Category: Євросоюз

Athens — Greece formally approved an offer to buy 20 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from the United States as part of a major defense overhaul, government officials said Thursday. “The letter of acceptance for the F-35s has been signed and sent to the United States,” Defense Minister Nikos Dendias said while visiting a military air base near Athens. The purchase, he said, would create “a powerful deterrent presence in our region.” Delivery of the fifth-generation jet made by Lockheed Martin is expected to start in 2028, while Greece maintains the option to purchase 20 additional F-35 jets as part of an …

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WASHINGTON — Retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who was chief of staff on former President Donald Trump’s national security council, spoke with VOA about his vision for ending the war in Ukraine. Kellogg says he is not a formal adviser to the former president and has not presented his plan to Trump, but it is one of the options that he could consider if he is elected in November. Kellogg also served as the national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence in the Trump administration. He now co-chairs the Center on American Security at America First Policy Institute, …

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In the internationally accepted economic ranking by nominal GDP, the U.S. remains the world’s leading economy, while Russia ranks 11th. Volodin referred to Russia’s ranking by the purchasing power parity, or PPP, not the actual size and strength of the economy. …

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New Delhi — The United Nations’ cultural agency rejected recommendations Wednesday to place Stonehenge on the list of world heritage sites in danger over concerns that Britain’s plans to build a nearby highway tunnel threaten the landscape around the prehistoric monument. Stonehenge was built on the flat lands of Salisbury Plain in southern England in stages, starting 5,000 years ago, with the unique stone circle erected in the late Neolithic period about 2,500 B.C. It was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986 — an honor bestowed upon sites that have special cultural or physical significance. UNESCO experts had …

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Paris — French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday he will keep a centrist caretaker government on through the Olympics to avoid “disorder,” brushing aside an 11th-hour prime minister nomination by the country’s leftist coalition. Macron made his widely expected announcement in a TV interview late Tuesday. Just prior to that appearance, the leftist coalition that won the most votes in this month’s parliamentary elections selected little-known civil servant Lucie Castets as their choice for prime minister. But Macron told the France 2 network that the current government, who resigned last week to take on a purely caretaker role, would “handle current …

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TOKYO — Russia has banned the head of Toyota and 12 other senior Japanese business figures from entering the country, prompting a protest by Tokyo on Wednesday. The list published by Russia’s foreign ministry on Tuesday includes Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda, Rakuten chief Hiroshi Mikitani and Akihiko Tanaka, president of the government-backed Japan International Cooperation Agency. The decision was a “response to Japan’s ongoing sanctions against our country in connection with the special military operation,” the foreign ministry statement said, using Moscow’s term for its invasion of Ukraine. It did not explain how individuals were chosen for the list, which did …

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LONDON — Britain’s royal family on Wednesday set out its latest plans to reduce its carbon footprint, including the installation of heat pumps at the centuries-old Windsor Castle near London. Other environmentally friendly initiatives include the electrification of the royal family’s luxury fleet of vehicles, including the Bentley State Limousines. King Charles III, a life-long environmentalist, famously owns a 1970 Aston Martin DB6 that he had converted to run on biofuel produced from surplus English white wine and whey from cheese manufacturing. The sports car was a gift from his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, for his 21st birthday. Under …

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Rights groups accuse French authorities of “social cleansing” ahead of the Paris Olympics by uprooting migrants, sex workers and others around the capital — undermining promises of making these Games the most inclusive ever. The government says it’s simply trying to address a longstanding problem. Lisa Bryant has more from the French capital. …

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WASHINGTON — The United States has invited the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces for U.S.-mediated cease-fire talks starting on August 14 in Switzerland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.  The talks will include the African Union, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations as observers, Blinken said in a statement. Saudi Arabia will be a co-host for the discussions, he added.   “The scale of death, suffering, and destruction in Sudan is devastating. This senseless conflict must end,” Blinken said, calling on the Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, to …

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Budapest, Hungary — Hungary’s foreign minister voiced indifference on Tuesday over a decision by the European Union’s top diplomat to shift an EU ministers’ meeting from Budapest to Brussels in a sign of disapproval over Hungary’s initial use of the EU presidency. “It was all the same to me in the beginning, and it’s all the same to me now,” Peter Szijjarto said in a statement. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell acted after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban began a self-styled Ukraine peace mission by holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Orban, …

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Washington — Russia and China on Tuesday pushed back against a U.S. warning over their increasing military and economic cooperation in the Arctic, where climate change is opening up greater competition. Russia has in recent years beefed up its military presence in the Arctic by reopening and modernizing several bases and airfields abandoned since the end of the Soviet era, while China has poured money into polar exploration and research. “We’ve seen growing cooperation between the PRC and Russia in the Arctic commercially, with the PRC being a major funder of Russian energy exploitation in the Arctic,” Deputy Secretary of Defense …

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washington — The United States is looking to boost intelligence collection in the Arctic and enhance cooperation with allies in the region, to prevent Russia and China from exploiting the cold and icy northern region at America’s expense. The mandate, part of the Pentagon’s just-released 2024 Arctic Strategy, comes as U.S. defense officials warn climate change is melting Arctic ice that used to keep adversaries at bay, and there are indications of growing Russian-Chinese cooperation in the region. “In the Arctic, the strategic can quickly become tactical,” said Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, briefing reporters at the Pentagon. “Ensuring that our …

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TALLINN, Estonia — The head of a banned Belarusian opposition party who had been behind bars for two years was released on Monday as the authoritarian country frees a trickle of political prisoners, according to the respected human rights group Viasna. Mikalai Kazlou, who led the United Civic Party, was serving a 2½-year sentence on allegations of organizing actions violating the public order. His arrest came amid a harsh crackdown on the opposition that began as mass demonstrations gripped the country. Those protests followed a presidential election in 2020 whose disputed results gave Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term. Many prominent opposition …

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Kyiv, Ukraine — This year, Ukraine’s largest music festival struck a different chord. Gone were the international headliners, the massive performance halls and the hundreds of thousands of visitors. Instead, beloved local artists graced the stage this past weekend at the Atlas Festival — the first since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 — for a smaller but still ebullient crowd. The stage was erected in a shopping mall parking lot, the only option with a shelter large enough to contain the 25,000 people expected in the event of an air raid. Carefree youth danced, romanced and sang along, rubbing shoulders …

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