WASHINGTON: NATO allies announced Wednesday they had started the long-promised transfer of F-16 jets to Ukraine as leaders meet for a summit in Washington clouded by political uncertainties in the United States.
With the pomp of the three-day gathering in the US capital, President Joe Biden is aiming to rally the West and also reassure US voters amid intense pre-election scrutiny on whether at 81 — six years older than the alliance — he remains fit for the job.
Kicking off events for the 32-nation alliance with a celebration Tuesday evening, Biden committed a new air defense system for Kyiv and urged unity against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched the Ukraine invasion in 2022.
“Make no mistake. Ukraine can — and will — stop Putin,” Biden said in a forceful speech.
The White House followed up Wednesday by saying that Denmark and the Netherlands had begun sending F-16 jets to Ukraine.
Biden last year approved the key request by Ukraine, which wants advanced Western aircraft as it struggles to gain parity in the skies with Russia.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the F-16 transfer “concentrates Vladimir Putin’s mind on the fact that he will not outlast Ukraine, he will not outlast us and, if he persists, the damage that will continue to be done to Russia and its interests will only deepen.”
“The quickest way to get to peace is through a strong Ukraine,” Blinken said.
But Donald Trump, who is edging out Biden in recent polls, has mused about bringing a quick peace settlement by forcing Ukraine to surrender territory to Russia.
The Republican mogul has repeatedly questioned the utility of NATO — formed in 1949 as collective defense against Moscow — which he sees as an unfair burden on the United States.
On the eve of the summit, Russia fired a barrage of missiles on Ukraine, killing dozens, including in Kyiv where a children’s hospital was reduced to debris.
Biden invited to the summit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who voiced gratitude for the F-16s which he said would better protect his country from such “brutal Russian attacks.”
The new aircraft will “bring just and lasting peace closer, demonstrating that terror must fail everywhere and at any time,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
The summit will look for ways to “Trump-proof” the alliance including by having NATO itself take over coordination of arms delivery from the United States.
Outgoing NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has also sought a pledge to keep supplying arms at the same rate — some 40 billion euros ($43 billion) annually — that NATO members have been since Russia invaded.
“I expect that regardless of the outcome of the US elections, the US will remain a strong and staunch NATO ally,” Stoltenberg said as leaders gathered for the summit.
Biden has also invited four key Pacific partners — Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand — as he seeks to increase NATO’s role in managing a rising China.
Ukraine wants firm assurances that it will one day join NATO, which considers an attack on any member an attack on all.
A NATO diplomat said negotiations had settled on wording of a statement that will voice support for Ukraine’s “irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”
Kyiv’s membership enjoys wide backing from Baltic and Eastern European nations still haunted by decades under the Soviet yoke.
But Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have led opposition, concerned that the alliance would effectively be entering war with nuclear-armed Russia as it occupies swathes of Ukraine.
Zelensky, who has achieved hero status in much of the West for his media-savvy defiance of Russia, voiced open annoyance at the last NATO summit in Lithuania at the failure to provide a clearer path to membership.
Other leaders attending the summit include Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of Putin’s closest partners in the West, who ahead of Washington went to Ukraine, Russia and China on a self-described peace mission criticized by Brussels and Washington.
Biden, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will later welcome their counterparts for gala dinners around the Washington area, which is in the throes of a searing heat wave.
One new NATO leader is British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is visiting days after taking office in a landslide victory by his Labour Party.
He will meet both Biden and Zelensky and is expected to confirm Britain’s strong support for Ukraine.
NATO begins sending F-16 jets to Ukraine as Biden leads summit
https://arab.news/552vs
NATO begins sending F-16 jets to Ukraine as Biden leads summit
- Biden committed a new air defense system for Kyiv and urged unity against Russian President Vladimir Putin
- The White House followed up Wednesday by saying that Denmark and the Netherlands had begun sending F-16 jets to Ukraine
Harris says ‘underdog’ campaign will overcome Trump’s ‘wild lies’
- The Harris campaign has adopted “weird” as a new catch-all for describing Trump’s aggressive rhetoric
- “Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record. And some of what he and his running mate are saying, well, it’s just plain weird,” she said
WASHINGTON: US Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday acknowledged the uphill climb to defeating Donald Trump in November, but said her freshly minted presidential campaign would prevail over the “wild lies” of her Republican rival.
As Trump addressed a bitcoin conference in Tennessee, Harris was speaking at a fundraising event in Massachusetts with celebrity guests including singer-songwriter James Taylor and cellist Yoyo Ma.
“We are the underdogs in this race, but this is a people-powered campaign,” she told the crowd at the event, which her campaign said would net $1.4 million.
“Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record. And some of what he and his running mate are saying, well, it’s just plain weird,” she said.
The Harris campaign has adopted “weird” as a new catch-all for describing Trump’s aggressive rhetoric.
His attacks include allegations that Harris wants to legalize killing newborn babies — a falsehood stemming from the vice president’s fervent support of abortion rights.
