlining how we’re going to fight COVID this winter -- not with shutdowns or lockdowns but with more widespread vaccinations, boosters, testing, and more.”
Read: Wary, weary world slams doors shut, fearing omicron variant
Asked by reporters if he would consult with allies about any changes in travel rules, given that former President Donald Trump had caught world leaders by surprise, Biden said: “Unlike Trump I don’t shock our allies.”
US seeks balance as fears grow Russia may invade Ukraine
The buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine has left U.S. officials perplexed, muddying the Biden administration’s response.
Some Republican lawmakers have been pressing the U.S. to step up military support for Ukraine. But that risks turning what may be mere muscle-flexing by Russian President Vladimir Putin into a full-blown confrontation that only adds to the peril for Ukraine and could trigger an energy crisis in Europe.
But a weak U.S. response carries its own risks. It could embolden Putin to take more aggressive steps against Ukraine as fears grow he could try to seize more of its territory. And it could cause more political damage for President Joe Biden at a time his popularity is dropping.
Knowing how to strike the right balance would be easier if the U.S. had a better understanding of what Putin was trying to accomplish. But top officials admit they don’t know.
“We’re not sure exactly what Mr. Putin is up to,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday. A week earlier, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “We don’t have clarity into Moscow’s intentions, but we do know its playbook.”
Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat and member of the House Intelligence Committee, said better understanding Putin’s intentions was critical “to avoid the mistakes that have started great wars.”
Any U.S. response must be calibrated to avoid being “an appeaser or a provocateur,” he said.
“This is a tough, tough area to try to gain information,” he said. “It’s a challenge that’s as tough or tougher than it’s ever been. It has a pretty serious impact on our ability to make the correct decisions.”
Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and an ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv and Russian-backed rebels in the region known as Donbas has left an estimated 14,000 dead. Now, Ukraine says an estimated 90,000 Russian troops have massed near the border.
The buildup could be a prelude to another Russian invasion. Speaking to Ukraine’s foreign minister this month, Blinken said Putin’s “playbook” was for Russia to build up forces near the border and then invade, “claiming falsely that it was provoked.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday that the alliance is seeing an “unusual concentration” of Russian forces along Ukraine’s border, warning that the same type of forces was used by Moscow in the past to intervene in neighboring countries.
Though U.S. officials don’t believe an invasion is imminent, Putin also has ramped up his dismissal of an independent Ukraine. A lengthy essay the Kremlin published in July asserts that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people” and the “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”
But the moves could also be saber-rattling to prevent Ukraine from growing closer to the West or being admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which Putin strongly opposes. It’s not clear if Russia would risk invading Ukraine, setting off a far more difficult war, or want to occupy hostile territory.
A similar Russian military buildup in the spring did not lead to an invasion, though lawmakers and officials say they are more concerned now, citing U.S. intelligence that has not been made public.
Russia denies it has aggressive motives, insisting it is responding to increased NATO activity near its borders and the strengthening of Ukraine’s military.
Speaking on Thursday, Putin said, “It should be taken into consideration that Western partners are exacerbating the situation by supplying lethal modern arms to Kyiv and carrying out provocative military maneuvers in the Black Sea — and not only in the Black Sea but also in other regions close to our borders.”
The U.S. has sent ships into the Black Sea as part of NATO activity alongside Ukraine and in recent weeks has delivered military equipment as part of a $60 million package announced in September. Since 2014, the U.S. has committed to spending more than $2.5 billion to help Ukraine strengthen its defense.
The White House said it hopes to de-escalate tensions. “As we have made clear in the past, escalatory or aggressive actions by Russia would be of great concern to the United States,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said in a statement.
There has been a flurry of diplomacy in recent weeks. U.S. leaders have met with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, including a visit by CIA Director William Burns to Moscow during which he spoke to Putin by phone. Germany and France have issued a joint statement affirming support for Ukraine.
Ultimately, the U.S. has few good apparent options to stop Putin were he to press forward.
The Biden administration in April imposed new sanctions on Russia for what it said was Russia’s role in the Ukraine conflict as well as allegations that it has abetted cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure and interference in American elections.
