House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., criticized Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Friday, calling him ‘the ultimate hypocrite’ in response to a new report in which Raskin stopped short of committing to certify a potential 2024 presidential win for former President Trump.

‘Ranking member Raskin is the ultimate hypocrite,’ Comer told Fox News Digital. ‘He talks a big game about ‘saving democracy’ yet actively undermines it by sowing seeds of doubt in America’s free and fair elections when it benefits him to do so.’

Comer slammed Raskin as ‘a two-time election denier,’ saying Raskin ‘suggested the 2000 election was illegitimate and didn’t certify election results when Trump won the White House in 2016.’

‘Now ranking member Raskin is signaling he’d do the same if Trump wins again in November. Raskin doesn’t care at all about democracy. He only cares about putting a Democrat in the White House whatever the cost,’ Comer said. 

Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee and a former Jan. 6 committee member, told Axios in a report published Thursday if former President Trump ‘won a free, fair and honest election, then we would obviously accept it.’ The report continued to say that Raskin said he ‘definitely’ does not assume the former president will employ ‘free, fair and honest means’ to win the Oval Office.

Trump ‘is doing whatever he can to try to interfere with the process, whether we’re talking about manipulating electoral college counts in Nebraska or manipulating the vote count in Georgia or imposing other kinds of impediments,’ Raskin told Axios. 

Several other Democratic members of Congress shared Raskin’s sentiments, including Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern. McGovern told Axios Democrats will certify a Trump win ‘assuming everything goes the way we expect it to.’ 

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., also called the Democrats’ statements ‘the most predictable hypocrisy in politics.’

‘After years of the radical left’s stenographers in the mainstream media, corporate special interest groups and radical Democrats viciously smearing President Trump and Republicans for standing up for election integrity, now 24 days until Election Day, far left Democrats are claiming that a President Trump victory would be illegitimate, and the mainstream media remains silent,’ Stefanik told Fox News Digital.

Raskin responded to the criticism in a statement to Fox News Digital, saying, ‘The Democratic Party is a party of democracy and the rule of law. We stand by both.

‘Trump and his followers have tried to use fraud, deceit, lies, coercion, trickery, voter suppression and mass insurrectionary violence to seize power against the rules of our constitutional order,’ Raskin said. ‘I will never back down from defending American constitutional democracy against their big lies, political coups and violent insurrections. And I certainly won’t get into the mud with Chairman Comer and call him a hypocrite because that would imply he has some principles and ideals to betray.’

Top Democrats criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson last month after he was asked if he’d commit to observing regular order in certifying the election results if Vice President Kamala Harris were to win. 

‘Well, of course — if we have a free, fair and safe election, we’re going to follow the Constitution. Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely,’ Johnson said.

Election certification was also touched upon during the vice presidential debate a few weeks ago, when Sen. JD Vance was pressed on past comments saying he would not have voted to certify the 2020 election results in January 2021. 

Vance fired back at the proposition that Trump could prove to be a ‘threat to democracy,’ saying he believes ‘we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country’ in the form of censorship. 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz circled back to the 2021 exchange, blasting Trump and Republicans for denying the events that unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building.

Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff did not explicitly deny allegations — made to the Daily Mail by several unnamed sources — that he once slapped an ex-girlfriend and also hired a ‘trophy secretary’ at his Los Angeles law firm.

Emhoff called the tabloid stories ‘a distraction’ when responding to a question during a Friday interview with ‘Morning Joe’ co-host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. The allegations could not be independently verified by Fox News Digital.

‘We don’t have time to be pissed off. We don’t have time to focus on it. It’s designed to try to get us off our game,’ Emhoff said, before pivoting to a warning about a potential second term for former President Trump. ‘We understand the stakes. We understand the responsibility. We understand what is necessary. Our very country. Our future.’

Trump recently told the Daily Wire that if he were subject to the same allegations as Emhoff, it would be ‘the greatest story in the last five years’ in the media.

Earlier this month, an unnamed representative for Emhoff told Semafor the report that he slapped a former girlfriend during a 2012 trip to the Cannes Film Festival is ‘untrue.’

‘Any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false,’ the representative said.

