MOSCOW (AP) — A court in Moscow on Monday ordered house arrest for a general in custody on fraud charges, in a ruling that represents an about-face from just weeks ago, when the same court refused to release the general from jail.
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov was ordered to be placed under house arrest until at least Oct. 11 by the 235th Garrison Military Court.
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Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army, right, speaks with his supporters after a session outside a court in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 15, 2024. Popov was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine. He was arrested this year and accused of fraud. A court in Moscow on Monday ruled to release him from custody and to place him under house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army, right, speaks with his supporters after a session outside a court in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 15, 2024. Popov was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine. He was arrested this year and accused of fraud. A court in Moscow on Monday ruled to release him from custody and to place him under house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army, centre, leaves a court building with his lawyer Sergei Buynovsky, right, after a session in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 15, 2024. Popov was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine. He was arrested this year and accused of fraud. A court in Moscow on Monday ruled to release him from custody and to place him under house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army, 2nd left, stands with his supporters after a session outside a court in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 15, 2024. Popov was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine. He was arrested this year and accused of fraud. A court in Moscow on Monday ruled to release him from custody and to place him under house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army leaves a court building after a session in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 15, 2024. Popov was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine. He was arrested this year and accused of fraud. A court in Moscow on Monday ruled to release him from custody and to place him under house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Popov, who had commanded the 58th Guards Combined Arms Army, was arrested in May along with several top military officials, including former Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov, a close associate of then Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Some of these officials have been charged with bribery, while Popov has faced charges of fraud on an exceptionally large scale.
President Vladimir Putin dismissed Shoigu as defense minister on May 12, appointing him the secretary of the national security council. Shoigu had been widely criticized for Russia's setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine, and was accused of incompetence and corruption by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who launched a mutiny in June 2023 to demand the dismissal of Shoigu and military chief of staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov.
Less than a month after Prigozhin’s failed uprising, Popov was dismissed. He said he had complained about problems that his troops were facing in Ukraine to the Russian military command, and that his dismissal was a “treacherous” stab in the back to Russian forces in Ukraine.
Popov’s forces were fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast of Ukraine, which is now partially occupied by Russian forces. His dismissal came one day after the 58th Army’s command post in the occupied city of Berdyansk was hit in a Ukrainian strike, killing a high-ranking general.
Popov has been in detention since late May. His lawyers have appealed the ruling to put him behind bars, but lost. In a development that is relatively rare for the Russian justice system, authorities also filed a petition to release Popov under house arrest, but their request was initially turned down by the 235th Garrison Military Court. The investigators filed another request with the court, and it was approved on Monday.
It wasn't immediately clear what prompted the court to change its position on Popov's pretrial detention.
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army, right, speaks with his supporters after a session outside a court in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 15, 2024. Popov was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine. He was arrested this year and accused of fraud. A court in Moscow on Monday ruled to release him from custody and to place him under house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army, right, speaks with his supporters after a session outside a court in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 15, 2024. Popov was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine. He was arrested this year and accused of fraud. A court in Moscow on Monday ruled to release him from custody and to place him under house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army, centre, leaves a court building with his lawyer Sergei Buynovsky, right, after a session in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 15, 2024. Popov was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine. He was arrested this year and accused of fraud. A court in Moscow on Monday ruled to release him from custody and to place him under house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army, 2nd left, stands with his supporters after a session outside a court in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 15, 2024. Popov was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine. He was arrested this year and accused of fraud. A court in Moscow on Monday ruled to release him from custody and to place him under house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, the commander of the 58th Army leaves a court building after a session in Moscow, Russia, Monday, July 15, 2024. Popov was relieved of duty last year after complaining about problems faced by his troops in Ukraine. He was arrested this year and accused of fraud. A court in Moscow on Monday ruled to release him from custody and to place him under house arrest. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Donald Trump began his first day as the 47th president of the United States with a dizzying display of force, signing a blizzard of executive orders that signaled his desire to remake American institutions while also pardoning nearly all of his supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
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Speaking to Fox News, press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to detail the announcement before Trump spoke at 4 p.m. Tuesday but said it would also send a signal to the world.
“You won’t want to miss it,” she said. Trump is also scheduled to attend a national prayer service Tuesday morning at Washington National Cathedral.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are heading to the White House to meet with Trump on Tuesday.
It’s the first formal sit down for the GOP leadership teams including Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Senate GOP Whip John Barrasso and the new president as they chart priorities with the sweep of Republican power in Washington.
Despite an ambitious 100-days agenda, the Republican-led Congress isn’t on the same page on some of the basics of their ideas and strategies as they rush to deliver tax cuts for the wealthy, mass deportations and other priorities for Trump.
He pledged to remove more than 1,000 presidential appointees “who are not aligned with our vision.”
In a post on his TruthSocial platform, Trump dismissed chef and humanitarian Jose Andres from the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, Ret. Gen. Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, former State Dept. official Brian Hook from the board of the Wilson Center, and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President’s Export Council.
“YOUR’E FIRED!” he wrote in a post just after midnight Tuesday.
Milley, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump, received a pardon from former President Joe Biden on Monday over concerns he could be criminally targeted by the new administration. His portrait in the Pentagon was also removed. Hook, who was Trump’s Iran envoy during his first term, had been involved in the Trump administration transition. No reasoning was given for his firing.
