The remains of a cluster bomb rocket and other ordnance were collected as the Ukraine Army troops dug in at frontline trench positions to continue repelling Russian attacks, east of the strategic port city of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, on March 10, 2022.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images

• Russia is apparently firing cluster munitions at the city of Kherson, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
• Cluster bombs contain multiple explosive submunitions that spread across a targeted area.
• Ukrainians survived Russian occupation “only to be subjected to new indiscriminate attacks,” per HRW.

Russian forces retreated from the city of Kherson last month, but they continue to terrorize the civilian population they left behind, Human Rights Watch charged Tuesday, accusing Moscow of using widely prohibited cluster munitions against targets with no military value.

The attacks have killed at least 15 people, the group said, and “might constitute a war crime.”

An early war win, Kherson was the first and only regional capital that Russia captured after its Feb. 24 invasion. In September, the Kremlin claimed to have annexed the city and surrounding province only to order troops to retreat across the Dnieper River less than six weeks later.

Since that humiliating setback, HRW said its researchers had personally witnessed “intensified” attacks on Kherson and visited bombing sites consistent with the use of cluster munitions. In one instance, the weapon appears to have been fired into a populated area in Kherson with no Ukrainian soldiers in sight, according to witnesses who described seeing a man and a woman who had feet blown off near a bus station.

HRW staff visited the site on November 22 and “saw pools of blood from both victims,” the group said in a statement, as well as three “munition impact sites” that tracked with the use of cluster bombs. They also spoke to witnesses of nearby attacks, including one near a high-rise apartment building, that resulted in civilian casualties.

“Residents of Kherson survived eight months of Russian occupation, and are finally free from fear of torture, only to be subjected to new indiscriminate attacks, apparently including cluster munitions,” Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at HRW, said in a statement.

Cluster bombs, which can be fired from the ground or dropped from the air, contain multiple explosive submunitions that spread across a targeted area, which critics argue makes them inherently indiscriminate. Submunitions that do not explode upon impact can also pose a risk for years after a conflict ends.

As of August 2022, Ukraine was the only country in the world where cluster bombs were being actively deployed, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition, a monitoring organization. Russia has used the weapons “extensively” since invading, the group said. Ukrainian forces also appear to have used them on at least three occasions.

More than 100 countries have signed a treaty prohibiting the use of cluster munitions. However, Russia, Ukraine and the United States have refused to join the agreement.

In addition to cluster munitions, Russia has also been accused of leaving landmines behind in Kherson, some in the form of apparent booby traps. According to the Associated Press, a main road in Kherson was blocked off with a sign that warned “Mines Ahead” — but it was the detour that was rigged with explosives.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among the chamber’s youngest and oldest lawmakers, respectively.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

• A proposed rule change would have limited House Democrats to 6 year terms as committee chairs.
• But House Democrats voted down the proposed rule change during a caucus meeting on Tuesday.
• It would’ve weakened the seniority system, which has contributed to a preponderance of elderly lawmakers.

House Democrats on Tuesday voted to reject a change to their party’s rules that would have limited the amount of time that their members can lead committees, a Democratic aide confirmed.

The amendment, proposed by Democratic Rep. Bill Foster of Illinois, would have required committee chairs to receive a majority vote from the entire Democratic caucus in order to chair a committee — a position that affords lawmakers greater influence over legislation and the power to steer policy — for more than a total of six years.

“Six years is a pretty long time,” Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia told Insider at the Capitol earlier this month. “I think if you enter a position, and you know you’ve got six years to make your mark and do right by the caucus, that sounds like a great period of time.”

Currently, Democrats have no limit for committee chairmanships, and members can serve atop committees until they resign, retire, or are successfully challenged. Republicans, by contrast, have implemented six-year term limits — a measure that proponents argue allows for greater turnover and opportunities for more junior lawmakers to move up the ranks.

“We have a really talented conference, and we have to create more opportunity for people to move up and make use of that range of talent,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a supporter of the change, told Insider. “I think that’s one mechanism that would do that.”

“It’ll encourage members to stay in Congress, instead of, you know, rotating out,” Democratic Ruben Gallego of Arizona told Insider. “It’ll take power away from lobbyists, and give more power back to members of Congress and staff.”

