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      Record Number of NATO Allies Hit Military Spending Targets

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      President Biden and the NATO secretary general sought to present a robust and united front against Russia as the alliance prepares for its annual meeting next month.President Biden and the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, announced on Monday that a record number of allies were meeting their military spending commitments as the two leaders sought to present a robust and unwavering response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.Mr. Biden and Mr. Stoltenberg met ahead of the annual NATO summit next month in Washington, where member countries are expected to discuss additional measures to help secure long-term security, funding and eventual membership for Ukraine. Mr. Stoltenberg announced on Monday that NATO was prepared to take on a larger role in Ukraine’s security in the meantime.“I expect that when we meet next month, we will agree to have a NATO role in providing security assistance and training,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. “This will reduce the burden on the United States and strengthen our support to Ukraine.”That is possible in part because the number of allies meeting their informal commitments to spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their militaries has soared. When NATO allies made the pledge in 2014, only three members — including the United States — met that mark, Mr. Stoltenberg said. About five years ago, roughly 10 did, he said, and this year more than 20 of the alliance’s 32 members will.Mr. Stoltenberg also said allies have increased military spending this year by 18 percent — the biggest jump in decades.The reassurances from the two leaders come as questions have arisen anew about the alliance and the commitment to Ukraine. Russia has recently made advances on the front lines after a temporary delay in military aid to Ukraine caused by congressional gridlock. And Mr. Biden’s main rival in the November election, former President Donald J. Trump, has expressed skepticism toward assistance for Ukraine and the value of NATO itself.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

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      U.S. Expands Sanctions on Russia as G7 Leaders Gather

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      The Biden administration is taking new measures aimed at stopping China from helping the Kremlin sustain its war effort against Ukraine. U.S. officials hope European nations will take similar steps.The Biden administration announced a series of new financial sanctions Wednesday aimed at interrupting the fast-growing technological links between China and Russia that American officials believe are behind a broad effort to rebuild and modernize Russia’s military during its war with Ukraine.The actions were announced just as President Biden was leaving the country for a meeting in Italy of the Group of 7 industrialized economies, where a renewed effort to degrade the Russian economy will be at the top of his agenda.The effort has grown far more complicated in the past six or eight months after China, which previously had sat largely on the sidelines, has stepped up its shipments of microchips, optical systems for drones and components for advanced weaponry, U.S. officials said. But so far Beijing appears to have heeded Mr. Biden’s warning against shipping weapons to Russia, even as the United States and NATO continue to arm Ukraine.Announcing the new sanctions, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a statement that “Russia’s war economy is deeply isolated from the international financial system, leaving the Kremlin’s military desperate for access to the outside world.”At the heart of the new measures is an expansion of “secondary” sanctions that give the United States the power to blacklist any bank around the world that does business with Russian financial institutions already facing sanctions. This is intended to deter smaller banks, especially in places like China, from helping Russia finance its war effort.The Treasury Department also imposed restrictions on the stock exchange in Moscow in hopes of preventing foreign investors from propping up Russian defense companies. The sanctions hit several Chinese companies that are accused of helping Russia gain access to critical military equipment such as electronics, lasers and drone components.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

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      Blinken Hints U.S. May Allow Ukraine Greater Latitude to Strike in Russia

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      The U.S. secretary of state suggested that Ukraine’s use of American-supplied arms could expand beyond the current limitation to strikes in the Kharkiv area.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken left open the possibility on Friday that President Biden could allow Ukraine to use U.S.-made weapons to strike at a broader array of targets inside Russia, going beyond attacks he has approved on launch sites the Russians are using for their current assault on the Kharkiv area.“Going forward, we’ll continue to do what we’ve been doing, which is: As necessary, adapt and adjust,” Mr. Blinken said at a news conference in Prague at the end of a two-day meeting of top diplomats from member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.Mr. Blinken was responding to a reporter’s question on whether the United States might give permission for Ukraine to use U.S.-made weapons to strike deeper into Russia. The phrase “adapt and adjust” is one that Mr. Blinken used in a news conference on Wednesday in Chisinau, Moldova, to suggest that Mr. Biden was about to make a major policy shift and grant Ukraine permission to use the weapons to strike in Russia, as Ukrainian and European leaders had been urging for weeks.American officials then said on Thursday that Mr. Biden had made that decision in recent days and told the Ukrainians, but that the permission to strike in Russia was limited to sites the Russians were using for the assault on Kharkiv. U.S. officials said the ban on Ukraine using weapons for “long range” attacks in Russia had not changed.But Mr. Blinken’s remarks on Friday suggested the ban could change, depending on shifts in battlefield conditions and the direction of the war. He did say, though, that the United States was “proceeding deliberately as well as effectively.” That included ensuring Ukrainian soldiers had the necessary training to use new weapons systems and the capacity to maintain them, he said.American officials say the policy shift means Ukrainian attacks with U.S. weapons in Russia can be pre-emptive, but can only take place within Russian areas near Kharkiv that the Pentagon has designated and that U.S. military officials have communicated to their Ukrainian counterparts.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

