US president calls Kamala Harris ‘Vice-President Trump’ and Zelenskiy ‘President Putin’, but hails alliance and touts domestic recordBiden introduces Zelenskiy as ‘President Putin’Keir Starmer is now holding a press conference as he prepares to leave the Nato summit in Washington.The UK prime minister said he had brought “a message of enduring and unwavering commitment” to Nato. Starmer said:Every policy we have in pursuit of our missions, everything we’re doing to improve people’s lives, all that we hold dear, depends on our security.That is our first priority. It is always our first priority. I made that crystal clear to the British people in our campaign and so I also came to this summit with a clear message.The US announced a new security package for Ukraine worth $225m, which includes a Patriot missile battery, additional ammunition for high-mobility artillery rocket systems and missiles. oe Biden told his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, “we will stay with you, period” ahead of a bilateral meeting on Thursday.Zelenskiy urged Nato allies to lift restrictions on its use of long-range weapons against targets in Russia. He said doing so would be a “gamechanger” in its war with Moscow, adding: “If we want to win, if we want to prevail, to save our country and to defend it, we need to lift all the limitations.”Hungary does not want, and will not support, Nato becoming an “anti-China” bloc, foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said. Speaking on the sidelines of a Nato summit, Szijjarto also said Ukraine’s admission to the alliance would weaken unity within the group.Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said that any possibility of a direct confrontation between Russia and Nato was “worrying”. He added: “Any steps that could lead to this outcome should be consciously avoided.”Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will fly to Mar-a-Lago on Thursday to meet with Donald Trump, according to two sources with knowledge of the meeting. Orbán has enraged his Nato allies by meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping en route to the alliance’s summit in Washington DC. He has also met with Zelenskiy in Kyiv, and is said to be quietly negotiating his own ceasefire plan without consulting either the Biden administration or other EU countries.France, Germany, Italy and Poland signed a letter of intent to develop ground-launched cruise missiles with a range beyond 500km (310 miles), aiming to fill what they say is a gap in European arsenals exposed by Russia’s war in Ukraine. French defence minister Sébastien Lecornu said the new missile was meant to serve as a deterrent.Norway will donate 1bn Norwegian kroner ($92.69m) in support to Ukraine for its air defence, prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre said. The donation comes a day after Norway announced it would give six F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine to help it in defence efforts against Russian air attacks.Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said that France remained a key partner on the international stage as Emmanuel Macron struggles to build a coalition government after elections. “France will be on the international agenda a big partner, a strong partner of all of us, and especially a partner for Germany,” Scholz said at the Nato summit on Thursday.Romania, Bulgaria and Greece signed a deal to enable swift cross-border movement of troops and weapons to Nato’s eastern flank, Romania’s defence ministry said. The planned harmonised military mobility corridor between the three Nato and EU states was one of two such mobility corridors agreed on the sidelines of the Nato summit in Washington DC. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/jul/11/biden-press-conference-nato-updates
Author : Léonie Chao-Fong
Publish date : 2024-07-12 02:24:30
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