Europe
Subterms
More stories
- in US Politics
‘Day of great joy’: Wall Street Journal’s crusade to free Gershkovich succeeds
The reporter Evan Gershkovich’s release from a Russian prison on Thursday was celebrated across US and global media but perhaps most happily by journalists at his own paper, the Wall Street Journal in New York.In an email to staff after news of Gershkovich’s release as part of a large-scale prisoner swap, Emma Tucker, the Journal editor-in-chief, said: “A few moments ago, Evan walked free from a Russian plane. He will shortly be on a flight back to the US.“I cannot even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you will feel the same. This is a day of great joy for Evan and his family, and a historic day for the Wall Street Journal.“The strength, determination and resilience that Evan, his parents and his sister maintained throughout this long ordeal have been incredible. They have been an inspiration to all of us in the newsroom, to colleagues across the company and to supporters who have campaigned so hard for his release.”Tucker’s assistant editor, Paul Beckett, told the Guardian that this week, editors had detected “an inkling that something was coming”.From “seven o’clock this morning”, he said, he and other senior editors were in Tucker’s office, “trying to find out whatever information we could. We started to see some reports dribble out that things were in the offing, [and] we made the call to wait until we knew that our reporter was on the ground, out of Russian custody, free on the tarmac at Ankara, and then we’d publish.“We were sitting here and really trying to figure out what was happening and it was so complicated – we had flight tracking, we had people in the ground in Ankara, we had people at the White House, we had people at the national security council. We were essentially reporting on our own story, in a way.”Asked how staff reacted when Gershkovich’s freedom was confirmed, Beckett said: “It was great to see the newsroom gather around the office. There was applause. We had champagne, there were smiles, joy, there were tears of relief.“It’s a historic day for the Journal, it’s a historic day in geopolitics, in many ways. But there is just huge thankfulness after 16 months, it’s over.”View image in fullscreenIt has been a long 16 months. But after Gershkovich was arrested and accused of espionage, in late March 2023, the Journal mounted a high-profile campaign to stress his innocence, ensure he was not forgotten and press for his release.Speaking to the New York Times earlier this year, Tucker said: “After an initial flurry of attention in the weeks following Evan’s arrest, keeping the spotlight on his ordeal became a huge challenge for the newsroom amid jam-packed news cycles.“We used every grim milestone as a moment to organise publicity and get Evan back into the headlines: 100 days, his birthday in October, 250 days, every one of his court appearances.”The Journal’s story about Gershkovich’s release and the prisoner swap deal described some effects of the campaign: “Well-wishers raised banners at Major League Baseball games and Premier League soccer matches, calling for his release. Journalists and celebrity news presenters from [Tucker] Carlson to CNN anchor Jake Tapper spoke out on his behalf.“Supporters received upbeat and joke-filled letters from Gershkovich, written in his nine-by-12-ft cell at Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison, where Soviet interrogators once tortured and murdered alleged ‘class enemies’.”Beckett said: “We made a decision early on. Someone in the US government told me, really within 24 hours of Evan being taken, that there were times to be loud and there were times to be quiet. And that moment was the time to be loud, and we stayed loud.“Really the effort was to create a landscape in which there could be successful negotiation. We were never going to conduct those negotiations ourselves. But we also firmly believed that there’s so much going on in the world that if Evan ever fell out of the spotlight, it would make it that much more difficult for those negotiations to have been successful.“But this was not the Journal alone. The reaction from our colleagues in media globally, other governments, institutions supporting the free press and just people, well-wishers everywhere, that was the collective voice that spoke for Evan when he was silenced. That made the difference. We’re very grateful [for such] huge support, and we’re incredibly grateful for the happy outcome.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Journal staffers celebrated, it was only 13 days since Gershkovich was sentenced, in a Moscow courtroom, to 16 years in a high-security penal colony. Then, Tucker and Almar Latour, chief executive of Dow Jones and publisher of the Journal, lamented a “disgraceful, sham conviction … after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist.”On Thursday, as the good news spread but before the Journal had confirmed its reporter was free, a dedicated page on the Journal website still hosted a counter showing time elapsed since Gershkovich was arrested. It stood at 491 days, minutes ticking forward towards 492.At the top of the front page, headings read: “Evan Gershkovich, Wrongfully Convicted, Sentenced to 16 Years, A Stolen Year, His Family Reflects, A Timeline, His Reporting, How You Can Help, Write a Message, Latest News and Get Email Updates.”But the paper was ready. After