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Europe
Russia
July 9, 2024 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's love-in with Putin started in Moscow yesterday. While the opprobrium was heaped upon Orbán, Modi’s decision to spend two days cuddling with Putin has been met with almost complete silence. That is because the West can do even less about his decision to visit than they can about Orbán’s. And „India is the biggest democracy in the world and just carried out the biggest election in history”. Modi’s trip shows that Russia is being driven into all of China’s, India’s, Brazil’s and Iran’s arms. And on Indian TV it was fascinating to see the local attitudes. The panellists ’were all surprisingly angry. They all highlighted how deep the friendship with Russia runs that goes back to Soviet times. It’s said that Russia’s relationship with China is a marriage of convenience, but the relationship with India is a genuine and warm relationship. That is tied in with Russia's image as anti-colonialist that plays so well in Africa, and persistent prevalence of the communist ideology in Indian domestic politics’ among other things. But more shocking was the barbed comments about the West, which they saw as an arrogant meddler, that tells them what to do while failing to apply the same standards to its own behaviour: in other words, exactly Putin’s double-standards criticism of the G7”. The whole Global South is fed up with being lectured to by the holier-than-thou West about values the West routinely ignores. Gaza… etc. They all also referred to India as an “emerging superpower” and clearly believe it’s time that India stands up for its own interests. That makes their non-participation in, specifically “Western”, sanctions a no-brainer. The rest of the world’s attitude is the war in Europe is a European problem that the Global South sees as none of its business. Later the same day, on X most of (predominantly European and US) interlocutors scoffed at the idea that India is a superpower, even if you point out that it's now the third largest country in the world in terms of adjusted GDP. Three of the four largest economies in the world are now BRICS members (China, India and Russia in that order, with the US in second place). And all three of the BRICS members are growing faster than their western peers, while Japan (fifth) and Germany (sixth) are stagnating and falling down the rankings. These are not bilateral relations anymore. They are multilateral non-Western relations. The BRICS+ summit last year was difficult but expanded that group. And Modi had a field day at last year’s G20 summit, hosted by India, that brought in the whole of the African Union and was dominated by Modi. These deepening multilateral and non-Western groupings could have wide-ranging consequences. India has a big problem with China, but Russia can help with that. Iran has big problems with other countries in the Middle East, especially with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), but Russia can help with that too. Putin is playing this game well. And it appears Russia wants to extend this diplomacy to Asia. He has moved a lot closer to North Korea with a trip in June, as part of a move to put a little distance between him and China, which has traditionally ruled supreme in Pyongyang. Putin followed that trip up with another to Vietnam, which is also keen for better relations with Russia simply as a counterweight to China’s strength in the Pacific Rim. Everyone thought that Russia would just become China’s raw materials warehouse, but it’s starting to look like Putin is trying to cut out a role for Russia that is a keystone that holds up a complicated but increasingly powerful Global South alliance that stands in opposition to the US hegemony. And Russia has been playing that game since the Cold War. The Kremlin has already emerged as an “honest broker” in the Middle East, which it has been courting from well before the start of the war in Ukraine. Its African project that started with the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019 is also well advanced. And, BTW, the Russian first half budget numbers just came out. It’s becoming increasingly obvious the sanctions have not only failed, but have actually backfired. The Russian federal deficit has fallen to just 0.5% of GDP – despite massive $100bn military spending – and the Ministry of Economy has upgraded its growth forecast for this year to 3.8% – that’s even more than last year’s 3.6%, and that was an upside surprise. (Source: intellinews)
(Tuesday ), July 9, 2024 2:21 PM EDT Why Modi and Putin are friends? India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Moscow yesterday. It is the first state visit of his third term and his first trip to Russia since 2022. Modi used the trip to affirm longstanding strategic and economic ties between the two countries. The Indian PM’s visit occurred at the same time as NATO meetings in Washington. He focused primarily on defense cooperation. India is a major financial lifeline for Russia, with trade between the two countries amounting to nearly $65 billion in the last year. Most of that money has flowed toward Russia - a trade imbalance that Modi hoped to address during his talks with Putin. India has also continued to purchase large quantities of Russian crude oil at steep discounts despite Russia facing sanctions and isolation from the West. Today, the two leaders continued talks over Russian imports vital for Indian