Biden's mission in Europe: strengthening alliance with Russia

Washington (AP) — President Joe Biden maintains a global alliance to punish Russia for Russia's invasion of Ukraine I'm trying. A five-day trip to Europe as his four-month-old war is unabated and the aftermath of the world's food and energy supply is deepening.

Biden first attended a meeting of a group of seven major economic powers in the Bavarian Alps, Germany, and then Madrid for a summit meeting with leaders of 30 NATO countries. To visit. This visit comes when a global coalition to strengthen Ukraine and punish Russia's aggression shows signs of fraying amid rising food and energy prices caused by the conflict.

The Ukrainian War has entered a more frictional phase since Biden's last visit to Europe in March, just weeks after Russia began its assault. increase. At that time, Ukraine was under regular bombardment, so he met with his allies in Brussels to reassure Poland's Eastern European partners that they would not face the invasion of Moscow.

With Russia's subsequent withdrawal from western Ukraine and reorganization in the east, the conflict shifts to one of the artillery and bloody urban warfare in the country's industrial center, the Donbus region. Did.

US officials have seen widespread consensus on maintaining pressure on Russia and short-term support for Ukraine, but Biden's trip is a world of conflict and winter. Since we see it as an opportunity to coordinate both strategies of the impact.

Allies differ depending on whether their goal is simply to restore peace or to force Russia to pay a deeper price to prevent repeated conflicts. John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said: "But as far as the alliance is concerned, it has never been more powerful and feasible than it is today."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will work on both summits in a video. The United States and its allies have sent billions of dollars of military aid to his country and imposed stricter sanctions on Russia for aggression.

Kirby said allies would make a new "commitment" during the summit, further separating Russia from the world economy. Its purpose is to make it more difficult for Moscow to master the techniques for rebuilding depleted weapons in Ukraine and crack down on sanctions evasion by Russia and its oligarchs.

The G7 summit has traditionally focused on global financial issues, but little concrete action is expected amid rising inflation in the United States and Europe. not.

"There are different inflationary factors in these different economies, and different things can be used to address them," said Joshlipsky, director of the Atlantic Council's Geoeconomics Center. increase. He foresaw "the lack of the ability to do anything tuned for inflation other than actually talking about the problem."

Biden has blamed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, especially many of the rising prices in the energy markets. This is because the sanctions of the United States and its allies limit Moscow's oil and gas supply capacity. Maintaining Western determination will be even more difficult, as US and European officials say the war will be prolonged and the bills to pay will cause political headaches for domestic leaders.

Key points of debate are finding ways to move from Russian energy to other sources without retreating long-standing goals for combating climate change. Probably.

Russia was once a member of the G8 at the time. He was expelled from the group in 2014 after invading the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine. This is a move that heralded the current crisis.

As the United Nations and others warn that tens of millions of people are being hungry, Western officials heading to the summit are the top priority for Ukraine's huge grain harvest on the global market. Is to find a way to put it out. Of a tight supply. The most influential changes require an agreement to stop targeting food and food infrastructure from Russia and to establish a sea corridor to allow grain exports from Ukraine. Probably.

In Madrid, Biden welcomes Finland and Sweden into the alliance after two historically neutral democracies seek protection for mutual defense due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine NATO Helps to facilitate the efforts of. Association.

It is not yet known whether Biden will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has shown plans to prevent the two countries from joining NATO unless they receive a concession. Adding new members requires unanimous support from existing NATO members.

US officials maintain optimism that the two countries will be welcomed by the alliance, but have low expectations for a breakthrough in Madrid.

Biden often says that there is a generational conflict between democracy and dictatorship, which will be a global agenda for decades to come. He aims to take advantage of this trip to show that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has "consolidated" democracy against threats from both Moscow and Beijing dictatorships.

Biden has also secured an important step by NATO to recognize China as a new challenge to the alliance. China's formal reference in NATO's new "strategic concept", the first update of its guiding principles since 2010, expands the focus of the alliance to China, even in the face of increasingly warlike Russia. We are making efforts under multiple presidents for.

In a symbolic step, NATO invited Pacific leaders from Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia to the summit.

"The President's leadership in supporting Ukraine instead of diverting us from the Indo-Pacific and China actually revitalizes regional leaders and encourages our efforts in Europe and Asia. We tied it up effectively, "Kirby told reporters. "And I think the Asian countries participating in the NATO Summit are talking a lot about that fact."

Biden was also formerly known as the "Build Back Better World", 2021 We plan to resume the idea of ​​a global infrastructure investment program introduced in the G7 of the year aimed at countering China's influence in developing countries. Summit.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused NATO of "starting a new Cold War" and accused the alliance of "a line of ideology that could cause conflict." I will pull it. "

—

Super building reported by Telfs, Austria.