Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and top Western diplomats vowed on Wednesday to sustain support for Ukraine and its bid to join NATO despite dwindling military supplies and competing crises. Mr. Blinken’s remarks came at the tail end of a NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels, where he and other Western diplomats sought to assuage […]
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Finland said Tuesday it was temporarily closing its only remaining open border crossing with Russia to stem an influx of asylum seekers that it accuses Moscow of orchestrating in retaliation for Finland’s decision to join NATO. The Finnish authorities have been raising alarms for weeks over an increased number of migrants crossing into the country […]
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With Republicans in Congress stalling on granting Ukraine more military aid, NATO’s top diplomat warned on Tuesday that it would be “dangerous” to curtail support to the war as member countries tried to pin down the United States on its commitments to Kyiv and as the conflict in Gaza saps Washington’s attention. As foreign ministers […]
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Finland is closing all but one of its land border crossings with Russia, escalating a standoff between the two countries over an influx of migrants that Finnish officials blame on Moscow. Starting on Friday, only the Raja-Jooseppi crossing in northern Lapland will stay open to travelers, while all seven other land crossings will be closed. […]
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An article that appeared in August on an international news outlet, Pressenza, recycled a false Russian claim that the West was looting religious relics and art from a monastery in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, one of the holiest sites in Russian Orthodoxy. The article stands out, U.S. officials said, not because of what it claimed — […]
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey signed the protocol approving Sweden’s bid to join the NATO military alliance and sent it to the Turkish Parliament on Monday, according to a brief statement from his office. It was not immediately clear why Mr. Erdogan, who had refused to officially endorse Sweden’s NATO bid for many months, […]
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Just days after the assault by Hamas ignited a new war in the Middle East, shipments of American weapons began arriving in Israel: smart bombs, ammunition and interceptors for the Iron Dome missile-defense system. When President Biden meets in Israel on Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, more military aid is a likely topic. The […]
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Clearly anxious, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine went in person this week to see NATO defense ministers in Brussels, worried that the war between Israel and Hamas will divert attention — and needed weapons — from Ukraine’s long and bloody struggle against the Russian invasion. American and NATO officials moved to reassure Mr. Zelensky, pledging […]
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Twenty-one years ago, in the shadow of the Sept. 11 attacks, George W. Bush warned of an “axis of evil,” encompassing the authoritarian and anti-American regimes of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. He did not claim that they were actually allies or partners in the style of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. What made them […]
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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine made a surprise visit to NATO headquarters on Wednesday, as top defense officials representing members of the military alliance gathered to consider how many more weapons — and for how much longer — the West can give Ukraine in its war against Russia. Mr. Zelensky’s appearance at the meeting was […]
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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Monday condemned Hamas for its surprise assault on Israel and likened the attack to Russia’s invasion of his own country. In a speech to NATO, he also criticized Iran for its support of Hamas and Moscow. It is the second speech that Mr. Zelensky, who spoke to Prime Minister […]
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Russia’s hard-liners are rattling the nuclear saber vigorously these days, on television and in academic journals, arguing that an atomic blast — in Ukraine, in Europe, or maybe in a test over Siberia — is the only way to restore the West’s fear of Russian might. But so far President Vladimir V. Putin is not […]
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The facade of the apartment building was blown off, the remains sagging to one side. Working together, the military police, the emergency services, the fire department and the explosives team cordoned off the scene, swept for other explosives, disarmed one, and searched for those still alive in the rubble with sniffer dogs, while removing the […]
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After ethnic Serbian gunmen stormed the small village of Banjska in Kosovo last week and fought a deadly battle with Kosovar forces, Serbia deployed thousands of military forces along Kosovo’s border, and the White House denounced the move as “destabilizing.” The violence raised fears that this troubled Balkan region could be plunged into a wider […]
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The White House called for the drawdown of Serbian military forces along Kosovo’s border on Friday, a directive meant to bring renewed attention to a longtime territorial conflict that Western officials fear is again at risk of boiling over. John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the Biden administration, denounced a Sept. 24 attack at a […]
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Barely a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland cast aside decades of military nonalignment and self-reliance and joined the NATO alliance. That happened with breathtaking speed, as these matters go, but gaining membership may have been the easy part. Now comes the complicated process of integrating itself into the alliance and its requirement of […]
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This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. I’m Tom Friedman, and I’m the Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times. I just returned from Kyiv, […]
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This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. I’m Tom Friedman, and I’m the Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times. I just returned from Kyiv, […]
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Two weeks after replacing its defense minister, Ukraine dismissed all six of its deputy ministers on Monday, deepening the housecleaning at a ministry that had drawn criticism for corruption in procurement as the military budget ballooned during the war. The shake-up in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wartime leadership team came as he headed to the United […]
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The president of Finland, Sauli Niinisto, is the person considered most responsible for bringing his country into the NATO alliance — and Sweden, too, which is awaiting ratification — following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. President Biden has consulted him about Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin, whom Mr. Niinisto has met numerous times. […]
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“Human morality must win this war,” Zelensky said. “Everyone in the world who values freedom, who values human life, who believes that people must win. And our success, the specific success of Ukraine, depends not only on us, on Ukrainians, but also on the extent to which the entire vast moral space of the world […]
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The United States on Thursday imposed one of its largest sanctions packages related to the war in Ukraine, penalizing more than 150 companies and individuals that officials said were profiting from Russia’s invasion and their proximity to the Kremlin and President Vladimir V. Putin. The sanctions are part of the U.S. effort “to target Russia’s […]
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At Saab’s sprawling combat production center in Karlskoga, Sweden, the 84-millimeter shells that can take out a battle tank in a single stroke are carefully assembled by hand. One worker stacked tagliatelle-shaped strips of explosive propellant in a tray. Another attached the translucent sheafs around the rotating fins of a guiding system. Outside the squat […]
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