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.”
Can you ‘Trump-proof’ NATO? As Biden falters, Europeans look to safeguard the military alliance
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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
Panama resumes flights to Venezuela, allowing for migrant returns
The resumption of flights is expected to facilitate the repatriation from Panama of Venezuelan migrants deported from the US
PANAMA CITY: Panama’s civil aviation authority on Thursday announced that it would resume flights with Venezuela after nearly a year, facilitating the repatriation of Venezuelan migrants expelled from the United States.
Venezuela suspended air links with Panama in July 2024 over its refusal to recognize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s victory in presidential elections.
The two countries at the time also suspended diplomatic relations.
The resumption of flights is expected to facilitate the repatriation from Panama of Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States.
Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino said earlier he had received a proposal from Caracas to resume flights between the two countries.
“I will evaluate it very carefully right away,” he told his weekly press conference, adding “it is in Panama’s best interest to open commercial flights to Venezuela.”
Mulino however ruled out restoring diplomatic relations with the Caribbean nation.
Panama is one of a handful of countries that has agreed to act as a stopover for migrants expelled from the United States by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Under the plan, Panama holds the migrants in closed shelters while waiting for them to be repatriated to their homelands.
Many of those expelled so far have been from Venezuela and other South American countries.
Panama has also been grappling with a reverse flow of thousands of migrants returning home through Central America after failing to gain entry to the Untied States.
In the absence of flights between Panama and Venezuela, many of the migrants were left to organize their own transport home, either by boat or overland through the treacherous Darien jungle on Panama’s border with Colombia.
Homeland Security blocking Harvard’s ability to enroll international students
- Kristi Noem: ‘This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus’
US President Donald Trump’s administration has revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, and will force existing students to transfer to other schools or lose their legal status, the Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered the department to terminate the Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification, the department said in a statement.
Harvard called the action illegal.
The move comes after Harvard refused to provide information Noem had previously demanded about some foreign student visa holders who attend the university, the department said.
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem said. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments.”
Harvard said the move a retaliatory action that threatens serious harm to the university.
“The government’s action is unlawful. We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably, the university said in as statement. “
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The move marks a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign against the elite Ivy League university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which has emerged as one of Trump’s most prominent institutional targets.
The Republican president has undertaken an extraordinary effort to revamp private colleges and schools across the US that he says foster anti-American, Marxist and “radical left” ideologies. He has criticized Harvard in particular for hiring prominent Democrats to teaching or leadership positions.
No new direct Russia-Ukraine peace talks are scheduled, Kremlin says
- “There is no concrete agreement about the next meetings,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said
- The major prisoner swap is a “quite laborious process” that “requires some time”
MOSCOW: Russia and Ukraine have no direct peace talks scheduled, the Kremlin said Thursday, nearly a week after their first face-to-face session since shortly after Moscow’s invasion in 2022 and days after US President Donald Trump said they would start ceasefire negotiations “immediately.”
“There is no concrete agreement about the next meetings,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “They are yet to be agreed upon.”
During two hours of talks in Istanbul on May 16, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each, in what would be their biggest such swap. Apart from that step, the meeting delivered no significant breakthrough.
Several months of intensified US and European pressure on the two sides to accept a ceasefire and negotiate a settlement have yielded little progress. Meanwhile, Russia is readying a summer offensive to capture more Ukrainian land, Ukrainian government and military analysts say.
Putin’s proposals
Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this week that Moscow would “propose and is ready to work with” Ukraine on a “memorandum” outlining the framework for “a possible future peace treaty.”
Putin has effectively rejected a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine has accepted. He has linked the possibility to a halt in Ukraine’s mobilization effort and a freeze on Western arms shipments to Kyiv as part of a comprehensive settlement.
European leaders have accused Putin of dragging his feet in peace efforts while he tries to press his bigger army’s battlefield initiative and capture more Ukrainian land.
The major prisoner swap is a “quite laborious process” that “requires some time,” Peskov said.
But he added: “The work is continuing at a quick pace, everybody is interested in doing it quickly.”
