WASHINGTON — As NATO prepares to convene on Tuesday a three-day summit in Washington to celebrate its 75th birthday, the alliance is reinforcing its support for Ukraine in the ongoing war with Russia.

During a news conference with a handful of reporters Sunday previewing the summit, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said all NATO members want peace, and that can be achieved if Russian President Vladimir Putin understands he cannot win on the battlefield.

“The quickest way to end this war is to lose the war,” he said. “But that that will not bring peace. That will bring occupation.”

Stoltenberg outlined key measures NATO would take, including the establishment of a dedicated command in Germany, enhanced financial and military aid, and bilateral security agreements.

Stoltenberg emphasized these initiatives while addressing the complexities of Ukraine’s potential NATO membership and the alliance’s united front against Russian aggression.

The precise language of the final agreement of the summit regarding Ukraine’s NATO membership is still under negotiation, he said.

In April, Stoltenberg said the alliance did not expect to offer Ukraine NATO membership during the summit, but rather a “bridge” to membership.

At the summit, that “bridge” will encompass five essential components:

Security assistance command: NATO is setting up a new command in Germany, with logistical hubs in Eastern Europe, to coordinate international security assistance for Ukraine. This will involve 700 personnel led by a three-star NATO general, according to Stoltenberg.

Stoltenberg said there have been differences among allies about “the approach or types of weapons Ukraine should be delivered.” Those differences create bureaucratic delays, and the goal is to make delivery faster and easier.

“This new command will have a very robust mandate, so there will be no need for consensus on each and every delivery,” he said.

Financial pledge: Since February 2022, NATO allies have provided around $43 billion annually in military support to Ukraine. The upcoming summit is expected to extend this commitment for another year, laying a foundation for future support.

Immediate weapon deliveries: Announcements on delivering more weapons and ammunition, particularly air defense systems, are anticipated at the summit to bolster Ukraine’s defense.

While the secretary general did not offer specifics, a senior U.S. official indicated that announcements can be expected from NATO allies this week regarding the provision of F-16 aircraft to Ukraine.

Bilateral security agreements: Twenty NATO allies will have signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine by the start of the summit, offering additional security guarantees and reinforcing collaborative defense efforts.

Interoperability: Efforts are underway to align Ukrainian armed forces with NATO standards, including a joint training center in Poland and programs on military acquisitions and procurement.

Hungary won’t participate or obstruct

Stoltenberg addressed concerns about Hungary’s stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine and its potential to block NATO decisions.

He recounted a recent visit to Budapest, where he secured an agreement with Prime Minister Viktor Orban ensuring that Hungary will not obstruct the proposed support measures for Ukraine.

Budapest will not participate in the new NATO security assistance command for Ukraine but will fulfill its other NATO obligations and contribute to the common budget, Stoltenberg said.

The secretary general highlighted NATO’s diverse engagements with Moscow even after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

He noted a recent conversation between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, underscoring the routine nature of such contacts.

Stoltenberg said NATO must function cohesively in developing new defense strategies, emphasizing unity despite differing perspectives, such as those represented by leaders like Orban.

Future relationship with the US

Stoltenberg is confident that the United States would continue to be a staunch NATO ally regardless of future election outcomes, attributing past criticisms by former president Donald Trump primarily to defense spending issues rather than NATO itself.

He emphasized that any secretary general must be able to work with all leaders within the alliance, comparing NATO to a big family that every now and then has arguments and disagreements.

Stoltenberg recounted his experience working with presidents Barak Obama, Trump, and Joe Biden, noting that despite differing political leadership, the U.S. has remained a steadfast and committed NATO ally.
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Beijing — Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Sunday congratulated new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on his election, state media reported, the first senior leader in Beijing to do so publicly.

China is “willing to work with the new U.K. government to consolidate mutual political trust and expand mutually beneficial cooperation,” Li told Starmer, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Their call came after days of silence from top officials in Beijing, with the Chinese foreign ministry saying only that it noted the results of the U.K. election. 

By comparison, Chinese leader Xi Jinping congratulated Iran’s incoming President Masoud Pezeshkian just hours after his election Saturday.

China was Britain’s fifth-largest trading partner as of 2023, according to the U.K. Department for Business and Trade.

But diplomatic relations between the two countries have been icy in recent years, with Beijing and London sparring over tightening communist control in former British colony Hong Kong.

The two sides have also traded accusations of espionage, with Beijing saying last month that MI6 had recruited Chinese state employees to spy for the U.K.

