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Dec 17 (Reuters) – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview that relations with the United States could improve and that a starting point could be U.S. acknowledgment that a Western campaign to overturn his 2020 re-election had failed.

Official results declaring Lukashenko had been re-elected to a sixth term sparked unprecedented mass protests with demonstrators denouncing what they regarded as electoral fraud. Russian leader Vladimir Putin expressed support for Lukashenko whereas Western countries refused to recognise him as president.

Lukashenko, in power since 1994, responded to the protests by arresting many thousands of demonstrators.

In comments to U.S. media outlet Newsmax published on Wednesday, Lukashenko said Belarusians and Americans were pragmatists able to reach agreement.

“Like a man, I told your colleagues who came here: guys, you have to know how to admit defeat. If a big country like the U.S., if you organised an attack on us in 2020 and lost, that is a starting point,” Lukashenko said.

“No need to shout from the rooftops ‘we lost’, but that is a starting point. We lost, but let’s sit down calmly, like men, and move on.”

The United States and other Western countries hit Belarus with sanctions in connection with the 2020 election as well as other alleged rights violations and after Lukashenko allowed Putin to use Belarusian territory to launch the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. emissaries have visited Belarus in recent years to improve ties and help secure the release of activists that the West sees as political prisoners. The U.S. envoy to Belarus, John Coale, who was present during Lukashenko’s interview, last week helped broker a deal to win the release of 123 people imprisoned in Belarus.

In Lukashenko’s comments to Newsmax, also posted online by the Belarusian state news agency BelTA, the Belarusian leader said his country wanted good ties with the U.S.

“Why do we have poor relations with the Americans? Did we do something bad to the United States of America? Nothing. So why do you look at us in such a doubting way?” he said.

“I don’t want the problems that emerged while I was leading the country to be passed on to another generation.”

The two countries, he said, could even work together to resolve Washington’s differences with Venezuela – a country whose leaders have enjoyed good relations with Lukashenko.

“Can we work together there? Yes, we can.” he said.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

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By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON, Dec 17 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump used a pre-holiday address from the White House on Wednesday to portray his first year in office as a success story, even as Americans worry about the economy and Republicans face tough midterm elections in 2026.

Here are four takeaways from the speech: 

BIDEN, BIDEN, BIDEN

Trump began his remarks with 14 words that captured the central theme of the night: “Good evening, America. Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it.”

In other words: It’s not my fault.

The president, responding to voters’ anxiety over the cost of living, laid blame at the feet of former President Joe Biden in the nearly 20 minutes that followed, mentioning his name seven times. The economy? Biden’s fault. Crime? Biden. Healthcare? Biden. Bad immigration policy? You guessed it.

Trump has often blamed Biden for problems that have festered during his first year back in office, from Russia’s war in Ukraine to the eyesore of offshore wind farms. He followed that playbook again on Wednesday, particularly when it came to the high cost of living, which he sought to cast as fleeting – just as Biden once did when prices rose. 

“What a difference a year makes,” Trump said, dismissing the mood of consumers, adding that the U.S. is “poised for an economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen.”

FESTIVE SETTING, LITTLE CHEER

Trump chose to give the address from the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House, rather than the Oval Office, and the setting allowed him to speak like he does at his signature rallies: behind a podium, standing up.

The president gripped that podium and delivered his talking points at a blistering pace, standing between two flags and against a backdrop of green garland.

Trump did not offer either good cheer or empathy to Americans struggling with high costs for food, housing and holiday gifts, however. And his only holiday-themed greeting at all came at the end with a brief “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” wish to viewers. 

NO MAJOR NEW POLICIES

Though White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt had told reporters Trump might tease new policy in his speech, the president offered little hint of his forthcoming plans.

He said his administration would pursue aggressive new housing policies next year, promised to name a new Federal Reserve chair soon and unveiled a plan to send checks for $1,776 to U.S. troops.

Otherwise, the topics of his speech largely reflected a greatest hits version of his political rallies. He railed against Somalis in Minnesota, whom he accused of stealing from the United States; talked about men playing in women’s sports; and reiterated his often-used remark that the country a year ago was “dead.”

GUNS AND BUTTER

Notably absent from the speech was a major focus on foreign policy issues that have captured a significant share of Trump’s second term in office.

Heading into the remarks, Trump allies speculated about how prominently the speech would focus on an escalating confrontation with Venezuela.

Trump has ramped up pressure on the South American nation’s leadership in recent weeks, and on Tuesday he ordered a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving the country. It’s not clear whether Trump intends to try to force out the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro.

That question wasn’t answered on Wednesday. Instead, Trump focused largely on the economy, allowing himself only a short victory lap for his work on the Middle East and peacemaking generally.

