WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that NATO is not obsolete, as he had declared on the campaign trail last year, but said NATO members still need to pay their fair share for the European security umbrella.
At a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump thanked NATO members for their support of his decision last Thursday to launch 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack on civilians and said it was time to end Syria’s civil war.
“I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete,” Trump said, adding that the Transatlantic alliance was adapting to the broader mission against Islamic militants that he had urged.
Stoltenberg said he had an excellent and productive meeting in the Oval Office with Trump.
Trump says NATO not obsolete, reversing campaign stance
Trump says NATO not obsolete, reversing campaign stance
Russian drone attack forces power cuts in Ukraine’s Kryvyi Rih, military says
- Kyiv says the campaign has forced rolling outages and emergency cuts to cities across the country, as repair crews work under fire and Ukraine relies on air defenses and electricity imports to stabilize the grid
KYIV: Russian drones struck infrastructure in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih on Wednesday, forcing emergency power blackouts for more than 45,000 customers and disrupting heat supplies, military administration head Oleksandr Vilkul said.
“Please fill up on water and charge your devices, if you have the chance. It’s going to be difficult,” Vilkul said on the Telegram messaging app.
Water utility pumping stations switched to generators and water remained in the system, but there could be pressure problems.
The full scale of the attack was not immediately known. There was no comment from Russia about the strike.
Russia has repeatedly struck Ukraine’s power plants, substations and transmission lines with missiles and drones, seeking to knock out electricity and heating and hinder industry during the nearly four-year war.
Kyiv says the campaign has forced rolling outages and emergency cuts to cities across the country, as repair crews work under fire and Ukraine relies on air defenses and electricity imports to stabilize the grid.
Kryvyi Rih, a steel-and-mining hub in the Dnipropetrovsk region and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown, has been hit repeatedly, with strikes killing civilians and damaging homes and industry.
The city sits close enough to southern front lines to be within strike range, while its factories, logistics links and workforce make it economically important and a key rear-area center supporting Ukraine’s war effort.
