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      Biden’s health and threat of a second Trump term loom over Nato summit

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      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

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      Ex-Trump security adviser backtracks on proposal to send all Marines to Asia

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      Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien – tipped to play a leading role if the ex-president returns to the White House – backtracked on parts of his proposal to sever US-China economic ties, an aspect of which called for sending the entire US Marine Corps to Asia.O’Brien, who recently submitted a 5,000-word article outlining his thinking to Foreign Affairs, explained on Sunday that instead of the “entire US Marine Corps”, it would be only the “fighting force”. And he said some Marines would still be stationed at bases like California’s Camp Pendleton and North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune.“We want to stop a war, and the way to stop the war is through strength,” O’Brien said on Sunday’s edition of CBS Face the Nation. “Moving the Marine Corps to the Pacific and moving the carrier battle group to the Pacific would show the kind of strength needed to deter a war.”In the essay, titled The Return of Peace Through Strength, O’Brien argued for the US to help expand the militaries of Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam; increase military assistance to Taiwan; and boost missile defense as well as fighter jet protection in the region.He also called for renewed plutonium and enriched uranium production – as well as the resumption of live nuclear-weapons testing.O’Brien cites concerns over an aging US nuclear arsenal as his primary argument in favor of abandoning the current nuclear testing moratorium.The military expansion would go beyond the measures Joe Biden has taken to counter Chinese ambitions in the Asia-Pacific region as the president seeks re-election against Trump in November.And on Sunday, Trump’s hawkish foreign policy adviser from 2019 to 2021 appeared to echo an earlier diplomatic strategy when Trump threatened to pull the US out of Asia and Europe unless its strategic partners met defense spending targets.O’Brien said US allies have fielded “some, but not enough” of the cost of housing US troops in their countries, and he called on them to “step up to the plate”.The US currently stations nearly half of all American military deployed abroad in Japan, South Korea and Guam, along with small detachments in Taiwan and the Marshall Islands.“We need our allies to step up,” O’Brien said. “America can’t do this alone.“Sometimes you have to be tough, you have to show tough love to your allies. And just like with family members sometimes you have to be tough with your family members.” More

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      White House disputes Netanyahu’s claim that US is withholding weapons from Israel

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      The Biden administration has reacted furiously to criticisms by Benjamin Netanyahu that the US is holding back weapons and ammunition from Israel in its war in Gaza, reportedly cancelling a high-level meeting with Israeli officials on Iran in retaliation.Netanyahu made the claims of a supposedly deliberate weapons delay in a video posted on X in which he implied that Israel’s ability to prevail in the nine-month war with Hamas was being hampered as a result.Speaking to the camera in English, Netanyahu said he had expressed gratitude in a recent meeting with Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, for American support since last October’s attack on Israel by Hamas, which killed about 1,200 and saw another 250 taken hostage.“But I also said something else,” he said. “I said it’s inconceivable that in the past few months the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel – Israel, America’s closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies.”Invoking Winston Churchill, Netanyahu continued: “During world war two, Churchill told the United States, ‘Give us the tools, we’ll do the job.’ And I say, give us the tools, and we’ll finish the job a lot faster.”The broadside appeared to blindside US officials. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters: “We genuinely don’t know what he is talking about.”At a later news conference, Blinken said that the only delayed weapons were 2,000lb bombs that Joe Biden had ordered to put under review because of concerns over an Israeli plan for an incursion into Rafah in southern Gaza, where up to 1 million people are sheltering.“That remains under review. But everything else is moving as it normally would,” said Blinken.The Biden administration finally won congressional approval for a $14bn military aid package for Israel in April after it was held up for months by the House of Representatives. A separate $15bn sale of US F15 aircraft is also set to move forward.Biden has pressed forward with aid despite opposition from within his own Democratic party, where progressives have accused Israel of committing genocide in a war that has now killed more than 37,000 Palestinians.Senior administration officials were said to be angry behind the scenes. Axios, citing two unnamed sources, reported that a bilateral meeting scheduled for 20 June had been called off to send Netanyahu a signal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe report said the US envoy to Israel, Amos Hochstein, had delivered the message to the prime minister personally, telling him that his accusation was “inaccurate and out of line”.“This decision makes it clear that there are consequences for pulling such stunts,” Axios quoted one American official as saying.A spokesperson for the White House national security council did not confirm the cancellation but amplified the perplexity over Netanyahu’s video.“We have been working to find a time to schedule the next SDG [sustainable development goals] that accounts for the travel and availability of principals, but have not yet fully finalized the details, so nothing has been cancelled,” the spokesperson, Eduardo Maia Silva, said in an email.“As we said in the briefing yesterday, we have no idea what the prime minister is talking about, but that’s not a reason for rescheduling a meeting.”Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Washington in late July to address a joint session of Congress, in response to an invitation by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, a close ally of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. More