Imposing more sanctions is unlikely to influence Putin’s behavior, lawmakers and experts said. The Biden administration in May did waive sanctions related to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will carry Russian natural gas directly to Germany, bypassing Ukraine.
A group of Republican lawmakers this month called on the U.S. to provide more lethal aid to Ukraine’s military, ramp up intelligence sharing, or deploy a larger presence of its own to the Black Sea. But Russia could quickly counter with more forces.
And Putin could respond to any Western action by limiting energy exports to Europe, which is heavily dependent on Russian natural gas.
“The traditional tools that nation-states use to govern behavior of other nation-states are not available,” said Douglas Wise, a former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. “The Russians have very little at risk.”
Writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, two analysts said Putin may want to send a message to Washington that it must treat Russia “as a major power that cannot be marginalized on the U.S. agenda.” But the analysts also described Ukraine as Putin’s “unfinished business.”
“That piece of unfinished business is the restoration of Russia’s dominion over key parts of its historic empire,” Eugene Rumer and Andrew Weiss wrote. “No item on that agenda is more important — or more pivotal — than the return of Ukraine to the fold.”
Trying to seize more of Ukraine — or even pushing to Kyiv — would be much tougher than taking Crimea or parts of eastern Ukraine, said Paul Kolbe, a former CIA officer who leads the Intelligence Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center.
Putin can achieve many of his objectives without an invasion, Kolbe said, by putting pressure on Ukraine and NATO and driving a wedge between allies about how to respond.
“It’s fitting in with a larger pattern of ensuring from their perception that they don’t face threats on their close borders,” he said.
Israel OKs some 3,000 new settler homes, despite U.S. rebuke
Israel approved about 3,000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, a day after the United States issued its strongest rebuke yet of such construction. It was the biggest announcement of settlement plans during the Biden administration.
The plans were approved by a Defense Ministry committee, according to a security official who was not authorized to speak publicly and did not provide further details. The anti-settlement group Peace Now also confirmed the approvals.
The decision marked the latest boost for Israel's half-century-old settlement enterprise on occupied lands the Palestinians seek for a state. Successive Israeli governments have expanded settlements, making an internationally backed two-state solution — a state of Palestine arising alongside Israel — increasingly impossible.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the international community to take a “decisive stance” on the Israeli decision, which he said amounted to a "message of disdain for the efforts of the U.S. administration.”
The Trump administration had tolerated settlement growth and abandoned the decades-long U.S. position that the settlements were illegitimate. Israel embarked on an aggressive settlement spree during the Trump years, advancing plans for more than 12,000 settler homes in 2020 alone, according to Peace Now, the highest number since it started collecting data in 2012.
Read: Israel set to OK 3,000 West Bank settler homes this week
Wednesday's decision was bound to raise friction with Europe and the United States.
Only a day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had protested the plan during a phone call with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, according to a senior U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Also on Tuesday, the U.S. State Department said it was “deeply concerned” about Israel’s plans to advance new settlement homes, including many deep inside the West Bank.
State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington: “We strongly oppose the expansion of settlements, which is completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm and damages the prospects for a two-state solution.”
Sabri Saidam, a former Palestinian official, criticized the Biden administration, saying it was “almost absent” as Israel pushes ahead with settlement construction.
The settlement approval also seemed poised to test Israel's fragile governing coalition of ultra-nationalists, centrists and dovish parties that oppose settlements after the 12-year rule of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Now, everybody knows that this is not a government of change, but this is a government with the same policy as Netanyahu to build more settlements, to deepen the occupation and to take us away from the chances for peace,” said Hagit Ofran of Peace Now.
The Palestinians seek the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — areas Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war — for their future state. The Palestinians view the settlements, which house some 700,000 Israelis, as the main obstacle to peace, and most of the international community considers them illegal.
Read: Israel, Palestinian militants use bodies as bargaining chips
Israel views the West Bank, home to more than 2.5 million Palestinians, as the biblical and historical heartland of the Jewish people.
Wednesday's approvals were given by the Defense Ministry's higher planning council, which authorizes West Bank construction. Roughly half of those units were given final approval before the start of construction.
The committee was also supposed to approve 1,300 housing units for Palestinians who live in areas of the West Bank that are under full Israeli control, outside the enclaves administered by a Palestinian autonomy government. The discussion was moved to next week.