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      In Serbia, Xi Underlines Close Ties With Ally That Shares Wariness of U.S.

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      Visiting friendly leaders in Eastern Europe, the Chinese president commemorated the 25th anniversary of a misdirected U.S. airstrike that destroyed China’s embassy in Belgrade.China and Serbia on Wednesday proclaimed an “ironclad friendship” during a visit to Belgrade by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, underlining the close political and economic ties between two countries that share a wariness of the United States.Mr. Xi arrived in Serbia late Tuesday — the 25th anniversary of a mistaken 1999 airstrike involving the U.S. Air Force during the Kosovo war that destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Three Chinese journalists were killed in the strike.“This we should never forget,” Mr. Xi said in a statement published on Tuesday by Politika, a Serbian newspaper, recalling that “25 years ago today, NATO flagrantly bombed the Chinese Embassy.” He said that China’s friendship with Serbia had been “forged with the blood of our compatriots” and “will stay in the shared memory of the Chinese and Serbian peoples.”Mr. Xi appeared briefly on Wednesday morning with the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, before a cheering crowd gathered in front of the Palace of Serbia, the former headquarters of the now defunct government of Yugoslavia that now houses Serbian government offices.In contrast to Mr. Xi’s last visit to Eastern and Central Europe in 2016, during which he faced noisy protests in the Czech Republic, he received a uniformly friendly reception in Belgrade, with the authorities mobilizing state workers to cheer him.China is Serbia’s largest foreign investor and increasingly close economic relations have helped expand a relationship forged before the collapse of Yugoslavia, whose capital was Belgrade, in the early 1990s by shared wariness of Western and Soviet power.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

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      NATO Weighs Taking Over Ukraine Defense Contact Group

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      The proposal faces several obstacles, including whether all members would agree to the changes. But the alliance is worried about wavering American support for Kyiv.With continued American aid to Ukraine stalled and against the looming prospect of a second Trump presidency, NATO officials are looking to take more control of directing military support from Ukraine’s allies — a role that the United States has played for the past two years.Under a proposal being discussed this week at the military alliance’s headquarters, NATO would oversee the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a group currently led by the United States that coordinates the donation and delivery of weapons to the battlefield. Discussions are also underway about a plan floated by Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, to secure an additional $100 billion from the alliance’s 32 member states for Ukraine over five years.“A stronger NATO role in coordinating and providing support is the way to end this war in a way where Ukraine prevails,” Mr. Stoltenberg said on Wednesday at the start of meetings among the alliance’s top diplomats.“There is a need to give this a more robust and institutional framework to ensure predictability and commitment for the long haul,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. He added: “I strongly believe it’s important that allies make decisions fast. And that includes, of course, the United States.”Mr. Stoltenberg would not discuss specifics, but he said he hoped to have the new efforts approved in time for a July summit meeting of NATO leaders in Washington, where officials are expected to again debate when Ukraine might be allowed to join the military alliance, as has been promised for years.A NATO official confirmed the proposals, which were reported earlier by news outlets including Bloomberg News.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

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      U.S. Defense Secretary Praises NATO Allies for Commitment to Ukraine