The Daily Mail’s exclusive story at the time quoted three unidentified sources who claim Emhoff slapped his then-girlfriend while the couple waited in a valet line following an event in Nice, France, in 2012. The alleged altercation was purportedly sparked when the woman — identified only by the pseudonym ‘Jane,’ and described as a successful New York attorney — flirted with a valet, according to the article.

The Harris campaign, the Office of the Vice President and a representative for Emhoff’s ex-wife, Kerstin Emhoff, did not comment despite repeated requests from Fox News. 

Several media outlets, including Semafor, noted they had been unable to match the Daily Mail’s reporting, and legacy media companies such as The New York Times have yet to report on the claims. 

The Daily Mail’s article hinged on the recollections of three people described as being friends of ‘Jane.’ The outlet said its sources requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from Emhoff. The three friends reportedly provided the outlet with a photo of the pair when they were still a couple, as well as itineraries and correspondence between Emhoff and ‘Jane’ to substantiate that they made the trip to France in May 2012.

One of the sources is described by the Daily Mail as a female New York attorney who learned about the alleged incident from ‘Jane.’

‘He hauled up and slapped her so hard she spun around,’ the source is quoted as saying. ‘She said she was in utter shock. She was so furious, she slapped him on one side, and then on the other cheek with the other hand.’

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.

President Biden on Friday joked that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is his ‘boss’ and referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as the ‘president’ while he delivered an update on hurricane recovery efforts from the White House.

Seated in the Roosevelt Room with members of his Cabinet, including the secretary and the vice president, who joined by teleconference, Biden said the priorities for his administration are power restoration and debris removal. 

‘Our heart goes out to all those folks who’ve lost not only personal property, but their homes and some lost lives and grieving after the aftermath of the tornadoes, brutal wind, record downpours and historic flooding,’ Biden said. 

The president informed reporters that he has spoken with dozens of officials from North Carolina, Florida and other states impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the last two weeks. According to Biden, experts have estimated that Milton caused $50 billion in damage alone.

‘We’re going to do everything we can to help you pick back up the pieces and get back to where you were,’ he said.

North Carolina authorities on Friday confirmed at least 92 storm-related fatalities from Hurricane Helene, but were unable to provide the number of those who remain missing or unaccounted for. Florida officials confirmed at least eight people are dead after Hurricane Milton spawned at least four tornadoes which wreaked havoc in St. Lucie County, The Associated Press reported.

More than 3 million people remain without power in Florida and an untold number of homes are damaged from flooding, heavy wind and fallen trees. Even so, 50,000 power line workers pre-staged by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have already restored power to 1 million customers. 

President Biden reiterated that the federal government is fully involved in rescue and recovery efforts, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. Coast Guard, the Army Corps and the Florida National Guard. He also criticized ‘disgusting’ claims spread online that suggest the federal hurricane response has been inadequate. 

The 81-year-old president appeared to trail off toward the conclusion of his remarks. At that point, Granholm interrupted by touching Biden on the arm, apparently to remind him to turn over the microphone to the vice president. 

‘I know,’ Biden said. ‘I’m going to go to the vice president in a second.’

Then, with a glance toward the reporters in the room, he grabbed the secretary’s hand and joked, ‘She’s my boss here.’ 

Harris then seemed to interject, and Biden replied, ‘Hang on a second, Madame Vice President.’

Before turning the news conference over to Harris, Biden said his administration will request additional funds from Congress for recovery efforts. 

‘We’re going to need a lot of help. We need a lot more money,’ he said. ‘So I’m just telling everybody now that I don’t want to hear this is going to be the end of it. So with that, I will yield to the president, I mean, the vice president,’ he said.

Harris has clashed with DeSantis in recent days after the Republican governor declined to take her call regarding the hurricane response. He said Thursday that the vice president has ‘no role’ in the process and added that she had never attempted to call him during previous storms in Florida.

‘I am working with the president of the United States. I’m working with the director of FEMA. We’ve been doing this now nonstop for over two weeks,’ DeSantis said Thursday. 

Speaking from a TV screen, Harris made an effort to show that she is involved in cabinet discussions about recovery efforts, noting that she has spoken with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about cracking down on purported price-gouging in the wake of the disaster.

‘We continue to coordinate resources with local and state authorities, including food, water, medical supplies and generators, and we will continue to work with the teams on the ground to restore water and power as quickly as possible in the coming days and weeks,’ Harris said. 