Harris has made her advocacy on the issue central to her campaign against Trump, whose conservative nominees to the Supreme Court helped overturn the national right to the procedure in 2022.
The former California prosecutor also challenged Trump to a debate, after his campaign said this week he would not agree to keeping a September 10 televised face-off previously scheduled with Biden.
“I hope he reconsiders because we have a lot to talk about,” she said.
Trump, 78, is now the oldest major-party nominee in history and scrambling to reorient an election against someone two decades his junior, having expected to face an 81-year-old incumbent Joe Biden beset by concerns over infirmity.
On Saturday, he made his pitch to the cryptocurrency industry, one he previously called a “scam.”
Saying China or others could seize the reins on the fast-growing field, Trump’s appeal is welcomed by crypto enthusiasts who feel they have been treated harshly by the Biden administration.
“This is the steel industry of 100 years ago,” Trump told the bitcoin conference. “I think you’re just in your infancy.”
“If crypto is going to define the future I want (it) to be mined, minted and made in the USA,” he said to cheers, calling for the United States to be “the crypto capital of the planet.”
Trump on Saturday also vowed a return to outdoor rallies two weeks after being wounded in an attempted assassination at a campaign event in Pennsylvania.
“I will continue to do outdoor rallies, and the Secret Service has agreed to substantially step up their operation. They are very capable of doing so,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
“No one can ever be allowed to stop or impede free speech or gathering,” he added.
Trump has made the shooting a key part of his campaign pitch, telling supporters he “took a bullet for democracy.”
He and running mate J.D. Vance will hold a rally later Saturday night — at an indoor hockey arena in the midwestern US state of Minnesota.
Harris, seeking to become the first female president in US history, is tasked with rapidly assembling a campaign against an opponent who has been in near permanent reelection mode since he became president in 2016.
Her late-starting White House bid has enjoyed early momentum. Polls that had shown Biden steadily slipping against Trump now show Harris in a race too close to call.
She’s garnered support from Democratic heavyweights, including Biden himself and most recently Barack and Michelle Obama.
Torianna Parrish, 34, was among the crowd greeting Harris upon her arrival Saturday afternoon at the airport in Westfield, Massachusetts.
“I wanted to show there’s power in numbers. I wanted to show my support,” she said.
“We’re rooting for her and we want to see her make this country what it needs to be.”
Harris was introduced at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield by Taylor, who said: “Let us honor the woman and the moment and may our ardent support be the wind in her sails. Our hopes go with her and she stands for us all.”
Russia takes control of Lozuvatske settlement in eastern Ukraine
- Russian forces have been slowly advancing through the Donetsk region in Ukraine’s east,
- Ukraine’s General Staff made no mention of the settlement in its reports, but noted that the area around it was gripped by heavy fighting
MOSCOW: Russia’s defense ministry said on Saturday that its forces had taken control of the settlement of Lozuvatske in the Pokrovsk sector of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, site of some of the most heated frontline battles in the 29-month-old war.
Ukraine’s General Staff made no mention of the settlement in its reports, but noted that the area around it was gripped by heavy fighting. Unofficial military bloggers have reported the loss of at least two other localities in the sector.
Russian forces have been slowly advancing through the Donetsk region in Ukraine’s east, with steady, incremental gains since seizing the key town of Avdiivka in Donetsk region in February.
The Russian defense ministry said its “center” grouping of forces had captured Lozuvatske, northwest of the Russian-held regional center of Donetsk.
It also reported that its forces had launched strikes on other localities in the sector and repelled three Ukrainian counter-attacks.
Ukrainian officials have reported for weeks that the Pokrovsk sector is gripped by the heaviest fighting along the 1,000-km (600-mile) front line.
President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the sector twice on Thursday with his top commander, Olexandr Syrskyi.
The Ukrainian General Staff on Saturday reported its forces had repelled 17 attacks in the area, with 10 clashes still proceeding.
“The situation is difficult, but under the control of the armed forces,” the report said.
Ukraine’s popular unofficial military blog DeepState made no reference to Lozuvatske in its latest report, but in the past two days has reported the fall of two villages in the sector — Prohres and Vovche.
Official Ukrainian accounts have made no such acknowledgement.
Hungarian PM says Russia stands to gain as ‘irrational’ West loses power
- “In the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will be the dominant center of the world,” Orban said, mentioning China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as the world’s future big powers
BUDAPEST: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday Russia’s leadership was “hyper rational” and that Ukraine would never be able to fulfill its hopes of becoming a member of the EU or NATO.
Orban, a nationalist in power since 2010, made the comments during a speech in which he forecast a shift in global power away from the “irrational” West toward Asia and Russia. “In the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will be the dominant center of the world,” Orban said, mentioning China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as the world’s future big powers.
HIGHLIGHT
• ‘In the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will be the dominant center of the world,’ Viktor Orban said, mentioning China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as the world’s future big powers.
