Joe Biden says US will defend ‘every inch of NATO’ – as Moscow welcomes China’s help in ‘resolving’ Ukraine war
Joe Biden has said the US will defend “literally every inch of NATO” in the face of Russian aggression – as Moscow welcomed China having a more active role in “resolving” the Ukraine war.
The US president has met leaders from the Bucharest Nine – a collection of nations in the most eastern parts of the NATO alliance that came together in response to Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
The alliance includes Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
The countries have expressed concerns that Mr Putin could launch military action against them next if he is successful in Ukraine.
Biden warns freedom is at stake in NATO meeting – follow live updates
“You’re the frontlines of our collective defence,” Mr Biden said of the group.
“And you know, better than anyone, what’s at stake in this conflict. Not just for Ukraine, but for the freedom of democracies throughout Europe and around the world.”
He pledged that NATO’s mutual-defence pact is “sacred” and that “we will defend literally every inch of NATO”.
Vladimir Putin greets China’s foreign policy chief Wang Yi in Moscow. Pic: AP
China’s top diplomat meets Putin in Russia
Meanwhile, Russia has welcomed Beijing taking a more active role in efforts to “resolve” the war after China’s top diplomat Wang Yi met Vladimir Putin in Russia.
Following the meeting, Mr Putin said he was looking forward to a visit to Moscow by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
No other countries could influence the relationship between China and Russia, he added.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Mr Wang’s trip had shown Moscow and Beijing agreed on many issues.
Ms Zakharova praised China’s “balanced approach” towards the war.
“We welcome China’s readiness to play a positive role in resolving the Ukrainian crisis,” Ms Zakharova said.
Mr Wang was quoted in Russian state media as saying China will “firmly adhere to an objective and impartial position and play a constructive role in the political settlement of the crisis”.
China has refused to criticise the invasion of Ukraine while condemning sanctions imposed on Russia.
In return, Russia has supported China amid tensions with the US over Taiwan.
Russia is due to begin military exercises with China in South Africa on Friday and has sent a frigate equipped with new generation hypersonic cruise missiles.
A Russian officer said Moscow would fire artillery, but not the missiles, whose speed makes them difficult to shoot down.
Putin ‘proud’ of those fighting in Ukraine
The top Chinese diplomat’s visit to Russia came as Mr Putin spoke at a huge rally in Moscow.
He said Russia is “proud of those who are fighting in Ukraine to defend the fatherland”, adding that the “whole country” supports them.
Chants of “Russia, Russia, Russia” were heard around him as he spoke.
Some 200,000 people had gathered in Moscow to hear Mr Putin’s address.
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‘There is a fight on our historic borders’
Biden criticises Russia’s move to pause nuclear treaty cooperation
Meanwhile, Mr Biden said Mr Putin had made a “big mistake” in deciding to suspend participation in the last nuclear treaty between the US and Russia.
He made the comment to reporters as he arrived at the presidential palace in Warsaw for a summit of the Bucharest Nine countries.
Moscow has insisted its decision to pull out of the New START treaty does not raise the risk of nuclear war.
The move is expected to have an immediate impact on US visibility into Russian nuclear activities as it allowed each side to conduct up to 18 inspections of strategic nuclear weapons sites each year.
Biden wants to project strength, resolve and unity
Joe Biden is putting diplomatic weight behind all the fine words and imagery of this week.
The White House says he wants to project strength, resolve and unity. After his surprise trip to Kyiv and passionate rallying cry for freedom in this speech in Warsaw, he is meeting allies.
They want reassurance that the US understands their anxieties and stands with them in the face of renewed Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere.
The meeting of the Bucharest Nine countries on NATO’s eastern flank followed Vladimir Putin’s ominous speech in Moscow.
He delivered another perverse view of history, saying NATO started the war, then announced Russia’s suspension from the START nuclear arms treaty in a major blow for nuclear arms reduction efforts.
The move is being seen in western capitals as more nuclear bullying by the Russian president as the war enters another year.
Joe Biden condemned the move as a mistake before meeting his central European allies.
The treaty also imposes a cap on the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the US and Russia can deploy.
Russia has said it is not withdrawing from the pact altogether and would respect the caps on nuclear weapons set under the treaty.
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“I do not believe that the decision to suspend the New START Treaty brings us closer to nuclear war,” deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
Despite the foreign minister’s comments, Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev said the world was “on the verge of a global conflict”.
“If the US wants Russia’s defeat, we have the right to defend ourselves with any weapons, including nuclear,” he wrote.