power plants, civil nuclear cooperation. During Modi’s two-day visit to the Kremlin Modi did not plan on challenging Putin over his actions in Ukraine. In 2022 during the sidelines of a regional summit in Uzbekistan, Modi has opted for a softer approach to the conflict, telling Putin that “today’s era is not an era of war” Putin did not attend the G-20 summit hosted by New Delhi last year, where world leaders criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Still, Delhi-Moscow relations were not without contention, as Modi sought to secure the early discharge of dozens of Indian nationals who were lured to join the Russian Army in recent years to fight Ukraine, with at least four dying on the battlefield so far. India has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and abstained from all resolutions on Ukraine at the United Nations, despite facing pressure to distance itself from Moscow. Last June, Modi met with U.S. President Biden during a state visit to Washington, where the two leaders struck a defense, trade, and technology partnership and deepened relations over shared concerns about China’s influence in the region. Tensions with neighboring China have heated up in recent years over a disputed Himalayan border, which has resulted in India becoming increasingly estranged in forums where Russia and China play a prominent role. “For India, Modi’s meeting with Putin in Russia is just a continuation of longstanding strategic ties dating back to the Cold War, but for the U.S. and West, it reminds everyone how difficult it is to enlist New Delhi in a coalition to counter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” says Grossman, a senior analyst at the RAND Corporation. “In short, it won’t happen.” It’s likely the friendship between India and Russia will endure. It comes after Putin’s return from Kazakhstan last week, where the Russian President claimed during a regional summit that Moscow-Beijing relations were experiencing “the best period in their history.” Russia’s stance on India-China hostilities in the future will be critical, especially given India’s heavy reliance on Russia for military equipment that dates back to the height of the Cold War. (Source: time *)
* Time, an American news magazine based in New York City, New York, U.S.
North America
United States
1:54 PM EDT, Tue July 9, 2024 US military bases across Europe were placed on a heightened state of alert last week for the first time in a decade after the US received intelligence that Russian-backed actors were considering carrying out sabotage attacks against US military personnel and facilities. The intelligence the US received suggested that Russia had included US bases and military personnel as options to attack via proxies. Plots have been carried out or disrupted across Europe in recent months. In April, two German-Russian nationals were arrested for allegedly plotting bomb and arson attacks on targets including US military facilities on behalf of Russia. The intelligence, which the US received within the last two weeks was deemed alarming enough to implement additional safety protocols. Several US military bases in Europe raised their alert level to Force Protection Condition “Charlie,” which “applies when an incident occurs or intelligence is received indicating some form of terrorist action or targeting against personnel or facilities is likely,” according to the US Army. A senior NATO official said today that the alliance had “significantly increased” its intelligence sharing around “Russia’s campaign of covert sabotage activities” in Europe, which have become increasingly brazen and aggressive in recent months amid elections across the West. US European Command’s spokesperson, Cmdr. Day, said that “our increase in vigilance is not related to any one single threat, but due to a combination of factors potentially impacting the safety and security of US forces in the European theater.” In London in March, several men were charged with working with Russian intelligence services to set fire to a Ukrainian-linked warehouse. Poland is investigating whether an arson attack that destroyed Warsaw’s largest mall in May was connected to Russia and has arrested nine people in connection with Russia-linked acts of sabotage, the prime minister said in May. And French authorities last month detained a Russian-Ukrainian man who was allegedly building bombs as part of a sabotage campaign orchestrated by Moscow. By outsourcing the attacks to local actors, Russia likely believes it can wage a hybrid war that falls below the threshold of armed, state-on-state conflict, officials say. (Source: cnn *)
* Cable News Network (CNN), a multinational news channel and website. Headquarters Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
