Norway’s Prime Minister said he did not see any US president pulling its support for Ukraine or abandoning Nato as the defence alliance benefits all its members.
Ukrainian forces withdrew from a strategic position south of the Dnipro River that they held for months, upending military aims to press ahead against Russian forces with a counteroffensive toward the Crimean peninsula.
Europe leaders cast wary eye on Trump’s tepid Ukraine stance
The prospect of a second US presidency for Donald Trump, and what that means for the defence of Ukraine against Russian aggression is hanging over a major gathering of European leaders on the other side of the Atlantic.
Trump — who’s been at best lukewarm in his commitment to European defence — leads US President Joe Biden in polling ahead of November’s US election, and did little to allay European concerns by naming JD Vance as his running mate. Vance told Bloomberg earlier this week that while Russia’s war in Ukraine was “tragic,” the US “doesn’t have the interest to respond to every tragedy that exists in the world”.
The pairing is pushing European leaders to cooperate more closely on security, a topic that dominated the European Political Community meeting on Thursday at Blenheim Palace in the English countryside near Oxford.
US events “could of course also have an impact on the security in Europe”, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told reporters at the summit. “For me, the lesson is that the EU and European countries should stand more on their own legs than ever.”
The assassination attempt on Trump at the weekend and his defiant response have cemented his position as the clear favourite to win the presidency in the eyes of some European officials. Concerns about Biden’s mental acuity and health — the US president this week contracted Covid-19 — add to that sense.
And while Biden has been full-throated in his defence of Ukraine, Trump has continued his criticisms of Nato that were a constant theme of his 2017-2021 presidency. Earlier this year, he said the US paid a disproportionate share of the cost for the military alliance, adding that the US had a “nice big, beautiful ocean” separating it from Europe’s problems.
“My task and the task of my colleagues will be to convince — if that will be the new administration in the United States — to continue this policy of transatlantic bond because it’s very important for the security of Europe,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told reporters at Blenheim Palace.
Other leaders were more circumspect: in separate press conferences at Blenheim Palace, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron all declined to be drawn on the outcome of the US election or its implications for European defence.
Without naming countries, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, beseeched leaders at the summit to “convince your partners around the globe that they also have to be brave.”
On Thursday, Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that a promised Nato command centre to help coordinate the alliance’s assistance to Ukraine would start operating in September, from facilities in Wiesbaden, Germany.
Norway leader says no US president wants to abandon Ukraine
Norway’s Prime Minister said he did not see any US President pulling its support for Ukraine or abandoning Nato as the defence alliance benefits all its members.
“I will not accept the prediction that that will happen,” Premier Jonas Gahr Store told Bloomberg TV in an interview on Thursday, commenting on the speculation that the incoming administration may withdraw backing for Ukraine. “When you really go into it and you study it and you have responsibility, you will see what is at stake. The idea that you will be all in or all out, I think that’s a bit too simplistic.”
Along with most other nations on Russia’s western border, Norway is among Ukraine’s biggest supporters against the Kremlin’s full-scale war relative to the size of its economy, according to data compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
Store told local media last week he wasn’t ruling out an expansion of his government’s 75 billion kroner ($7-billion), five-year aid package for Ukraine, as he announced a 10-fold boost of its production of advanced artillery ammunition to bolster supplies to Ukraine and its Nato allies.
Norway’s parliament in June approved a plan to almost double defence spending over the next 12 years to adapt to threats from its neighbour, with a focus on naval and air defence capabilities.
“Nato is a great benefit to all members,” Store said. “I don’t see any American president wanting to renounce on that.”
He added Europe “has to do more” on defence spending and on contributing to regional defence plans.
“We have to demonstrate to the US and to others the value of this partnership,” he said.
Ukraine withdraws from strategic position in southern region
Ukrainian forces withdrew from a strategic position south of the Dnipro River that they held for months, upending military aims to press ahead against Russian forces with a counteroffensive toward the Crimean peninsula.