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      Despite doubts about further U.S. aid, the American defense secretary told a meeting of Kyiv’s backers that the fight against Russia “remains one of the great causes of our time.”With additional American aid still in doubt, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Tuesday called for “creative, adaptable and sustainable ways” to continue arming Ukraine and praised European allies who were trying to bolster Kyiv’s military as the war against Russia entered a critical stretch.Mr. Austin, in Germany for the start of a semiregular meeting of nearly 50 nations who are supplying Ukraine’s forces, said that allies would “dig deeper to get vital security assistance to Ukraine.” He singled out Denmark, France, Germany and Sweden for recent donations of weapons and noted the Czech Republic’s efforts to provide 800,000 artillery shells — the first tranche of which could arrive on the battlefield within weeks.Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, said Berlin would send Ukraine 10,000 rounds of badly needed artillery shells, 100 armored infantry vehicles and transport equipment in a new infusion of support worth 500 million euros, about $544 million.“Things are progressing sometimes in small steps, sometimes in larger steps, but the main thing is the constant supply of ammunition,” Mr. Pistorius told journalists in Germany, according to local news reports.The United States remains the single largest donor of military support to Ukraine, and last week, Washington pledged an additional $300 million of air defense missiles, artillery rounds and armor systems. The latest package also included attack missiles with a range of about 100 miles that dispense clusters of small munitions and can do damage over a wide area, though they are still at least a week from arriving.Yet Ukrainian forces are expected to burn through the new American aid within a few weeks, and it is unlikely that the Biden administration will be able to send much more unless Republicans in Congress agree to a $60 billion emergency spending plan to ship additional weapons to Ukraine and bolster armament production in the United States.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

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      Serbian Leader Says Kushner Deal Is Not an Effort to Influence Trump

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      After news reports that Jared Kushner plans to redevelop a site in Belgrade bombed by NATO in 1999, Serbian politicians clashed over whether the deal was appropriate.The president of Serbia on Monday batted away any suggestion that he might have intentionally tried to steer a valuable real estate project in Serbia’s capital to Jared Kushner, Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law, in an effort to influence Mr. Trump should he return to the White House.“I died laughing,” the Serbian leader, Aleksandar Vucic, said at a rally, referring mockingly to news reports that Mr. Kushner was close to an agreement to invest $500 million in redeveloping a high-profile site in central Belgrade, the capital. “I read in some papers that I used this for a political influence on Trump, that corrupted America or someone in America. I am a miracle. It is incredible what all I can do.”Mr. Kushner, who was a senior White House adviser under Mr. Trump, has teamed up with a second former Trump aide, Richard Grenell, on the plan.The tentative agreement between the Kushner team and the Serbian government would grant Mr. Kushner’s investment firm a 99-year lease, at no charge, and the right to build a luxury hotel and apartment complex and a museum on the site of the former headquarters of the Yugoslav Ministry of Defense in Belgrade, which was bombed by NATO in 1999.News of the proposal provoked strong objections on Monday from opposition party leaders in Serbia during a meeting of the parliament.Opposition party leaders said they had not been properly informed of the plan and called it inappropriate that an American company owned by a Trump family member would be allowed to earn profits off a site that a United States-led coalition bombed 25 years ago.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

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      Assessing Donald Trump’s Claims That He Would Have Done Better

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      The war in Ukraine. Hamas’s attack on Israel. Inflation. The former president has insisted that none would have occurred if he had remained in office after 2020.Aside from falsely insisting that he did not lose the 2020 election, former President Donald J. Trump has peddled a related set of theories centered on one question: What would the world have looked like had he stayed in office?Mr. Trump, in rallies and interviews, has repeatedly asserted — more than a dozen times since December, by one rough count — that three distinct events, both in the United States and abroad, are a product of the 2020 election.“There wouldn’t have been an attack on Israel. There wouldn’t have been an attack on Ukraine. And we wouldn’t have had any inflation,” he declared during a rally in January in Las Vegas. The next month in South Carolina, he baselessly claimed that Democrats had admitted as much.Politicians routinely entertain what-ifs, which are impossible to prove or rebut with certainty. But Mr. Trump’s suppositions underscore the ways in which he often airs questionable claims without explanation and which might not be supported by the broader context.And unlike simply attacking an opponent’s record or making a campaign promise, such alternative realities enjoy the benefit of being untestable.“People already grapple with how to hold elected officials accountable,” said Tabitha Bonilla, an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University who has researched campaign promises and accountability. “And what is super interesting here is that there’s no way to hold someone accountable at all, because there’s no way to measure any of this.”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