July 9, 2024 Hoffman, director of the Congressional and Government Affairs Program, a fellow at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) discusses Ukraine and Transatlantic security on the eve of the NATO Summit with Senator Ernst from the state of Iowa and Congressman Suozzi representing the Third District of New York - two members of Congress who are leading voices on foreign policy and national security in their respective parties. Senator Ernst, an elected member of Republican leadership serves on the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, and Small Business Committees. Congressman Suozzi (D-NY) serves on the House Budget and Homeland Security Committees. In April they joined CSIS on the first multiday, bipartisan, bicameral delegation to Ukraine to visit Kyiv, Chernihiv and Odessa and to visit Moldova. At first, they both spoke about the importance of controlling the narrative. Sometimes the information the public received ’is ginned up by strategic adversaries – Russia, the Chinese Communist Party, Iran, North Korea, and others. They are trying to manipulate the public, „to get us simply to be mad at each other. Gaza, Gaza, Gaza was in the paper every day. It’s working,’ Rep. Suozzi said. During the trip, he released a picture shaking hands with President Zelensky, which they met in Chernihiv. Within an hour, in a disinformation campaign the picture was doctored to show him wearing a Nazi armband. The good people of America needs to get beyond the rhetoric and the hate-fueled speech, he added. And „we do have constituents at home that are very concerned about the U.S. taxpayer expenditures going into the war in Ukraine”, Sen. Ernst said. "It’s important for members of Congress to continue the dialog and discussing how can we bring this war to an end – what are the platforms and assistance that Ukraine needs.’ This fight is not going to end, not well anyway, ’if America doesn’t provide leadership’ or doesn’t engage with other world leaders on a solution for Ukraine, she added. Has really the administration articulated a strategy for victory? In April when the supplemental was passed one of the provisions required the administration to provide to Congress a strategy for victory within 60 days. That 60 days has now elapsed, said Ms. Hoffman. The actual strategy is classified. The restriction of ability to use U.S. weapons to strike Russian targets have been eased slightly in the past several weeks, but they still remain. Given the Ukrainians weapons that could strike much deeper into Russia, including some of the airfields from which they launch attacks, is there a clear strategy for victory? And are we giving the Ukrainians all the tools that they need to be successful?, she asked. It literally is cheaper for America for us to be supporting Ukraine than for us to get engaged in a war like this, Rep. Suozzi said. 'I always say is it’s so much cheaper for America, and without having our soldiers there. Now we’re sending an enormous amount of arms here. Our soldiers, our service members, are not engaged in Ukraine.” 'We need to give them what they need and anticipate the demands that they will need to strike inside of Russia'. The administration has not clearly articulated what the strategy is to win in Ukraine, Sen. Ernst told. Allowing the Ukrainians to be as aggressive as they need to be to win this war and put it to bed, they need to be able to go on offense, ’and let’s settle the war’. ’So we need to have someone that will clearly articulate that’. National Security Advisor Sullivan never clearly articulated this. „Neither Secretary of Defense Austin nor the president would actually say the phrase, we want Ukraine to win”. ’So we need Ukraine to win’. The administration is holding the Western world together, holding the NATO alliance and others together in this effort ’in an effective way for a war’. The NATO conference this week will help to cement that fact, Rep. Suozzi said. Russia has access to untold numbers of dumb bombs that they had figured out how to launch from within Russian territory from Russian planes that they could sail in to attack Ukraine, especially in the Kharkiv area. And there were some restrictions lifted by the administration on attacking Russians and Russian planes and airspace at the end of May. 'A short way into Russian territory is an airfield with the airplanes that are launching these dumb bombs on a regular basis where we can wipe out a significant portion – or, the Ukrainians can wipe out a significant portion of the Russian air force'. Many of our allies’ concerns – about escalation. I don’t think that we can tie the hands of the Ukrainian officials and army to really go after the Russians, he added. At the same time, Putin’s not going to stop, to back down. ’Over a hundred thousand Ukrainians have been killed. At least 40,000 children have been kidnapped from Ukraine and taken into Russian space', according to him. And ten million Ukrainians have been forced from their homes, as the Russians try and take over more land. The greatest strength we have right now is that we’ve held together this Western alliance, Rep. Suozzi continues. Positive developments: NATO did step up. The Europeans did step up: Europe was doing its fair share, there’s a million Ukrainian refugees in Poland right now, weapons have been sent in, and ’people’ have been increasing their defense budgets to their 2 percent ’as has been demanded by so many in our country’ over the past eight years. Member states have been clear that Ukraine cannot receive a formal invitation to join NATO until the war is over, which is reasonable and outlined in the NATO charter – that a state at conflict cannot join. However, there is a lot that can be offered to Ukraine, short of an official invitation to join the alliance, that can signal a significant commitment by allies to the future security of Ukraine, Ms. Hoffman said. We need to continue to hold this incredible alliance together, Sen. Ernst answered. 'We see China, Iran, and Russia, and in some areas even North Korea, forming their own axis of evil. It’s the modern-era axis of evil’. 'So we do need to continue to push those member nations to meet their 2 percent GDP obligations'. 