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      The Guardian view on the US and vaccine disinformation: a stupid, shocking and deadly game | Editorial

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      In July 2021, Joe Biden rightly inveighed against social media companies failing to tackle vaccine disinformation: “They’re killing people,” the US president said. Despite their pledges to take action, lies and sensationalised accounts were still spreading on platforms. Most of those dying in the US were unvaccinated. An additional source of frustration for the US was the fact that Russia and China were encouraging mistrust of western vaccines, questioning their efficacy, exaggerating side-effects and sensationalising the deaths of people who had been inoculated.How, then, would the US describe the effects of its own disinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic? A shocking new report has revealed that its military ran a secret campaign to discredit China’s Sinovac vaccine with Filipinos – when nothing else was available to the Philippines. The Reuters investigation found that this spread to audiences in central Asia and the Middle East, with fake social media accounts not only questioning Sinovac’s efficacy and safety but also claiming it used pork gelatine, to discourage Muslims from receiving it. In the case of the Philippines, the poor take-up of vaccines contributed to one of the highest death rates in the region. Undermining confidence in a specific vaccine can also contribute to broader vaccine hesitancy.The campaign, conducted via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X) and other platforms, was launched under the Trump administration despite the objections of multiple state department officials. The Biden administration ended it after the national security council was alerted to the issue in spring 2021. The drive seems to have been retaliation for Chinese claims – without any evidence – that Covid had been brought to Wuhan by a US soldier. It was also driven by military concerns that the Philippines was growing closer to Beijing.It is all the more disturbing because the US has seen what happens when it plays strategic games with vaccination. In 2011, in preparation for the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the CIA tried to confirm that it had located him by gathering the DNA of relatives through a staged hepatitis B vaccination campaign. The backlash was entirely predictable, especially in an area that had already seen claims that the west was using polio vaccines to sterilise Pakistani Muslim girls. NGOs were vilified and polio vaccinators were murdered. Polio resurged in Pakistan; Islamist militants in Nigeria killed vaccinators subsequently.The report said that the Pentagon has now rescinded parts of the 2019 order that allowed the military to sidestep the state department when running psychological operations. But while the prospect of a second Trump administration resuming such tactics is alarming, the attitude that bred them goes deeper. Reuters pointed to a strategy document from last year in which generals noted that the US could weaponise information, adding: “Disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”The US is right to challenge the Kremlin’s troll farms, Beijing’s propaganda and the irresponsibility of social media companies. But it’s hard to take the moral high ground when you’ve been pumping out lies. The repercussions in this case were particularly predictable, clear and horrifying. It was indefensible to pursue a project with such obvious potential to cause unnecessary deaths. It must not be repeated. More

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      Thousands gather at White House for pro-Palestinian protest

