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Europe
Georgia
July 12, 2024 Reduced language devoted to Georgia, near-exclusion from NATO Declaration emerged from this week's NATO summit in Washington. "The main issue regarding Georgia is that Georgia is no longer on the Euro-Atlantic agenda and that there has been a democratic backsliding in Georgia, which may bring irreparable consequences,’ Kutelia, a former Georgian defense minister and a former Georgian ambassador to the United States have lamented, regarding the perceived NATO snub. NATO allies controversially pledged in the 2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration that Georgia would eventually become a member, providing it fulfilled requirements. That decision was reconfirmed in the wake of Russia's five-day war with Georgia in August 2008 and Russia's ongoing occupation of Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions. A 2022 NATO summit in Madrid approved specific "support measures" for Georgia as a partner, after President Putin ordered troops to invade Ukraine months earlier. Whereas former declarations have mentioned Georgian cooperation with the transatlantic defense alliance, this week the declaration neither repeated the record of the Bucharest summit, nor talk about the NATO-Georgia program, nor mention the essential package of the Wales summit. NATO members limited the text to a single reference urging Russia to completely withdraw its troops from Moldova and Georgia. Prime Minister and Georgian Dream leader Kobakhidze, in May accused a former U.S. ambassador of supporting two attempted revolutions in Georgia. The United States has undertaken a 'comprehensive review' of relations with Tbilisi since the so-called "foreign agent" law was passed in May over pro-European President Zurabishvili's veto. Kobakhidze responded to Washington's review by calling for a review of relations with the United States. 'EU officials have checked the momentum of Georgia's candidacy'. Pursuit of EU and NATO membership remains embedded in the post-Soviet Caucasus nation's constitution, but the current Georgian government's passage of the perceived Russian-style law to curb media and NGOs has dealt a blow to both efforts. The U.S. House of Representatives is considering legislation calling for increased scrutiny of the Georgian government's actions and its ties to Russia and other authoritarian regimes like China. The so-called Megobari Act passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday. The act, which takes its name from the word that in Georgian means "friend', mandates several reports, including an assessment of Russian intelligence's penetration of Georgia and Tbilisi's cooperation with China. The bill is expected to come to a vote in the full House before Congress adjourns for summer break in August, to become law ahead of Georgian elections in October. (Source: rferl *)
* Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an American government-funded international media organization. Headquarters Prague Broadcast Center, Czech Republic
Asia
China
July 12, 2024 9:06 PM China and Russia announced today that they are conducting joint naval exercises in the waters and airspace near Zhanjiang city in the south of China. Zhanjiang city, located in China’s southern Guangdong province, faces the South China Sea, a contentious waterway where China holds multiple territorial disputes with neighboring countries, including the Philippines. "The ongoing exercise is to demonstrate the resolve and capabilities of the two sides in jointly addressing maritime security threats and preserving global and regional peace and stability," said Zhang, spokesperson for China’s Defense Ministry. Guided missile destroyers, guided missile frigates and suppliers have assembled on China’s Southern coast to participate in the exercise, according to Chinese state-run media CGTN. The exercises, titled Joint Sea-2024, began in early July and will last until the middle of the month, according to the Chinese Defense Ministry. Joint Sea-2024 is part of the regular defense collaboration agreed upon between the two nations, according to the ministry. This new round of naval exercises “will further deepen China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination in the new era," Zhang said. The naval exercises were announced following the NATO summit in Washington, where countries cited the deepening strategic relationship between China and Russia and the two states’ attempts to "undercut and reshape the rules-based international order" as "a cause for profound concern.’ China said NATO’s statement was "filled with Cold War mentality and belligerent rhetoric.’ A spokesperson for China’s mission to the European Union said in a statement yesterday that the NATO statement was "provocative" and filled with "obvious lies and smears.’ China is also hosting bilateral military exercises with Russian-ally Belarus on the border with Poland, which will last until July 19. (Source: voanews *)
* Voice of America, the international radio broadcaster of the United States of America. Headquarters Washington, D.C., United States
North America
United States
