June 30, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

US President Joe Biden sought to portray the transatlantic alliance as more united than ever as he prepared to depart Europe after two summits focused heavily on the war in Ukraine.

Biden said the United States was “doing exactly what I said” and enhancing its force posture in Europe.

He said the United States was “rallying the world to stand with Ukraine” and said he was preparing to unveil an additional $800 million in security assistance, including air defense systems, artillery, ammunition and counter-battery radar.

“We're moving to a place that reflects the realities of the second quarter of the 21st century And we're we're on the verge of making significant progress,” he said.

“Putin thought we could break the Transatlantic Alliance,” he went on. “He tried to weaken us, expected our resolve the fracture, but he's getting exactly what he did not want.”

US President Joe Biden said the decisions and deals announced at the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, show that NATO is "moving to a place that reflects the realities of the second quarter of the 21st century."

The world's response to every crisis created due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows Putin is "getting exactly what he did not want," Biden said.

"He wanted the Finlandization of NATO. He got the natoization of Finland," Biden added, as NATO invited Sweden and Finland to join the US-led military alliance, which has drawn an angered response from Russia. "We're more united than ever. And with the addition to Finland and Sweden, we'll be stronger than ever. They have serious militaries, both of them. We're going to increase the NATO border by 800 miles along the Finnish-Russian border. Sweden is all in."

Biden also noted NATO's work to address price hike in gas and oil and food insecurity affecting different parts of the world because of Russia's war in Ukraine.

"We tasked our teams to work on the details of the price cap on Russian oil, to drive down Putin's revenues without hurting Americans and others at the gas pump. We'll seek to use the funds from the tariffs on Russian goods to help Ukraine rebuild. We've committed more than $ 4.5 billion — more than half of that from the United States — to address food insecurity, and the immediate crisis caused by the Russian war."

US President Joe Biden said the NATO summit in Madrid has been "historic" citing the decision to invite Finland and Sweden to the military alliance.

"This summit was about strengthening our alliance, meeting the challenges of our world as it is today, and the threats we're going to face in the future," he said.

Biden also addressed how the alliance is looking to meet "the direct threats Russia poses to Europe" and the "systematic challenges that China poses."

Before returning to Washington, US President Joe Biden is holding a news conference at the NATO summit in Madrid where he's expected to address the state of the war in Ukraine.

With Russia bogged down in a long-term conflict of attrition, NATO leaders leave here having taken historic steps to address a fundamentally altered security situation. It has given the organization a renewed sense of purpose after years wavering on how to approach Russia.

The alliance is poised to grow larger after formally inviting Finland and Sweden to join. The path was cleared for the two countries, each with long histories of military non-alignment, after Turkey dropped its objections, giving this summit a somewhat unexpected boost as it commenced.

Leaders made major enhancements of NATO's force posture along its eastern edge, increasing the number of high-alert troops by sevenfold. Biden announced new rotational deployments of US troops in the Baltics and Romania, new ships to Spain and planes to the United Kingdom, and for the first time a permanent Army garrison headquarters in Poland.

Read more about the summit here.

The mayor of Sloviansk, Vadym Liakh, has urged residents of the eastern Ukrainian city to evacuate as he issued a warning about the approach of Russian troops.

Six people were wounded and two of them were in “serious condition” after Russian forces fired on the city on Thursday, he said.

“Today at 11a.m., the enemy fired at the city of Sloviansk from multiple rocket launchers. Two explosions of cluster shells happened in a densely populated neighborhood, near a supermarket, as well as near a bus stop,” Liakh told Ukrainian broadcaster Espreso TV. “The shelling is ongoing. The enemy is close.”

NATO military officials are walking back the secretary general’s announcement earlier this week that 300,000 troops “will” be placed on high alert across the alliance, now saying the high number is a “concept” the bloc aims to enact by mid-2023. 

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that NATO “will increase the number of our high readiness forces to well over 300,000.” 

But it now appears that number is more aspirational, and is based on a new model NATO believes will take at least another year to accomplish. 

The initial announcement appeared to be a seven-fold increase from the 40,000 troops NATO currently has on high alert, and two NATO officials told CNN that number caught many NATO countries’ defense chiefs off guard. 

It was not clear to them, for example, which troops from each member state would need to contribute to that new high-readiness force, or whether enough countries had even been asked or agreed to provide the sufficient forces for it. It was a point of apparent confusion and disjointedness in an otherwise highly choreographed show of unity among the allies. 

Two senior NATO officials told reporters in a briefing on Thursday that the new high-readiness model will eventually replace the NATO Response Force model, but that it is “still a work in progress.”

The officials indicated that under the new model, many of the troops would remain in their home countries rather than move under the command of NATO’s Allied Command Operations. But they would be quickly available to NATO should a security crisis arise, such as if Russia were to attack a member country. 

Asked what the trigger would be to move those forces to high alert under NATO command, one of the officials would only say it will involve “indications and warnings” of a potential attack. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday denied that sanctions against Russia by NATO members are to blame for the worsening food crisis.

“The impact is severe, including on some of the world's most vulnerable people. Food prices are hitting record highs, and many countries depend on Ukraine for substantial wheat and other food imports,” he added, noting that NATO allies discussed efforts to mitigate the crisis and get grain out of Ukraine.

The NATO chief said that Turkey is trying to facilitate some kind of agreement and that Greece announced “that they are ready to make available ships to get grain out of Ukraine.”

Lithuania and Romania are making efforts “to expand their own land capacity by railway to transport more food," he added.

Ukraine has begun exporting electricity to the European Union, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and the EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen announced on Thursday.

“In the first day alone, the state-owned enterprise Ukrenergo earned UAH 10 million from the sale of access to the interstate crossing,” he added. “The export potential of Ukrainian electricity to Europe is up to 2.5 GW. Under this scenario, the state will be able to receive more than UAH 70 billion a year.”

The President of the European Commission welcomed the move, saying it serves both Ukraine’s and the EU’s needs.

“It will provide an additional source of electricity for the EU. And much-needed revenues to Ukraine,” von der Leyen tweeted on Thursday. “So we both benefit."

The first merchant ship has left the occupied Berdyansk port on the Azov sea on Thursday, according to Yevgeniy Balitsky, head of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia military administration. 

Ukrainian officials say millions of Ukrainian grain exports are still on hold as Russia continues to block the country’s main export routes on Black and Azov sea. Russian officials have claimed the seaports of Mariupol and Berdyansk have been demined and operating normally since early June.

Balitsky reiterated claims by Russia that the waters surrounding the occupied port have been demined by the engineering units of Russia’s Novorossiysk Naval Base.

“The Berdyansk Bay and the port itself are fully secure. And the port workers and port equipment are ready for cargo handling operations,” he claimed in his Telegram post.