it launched its report on the release deal – and as Annie Linskey, a reporter, described “applause in WSJ’s DC office” – the Journal also rolled out a detailed account of how “secret negotiations to free … Gershkovich unfolded on three continents, involving spy agencies, billionaires, political power players and his fiercest advocate – his mom”.Beckett said: “A lot has happened out of our sight, and appropriately so. Both sides said that was important. The US government obviously was in touch with Evan’s parents and our legal team, but we were still on tenterhooks until two hours ago.”In her email to staff, reported by the Times, Tucker said the paper would now “ensure Evan is well looked after. We want him to take as much time as he needs to recuperate privately and are doing everything we can to support him and his family. I will be travelling later today to meet him when he lands in Texas.”Tucker also said the Journal was “happy too for the other Americans released today who will soon be reunited with their families”. But the paper’s story about Gershkovich’s release and the prisoner swap deal also noted a prisoner not set free.“Marc Fogel, a history teacher at the high school where US Moscow embassy staff sent their children … is serving 14 years in a penal colony. He was arrested in 2021 for carrying less than an ounce of medical marijuana. He said he had intended to use the drug for medical purposes to treat chronic pain.“The US has sought to free him on ‘humanitarian grounds’.”“Obviously, we feel for” prisoners not yet freed, Beckett said. “That is very tough, and I hope that the US government can work its magic again and get these folks home.” More
- in US Politics
Joe Biden defiant despite gaffes at Nato press conference as he battles calls to stand aside
In a critical press conference meant to make or break his presidential campaign, Joe Biden spiritedly defended his foreign policy record even as he faced a barrage of questions on his mental fitness and, in another gaffe, mistakenly referred to Kamala Harris as “vice-president Trump”.Biden offered extensive remarks on thorny foreign policy issues including competition with China and the Israel-Hamas war, in which he said he had warned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu away from an occupation of the Gaza Strip.He said he was directly in contact with Xi Jinping to warn him not to offer further support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, but not with Vladimir Putin, whom he said: “I have no reason to speak to him right now.”But Biden, who is running to be president until January 2029, fielded an equal number of questions during the press conference on his mental fitness, an issue that has loomed over his campaign since a faltering debate performance against Donald Trump that he called “that dumb mistake”.Ultimately, it was a performance that supporters will probably say shows he is capable of handling his responsibilities as commander-in-chief, but unlikely to convince those already in doubt about his mental fitness that he can serve another four years in office.Biden, 81, insisted he would stay in the race despite calls from some in his party to drop out and to allow another figure, including Harris, run in the November election.Shortly after he finished speaking, Connecticut congressman Jim Himes, the top ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called on Biden to step down from the campaign, writing on X: “We must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront the threat posed by Trump’s promised MAGA authoritarianism. I no longer believe that is Joe Biden.”Appearing later on CNN, Himes said: “Imagine that three months from now, we get another performance like there was in the debate, right before the election. Do you want to take that risk? I don’t.”Two more congressional Democrats also called on Biden to step aside, bringing the total to 17. Representative Scott Peters of California said, “The stakes are high, and we are on a losing course,” while Representative Eric Sorensen of Illinois said that Biden should “put country over party”.Wrapping up a summit of the 32-member bloc in Washington DC, Biden said: “I’ve not had any of my European allies come up and say, ‘Joe, don’t run’. What I’ve heard them say is, ‘You’ve got to win’.“If I slow down and can’t get the job done that’s a sign I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said. “But there’s no indication of that. None.”Biden said he wouldn’t leave the race unless polls showed him that he had no chance of winning against Trump, even if they showed that Harris’s chances in the election were better than his own.Nonetheless, he said Harris was qualified to be president as well, although he misnamed her in the endorsement. “I wouldn’t have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president, if she’s not qualified to be president,” he said.That gaffe was compounded by the fact that he had introduced the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as “President Putin” just hours earlier, before correcting himself and saying “we’re going to beat Putin”.Biden initially used the final Nato summit press conference as something of a stump speech, brandishing his national security record in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression and saying that the November vote was “much more than a political question … It’s a national security issue.”He then turned to his record on the economy, border security and his efforts to broker a peace in the Israel-Hamas war to bolster his case for his campaign in November.Biden spoke for 58 minutes, including 50 minutes of unscripted question-and-answer. He appeared most comfortable and cogent as he discussed thorny foreign policy questions.