Peskov told Russia’s Interfax news agency that Moscow had provided Kyiv with a list of prisoners it wants released. “We have not yet received a counter list from Kyiv. We are waiting,” he told Interfax.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that preparations are underway for the potential prisoner exchange, which he described as “perhaps the only real result” of the talks in Turkiye.
Peskov disputed a report Thursday in The Wall Street Journal that Trump told European leaders after his phone call with Putin on Monday that the Russian leader wasn’t interested in talks because he thinks that Moscow is winning.
“We know what Trump told Putin, we don’t know what Trump told the Europeans. We know President Trump’s official statement,” Peskov said. “What we know contrasts with what was written in the article you mentioned.”
Russian capital targeted by drones for the second night
Apart from the continuing war of attrition along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, which has killed tens of thousands of troops on both sides, Russia and Ukraine have been firing dozens of long-range drones at each other’s territory almost daily.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it shot down 105 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 35 over the Moscow region. It was the second straight night that Kyiv’s forces have targeted the Russian capital.
More than 160 flights were delayed at three of Moscow’s four main airports, the city’s transport prosecutor said, as officials grounded planes citing concerns for passenger safety.
The attack prompted some regions to turn off mobile Internet signals, including the Oryol region southwest of Moscow, which was targeted heavily Wednesday.
The Defense Ministry claimed it downed 485 Ukrainian drones over several regions and the Black Sea between late Tuesday and early Thursday, including 63 over the Moscow region, in one of the biggest drone attacks.
It was not possible to verify the numbers.
Russia seeks a buffer zone on the border
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 128 drones overnight. Among the targets were Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, damaging an industrial facility, power lines, and several private homes, regional Gov. Serhii Lysak said on Telegram.
In Kyiv, debris from a Russian drone fell onto the grounds of a school in the capital’s Darnytskyi district, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration. No injuries were reported.
Ukrainian shelling in Russia’s Kursk region killed a 50-year-old man and injured two others, acting regional Gov. Alexander Khinshtein said Thursday.
Putin visited the Kursk region on Tuesday for the first time since Moscow claimed that it drove Ukrainian forces out of the area last month. Kyiv officials denied the claim.
“Despite the liberation of our territory, the border region is still subject to enemy attacks,” Khinshtein warned residents on Telegram. “It is still dangerous to be there.”
Putin has said Russian forces have orders to create a “security buffer zone” along the border.
That would help prevent Ukraine from striking areas inside Russia with artillery, Putin told a government meeting, but he gave no details of where the proposed buffer zone would be or how far it would stretch.
Putin said a year ago that a Russian offensive at the time aimed to create a buffer zone in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. That could have helped protect Russia’s Belgorod border region, where frequent Ukrainian attacks have embarrassed the Kremlin.
Malema, the radical politician in Trump’s South Africa video
- In a tense Oval Office meeting, Ramaphosa and his delegation distanced themselves from Malema’s rhetoric
- Malema mocked the meeting at the White House on social media as ‘A group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me’
JOHANNESBURG: A video projected by US President Donald Trump to support false claims of “persecution” of white South Africans prominently featured Julius Malema, a firebrand politician known for his radical rhetoric.
Trump ambushed President Cyril Ramaphosa with the 4:30-minute video shown in the Oval Office on Wednesday during talks at which South Africa wanted to salvage bilateral ties and push back on baseless claims from the United States about a “white genocide.”
Malema was the main character, seen in several clips wearing the red beret of his populist, marxist-inspired Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party and chanting calls to “cut the throat of whiteness” as well as a controversial anti-apartheid song “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer.”
Trump falsely said he was a government official, insinuating his inflammatory slogans reflected an official policy against South Africa’s white minority.
But Malema, 33, is an opposition politician, leader of the anti-capitalist and anti-US EFF that he founded in 2013 after being thrown out of the youth league of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), where he was accused of fomenting divisions.
He portrays himself as the defender of society’s most disadvantaged and has attracted largely young supporters angry at the large social inequalities that exist in South Africa 30 years after the end of apartheid.
