Threat Status for Wednesday, February 18, 2026. Share this daily newsletter with your friends, who can sign up here. Send tips to National Security Editor Guy Taylor.
The Russia-Cuba alliance is on full display, with Moscow calling on the U.S. not to blockade the communist-run Caribbean island.
… Cuba’s foreign minister visited the Russian capital Wednesday, two days after President Trump boasted the island doesn’t “even have jet fuel for airplanes to take off” under his push to block Venezuelan oil from reaching Havana.
… Iran says talks in Geneva may have opened a pathway to a diplomatic deal with Washington.
… South Korea is pushing to reinstate a no-fly zone over its border with North Korea that had been lifted in 2018 after Mr. Trump met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
… Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally ordered the firing of a top U.S. Army spokesman, according to Fox News.
… Sara Duterte, the daughter of the Philippines’ jailed pro-China former President Rodrigo Duterte, has announced plans to run for president of the U.S.-aligned Southeast Asian nation.
… ICE’s use of force incidents skyrocketed by 353% after Mr. Trump entered the White House last year, according to Department of Homeland Security documents obtained by a left-leaning watchdog group.
There was no breakthrough in high-stakes Russia-Ukraine talks on Tuesday and Wednesday, with deep division between the two sides remaining over the future of land in eastern Ukraine that is occupied by the Russian army and that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to keep.
U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, who participated in the talks in Geneva, said on social media that Washington’s push for peace has “brought about meaningful progress,” without elaborating. A top Kremlin spokesman said it’s “too early” to comment on the outcome of the talks. Ukrainian and Russian officials said a new round is set to take place. However, it was unclear Wednesday whether that will happen before next week’s fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion.
Amid the uncertainty, Ukrainian media on Wednesday highlighted the impact of ongoing Russian missile attacks that have severely damaged power plants and high-voltage substations inside Ukraine. The Kyiv Post prominently displayed the following headline: “Kyiv to Have Only 4-6 Hours of Power Daily in February After Russian Bombardment.”
The second round of U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations in Geneva ended with some signs of progress on Tuesday, even as Washington moves more military assets into the region and Tehran conducted unprecedented live fire drills in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who leads the Iranian delegation, said that a “path for a deal has started,” without confirming when the next round of talks would be conducted. The two sides will now have time to hammer out proposals that will be exchanged during a potential third meeting.
The talks come amid increased U.S. military pressure on Iran and increasingly aggressive rhetoric from the Islamic republic. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday that Iran was capable of sending U.S. warships in the region to the “bottom of the sea” and warned again that Tehran would respond if attacked.
U.S. Army Col. Dave Butler, who had been serving as the Army’s chief of public affairs and was a top adviser to Secretary of the Army Daniel P. Driscoll, was ousted from his position this week — the latest in a string of high-profile firings in the Pentagon since Mr. Trump’s return to the White House.
A Pentagon spokeswoman confirmed the development to Threat Status but declined to offer details on the reasoning behind Col. Butler’s abrupt departure from the military. Fox News reported that Mr. Hegseth personally ordered Mr. Driscoll to remove the colonel and that Mr. Driscoll, who is in Geneva participating in U.S.-Ukraine-Russia talks this week, had resisted pressure on the matter from Mr. Hegseth for months.
Col. Butler, who is known to be popular among journalists who regularly cover the Pentagon, has not responded to a request for comment from Threat Status. There is speculation that Mr. Hegseth wanted him removed from the spokesman position because the colonel had previously served as a key spokesman under former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, a sharp critic of Mr. Trump.
By putting Hong Kong free speech advocate Jimmy Lai behind bars for the rest of his life, Chinese President Xi Jinping is sending a clear message to the rest of the world that it is willing to use transnational repression to crush dissent, writes Clifford D. May, the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an opinion contributor to Threat Status.
“Mr. Trump could ask that Mr. Lai be released as an act of mercy, or a goodwill gesture, or just as a personal favor to Mr. Trump, who has said the two men have ‘always had a great relationship,’” Mr. May writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times.
“He and Mr. Xi are scheduled to meet in late March or early April. Of course, requesting that Mr. Xi respect inalienable human rights or abide by treaty obligations and international law would be futile,” Mr. May writes. “On the other hand, if Mr. Xi refuses, if he is adamant that Mr. Lai live out his final years alone in a cell rather than with his children and grandchildren, then we, not least Mr. Trump, should understand how intense his hostility is to individuals and nations that refuse to kowtow to him and his Communist Party.”
The United Nations has “taken so many actions against U.S. interests that we should boot it out of the United States,” writes Jed Babbin, who argues that the world body “is full of fat-cat bureaucrats,” with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ annual salary at roughly $420,000, more than that of the U.S. president.
“It was bad enough when, in 2004, Sudan (which still had chattel slavery) was elected to the U.N. Human Rights Commission,” writes Mr. Babbin, a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Times. “Now, Iran has been elected as vice chair of the U.N. Commission for Social Development, which is supposed to promote democracy and gender equality and ensure tolerance and nonviolence.
“We shouldn’t pay the United Nations one more cent,” he writes in a Times op-ed. “We should end our membership and form an alliance of democracies in its place.”
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