Russian President Vladimir Putin is continuing to blame the West for his nation’s difficulties subduing opposition forces in Ukraine.

The Russian president told regional governors and national defense officials on Monday that the Ukrainian military’s current campaign in the territory of the Kursk region will not affect negotiations.

‘The West is fighting us with the hands of the Ukrainians,’ Putin told them at his home outside the capital city of Moscow, according to a report from The New York Times.

‘The enemy will certainly get the response he deserves, and all our goals, without doubt, will be accomplished,’ he continued.

Ukraine launched incursions into the Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk districts last week, continuing the campaign since last Tuesday. 

The events have put the Russian military command under fire over the intelligence and tactical lapses that allowed such an attack to happen. 

‘One of the obvious goals of the enemy is to sow discord, strife, intimidate people, destroy the unity and cohesion of Russian society,’ Putin told government officials in a televised meeting this week, according to the Moscow Times. ‘The main task is, of course, for the defense ministry to dislodge the enemy from our territories.’

Experts attribute the Ukrainian gains to ‘unconventional’ tactics that have caught the much larger Russian military off-guard.

‘Given the significant disparity of combat potential favoring Russia on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces appear to be switching to, or at minimum, intensifying, unconventional warfare, bringing war deeper into Russia,’ Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and author of ‘Putin’s Playbook,’ told Fox News Digital last week. 

‘With the latest surprise incursion into Kursk oblast, Zelenskyy likely aims to demonstrate to Putin that as long as there’s no peace in Ukraine, the Russian people will not sleep peacefully either,’ Koffler said. ‘Kyiv is probably also seeking to beef up its negotiating position in a potential peace settlement with Moscow.’

Approximately 121,000 people have evacuated the Kursk region — residents of the Belovsky and Krasnoyaruzhsky districts have also joined the exodus.

Ukraine has been the beneficiary of tens of billions of dollars from Western powers providing weapons and resources in order to push back against Russian expansion through the remote conflict.

Fox News Digital’s Peter Aitken and Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign is blasting former President Trump’s interview with billionaire Elon Musk, saying Trump’s campaign is in service of ‘self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class.’

Trump joined Musk on X Spaces, a live audio chat feature on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for an interview Monday night, although it had a shaky start due to technical difficulties. Millions of people ultimately listened to the interview, according to the live tracker throughout the discussion.

Musk said in a post after the interview that he would also be happy to host Harris on X Spaces.

During Monday’s interview, Musk gave Trump ample time to explain his stance on various issues such as immigration, the assassination attempt he survived at a campaign rally last month, inflation and the idea of eliminating the Department of Education to allow states authority over school systems.

‘I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states … Of the 50 [states], I would bet that 35 would do great. And 15 of them, or, you know, 20 of them, will be as good as Norway. You know, Norway is considered great,’ Trump said, adding that deep blue states like California may struggle if the department is eliminated.

The Harris campaign hit Trump following the interview for the policy proposals the former president touched on and took a jab over the technical difficulties the X Space endured.

‘Donald Trump’s extremism and dangerous Project 2025 agenda is a feature not a glitch of his campaign, which was on full display for those unlucky enough to listen in tonight during whatever that was on X.com,’ Harris campaign spokesperson Joseph Costello said in a statement. ‘Trump’s entire campaign is in service of people like Elon Musk and himself — self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.’

Project 2025 is a controversial initiative organized by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation that was authored by a number of conservatives, including some former Trump administration officials.

The initiative offers right-wing policy recommendations for Trump should he win the presidency, including replacing civil service employees with Trump loyalists, abolishing the Department of Education, criminalizing pornography, eliminating DEI programs, cutting funding for Medicaid and Medicare, rejecting abortion as health care and infusing the government with Christian values.

Trump has sought to distance himself from the initiative, which has been criticized as being an authoritarian and Christian nationalist plan that would undermine civil liberties, saying he knows nothing about it, that parts of it are ‘absolutely ridiculous and abysmal’ and that its backers are on the ‘radical right.’

Monday marked Trump’s return to X after nearly a year of not posting on the social media platform, posting a series of campaign ads prior to the interview with Musk.

Before Musk purchased X in 2022, Trump was suspended from the platform following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, when the platform was still known as Twitter. But even after Musk reinstated his account, Trump’s only post was sharing his mugshot in August of last year.

‘This country is going down, and these people are bad people that we’re running against. And they’re liars. They make statements. They do things that are so bad. They say they’re going to make a strong border. They say they’ve been great on the border, and they’ve been the worst in history. They say they’ll stop crime,’ Trump said towards the end of the interview.

Trump also addressed President Biden’s decision last month to suspend his re-election campaign, saying it was a Democratic ‘coup’ that pressured the president to step aside. Biden’s decision came amid pressure from Democrats to drop out of the race over concerns about his mental acuity.

‘This was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave, and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way,” Trump said.

‘They just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him,’ Musk responded before Trump criticized Biden as ‘the worst president in history.’

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.

A conservative government watchdog group secured a legal victory against the Biden-Harris administration by compelling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to stop deleting employee emails they say had been done in violation of the Federal Records Act.