'In Poland, we heard from the defense chief that ’Putin’s war is against the West’. We should use Information in our space, pushing back on Russia informational, creating these messages on Facebook, or Instagram. Militarily ’we still do use Special Operations Forces (SOF)’, and provide them with the military platforms that they need and the munitions. Economically: working with Ukrainians, with the alliance to find ways that we can be supportive in business or industry, to push back against the Russians. But America needs to lead’, Sen. Ernst added. ’Its complete BS and complete disinformation - Rep. Suozzi said - that Putin and his allies, and people that have been bamboozled by his disinformation here in the United States of America – including some presidential candidates, and some members of Congress, and some senators, and many others, conspiracy theorists – are like, well, the reason that Putin has done this is because he’s afraid that Ukraine is going to attack Russia and invade Russia; and that’s why they’re moving Ukraine and others into – closer and closer to Russian borders; and Russia’s history having been attacked for many, many centuries has this paranoia; and, therefore, that’s why they’ve got to go stop this invasion. But that’s why we have said that, no, we’re not looking for Ukraine to join NATO because we want to take that argument away from Putin, away from the conspiracy theorists, away from the people in the United States of America who’ve been bamboozled by that message so that they can’t use it’. "We were meeting with the commander of the Polish military and he had a topographical map on the wall. It was just so obvious looking at the topography of that region that if Russia were to go through Ukraine it’s, clearly, going right into Poland right afterwards. I mean, the topography demands it’, Rep. Suozzi added. ’And I sensed, some anger from some of the Polish people we met with at the highest levels because they felt that the United States was backing down on its commitment that it had made”. When you look at the history of World War II and what Hitler did, ’it’s the same playbook'. It’s in the United States’ self-interest to support Ukraine to defeat the bad guys, Sen. Ernst added. ’I tend to say more weapons, more weapons’. We need to focus on weapons, and so that is typically what I talk to Iowans about because we can track those platforms. We can track how the munitions are used, I would love to see additional oversight of humanitarian assistance, she said. ’We really need our European partners to step up in this area. I think we can continue to be the arsenal of democracy where we can provide a lot of the munitions platforms that maybe some of our friends in NATO, in other European countries, they can’t. They don’t necessarily have the defense industrial base to do that.’ The G-7 took the important step of agreeing to use the interest from frozen Russian assets to go to Ukraine to procure and buy weapons. Ms. Hoffman said. In Moldova, until recently neutrality was actually enshrined in their constitution. They take steps to join the EU, potentially maybe at some point NATO. But there is an election in Moldova this year. The President’s opponent is quite clearly backed by the Russians, he spends a lot of time in Russia. There’s been clear linkages to Russian oligarchs and even the state for his campaign finance and Transnistria also, which is occupied by Russian forces – this is really a consequential year for Moldova with these elections in October ’which are very close to ours’, Rep. Suozzi said. Because of the Russian influence through Transnistria it will be very difficult for them to continue leaning towards the West. If there are economic opportunities for them to join the EU, to work with the United States, ’certainly we would look for those opportunities”. 'And it was so inspirational to listen to this president of this tiny country who’s fighting back for the most idealistic things you could possibly imagine. Talking about freedom, and about democracy, and about participating in the modern world, in the Western market economy with the specter of the Russian bear breathing down their neck. And this sense that they’re next’, Rep. Suozzi added. Years and years ago, McCain had said that if Ukraine should fall that one of the most likely targets would then then – next for Russia would be Moldova, he recalled. This is a tiny country, 3 million people, really trying to move closer and closer to the West and away from the clutches of Russia. They’re trying to build their wine industry... And I’d just like to get your thoughts on the importance of the economic and humanitarian assistance, not just by the U.S., but again, our allies, Ms. Hoffman: said. There are some that say the U.S. should support Ukraine and other countries in the region military, but not economically or not with humanitarian assistance. And we had the opportunity to meet with the U.S. business community in Ukraine to hear about kind of really the remarkable story of continued economic growth in Ukraine in spite of bombs raining down, Russian attempts to really completely destroy Ukraine infrastructure to the point that the economy can no longer function, she added. (Source: csis *)
* The Center for Strategic and International Studies, officially a bipartisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C., CSIS "has been dedicated to finding ways to sustain American prominence and prosperity as a force for good in the world'.