“And we Westerners pushed the Russians into this bloc as well,” he said in the televised speech before ethnic Hungarians at a festival in the town of Baile Tusnad in neighboring Romania. Orban, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, has sharply differed from the rest of the bloc by seeking warmer ties with Beijing and Moscow, and he angered some EU leaders when he went on surprise visits to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing this month for talks on the war in Ukraine.
He said that in contrast to the “weakness” of the West, Russia’s position in world affairs was rational and predictable, saying the country had shown economic flexibility in adapting to Western sanctions since it invaded Crimea in 2014.
UK police arrest two men after assault on anti-facism protester
- London’s Metropolitan Police said the pair were arrested on suspicion of assaulting a “Stand Up To Racism” protester
- Officers gave the victim first aid after he sustained a head injury in the incident
LONDON: UK police arrested two men on Saturday following an assault on a participant in an anti-facism protest, held to counter another nearby demonstration organized by far-right agitator Tommy Robinson.
London’s Metropolitan Police said the pair were arrested on suspicion of assaulting a “Stand Up To Racism” protester in Victoria Embankment Gardens in the city center.
Officers gave the victim first aid after he sustained a head injury in the incident, and he will be taken to hospital to be checked, according to the force.
It noted that, contrary to social media reports, the arrests were not related to the carrying of any flags.
The Met, as the London force is known, said around 1,000 officers were on duty Saturday as part of the policing operation to deal with the two rallies, as well as another protest.
Thousands gathered in the heart of the British capital from late morning for the demonstration organized by Robinson, a far-right firebrand and founder of the now defunct Islamophobic English Defense League organization.
Meanwhile the counter-protest staged by Stand Up To Racism and others also rallied in the heart of London, with the Met imposing so-called conditions on the two marches “with the aim of preventing serious disruption.”
They included requiring participants to stick to certain areas and streets and disperse by stipulated times.
“Our first priority is to keep the peace to ensure that those exercising their right to lawful protest can do so safely,” Chief Superintendent Colin Wingrove said ahead of the weekend events.
Ex-cricketer and racism whistleblower Azeem Rafiq says Manchester Airport footage ‘triggering’
- The former cricket star said: “The man could have died and looking at his mother in the clip reminded me of my own”
- The family’s lawyer, Akhmed Yakoob, said that the man who was stomped on has a brain cyst and had undergone a CT scan following head injuries
LONDON: Former cricketer and racism whistleblower Azeem Rafik has said the footage of a Manchester Airport policeman stamping on an Asian man’s head was “incredibly triggering” and accused the police of “brutality.”
“I found the footage incredibly triggering; not just me, but the whole community and the rest of my family. It’s infuriating because that resonates, plus the way you get treated in airports generally, as a Muslim, since 9/11,” Rafiq told The Independent on Friday.
Video scenes surfaced on Tuesday showing a Greater Manchester Police officer kicking and stamping on the head of 19-year-old Mohammed Fahir, who was lying face down on the floor, with a woman believed to be his mother kneeling beside him.
Former cricket star, Rafiq, who is from Pakistan, said: “The man could have died and looking at his mother in the clip reminded me of my own.”
The ex-Yorkshire player spoke out in 2020 about the racism he suffered as a cricketer and his testimony to a select committee in 2021 led to a major overhaul in the county’s leadership.
“I have had dealings with the police around some of the death threats and attacks that were happening at my house and the lack of interest in protecting me and my family effectively, which is why I left the country.
“When that gentleman is on the floor defenseless, no context excuses that level of police brutality. Yet, you still have a lot of people defending that stuff, which is the scary bit,” said Rafiq, who now lives in Dubai.
The white officer was also shown in the video striking a second man, believed to be Fahir’s brother.
In a media brief at Rochdale police station on Thursday, the family’s lawyer Akhmed Yakoob revealed that the man who was stomped on has a brain cyst and had undergone a CT scan following his head injuries. Mohammed was “fighting for his life,” and Fahir’s brother and 56-year-old mother were also assaulted at the airport, according to Yakoob.
Rochdale’s Labour MP Paul Waugh has reportedly met the family and said that they have appealed for “calm in all the communities.”
Their elder brother, a serving officer with Greater Manchester Police, the lawyer said, was “too afraid” to go to work.
Rafiq told the publication that he was not optimistic that improvements would be made to policing following the incident and protests.
“We’ve seen these sorts of videos before, and it doesn’t seem to matter. The change doesn’t seem to get anywhere closer to change.”
Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice came under fire for describing the alarming footage as “reassuring.”
Referring to the remarks as “sickening,” Rafiq said: “We’ve had members of parliament yesterday not only justifying it but actually advocating for that type of police response.
“As a person of color, and given the current dynamics around Muslims in this country, it’s a pretty scary place to be.”
Campaigners have expressed concern that the officer’s assault was racially motivated and steeped in Islamophobia, which has increased across England and Wales in recent months.
Rafiq called for support for the family, adding that the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s probe should happen “quickly and independently.”