But after the measure was not recommended during an earlier meeting of the party’s Committee on Caucus Procedures, the rule was rejected during a closed-door caucus meeting Tuesday, which came two weeks after party members selected Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, and Pete Aguilar of California as their new top triumvirate of leaders.

Democratic Rep. Bill Foster of Illinois proposed a rule that would limit committee chairmanships to six years total.

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

Concerns about diversity in leadership

Though many Democrats supported the change, both longer-serving members and the influential Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) were opposed to making the change.

“I’m not for term limits,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Insider during a briefing with reporters at the end of November. “Members need to make decisions, if they think a chairman is doing well or not, and if not, replace that chairman.”

Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada, who was recently elected as the new chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, told Insider that the group is opposed to the change.

“This was considered, debated, and discussed,” he said, noting the lack of a recommendation from the steering committee. “From the standpoint of members who have been in Congress, who have contributed to significant legislative efforts, to finally ascend to the position of chair or subcommittee chair, to now be rotated out arbitrarily, is not something that the CBC supports.”

The CBC — as well as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — have historically argued that the current system, in which seniority plays a heavy role in determining who gets to chair committees, has allowed minority lawmakers to ascend to positions of power without being passed over in favor of white members.

Hakeem Jeffries, the newly-elected Democratic leader and a member of the CBC, declined to offer his position when recently asked by Insider. “I’m not taking a position on any single rules proposal that is before the House Democratic Caucus,” he said.

Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada, the incoming chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the group opposes committee term limits.

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

A missed opportunity to empower younger members? 

The tenure-limiting measure could have significantly weakened Congress’s emphasis on seniority and length of tenure, which has contributed to the increase in more elderly lawmakers in positions of power. Insider recently explored the aging nature of American leadership in the Red, White, and Gray project.

The emphasis on seniority, lawmakers say, has contributed to the predominance of elderly lawmakers in the halls of Congress.

“Congress itself is a gerontocracy,” Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York told Insider earlier this year. “It’s an institution that prioritizes seniority to the exclusion of everything else.”

Another prominent young lawmaker — 33-year-old Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — has also been vocal in her criticism of the system.

“If you are on a committee and want to chair it, you basically have to wait until almost everyone before you resigns or leaves office,” she wrote in a June 18 Instagram post. “That often takes decades.”

“So people wait. And wait. And wait,” she continued. “Those who DID wait and are in leadership (or next in line for it) are incentivized to protect the automatic seniority system as much as possible because of their sunk time cost.”

But when asked about the proposed change in recent weeks, Ocasio-Cortez declined to offer a position, acknowledging that the current system has historically been how “members from marginalized communities have been able to secure positions of leadership” while offering praise for the underlying intention of Foster’s proposal.

“We have a real issue with particularly newer members, and junior members, being able to pass legislation and get things through committee,” she said.

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of California also declined to offer a position, citing her role as the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a diversity of views among those members. 

But she nodded to the need for more opportunities for younger members.

“Whatever the mechanism is, we need to have more opportunities for people to bring their leadership to bear in different places,” she told Insider. “And if it’s not this proposal, then I think people are saying there needs to be more of that.”

And Torres, despite his criticisms of Congress’s gerontocracy, also expressed his skepticism of the measure, possibly owing to his position as a CBC member.

“If a member is dissatisfied with the performance of a particular chair, then he or she should have the courage to mount a challenge,” Torres told Insider. “Seniority is an important consideration, but the chairs are not chosen strictly on a seniority basis.”

Republican Senator Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced bipartisan legislation to ban China’s popular social media app TikTok, ratcheting up pressure on owner ByteDance Ltd amid U.S. fears the app could be used to spy on Americans and censure content.

The legislation would block all transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of China and Russia, Rubio’s office said in a news release, adding that a companion bill in the U.S. House of Representatives was sponsored by Republican congressman Mike Gallagher and Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi.

ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The bill comes as scrutiny of TikTok has grown in Washington in recent weeks, after a failed bid by the Trump administration to ban the video-sharing app.

At a hearing last month, FBI Director Chris Wray said TikTok’s U.S. operations raise national security concerns, flagging the risk that the Chinese government could harness it to influence users or control their devices.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump attempted to block new users from downloading TikTok and ban other transactions that would have effectively blocked the apps’ use in the United States but lost a series of court battles over the measure.