“Don’t make the same mistake America made after [Osama] bin Laden,” he said he told Netanyahu, as he sought to ward off a potential occupation of the Gaza Strip. “There’s no need to occupy anywhere. Go after the people who did the job.”He also indicated that European countries were prepared to cut their investments in China if Xi continued to “[supply] Russia, with information and capacity, along with working with North Korea and others, to help Russia in armament”.But at times he got lost in the weeds. Asked about reports that he had asked his schedule to be moved up, he said: “I’m not talking about, and if you’ve looked at my schedule since I, since I made that stupid mistake in the campaign, in the debate. I mean, my schedule has been full bore.”“Where’s Trump been?” he continued. “Riding around on his golf cart? Filling out his scorecard before he hits the ball?” More
- in US Politics
Political rifts have left the US haunted by fear of civil war. Here’s how France can do better | Alexander Hurst
In 2016, it was the “Anglo-American” world that seemed in lockstep, the US electing Donald Trump hot on the heels of Britain’s own goal of Brexit. A few weeks ago, it seemed as if France would take the UK’s place as the US’s partner in implosion. But even though fireworks and cheers filled Paris’s Place de la République on Sunday night following the success of a hasty marriage of convenience between leftwing parties and centrist coalitions to keep the far right out of power, they only temporarily drowned out reality. France’s social and political fractures are not going away any more than a four-year respite from Trump means that Trumpism has gone away.France and the US have seen their neuroses about social fracture leading to civil conflict seep into politics, as well as playing out in film and TV dramas. The US’s fractures are so deep that full-blown civil war is already the subject of fiction. Alex Garland’s Civil War film skips over the reasons that the country is divided and jumps straight to the middle of the fighting, suggesting a politically improbable alliance of Texas and California to overthrow a president turned autocrat.During the recent election campaign in France, historians, analysts and politicians evoked the spectre of conflict that could arise in the case of a far-right victory. Emmanuel Macron said that should the extreme right win it would “divide and push” the country towards “civil war”.Of course, there is one big difference between the US and France: guns. “There have to be guns for there to be a civil war; it’s the bare minimum,” says Marie Kinsky (Ana Girardot) in the 2024 French TV series La Fièvre. The co-protagonist and far-right activist sets about to turn France into the US (even seeking assistance from the National Rifle Association) as the basis for provoking an identitarian implosion. Far-fetched? Hopefully – though a shocking 91% of French people share the sentiment that “society is violent”.La Fièvre, directed by Eric Benzekri, opens with an altercation between a football player and his coach, which both far right and far left attempt to inflate into a race and identity crisis to exploit for their own purposes. In the aftermath, Sam Berger (Nina Meurisse), a political communications consultant, and an anxiety-ridden depiction of the centre left, feverishly tries to stop Kinsky from pushing French society to the brink. The two play a nationwide game of chess that takes in disinformation, social media astroturfing, a citizens’ assembly and – in a direct foreshadowing of how Kylian Mbappé and other French footballers took public stances against “the extremes” – the use of a Paris football club as a force for moderation.View image in fullscreenWhile Civil War can seem almost apolitical, La Fièvre never stops theorising, pulling from Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, the Overton window and the research institute Destin Commun’s La france en qûete. The show lays bare the way that modern democracy is being hollowed out by what it terms “conflict entrepreneurs”, those in politics and the private sector who gain from exploiting and aggravating social fracture.One of the truths Benzekri conveys is that the far right isn’t the only threat. Ideological rigidity can come from the far left too, and often blocks progress while contributing to a society where conversation – and thus, democracy – becomes unworkable. But what seems to worry Benzekri most is the phenomenon of politics as spectacle, and the degree to which populism is contagious.In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Benzekri worked with Jean-Luc Mélenchon – the radical-left leader of France Unbowed (LFI), the largest party in the New Popular Front (NFP), the shock winner in the recent French parliamentary elections. But the director has drifted towards the more mainstream centre left, and now seems to see some of his former allies as conflict entrepreneurs who also bear responsibility for the deteriorating state of French politics.I’ve watched as the US has experienced the polarisation of almost all aspects of life along political lines. It’s a phenomenon I desperately would love France