‘President Biden and I will make sure that the communities that are there on the ground and have been affected will have the resources they need not only to respond to the storm, but also to recover. And we will continue to keep communities in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina and across the Southeast ensured that they will recover from Hurricane Helene.’ 

‘The bottom line is we are in this for the long haul,’ she said. 

Fox News Digital’s Bradford Betz and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

A leading vaping industry advocate tells Fox News Digital that Democrat positions cracking down on vaping and using nicotine pouches could backfire as many Americans across the country are single issue voters on that issue.

Tony Abboud, Executive Director of the Vapor Technology Association, told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration has ‘made it clear’ that they have ‘no desire to have less harmful nicotine products on the market.’

‘I don’t know how to explain that except to say special interest groups in this country that are often funded by the likes of Mike Bloomberg, who has made it clear that he wants to rid the marketplace of flavored e-cigarettes,’ Abboud said. ‘That is what is at issue here, it is an ideological fight. It has nothing to do with science, and it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with what the FDA is legally required to do.’

Abboud’s trade association represents companies in the independent vaping industry throughout the entire supply distribution chain, from manufacturers to mom and pop retailers and consumers.

‘Those consumers are the ones that are using the variety of flavored vaping products that are available to help them quit smoking, because this is the first thing that has helped them, so many smokers who have tried to quit over many years, it’s the first thing that’s really helped them succeed and so that is at the core. I think one of the reasons why this product is so important to people, and we cannot forget that in everything that we’re doing, we’re talking about a product that has changed people’s lives.’

Democrats across the country, from Sen. Chuck Schumer to VP candidate Tim Walz, who supported heavy taxes on Zyn in Minnesota, have stood up in opposition to flavored vapes and nicotine pouches, which Abboud says could motivate voters in the upcoming election.

‘So we looked at this issue back in 2019 and we looked at it again this year and what’s very clear from the numbers is that vaping voters can be single issue voters, because as I noted at the outset, this is an incredibly important product to them,’ Abboud told Fox News Digital. ‘And the notion that the government is going to take away their freedom to vape, their freedom to make choices over what they use and don’t use affects them greatly.’

‘The same is true with our small business owners. They have built businesses that support their families that creates jobs. Tens of thousands of jobs in various states, over 100,000 jobs across the United States,’ he continued. ‘This is a real industry with real people and the calls by mostly Democrats to rid the market of these products is a call to shut down these small businesses. We fought hard for those in 2019, and President Trump did the right thing. He said, I’m not going to ban flavors. I’m going to raise the age to 21 to address the youth vaping epidemic at the time, and it’s effectively been solved. The youth vaping rate is now 71% lower than it was at the time that that law was changed.’

Abboud told Fox News Digital that voters who are concerned about being able to easily access tobacco alternatives are going to be more likely to support former President Trump.

‘I think voters really just have an option, right?’ Abboud said. ‘They have an option of a president who has in the past supported their freedom to vape, has defended their small businesses, has ensured that they had access to safer, low, safer nicotine alternatives to smoking cigarettes versus what they’ve had in the last three and a half years, which is an administration which has done everything in its power to eliminate these products from the market, while at the same time, by the way, authorizing, like I noted, hundreds of new cigarettes.’

‘We know where President Trump stood in 2019 and if you think about the common sense approach that he took, it changed everything in this country as it relates to youth vaping and so, yeah, we are hopeful that that thinking will continue and that common sense regulations will replace this mess that this current administration’s FDA has created.’

‘We’ve already seen in our data that significant majorities of swing state voters agree that we should not be banning vaping products or banning flavored vaping products, but instead the FDA should focus on harm reduction and doing everything in its power to fill the marketplace with these new technologies. And if you look at the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the majorities I’m talking about are 60%, 59% and 58% and what that tells you is Americans are smart, voters are smart, and they know when government is not acting in their interests.’

Abboud also pointed out that crackdowns on smoking alternatives often hit minority communities the hardest.

‘The people that smoke and suffer from smoking-related disease and death are predominantly people in lower income communities,’ Abboud said. ‘The people in lower income communities today are already getting just hurt so badly by the high cost of groceries, the high cost of housing.’