The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a powerful national security body, in 2020 ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that U.S. user data could be passed on to China’s communist government.

CFIUS and TikTok have been in talks for months aiming to reach a national security agreement to protect the data of TikTok’s more than 100 million users.

Belgian authorities have charged four people linked to the European Parliament over allegations World Cup host Qatar lavished them with cash and gifts to influence decision-making.

Investigators searched 19 homes and the offices of the European Parliament in raids from Friday to Monday.

A source close to the investigation said 1.5 million euros ($1.6 million) was seized in the raids. This included 600,000 euros in cash at the home of a suspect, several hundred thousand euros in a suitcase in a Brussels hotel room and 150,000 euros in an apartment belonging to a European Parliament member.

Investigators also seized laptops and mobile phones and ordered the IT resources of 10 parliamentary staff were frozen to prevent data disappearing. Investigators seized the data on Monday.

Searches have also been carried out in Italy.

The Belgian prosecutors say they have been investigating for more than four months alleged payments made by a Gulf state. Sources close to the case say the state is Qatar.

Qatar denies any wrongdoing.

In arrest warrants issued in Italy, there are also allegations of payments from Morocco.

The Moroccan government has not responded to a request for comment.

Four suspects have been charged with participating in the activities of a criminal organisation, money laundering and corruption.

Prosecutors have not named them, but a source with knowledge of the case say they are:

Eva Kaili – a Greek socialist politician who was one of the European Parliament’s 14 vice presidents until Tuesday when lawmakers voted to remove her from that post. The former television presenter defended Qatar in the assembly last month against those trying to “bully” Doha over its treatment of migrant workers. Her Greek socialist PASOK party is expelling her from its ranks and Greece has frozen her Greek property.

Her lawyer in Greece said she denied any wrongdoing. “Her position is that she is innocent,” Michalis Dimitrakopoulos told Open TV.

Pier Antonio Panzeri – a former European Parliament member from Italy’s centre-left and founder of non-profit pro-justice campaign group Fight Impunity. Belgium also submitted European arrest warrants for his wife and daughter in Italy. Extracts of the warrants say they took part in Panzeri’s activities and in the transport of gifts, and that Panzeri and his wife had the use of a credit card of an unidentified person they called the “geant”, or giant.

Panzeri, who is detained in Belgium, could not be reached for comment. Fight Impunity did immediately respond to a request asking for comment or for contact details for his lawyer.

A lawyer acting for the family in Italy said Panzeri’s wife and daughter denied any involvement at a hearing in Italy on Saturday but he declined to comment on the merits of the case because he had not received the full European arrest warrant. An Italian court is expected to decide next week whether his wife and daughter will be handed over to Belgium.

Francesco Giorgi – Kaili’s partner who is parliamentary assistant. His LinkedIn account says Giorgi is a sailing instructor and a founder of Fight Impunity. His account says his specialist areas as a policy adviser are foreign affairs, human rights and the Middle East.

Giorgi did not respond to a message requesting comment sent to his LinkedIn account. Reuters also received no response to emails that were sent to the office of the lawmaker he advises and to Fight Impunity.

Niccolo Figa-Talamanca – the secretary-general of human rights and rule of law campaign group No Peace Without Justice.

Figa-Talamanca could not be reached for comment. No Peace Without Justice said he had suspended himself from his role to safeguard the organisation and that the group trusted the investigation would show he had acted correctly.

($1 = 0.9394 euros)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear an appeal by a North Carolina man serving life in prison after being convicted of taking part in a plot to murder a woman in the Philippines at the behest of the head of a multinational criminal organization.

The justices agreed to consider whether Adam Samia’s constitutional right to confront the witnesses against him at trial was violated when prosecutors introduced part of a co-defendant’s post-arrest statement admitting to the 2012 murder.

Samia, 48, was convicted in 2018 alongside former U.S. Army sergeant Joseph Hunter and another North Carolina man, Carl David Stillwell, on charges related to the murder of Filipino real estate agent, Catherine Lee,

Prosecutors said Samia killed her while working as a mercenary for Paul Le Roux, a Zimbabwe-born transnational crime leader who was sentenced in 2020 to 25 years in prison after cooperating with authorities investigating his organization.

Prosecutors said his organization committed money laundering, drug and weapons trafficking and murder in multiple countries.