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      Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside the White House on Saturday to protest Joe Biden’s response to Israel’s ongoing military strikes on Gaza.Footage posted to social media showed police using pepper spray on protesters, who faced arrest at the mass demonstration.At least one demonstrator also held a canister that released green and white smoke near the southern side of the White House.The demonstrator, who was dressed as the superhero character Spiderman, shouted along with a crowd: “Biden, Biden, we can’t wait! We’ll see you at the Hague!”The Hague is the Dutch city that is home to the international criminal court that prosecutes war crimes.The protest comes after criticism aimed at the president over his handling of Israel’s continued strikes on Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas.Saturday’s demonstration featured a coalition of groups including Code Pink and the Council on American Islamic Relation, Reuters reported.Biden has claimed that Israel’s latest attacks on Rafah do not violate the US’s red line – or, limit – with respect to support for its ally.The Biden administration has continued to provide American weapons to Israel, even as the Israeli military launched an airstrike against a tent city in Rafah two weeks earlier that killed at least 45 people.Saturday’s protest also comes days after Biden told Time magazine that there is “every reason” to believe that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is prolonging the war in Gaza for his own political gain – accusations the Israeli government has criticized.On Saturday, protesters held a red banner around the perimeter of the White House to symbolize the US’s red line with respect to Israel.They also held up Palestinian flags and protest signs decrying what they describe as a genocide in Gaza.“Biden, you got blood on your hands,” read one protest sign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother sign simply read: “Free Palestine.”Demonstrators shouted slogans that condemned the president’s response, including: “Biden, Biden, you’re a sellout. Pack your bags and get the hell out!”Protesters will reportedly be surrounding the White House all day.Saturday marks eight months since Israel’s current war against Gaza began, after Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 people hostage during the 7 October attack.Since the war began, more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s military attacks.Gaza has also been pushed into a humanitarian crisis amid widespread hunger and disease within the territory. More

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      D-day: Biden calls for supporting Ukraine in struggle against ‘dark forces’

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      Joe Biden has marked the 80th anniversary of the D-day landings in Normandy with an impassioned call to western allies to continue supporting Ukraine in the face of the “unending struggle between dictatorship and freedom”.Speaking on Thursday at a ceremony at the Normandy American cemetery attended by his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, and dozens of surviving veterans from the second world war, Biden drew parallels between the Allied troops who fought to free Europe and the alliance of nations that came together to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression.The president warned that democracy was under great threat than at any time since the end of second world war. Describing Vladimir Putin as a “tyrant bent on domination”, Biden said the Russian leader and “the autocrats of the world are watching closely to see what happens in Ukraine, to see if we let this illegal aggression go unchecked.“To surrender to bullies, to bow to dictators, is simply unthinkable,” Biden said. “If we do, Ukraine will be subjugated and it will not end there, Ukraine’s neighbours will be threatened, all of Europe will be threatened.”Biden honoured the American second world war veterans who, alongside allied soldiers, stormed the beaches of Normandy to drive out the forces of Nazi Germany.“We know the dark forces that these heroes fought against 80 years ago. They never fade,” he said.This D-day milestone carried particular significance as it was likely the last major ceremony attended by significant numbers of veterans, many of whom are aged 100 or more.“On behalf of the American people and as commander-in-chief, it’s the highest honour to be able to salute you here in Normandy,” Biden told them.Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, greeted the veterans one by one and thanked them for their service. During the ceremony, Macron bestowed the Legion of Honour, France’s highest award of merit, to 11 American veterans and one from Britain in recognition of their sacrifice. The ceremony was attended by more than 150 members of Congress and dozens of members of the French parliament.On Wednesday, Biden arrived in Paris for the start of a five-day visit in France, during which he will underscore the US’s steadfast commitment to European security and contrast his foreign policy vision with his 2024 election opponent, Donald Trump.“Isolationism was not the answer 80 years ago and is not the answer today,” Biden said, in a veiled reference to Trump’s American First doctrine. “Real alliances make us stronger, a lesson that I pray we Americans never forget.”While in Normandy, Biden will hold talks with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to discuss “how we can continue and deepen our support for Ukraine”, the White House said. Biden is also expected to visit a cemetery where American soldiers who died in the first world war are buried. Trump opted not to visit the same site during a 2018 trip to France, citing bad weather, a move that drew intense criticism at the time.More than 25 heads of state are attending D-day commemorations in Normandy, including the Ukrainian president, Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Britain’s prime minister Rishi Sunak and members of the royal family, as part of Europe is in the grip of the largest war since 1945. Russia will not be represented at Thursday’s ceremonies. More

