Accordo di difesa Kyiv-Varsavia; Tokyo-Manila, parte cooperazione militare🗞️Rassegna del 09/07/2024

Israele

(AP) Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City

• Israeli forces advanced deeper into the Gaza Strip’s largest city in pursuit of militants who had regrouped there, sending thousands of Palestinians fleeing on Monday from an area ravaged in the early weeks of the nine-month-long war.
• Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza in the first weeks of the war and has prevented most people from returning. But hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain, living in shelters or the shells of homes. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are packed into sweltering tent camps.

Ucraina

(Guardian) Kyiv children’s hospital hit as Russian missile attack kills at least 29 in Ukraine

• An unknown number of people have been trapped under rubble after Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital was hit during a daylight Russian missile barrage that the authorities said had killed at least 29 people across the country.
• Ihor Klymenko, the interior minister, said five people had been confirmed dead in the Kyiv hospital attack and at least four more had been injured. The strike largely destroyed the hospital’s toxicology ward. Hundreds of rescue workers and volunteers joined the effort to clear the debris and search for survivors.
• Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the attack on the capital was one of the heaviest since Russia’s invasion began more than two years ago. Thanks to western-supplied defences, the city had experienced a relatively peaceful period before Monday’s strike.
• Russia, which has targeted civilian infrastructure throughout the war, denied responsibility for deaths on Monday. In a statement, the defence ministry attributed the incident, without directly referencing the hospital blast, to Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles.

(Politico+Bloomberg+Kyiv Indipendent) Ukraine strikes security deal with Poland
 

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed bilateral security agreement with Poland in Warsaw on Monday — aimed at strengthening ties with one of the country’s closest wartime allies.
• Ukraine promised to reform, to share intelligence and lessons it has learned on the battlefield with Warsaw, and to contribute to modernising the Polish military, the Ukrainian president’s office said in a statement.
• The Polish agreement has several unique points compared to the other agreements Ukraine has signed: Poland agreed to encourage Ukrainian citizens to return to Ukraine to serve in the Ukrainian military at the request of Kyiv. Well over 1 million Ukrainian refugees live in Poland.
• Zelenskyy and Tusk also agreed to discuss the possibility of shooting down Russian missiles and drones fired in the direction of Poland. Several such weapons have crossed over Poland’s airspace, but Warsaw has not intercepted them.
• Warsaw will also consider delivering a squadron of MiG-29 fighters as long as that does not undermine its own security, the agreement says. Poland has already donated 10 of its Soviet-era jets to Ukraine

Europa

Francia:

(BBC) Macron asks French PM to stay on as political deadlock continues

• Mr Attal, who led the president's Ensemble alliance's election campaign, handed his resignation to Mr Macron on Monday, only for the president to refuse. Although Ensemble lost many of its seats in Sunday's parliament election, it came second, behind a left-wing alliance, The New Popular Front, but ahead of the far right which had been expected to win.
• The unexpected result leaves French politics in deadlock, with no party able to form a government by itself. Mr Attal had announced he would resign on Sunday night, but left open the possibility of remaining in the job as long as duty required him to do so.
• The New Popular Front, a left-wing alliance cobbled together after Mr Macron called the elections, argues that as the leading group in the next National Assembly it has earned the right to choose a prime minister, but there is no obvious candidate who would satisfy the radical France Unbowed (LFI) party as well as the more moderate Socialists, Greens and Communists.

Bielorussia:

(CNN) China and Belarus announced they were holding joint military training exercises just miles from the border of Poland

• Belarus’ Ministry of Defense said troops from China’s People’s Liberation Army arrived in Belarus over the weekend. China’s Ministry of Defense said on Sunday that the drills will include “hostage rescue operations and counter-terrorism missions.” The exercises are taking place near the Belarus city of Brest on the Belarus-Poland border which is around 130 miles from the Polish capital of Warsaw and some 40 miles from Minsk’s border with Ukraine.
• NATO and the EU have long accused Belarus of weaponizing the border by pushing asylum-seekers from third countries to its borders and the joint exercises will no doubt be seen by some as a further provocation – especially as they come on the eve of NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington.
• The Chinese troops arrived in Belarus just days after that country joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to combat terrorism and promote border security, the SCO has grown in recent years as Beijing and Moscow drive a transformation of the bloc from a regional security club with a focus on Central Asia to a geopolitical counterweight to Western institutions led by the United States and its allies.