to avoid. But how?During the 2021-22, and 2022-23 academic years, I taught a first-year seminar to students at Sciences Po Paris that I titled, “In search of respect: US democracy confronting race and inequality.” I pulled the title from a book written by a French anthropologist, Philippe Bourgeois, who studied crack gangs in Harlem in the 1990s. A desire to be “respected”, it seemed to me, was at the root of so much of the emotion and anger that Trump was able to channel and direct.Populism pits different segments of society against each other, often around competing notions of respect. A far-right populist tells supporters that they are right to feel disrespected, because “someone else” has come and intruded upon something fundamental about who they are. A far-left populist tells supporters that the institutions of the state itself are racist. And now each side’s desire for justice and to be respected validates the other side’s deepest fears about what kind of society they are going to live in.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne solution is to change the game rather than play by the new rules the populists have set out for us. In La Fièvre, football is a socially unifying factor. Offscreen, Destin Commun has for many years promoted ecology as a common project with the potential to create social cohesion: an argument that it has found to be one of the most effective in countering the far right.Outside parliament, perhaps there is another way to change the rules of the game and create something new. According to Mathieu Lefèvre at Destin Commun, when it runs a focus group it often finds that participants request to come back the next day for nothing because they are so relieved to have had the chance to listen to, and be listened to by, other people in their communities. What if focus groups weren’t just run for campaign purposes, but in every one of France’s 36,000 communes? What better way to feel respected than listening and being listened to?Even though the NFP is now the largest group in the national assembly, it lacks anything close to a majority and is divided between different wings. Unless moderates succeed in coalition-building, a legislature split between three rough political families – the far right, Macron’s centrist coalition and the NFP – is a recipe for ungovernability that would serve “conflict entrepreneurs”, but certainly not the country.In the final scene of La Fièvre, the president asks: “Can we make it through?” In real-life France, we are going to find out.
Alexander Hurst is a Guardian columnist More - in US Politics
European leaders use Nato summit to sell military alliance to US voters
European leaders at the Nato summit in Washington are focused on explaining to ordinary American taxpayers that the military alliance is worth the money, as the issue of burden-sharing has become a political football for both parties in the US – and threatens to become a serious stumbling block for the alliance should a second Trump administration come to power.“There is a debate in the United States that the US are doing a lot to support Ukraine and Europe is not doing enough. If you look at figures, it’s actually a different picture. Europe is doing more than the United States: the financial support, military support we all have provided so far has been enormous … We are taking the security and defense seriously,” said Edgars Rinkēvičs, the president of Latvia, during a speech on Tuesday alongside former CIA director Leon Panetta and the Estonian defense minister, Hanno Pevkur. “It’s also very important to explain to the American public.”In background briefings, European officials have said they have been concerned with political turmoil in the US and Europe. The US was among countries that pushed back against a multi-year financial pledge for military aid to Ukraine – in part because of the bitter fight in Congress over the Ukraine supplemental bill.“We think that this is essential to signal that Europeans are taking a greater burden of their own security,” said another European official ahead of the summit. “And it’s an important message to Ukraine, to Russia – but also for domestic audience. Here in DC, we are aware of the sensitivity of that topic, and I think you can expect a lot of strategic communication on that next week.”European officials are balancing concerns over the growing Russian threat in Ukraine and the political sensitivities that could further divide the alliance.“We also understand that the ordinary people, in Latvia or the United States or somewhere else, sometimes do care more about economy, social issues, internal security, and we should take those concerns seriously and address them in the same manner that we are addressing the high geopolitical issues,” said Rinkēvičs.Polling has shown that views on Nato are subject to a partisan divide in the US, and that the alliance has become steadily less popular among Republicans in the past year. According to the Pew Research Centre, just 43% of Republicans have a positive view of the alliance, down from 49% who said the same in 2023.European leaders have taken different tacks, with some talking points seemingly tailored toward the Republican candidate as well. “Nato is a club, and when you have a club rules, then you respect the rules, and you expect that everybody will also respect the rules,” Pefkur, the Estonian defense minister said on Tuesday. “So Trump is a golfer, so when you pay your fee, in the golf club, you can play. Doesn’t matter how big is your wallet. So when you pay that fee, you can go to the golf course and play.”In a speech at the Hudson Institute on Tuesday, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said that he supported Nato but that he would press European leaders on fulfilling a pledge to spend 2% of GDP on defense. He also tied national security to US border security, once again reinforcing how Nato policies have become subsumed to domestic US politics.