‘So for politicians like Governor Walz to impose a 95% tax, it is a regressive tax, and it is a regressive tax on people who need relief,’ Abboud said. ‘In this case, he’s making it harder and more expensive to use the safest and safer form of nicotine available on the market.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign for comment but did not receive a response.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Friday, hailing the ‘very close’ relationship between Russia and Iran. 

The meeting comes as Iran braces for an Israeli response to its missile attacks on Tel Aviv earlier this week. 

‘We are actively working together in the international arena, and our assessments of events taking place in the world are often very close,’ Putin said, as reported by Russia’s state news agency TASS.

The cooperation between the two sanctioned nations has sparked renewed alarm in the West. U.S. officials have said Tehran is supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles to use in its fight against Ukraine. 

In return, Russia is suspected of providing Iran with sensitive nuclear technology – as it draws nearer in its capabilities to being a fully nuclear-armed state. 

‘Russia is the world’s largest nuclear power. It holds an advantage even with the United States when it comes to nukes, especially in the tactical warhead realm and, obviously, it can share,’ Rebekah Koffler, former senior official in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and author of ‘Putin’s Playbook,’ told Fox News Digital.

‘Nuclear is not the only capability – strategic capability of concern – there’s also cyber and space weapons,’ she said. 

Former President Donald Trump launched the U.S. Space Force in August 2019 to counter Russia and China’s capabilities in space.

‘Russia has, again, one of the world’s most robust counter space weapons and has a developed, mature space warfare doctrine,’ Koffler went on. 

‘Nuclear weapons do not work without satellites. Whatever Iran has right now, however close they are in terms of developing the actual capability, can’t do anything without a satellite network. You can’t do targeting, you can’t do command and control, missile warning, all that stuff, you cannot negate the adversaries command and control capability, and that is what Russia can, and probably has, to some extent, provided to Iran, although there’s no conclusive analysis.’ 

During the gathering, Putin reportedly backed up Pezeshkian’s condemnations of Israel. Pezeshkian said that Israel must ‘stop killing innocent people’ and blamed the U.S. and European Union for supporting Israel in the war. 

The pair met on the sidelines of an international conference in Turkmenistan. Pezehskian agreed to visit his counterpart in Russia, according to state-run RIA news agency.

‘Economically and culturally, our communications are being strengthened day by day and becoming more robust,’ Pezeshkian was cited as telling Putin by Iran’s official IRNA news agency.

‘The growing trend of cooperation between Iran and Russia, considering the will of the top leaders of both countries, must be accelerated to strengthen these ties,’ he said.

The meeting represents a stark reorienting for Putin, who in the past has been the ‘most pro-Israel president in Russian history,’ according to Koffler. But both Russia and Iran face steep sanctions from the U.S. 

Around 20% of the Jewish population in Israel are Russian expatriates. ‘Jewish people, traditionally, are very smart, highly educated, highly employable. And with Russia having a demographic issue, Putin ideally wants those people, or their children or their grandchildren to come back to Russia,’ Koffler explained. 

The Israeli Prime Minister was initially resistant to providing arms to Ukraine when Russia invaded. But the Pentagon tapped into a little-known stockpile of U.S. weapons stored in Israel for its defense to help fill Ukraine’s request for artillery last year. 

The U.S. has offered Ukraine over $100 billion in arms assistance over the course of the war. Russia views Israel, which is also armed by U.S. supply, as squarely in the camp of the Americans. 

‘It’s not Iran that pushed Russia. Iran has no influence. Russia has always been the top dog in that relationship,’ said Koffler. ‘But it’s Russia that oriented itself towards Iran as a result of the Biden administration’s policies.’

A new Wall Street Journal poll has found little separation between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in seven battleground states, prompting a Democratic pollster to say that the 2024 election ‘really could not be closer.’ 

The survey of 600 registered voters in each of the states, which was conducted from Sept. 28 to Oct. 8 with a margin of error of +/- four percentage points, found that in a head-to-head contest, Trump and Harris are tied in North Carolina and Wisconsin. 

Harris leads Trump 48-46% in Arizona and Georgia, and 49-47% in Michigan, according to the poll. In Nevada, Trump has his biggest swing state lead of 49-43%, while he leads Harris in Pennsylvania 47-46%, the poll also found. 