Ungheria:

(POLITICO) After causing a diplomatic storm with his surprise visit to Moscow, Hungary’s PM has now gone to Beijing to meet President Xi Jinping

• “Peace mission 3.0,” the Hungarian leader tweeted after landing in China. China is a “key power in creating the conditions for #peace in the #RussiaUkraineWar,” Orbán said on X.
• The United States, however, has accused Beijing of helping the Kremlin meet its war goals in Ukraine by continuing to sell supplies such as drone technology and gunpowder ingredients to Moscow.
• The previous meeting with Putin caused a diplomatic storm within the EU, drawing sharp criticism from numerous leaders and an official statement from the EU diplomatic service underlining that Orbán was not representing the EU, contrary to the impression the PM gave in a statement made in Russia. 
• China is the largest foreign investor in Hungary, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping made a state visit to Hungary earlier this year.

Politica internazionale

Nord America

Usa:

(Guardian) Former Republican figures call Trump’s move to distance himself from Project 2025 ‘preposterous’

• The Project 2025 plan from the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank includes calls for replacing civil servants with Trump loyalists, eliminating the education department, putting the justice department under the president’s thumb and banning the abortion pill.
• But although it was written by former members of Trump’s first administration, and he regularly echoes its policies in his speeches, last week Trump tried to disown the initiative. the presumptive Republican nominee claimed to “know nothing about Project 2025” and have “no idea who is behind it”. He added: “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal”.
• The Democrats, currently in the throes of a fierce internal debate over whether to retain Joe Biden as their presidential candidate, have settled on trying to make Project 2025 a household phrase in a drive to illustrate what a second Trump presidency would mean.

Usa:

(CNN) Boeing agrees to plead guilty to defrauding the FAA but escapes punishment sought by victims’ families

• Boeing will pay up to $487 million in fines — a fraction of the $24.8 billion that families of crash victims wanted the aircraft maker to pay. According to the charges, the company defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration during the process of certifying the 737 Max to carry its first passengers. The plane started service in 2017, but two fatal crashes led to a 20-month grounding of the jets.
• Family members of victims from the two fatal plane crashes blasted the plea agreement. The Justice Department argues that the penalties Boeing agreed to were the most serious available. It argued it won other improvements as well, including the oversight of a monitor and the demand that Boeing spend more on safety and compliance of rules when building aircraft. 
• The guilty plea is a severe blow to the reputation of Boeing, a company once known for the quality and safety of its commercial planes. Beyond the fatal crashes of the 737 Max jets, the company has faced a series of questions about the safety and quality of its planes.

Asia e Pacifico

India:

(NYT) As Modi Meets Putin in Moscow, India Seeks to Chart Its Own Course

• The South Asian nation became a major buyer of cheap Russian oil. India is building massive nuclear energy power plants with technical assistance from Russia. Russia is also India’s biggest supplier of arms, making the relationship key for India, which has long had to defend its borders against China.
• Indian officials have said that the country’s trade imbalance with Russia will be a priority for Mr. Modi. India exports only $4 billion worth of goods to Russia and imports $65 billion, much of it because of its purchases of enormous quantities of oil. India wants to increase its exports to Russia across the board, including agriculture, pharmaceuticals and services.
• For Mr. Modi, the meeting is an opportunity to signal India’s determination to carve its own foreign policy path. 
• The United States and India have also said that they would expand cooperation on advanced weaponry, supercomputing and other high-tech fields. But American officials are concerned about providing equipment and sensitive technology to India if there is a risk that Russia’s military might gain access to it.

Giappone-Filippine:

(AP) Japan and the Philippines sign a defense pact in the face of shared alarm over China

• Japan and the Philippines signed a key defence pact Monday allowing the deployment of Japanese forces for joint drills in the Southeast Asian nation that came under brutal Japanese occupation in World War II but is now building an alliance with Tokyo as both face an increasingly assertive China.
• The Reciprocal Access Agreement, which similarly allows Filipino forces to enter Japan for joint combat training, would take effect after ratification by the countries’ legislatures
• The Japanese and Philippine officials “expressed serious concern over the dangerous and escalatory actions by China” in Second Thomas Shoal: a busy sea passage and a key global trade route which has been claimed virtually in its entirety by China but also contested in part by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.