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Ukraine is asking for security guarantees from the United States, European countries and Moscow as part of a possible settlement following the Russian invasion, a government adviser has said.

Kiev admits its long-term goal of joining the NATO military alliance is distant due to Kremlin opposition, and is instead seeking a separate short-term security deal, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday. .

Mykhailo Podolyak’s comments follow the breakdown of peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers in the southern Turkish city of Antalya.

Thursday’s meeting was their first since Russia invaded its neighbor on February 24, but it yielded few results, with sticking points including Moscow’s territorial claims over parts of Ukraine.

NATO “is still not ready to accept Ukraine as an unconditional partner,” Podolyak told the Financial Times. “This uncertainty, as we understand it, will last for a long time.”

He added that Ukraine was discussing “new European security formats” with Russia and the West that could give Ukraine “comparable guarantees” to Article 5 of the NATO treaty.

Podolyak made it clear that Ukraine would not agree to another deal with weak assurances, such as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum signed by Kyiv, Moscow, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The deal meant that Ukraine handed over its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal, which was the third largest in the world at the time, to Russia in return for security guarantees from the other signatories.

“The main problem with the Budapest Memorandum is the lack of clear legal obligations for the guarantor parties in the event of an assault,” Podolyak said.

“Now when we talk about security guarantees for Ukraine, we are only talking about clear legal obligations,” he added. “Specific logistical actions. Thus, in the event of aggression against Ukraine, specific states are legally bound to take specific measures to protect Ukraine,” he added.

Ukraine’s president on Wednesday rallied his country’s armed forces and citizens to keep fighting 14 days after the Russian invasion, while urging Russian troops to “go home”.

“Brave Ukrainians,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in a televised address to the nation. “We persevered and inspired the whole world with our determination.”

Russian troops “can destroy the walls of our homes, our schools, our churches; [they] can break Ukrainian businesses,” Zelensky said, referring to their bombings and airstrikes on civilian, non-military buildings.

“Corn [they] will never reach our soul, our heart, our ability to live freely. And fight boldly,” he added.

Zelensky, dressed in a military T-shirt, looked more rested and confident than at the start of the war. He spoke as Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attempts to seize major cities, including the capital Kiev, Kharkiv in the east and Mykolaiv in the south.

“You still have a chance to survive,” Zelensky said, addressing the 200,000 Russian troops in Ukraine. “We will not give up. Because it’s our house. These are our families and our children. We will fight until we regain our land and you are fully responsible for all our deaths.

He added: “You can still be saved if you leave.”

Zelensky issued a word of defiance to the United States and NATO over blocking Poland’s offer to send fighter jet supplies and urged them to “send planes to us”.

“If you don’t close the skies, you will also be responsible for this disaster”, he repeated, adding that Kiev is grateful to Poland for the alternative and its “willingness to provide Ukraine with planes of fight”.

REVIEW ANALYSIS

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that information about the federal government’s post-9/11 torture program on CIA “black sites” is protected by “state secrets privilege,” a doctrine that allows the government to withholding information in the context of litigation when its disclosure would compromise national security.

the fractured decision in United States vs. Zubaydah, written by Judge Stephen Breyer, ends a years-long effort by a Guantanamo Bay detainee and could make it easier for the government to rely on state secrets privilege in future cases. In sharp dissent, two judges at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum – Judge Neil Gorsuch and Judge Sonia Sotomayor – denounced the overclassification of documents and accused the government of invoking privilege to avoid embarrassment.

Opinion came in the case of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, known as Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian who was mistakenly considered a high-level al-Qaeda member when he was captured in Pakistan 20 years ago. While being held in several overseas locations, including one in Poland, the CIA repeatedly subjected Abu Zubaydah to so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation before he was transferred to Guantanamo military prison, where he remains today. .

The Supreme Court dispute stems from Abu Zubaydah’s efforts to file and obtain documents from two former CIA contractors who Abu Zubaydah says oversaw his interrogations. He wants to use the information in a criminal investigation in Poland, where prosecutors are investigating abuses that took place there. The US government has claimed that the information is protected by state secrets privilege because, although the location of the detention site has already been publicly disclosed, Abu Zubaydah’s request could compel former contractors to the CIA to confirm the location of the site – which would compromise national security. The Supreme Court agreed.