‘It really could not be closer,’ Democrat Michael Bocian, one of the pollsters who worked on the survey, told The Wall Street Journal. ‘It’s an even-steven, tight, tight race.’ 

Overall, Trump leads Harris 46-45%, with 93% of Democrats and Republicans across the seven states indicating their support for their parties’ respective candidates. 

As for independent voters, 40% said they would vote for Harris, compared to 39% for Trump. 

On the issues, voters say they trusted Trump more to handle the economy, inflation and immigration and border security. 

They preferred Harris when it comes to housing affordability, abortion, healthcare and having someone in the Oval Office who cares about you. 

The poll found that 47% of voters believe Trump will stand up better for the American worker, compared to 45% for Harris, and that nearly two-thirds believe the national economy is poor or not so good. 

‘This thing is a dead heat and is going to come down to the wire. These last three weeks matter,’ Republican pollster David Lee told The Wall Street Journal. 

The newspaper cited Lee as saying that around this time in 2020, Biden had polling average leads of more than 5 points over Trump in each of the industrial northern swing states, compared to the narrower margins Harris is facing right now. 

However, Bocian says that Trump had a ‘clear advantage’ over Biden in March – the last time The Wall Street Journal polled the swing states – during a period where third-party candidates were having a ‘massive impact’ on the numbers. 

‘Now the third-party support has evaporated almost completely, and the race is tied in all the states,’ he said. 

An air raid on Beirut left at least 22 people dead and dozens of others wounded after Israeli airstrikes pummeled neighborhoods in Lebanon, according to the Associated Press.

The latest attack, the deadliest one in over a year of war between the embattled countries, further escalated the conflict with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.

Lebanon’s health ministry told the AP that the air strikes targeted two residential buildings in separate neighborhoods at the same time, demolishing the eight-story building and taking out the lower floors of the other.

The Israeli military told the AP it was investigating the reported strikes. Israeli airstrikes have become more prevalent in Beirut’s tightly packed southern suburbs, where Hezbollah bases a large portion of its operations.

The attack came the same day as Israeli forces fired on United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and wounded two of them, the AP reported. 

Hezbollah has expanded its rocket fire to more populated areas deeper inside Israel, causing few casualties but interrupting daily life for people in the country. 

The attacks across Israel come as the Jewish nation finds itself embroiled in multiple conflicts with Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Biden spoke on Wednesday to discuss Israel’s anticipated retaliatory attack against Iran following its massive missile strike on Israel last week, reported Israeli news outlets. 

The Biden administration has grown increasingly frustrated with Israel over its withholding of security details and had previously urged it not to launch an incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah over concerns it could prompt a broader regional war. 

The White House has urged Israel not to hit Iranian nuclear or oil facilities and to keep its retaliation ‘proportionate,’ though the administration has not specified what this type of attack would look like. 

Roughly 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon since the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel escalated last month. More than 400,000 people have fled Lebanon into Syria, and roughly 1,400 people have been killed based on numbers provided by the Lebanese Health Ministry and the number of combatants believed to have been killed by Israel. Some 70,000 Israelis have been forced out of the country’s northern communities since the start of the conflict. 

Fox News Digital’s Caitlin McFall and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Democratic strategists are calling on the Harris campaign to get more aggressive amid concerns her early momentum, spurred largely by Harris’ debate performance and the Democratic National Convention, has waned due to a number of factors.

‘I’m scared to death,’ Democratic strategist James Carville said Wednesday. 

‘Now that the sugar high is gone, people have realized what Kamala Harris has said from the start, which is that she is the underdog,’ Anthony Coley, a former Biden and Obama staffer turned political consultant, told The Hill. 

‘If you’re not nervous, you’re not paying attention,’ former Harris communications director Jamal Simmons added.

Meanwhile, David Axelrod, widely regarded as the political mastermind behind former President Obama’s 2008 victory, recognized that ‘Harris had a great launch, right through the convention and the debate,’ but he acknowledged ‘the race has plateaued.’ 

Carville’s remarks that he is ‘scared to death’ about Nov. 5 came during an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber. Carville estimated that with Hurricane Milton dominating the news cycle, Harris only has about 20 days to amplify her messaging.

