According to President Joe Biden, the US is ready to offer Ukraine similar protection to Israel after the end of the Russian war of aggression. Biden related the proposal to the period between the end of the war and a possible NATO membership. In a CNN interview ahead of the NATO summit next week in Lithuania, Biden also emphasized that such a comprehensive protection guarantee would only be conceivable in the event of a ceasefire and a peace agreement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose country has been defending itself against a Russian invasion for 16 months, again made his participation in the NATO summit conditional. All decisions would have to be made during the meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, he told US broadcaster ABC. “I don’t want to go to Vilnius for fun if the decision has already been made.” Specifically, he said: “Ukraine should be given clear security guarantees as long as it is not in NATO.” This is a very important point. “Only under these conditions would our meeting make sense.”
The summit in Vilnius is about how Ukraine can be brought closer to the alliance and what security guarantees can be given after the end of the Russian war of aggression. However, the formal invitation to NATO desired by Ukraine will probably not come about. Biden and a number of other NATO partners do not yet consider Ukraine ready for accession – also because of the ongoing war.
Biden said an accession process would take time. In the meantime, however, the US could provide Ukraine with the necessary weapons and enable it to defend itself.
On his trip to the NATO summit, Biden is making a stopover in Great Britain on Monday. In addition to meeting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the 80-year-old US President will also visit King Charles III at Windsor Castle. expected.
The United States supports Israel with around 3.8 billion US dollars (almost 3.5 billion euros) every year – a considerable part of which goes into defense against missiles and military technology. However, the USA is also already providing massive support to Ukraine: According to their own statements, they have provided or promised military aid of more than 40 billion US dollars since the beginning of the war at the end of February 2022.
Russia criticized the fact that Zelenskyy brought several high-ranking officers involved in the defense of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol back to Ukraine from Turkey on Saturday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticized this as a “direct violation of existing agreements” by both the Turkish and Ukrainian sides. The release of the Azov commanders from Russian captivity was conditional on their remaining in Turkey until the end of the war, he said.
Shortly after the war began, the port city of Mariupol was bitterly contested. After several months, several thousand Ukrainian soldiers, including fighters from the nationalist Azov regiment, were holed up in the Azovstal steelworks. Later, the last defenders surrendered and were taken prisoner by the Russians. Then they were extradited to Turkey and returned to their homeland “after negotiations with the Turkish side,” according to the Ukrainian side.
Moscow also found harsh words for the US delivery of cluster munitions to Ukraine. This is another “blatant revelation of the aggressive anti-Russian course of the USA, which aims at the maximum prolongation of the conflict in Ukraine and a war to the “last Ukrainian”,” commented the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The cluster munitions are part of a new $800 million US military aid package. Washington had defended the decision as necessary despite the increased dangers to civilians. Russia itself used cluster bombs in the war.
Criticism of the decision in Washington also came from Great Britain, Spain and Germany. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in the ZDF “summer interview” on Sunday that it was true that this type of ammunition was still banned by the federal government and that Germany was against deliveries. But the federal government “cannot stand in the arms of the USA in the current situation”.
In the border regions of Rostov, Bryansk and on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow, the Russian air defense system shot down Ukrainian missiles, according to the authorities. In the Rostov region, the debris of a launched rocket damaged several buildings, as Governor Vasily Golubev announced on Telegram on Sunday. There are no injuries. In the Bryansk region, Governor Alexander Bogomas spoke of two Ukrainian missiles shot down and only minor damage. The head of occupied Crimea Sergey Aksyonov said that a cruise missile had been shot down in the Kerch region. There is no damage or injuries. Russian border regions have repeatedly complained about shelling from the Ukrainian side.
According to a spokesman, the paramilitary Russian volunteer battalion “Legion Freedom of Russia” is planning further actions in the Russian border area. “There will be another surprise in the coming month or so,” Maximillian Andronnikov, who calls himself Caesar, said in an interview with Britain’s Sunday newspaper The Observer. “We have ambitious plans. We want to liberate our entire territory.” The “Legion of Freedom of Russia” consists of Russian nationalists who are currently fighting on the side of Ukraine.
After the uprising of the Wagner mercenary group, US experts continue to consider them a potential threat to Putin and his power apparatus. “Putin continues to allow Wagner and Prigozhin to operate in Russia and potentially pose a threat to his regime,” according to a recent analysis by the US Institute for War Studies ISW in Washington. Even two weeks after the short-term uprising with probably 25,000 mercenaries, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and the commanders could move freely in Russia.