Trump’s allies have warned his aides in recent weeks that he needs to shift focus from international conflicts to kitchen-table issues, according to a person familiar with the matter. Whether he was effective or not, for at least 18 minutes on a Wednesday night, he seemed to heed the advice.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Paul Thomasch and Deepa Babington)

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MBERA, Mauritania (AP) — The men move in rhythm, swaying in line and beating the ground with spindly tree branches as the sun sets over the barren and hostile Mauritanian desert. The crack of the wood against dry grass lands in unison, a technique perfected by more than a decade of fighting bushfires.

There is no fire today but the men — volunteer firefighters backed by the U.N. refugee agency — keep on training.

In this region of West Africa, bushfires are deadly. They can break out in the blink of an eye and last for days. The impoverished, vast territory is shared by Mauritanians and more than 250,000 refugees from neighboring Mali, who rely on the scarce vegetation to feed their livestock.

For the refugee firefighters, battling the blazes is a way of giving back to the community that took them in when they fled violence and instability at home in Mali.

Hantam Ag Ahmedou was 11 years old when his family left Mali in 2012 to settle in the Mbera refugee camp in Mauritania, 48 kilometers (30 miles) from the Malian border. Like most refugees and locals, his family are herders and once in Mbera, they saw how quickly bushfires spread and how devastating they can be.

“We said to ourselves: There is this amazing generosity of the host community. These people share with us everything they have,” he told The Associated Press. “We needed to do something to lessen the burden.”

His father started organizing volunteer firefighters, at the time around 200 refugees. The Mauritanians had been fighting bushfires for decades, Ag Ahmedou said, but the Malian refugees brought know-how that gave them an advantage.

“You cannot stop bushfires with water,” Ag Ahmedou said. “That’s impossible, fires sometimes break out a hundred kilometers from the nearest water source.”

Instead they use tree branches, he said, to smother the fire.

“That’s the only way to do it,” he said.

Since 2018, the firefighters have been under the patronage of the UNHCR. The European Union finances their training and equipment, as well as the clearing of firebreak strips to stop the fires from spreading. The volunteers today count over 360 refugees who work with the region’s authorities and firefighters.

When a bushfire breaks out and the alert comes in, the firefighters jump into their pickup trucks and drive out. Once at the site of a fire, a 20-member team spreads out and starts pounding the ground at the edge of the blaze with acacia branches — a rare tree that has a high resistance to heat.

Usually, three other teams stand by in case the first team needs replacing.

Ag Ahmedou started going out with the firefighters when he was 13, carrying water and food supplies for the men. He helped put out his first fire when he was 18, and has since beaten hundreds of blazes.

He knows how dangerous the task is but he doesn’t let the fear control him.

“Someone has to do it,” he said. “If the fire is not stopped, it can penetrate the refugee camp and the villages, kill animals, kill humans, and devastate the economy of the whole region.”

About 90% of Mauritania is covered by the Sahara Desert. Climate change has accelerated desertification and increased the pressure on natural resources, especially water, experts say. The United Nations says tensions between locals and refugees over grazing areas is a key threat to peace.

Tayyar Sukru Cansizoglu, the UNHCR chief in Mauritania, said that with the effects of climate change, even Mauritanians in the area cannot find enough grazing land for their own cows and goats — so a “single bushfire” becomes life-threatening for everyone.

When the first refugees arrived in 2012, authorities cleared a large chunk of land for the Mbera camp, which today has more than 150,000 Malian refugees. Another 150,000 live in villages scattered across the vast territory, sometimes outnumbering the locals 10 to one.

Chejna Abdallah, the mayor of the border town of Fassala, said because of “high pressure on natural resources, especially access to water,” tensions are rising between the locals and the Malians.

Abderrahmane Maiga, a 52-year-old member of the “Mbera Fire Brigade,” as the firefighters call themselves, presses soil around a young seedling and carefully pours water at its base.

To make up for the vegetation losses, the firefighters have started setting up tree and plant nurseries across the desert — including acacias. This year, they also planted the first lemon and mango trees.

“It’s only right that we stand up to help people,” Maiga said.

He recalls one of the worst fires he faced in 2014, which dozens of men — both refugees and host community members — spent 48 hours battling. By the time it was over, some of the volunteers had collapsed from exhaustion.

Ag Ahmedou said he was aware of the tensions, especially as violence in Mali intensifies and going back is not an option for most of the refugees.

He said this was the life he was born into — a life in the desert, a life of food scarcity and “degraded land” — and that there is nowhere else for him to go. Fighting for survival is the only option.

“We cannot go to Europe and abandon our home,” he said. “So we have to resist. We have to fight.”

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For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

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