Breyer’s opinion for the court, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and largely by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, pointed out that although the court only faced ” a narrow evidentiary dispute”, he did not condone terrorism or torture. . Breyer explained that a key factor in his analysis was the language used in Abu Zubaydah’s request for information, which makes it clear that contractors’ responses “would tend to confirm (or deny) the existence of a CIA detention site in Poland”. Although this information has already been released publicly, even unofficially, Breyer wrote, the federal government has adequately explained why national security would be compromised if contractors confirmed or denied the information Abu Zubaydah was seeking. Specifically, Breyer noted, if the federal government confirms that there is a CIA “black site” in a country, the intelligence service of not only that country, but also other countries, will be less likely to cooperate. with US intelligence in the future.

Breyer rejected the reasoning of the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which concluded that because the contractors are individuals, rather than CIA employees, their disclosures would provide no confirmation or denial on behalf of the United States. Because both worked for the CIA as contractors and played a “central role” in the events at the heart of this case, Breyer said, “their confirmation (or denial) of the information sought by Zubaydah would amount to a CIA disclosure himself.

Breyer concluded that Abu Zubaydah’s case should be dismissed. At least in this case, he explained, the affidavit submitted by former CIA director Mike Pompeo asserting state secrets privilege is enough to convince the court that the privilege should apply. To the extent that Abu Zubaydah’s need for information is relevant, Breyer continued, much of that information is already in the public domain. And the government has indicated that it will allow Abu Zubaydah to submit his own statement about his treatment in Poland – which Breyer says is the information he really wants to disclose.

Judge Clarence Thomas filed an opinion, joined by Judge Samuel Alito, in which he agreed with the majority decision to dismiss Zubaydah’s discovery request. In Thomas’ view, the case should be dismissed because Abu Zubaydah has not demonstrated that he really needs the information he seeks, so there is no need for the court to decide whether the government has sufficiently substantiated his assertion that the information is protected by state secrets privilege.

Judge Elena Kagan agreed with parts of the majority opinion, but she would have sent the case back to the district court instead of dismissing it. She explained that “the government’s national security concerns all relate to confirming the location of detention sites.” But Abu Zubaydah is also looking for evidence of his treatment in black sites. The district court can and should be able to separate these two types of evidence, so that Abu Zubaydah receives information about the second but not the first, Kagan wrote.

In a 30-page dissent joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Judge Neil Gorsuch took no chances, detailing Abu Zubaydah’s torture and lamenting recent trends to ‘overclassify’ government documents .

The central point of the case, Gorsuch wrote, was information about Abu Zubaydah’s treatment while he was held in a black site between December 2002 and September 2003. No one, Gorsuch noted, claims that this information are a state secret.

Gorsuch rejected the idea that US courts should accept without question the federal government’s assertion that Abu Zubaydah’s prosecution should be dismissed because disclosing the information he is seeking would harm national security. The government should provide details to back up its claim, Gorsuch argued, and the courts should decide for themselves whether state secrets privilege applies. Gorsuch observed that although English monarchs “may have enjoyed the kind of latitude sought by government”, the “Constitution did not create a president in the image of the king, but envisaged an executive regularly checked and balanced by d ‘other authorities’.

While the executive branch’s efforts to classify information have increased dramatically over the past 20 years – Gorsuch observed wryly that the government had even classified a memo from one senior military official to another on the subject of the overclassification of documents – even more important, Gorsuch posited, is that the courts exercise scrutiny when the executive branch asserts state secrets privilege in an attempt to protect information from disclosure.

Even the majority, Gorsuch suggested, seem to agree that Abu Zubaydah can still sue again for information about his treatment at the black site in Poland. But, Gorsuch continued, he shouldn’t have to. Instead, Gorsuch argued, this case should go to the district court, which should be able to determine which discovery requests can go forward and which are barred by state secrets privilege.

