JERUSALEM/BEIRUT — US President Joseph R. Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron are expected to announce a ceasefire in Lebanon between armed group Hezbollah and Israel imminently, four senior Lebanese sources said on Monday.

In Washington, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said, “We’re close” but “nothing is done until everything is done.”

The French presidency said discussions on a ceasefire had made significant progress. In Jerusalem, a senior Israeli official said Israel’s cabinet would meet on Tuesday to approve a truce deal with Hezbollah.

Signs of a diplomatic breakthrough were accompanied by heavy Israeli airstrikes on Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, as Israel pressed on with the offensive it launched in September after almost a year of cross-border hostilities.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on reports that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to the text of a deal. But the senior Israeli official told Reuters that Tuesday’s cabinet meeting was intended to approve the text.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Danny Danon, said Israel would maintain an ability to strike southern Lebanon under any agreement. Lebanon has previously objected to wording that would grant Israel such a right.

US State department spokesperson Matthew Miller said gaps between the two parties have narrowed significantly but there are still steps they need to take to reach an agreement.

“Oftentimes the very last stages of an agreement are the most difficult because the hardest issues are left to the end,” he said. “We are pushing as hard as we can.”

Diplomacy is aimed at getting Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel to end fighting that erupted in October 2023 in parallel with Israel’s war against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza. The conflict in Lebanon has drastically escalated over the last two months.

In Beirut, Elias Bou Saab, Lebanon’s deputy parliament speaker, told Reuters there were “no serious obstacles” left to start implementing a US-proposed ceasefire with Israel, “unless Netanyahu changes his mind.”

He said the proposal would entail an Israeli military withdrawal from south Lebanon and regular Lebanese army troops deploying in the border region, long a Hezbollah stronghold, within 60 days.

A sticking point over who would monitor compliance with the ceasefire was resolved in the last 24 hours with an agreement to set up a five-country committee, including France and chaired by the United States, he said.

STRIKES ON BEIRUT
Despite diplomatic progress, hostilities have intensified. Over the weekend, Israel carried out powerful airstrikes, one of which killed at least 29 people in central Beirut, while Hezbollah unleashed one of its biggest rocket salvoes yet on Sunday, firing 250 missiles into Israel.

In Beirut, Israeli airstrikes leveled more of the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs on Monday, sending clouds of debris billowing over the Lebanese capital.

Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli attacks killed 31 people and wounded 62 across the country on Monday. Over the past year, more than 3,750 people have been killed and over one million have been forced from their homes, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures.

Israel has dealt major blows to Hezbollah, killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders, and inflicting massive destruction in Lebanon areas where the group holds sway.

Israel says its military offensive is aimed at enabling tens of thousands of Israelis to return to homes they evacuated when Hezbollah began firing across the Lebanese border into Israel more than a year ago. Hezbollah’s campaign followed the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that precipitated the Gaza war.

Hezbollah strikes have killed 45 civilians in northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. At least 73 Israeli soldiers have been killed in northern Israel, the Golan Heights and in combat in southern Lebanon, according to Israeli authorities.

MISTRUST OVER DEAL
Biden’s administration, which leaves office in January, has emphasized diplomacy to end the Lebanon conflict, even as all negotiations to halt the parallel war in Gaza are frozen.

US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk will be in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss using a potential Lebanon ceasefire as a catalyst for a deal ending hostilities in Gaza, the White House said.

Diplomacy over Lebanon has focused on restoring a ceasefire based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the last major war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.

It requires Hezbollah to pull its fighters back around 30 kilometers from the Israeli border, behind the Litani River, and the regular Lebanese army to enter the frontier region.

Israel and Hezbollah have accused each other of failing to implement it in the past; Israel says a new ceasefire must allow it to strike any Hezbollah fighters or weapons that remain south of the river.

An agreement could reveal rifts in Mr. Netanyahu’s right-leaning government. The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said Israel must press on with the war until “absolute victory.” Addressing Mr. Netanyahu on X, he said, “It is not too late to stop this agreement!” — Reuters

MOSCOW — Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.

This as Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of Greater London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers say.

The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested that US President Joseph R. Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons, though there were fears such a step would have serious implications.

“American politicians and journalists are seriously discussing the consequences of the transfer of nuclear weapons to Kyiv,” Mr. Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, said on Telegram.

Mr. Medvedev said that even the threat of such a transfer of nuclear weapons could be considered as preparation for a nuclear war against Russia.

“The actual transfer of such weapons can be equated to the fait accompli of an attack on our country,” under Russia’s newly updated nuclear doctrine, he said.

RUSSIAN ADVANCES
The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase after Moscow’s forces made some of their biggest territorial gains and the United States allowed Kyiv to strike back with US missiles.

“Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine,” independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.

The Russian army captured almost 235 square kilometers (sq. km.) in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, it said.