“Nato needs to be doing more,” he said. “Not all Nato members have reached their current commitment. It may even need to be closer at a level during the cold war. But if we’re all going to enjoy a future of peace and prosperity, we all need to have skin in the game.”Critics have said that the US is going through a period of isolationism. “On a tectonic level, our allies should understand that there is a usually isolationist instinct in this country,” said Representative Jim Himes, a senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee. “And it emerges from time to time, when economic conditions here are not good,” or after moments of disenchantment like the Iraq war. “We are in that isolationist moment and it’s not just Donald Trump.”Others describe it as restraint. Trump is not the only one calling for the US to withdraw forces and resources from Europe, leaving Europeans to take on the burden of defending themselves. Several liberal foreign policy analysts have been calling for years for a switch to American restraint when it comes to US military projection, especially in Europe.“It is in the interest of a transatlantic alliance to shift the burden toward Europe and transition over, a decent period, maybe about a decade, toward European leadership of European defense with the United States moving to a supporting role,” Stephen Wertheim a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a leading advocate for restraint.Wertheim was one of dozens of foreign policy experts who wrote an open letter published in the Guardian urging Nato leaders not to invite Ukraine to become a member.“It could also be counterproductive insofar as Russia believes that Ukraine is advancing down this bridge to Nato membership, Russia gains an incentive to prolong the war so that that moment never arrives, so that Ukraine never crosses that bridge on the other side.” More
- in US Politics
Biden’s health and threat of a second Trump term loom over Nato summit
As European leaders and top defense officials from 31 Nato countries descend on Washington next week, all eyes will be focused firmly on Joe Biden, whose faltering performance at last month’s debate has added to concerns about the country that some Europeans already described as their “unpredictable ally”.The US president has hoped that his leadership at the summit will rescue his campaign against Donald Trump amid concerns about his age and mental acuity. In a primetime interview on US television this week, he said: “And who’s gonna be able to hold Nato together like me?… We’re gonna have, I guess a good way to judge me, is you’re gonna have now the Nato conference here in the United States next week. Come listen. See what they say.”But in private conversations, some European officials and diplomats have expressed concerns about his “shaky” public appearances and worries about the high likelihood of a second Trump term. Several foreign officials questioned whether Biden would remain in the race through next week.“You can’t just put the genie back in the bottle,” said one European diplomat of the questions concerning Biden’s age. “It is one of the big issues [around the summit].”Officials who normally focused on security policy said they would pay close attention to Biden’s behaviour during his public appearances at the Nato summit, including a speech in the Mellon Auditorium on Tuesday and then meetings with the other member and partner countries on Wednesday. Some expressed confidence in his team, including Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, to manage major crises, but said that the question of Biden’s political future had taken a toll.Several foreign officials said that Biden’s slump in the polls would compound problems from this year’s bruising fight in Congress over the $60.8bn in military aid to Ukraine and make it less likely for the administration to take bold action.“The issue with his age has become a major concern … a distraction from other real issues [for Nato],” said a European official. One administration official told the Washington Post that the summit has “gone from an orchestrated spectacle to one of the most anxious gatherings in modern times”.US officials have insisted that Biden is mentally acute, especially pointing at his handling of national security issues such as the Russian war on Ukraine.A long piece detailing concerns about Biden’s mental state in the New York Times included aides describing his forceful warnings to Benjamin Netanyahu not to launch a massive counterattack against Iran as an example of his good health.“Look, foreign leaders have seen Joe Biden up close and personal for the last three years,” said a senior administration official. “They know who they’re dealing with and, you know, they know how effective he’s been.”But that article also said that G7 leaders were concerned about Biden’s physical condition, quoted a European official who said Biden was sometimes “out of it”, and quoted two officials who struggled to say they would put Biden in the same room as Vladimir Putin.