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      Why are Democrats blindly embracing Netanyahu? | Jo-Ann Mort

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      When Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, feels squeezed at home – and trapped by a Democratic White House – he turns to his most trusted consigliere, Ron Dermer, to fix things. Dermer, an American-born Israeli who functions like a Republican party operative, is the Bibi whisperer on Capitol Hill. His official title in the Netanyahu government is minister of strategic affairs. In practice, he is a Republican fixer.During a previous US administration, Dermer was the one who worked with the then Republican House speaker, John Boehner, to have his boss address a joint session of Congress, infuriating Barack Obama and his then vice-president, Joe Biden, by going behind their backs. That time it was to try to derail the Obama-initiated Iran nuclear agreement.This time, Dermer has schemed with the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, to invite Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress before the end of this summer session. Once Johnson accepted this idea, both Chuck Schumer, Senate majority leader, and Hakeem Jeffries, House minority leader, felt obliged to fall in line, even after Schumer gave a well-publicized speech on the Senate floor calling for new elections in Israel. Their agreeing to the Republican ploy was a mistake, but it can be rectified.The Republicans are convinced that Israel is a wedge issue, and that Jewish voters who traditionally vote Democratic will turn on the Biden-Harris ticket if the president – the most supportive president that Israel has had perhaps since Harry Truman – appear to be “anti-Israel”. So, they keep trying to weaponize Israel. But today, especially in the current Israeli political climate, there is a profound difference between being pro-Netanyahu and pro-Israel. That same difference is matched among American voters, both Jewish and non-Jewish.Amir Tibon wrote about Congress’s invitation recently in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, where he is a diplomatic correspondent. If the invite goes through, Tibon wrote: “It will be made possible thanks to the weakness and shallowness of certain Democratic politicians who have no real understanding of Israeli politics and society, and mistakenly think it is ‘pro-Israel’ to cooperate with Netanyahu – a man despised by at least half of his country.” (Tibon himself was rescued from Hamas attackers on 7 October not by the IDF or any action of the Netanyahu government, but by his father, a retired army officer who drove on his own to save the lives of his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren.)Support for Israel is not synonymous with support for Netanyahu; to the contrary, the majority of Jewish Americans don’t vote on blind support for Israel. Dermer, especially, knows this. For years, he has been counseling Netanyahu and others who will listen that Israeli rightwing leaders should strengthen a bloc of support in the US composed of conservative and evangelical Christian voters.Dermer knows that Jewish voters continue to be among the most loyal Democratic voters. They won’t fall in line behind far-right Israeli policies. An April 2024 Pew study found that “about seven-in-10 Jewish voters (69%) associate with the Democratic party, while 29% affiliate with the Republican party. The share of Jewish voters who align with the Democrats has increased 8 percentage points since 2020.” The same poll found that Jewish Republicans are about twice as likely as Democratic-identifying Jews to say they have a favorable view of the current Israeli government (85% v 41%).Moreover, 53% of Jewish Americans ages 50 and older said Biden was striking the right balance in his handling of the war. Younger Jews, like other younger voters, are less enthusiastic about Biden’s policies – but that isn’t because they are swinging Republican.Netanyahu is a profoundly weak leader right now. Every Israeli poll since the 7 October attack against Israel and the ensuing war between Israel and Hamas has shown the Netanyahu government losing its governing majority and Netanyahu without majority support for his own leadership. And Israelis poll all the time, usually one or more polls a week.There are growing calls inside Israel for a ceasefire and an agreement with Hamas that will stop the war and bring home the remaining hostages. No current member of the governing coalition can appear in good faith before an Israeli hostage family. Nor have most of them even reached out to the hostage families. Meanwhile, Biden, the White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and numerous other Biden officials have met multiple times with hostage family members.Netanyahu himself is so weak inside his own coalition that Biden rightly chose to try to force Netanyahu’s hand on the latest Israeli proposal from Israel to Hamas, by announcing it himself – and announcing it when the Israeli government would be caught off guard during the Jewish Sabbath. Biden knew full well that the extreme rightists in the Netanyahu government would try to knock the proposal out of the running. That’s what is happening right now.Ideally, liberal or progressive members of Congress who do support Israel can find plenty of ways to show their support without being part of a staged show produced by Netanyahu, Dermer and Johnson. Those members of Congress who truly care about Israel, at the very least, must agree that before Netanyahu speaks at Congress, he has to wholeheartedly accepted the Biden-announced proposal for an agreement with Hamas, that was, after all, already endorsed by the Netanyahu government.Better yet just say no. So far, Senator Bernie Sanders has said he’ll skip the speech. That’s not surprising. But, Jan Schakowsky, the Illinois congresswoman who has significant liberal Jewish support, has also said she won’t attend. It’s anticipated that more Jewish and non-Jewish members will find other things to do that day (the date is now in flux due to the congressional calendar). That’s good. Back in 2015, 50 Democratic house members and eight senators skipped the Netanyahu speech. It would be important to raise these numbers this time.Blind embrace of a leader who is profoundly unpopular in his own country and who has repeatedly attacked the current US government and US foreign policy is a cynical use of the congressional stage. It must not be rewarded.
      Jo-Ann Mort is co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today’s Israel? She writes frequently about Israel for US, UK and Israeli publications More