Prosecutors said Joseph Hunter, a former U.S. Army sergeant who led Le Roux’s teams of mercenaries, recruited Samia and Carl David Stillwell for a “kill team,” and in exchange for money the two murdered Lee, who Le Roux believed had stolen from him.

In 2018 all three men were convicted at trial and are serving life sentences.

At trial, prosecutors introduced a post-arrest confession by Stillwell in which he named Samia as the person who pulled the trigger.

Stillwell did not testify at trial, so Samia’s lawyers could not question him. To protect his rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment to confront witnesses against him, his name was redacted.

But Samia’s lawyers say the confession remained incriminating and that the federal appeals courts are divided on how to assess whether how such redacted confessions should be used at trial.

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Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday slammed the removal of fellow leftist Pedro Castillo as Peru’s democratically elected president, and said relations with the South American country are now on hold.

Castillo was ousted last week after lawmakers in the opposition-controlled Congress voted to remove him from power after he attempted to rule by decree and dissolve Congress to avoid a third impeachment vote.

Lopez Obrador, who has been president since late 2018, was speaking at a regular news conference after the governments of Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia and Argentina on Monday jointly called for the protection of Castillo’s human and judicial rights.

“The will of the people who elected (Castillo) should be respected,” said Lopez Obrador, who has long argued he was robbed of the Mexican presidency in 2006 and 2012. “Recognizing that he won democratically and cannot be removed.”

Lopez Obrador, who says he pursues a policy of non-intervention in the affairs of other countries, said that the Peruvian constitution had an “anti-democratic flaw”.

The president said he would continue to regard Castillo as Peru’s leader until the matter was legally resolved.

“Relations are on hold, waiting to see what happens. Hopefully a democratic solution is sought,” he said.

Asked whether he acknowledged Dina Boluarte as Peru’s new president, Lopez Obrador did not answer directly. He instead argued that acts of recognition have “nothing to do with our foreign policy”, and pointed to past coups in Mexican history.

A judge in Peru ordered last week seven days of preliminary detention for Castillo while authorities investigate him for alleged “rebellion and conspiracy.”

Protests that have left at least seven dead – many of them teenagers – have exploded throughout Peru after Castillo’s removal. Demonstrators argue that Boluarte was not elected by the people and have been calling for the of closure of Congress and for new elections to take place. Boluarte on Monday offered a plan to bring elections forward by two years.

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U.S. scientists on Tuesday revealed a breakthrough on fusion energy that could help curb climate change if companies can scale up the technology to a commercial level in the coming decades.

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California on Dec. 5 for the first time briefly achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using lasers, the U.S. Energy Department said. The scientists focused a laser on a target of fuel to fuse two light atoms into a denser one, releasing the energy.

Kimberly Budil, the director of Lawrence Livermore, told reporters at an Energy Department event that science and technology hurdles mean commercialization is probably not five or six decades away, but sooner. “With concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant,” Budil said.

Scientists have known for about a century that fusion powers the sun and have pursued developing fusion on Earth for decades.

The experiment briefly achieved what’s known as fusion ignition by generating 3.15 megajoules of energy output after the laser delivered 2.05 megajoules to the target, the Energy Department said.

Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Sciences and Technology Policy, said the experiment represents a “tremendous example of what perseverance can achieve.”

Nuclear scientists outside the lab said the achievement will be a major stepping stone, but there is much more science to be done before fusion becomes commercially viable.

Tony Roulstone, a nuclear energy expert at the University of Cambridge, estimated that the energy output of the experiment was only 0.5% of the energy that was needed to fire the lasers in the first place.

“Therefore, we can say that this result … is a success of the science – but still a long way from providing useful, abundant, clean energy,” Roulstone said. In order to become commercial, a power plant would have to produce enough energy to power the lasers and to achieve ignition continuously.

“This is one igniting capsule (of fuel) one time,” Budil said about the experiment. To realize commercial fusion energy you have to … be able to produce many, many fusion ignition events per minute.”

The electricity industry cautiously welcomed the step, though emphasized that in order to carry out the energy transition, fusion should not slow down efforts on building out other alternatives like solar and wind power, battery storage and nuclear fission.

“It’s the first step that says ‘Yes, this is not just fantasy, this can be done, in theory,'” said Andrew Sowder, a senior technology executive at EPRI, a nonprofit energy research and development group.

