MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Thursday said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Russia next Monday and Tuesday and hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The visit was first announced by Russian officials last month, but the dates have not been previously disclosed.
Russia has had strong ties with India since the Cold War, and New Delhi’s importance as a key trading partner for Moscow has grown since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China and India have become key buyers of Russian oil following sanctions imposed by the US and its allies that shut most Western markets for Russian exports.
Under Modi’s leadership, India has avoided condemning Russia’s action in Ukraine while emphasizing the need for a peaceful settlement.
The partnership between Moscow and New Delhi has become fraught, however, since Russia started developing closer ties with India’s main rival, China, because of the hostilities in Ukraine.
Modi on Thursday skipped the summit of a security grouping created by Moscow and Beijing to counter Western alliances.
Modi sent his foreign minister to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at its annual meeting in Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana. The meeting is being attended by Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Indian media reports speculated that the recently reelected Modi was busy with the Parliament session last week.
Modi last visited Russia in 2019 for an economic forum in the far eastern port of Vladivostok. He last traveled to Moscow in 2015. Putin last met with Modi in September 2022 at a summit of the SCO in Uzbekistan. In 2021, Putin also traveled to New Delhi and held talks with the Indian leader.
Tensions between Beijing and New Delhi have continued since a confrontation in June 2020 along the disputed China-India border in which rival troops fought with rocks, clubs and fists. At least 20 Indian troops and four Chinese soldiers were killed.
After his reelection to a third straight term. Modi attended the G7 meeting in Italy’s Apulia region last month and addressed artificial intelligence, energy, and regional issues in Africa and the Mediterranean.
In the early 1990s, the Soviet Union was the source of about 70 percent of Indian army weapons, 80 percent of its air force systems and 85 percent of its navy platforms.
India bought its first aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya, from Russia in 2004. It had served in the former Soviet Union and later in the Russian navy.
With the Russian supply line hit by the fighting in Ukraine, India has been reducing its dependency on Russian arms and diversifying its defense procurements, buying more from the US, Israel, France and Italy.
India’s Modi will meet with Putin on 2-day visit to Russia starting Monday, Kremlin says
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India’s Modi will meet with Putin on 2-day visit to Russia starting Monday, Kremlin says
- New Delhi’s importance as a key trading partner for Moscow has grown since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022
- But Modi on Thursday skipped the summit of a security grouping created by Moscow and Beijing to counter Western alliances
Explainer: After French election no party has a majority, so what comes next?
- With all three major blocs falling short of 289 needed to secure an outright majority, none of them can form a majority government and would need support from others to pass legislation
Here’s what may come next after France’s election on Sunday looked set to produce a hung parliament, with a leftist alliance in the lead but without a absolute majority.
What happened in Sunday’s second round vote?
The left-wing New Popular Front alliance was on track to win the biggest number of seats, according to pollsters’ projected results, but it will fall short of the 289 needed to secure an outright majority in the lower house.
The outcome delivers a stinging defeat to the far-right National Rally (RN) party, which had been projected to win the vote but suffered after the NFP and President Emmanuel Macron’s Together bloc worked together between the first and second rounds of voting to create an anti-RN vote.
Projections showed the RN finishing third, behind Together.
It means none of the three blocs can form a majority government and would need support from others to pass legislation.
Will a left-leaning coalition form?
This is far from certain.
France is not accustomed to the kind of post-election coalition-building that is common in northern European parliamentary democracies like Germany or the Netherlands.
Its Fifth Republic was designed in 1958 by war hero Charles de Gaulle to give large, stable parliamentary majorities to presidents and that has created a confrontational political culture with no tradition of consensus and compromises.
Moderate leftwing politician Raphael Glucksmann, a lawmaker in the European Parliament, said the political class would have to “act like grown-ups.”
Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), ruled out a broad coalition of parties of different stripes. He said Macron had a duty to call on the leftist alliance to rule.
In the centrist camp, Macron’s party head, Stephane Sejourne, said he was ready to work with mainstream parties but ruled out any deal with Melenchon’s LFI. Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe also ruled out any deal with the hard-left party.
Macron himself said he will wait for the new assembly to have found some “structure” to decide his next move.
What if no agreement can be found?
That would be uncharted territory for France. The constitution says Macron cannot call new parliamentary elections for another 12 months.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said he would tender his resignation to Macron on Monday morning, but that he was available to act in a care-taker capacity.
The constitution says Macron decides who to ask to form a government. But whoever he picks faces a confidence vote in the National Assembly, which will convene for 15 days on July 18. This means Macron needs to name someone acceptable to a majority of lawmakers.
Macron will likely be hoping to peel off Socialists and Greens from the leftist alliance, isolating France Unbowed, to form a center-left coalition with his own bloc.
However, there was no sign of an imminent break-up of the New Popular Front at this stage.
Another possibility is a government of technocrats that would manage day-to-day affairs but not oversee structural changes.
It was not clear the left-wing bloc would support this scenario, which would still require the backing of parliament.