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      Putin warns that Russia could supply arms to other countries to strike west

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      Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has slammed the west’s delivery of long-range weapons to Ukraine, warning Moscow could supply similar arms to other countries to attack western targets.“If someone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone to attack our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply our weapons,” Putin told a press conference in St Petersburg.His comments came after a a US senator and a western official confirmed that Ukraine has recently used US weapons to strike inside Russia.The weapons were used under recently approved guidance from Joe Biden allowing American arms to be used to strike inside Russia for the limited purpose of defending Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.The Republican senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a member of the Senate armed services committee, confirmed the strikes with US weapons, but did not say how he was briefed.Biden’s directive allows for US-supplied weapons to be used to strike Russian forces that are attacking or preparing to attack. It does not change US policy that directs Ukraine not to use American-provided army tactical missile systems (Atacms) or long-range missiles and other munitions to strike offensively inside Russia, US officials have said.Berlin also recently authorized Ukraine to hit some targets on Russian soil with German-supplied long-range weapons, a move Putin said would be a “dangerous step” that would ruin relations between Berlin and Moscow.Ukrainian officials had stepped up calls on the US and other allies to allow Kyiv’s forces to defend themselves against attacks originating from Russian territory. Kharkiv sits just 20km (12 miles) from the Russian border and has come under intensified Russian attack.According to a 3 June report from the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian forces struck a Russian S-300/400 air defense battery in the Belgorod region, probably with a high mobility artillery rocket system, or Himars, on 1 or 2 June. The air defense system was located roughly 60km (40 miles) from the current frontline in the northern Kharkiv region and more than 80km from the city of Kharkiv, which is within the range of Himars, the institute reported.Putin on Wednesday also said that the US administration was taking “energetic steps” to try to secure the release of a detained Wall Street Journal reporter but said such questions could only be resolved on the basis of reciprocity.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPutin added talks with US intelligence agencies on the subject were ongoing, but needed to be conducted in “silence”.Gershkovich, a 32-year-old reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has been held in the Lefortovo prison on the outskirts of Moscow since March last year on allegations by the Russian authorities of espionage while on a reporting trip in the city of Ekaterinburg. The state department has declared him wrongfully detained, and Gershkovich denies spying, and Joe Biden said his administration is working “every day” to get him released. More