Debra Callahan, who worked at Lawrence Livermore until late this year and is now a senior scientist at Focused Energy, said the lab’s results will help companies figure out how to make lasers more efficient. “Everyone is excited about what’s been achieved and what’s in the future.”

Focused Energy is one of dozens of companies working to commercialize fusion energy, and it has raised about $5 billion in private and government funding in recent years. Several, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, seeks to use powerful magnets instead of lasers.

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Imagine you are on a dark and unlit road in the dead of night. Your car is out of gas. Your cell phone’s broken. It’s pouring rain out. Drops of rain are pelting down, covering you. There are no cars, no signs of help. You are stranded. All alone in the dark – that is Kevin McCarthy.

It is being reported that searches are going on — for an alternative speaker to McCarthy. People, I’ve done my research for this article. I’ve read the vile words directed at McCarthy from Maga-land and from some of his own coworkers.

He is despised — for a variety of reasons. He is alone. And he is in the dark. McCarthy has turned into a mindless creature — and he made it all happen himself. It is being said “preliminary conversations” are happening about a “contingency candidate.”

And time is running out. The hourglass for McCarthy is running relatively low. And as time moves by, it does not appear – still — STILL -that he has the votes. There are many who think McCarthy will, at some point, probably late in the game, be able to garner enough support. I am not so sure.

It’s still possible he can pull it out. But every day appears bleaker for him. It’s being reported that other candidates are interested. The media has taken up the story and is screaming about it. Some are cackling. It would be his just comeuppance, would it not?

Of course, we could wind up with someone worse than McCarthy. By then again, we could also wind up with a moderate. Anything is possible in the game of thrones. Kevin McCarthy is a mere firefly at this point, trying to shine in the darkness that he himself created.

By showing his spinelessness and his lack of ability to lead, he also revealed that he is in no way ready for the tough work any House Speaker would have to do. And that fact has come back big time to haunt him.

The post Game of thrones appeared first on Palmer Report.

Cleanup of the biggest U.S. oil spill in nearly a decade will take at least weeks more, local officials in Kansas said on Tuesday, citing a recent meeting with Keystone pipeline owner TC Energy Corp (TRP.TO).

TC closed the pipeline after the spill of roughly 14,000 barrels of crude was discovered in a creek on Wednesday in Washington County in Kansas. There is still no official timeline for a restart of the line, which will need approval from regulators.

TC and county officials met briefly on Monday.

“They told us they expected to be here for several more weeks,” said Randy Hubbard, Washington County’s emergency management coordinator. “They didn’t qualify what that is.”

TC did not immediately respond to questions, and the company and regulators have not yet identified a cause for the leak.

The 622,000 barrel-per-day Keystone line, which ships heavy Canadian crude from Alberta to U.S. refiners in the Midwest and the Gulf Coast, had received a special permit to run at a higher rate than any other crude line in the United States, and has been doing so since 2017.

Workers have recovered roughly 2,600 barrels of oil and water from the creek, which does not connect to a drinking water source, according to TC.

Washington Commissioner Raleigh Ordoyne said TC’s clean-up efforts have exceeded expectations.

“In a time where nobody stands behind their product, or nobody takes accountability for actions or for a fault, TC Energy has come in and taken care of business,” Ordoyne said.

“They’ve got boots on the ground 24/7 and I couldn’t imagine this cleanup going any better.”

Jeanette Stamm, 78, who owns pasture land two miles (3.2 km)from the spill site, said she is concerned about whether crews can remove all the oil from Mill Creek and whether crude could seep into the aquifer.

“I hope (the area) will all be put back the way it was. I don’t know if it ever will be.”

Hubbard said TC has assured the county that oil will not reach the drinking water table or other water sources.

Light rain fell in Washington County on Tuesday morning but was expected to clear later in the day, according to the National Weather Service.

“They’re using large equipment out in fields that are muddy, so undoubtedly it will slow things down,” Hubbard said.

The number of personnel from TC, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), state agencies and the county numbered more than 300, the EPA said on Tuesday.

There has been no additional impact from the spilled oil since Friday, the date of the EPA’s previous update, the agency said.