Kyiv’s troops retreated from the village of Krynky on the left bank of the Dnipro in the southern Kherson region, the DeepState map service said on Telegram on Thursday. The service, which is maintained in cooperation with Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, said military engagements continued on nearby islands.
Ukrainian forces were still fighting on the Dnipro’s left bank around Krynky, military spokesperson Dmytro Lyhovyi said in a televised statement. He called the battlefield situation “complicated” because the settlement, some 38km west of Kherson, had been destroyed.
Ukrainian forces, which had seized back the city of Kherson after Russian forces withdrew in 2022, launched an effort late last year to secure a bridgehead south of the river. But those positions became more difficult to defend as Russian forces advanced in the east and north, particularly with a spring offensive north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s No 2 city.
The position was a potential springboard for a push further south, which could open a way to cut off Russian-held Crimea from the mainland. Russia falsely claimed to have seized Krynky in February.
The swift advance of Russian troops in the early days of the large-scale invasion left vast swathes of southern Ukraine in the Kremlin’s hands. After seizing back a swathe of the Kherson region north of the Dnipro, Kyiv’s forces have struggled to press ahead further.
Ukraine plans law allowing foreign debt payments suspension
Ukraine plans to adopt a law allowing the government to impose a moratorium on foreign debt payments as the country and its international creditors wrangle over terms for restructuring more than $20-billion in bonds.
The draft legislation, submitted by the head of Zelensky’s party, seeks to enable the suspension of payments on international sovereign debt and state-guaranteed obligations because a coupon payment is scheduled for 1 August.
The parliamentary budget committee met on Thursday morning and recommended that the assembly approve the bill, chairperson Danylo Hetmantsev said in a post on social platform Telegram.
Time is running out for Ukraine and its bondholders over the debt overhaul as a freeze on payments that was agreed two years ago after Russia’s full-scale invasion is set to expire. With repayments about to resume in two weeks, the government is asking investors to accept bigger losses that would allow it to finance its defence efforts against Russia and prepare financial resources for reconstruction when the war ends.
Russian miner Nornickel weighs projects in new top market China
Russia’s biggest miner MMC Norilsk Nickel is weighing several new projects in copper, nickel and palladium in China as sanctions make cross-border payments and shipments increasingly difficult.
Nornickel executives held talks with potential Chinese partners this month and signed about 10 memorandums of understanding, covering the whole group of metals the miner makes, two people familiar with the situation said, asking not to be identified as the information is private.
While Nornickel has not been directly sanctioned by either the US or the European Union, its operations have been hit by wider restrictions since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The London Metal Exchange barred new deliveries of Russian metal this year.
Most European and all US banks stopped funding Russian metals deals, while some clients decided not to continue trading with the country. That made China the biggest export market for Nornickel since 2023, accounting for more than half of its sales.
Lithuania to exit cluster munitions convention, citing security
Lithuania will exit the international treaty banning cluster munitions, citing worsening security in the region and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Legislators voted 103 to one, with three abstentions, to back a proposal to leave the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits the use, production and purchase of the weapons. Lithuanian officials say withdrawing from the convention, which entered force in 2011, won’t negate the country’s obligations to the principles of humanitarian law.
Cluster munitions are weapons that disperse a large number of sub-munitions over a wide target area, creating the potential for more casualties. Human rights organisations call them indiscriminate by nature and warn that unexploded munitions can kill civilians.
In a statement before the vote, the convention’s presidency urged Lithuania to reconsider its proposed withdrawal, as did Human Rights Watch.
Lithuania’s Defence Ministry argued the convention was more relevant to countries that face no threats from their neighbours, pointing out that neither Russia nor Belarus were party to the treaty. Officials also said that several of Lithuania’s Nato allies, including the US, Poland and Turkey, are not signatories.
However, most European Nato states have signed up to the ban and strongly criticised a US decision to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine in July 2023. DM