01:56 BST, 9 June 2024 Since the United States detonated its first atomic bomb at the Trinity test site in 1945, dozens of accounts of UFOs have been logged by military witnesses and government scientists working with America's sensitive nuclear arsenal. A series of three studies led by a retired US Air Force staff sergeant, Hancock, and a data analyst affiliate with Harvard's UFO-hunting Galileo Project, Porritt, along with their research team focused the analysis on official military and police reports of UFOs from 1945 to 1975, on cases with multiple witnesses and signals evidence, like radar. Now a new, decades-long study has analyzed over 500 of the best supported UFO cases from the heights of the Cold War, Hancock and Porritt's most recent report on the connection, 'UAP Activity Pattern Study 1945-1975 Military and Public Activities.' It was published in March and presented before the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies this past weekend. Their study only covered US cases. Their conclusion: extraterrestrials, or some other intelligence, has methodically surveilled America's rise to a nuclear power. 'This intelligence understands the developmental cycle. They have some contextual knowledge of what they're looking at and what they're looking for,' Hancock told. From 1948 to 1952, as America's production of atomic weapons first ramped up, waves of UFO sightings began cropping up over Washington state's Hanford nuclear production complex, as well as Los Alamos and other sites for the Manhattan Project. Inside the Air Force for the first seven to 10 years they sincerely believed it was the Russians, Hancock told. 'And when they couldn't prove that,' he said, 'it became very political.' In one illustrative case from May 21, 1949, Hanford personnel spotted a 'silvery, disc-shaped' UFO hovering over the plant, whose B Reactor had generated the plutonium used in the first atomic bomb test at Trinity. The UFO was simultaneously tracked on radar by nearby Moses Lake Air Force Base, which scrambled an F-82 fighter jet to 'intercept it in hopes that it might be a disk,' 'UFO's were faster than jet,' Air Force investigators noted of the failed pursuit. These years of strange encounters were much more likely to have occurred in broad daylight and often involved multiple UFOs in formation performing dazzling maneuvers. 'This period, here, we've got only four sites, that would be the key stuff that you would focus on,' Porritt told. ’You get the same sort of pattern with with all four sites,' he said. But as the Pentagon began arming Air Force squadrons with its new nuclear bombs, and installing missile silos in the American heartland, UFOs appeared to follow the action there. From 1952 onward, UFOs probing near active US nuclear weapons took precedence, with a wave of sightings around America's new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) starting in the 1960s. As the UFOs appeared more and more over armed and ready nuclear weapons sites, the apparent craft also started to appear more at night. 'When you get to those ICBM bases, from about 1965 to 1975, these things are occurring at night,' Hancock pointed out. And they are much more intrusive. ’They're very low altitude, they penetrate the security perimeters of the base,' he added. Among the hundreds of cases included in their analysis was the infamous March 16, 1967 Malmstrom case in Montana in which Air Force witnesses reported that ten nuclear missiles were switched off by a UFO, confirmed by a US Strategic Air Command report. 'All ten missiles in Echo Flight at Malmstrom lost strat alert within ten seconds of each other'. The declassified report, much like Salas who was the on-duty commander for the base's underground launch in March 1967, and his fellow veteran witnesses, noted 'grave concern' about the case. This February, a bombshell report revealed that an ex-Pentagon UFO investigator had privately briefed Congress on a similar 1964 incident where a UFO blasted an Atlas missile carrying a dummy nuclear warhead out of the sky. Several of UFO sightings, including incidents at Malmstrom Air Force Base become central to demands in Congress for wider declassification of military UFO data. During the first public hearings on UFOs in over half a century, back in May 2022, Congress grilled Pentagon officials over UFOs and America's nuclear weapons security. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security Moultrie 'didn't seem to know anything about it – or if he did, he was wanting to avoid the topic', according to Salas who told he was 'shocked' to see those Pentagon officials plead ignorance on the events. Hancock, Porritt and their coauthors hope to extend their analysis on the connections between UFO sightings and nuclear sites from 1975 to the modern era, although that work faces some hurdles. But from just the 1945 to 1975 studies, Hancock believes that these airborne mysteries appear to show intentional study of America's most sensitive weaponry. 'I mean, focus implies intention. And focus obviously implies intelligence,' he said. 'This intelligence understands atomics, and they understand atomic weaponry.''The way it progressed from one type of facility to another type - I mean, it starts with manufacturing plants, moves on through assembly plants, storage, deployment, it's hard to read that as anything other than someone having an agenda,' according to Hancock. His research partner, Porritt, ventured even a little further: 'They may have a better understanding of the future, our future, than we do.' (Source: dailymail *)