Xinhua reported Sunday that Li told Starmer that the “strengthening of bilateral coordination and cooperation was in the interests of both sides.”
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Kyiv — A village in western Russia’s border region was evacuated Sunday following a series of explosions after debris from a downed Ukrainian drone set fire to a nearby warehouse, local officials said.

Social media footage appeared to show rising clouds of black smoke in the Voronezh region while loud explosions could be heard in succession.

Gov. Aleksandr Gusev said that falling wreckage triggered the “detonation of explosive objects.” No casualties were reported, but residents of a nearby village in the Podgorensky district were evacuated, he said. Roads were also closed with emergency services, military and government officials working at the scene.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense did not address the strike in their morning briefing, but said that air defense systems had destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region.

Authorities in Russia’s Krasnodar province on Saturday said a fire at an oil depot had also been caused by falling drone debris. Russia’s emergency services said the blaze was extinguished Sunday morning. 

The strikes come after a Ukrainian military spokesperson told The Associated Press Thursday that Kyiv’s troops had retreated from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a strategically important town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that has been reduced to rubble under a monthlong Russian assault.

Russian forces have for months tried to grind out gains in Ukraine’s industrial east, in an apparent attempt to lock its defenders into a war of attrition. In a joint investigation published Friday, independent Russian news outlets Meduza and Mediazona reported that Moscow’s forces were losing between 200 and 250 soldiers in Ukraine each day.

Military analysts say Chasiv Yar’s fall could also compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes and put nearby cities in jeopardy, bringing Russia closer to its stated aim of seizing the entire Donetsk region. 

Russia sent overnight into Sunday two ballistic missiles and 13 Shahed drones, Ukrainian air force officials said. All were shot down but the officials did not elaborate on the impact of the missiles.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, 14 people died after a bus collided with a cargo vehicle, leaving a single survivor, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Saturday evening. The victims included a 6-year-old child.
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Vatican City — Pope Francis decried the state of democracy and warned against “populists” during a short visit to Trieste in Italy’s northeast on Sunday ahead of a 12-day trip to Asia — the longest of his papacy.

“Democracy is not in good health in the world today,” Francis said during a speech at the city’s convention center to close a national Catholic event.

Without naming any countries, the pope warned against “ideological temptations and populists” on the day that France holds the second round of a snap parliamentary vote that looks set to see the far-right National Rally party take the largest share of the vote.

“Ideologies are seductive. Some people compare them to the Pied Piper of Hamelin: they seduce but lead you to deny yourself,” he said in reference to the German fairytale.

Ahead of last month’s European parliament elections, bishops in several countries also warned about the rise of populism and nationalism, with far-right parties already holding the reins to power in Italy, Hungary and the Netherlands.

Francis also urged people to “move away from polarizations that impoverish” and hit out at “self-referential power.”

After Venice in April and Verona in May, the half-day trip to Trieste, a city of 200,000 inhabitants on the Adriatic Sea that borders Slovenia, marked the third one within Italy this year for the 87-year-old pontiff, who has suffered increasing health problems in recent years.

Since travelling to the French city of Marseille in September 2023, the Argentine Jesuit has limited himself to domestic travel.

But he plans to spend nearly two weeks in Asia in September visiting Indonesia, Singapore and the islands of Papua New Guinea and East Timor.

He arrived in Trieste shortly before 9 a.m. and was due to meet with various groups from the religious and academic spheres, along with migrants and the disabled.

The papal visit is due to conclude with a Mass in the city’s main public square before he departs for the Vatican in the early afternoon. 
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Washington — The NATO summit scheduled for this week will include a discussion among the allies about strengthening security ties with South Korea and Japan against deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, experts said.

The leaders of 32 NATO members will convene in Washington July 9 to 11 to discuss ways to provide continued military support to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia, which invaded more than two years ago.

Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea — sometimes referred to as the Indo-Pacific 4 or IP4 — are invited to the NATO summit. The United States, Japan and South Korea plan to meet on the sidelines of the summit.

Among the items that analysts expect NATO to discuss with Japan and South Korea is the growing military cooperation between Russia and North Korea.

“The Russian-North Korean agreement is a problem for both NATO countries and for the countries in the Northeast Asia,” said Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation.

“I expect that it will be discussed at this meeting. It may become a critical aspect of the meeting, if, by that time, intelligence is saying that North Korea is sending many military personnel to support Russia in Ukraine,” Bennett said.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a mutual defense pact in Pyongyang last month, some speculated that North Korea could dispatch army engineers to Russian-occupied Donetsk to rebuild the war-torn region.