According to Gorsuch, the government’s argument for dismissing the case really boils down to a desire to obstruct the Polish criminal investigation “and avoid (or at least delay) further embarrassment for past wrongdoings.” “But as embarrassing as these facts may be,” Gorsuch stressed, “there is no state secret here. The duty of this Court is to ensure the rule of law and the search for truth. We must not let shame cloud our vision.

This article has been originally published at Howe on the Court.

He thought he could ride in Ukraine and the world would change. Instead, he encountered a wall of force he never imagined.

He met the Ukrainian people.

From President Zelensky to every Ukrainian, their fearlessness, their courage, their determination inspire the world.

Groups of citizens blocking the tanks with their bodies. Everyone from students to retired teachers have become soldiers defending their homeland.

In this struggle, as President Zelensky said in his speech to the European Parliament, “light will prevail over darkness”. The Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States is here tonight.

May each of us here tonight in this room send an unequivocal signal to Ukraine and to the world.

Please stand up if you can and show that, yes, we, the United States of America, stand with the people of Ukraine.

Throughout our history we have learned this lesson when dictators don’t pay the price for their aggression, they cause more chaos.

They keep moving.

And the costs and threats to America and the world continue to mount.

This is why the NATO Alliance was created to ensure peace and stability in Europe after the Second World War.

The United States is a member along with 29 other nations.

It matters. American diplomacy matters. American resolve matters.

Putin’s latest attack on Ukraine was premeditated and unprovoked.

He rejected repeated efforts at diplomacy.

He thought the West and NATO would not respond. And he thought he could divide us at home. Putin was wrong. We were ready. Here’s what we did.

We prepared thoroughly and carefully.

We spent months building a coalition of other freedom-loving nations from Europe and the Americas to Asia and Africa to take on Putin.

I have spent countless hours uniting our European allies. We shared with the world in advance what we knew Putin was planning and precisely how he would try to falsely justify his aggression.

We have pitted the truth against Russia’s lies.

And now that he has acted, the free world holds him accountable.

With 27 members of the European Union, including France, Germany, Italy, as well as countries like the UK, Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and more others, even Switzerland.

We inflict pain on Russia and support the Ukrainian people. Putin is now more isolated from the world than ever.

Together with our allies, we are currently applying powerful economic sanctions.

We cut the largest Russian banks from the international financial system. Preventing the Russian central bank from defending the Russian rouble, rendering Putin’s $630 billion “war fund” worthless.

We are stifling Russia’s access to technology that will sap its economic strength and weaken its military for years to come.

Tonight, I say to the Russian oligarchs and corrupt leaders who have cheated billions of dollars from this violent regime: “No more”.

The US Department of Justice is assembling a dedicated task force to prosecute the crimes of Russian oligarchs.

We join our European allies in finding and seizing their yachts their luxury apartments their private jets. We come for your ill-begotten gains.

And tonight, I am announcing that we will join our allies in closing American airspace to all Russian flights, further isolating Russia and adding further pressure on its economy. He has no idea what’s coming.

The ruble has lost 30% of its value.

The Russian stock market has lost 40% of its value and trading remains suspended. The Russian economy is in shock and Putin is solely responsible.

Together with our allies, we support Ukrainians in their struggle for freedom. Military aid. Economic aid. Humanitarian aid.

We are providing over $1 billion in direct assistance to Ukraine and we will continue to help the Ukrainian people defend their country and alleviate their suffering.

But let’s be clear: our forces are not and will not be engaged in a conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine.

Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO allies – in case Putin decides to keep moving west.

To that end, we have mobilized US ground forces, air squadrons, and ship deployments to protect NATO nations, including Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

As I have said very clearly: the United States and our allies will defend every inch of NATO country territory with the full force of our collective power. Every inch.

And we remain lucid. The Ukrainians are fighting back with pure courage. But the next few days, weeks and months will be tough for them.

Putin unleashed violence and chaos. But even if he can make gains on the battlefield, he will pay a high price in the long run.

And a proud Ukrainian people, who have enjoyed 30 years of independence, have repeatedly shown that they will not tolerate anyone who tries to set their country back.

