Category Archives: Nato

Biden heads to Europe amid questions over cluster munitions and Nato unity

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US leader’s three-country tour aims to ‘showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage’ at a key time for the war in Ukraine

Joe Biden heads to Europe on Sunday for a swift tour dominated by the war in Ukraine, with membership of the expanding Nato military alliance and the US approval of cluster munitions likely to be key talking points. His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the trip would “showcase the president’s leadership on the world stage”.

The US president will arrive at night in London, ahead of meetings with the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and King Charles, and then head to a key Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, before travelling to Helsinki to welcome Nato’s newest member, Finland.

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy discusses peace plan, Nato and grain deal with Erdoğan in Turkey – as it happened

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Ukraine president meets with Turkish leader after summits across Europe

In his daily operational briefing, Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region in Russia, has said that one man was killed by Ukrainian shelling in the last 24 hours. He also recorded damage in a number of settlements caused by falling debris after air defence had been in action.

Belgorod borders Sumy, Kharkiv and the occupied Luhansk region in Ukraine’s north-east. The claims have not been independently verified.

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Biden ratchets up efforts to secure Sweden’s Nato membership ahead of key summit

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Work to persuade Turkey to drop its objections continues, as president meets with Sweden’s prime minister at White House

US President Joe Biden has told prime minister Ulf Kristersson of Sweden that he is “looking forward” to the country’s stalled Nato membership bid winning final approval, amid doubts that Turkey will withdraw its opposition in time for a major summit next week.

Speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Biden said he wanted to reiterate that he “fully, fully supports Sweden’s membership in Nato” and was “anxiously looking forward” to the bid being ratified.

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Iraq protesters breach Sweden’s embassy over Qur’an burning

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Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr enter mission’s compound to denounce incident outside Stockholm mosque

Iraqi protesters have breached Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad, angered by a Qur’an burning outside a Stockholm mosque that sparked condemnation across the Muslim world.

A crowd of supporters of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr stayed inside the compound for about 15 minutes, then left as security forces deployed, an AFP photographer said.

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Ukraine defence minister expects Nato guarantee for after war

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Exclusive: Oleksii Reznikov says entry to alliance non-negotiable and pledges need to be made now

Ukraine’s defence minister has raised the stakes before the next Nato summit, saying he expects a guarantee that his country will be invited to join the military alliance at the conclusion of the war with Russia, describing membership as non-negotiable.

Before the 33rd meeting of the alliance’s leaders taking place in a fortnight in Vilnius, Oleksii Reznikov said Kyiv recognised that accession to Nato was not possible while the conflict continued but insisted hard pledges for the future would need to be made.

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Nato ready to face threat from ‘Moscow or Minsk’, says alliance head after Wagner chief’s exile

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Jens Stoltenberg says alliance has strengthened eastern flank and will protect ‘every inch of Nato territory’ after Prigozhin move

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg has said the alliance is ready to defend itself against any threat from “Moscow or Minsk” and has increased its military presence on its eastern flank in recent days after Belarus welcomed Wagner rebel leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“It’s too early to make any final judgment about the consequences of the fact that Prigozhin has moved to Belarus and most likely also some of his forces will also be located to Belarus,” Stoltenberg told reporters.

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Greek voters propel new far-right Spartans group into parliament

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Kyriakos Mitsotakis of centre-right New Democracy party wins second term as prime minister but unheard-of group delivers shock

Greece’s general election has propelled a far-right group called the Spartans, a previously unheard-of political force, into the Athens parliament with the help of an imprisoned, neo-Nazi leader of the now-disbanded Golden Dawn party.

While the centre-right politician Kyriakos Mitsotakis has won a second term as prime minister, the Spartans have emerged as the fifth biggest group in the 300-seat parliament.

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‘It’s not going to happen’: Ben Wallace expects hopes of top Nato job to be dashed

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UK defence secretary had earlier shown interest in the role, but the US is believed to want Jens Stoltenberg to stay in post

The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has said he does not expect to be the next head of Nato, amid claims that the US wants the current leader to stay.

In an interview with the Economist, the Conservative MP said “it’s not going to happen”, adding that he thinks the United States wants the current secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, to remain in post for another year.

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Nato allies back fast-track membership for Ukraine, says Cleverly

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UK foreign secretary says Ukraine has ‘evolved quickly’, as Zelenskiy tells summit it can be engine of green growth

The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said all Nato allies are backing a plan to give Ukraine a fast track to Nato membership of the kind offered to Sweden and Finland earlier this year.

Speaking on the margins of the two-day Ukraine Recovery conference in London, Cleverly said the UK was “very, very supportive” of Ukraine being able to join Nato without the usual need for it to meet the conditions set out in a Nato membership action plan (Map).

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Lack of consensus on next Nato chief could lead to Stoltenberg staying on

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Disagreement over possible successors may mean secretary general is asked to remain in role at next month’s summit in Lithuania

Political disagreements, vetoes and personal reluctance make it increasingly likely that the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, will be asked to remain in post for another year at the Nato summit in Lithuania next month.