Can you ‘Trump-proof’ NATO? As Biden falters, Europeans look to safeguard the military alliance
- Biden’s poor debate performance set off a frenzy about whether the 81-year-old president is fit for office or should step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate
WASHINGTON: Growing skepticism about President Joe Biden’s reelection chances has European leaders heading to the NATO summit in Washington confronting the prospect that the military alliance’s most prominent critic, Donald Trump, may return to power over its mightiest military.
NATO — made up of 32 European and North American allies committed to defending one another from armed attack — will stress strength through solidarity as it celebrates its 75th anniversary during the summit starting Tuesday. Event host Biden, who pulled allies into a global network to help Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion, has called the alliance the most unified it has ever been.
But behind the scenes, a dominant topic will be preparing for possible division, as the power of far-right forces unfriendly to NATO grows in the US and other countries, including France, raising concerns about how strong support will stay for the alliance and the military aid that its members send to Ukraine.
At the presidential debate, Biden asked Trump: “You’re going to stay in NATO or you’re going to pull out of NATO?” Trump tilted his head in a shrug.
Biden’s poor debate performance set off a frenzy about whether the 81-year-old president is fit for office or should step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate.
Even before the debate, European governments were deep in consultations on what they could do to ensure that NATO, Western support for Ukraine and the security of individual NATO countries will endure should Trump win back the presidency in November and temper US contributions.
Some Americans and Europeans call it “Trump-proofing” NATO — or “future-proofing” it when the political advances of far-right political blocs in Europe are factored in.
This week’s summit, held in the city where the mutual-defense alliance was founded in 1949, was once expected to be a celebration of NATO’s endurance. Now, a European official said, it looks “gloomy.”
There are two reasons for the gloom: Russian advances on the battlefield in the months that Trump-allied congressional Republicans delayed US arms and funding to Ukraine. And the possibility of far-right governments unfriendly to NATO coming to power.
The official spoke to reporters last week on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations among governments.
Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow on NATO with the nonpartisan think tank the Atlantic Council, says she has a blunt message for Europeans: “Freaking out about a second Trump term helps no one.”
For allies at the summit, she said, the key will be resisting the temptation to dwell on the details of unprecedented events in US politics and put their heads down on readying Western military aid for Ukraine and preparing for any lessening of US support.
Trump, who before and after his presidency has spoken admiringly of Russian President Vladimir Putin and harshly of NATO, often focuses his complaints on the US share of the alliance’s costs. Biden himself, as a US senator in 1997, warned that if there were any sense other NATO allies were “taking the United States for suckers, the future of the alliance in the next century will be very much in doubt.”
The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union lulled the West into thinking the Russian threat had been neutralized, leading to military spending cuts. Now, NATO allies are bolstering their forces against any wider aggression by Putin, and a record 23 nations in NATO are meeting defense-spending goals.
One of Trump’s former national security advisers, John Bolton, says Trump in a second term would work to get the US out of NATO. Congress passed legislation last year making that harder, but a president could simply stop collaborating in some or all of NATO’s missions.
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Elections in France saw a NATO-adverse far-right party under Marine Le Pen greatly increase the number of seats it holds in parliament. Far-right forces also are gaining in Germany.
Some European officials and analysts say that’s simply the rise and fall of voter allegiance in democracies, which NATO has dealt with before. They point to Poland, where a right-wing party lost power last year and whose people have been among NATO’s most ardent supporters. They also note Italy, where right-wing populist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has won praise as an ally.
In part in response to the United States’ political upheaval, Europeans say they want to “institutionalize” support for Ukraine within NATO, lessening the dependence on the US
European allies also failed to get enough weapons to Ukraine during the delay in a US foreign aid package, outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged in a visit to Washington last month.
That’s “one of the reasons why I believe that we should have a stronger NATO role — is that role in providing the support,” Stoltenberg told reporters.
An initiative likely to be endorsed at the summit is NATO taking more responsibility for coordinating training and military and financial assistance for Ukraine’s forces, instead of the US Europeans also are talking of giving Ukrainians a greater presence within NATO bodies, though there’s no consensus yet on Ukraine joining the alliance.
Europeans say NATO countries are coordinating statements on Ukraine for the summit to make clear, for example, that additional Russian escalation would trigger substantial new sanctions and other penalties from the West. That’s even if the US, under Trump, doesn’t act.
As for NATO security overall, besides European allies upping defense spending, they’re huddling on defense strategies that don’t rely as much on the US There’s also growing emphasis on ensuring each country is capable of fielding armies and fighting wars, the European official said.
The possibility of a less dependable US partner under Trump is generating discussions about Europeans playing a bigger role in NATO’s nuclear deterrence, according to the Poland-based Center for Eastern Studies, a security think tank. The US now plays the determinative role in the nuclear weapons stationed in Europe.
But European countries and Canada, with their smaller military budgets and economies, are years from being able to fill any US-sized hole in NATO.
“If an American president comes into office and says, ‘We’re done with that,’ there is definitely will in Europe to backfill the American role,” said John Deni, a senior fellow on security at the Atlantic Council. “The Brits would jump on it.”