Renowned for its theatrics, his party gained prominence advocating radical reforms including land redistribution and nationalizing key economic sectors.
But the party only came fourth in last year’s elections, with 9.5 percent of the vote, and it has lost popularity since, with several of its top brass leaving to join a new party of former president Jacob Zuma, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK).
In the tense Oval Office meeting, Ramaphosa and his delegation distanced themselves from Malema’s rhetoric.
Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, a member of the center-right Democratic Alliance, told Trump he joined Ramaphosa’s multiparty coalition “precisely to keep these people out of power.”
“I’m the biggest target of that rabble-rouser,” businessman Johann Rupert told Trump.
The decades-old “Kill the Boer” rallying cry was born during the struggle against the brutal policies of white-minority rule, and its use since the end of apartheid in 1994 infuriates parties that represent white South Africans, with many attempting to get it banned.
A ban in 2010 was lifted after courts said it does not constitute hate speech and instead should be regarded in its historical context, and for the fact that it was being used by Malema only as a “provocative means of advancing his party’s political agenda.”
“But why wouldn’t you arrest that man?” Trump asked Ramaphosa Wednesday.
“In a Constitutional democracy... a person cannot be arrested when what they are doing is explicitly permitted in law,” political scientist Sandile Swana told AFP.
Although controversial, the vocal Malema was exerting the “fundamental rights of freedom of expression,” he said.
In the context of the anti-apartheid struggle, “Kill the Boer” had “nothing to do with the killing of a specific white man, but with the killing of the system of apartheid,” he said.
Malema mocked the meeting at the White House on social media as “A group of older men meet in Washington to gossip about me.”
The party later accused Ramaphosa of “betraying the struggle for land and dignity.”
“Surrounded by elites like Johann Rupert and John Steenhuisen, Ramaphosa denounced a liberation song upheld by South Africa’s highest courts and failed to defend the nation against the false narrative of white genocide,” it said.
German finance minister optimistic that G7 can agree joint communique on Ukraine support
- “I am very positive that we will also reach a joint communique,” Klingbeil said
- If Russia is not prepared to enter into serious negotiations with Ukraine, “we will consider further sanctions“
BANFF, Canada: German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil on Thursday said he was optimistic that the Group of Seven advanced economies could agree a joint communique showing support for Ukraine, amid a rift between the US and the rest of the G7 on the issue.
Sources earlier said it was unclear whether the delegations at G7 finance ministers’ consultations in Canada could agree on joint language, with one European source saying that US officials wanted to delete language describing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “illegal.”
“I am very positive that we will also reach a joint communique,” Klingbeil said at a press conference in Banff, adding that if Russia is not prepared to enter into serious negotiations with Ukraine, “we will consider further sanctions.”
The EU and Britain this week announced new sanctions against Russia without waiting for Washington to join them, a day after President Donald Trump’s phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin brought about neither a ceasefire in Ukraine nor fresh US sanctions.
European leaders have been lobbying intensely for the Trump administration to join them in imposing new sanctions if Russia rejected a ceasefire.
Klingbeil said that G7 finance ministers and their Ukrainian counterpart had concluded in a meeting that the conflict was “a brutal war” initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and that support for Ukraine continued unabated.
“I am optimistic that in the end such formulations will also be included in the communique, but please wait for the exact wording, as I want to leave that to the Canadian presidency this afternoon,” he said.
TRADE SOLUTIONS
Klingbeil earlier on Wednesday met United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for a bilateral conversation and the two agreed to meet again in Washington.
“We have always discussed forward, how we can take steps together to find solutions,” Klingbeil said about the meeting, adding that Bessent’s invitation was a good sign.
Klingbeil warned, however, that if no agreement can be found with the United States on tariffs, “then we can expect turbulence on the markets again very quickly.”
The Trump administration has imposed a 25 percent tariff on US imports of steel, aluminum and cars, as well as a baseline 10 percent tariff on almost all countries, with additional “reciprocal” tariffs — making for a combined 20 percent in the EU’s case — lined up if negotiations during a 90-day pause fail.