* The Daily Mail, a British daily, middle-market tabloid newspaper. Headquarters London, United Kingdom
Photo: Project 1794: a Cold War-era US Air Force effort to build a supersonic flying saucer in collaboration with a Canadian defense contractor
NATO
July 9, 2024 The Nato summit comes on the back of the failed Swiss peace summit held on June 16-17 that was supposed to reinforce the isolation of Russia mandate, but in the end had the opposite effect: too few Global South countries turned up and too few signed off on what was already an extremely weak final communiqué. At the Swiss summit this was watered down to a mere three of the least contentious points – POW exchanges, food security and nuclear safety – and the delegates struggled to endorse even those. The main objective of the Nato summit – to create a roadmap for Ukraine’s accession – is dead in the water before the meeting begins. There is talk of a “bridge” to Nato, but this is classic Euro-nonsense that means nothing. It doesn’t even go as far as “road”, as roads go somewhere. All bridges do is cross some bit of water but don’t get you to a destination. US President Biden is struggling after his debate fiasco, French President Macron is fighting for his political life after the snap elections and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also took a body blow in the recent EU elections. Ukraine’s three Ms problem highlights the details of the increasing pressure President Zelenskiy is under from the lack of men, money and materiel. (Source: intellinews *)
* bne IntelliNews, a news wire agency and media company. Headquarters Berlin, Germany
(Tuesday), 07/09/24 6:00 AM ET President Biden’s fitness for office will be put to the test this week during the NATO summit he is hosting in Washington, a high-stakes endurance test that gives the president an opportunity to push back on critics saying he is too old for a second term. The NATO summit, beginning today and taking place over three days in Washington, D.C., will focus on demonstrating the alliance’s enduring support for Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia, and 'signaling deep ties in the Indo-Pacific' to counter Chinese President Xi’s designs on subsuming Taiwan. But the frantic debate over Biden’s future - as he tries to contain the fallout from his alarming debate performance last month - risks overshadowing an event 'aimed at projecting strength against threats from Russia and China'. Biden’s June 27 debate with Trump spurred panic among even ardent supporters, as the president failed to match Trump’s energy, speaking with a weak, raspy voice and trailing off on numerous answers. “Journalists attending President Biden’s summit press conference will likely not ask one question about NATO but instead ask about the president’s political future,” said Townsend, a former senior Pentagon official focused on NATO policy and a current adjunct senior fellow with the Center for New American Security. While the U.S. is viewed as an indispensable partner and the de facto leader of the alliance, allies are confronting the reality that Trump may win in November, and the possibility that he could follow through on threats to withdraw from the alliance or hold back U.S. commitments to the Article 5 mutual defense agreement. “U.S. domestic politics” is a major challenge for the alliance, Gentile, associate director of the RAND Corporation’s Arroyo Center, said. “The alliance will have to improve cohesion among NATO states in their aim to help Ukraine win the war,' he added. “It is possible that a future U.S. administration will substantially reduce its traditional level of leadership and support for the alliance because of a shift in American domestic politics or a conflict in Asia that consumes U.S. attention and resources,' Mueller, senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, said of the challenges facing NATO. Biden has been defiant in the wake of increasingly public calls from Democratic lawmakers to drop out of the race and widespread concern behind closed doors that the president is too frail to mount a campaign against former President Trump in the November election. White House national security communications adviser Kirby brushed off a question