But “even they will acknowledge they do not have the capacity or the capability, and they can’t do it at the speed and the scale that we can,” Deni said. “This notion that we are somehow Trump-proofing or future-proofing the American commitment — either to Ukraine or to NATO — I think that mostly is fantasy.”
North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong calls South Korean drills a provocation, KCNA says
SEOUL: Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said South Korea’s recent military drills near the border between the two nations are an inexcusable and explicit provocation, according to a report from state media KCNA on Monday.
Kim said that in case North Korea judges its own sovereignty as violated, its armed forces will immediately carry out mission and duty according to its constitution.
France ‘avoided worst’ with far right loss: Scholz ally
BERLIN: A senior member of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party said Sunday that France had “avoided the worst” after projections showed the far right losing the second round of legislative elections.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who stunned the country by calling the snap vote last month after the far right trounced his centrist alliance in EU elections, was “politically weakened,” Nils Schmid said.
Estimated results showed a broad left-wing alliance becoming the largest group in France’s National Assembly, with Macron’s centrists in second and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) in a surprise third place.
Pre-election polling had put the RN in first, raising fears for the European Union’s future direction with an anti-immigration, euroskeptic party potentially controlling the government of a key member.
“The worst is avoided, the RN cannot form a governing majority,” Schmid, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) foreign policy spokesman in the German parliament, told the Funke press group.
Macron is “politically weakened” because his group lost a significant number of seats but “retains a central role” with no party claiming an outright majority, Schmid added.
Forming a government will be “tricky” and parties must show “flexibility” and an “ability to compromise,” said Schmid, whose country has long been used to drawn-out negotiations leading to seemingly unwieldy coalitions.
Scholz’s government is made up of his SPD, the Greens and the liberal FDP. But French politics is unaccustomed to such arrangements.
“The crisis isn’t over, quite the opposite,” said Germany’s conservative FAZ daily.
“France, and with it Europe, are heading for an unstable period” with the prospect of “fragile government coalitions depending on the extremes and liable to fall at any moment,” it added.
The country’s most-read daily Bild wondered if far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon, who it said was “contemptuous of Germany,” would take power.
For center-left daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the “republican front stopped Le Pen” and the RN, but parliament will be “very fragmented” and Macron had “isolated himself on the Mount Olympus of power.”
Philippines, Japan on verge of key defense pact
- The Philippines and Japan — longtime allies of the United States — have been deepening defense ties in the face of an increasingly assertive China
MANILA: The Philippines and Japan are set to sign on Monday a key defense pact that will allow the deployment of troops on each other’s territory.
Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa will hold high-level talks with their Philippine counterparts Gilberto Teodoro and Enrique Manalo in Manila.
The Philippines and Japan — longtime allies of the United States — have been deepening defense ties in the face of an increasingly assertive China.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos will witness the signing of the reciprocal access agreement (RAA), which the countries began negotiating in November, the Philippine Presidential Communications Office said.
The accord would provide the legal framework for Japan and the Philippines to send defense personnel to each other’s territory for training and other operations.
Negotiations were “close to conclusion,” Tokyo’s ambassador to Manila, Kazuya Endo, said in a speech on Thursday, as he flagged “significant developments” in Japan’s defense equipment supplies to the Philippines.
The talks follow escalating confrontations at sea between Chinese and Philippine ships as Beijing steps up efforts to push its claims to nearly all of the South China Sea.
The most serious in a number of incidents happened on June 17 when Chinese coast guard personnel wielding knives, sticks and an axe surrounded and boarded three Philippine navy boats during a resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands.
A Filipino sailor lost a thumb in the clash.
Tokyo and Beijing are also at loggerheads over Japan-controlled disputed islands in the East China Sea.
The RAA was important because it would enable the Philippines “to enhance our interoperability with like-minded partners,” said Manila-based geopolitical analyst Don McLain Gill.
“This would also complement what we are trying to do in terms of enhancing our security partnerships within the US hub and spokes network.”
Washington has been strengthening its network of alliances in the Asia-Pacific region to counter China’s growing military might and influence, which Chinese officials have said is a US effort to create a “NATO” in the region.
Leaders from Japan, the Philippines and the United States had their first trilateral summit in April aimed at boosting defense ties in Washington.
It was held on the heels of four-way military drills that included Australia in the South China Sea, riling Beijing.
The Philippines has been a key focus of US efforts to build an arc of alliances, owing to its position in the South China Sea and proximity to Taiwan, which China claims as its own.
Philippine support would be crucial for the United States in the event of any conflict.
Japan, wary about possible future changes in US policy in the region, was also seeking “to play a larger role” as an independent and stabilising force, Gill the analyst, said.
Tokyo has signed similar reciprocal access agreements with Britain and Australia in recent years.
The Philippines has equivalent pacts with the United States and Australia and plans to pursue one with France.
Japan, which invaded and occupied the Philippines during World War II, is a top provider of overseas development assistance to the country and also a supplier of security equipment.
“The Japanese would like to impress upon the Americans that Japan is the linchpin of US security presence, military presence here in the region, and of course, the most reliable ally of the United States,” said Renato Cruz De Castro, professor for international studies at De La Salle University in Manila.