“I’ve heard multiple times [US officials] talking about how he’s very sharp,” a European official told the Guardian. “But he can’t be great just part of the time, he needs to be on his game all of the time.”Some have gone public with their concerns. “They certainly have a problem,” said Polish prime minister Donald Tusk after last week’s debate. “Yes, these reactions are unambiguous. I was afraid of that. I was afraid … in the sense: it was to be expected that in a direct confrontation, in a debate, it would not be easy for President Biden.”Especially following the debate, many European diplomats are bracing for a second Trump administration. The former president has openly flirted with the idea of pulling out of Nato and personally harangued members of the alliance who failed to reach a 2% spending benchmark. He has also indicated that he may withhold further aid to Ukraine.Since early in the campaign, European diplomats have sought to understand Trump’s policies, sending envoys to his campaign or conservative thinktanks like the Heritage Foundation who have produced voluminous briefings about what a second-term Trump administration’s foreign policy could look like.But Trump’s foreign policy vision remains unclear, they said, subject to his own whims, and will likely be decided at the last minute. (In a surprise on Friday, he disavowed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, often touted as a 900-page road map for his administration’s agenda, saying he “had no idea who they are”.)skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You meet a lot of people who will tell you that they know what Trump is thinking, but no one actually does,” said one European official.Ahead of the election, officials from Nato countries have sought to “Trump-proof” military aid by having the alliance take over coordination of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group from the US. European countries have also pushed for language in a final Nato communique that would proclaim the “irreversibility” of Ukraine’s accession to the alliance.“On managing the unpredictability of the US ally … again, it’s not new,” said a European official. “It’s clearly a sentiment which is shared among European allies, that we need to be prepared for the unpredictability of the US ally.”In a policy brief, Camille Grand, a former Nato assistant secretary general who is now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that leaders should prepare to “defend Europe with less America”.“Even setting aside the outcome of the US presidential election this year and the need to Trump-proof Europe, there is a fundamental and deep trend in US security policy that suggests Europe will have to become less reliant on US support for its security,” he wrote.Planners want to avoid a repeat of last year’s summit in Lithuania, when Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted that the lack of a timetable for the country’s accession to Nato was “absurd” after learning of last-minute discussions between other leaders.“The US team has been making absolutely sure that there wouldn’t be too many or any open issues at the summit to avoid what happened in Vilnius,” Grand said in an interview.“It’s meant to be a smooth summit and a celebration and an opportunity for Biden to shine, then I guess what the European leaders will be watching in light of the debate is, how is Biden? Is he truly leading? So they will have an eye on him, but I think they will all, at least most of them … rather be in the mood to strengthen him than the opposite.” More
- in Elections
NATO, at Washington Summit, Will Offer Ukraine a ‘Bridge’ to Membership
Officials say Kyiv won’t get membership negotiations at the coming NATO summit, but the alliance will announce a structure to coordinate aid over the longer term.NATO will offer Ukraine a new headquarters to manage its military assistance at its upcoming 75th anniversary summit in Washington, officials said, an assurance of the alliance’s long-term commitment to the country’s security that has been heralded as a “bridge” to Kyiv’s eventual membership.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — along with some Central European nations — had fervently hoped his country would be offered membership negotiations by NATO at the summit, which runs from July 9 to 11.Instead, the alliance will announce that it has agreed to set up a mission in Germany to coordinate aid of all kinds to Ukraine over the longer term, American and NATO officials said. The move is intended to send a strong signal of allied commitment, both to Kyiv and to Moscow, which hopes the West will grow tired of supporting the war.Because the mission will be under NATO’s auspices, it is designed to function even if Donald J. Trump, a sharp critic of the alliance and of aid to Ukraine, wins the U.S. presidency in November.The Biden administration and NATO officials came up with the idea as a way to give something solid to Kyiv at the summit even as they maintain the time is not right for Ukraine to join. It is not just that the country is still at war, which could make NATO an active participant in the fighting. President Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany have said that Ukraine must make important reforms to reduce corruption and improve its democracy and rule of law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
