Tag Archives: nato

NATO marked on Thursday 75 years of collective defense across Europe and North America, with its top diplomats vowing to stay the course in Ukraine as better-armed Russian troops assert control on the battlefield. The anniversary comes as the now-32-nation alliance weighs a plan to provide more predictable longer-term military support to Ukraine. Plagued by ammunition shortages, Ukraine this week …

Germany’s defense minister on Thursday announced a plan to streamline and reorganize the country’s military command as part of efforts to make the armed forces of NATO’s most populous European member “war-capable.” Chancellor Olaf Scholz set in motion a big increase in military spending shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, which he described as a “turning …

Ukraine’s partners are not providing enough air defense to protect against Russian missile attacks even though they have more than 100 Patriot systems in their own arsenals, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Wednesday. In an interview with Reuters, Kuleba said he would raise the issue of Patriot missile defense systems in every one of a series of meetings …

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and an American delegation were forced to drive from Paris to Brussels to attend a NATO meeting Wednesday after his plane was again grounded due to a “mechanical issue,” the State Department said. The incident involving the aircraft, identified by Bloomberg as a modified Boeing 737, happened after Blinken’s travel plans were upended in January …

A senior Defense Department official who attended last year’s NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, had symptoms similar to those reported by U.S. officials who have experienced “Havana syndrome,” the Pentagon confirmed Monday. Havana syndrome is still under investigation but includes a string of health problems dating back to 2016, when officials working at the U.S. Embassy in Havana reported sudden …

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a local radio interview Monday that he is putting “the main part of my focus in the coming years” on opposing Russia in Ukraine, noting that it is “a worldwide problem for democracies.” Though he will not seek a Senate leadership role again, McConnell told NewsRadio 840 WHAS host Terry Meinersthat he …

Norway is to increase the number of conscripted soldiers from the present 9,000 to 13,500, the Norwegian government said Tuesday. “We must have enough people with the right skills at the right time,” Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram said. “We will need more people with professional military expertise going forward.” The country’s armed forces will see a gradual increase in …

Ukraine has been fighting the war against Russia for over two years with defensive aid supplied by the U.S. and its European allies. But as the war of attrition rages on, Russia has recently seen some small advances and Ukraine has begun to face down the possibility that more aid from Washington may not be coming. “It’s quite dire, it’s …

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Several central and Eastern European countries began marking on Thursday the 20th anniversary of the largest expansion of the NATO military alliance when formerly socialist countries became members of the bloc. Military aircraft roared over the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. At the main airbase hosting Spanish and Portuguese fighter jets tasked with NATO air policing missions in …

An Iraqi man who carried out several Quran burnings in Sweden told a newspaper on Wednesday that he would seek asylum in neighboring Norway in the wake of a deportation order by authorities in Stockholm. Salwan Momika, 37, has staged several burnings and desecrations of the sacred book of Islam in Sweden over the past few years. “I am on …