An anonymous Democratic strategist told The Hill that Harris is still ‘fine-tuning her message’ way too close to Election Day. ‘We are in the ‘make the sale’ phase of the campaign now. We’re not still tweaking the message,’ the strategist pointed out.  

Some of the criticism from Democratic strategists also included suggestions the Harris campaign get more aggressive.

‘They need to be sharp. They need to be aggressive. They need to stop answering questions and start asking questions,’ Carville insisted on Wednesday. ‘I think she and the whole campaign need to be much more aggressive and much less passive than they are.’

‘In these campaigns, every time you clear a bar, the bar gets raised,’ added Axelrod. ‘You have to lift your game and adjust your strategy.’

With Election Day rapidly approaching, polling in three critical battleground states show former President Trump making gains, but the race still remains a toss-up between the two candidates. 

According to polling from Quinnipiac University, Harris is maintaining a 3-point advantage over Trump in battleground Pennsylvania. However, that is a drop from Harris’ 6-point lead in Quinnipiac’s September polling of Pennsylvania voters. 

Quinnipiac polling in Michigan shows Trump with a 3-point edge, and it shows him with a 2-point advantage in Wisconsin. Quinnipiac’s Michigan polling last month had Harris leading by 5 points, while its Wisconsin polling had her at a 1-point advantage over Trump. 

‘That was then, this is now,’ said Tim Malloy, a polling analyst at Quinnipiac. ‘The Harris post-debate starburst dims to a glow as Harris enters the last weeks slipping slightly in the Rust Belt.’

Russia has suffered some 600,000 casualties in its war with Ukraine — more than its losses in every conflict since World War II combined, according to U.S. officials. 

This September was the deadliest month of the entire war for Russia, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters on a call Wednesday. 

‘Russian losses, again both killed and wounded in action, in just the first year of the war exceeded the total of all Soviet losses in any conflict since World War II combined,’ the official said.

However, the steep casualties are not a ‘definitive metric’ of success for Ukraine, the official warned. Ukraine has also suffered mass casualties, though the U.S. has not disclosed how many. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in February that some 31,000 troops had been killed. 

The U.K. Ministry of Defence put Russia’s daily casualty count at 1,271 in September, and said some 648,000 Russians had been killed or injured in the war. 

‘It’s kind of the Russian way of war where they continue to throw mass into the problem, and I think we’ll continue to see high losses,’ the U.S. military official said.

South Korea warned earlier this week that North Korea was sending its forces to fight alongside the Russians. 

Russia has also lost two-thirds of its pre-war inventory of tanks to Ukraine, along with 32 medium-to-large naval vessels. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is ‘trying to avoid a mass mobilization because of the effect that would have on Russia’s domestic population,’ the official said. 

‘At this point, he has been able to significantly increase the pay of these voluntary soldiers, and he has been able to continue to field those forces without doing a major mobilization.’

‘And I think we’re just watching very closely how long that stance can actually be one that he can maintain, and I think it’s an important one for all of us to watch very closely,’ the official added.

Ukraine’s military said it struck a base in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region storing nearly 400 strike drones on Wednesday.

Russia has made some progress in the Donetsk region, taking the town of Vuhledar earlier this month and pressing toward Povrosk, a key railroad hub and supply station for Ukraine. 

The U.S. official said the Russian strategy around Vuhledar and Povrosk had brought ‘substantial casualties’ for minor gains.

Russia’s Kursk region, which Ukraine invaded in August, is also in the midst of heavy fighting. Ukraine had hoped to divert Russian troops from the front line to defend Kursk. Russia has since recaptured some of the region, though the military official said that Ukrainian troops could hold onto the Kursk region for months or longer. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to pour billions into Ukraine’s defense. Last month, President Biden announced an $8 billion package for Kyiv to supply it with military equipment through January. It is the last of the $61 billion that Congress approved in April for Ukraine. 

Despite Zelenskyy’s calls, Biden has resisted authorizing Ukraine’s use of U.S.-given long-range missiles, known as ATACMs, to strike inside Russia and take out its stores of weapons capabilities, for fear of escalation. 

Many U.S. lawmakers have backed Zelenskyy’s request, but the U.S. official said the Biden administration is not considering reversing its policy. He said many of the arms that Ukraine is looking to take out, like Russia’s deadly glide bombs, have been moved out of range of ATACMs.