Russian forces had taken 600 sq. km. in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, a group with close links to the Ukrainian army that studies combat footage and provides frontline maps.

Russia began advancing faster in eastern Ukraine in July just as Ukrainian forces carved out a sliver of its western region of Kursk. Since then, the Russian advance has accelerated, according to open-source maps.

Russia’s forces are moving into the town of Kurakhove, a stepping stone towards the logistical hub of Pokrovsk in Donetsk, and have been exploiting the vulnerabilities of Kyiv troops along the frontline, analysts said.

“Russian forces recently have been advancing at a significantly quicker rate than they did in the entirety of 2023,” analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a report.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in its Monday update that 45 battles of varying intensity were raging along the Kurakhove part of the frontline that evening.

The Institute for the Study of War report and pro-Russian military bloggers say Russian troops are in Kurakhove. Deep State said on its Telegram messaging app on Monday that Russian forces are near Kurakhove.

“Russian forces’ advances in southeastern Ukraine are largely the result of the discovery and tactical exploitation of vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s lines,” Institute analysts said in their report.

Russia says it will achieve all of its aims in Ukraine no matter what the West says or does.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said peace cannot be established until all Russian forces are expelled and all territory captured by Moscow, including Crimea, is returned.

But outnumbered by Russian troops, the Ukrainian military is struggling to recruit soldiers and provide equipment to new units.

Mr. Zelensky has said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main objectives were to occupy the entire Donbas, spanning the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and oust Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region, parts of which they have controlled since August. — Reuters

WASHINGTON — A US judge on Monday dismissed the federal criminal case accusing Donald Trump of attempting to overturn his 2020 election defeat after prosecutors moved to drop that prosecution and a second case against the president-elect, citing Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

The order from US District Judge Tanya Chutkan puts an end to the federal effort to hold Trump criminally responsible for his attempts to hold onto power after losing the 2020 election, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters.

The move came after Special Counsel Jack Smith, the lead prosecutor overseeing both cases, moved to dismiss the election case and end his attempt to revive a separate case accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified documents when he left office in 2021 after his first term as president.

It represents a big legal victory for the Republican president-elect, who won the Nov. 5 US election and is set to return to office on Jan. 20.

The Justice Department policy that the prosecutors cited dates back to the 1970s. It holds that a criminal prosecution of a sitting president would violate the US Constitution by undermining the ability of the country’s chief executive to function. Courts will still have to approve both requests from prosecutors.

The prosecutors in a filing in the election subversion case said the department’s policy requires the case to be dismissed before Trump returns to the White House.

“This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.

Prosecutors in the documents case signaled they will still ask a federal appeals court to bring back the case against two Trump associates who had been accused of obstructing that investigation.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung hailed what he called “a major victory for the rule of law.”

Trump had faced criminal charges in four cases — the two brought by Smith and two in state courts in New York and Georgia. He was convicted in the New York case while the Georgia case, which also relates to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is in limbo.

In a post on social media, Trump railed on Monday against the legal cases as a “low point in the History of our Country.”

The moves by Smith, who was appointed in 2022 by US Attorney General Merrick Garland, represents a remarkable shift from the special prosecutor who obtained indictments against Trump in two separate cases accusing him of crimes that threatened US election integrity and national security. Prosecutors acknowledged that the election of a president who faced ongoing criminal cases created an unprecedented predicament for the Justice Department.

Chutkan left open the possibility that prosecutors could seek to charge Trump again after he leaves office, but prosecutors would likely face challenges bringing a case so long after conduct involved in the case happened.

Trump pleaded not guilty in August 2023 to four federal charges accusing him of conspiring to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump, who as president will again oversee the Justice Department, was expected to order an end to the federal 2020 election case and to Smith’s appeal in the documents case.

Florida-based Judge Aileen Cannon, who Trump appointed to the federal bench, had dismissed the classified documents case in July, ruling that Smith was improperly appointed to his role as special counsel.

Smith’s office had been appealing that ruling and indicated on Monday that the appeal would continue as it relates to Trump personal aide Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, a manager at his Mar-a-Lago resort, who had been previously charged alongside Trump in the case. Both Nauta and De Oliveria have pleaded not guilty, as did Trump.

In the 2020 election case, Trump’s lawyers had previously said they would seek to dismiss the charges based on a US Supreme Court ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution over official actions taken while in the White House.

Trump denied wrongdoing in all cases and argued that the US legal system had been turned against him to damage his presidential campaign. He vowed during the campaign that he would fire Smith if he returned to the presidency.

Trump in May became the first former president to be convicted of a crime when a jury in New York found him guilty of felony charges relating to hush money paid to a porn star before the 2016 election. His sentencing in that case has been indefinitely postponed.

The criminal case against Trump in Georgia state court involving the 2020 election is stalled. — Reuters