(Friday), July 12, 2024 04:29 JST The North Atlantic Council met with leaders of the Indo-Pacific and European Union during NATO's 75th anniversary summit in Washington yesterday. The meeting came a day after U.S. national security adviser Sullivan announced four new joint projects between the Indo-Pacific countries and NATO members that focus on Ukraine, artificial intelligence, disinformation and cybersecurity. The leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand met with NATO members yesterday for the third consecutive year. It also came a day after NATO issued the Washington Summit Declaration, which strengthened language against China, calling it a "decisive enabler" of Russia's war in Ukraine and directly categorizing Beijing as part of the threat facing the Euro-Atlantic region. Against the accusation, the English-language newspaper China Daily said today the declaration's language is provocative and is based on the "false proposition" that China bears responsibility for the prolonged conflict. "China has remained a neutral party and it is NATO that has been continually fanning the flames of the hostilities," it said, echoing Moscow's argument that it was the expansion of NATO that is the root cause of the conflict. China skipped a Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland last month on the grounds that a meeting without Russia's participation lacked balance. Since the war began in February 2022, China has supported Russia's defense industrial base and become its major trading partner, while also trying to maintain stable economic relations with Western countries. On Monday, Xi met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Beijing, who briefed the Chinese leader on his recent visits to both Kyiv and Moscow. Hungary just took over the European Union's rotating presidency in July and Xi is eager to collaborate with Orbán for a diplomatic win. Today, U.S. President Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, South Korea President Yoon, New Zealand Prime Minister Luxon and Australian Deputy Prime Minister Marles on the sidelines of NATO events. The leaders "strongly condemned' arms transfers from North Korea to Russia and also discussed ’shared concerns" over China's support to Russia's military industrial base. NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners are signaling to China that Beijing's current path is unacceptable, and that united messaging from all parties could put pressure on Chinese President Xi. The key is for NATO leaders and Indo-Pacific partners to voice concerns directly to the Chinese president, Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said. "If this complaint comes from Washington, it will easily be dismissed. But if European countries and U.S. allies in East Asia can speak out more directly and explicitly to the Chinese leadership, that will have a greater chance of being persuasive because these countries are now the major target of Chinese diplomatic engagement.' (Source: nikkei *)
* The Nikkei, a national daily newspapers in Japan, the world's largest financial newspaper. Headquarters Tokyo, Japan.
(Friday), July 12, 2024 6:03 am Another step in an arms race. The White House announced on Wednesday, July 10, that it would begin deployments of non-nuclear ’long-range fires capabilities’ for a US force stationed in Germany in 2026. That will, when fully developed, include the SM-6 and Tomahawk missile systems, and ’developmental hypersonic weapons’. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) signed by the US and Russia in 1987, prohibited both sides from possessing, producing, or testing land-based cruise or ballistic missiles with a range between 500-5,500km. Former president Trump withdrew from the treaty in 2019. Moscow says it has observed a “voluntary moratorium” on the deployment of missiles previously covered by the treaty. The US’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) programme, dubbed ’Dark Eagle’, is said to use missiles capable of reaching speeds of Mach 17 with a range of up to 3,000km. Both the Dark Eagle and Tomahawk systems are capable of reaching targets across Russia. 'This will almost certainly lead to Russia declaring a formal end to its moratorium on the deployment of INF-range systems,' Podvig, a senior researcher in the Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research told. 'I think we should expect that Russia will deploy its systems in response’. “I don’t know how anyone in the US or Nato believes that this will lead to a more secure environment in Europe,” he added. President Putin warned on 4 July: 'If medium and shorter-range missiles of American manufacture appear somewhere, then we reserve the right to act in a mirror manner.” 'The necessary work on preparing compensating countermeasures by Russian specialised agencies was started in advance and is being carried out on a systematic basis,' Russia’s foreign ministry said yesterday. Stefanovich, a security analyst at Russian think-tank, the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations, said the Kremlin would see the US deployments as a direct threat and respond in kind. 'Given the clearly strategic nature of the US and allied INF-range weapons vis-à-vis Russian targets, I believe that our guys will not bother much with matching European/Asian deployments and go straight after [the US],' he wrote on X. Wolfstahl, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists, warned: 'We have recreated one of the most dangerous components of the Cold War in Europe and things will only get worse from here.' So far, the US has announced plans to deploy missile systems in Germany. The weapons will be under US rather than Nato command. (Source: inews *)
* The i, a British national newspaper published in London, United Kingdom.
