Feb 15 (Reuters) - John Hurley, the U.S. government's top sanctions official, is set to leave his post as the Treasury under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence after friction with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.
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Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
(Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese)
A Ukrainian drone strike ignited fires at one of Russia's Black Sea ports, officials said Sunday, ahead of fresh talks aimed at ending the nearly 4-year-old war.
Two people were wounded in the attack on the port of Taman in the Krasnodar region, which damaged an oil storage tank, warehouse and terminals, according to regional Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev.
Meanwhile, falling debris from Russian drones damaged civilian and transport infrastructure in Ukraine's Odesa region, officials said, causing disruption to the power and water supply.
Ukraine's long-range drone strikeson Russian energy sites aim to deprive Moscow of theoil export revenueit needs to pursue its full-scale invasion. Russia wants tocripple the Ukrainian power grid, seeking to deny civilians access to heat, light and running water in what Kyiv officials say is an attempt to "weaponize winter."
The attacks came ahead of another round ofU.S.-brokered talksbetween envoys from Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday and Wednesday in Geneva, just before the fourth anniversary of theall-out Russian invasion of its neighboron Feb. 22.
Speaking at theMunich Security Conferencein Germany on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested there were still questions remaining overfuture security guaranteesfor his country. Zelenskyy also questioned how the concept of a free trade zone — proposed by the U.S. — would work in the Donbas region, which Russia insists Kyiv must give up for peace.
He said the Americans want peace as quickly as possible and that the U.S. team wants to sign all the agreements on Ukraine at the same time, whereas Ukraine wants guarantees for the country's future security signed first.
Zelenskyy's concerns were echoed by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"Unless we have real security guarantees on whatever peace agreement is ultimately determined, we are going to be here again, because one of the things we know is that Russia has geared up not just for Ukraine, but to go beyond Ukraine," she told reporters in Munich on Sunday.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Russia was hoping to win diplomatically what it had failed to achieve on the battlefield, and was banking on the U.S. to deliver concessions at the negotiating table. But Kallas told the Munich conference Sunday that key Russian demands — including the lifting of sanctions and unfreezing of assets — were decisions for Europe.
"If we want a sustainable peace then we need concessions also from the Russian side," she said.
Previous U.S.-led efforts to find consensus on ending the war, most recentlytwo rounds of talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, have failed to resolve difficult issues, such as the future of Ukraine's Donbas industrial heartland that is largely occupied by Russian forces.
Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine athttps://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military forces boarded another sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon said Sunday.
Venezuela had faced U.S. sanctions on its oil for several years, relying on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers tosmuggle crude into global supply chains. President Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to pressurethen-President Nicolás Madurobefore Maduro was apprehended in January during an American military operation.
Several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast in the wake of the raid, including the ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight. The Defense Department said in a post on X that U.S. forces boarded the Veronica III, conducting "a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding."
"The vessel tried to defy President Trump's quarantine — hoping to slip away," the Pentagon said. "We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down."
Video posted by the Pentagon shows U.S. troops boarding the tanker.
The Veronica III is a Panamanian-flagged vessel under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The Veronica III left Venezuela on Jan. 3, the same day as Maduro's capture, with nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil, TankerTrackers.com posted Sunday on X.
"Since 2023, she's been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil," the organization said.
Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, told The Associated Press in January that his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document that at least 16 tankers left the Venezuelan coast in contravention of the quarantine.
The Trump administration hasbeen seizing tankersas part of its broader effortsto take controlof the Venezuela's oil. The Pentagon did not say in the post whether the Veronica III was formally seized and placed under U.S. control, and later told the AP in an email that it had no additional information to provide beyond that post.
Last week, the U.S. militaryboarded a different tankerin the Indian Ocean, the Aquila II. The ship was being held while its ultimate fate was decided by the United States, according to a defense official who spoke last week on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing decision-making.
Associated Press writer Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.