To all Americans, I will be honest with you, as I have always promised. A Russian dictator, invading a foreign country, has costs all over the world.

And I am taking strong action to ensure that the pain of our sanctions targets the Russian economy. And I will use every tool at our disposal to protect American businesses and consumers.

Tonight I can announce that the United States has worked with 30 other countries to release 60 million barrels of oil from reserves around the world.

America will lead this effort, releasing 30 million barrels of our own strategic oil reserve. And we are ready to do more if necessary, united with our allies.

These measures will help to blunt gasoline prices here at home. And I know the news about what is happening can seem alarming.

But I want you to know that everything will be fine.

When the history of this era is written, Putin’s war on Ukraine will have weakened Russia and strengthened the rest of the world.

While it wouldn’t have taken something so terrible for people around the world to see what’s at stake, now everyone sees it clearly.

We see unity among the leaders of nations, a more unified Europe, a more unified West. And we see unity among people gathering in cities in large crowds around the world, even in Russia, to show their support for the Ukrainian people.

In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security.

It’s a real test. That will take time. Let us therefore continue to be inspired by the iron will of the Ukrainian people.

To our fellow Ukrainian Americans who are forging a deep bond that connects our two nations, we stand with you.

Putin can surround Kiev with tanks, but he will never win the hearts and souls of the Ukrainian people.

He will never extinguish their love of freedom. It will never weaken the resolve of the free world.

“While we firmly believe in the warm friendship and cultural exchanges that have long existed between artists and art institutions in Russia and the United States,” Mr. Gelb said in a video statement, “we can no longer engage with artists or institutions that support Putin or are supported by him.

Mr Gelb added that the policy would be in effect “until the invasion and the killings have been stopped, order has been restored and restitutions have been made”.

The Met’s decision could affect artists like superstar soprano Anna Netrebko, who has links to Mr Putin and has previously been photographed holding a flag used by some Russian-backed separatist groups in Ukraine. Ms Netrebko is due to appear at the Met in Puccini’s ‘Turandot’ from April 30.

Ms Netrebko has tried to distance herself from the invasion, posting a statement on Instagram on Saturday saying she was “opposed to this war”. She added a note of defiance, writing that “forcing artists, or any public figure, to express their political views in public and denounce their homeland is not right.”

It was unclear whether his statement would pass the Met’s new test.

The company’s decision will also likely mean the end of its collaboration with the Bolshoi, including on a new production of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” which is slated for next season. The Met relied on the Bolshoi for stage sets and costumes, but now it may have to change course.

“We’re scrambling, but I think we’ll have no choice but to physically build our own sets and costumes,” Mr. Gelb said in an interview Sunday night.

He added that he was saddened that the partnership with the Bolshoi, which began five years ago, is likely to end – at least for now.

“It’s terrible that artistic relationships, at least temporarily, are the collateral damage of these actions of Putin,” he said.

The Met’s decision comes as performing arts institutions grapple with the continued fallout from Mr Putin’s invasion. In recent days, Russian artists, long ubiquitous in classical music, have come under pressure to condemn Mr Putin’s actions or face the prospect of canceled engagements.

Carnegie Hall and the Vienna Philharmonic last week dismissed two Russian artists, conductor Valery Gergiev and pianist Denis Matsuev, from a series of planned concerts because of the pair’s ties to Mr Putin . Mr Gergiev is also at risk of losing several key positions, including that of conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and honorary conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.

On Sunday, Mr Gergiev’s manager announced he was ending his relationship with his client.

“It has become impossible for us, and clearly inappropriate, to defend the interests of Maestro Gergiev, one of the greatest conductors of all time, a visionary artist loved and admired by many of us, who does not want not, or cannot, publicly end his career. longtime support for a regime that has come to commit such crimes,” the official, Munich-based Marcus Felsner, said in a statement.

The Royal Opera House in London announced on Friday that it would cancel a Bolshoi Ballet residency scheduled for this summer.

“Russia’s war represents an attack on fundamental international rules and norms that have prevailed since World War II, which we pledge to uphold,” the countries said in a joint statement. “We will hold Russia to account and collectively ensure that this war is a strategic failure for Putin.”