Pentagon press secretary Major General Patrick Ryder said at a press conference on June 25 that the U.S. is keeping an eye on a possible dispatch of troops but warned North Korea about sending military forces, saying they would be “cannon fodder in an illegal war against Ukraine.”

North Korea on June 27 renewed its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, saying, “We will always be on the side of the Russian army” in “the war of justice.”

Both Washington and Seoul have estimated that Pyongyang sent about 10,000 containers of munitions to Russia. Moscow and Pyongyang denied arms exchanges between the two.

But in the defense pact that Putin and Kim signed last month, they agreed to set up ways to bolster their defense capabilities and openly announced possible military and technical cooperation.

“NATO members will discuss the implications of closer Russia-North Korea relations and how best to respond, including in terms of risks and opportunities,” said Matthew Brummer, a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

“Risks primarily include material outcomes, such as how North Korea involvement will come to bear on warfighting in Ukraine. But there are also opportunities to be exploited, including how to use increased North Korea involvement to drive a wedge between China and Russia,” he said.

“The reemerging axis between China, Russia and North Korea has most certainly precipitated the security link between Europe and Asia. As a result, I expect increased NATO involvement in East Asia, especially with Japan, which is the world’s greatest latent military power,” Brummer said.

Beijing said that it is keeping “a close eye” on the NATO summit and that it hopes the summit does not “target any third party.”

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA on Tuesday that “the Asia-Pacific lies beyond the geographical scope of the North Atlantic” and that “NATO’s attempt to make eastward inroads into the Asia-Pacific will inevitably undermine regional peace and stability.”

“The countries and people in this region are on high alert against this and firmly oppose any words or actions designed to bring military blocs into this region and stoke division and confrontation,” he said.

The U.S. State Department did not respond to an inquiry by VOA’s Korean Service seeking a response to Beijing’s comments.

Luis Simon, director of the Elcano Royal Institute in Brussels, Belgium, said he would not rule out NATO countries conducting joint military exercises with its East Asian partners “in the Korean Peninsula context rather than in a China context” because it offers “diplomatically an easier entry point.”

At the same time, he said, “It will be more with NATO allies rather than the NATO as a whole because NATO as a whole is very clear about being laser focused” on defending Ukraine.

The Japan Air Self-Defense Force announced on June 25 that it will hold a series of joint drills in July with Germany, Spain and France — all NATO members.

David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, also said that bilateral arrangements between South Korea and individual NATO countries could be possible as “a number of NATO countries are member states of the United Nations Command.”

The U.N. Command is a multinational military body created during the Korean War of 1950-53 to defend against North Korean aggression.

Some analysts said there are limits to NATO’s involvement in the Indo-Pacific.

“Most of the countries in NATO are focused on the Atlantic area, and those who have projection capabilities” that can go beyond that “have rather small ones,” said Barry Posen, Ford international professor of political science at MIT.

William Ruger, a nonresident senior fellow at Defense Priorities, said U.S. “capabilities, material and policy bandwidth” are not sufficient to deal with the security of both Europe and Asia.
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Trollstigen, Norway — Far from her home in the tourist hotspot of Tenerife, Canary Islands, Cati Padilla is one of the growing number of travelers escaping heatwaves for cooler holidays in Nordic countries.

Countries like Norway and Sweden in northern Europe are now promoting “coolcations” to attract visitors to their temperate climates.

Why leave the Canaries in summer? “To escape the heat,” said Padilla while on holiday with her friends.

“Norway attracted our attention a long time ago because of the green landscape, the mountains and the ice,” added the civil servant in her fifties on the so-called “troll path,” a serpentine mountain route towards the fjords.

In 2023, foreign overnight stays rose by 22% in Norway and 11% in Sweden according to official statistics, mainly driven by the end of COVIS-related restrictions in 2022 and a slump in Scandinavian currencies.

But a survey in Germany for tourist organization Visit Sweden also found that two out of five people plan to change their travel habits due to the southern European heat, opting for different seasons or cooler destinations.

“Coolcation is not just about the weather,” said Susanne Andersson, head of Visit Sweden. “It’s about traveling to places where it’s a little bit cooler both in the weather but also cooler in the sense of not that many people.”

For some people, gone are the overcrowded Mediterranean beaches and heatwaves causing forest fires and the partial closure of the Acropolis in the Greek capital in June.