The Palestinians and rights groups say the 1,300 homes under discussion meet a tiny fraction of the need. Palestinians require military permits to build in the 60% of the occupied West Bank that is under full Israeli control. Rights groups say permits are almost never granted, forcing many residents to build without authorization and risk demolition.
On Sunday, Israel announced construction tenders for 1,355 housing units in the West Bank, the first move of its kind since President Joe Biden assumed office pledging to take a harder line on the settlements. It also appeared to run contrary to the new Israeli coalition government’s own vows to reduce tensions with the Palestinians.
US details new international COVID-19 travel requirements
Children under 18 and people from dozens of countries with a shortage of vaccines will be exempt from new rules that will require most travelers to the United States be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Biden administration announced.
The government said Monday it will require airlines to collect contact information on passengers regardless of whether they have been vaccinated to help with contact tracing, if that becomes necessary.
Beginning Nov. 8, foreign, non-immigrant adults traveling to the United States will need to be fully vaccinated, with only limited exceptions, and all travelers will need to be tested for the virus before boarding a plane to the U.S. There will be tightened restrictions for American and foreign citizens who are not fully vaccinated.
The new policy comes as the Biden administration moves away from restrictions that ban non-essential travel from several dozen countries — most of Europe, China, Brazil, South Africa, India and Iran — and instead focuses on classifying individuals by the risk they pose to others.
It also reflects the White House’s embrace of vaccination requirements as a tool to push more Americans to get the shots by making it inconvenient to remain unvaccinated.
Read:Nine countries to follow additional measures as India revises COVID-19 guidelines for international travellers
Under the policy, those who are vaccinated will need to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within three days of travel, while the unvaccinated must present a test taken within one day of travel.
Children under 18 will not be required to be fully vaccinated because of delays in making them eligible for vaccines in many places. They will still need to take a COVID-19 test unless they are 2 or younger.
Others who will be exempt from the vaccination requirement include people who participated in COVID-19 clinical trials, who had severe allergic reactions to the vaccines, or are from a country where shots are not widely available.
That latter category will cover people from countries with vaccination rates below 10% of adults. They may be admitted to the U.S. with a government letter authorizing travel for a compelling reason and not just for tourism, a senior administration official said. The official estimated that there are about 50 such countries.
The U.S. will accept any vaccine approved for regular or emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the World Health Organization. That includes Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines. Mixing-and-matching of approved shots will be permitted.
The Biden administration has been working with airlines, who will be required to enforce the new procedures. Airlines will be required to verify vaccine records and match them against identity information.
Quarantine officers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will spot-check passengers who arrive in the U.S. for compliance, according to an administration official. Airlines that don't enforce the requirements could be subject to penalties of up to nearly $35,000 per violation.
The new rules will replace restrictions that began in January 2020, when President Donald Trump banned most non-U.S. citizens coming from China. The Trump administration expanded that to cover Brazil, Iran, the United Kingdom, Ireland and most of continental Europe. President Joe Biden left those bans in place and expanded them to South Africa and India.
Read: Australia's Queensland state to open to vaccinated travelers
Biden came under pressure from European allies to drop the restrictions, particularly after many European countries eased limits on American visitors.
“The United States is open for business with all the promise and potential America has to offer,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said after Monday's announcement.
The main trade group for the U.S. airline industry praised the administration's decision.
“We have seen an increase in ticket sales for international travel over the past weeks, and are eager to begin safely reuniting the countless families, friends and colleagues who have not seen each other in nearly two years, if not longer,” Airlines for America said in a statement.
The pandemic and resulting travel restrictions have caused international travel to plunge. U.S. and foreign airlines plan to operate about 14,000 flights across the Atlantic this month, just over half the 29,000 flights they operated during October 2019, according to data from aviation-research firm Cirium.
Henry Harteveldt, a travel-industry analyst in San Francisco, said the lifting of country-specific restrictions will help, but it will be tempered by the vaccination and testing requirements.
“Anyone hoping for an explosion of international inbound visitors will be disappointed,” he said. “Nov. 8 will be the start of the international travel recovery in the U.S., but I don’t believe we see full recovery until 2023 at the earliest.”