Speaking of Russia decision to pause its cooperation in the New START treaty, Mr Biden said: “It’s a big mistake.”
The remark, and his promise that the US would protect eastern NATO territory, came a day after he gave a highly-anticipated speech in the gardens of the Royal Castle in Warsaw.
Mr Biden warned that Russian aggression, if unchecked, wouldn’t stop at Ukraine’s borders. “Appetites of the autocrat cannot be appeased,” he said. “They must be opposed.”
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‘Putin left with his forces in disarray’
He also met Moldovan President Maia Sandu in Warsaw, who last week claimed Moscow was behind a plot to overthrow her country’s government using external saboteurs.
She spoke out after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country had intercepted plans by Russian secret services to destroy Moldova. Those claims were later confirmed by Moldovan intelligence officials.
Meanwhile, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the right-wing populist leader who argued last week that the European Union is partly to blame for prolonging Russia’s war in Ukraine, skipped the Bucharest Nine meeting with Mr Biden.
President Katalin Novak attended instead.
‘We must break the cycle of Russian aggression’
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who attended the meeting, said: “We don’t know when the war will end, but when it does, we need to ensure that history does not repeat itself.”
Pointing to past Russian actions in Georgia and Ukraine, he said: “We cannot allow Russia to continue to chip away at European security. We must break the cycle of Russian aggression.”
Meanwhile, Kyiv has said there can be no talk of peace with Russian troops in Ukraine.
The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken “deadly seriously,” David Lammy has warned.
Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary.
We travelled to Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole.
It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change.
Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken “deadly seriously” due to climate change and “the threats we’re seeing from Russia”.
We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard’s coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past.
David Lammy and Norway’s Foreign Minister Barth Eide view the melting Blomstrandbreen glacier. Pic: PA
The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre.
“We do see Russia’s shadow fleet using these waters,” Mr Lammy said. “We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time.”
In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders.
The foreign secretary visiting SvalSat, a satellite ground station which monitors climate in Svalbard. Pic: PA
Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit.
“Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security,” he said.
But it’s not just Vladimir Putin they’re worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Russian leader too.
Norwegian observers are concerned about the Russian leader – and Trump being ‘too soft’ on him. Pic: AP
Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: “If he’s too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans.”
Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance – including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia.
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In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary.
There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security.
“Let’s be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security.”
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This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.
Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.
World
‘What did they do to be burned and bombed?’: Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment
A British charity has written to the prime minister and foreign secretary, urging them to allow seriously ill children from Gaza into the UK to receive life-saving medical treatment.
Warning: This article contains images readers may find distressing
The co-founder of Project Pure Hope told Sky News it was way past the time for words.
“Now, we need action,” Omar Dinn said.
He’s identified two children inside Gaza who urgently need help and is appealing to the UK government to issue visas as a matter of urgency.
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Britain has taken only two patients from Gaza for medical treatment in 20 months of Israeli bombardment.
Children are among the bulk of the casualties in Gaza
“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe that’s unfolding in Gaza are children,” he continued. “And children are the most vulnerable.
“They have nothing to do with the politics, and we really just need to see them for what they are.
“They are children, just like my children, just like everybody’s children in this country – and we have the ability to help them.”
Sky News has been sent video blogs from British surgeons working in Gaza right now which show the conditions and difficulties they’re working under.
They prepare for potential immediate evacuation whilst facing long lists, mainly of children, needing life-saving emergency treatment day after day.
Dr Victoria Rose is a British surgeon working in southern Gaza’s last remaining hospital
Dr Victoria Rose told us: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.
“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.
“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”
One of her patients is three-year-old Hatem, who was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family apartment.
Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
His pregnant mother and father were both killed, leaving him an orphan. He has 35 percent burns on his small body.
“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Dr Rose says. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”
Hatem’s grandfather barely leaves his hospital bedside. Hatem Senior told us: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries? To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”
Hatem Senior
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The second child identified by the charity is Karam, who, aged one, is trying to survive in a tent in deeply unhygienic surroundings with a protruding intestine.
He’s suffering from a birth defect called Hirschsprung disease, which could be easily operated on with the right skills and equipment – unavailable to him in Gaza right now.
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Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
Karam’s mother Manal told our Gaza camera crew: “No matter how much I describe how much my son is suffering, I wouldn’t be able to describe it enough. I swear I am constantly crying.”
Children are among the bulk of casualties – some 16,000 have been killed, according to the latest figures from local health officials – and make up the majority of those being operated on, according to the British surgical team on the ground.
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