Category Archives: Nato

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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All Nato members have agreed Ukraine will join, says Stoltenberg

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Secretary general says countries have agreed Kyiv will join military alliance when war with Russia is over

The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said all member countries have agreed that Ukraine will eventually join the transatlantic military alliance once the war is over, ahead of a meeting of western defence ministers discussing further military aid for Kyiv.

Further announcements on weapons and support are expected after the summit at the Ramstein airbase in Germany, but Stoltenberg also sounded notably upbeat about Ukraine’s longer-term prospects for joining Nato.

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Pentagon investigates reported leak of top-secret Ukraine documents

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Classified papers said to contain details of military aid and battalion strengths before potential Ukrainian counteroffensive

The Pentagon is investigating a security breach in which classified war documents detailing secret American and Nato plans for supplying aid to Ukraine before its prospective offensive against Russia were leaked to social media platforms.

The top secret documents were spread on Twitter and Telegram, and reportedly contain charts and details about anticipated weapons deliveries, battalion strengths and other sensitive information, the New York Times reported. According to military analysts, the papers appear to have been altered in certain parts from their original format, overstating American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed, citing how the modifications could point to an effort of disinformation by Moscow.

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Finland becomes 31st member of Nato in Brussels ceremony

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Formal accession nearly doubles Nato border with Russia as Moscow warns it will boost its defences if necessary

The blue-and-white flag of Finland has been raised alongside those of its western partners outside Nato’s headquarters in Brussels after the Nordic country formally became the 31st member of the transatlantic defensive alliance.

Guests including the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Finnish president, foreign and defence ministers applauded and shouted “bravo” at the ceremony on Tuesday, which marked a historic realignment of Europe’s security landscape.

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Finland to join Nato on Tuesday as Russia sounds border warning

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Moscow threatens to bolster border defences if western military alliance deploys troops inside Finland

Russia has said it will bolster its defences near its 1,300km border with Finland after the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, announced that the Nordic country would formally join the transatlantic defence alliance on Tuesday.

The accession marks the end of an accelerated process that began last May, when Finland and neighbouring Sweden abandoned decades of military nonalignment to seek security as Nato members after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Finland’s way into Nato clears as hold-out Turkey votes in favour

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Parliament in Ankara passes bill allowing membership after second-to-last objector, Hungary, voted in favour

Turkey’s parliament has approved a bill to allow Finland to join Nato, clearing the way for Helsinki to join the western defence alliance as war rages in Ukraine.

The Turkish parliament was the last among the 30 members of the alliance to ratify Finland’s membership, after Hungary’s legislature approved a similar bill this week.

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Russia-Ukraine war: UN warns of ‘very dangerous’ situation at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – as it happened

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This live blog has now closed, you can read more of our coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war here

Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports on its official Telegram channel that this morning the border village of Chernatske in Sumy oblast has been struck. It writes: “Twenty hits were recorded, probably from barrel artillery. The infrastructure of the village was damaged – a cultural centre and a children’s playground, as well as five private houses.”

The UK Ministry of Defence says Russia’s 10th tank regiment has borne the brunt of the assault of Avdiivka and has likely lost a “large portion of its tanks” while attempting to surround the town from the south.

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