civilians will rest unpunished, that is for certain. and from the president and russia and ukraine, a very different new years message to the countries. clare sebastian has details. one gave a detailed account of the war. the other never directly mentioned it. in very different ways, this was two leaders calling on their conflict weary populations to stay the course. and just like that, december 31st, today we say we do not know for certain what the new year will bring us, but this year we can and whatever it brings we will be stronger. we have proven more than once that we can solve the most difficult problems, and will never back down. vladimir putin s speech was pared back, less than half the length of the previous year, this time no assembled company and military serviceman.
alleged members of the oath keepers, including its founder, for their role in the attack on the capitol on january 6, 2021. over the last month, the justice department presented witness testimony and shocking videos and damning text messages and more, all of it evidence that prosecutors say proves the five defendants attempted to carry out a coordinated conspiracy to stop the legal and lawful transfer of presidential power and keep donald trump in the white house. now, why is this case so different than the hundreds of cases facing alleged rioters. two words, seditious conspiracy. that s a rare charge. it s one that was put on the books around the time of the u.s. civil war when the confederacy declared war on the u.s. government. it s a charge reserved for only the gravest of threats to the u.s. government. and these five alleged oath keepers are the first to stand trial for this accusation in more than a decade.
violent during the riot and they themselves never called in their quick reaction forces, their qrfs. obviously prosecutors disagreed and think the oath keepers were conspiring for much more than they actually carried out on that day, hence the charge of seditious conspiracy. so, what does that mean? what is this statute in u.s. federal law? why does it exist? well, as i told you, it dates back to 1861 in the u.s. civil war. congress made it a crime to conspire to overthrow the u.s. government or to conspire to use force to, quote, prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the united states. the confederate insurrectionists failed, though it took four years to stop their armed rebellion. and the seditious conspiracy charge has rarely been used since. it was used notably in 1954 against terrorists pushing puerto rican independence.
do you remember what the former spokesman for the oath keepers told the january 6 committee a few months ago. if a president that s willing to try to instill and and encourage to whip up a civil war amongst his followers using lies and deceit and snake oil. and regardless of the human impact, what else is he going to do if he gets elected again? opening statements in the oath keepers trial were given exactly one month ago. one person who s been covering every step in this trial is cnn s sara sidner, who joins us now. sara, thanks for joining us. thank you. how compelling has the case been the department of justice has been trying to make that this was actually a conspiracy against the united states government? very compelling. there are mountains of evidence. we have heard from about a half dozen fbi agents talking about
on the second day after the peace talks are concluded, putin will not because. word there is none. , and that this matters, the peace talks are uses. before, we were having them because we needed to release our people from the azovstal territories. right now, they exchange process is going hard but it does not require high level peace talks. so, in this matter, what more can be done is the package sanctions and we will see that the dependence of the west on kyiv and reduce sources , second the amount of heavy weapons seem to increase dramatically. because want to start, winning there will be an upper hand on the discussions with putin if there will be any. but, third of, course we need to make sure that ukraine can sustain economically. because, right now it is extremely hard with the war