Nearly ten months into the war in Ukraine, the Biden administration is intensifying diplomatic efforts to ensure that the transatlantic alliance that opposes Russia’s invasion survives a bitter European winter.

In the past weeks, the administration has scrambled to adjust its signature inflation legislation to appease European governments whose support it needs on Ukraine, and secured an agreement from the G7 nations to cap the price of Russian oil.

President Joe Biden also briefly moderated his strong opposition to talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a signal to allies restless for a negotiated end to the conflict.

The Ukraine war is also the backdrop for the U.S.-Africa Summit, a relationship-building exercise that starts on Tuesday and brings together the leaders of 49 African nations, many of whom have expressed frustration with paying the economic price for the war, which the United Nations says has worsened a global food crisis.

The coalition of countries opposing Russia’s invasion – from NATO members to U.S. allies such as Japan and Australia – has proven resilient, defying predictions that rising energy prices in part caused by the war could fracture the grouping. But sustaining that united front has required diplomacy and compromise, say diplomats and U.S. officials, and will likely require more as the European winter tests the public’s support for Ukraine.

“(This winter) Ukrainians will suffer and Russia may just continue to make it harder,” said one senior European diplomat. “It may be more and more difficult for Europeans to preserve their unity and continue to deliver weapons, cash and assistance to Ukraine.”

John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, predicted the allies would remain united but acknowledged the stresses ahead.

“We certainly recognize that with the coming of winter, and the way Mr. Putin has weaponized energy specifically, there’s going to be enormous stress not just in Ukraine but throughout Europe,” he said.

U.S. and European officials met last week in Washington for trade talks focused on the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s capstone legislative achievement of 2022. The $430-billion law has angered European allies, who say that it unfairly subsidizes U.S. industry at Europe’s expense.

There is little appetite in Biden’s Democratic Party to change the law, the result of over a year of congressional wrangling. But in discussions with French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the trade talks, Biden said the bill wasn’t intended to exclude partners who are cooperating with the United States and that “tweaks” are possible.

The administration has said little about what those changes might be, but in his remarks Biden suggested more loosely interpreting the term “free trade partner” to exempt the EU from some of the law’s restrictions.

While the disagreements aren’t yet resolved, the willingness to bend on such a core issue shows that the United States – and its European allies – recognize a need to tamp down disagreements for the sake of providing Ukraine with Western arms and other support.

“It is a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, there is an absolute recognition of the need for solidarity over Ukraine but on the other hand there are important public policy objectives the Biden administration is trying to accomplish in the United States,” said Ian Lessler, a vice president at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels.

“There needs to be a nod to American national economic interest. And I think that’s recognized in Europe.”

There have been successes. Those include the recent agreement by the G7 coalition to cap the price of Russian seaborne crude oil at $60 per barrel, a compromise reached after months of discussions aimed at overcoming disagreement between countries such as Poland who wanted to set the cap much lower and others who worried about rising energy costs.

The U.S. also telegraphed a shift in its position on negotiations with Russia. After the meetings with Macron, who has advocated direct talks with Putin, Biden said at a news conference that he would be “prepared to speak with Mr. Putin if there is an interest in him deciding he’s looking for a way to end the war,” adding that Putin hasn’t done that yet.

The White House quickly walked back the comments, clarifying that it had no intention of speaking with Putin because talks would not yet be fruitful and that there would be no discussions “about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

Still, Biden’s remarks suggested a U.S. desire to meet France halfway on the question of Russia talks without alienating Ukraine and East European allies, who insist Russia must be defeated before any negotiation can begin.

“We’re now very much in line with the Americans,” said one French diplomat. “They have slowly moved to our position, which is to keep channels of communications open with Russia.”

Biden’s remarks also resonated with countries who feel caught in the middle of a standoff between the United States and Russia and are eager to see a negotiated end to the conflict.

Challenges remain, including a dispute between Hungary and Ukraine that has led Hungary to block Ukraine from participating in certain NATO meetings. And as winter sets in and energy prices soar the voices calling for an early end to the war will grow louder.

But diplomats are projecting confidence.

“Yes, it’s impacting energy prices and I’m not dismissing that as a problem,” said Ireland’s U.N. Ambassador Fergal Mythen. “I can say very strongly that unity of purpose between European countries and the U.S. will not diminish. This is a matter of life and death for Ukraine.”