America First Legal, the right-leaning, Washington, D.C. based public interest organization founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, sought records concerning the CDC’s endorsement of the controversial gender ideology within public schools in February 2023. In response, the CDC told AFL that it systematically deletes the emails of most employees 30 days after they depart from the agency.

As of Friday, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is now required under a preliminary injunction granted to AFL to enlist the help of Attorney General Merrick Garland and inform Congress to recover the deleted emails and halt the destruction of records. 

‘Notably, while the Biden-Harris administration has been slapped down for illegally violating the law, CDC employees’ homes were not searched and raided without notice or consent, nor have their families had to endure the trauma and onslaught of legal fees or indictments,’ AFL said in a news release. 

‘Yet, the Biden-Harris Administration did exactly that to President Trump. We cannot have a country where government bureaucrats are allowed to circumvent the law without repercussion, and innocent civilians are subjected to invasive and unlawful political persecution for saying the ‘wrong’ thing. The two-tiered justice system in the United States has never been more prevalent,’ the group said. 

In April, AFL filed the initial lawsuit against the Biden-Harris Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and NARA.

‘The Biden-Harris Administration was actively destroying the records of federal employees at the CDC in blatant violation of the law–and we are pleased that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered a stop to their illegal conduct,’ AFL executive director Gene Hamilton said in a statement. 

AFL subsequently reached out to NARA urging an investigation into the CDC’s policy of deleting employee emails. 

‘NARA investigated the allegations but determined that because the ‘CDC instructs individual email account holders to apply retention based on the email’s content value and its applicability to a NARA-approved records schedule,’ NARA considered the matter closed. In short, NARA entrusted individual CDC employees to decide which emails can be automatically deleted,’ AFL said in a news release.x

This isn’t the first time the CDC has been in hot water over its influence in the public. Last year, the CDC reportedly had ‘significant input on pandemic-era social media policies’ at Facebook and Instagram and worked to ‘silence dissent’ related to the COVID vaccine. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, denied attempting to suppress the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic began as a result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China, during the heated House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing this summer.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the CDC, HHS and NARA for comment. 

Fox News Digital’s Brian Flood and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report. 

Israel on Monday accused Tehran and its Palestinian terrorist proxy Hamas of smuggling weapons into Jordan and the West Bank to destabilize those areas as the world braces for a possible retaliatory strike from Iran. 

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Monday that a ‘serious and dangerous situation is unfolding in Iran.’ 

Katz alleged that Iranian Revolutionary Guard Units are collaborating with Hamas operatives in Lebanon to smuggle weapons and funds into Jordan ‘with the aim of destabilizing the regime.’ 

From there, Katz said, the weapons are smuggled into the West Bank, flooding areas like Judea and Samaria where there are refugee camps, ‘with dangerous weapons and large sums of money – aiming to create a pro-Iranian Islamic terror front.’ 

Katz said Iran’s effective control of these refugee camps in the West Bank leaves the Palestinian Authority ‘powerless to act.’ 

‘We must take terror hubs like the Jenin refugee camp and carry out a thorough operational campaign to dismantle the terror infrastructure in the camp,’ Katz said, calling such a plan ‘a shared interest of Israel, many regional states, and the entire free world – to halt the spread of Iran’s axis of evil.’ 

Katz’s statement comes as Israel is bracing for a possible retaliatory strike from Iran in response to the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran late last month. 

Israel was immediately blamed for the assassination after pledging to kill Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders over the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state, which killed 1,200 people and saw hundreds more taken hostage. 

Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon also late last month confirmed the death of Faud Shukr, its ‘No. 2’ commander who was involved in the 1983 Beirut bombings of a Marine barracks bombing that killed 241 U.S. military personnel. 

This comes as mediators United States, Qatar, and Egypt have been pushing for ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas to end the 10-month war. 

Mediators have spent months trying to get the sides to agree to a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release the remaining hostages captured in its Oct. 7 attack in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel and Israel would withdraw from Gaza. Talks have been expected to resume Thursday.

On Monday, France, Germany and Britain issued a joint statement endorsing the plan, while calling for the return of scores of hostages held by Hamas and the ‘unfettered’ delivery of humanitarian aid.

The statement was signed by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. It also called on Iran and its allies to refrain from any retaliatory attacks that would further escalate regional tensions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The State Department on Monday denied a Wall Street Journal report that claimed the Biden administration had offered Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro amnesty in exchange for him stepping down from his 11-year reign.

‘That is not true,’ Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters during the question-and-answer portion of a press briefing Monday. ‘We have not made any offers to Maduro or others since this election.’

Patel’s comments were in stark contrast to claims made by ‘three people familiar with the Biden administration deliberation[s]’ regarding secret meetings held in Doha, Qatar in June and September 2023 between the U.S. and Venezuela, according to the Wall Street Journal report.

Details following the meetings have been scarce, though reports released last year indicated that chief adviser to Maduro, Jorge Rodríguez, and the White House National Security Council’s former senior director for the Western Hemisphere, Juan González, met at least twice to discuss an array of issues on top of the alleged amnesty proposal, including sanctions relief, according to a document posted by Maduro to X. The U.S., however, has never verified this information. 