Nowadays, many prefer to take a dip in a lake or a fjord, or fill their lungs with fresh air on a mountain hike in relative isolation.

Killer summer

When British tourist Pam disembarked from a cruise ship on the majestic Geiranger Fjord, a UNESCO World Heritage site, she expected to find cool weather.

But she found herself in sandals and a T-shirt, rather than the raincoat and woollen clothes she packed.

“It’s been wonderful,” said the resident of Lichfield city in west-central England. “It’s still not that hot that you can’t walk.”

“It just does not interest me now to sit on a sunbed, read a book, get up, go and have something to eat and come back to the sunbed. I’d rather visit places, find the history and just look at beautiful places.”

The frequency and intensity of extreme heat events and the duration of heatwaves have almost certainly increased since 1950 and will continue to do so with global warming, according to UN climate experts.

By 2050, half of Europe’s population could face high or very high risk heat stress in summer, with heat-related deaths potentially doubling or tripling with temperature rises of between 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) to 3C.

“Spain is a no. Greece is a no,” said 74-year-old French pensioner Gerard Grollier, as he disembarked from a coach in Geiranger village in western Norway.

Why Norway? “The climate is much more pleasant,” explained his daughter, Virginie, a financial adviser. “We have not protected our planet, and now that is impacting tourism.”

Submerged villages

The capital of Lapland in northern Finland, Rovaniemi, recorded a 29% jump in overnight stays last year.

“You can feel the ‘coolcation’ here, the trend started years ago but it has increased with the hot summers in southern and central Europe,” said Sanna Karkkainen, who promotes tourism in Rovaniemi.

The coolcation influx has its issues, including a surge in Airbnb properties and unruly tourists.

“Our main concern is to have too many people at the same time,” emphasised Jan Ove Tryggestad, former mayor of a Norwegian village where a cruise ship carrying 6,000 passengers and 2,000 crew members had just docked.

“It’s a small village here. In Hellesylt, there are between 280 to 300 winter inhabitants. Obviously it’s a bit of a culture shock when suddenly a small town, by European standards, turns up,” he added. “But we adapt.”
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PARIS — French voters face a decisive choice Sunday in the runoff of snap parliamentary elections that could produce the country’s first far-right government since the World War II Nazi occupation — or no majority emerging at all. 

Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, nationalist party National Rally stands a chance of winning a legislative majority for the first time, but the outcome remains uncertain because of a complex voting system and tactical maneuvers by political parties. 

What’s happening Sunday? 

Voters across France and overseas territories can cast ballots for 501 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, the lower and most important of France’s two houses of parliament. The other 76 races were won outright in the first round of voting. 

The National Rally and its allies arrived ahead in Round 1 with around one-third of the votes. A coalition of center-left, hard-left and greens parties called the New Popular Front came in second position, well ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s struggling centrist alliance. 

In the frantic week between the two rounds, more than 200 centrist and left-wing candidates pulled out of races to boost the chances of their moderate rivals and try to keep National Rally candidates from winning. 

Final preelection polls suggest the tactic may have diminished the far right’s chances of an absolute majority. But Le Pen’s party has wider and deeper support than ever before, and it’s up to voters to decide. 

What are the possible outcomes? 

Polling projections suggest the National Rally is likely to have the most seats in the next National Assembly, which would be a first. 

If it wins an absolute majority of 289 seats, Macron would be expected to appoint National Rally President Jordan Bardella as France’s new prime minister. Bardella could then form a government, and he and Macron would share power in a system called cohabitation. 

If the party doesn’t win a majority but still has a large number of seats, Macron could name Bardella anyway, though the National Rally might refuse out of fears that its government could be ejected in a no-confidence vote. 

Or Macron could seek to build a coalition with moderates and possibly choose a prime minister from the center-left. 

If there’s no party with a clear mandate to govern, Macron could name a government of experts unaffiliated with political parties. Such a government would likely deal mostly with day-to-day affairs of keeping France running. 

Complicating matters: Any of those options would require parliamentary approval. 

If political talks take too long amid summer holidays and the July 26-Aug. 11 Olympics in Paris, Macron’s centrist government could keep a transitional government pending further decisions. 

How does cohabitation work? 

If an opposition force wins a majority, Macron would be forced to appoint a prime minister belonging to that new majority. In this cohabitation, the government would implement policies that diverge from the president’s plan. 

France’s modern Republic has experienced three cohabitations, the last one under conservative President Jacques Chirac, with Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, from 1997 to 2002. 