The Biden administration has not proposed a vaccination requirement for domestic travel, which the airlines oppose fiercely, saying it would be impractical because of the large number of passengers who fly within the U.S. every day.
US marks 200M COVID-19 shots shared with world
The U.S. on Thursday donated its 200 millionth COVID-19 shot to help vaccinate the rest of the world, the White House announced. The Biden administration aims to lead a global vaccination campaign even as it rolls out boosters for domestic use, which critics say diverts doses from those who are in greater need around the world.
The donated doses include more than 120 million in surplus from the U.S. stockpile of shots, as well as the initial deliveries of the 1 billion doses the Biden administration has purchased from Pfizer for overseas donation by September 2022. More than 100 countries and territories have received the American doses, and the U.S. remains the largest vaccine donor in the world.
Read:India hits 1 billion Covid vaccination milestone
“These 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have helped bring health and hope to millions of people, but our work is far from over,” U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power said in a statement. “To end the pandemic, and prevent the emergence of new variants, as well as future outbreaks within our nation’s borders, we must continue to do our part to help vaccinate the world.”
While aid groups have praised the U.S. for leading the world in vaccine donations, they have criticized the U.S. for approving booster doses for use in the country while many people in lower-income nations have no protection at all. The Food and Drug Administration approved booster doses of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines Wednesday, following last month's authorization of a third dose of the Pfizer shot.
Read: White House details plans to vaccinate 28M children age 5-11
“The reality is, the more wealthy countries use booster shots, the further we will be from ending the pandemic," said Tom Hart, acting CEO of the One Campaign. “While some argue that we can both administer boosters and vaccinate the world, the simple fact is that boosters divert supply from an urgent area of need — administering first shots around the world.”
While half the planet has been vaccinated, there are massive geographic and wealth disparities. The majority of global shots have been administered in high- and moderate-income countries.
Rescue groups: US tally misses hundreds left in Afghanistan
Veteran-led rescue groups say the Biden administration’s estimate that no more than 200 U.S. citizens were left behind in Afghanistan is too low and also overlooks hundreds of other people they consider to be equally American: permanent legal residents with green cards.
Some groups say they continue to be contacted by American citizens in Afghanistan who did not register with the U.S. Embassy before it closed and by others not included in previous counts because they expressed misgivings about leaving loved ones behind.
As for green card holders, they have lived in the U.S. for years, paid taxes, become part of their communities and often have children who are U.S. citizens. Yet the administration says it does not have an estimate on the number of such permanent residents who are in Afghanistan and desperately trying to escape Taliban rule.
“The fear is that nobody is looking for them,” said Howard Shen, spokesman for the Cajon Valley Union School District in the San Diego area that is in contact with one such family who says they cannot get out.
“They are thousands of miles away under an oppressive regime and we’re leaving them behind,” he said. “That’s not right.”
Stung by the U.S. military’s chaotic and deadly retreat, President Biden has promised that evacuation efforts will continue for the 100 to 200 American citizens who want to leave, most of whom he said are dual citizens. And Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that extends to green card holders and Afghans who supported the U.S. government during the 20-year war.
READ: Kabul airport attack kills 60 Afghans, 13 US troops
It’s unclear how that will work without an active U.S. military presence in the country and the Taliban-controlled Kabul airport, a major way out of the country, now closed. But an undersecretary of state said this past week that all American citizens and permanent residents who could not get evacuation flights or were otherwise stranded had been contacted and told to expect further details about routes out once those have been arranged.
Three school districts in California say they know of more than 30 children enrolled in their schools who have not been able to return. One family who has lived in Sacramento for years has been texting daily with their children’s elementary school principal while trying to escape.
The parents and three children — all legal U.S. residents — went to Afghanistan in April to care for their sick grandmother after being unable to do so for months because of COVID-19 restrictions. Caught by surprise by the quick Taliban takeover, the family members were unable to get through the crush of thousands of people at the airport in Kabul before the last U.S. plane left Aug. 31.
READ: US troops surge evacuations out of Kabul but threats persist
Now they fear they will be forgotten by the U.S. government, especially since they are not American citizens.
