Western allies vowed on Tuesday to boost NATO's defences and to back Ukraine to the end as Moscow demanded Kyiv's surrender.<\/p>\n
As NATO leaders gathered in Madrid for a summit, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said Finland and Sweden would be formally invited to join NATO after Turkey lifted its block on their bids.<\/p>\n
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had stubbornly refused to approve their applications -- lodged in response to Russia's war on Ukraine -- despite calls from his NATO allies to clear their path to membership.<\/p>\n
But he abandoned his opposition following crunch talks on Tuesday with the leaders of the two Nordic countries in Madrid.<\/p>\n
Erdogan's office said late on Tuesday it had agreed to back their applications, saying Ankara had \"got what it wanted\".<\/p>\n
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hailed the agreement between Finland, Sweden and Turkey, saying their membership would make the defence alliance \"stronger and safer\".<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a senior US official said their membership would be a \"powerful shot in the arm\" for NATO unity.<\/p>\n
NATO's expansion came as Russian missiles continued to pound Ukrainian cities.<\/p>\n
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters arriving with President Joe Biden that Washington will announce \"historic\" new long-term military deployments in Europe.<\/p>\n
The reinforcements will join NATO's eastern flank, Russia's nervous neighbours like the Baltic states, and reflect a long-term change \"in the strategic reality\" elsewhere in Europe.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the summit, Stoltenberg said the allies would boost their high-readiness forces from 40,000 to 300,000.<\/p>\n
- New sanctions -<\/p>\n
Before travelling to Madrid, Biden and other leaders of the G7 powers -- the world's richest democracies -- had held a summit in the German Alps.<\/p>\n
Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz boasted afterwards that his country, a laggard in defence spending, would build \"the largest conventional army within the NATO framework in Europe\".<\/p>\n
Russia's invasion, he said, had convinced Berlin \"that we should spend more... an average of around 70 to 80 billion euros a year on defence over the next few years\".<\/p>\n
NATO member Bulgaria announced it would expel 70 staff from Russia's diplomatic mission accused of working against its interests.<\/p>\n
At the G7 summit, the leaders agreed to impose new sanctions targeting Moscow's defence industry, raising tariffs and banning gold imports from the country.<\/p>\n
The US Treasury said the measures \"strike at the heart of Russia's ability to develop and deploy weapons and technology used for Vladimir Putin's brutal war of aggression against Ukraine,\"<\/p>\n
The new set of sanctions target Rostec, Russia's largest defence conglomerate, as well as military units and officers implicated in human rights abuses in Ukraine, the Treasury said.<\/p>\n
Putin's Kremlin was not fazed by the sanctions, warning that Ukraine's forces' only option was to lay down their arms.<\/p>\n
\"The Ukrainian side can stop everything before the end of today,\" Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.<\/p>\n
\"An order for the nationalist units to lay down their arms is necessary,\" he said, adding Kyiv had to fulfil a list of Moscow's demands.<\/p>\n
- 'Everything burned' -<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for the United Nations to visit the site of a missile strike on a shopping mall in the central city of Kremenchuk, as he addressed the UN Security Council on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\"I suggest the United Nations send either a special representative, or the secretary-general of the United Nations, or a plenipotentiary commission to the site of this terrorist act... so the UN could independently find out information and see that this indeed was a Russian missile strike,\" Zelensky said of the attack on Monday that killed at least 18 people.<\/p>\n
\"Everything burned, really everything, like a spark to a touchpaper. I heard people screaming. It was horror,\" witness Polina Puchintseva told AFP.<\/p>\n
All that was left of the mall was charred debris, chunks of blackened walls and lettering from a smashed store front.<\/p>\n
Russia claims its missile salvo was aimed at an arms depot -- but none of the civilians who talked to AFP knew of any weapons store in the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n
And, outside Russia, the latest carnage sparked only Ukrainian fury and western solidarity.<\/p>\n
\"Indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime,\" the G7 leaders said in a statement, condemning the \"abominable attack\".<\/p>\n
Zelensky declared on his social media channels: \"Only total insane terrorists, who should have no place on Earth, can strike missiles at civilian objects.<\/p>\n
\"Russia must be recognised as a state sponsor of terrorism. The world can and therefore must stop Russian terror,\" he added.<\/p>\n
The G7 leaders did not go so far as to brand Putin a terrorist -- but they vowed that Russia, already under tough sanctions, would face more economic pain.<\/p>\n
\"The G7 stands united in its support for Ukraine,\" Scholz told reporters.<\/p>\n
\"We will continue to keep up and drive up the economic and political costs of this war for President Putin and his regime.\"<\/p>\n
- Oil price cap? -<\/p>\n
The G7 had announced several new measures to put the squeeze on Putin, including a plan to work towards a price cap on Russian oil.<\/p>\n
The group also agreed to impose an import ban on Russian gold. At the same time, the G7 powers heaped financial support on Ukraine, with aid now reaching $29.5 billion.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, with fierce artillery duels continuing in the eastern Donbas region, Ukrainian officials said the central city of Dnipro and several other sites had been hit by more Russian missiles.<\/p>\n
Pro-Moscow forces detained Igor Kolykhayev, the elected mayor of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.<\/p>\n
Russian media said the \"nationalist\" was an opponent of Moscow's supposed efforts to \"de-Nazify\" Ukraine, but Kolykhayev's aides said he had been \"kidnapped\" by the city's illegitimate occupiers.<\/p>\n
The UN said 6.2 million people are now estimated to have been displaced within Ukraine, in addition to 5.26 million who have fled abroad.<\/p>\n
\"Ukraine now faces a brutality which we haven't seen in Europe since the Second World War,\" Stoltenberg said as leaders began to gather in Madrid.<\/p>\n
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Western allies vowed on Tuesday to boost NATO's defences and to back Ukraine to the end as Moscow demanded Kyiv's surrender. As NATO leaders gathered in Madrid for a summit, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said Finland and Sweden would be formally invited to join NATO after Turkey lifted its block on their bids. Turkish President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553,2576],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-102823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed","category-fil-d-actualite"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n