Former President Joe Biden also removed many Trump appointees in his first days in office, including former press secretary Sean Spicer from the board overseeing the U.S. Naval Acadamy.
Rep. Elise Stefanik is likely to face questions at her confirmation hearing Tuesday to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations about her lack of foreign policy experience, her strong support for Israel and her views on funding the U.N. and its many agencies.
Harvard-educated and the fourth-ranking member of the U.S. House, she was elected to Congress in 2015 as a moderate Republican and is leaving a decade later as one of President Trump’s most ardent allies.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “looks forward to working again with President Trump on his second term,” U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Monday.
When she appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Stefanik is likely to be grilled about her views on the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere as well as the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs — all issues on the U.N. agenda.
▶ Read more about Elise Stefanik’s confirmation hearing
Scholz said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday that “not every press conference in Washington, not every tweet should send us straight into excited, existential debates. That’s also the case after the change of government that took place in Washington yesterday.”
Scholz said the U.S. is Germany’s closest ally outside Europe and he’ll do everything to keep in that way.
He acknowledged that Trump and his administration “will keep the world on tenterhooks in the coming years” in energy, climate, trade and security policy. But he said “we can and will deal with all this, without unnecessary agitation and outrage, but also without false ingratiation or telling people what they want to hear.”
Scholz said of Trump’s “America First” approach that there’s nothing wrong with looking to the interests of one’s own country – “we all do that. But it is also the case that cooperation and agreement with others are mostly also in one’s interest.”
Speaking in the Oval Office Monday, Trump rejected Biden’s warning that the U.S. is becoming an “ oligarchy ” for tech billionaires, saying the executives supported Democrats until they realized Biden “didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.”
“They did desert him,” Trump added. “They were all with him, every one of them, and now they are all with me.”
Despite taking millions from the executives and their companies for his inaugural committee — and receiving more than $200 million in assistance from Musk in his presidential campaign — Trump claimed he didn’t need their money and they wouldn’t be receiving anything in return.
“They’re not going to get anything from me,” Trump said. “I don’t need money, but I do want the nation to do well, and they’re smart people and they create a lot of jobs.”
Some of the most exclusive seats at Trump’s inauguration on Monday were reserved for powerful tech CEOs who also happen to be among the world’s richest men.
That’s a shift from tradition, especially for a president who has characterized himself as a champion of the working class. Seats so close to the president are usually reserved for the president’s family, past presidents and other honored guests.
The mega-rich have long had a prominent role in national politics, and several billionaires helped bankroll the campaign of Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
But the inaugural display highlights the unusually direct role the world’s wealthiest people will likely have in the new administration. In his outgoing address, Biden warned that the U.S. was becoming an oligarchy of tech billionaires wielding dangerous levels of power and influence on the nation.
▶ Read more about the billionaires at Trump’s inauguration
Outside the National Cathedral, just a few hours before the Interfaith Service of Prayer for the Nation, which both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance are expected to attend, the scene before was decidedly quiet.
At the Cathedral only a few dog walkers dotted the sidewalk and the police presence was low.
It was a far cry from yesterday when thousands lined up in downtown D.C. festooned in the red regalia of MAGA nation — or the security and foot traffic from earlier this month for the funeral service of former President Jimmy Carter where Secret Service vehicles could be seen at least a mile from the Cathedral.
The Senate quickly confirmed Marco Rubio as secretary of state Monday, voting unanimously to give Trump the first member of his new Cabinet on Inauguration Day.
Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida, is among the least controversial of Trump’s nominees and vote was decisive, 99-0.
It’s often tradition for the Senate to convene immediately after the ceremonial pomp of the inauguration to begin putting the new president’s team in place, particularly the national security officials.
▶ Read more about Marco Rubio’s confirmation
All the living former presidents were there and the outgoing president amicably greeted his successor, who gave a speech about the country’s bright future and who left to the blare of a brass band.
At first glance, President Donald Trump’ssecond inauguration seemed like a continuation of the country’s nearly 250-year-long tradition of peaceful transfers of power, essential to its democracy. And there was much to celebrate: Trump won a free and fair election last fall, and his supporters hope he will be able to fix problems at the border, end the war in Ukraine and get inflation under control.
Still, on Monday, the warning signs were clear.
Due to frigid temperatures, Trump’s swearing-in was held in the Capitol Rotunda, where rioters seeking to keep him in power the last time roamed during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Trump walked into the space from the hall leading to the building’s west front tunnel, where some of the worst hand-to-hand combat between Trump supporters and police occurred that day.
After giving a speech pledging that “never again” would the government “persecute political opponents,” Trump then gave a second, impromptu address to a crowd of supporters. The president lamented that his inaugural address had been sanitized, said he would shortly pardon the Jan. 6 rioters and fumed at last-minute preemptive pardons issued by outgoing President Joe Biden to the members of the congressional committee that investigated the attack.
▶ Read more about Trump’s Inauguration Day
President Donald Trump signs an executive order to create the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, as White House staff secretary Will Scharf watches. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump speaks as first lady Melania Trump listens at the Commander in Chief Ball, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump signs an executive order on TikTok in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)