“I’m loosing the hope,” the mother, who is not being named to protect her safety, texted in broken English to Principal Nate McGill, who urged her to not give up.
McGill said California Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui, who has been working to free the family, tried to help them board a flight in Afghanistan. But they were pushed back. The family, whose three children are in first, third and fourth grade, fled amid tear gas and gunfire as U.S. forces and the Taliban tried to control the crowd.
“We run away from the gate. Situation is very scary. Kids are crying because of these firing,” the mother texted, later adding: “I totally lost my mind sir ... today I saw my death.”
Mohammad Faizi, a green card holder from the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, said he and his wife and five children were stopped by the Taliban at a checkpoint on their way to the airport. His wife is a U.S. citizen.
Read:Biden vows to evacuate all Americans — and Afghan helpers
Faizi, whose family got out just before the last U.S. flight left, said he was asked at the checkpoint why he was trying to leave Afghanistan. “I told him, ‘That’s our country. That’s my nation. We’re living there. So we have to get out of here.’″
The Taliban, which are in need of foreign aid, have said they will allow people with valid travel papers to leave, and the international community says it will be monitoring to see if they keep their word.
Mike Jason, who runs an ad-hoc rescue operation called Allied Airlift 21, said his volunteer group has been in contact with 78 green card holders trapped in the country, but that the figure does not capture the scale of the problem. Add their spouses and children to the tally, he said, and the number rises to nearly 400.
Jason and others say they also believe the number of U.S. citizens is much higher than 200 people and is misleading because it does not include their family members who may be green card holders. Allied Airlift has identified 45 U.S. citizens in the country but has documents on more than 250 family members stuck there with them.
Such volunteers say they are also skeptical of the government’s estimate because it only includes American citizens who registered with the U.S. Embassy before it was shuttered in Kabul, a process that was entirely voluntary.
Alex Plitsas, an Iraq War veteran who is part of an informal rescue network called Digital Dunkirk, said he received calls from six U.S. citizens stuck in Afghanistan in just one day earlier this week — and none had registered with the U.S. Embassy.
He suspects the true number of U.S. citizens left behind could be off by hundreds.
“Those names are starting to trickle out now,” said Plitsas, a former civilian intelligence officer in Afghanistan. “I expect that number to rise significantly.”
Plitsas said he’s also handled pleas from more than 100 U.S. green card holders trying to leave over the past two weeks and says they should get just as much attention as U.S. citizens.
“They live here,” he said. “They’re our folks.”
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s office said he is working to evacuate an 80-year-old couple who are both U.S. citizens and live in San Diego County, along with two other families from his congressional district that covers El Cajon.
The administration says 6,000 U.S. citizens made it out, most on U.S. military flights.
Issa said he believes the number of U.S. citizens still there and wanting to leave is closer to 500. That includes roughly the number the State Department says made clear they want to leave and additional U.S. citizens who were not counted because they expressed concern about “leaving behind family members to die.”
If you include the family members of U.S. citizens, the number of people could be as high as 1,000, he added.
“Unless we continue and get the rest of our American citizens, and all those otherwise eligible out, we won’t have done our job,” Issa said.
Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a former Air Force officer receiving calls for help in the rescue effort, said the Biden administration needs to give a full accounting of those left behind and stop limiting its official tally to U.S. citizens.
“The problem is, it doesn’t include families,” he said. “They’re lowballing the numbers.”
Rescue coordinator Chuck Nadd, an Afghanistan veteran, said the numbers being reported back to him by 180 Digital Dunkirk volunteers suggest there are hundreds of green card holders desperate to get out.
Among them are the three Sacramento schoolchildren whose mother recently texted their principal a photo of them with forlorn faces and handmade signs reading, “Take us out of Afghanistan, please” and “I am SO scared here.”
Afghans plead for faster US evacuation from Taliban rule
Educated young women, former U.S. military translators and other Afghans most at-risk from the Taliban appealed to the Biden administration to get them on evacuation flights as the United States struggled on Wednesday to bring order to the continuing chaos at the Kabul airport.
President Joe Biden and his top officials said the U.S. was working to speed up the evacuation, but made no promises how long it would last or how many desperate people it would fly to safety “We don’t have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters, adding that evacuations would continue “until the clock runs out or we run out of capability.”