The Wall Street Journal report further suggested that Maduro’s top officers facing judicial indictments over offenses relating to charges of conspiring to export cocaine to the U.S., could also see amnesty agreements. 

The State Department did not return Fox News Digital’s questions regarding the Wall Street Journal report, though a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council echoed the department’s claims.

‘Since the July 28 election, we have not made any specific offers of amnesty to Nicolás Maduro or others,’ Director of Strategic Communications and Assistant Spokesperson to the National Security Council Vanessa Vidal Castellanos told Fox News Digital.  

‘In coordination with our partners, we are considering a range of options to incentivize and pressure Maduro to recognize the election results and will continue to do so, but the responsibility is on Maduro and the Venezuela’s electoral authorities to come clean on the election results,’ she added. 

According to the report, an amnesty proposal was allegedly floated as a way to incentivize Maduro to step down before his term was set to end.

But Maduro was reportedly unwilling to ‘discuss arrangements where he would have to leave office’ — a position he has only doubled-down on since the national election last month.

Despite international calls for the Venezuelan president to step aside amid mounting evidence that shows he lost to opposition leader Edmundo González, Maduro has refused to relinquish his power. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed those calls last week and said, ‘In the days since the election, we have consulted widely with partners and allies around the world, and while countries have taken different approaches in responding, none have concluded that Nicolás Maduro received the most votes this election.’

‘Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election.’

The UN General Assembly has offered to mediate the election results as a third party to resolve the growing unrest in Venezuela.

Despite mounting pressure to step down, Maduro’s regime has arrested thousands of protesters and dissidents, maintained military loyalty and has elected the pro-Maduro Supreme Court to resolve any election disputes. 

Maduro’s position on leaving office is reported to be ‘unchanged.’

Democrats have continued to push a vulgar falsehood about former President Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, despite the claim being debunked weeks ago.

‘It undermines their moralizing about Trump’s falsehoods and gives Trump an opportunity to say it’s ‘the pot calling the kettle black,’’ Democratic strategist Julian Epstein told Fox News Digital.

Epstein’s comment comes as Democrats show no signs of ditching the Vance ‘couch meme,’ a vulgar rumor that originated on social media last month that Trump’s running mate described a sex act he performed on a couch in his 2016 memoir, ‘Hillbilly Elegy.’

Despite the claim being quickly debunked, its viral spread was picked up by Democrats and spawned jokes and memes across social media.

The falsehood even made its way to the top of the Democratic ticket, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, cracking a joke about the rumor during a speech in Philadelphia the same day Harris announced he was joining the ticket.

‘I got to tell you, I can’t wait to debate [Vance]. That is if — if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up,’ Walz said during the remarks as Harris smirked behind him, according to a recounting of the event on NBC News. ‘You see what I did there?’

The moment went viral on the Harris campaign’s TikTok account, named Kamala HQ, garnering 5.3 million views, NBC reported, noting that Democrats have continued to use the joke despite the release of fact-checks debunking the rumor by several media outlets.

In one such example, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent a news release on July 26 targeting Trump’s decision to pick Vance, joking that Republicans are ‘couching their public praise of Trump’s vice presidential nominee with private criticism.’

On July 27, the Kamala HQ X account shared a screenshot of Vance’s moments on ‘cat ladies’ with the caption that the Ohio senator ‘does not couch his hatred for women.’

A day later, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, long believed to be a potential candidate to join Harris on the ticket, joked on ABC News that while Trump ‘talks about all kinds of crazy stuff,’ Vance is ‘getting known for his obsession with couches.’

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., has also leaned into the joke, responding to Vance’s post asking why Harris had not been taking questions from the media.

‘I’ve been on Air Force 2 JD, there is a great couch on it,’ Moskowitz said in an August 7 post on X.

The continued veiled jabs at Vance over a debunked rumor seemingly fly in the face of one of the main Democratic criticisms of Trump, who the party has long claimed peddled misinformation and false claims for political benefit.

That criticism of Trump took center stage during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, when then-first lady Michelle Obama famously declare ‘when they go low, we go high,’ in reference to the attacks on her and her family.

‘More than anything else, Democrats want to memory-hole the Biden/Harris record of the last four years. They want to memory-hole Harris’ fringe left views from just five years ago.’

Obama doubled down on the theme during the 2020 convention in support of President Biden, declaring that ‘going high is the only thing that works.’

Moskowitz has nevertheless defended his party’s apparent double standard, arguing on social media that continuing the spread of the rumor is just jokes and does not compare to the lies spread by Trump.

‘For 2 years we had to hear that Joe Biden was an international super criminal mastermind from Despicable Me 3. You will listen to couch story,’ he said last month.

Moskowitz’s office did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.

However, Epstein believes Democrats are making a ‘mistake’ by continuing to lean into the falsehood, though she argued getting into a ‘tit for tat campaign of insult comedy’ would also be a ‘trap for the Republicans.’

‘More than anything else, Democrats want to memory-hole the Biden/Harris record of the last four years,’ Epstein said. ‘They want to memory-hole Harris’ fringe left views from just five years ago.’

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.