The announcement was a remarkable change of direction for European powers, which until recent days have been reluctant to end a 30-year effort to integrate Russia into the European economy. Now, like the Biden administration, European nations appear to be heading towards a policy of containment.

But, for the sake of political self-preservation, they refrained from banning energy transactions with Russia. The result is that Germany, Italy and other European nations will continue to buy and pay for the natural gas flowing through pipelines from Russia – through Ukrainian territory which is suddenly a war zone.

Some in Europe, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, had called for all Russian institutions and individuals to be cut off from SWIFT in a bid to bring the Russian economy to its knees. About 40% of the Russian government’s budget comes from energy sales.

While Saturday’s announcement was limited in scope, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said that “closing the banks will prevent them from carrying out most of their financial transactions around the world and will effectively block the Russian exports and imports”.

Ms von der Leyen said the transatlantic coalition would also try to cripple Russia’s central bank by freezing its transactions and making it “impossible for the central bank to liquidate assets”.

The central bank’s targeting may ultimately turn out to be more substantial than the action on SWIFT. Russia has spent the past few years bolstering its defenses against sanctions, amassing more than $630 billion in foreign currency reserves by embezzling its oil and gas revenues. These reserves can be used to prop up the rouble, the value of which has fallen dramatically over the past rounds of sanctions.

Biden administration officials said on Saturday there would be new restrictions by the United States and its allies against selling rubles to Russia, undermining the country’s ability to prop up its currency in the face of new sanctions against its financial sector. That, in turn, could cause inflation — and while administration officials haven’t said so explicitly, they clearly hope it could fuel protests against Mr Putin’s regime in Russia.

“We know that Russia has taken steps since 2014 to shield its economy from sanctions, in part through the hoarding of foreign exchange reserves,” said Emily Kilcrease, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “Central bank sanctions will limit their ability to leverage this asset, while limiting their ability to conduct monetary policy of any kind to manage the economic damage caused by other sanctions.”

The United States and its allies have also announced measures to pressure Russian elites, including creating a task force that says the White House “would identify, hunt down and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs – their yachts, mansions and any other ill-gotten gains we can find and freeze under the law”.

The idea is to hit those closest to Mr. Putin and undermine their ability to live in both Russia and the West. In another new initiative, the United States and its allies have said they will seek to limit the sale of so-called golden passports that allow wealthy Russians linked to the Russian government to become citizens of Western countries and access their financial systems.

Although the measures are among the toughest taken to date, the announcement does not correspond to a general cut of Russia from SWIFT, which some officials see as a kind of nuclear option. Such a move would have essentially cut Russia off from much of the global financial system.

And some experts say that can only push Russia to expand the SWIFT alternative it created years ago when it started trying to “protect” its economy. But Russia’s equivalent system is primarily national; to make it a competitor to SWIFT, officials say, would require teaming up with China.

Saturday’s decisions came the same day German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced his government was approving a transfer of anti-tank weapons to the Ukrainian military, ending its insistence on providing only non-lethal aid, like helmets.

At the same time, in a post on TwitterGerman Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and her Economy Minister Robert Habeck have acknowledged that the country is moving from opposition to a SWIFT ban to narrowly targeted favor.

“We are working intensely on how to limit the collateral damage of a disconnection from #SWIFT so that it reaches the right people,” they said. “What we need is a targeted and functional restriction of SWIFT.”

The announcement by the United States and its allies did not specify which banks would be cut from the system.

SWIFT, a Belgian messaging service formerly known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, connects more than 11,000 financial institutions around the world. It does not hold or transfer funds, but it allows banks and financial institutions to alert each other of transactions about to take place.

For weeks, the Biden administration has publicly downplayed the idea of ​​cutting Russia out of the system, suggesting that while all options were on the table, such a move could create more problems than it solved.

But behind the scenes, US officials were pressing European allies to give Mr Putin some kind of indication that Europe was heading for greater economic isolation of his country.