12 Jul 2024 Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has met with former US President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida for ‘peace mission 5.0’. They discussed the “possibilities of peace”, the latest stop in the prime minister’s solo run to secure a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war. “It was an honour to visit President [Trump] at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!,” Orbán said on X. Trump has said he would quickly end the war, and advisers to the former president are reported to have presented him with a plan to end the conflict by, in part, making future US aid to Kyiv conditional on Ukraine joining peace talks. Orbán was in the United States this week to attend a NATO summit hosted by President Biden. Orbán has visited Ukraine, Russia and China in the past two weeks on a self-styled “peace mission”. He had travelled to Kyiv before visiting Moscow, meeting last week with Putin. President Zelenskyy said he was not informed by Orbán of his onward trip to Russia. The Kremlin said today that Orbán did not tell Putin of his plans to meet Trump, and the Russian president did not convey any message to Trump via Orbán. NATO allies were frustrated with Orbán’s actions around the summit in Washington, but he had not blocked the alliance from taking action on Ukraine. Some NATO members said the trip handed legitimacy to the Russian leader when the West wants to isolate him over his invasion of Ukraine. Meeting in Beijing on Tuesday, July 9, with Chinese President Xi for “peace mission 3.0”, Orbán said China was key to ’creating the conditions for peace" between Ukraine and Russia. Hungary does not want NATO to become an 'anti-China' bloc, and will not support it doing so, the country’s foreign minister Szijjártó said yesterday. (Source: aljazeera *)
* Al Jazeera Media Network, a media conglomerate headquartered at Doha. Qatar
July 12, 2024 Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met with former US President Trump in the United States on July 11 to discuss a peace deal in Ukraine, and said he would “fix this problem." Trump, expressing gratitude, emphasized the urgency of peace. "Thank you, Viktor. There must be PEACE, and as soon as possible. Too many people have died in a war that should never have started!" Trump wrote on TruthSocial. His meeting with Trump follows Orbán's first trip to Kyiv on July 2 since Hungary assumed the presidency of the EU Council to meet with President Zelenskiy who flatly refused to start talks with Russia. Orbán then put the cat amongst the pigeon by travelling to Moscow, to meet Russian President Putin, who repeated earlier offers to restart talks on the basis of the Istanbul peace deal agreed in 2022. Orbán shared a photo on social media from the Vnukovo government terminal in Moscow, highlighting his Hungarian EU presidency. Under EU rules the presidency does not grant Hungary the authority to act independently in foreign policy matters. Orbán vowed to “Make Europe Great Again” after taking over the presidency on July 1, in an echo to Trump’s famous MAGA phrase. Orbán's follow up with a visit to Azerbaijan for the Organization of Turkic States summit and a meeting in China with President Xi, who also called for a dialogue to begin. (Source: dw *)
* Deutsche Welle, the German public, state-owned international broadcaster, headquartered in Bonn
July 12, 2024 "Trump’s "going to solve" Russia-Ukraine war, says Orbán". 'Peaceniks unite' at Mar-a-Lago summit in Florida. Since Hungary took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union at the start of July, Orbán announced he is using the presidency to take steps toward peace in Russia’s war against Ukraine - despite the fact that Budapest's role affords him no special diplomatic status. Trump, who leads incumbent President Biden in polling in several critical swing states for November's election, has also said several times that he would end the war quickly - even before he takes over the presidency. ('by Melkozerova'). (Source: politico *)
* Politico, an American political digital newspaper. Headquarters Arlington County, Virginia, U.S.