The prime minister is accountable to the parliament, leads the government and introduces bills. 

The president is weakened at home during cohabitation, but still holds some powers over foreign policy, European affairs and defense and is in charge of negotiating and ratifying international treaties. The president is also the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces and holds the nuclear codes. 

What about a hung parliament? 

While not uncommon in other European countries, modern France has never experienced a parliament with no dominant party. 

Such a situation requires lawmakers to build consensus across parties to agree on government positions and legislation. France’s fractious politics and deep divisions over taxes, immigration and Mideast policy make that especially challenging. 

That would likely derail Macron’s promises to overhaul unemployment benefits or legalize life-ending procedures for the terminally ill, among other reforms. It could also make passing a budget more difficult. 

Why is the far right rising? 

While France has one of the world’s biggest economies and is an important diplomatic and military power, many French voters are struggling with inflation and low incomes and a sense that they are being left behind by globalization. 

Le Pen’s party, which blames immigration for many of France’s problems, has tapped into that voter frustration and built wide online support and a grassroots network, notably in small towns and farming communities that see the Paris political class as out of touch. 

Why does it matter? 

The National Assembly is the more powerful of France’s two houses of parliament. It has the final say in the law-making process over the Senate, dominated by conservatives. 

Macron has a presidential mandate until 2027 and said he would not step down before the end of his term. But a weakened French president could complicate many issues on the world stage. 

During previous cohabitations, defense and foreign policies were considered the informal domain of the president, who was usually able to find compromises with the prime minister to allow France to speak with one voice abroad. 

But both the far-right and the leftist coalition’s views in these areas differ radically from Macron’s approach and would likely be a subject of tension during a potential cohabitation. 

Bardella said that as a prime minister, he would oppose sending French troops to Ukraine — a possibility Macron has not ruled out. Bardella also said he would refuse French deliveries of long-range missiles and other weaponry capable of striking targets within Russia itself. 
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HAMBURG, Germany — He has a broken nose that requires him to wear a vision-limiting face mask. He is managing fitness issues stemming from the end of the club season. He has scored only one goal — from the penalty spot. 

The European Championship is hardly going as planned for Kylian Mbappé, and he knows it. 

“These are the vagaries of the footballer,” the France captain said after his latest below-par par performance at Euro 2024. 

He doesn’t really care, though, as long as he is lifting the Henri Delaunay Cup in Berlin on July 14. 

Mbappé was so fatigued, so knocked out of his stride after a couple of bashes to his protective mask, that he asked to come off at halftime of extra time against Portugal in the quarterfinals in Hamburg on Friday. 

It meant giving up a likely penalty in the impending shootout — which France won 5-3 because of Joao Felix’s miss — but Mbappé simply couldn’t continue. 

France coach Didier Deschamps confirmed his captain asked to be replaced, for the good of the team. 

“He is always very honest with me and the team. When he feels he doesn’t have the capacity to accelerate then we can’t risk it, even a player like Kylian,” Deschamps said. 

“With all that has happened to him — the issues he has had, the trauma with his nose — he is hanging in there. He is not in his top form. He felt very tired indeed.” 

Mbappé accepted before the Portugal game that he wasn’t in prime shape and needed a “good pre-season to be at 100%.” That will come at Real Madrid, which he has joined after running down his contract at Paris Saint-Germain. 

Getting his nose broken in France’s opening group game at Euro 2024 threw him off kilter, too, restricting a part of his game because of his lack of peripheral vision. 

His best performances so far might have come in France’s news conferences, where he has been vocal in urging French people to vote in the snap elections while warning about the dangers of the far right getting into power. 

On the field, Mbappé is part of a France team that heads into a semifinal match against Spain on Tuesday having scored three goals this tournament — two own-goals and his penalty against Austria. No France player has scored a goal from open play yet. 

Like Greece in 2004, France is looking to reach the final pretty much entirely based on its mean defense and team structure. Except the talent in this France squad far outweighs what was at Greece’s disposal 20 years ago. 

“In the locker room, we weren’t thinking that we still hadn’t scored a goal in the game,” said Mbappé, who netted a hat trick in the 2022 World Cup final. “But yes, we will look into the question [of France’s lack of efficiency in attack] while maintaining this defensive solidity. 

“I’ve only scored one goal, but we’re in the semifinals and I’m very happy.” 

Mbappé didn’t much like watching the penalty shootout from afar, either. 

“It’s worse than shooting,” he said, laughing. 
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