Moreover, since SWIFT is a European organization, the United States allows European countries to take the lead on the issue. The only unilateral leverage the United States could use would be to impose sanctions, or threaten them, on the SWIFT organization itself if it continued to deliver messages for Russian institutions.

Some sanctions experts have argued that banning Russian financial institutions from SWIFT is overblown as a tool to punish Russia, saying tough sanctions against the country’s banks will have the same effect.

But others have argued that shutting Russian institutions out of the system would be a blow to the country’s financial sector and that excluding just a handful of banks doesn’t go far enough.

“A targeted cut would not achieve what is needed,” said Marshall S. Billingslea, who served as Assistant Treasury Secretary for Terrorist Financing in the Trump administration. “They’re just going to reorganize the banking industry to come up with someone else. The much more direct approach is to simply detach SWIFT from all Russian financial institutions.

David E. Sanger and Alan Rappeport reported from Washington, and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels.

Joe Biden’s speech sounded like a closing argument, one that had been honed for some time and suggested that expectations are still high in the White House for Russia’s military action.

Biden briefly nodded to Moscow’s claims to stand down before sharply contradicting them, raising the US estimate of the number of troops surrounding Ukraine to 150,000 in a “threatening position”.

It was the kind of speech normally delivered on the eve of a capital action, usually a military action, to prepare the expectations of the population. Biden spoke directly to the American people, telling them he wasn’t going to “pretend it’s going to be painless” and that they would smell it at the gas pump. He promised that his administration would do what it could to mitigate this.

The president has also sought to speak over Putin’s head to ordinary Russians, who have heard little from their own media about their unprecedented troop deployments around Ukraine. Biden spoke of their “deep family history and cultural ties” with Ukrainians, and warned that a war would bloody the country’s reputation in the history books. The world, he said, “will not forget that Russia chose unnecessary death and destruction.”

He made it clear that the United States remained open to negotiations on mutual security issues, saying it would continue talks “as long as there was hope” for diplomacy, but he was sticking to the American position that no compromise on the fundamental principle of the right of Ukraine and other states to choose their alliances.

Earlier in the day, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had stressed that Ukrainian membership would not happen for the foreseeable future, but Biden did not echo that conciliatory note. The United States has already concluded that such verbal assurances will not be enough for Putin

Biden’s final statement, “If we don’t stand up for freedom. where there is this risk today, we will surely pay a higher price tomorrow” is likely to be met with grim glee in Kyiv, following the evacuation of the US Embassy and the withdrawal of diplomats Americans at the western end of the country. But the United States has maintained the arms supply and is said to have arranged for weapons to continue to flow to a Ukrainian insurgency should that happen.

This administration is well aware that it has been portrayed as weak for the way it left Afghanistan.

But Biden had long since lost faith in the US mission there, despite his wholehearted belief in NATO. He used the word “sacrosanct” to describe America’s obligation to its allies. It was a deliberately resonant language. Biden is clearly aware that this could prove to be a litmus test for his presidency.

The so-called ‘freedom convoy’ originally intended to protest against COVID-19 vaccination mandates and quarantine rules for cross-border truckers entered its 16th day on Saturday with more than 4,000 protesters gathered in Ottawa.

Ottawa police said the app was limited due to “safety concerns” such as “aggressive and unlawful behavior.”

The federal government warned late Saturday that the consequences for protesters who break the laws would be “increasingly severe.”

READ MORE: Ottawa police have been ‘incredible,’ convoy protesters say, as calls for a crackdown mount

Meanwhile, police efforts to clear a blockade in Windsor, Ont., were halted as hundreds of protesters gathered near the Ambassador Bridge, Canada’s busiest border crossing into the United States.

Police said they told protesters at the scene to go home, and several began packing tents.

But others remained, either in trucks or on foot, carrying Canadian flags and sometimes shouting “freedom.”

Police maintain a heavy presence at the entrance to the bridge, where traffic is at a standstill for most of the week.

3:35
Trucker protests: Protesters vow to protect National War Memorial in Ottawa after fence removed

Other protests gathered across the country, including in British Columbia, where a large truck broke through an RCMP barricade at the US border.

-With files from The Canadian Press and Eric Stober