12 July 2024 Members of Biden’s cabinet crestfallen, dismayed in silent dejection, anxious embarrassment. Secretary of State Blinken, Defense Secretary Austin and National Security Adviser Sullivan were sat in the audience and react to president calling his deputy Harris ‘vice president Trump.’ 'Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump, to be vice president, if I think she’s not qualified to be president,” Biden said, without correcting himself. Earlier in the day Biden confused President Zelensky with his Russian counterpart Putin, introducing him as "President Putin'. That time, Biden returned to the podium to correct himself: 'President Putin? He’s going to beat President Putin. President Zelensky. I’m so focused on beating Putin.' Asked whether he can reassure Americans that he won’t have further bad nights like his admittedly stupid mistake of a debate performance, Biden said there is “no indication” that his work is slowing down. "None.” /photo, video/ (Source: independent *): https://tinyurl.com/3nwn2zjz
* The Independent, a British online newspaper. Headquarters London, United Kingdom
United States
July 12, 2024 Today, President Biden have signed into law S. 138, the “Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act”. He shares the Congress’s bipartisan commitment to advancing the human rights of Tibetans and supporting efforts to preserve their distinct linguistic, cultural, and religious heritage. The Administration will continue to call on the People’s Republic of China to resume direct dialogue, without preconditions, with the Dalai Lama, or his representatives, to seek a settlement that resolves differences and leads to a negotiated agreement on Tibet. The Act does not change longstanding bipartisan United States policy to recognize the Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas of China as part of the People’s Republic of China, White House informs. Reported to Senate at 05/07/2024, the Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act bill addresses issues relating to Tibet, including by establishing a statutory definition of Tibet that includes areas in Chinese provinces outside the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). "For the purposes of U.S. policies and activities relating to Tibet, this bill defines Tibet to include the TAR and the Tibetan areas of the Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan provinces. (Generally, when China's government refers to Tibet, it means only the TAR, but it recognizes the areas included in this bill's definition as Tibetan. China's government formally established the TAR in 1965.) Furthermore, the duties of the Office of the U.S. Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues shall include working with relevant bureaus in the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development to ensure that U.S. government statements and documents counter, as appropriate, disinformation about Tibet by China's government and the Chinese Communist Party, including disinformation about Tibet's history and institutions," congress.gov tells. (Sources: whitehouse *; congress **)
* The White House, the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States, located in Washington, D.C.
** The United States Congress, the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States in Washington, D.C.
NATO
(Friday), 2024. júl. 12. The military alliance was changing its stance. For the past two years, NATO has refused to be involved in anything related to providing lethal support to Ukraine. ’The fact that the war is ongoing and that support must be sustained has changed this attitude’. The transfer of oversight of military supplies, training and reform of Ukraine’s armed forces into NATO hands is to be completed 'in the coming months' as 'alliance leaders rush to protect the country’s support from governments that may criticise it in the future'. On Wednesday, NATO members endorsed the Alliance’s role in coordinating training and supplies to Ukraine. “This will not make NATO party to the conflict, but it will enhance Ukraine’s self-defence,’ Stoltenberg insisted ahead of the summit. They created a platform called NATO Security Assistance and Training to Ukraine (NSATU), which will be put in place 'over the next several months, in a way that has no disruption over the efforts.' Until then, the coordination of assistance will remain in the hands of the SAGU (Security Assistance Group for Ukraine) and its International Board of Coordination Center (IBCC), which are linked to the so-called Ramstein format, where more than 50 countries meet regularly. A reason is the need to insulate support for Ukraine from any future governments that might challenge it. NSATU’s tasks currently lie in the hands of ad hoc structures set up by the US in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine. ’This conflict is not likely to be over any time soon,’ said a senior NATO official. The decision to create NSATU was taken by 31 allies – with Hungary opting out – and any further decision to change its mandate will require the consensus of all 31 allies. Bilateral or multilateral training missions for the Ukrainian armed forces are now in the hands of the countries, such as the British-led Interflex, the EU military assistance mission (EUMAM), and the Dutch-led fighter jet pilot training for F-16s. The NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) will lead the transition from the ephemeral formation to the NSATU coordination platform. A three-star general will lead NSATU and report to SACEUR. NATO will coordinate with donor governments what equipment to send Ukraine based on their needs, and deliveries will be made to hubs on the eastern flank in Poland, Slovakia and Romania. As a second task, NSATU will also coordinate training activities. A third task is the future development of the Ukrainian armed forces. This means that, as part of its coordination work, NATO staff will take into account ’the needs of the future Ukrainian Army as it modernises and joins the Alliance, making its forces more interoperable and able to work with the armies of NATO members’. “We work more closely with the Ukrainian armed forces, including to a new NATO-Ukraine joint analysis, training and education centre in Poland and by deepening our cooperation on innovation and defence industrial production,’ the Secretary-General Stoltenberg said yesterday. "NATO will not deploy forces in Ukraine, move equipment into Ukraine, track its movement across the border or get involved in procurement', a NATO official said. (Source: euractiv *)
* Euractiv, a European news website. Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