Afghans in danger because of their work with the U.S. military or U.S organizations, and Americans scrambling to get them out, also pleaded with Washington to cut the red tape that they say could strand thousands of vulnerable Afghans if U.S. forces withdraw as planned in the coming days.
“If we don’t sort this out, we’ll literally be condemning people to death,” said Marina Kielpinski LeGree, the American head of a nonprofit, Ascend. The organization’s young Afghan female colleagues were in the mass of people waiting for flights at the airport in the wake of days of mayhem, tear gas and gunshots.
READ: Taliban encounter Afghan cities remade in their absence
The U.S. has rushed in troops, transport planes and commanders to secure the airport, seek Taliban guarantees of safe passage, and ramp up an airlift capable of ferrying between 5,000 and 9,000 people a day.
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman described an all-out effort by U.S. officials to get Afghans and allies to safety. “This is an all-hands-on-deck effort and we’re aren’t going to let up,” Sherman said at a State Department news conference.
Taliban fighters and checkpoints ringed the airport — barriers for Afghans who fear that their past work with Westerners makes them prime targets of the insurgents. Afghans who made it past the Taliban reached Americans guarding the airport complex, and thrust documents at some of the 4,500 U.S. troops in temporary control.
One of the last windows of escape from Taliban threatens to close when Biden’s planned pullout by Aug. 31 is complete.
READ: Taliban promise women's rights, security under Islamic rule
“People are going to die,” said Air Force veteran Sam Lerman. He said he was working to help a former Afghan military contractor who received an email from the State Department telling him to go to the airport. But U.S. troops at the entry to the airport turned back the Afghan man Wednesday, telling him he lacked the right document, Lerman said.
Hundreds of Afghans who lacked any papers or promises of flights also congregated at the airport, adding to the chaos. It didn’t help that many of the Taliban fighters were illiterate, and cannot read the documents.
U.S. officials say they have evacuated 4,480 people since they took control of the airport over the weekend. The turmoil there has seen Afghans rush the tarmac. In one instance, some apparently fell to their death while clinging to a departing American C-17 transport plane.
Hoping to secure seats on an airlift are American citizens and other foreigners, Afghan allies of the Western forces, and women, journalists, activists and others most at risk from the fundamentalist Taliban.
Read: Taliban announces ‘amnesty,’ urges women to join government
The U.S. has declined to give estimates of how many U.S. citizens remain in Afghanistan and are in need of escape.
About 100,000 Afghans were seeking evacuation through a U.S. visa program meant to provide refuge to Afghans who had worked with Americans, as well as family members, said Rebecca Heller, head of the U.S.-based International Refugee Assistance Program. Her organization was among those pressing the United States to urgently step up visa processing.
Heller said an Afghan client told her of five Afghan translators killed by the Taliban in the past two days for their past work with Americans.
Heller played an appeal that she said a female Afghan client had recorded. The woman, whose name The Associated Press is withholding for her safety, has been waiting for three years for U.S. action on her visa application.
“The only hope in this moment I have is the U.S. government,” the Afghan woman said. “Please, U.S. government ... please stop promising. Please, start taking action. As immediately as you can.”
The Pentagon said senior U.S. military officers, including Navy Rear Adm. Peter Vasely, are talking to Taliban commanders about Taliban checkpoints and curfews that have limited the number of Americans and Afghans able to enter the airport.
The U.S. government sent emails in recent days telling some American citizens, green card holders and their families, and others to come to the airport, and to be prepared to wait.
Biden has defended his decision to end the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan that began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has rejected blame for the chaos that has ensued. Biden this laid responsibility on Afghans themselves for the Taliban takeover and for the frantic scrambles to flee the country.
But refugee groups note yearslong backlog of visa applications.
An operation to fly to the United States former Afghan translators and others whose visa processes were closest to completion had managed to bring in only about half of the 4,000 Afghans predicted before the Taliban takeover.
A separate visa program meant to fly out civil society members most at risk from the Taliban was handicapped from the start, partly by a U.S. requirement that Afghans travel outside Afghanistan to apply — a trip that the Taliban sweep made impossible for most.