It would be the third time the former Norwegian prime minister has been asked to extend his almost 10-year term.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Ukraine taking significant casualties and making slow progress towards Russian defence, say western officials – as it happened

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Counteroffensive is still ‘going in the right direction’ says officials, in one of west’s first assessments of Ukrainian action launched on 4 June

Dmitry Medvedev, long-term ally of Vladimir Putin and currently deputy chair of the security council of Russia, has said on Telegram that Russia needs to put in a demilitarised zone as far west as Ukraine’s Lviv, which he referred to by its Russian name Lvov and German name Lemberg.

He went on to say that, as a result of the Nord Stream sabotage, for which he cited “western complicity”, that Russia should have “no restrictions left to refrain from destroying the cable communications of our enemies, laid along the ocean floor”.

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Nato members may send troops to Ukraine, warns former alliance chief

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Security guarantees and membership path needed at Nato summit to avoid escalation, says Anders Rasmussen

A group of Nato countries may be willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine if member states including the US do not provide tangible security guarantees to Kyiv at the alliances’s summit in Vilnius, the former Nato secretary general Anders Rasmussen has said.

Rasmussen, who has been acting as official adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Ukraine’s place in a future European security architecture, has been touring Europe and Washington to gauge the shifting mood before the critical summit starts on 11 July.

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Turkey to send commandos to Kosovo in response to Nato peacekeeping call

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EU has called on leaders in Kosovo and Serbia to immediately reduce tensions and halt ‘divisive rhetoric’

Turkey has announced it will be sending commandos to Kosovo on Sunday in response to a Nato request to join the peacekeeping operation after unrest in the north of the country.

In a statement on Saturday, the Turkish defence ministry called for restraint and constructive dialogue to resolve a crisis it said could harm regional security and stability.

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‘We will succeed’: Zelenskiy says Ukraine ready to launch counteroffensive

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Ukraine’s president hints at concern over a possible Trump return in 2024 in Wall Street Journal interview

Ukraine’s president has declared his country’s military is ready to launch a long-awaited counteroffensive and hinted at concern about the possibility of Donald Trump retaking the White House.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal, suggested that a significant attack could come soon and said he hoped a change in the US presidency would not impact military aid to Kyiv.

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Nato to send 700 more troops to Kosovo to try to quell violence

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Nato chief announces further measures as situation in Serb-majority north remains ‘fragile’

Nato has said it will send 700 extra troops to try to curb the violence in Kosovo a day after 30 alliance-led peacekeeping soldiers and more than 50 ethnic Serbian protesters were injured in clashes.

On Monday, Nato peacekeepers in riot gear had secured a town hall in the town of Zvecan as the situation remained tense.

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Kosovo clashes: Nato commander criticises ‘unacceptable’ attacks on troops

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Dozens of Italian and Hungarian soldiers from Kfor mission and more than 50 Serbs were injured in clashes over ethnic Albanian mayors taking office

More than 30 Nato peacekeeping soldiers defending three town halls in northern Kosovo have been injured in clashes with Serb protesters, while Serbia’s president put the army on the highest level of combat alert.

The tense situation developed after ethnic Albanian mayors took office in northern Kosovo’s Serb-majority area after elections that the Serbs boycotted – a move that led the US and its allies to rebuke Pristina on Friday.

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West caught between fear and hope as Erdoğan extends 20-year rule in Turkey

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Re-elected president could take Nato country further towards Russia, or may instead be more open to alternatives

Western capitals remained silent through Turkey’s presidential campaign – privately hoping Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s erratic 20-year rule would come to a surprise close – but now he has been handed a decisive mandate to serve a third term, the west is caught between fear and hope.

It fears he will exploit the result to take this Nato founder member further from the liberal secular west, but hopes against hope that, not being eligible to run again and thus freed from the need to pander to a nationalist electorate for the rest of his political life, he may at least be open to persuasion and base his foreign policy on something other than self-preservation.

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Providing Ukraine with F-16 jets a ‘colossal risk’ for west, Russia says

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Warning comes after Joe Biden said US would back joint effort to train Ukrainian pilots to fly fighter jets

Providing Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets would be a “colossal risk” for western nations, a senior Russian minister has warned, as Washington and London reasserted their commitment to equipping the embattled nation with the military hardware it needs.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has been pushing western allies to supply the jets for months, with Downing Street saying on Saturday that the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, had again discussed the matter with him at the G7 summit in Japan.

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Ukraine needs ‘more time’ before its counter-offensive, says Zelenskiy

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Losses would be ‘unacceptable’ without more heavy weapons promised by west, says president

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that Ukraine needs “more time” before it can launch its much-anticipated counter-offensive against Russia, adding that some armoured vehicles promised by the west had yet to arrive.

The president said that newly formed brigades were ready to attack: “We can go forward and be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”

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Nato planning to open Japan office to deepen Asia-Pacific ties – report

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Liaison office plans likely to attract criticism from China which has warned against the western alliance extending into Asia

Nato is reportedly planning to open a liaison office in Japan to coordinate with close partners across the Indo-Pacific region including Australia, South Korea and New Zealand.

The plans are likely to attract criticism from the Chinese government, which has previously warned the western alliance against extending “its tentacles to the Asia-Pacific”.

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