yesterday about whether Biden’s poor debate performance late last month would cause trouble with allies, saying it “presupposes the notion that they need to be reassured.” “I don’t believe that’s the case,” he said. “We’re not picking up any signs of that from our allies at all.' Kirby sought to put the focus back on Ukraine, saying announcements throughout the summit will include new commitments for air defense support for Ukraine, deterrence capabilities to boost NATO and investments in the defense industrial base, 'including' domestically in the U.S. He said leaders would also reaffirm that 'there is a path for Ukraine to join NATO in the future'. A joint communique issued at the end of the summit is 'expected to lay out how NATO is taking on a bigger leadership role in coordinating support for Ukraine' - concerned that a second Trump administration would cut back or end robust U.S. military and economic support for Kyiv. This includes NATO establishing a command post in Germany to coordinate weapons deliveries among approximately 50 of Kyiv’s supporters - an initiative currently led by the U.S. and called the Ramstein grouping. The alliance will also seek pledges from allies to sustain their current level of funding for the next year, and seek to establish a consensus on a baseline of future financial support. The president is expected to meet with newly elected British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday, and he will host a dinner with NATO allies beginning at 8 p.m. local time - a counter to Biden’s reported comments last week to Democratic governors that evening events tend to tire him out. On Thursday, (July 11), Biden will begin a day of meetings at 10 a.m. with NATO allies, and hold a press conference at 5:30 p.m. Other events include the president hosting President Zelensky and nearly two dozen NATO allies who have signed bilateral security agreements with Kyiv. (Source: thehill *)
* The Hill, an American newspaper and digital media company based in Washington, D.C.
United Nations
(Tuesday), 9:12 PM CEST, July 9, 2024 At an emergency meeting chaired by Moscow’s own ambassador Nebenzia, U.N. Security Council members confronted Russia today over a missile strike the previous day that destroyed part of Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital. France and Ecuador asked for the session at the Security Council, but Russia led it as the current holder of the council’s rotating presidency. At the U.N. headquarters, Ukrainian Ambassador Kyslytsya showed the Security Council photos of what his country asserts were fragments showing the projectile’s Russian origin, plus a map purportedly showing a missile’s path from Russian territory and, via a sharp turn, to the children’s hospital. Kyslytsya’s country isn’t on the 15-member council. Russia denies responsibility for the strike at the hospital, where at least two staffers were killed. At Okhmatdyt, “the ground shook and the walls trembled. Both children and adults screamed and cried from fear, and the wounded from pain,” cardiac surgeon and anesthesiologist Dr. Zhovnir told the Security Council by video from Kyiv. “It was a real hell.” Most of the over 600 young patients had been moved to bomb shelters, except those in surgery, Zhovnir said. He said over 300 people were injured, including eight children, and two adults died, one of them a young doctor. Later, he heard people crying out for help from beneath the rubble. Nebenzia reiterated Moscow’s denials of responsibility for the hospital attack, insisting it was hit by a Ukrainian air defense rocket. He characterized the slew of criticism as “verbal gymnastics” from countries trying to protect Ukraine’s government. “If this had been a Russian strike, there would have been nothing left of the building,” Nebenzia said, adding that “all the children and most of the adults would have been killed, and not wounded.” The strike on the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital was part of a massive daytime barrage in multiple cities, including the capital of Kyiv. The attack also damaged Ukraine’s main specialist hospital for women and hit key energy infrastructure. Officials said at least 42 people were killed. Acting U.N. humanitarian chief Msuya stressed to the Security Council that intentionally attacking a hospital is a war crime. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) has verified 1,878 attacks affecting health care facilities, personnel, transport, supplies and patients, she said. Russia insists that it doesn’t attack civilian targets in Ukraine. Earlier today in Geneva, Bell, who heads a U.N. team monitoring human rights in Ukraine, said the hospital likely was struck by a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile. (Source: apnews *)
* The Associated Press, an American news agency headquartered in New York City, U.S
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