WORLD BRIEFING: July 12, 2024

Russia is believed to be behind a foiled plot to assassinate the head of Europe’s largest arms manufacturer over his company’s support for Ukraine, according to NATO diplomats. Two senior alliance diplomats said the alleged conspiracy against Armin Papperger, chief executive of Düsseldorf-based Rheinmetall, was being treated as part of Russia’s wider sabotage and hybrid attack campaign against European NATO states. The plot was first reported by CNN. A person familiar with Papperger’s security said that the measures around the defense boss were “at the highest level” — similar to the protection of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. A spokesperson for Scholz declined to comment, but Papperger told the Financial Times that Berlin had established a “great level of security around my person.” Although Papperger said he could not confirm details of the plot, he said he believed the outline contained the original CNN report, which said that US intelligence uncovered the effort and alerted German authorities, who were then able to foil the plot. “I think CNN is not just looking up at the sky,” he said when asked about the validity of the US broadcaster’s story. – FT

Despite billions of dollars in additional weapons and security assistance that NATO announced this week, allied officials said Ukraine would not be ready to launch a dramatic counteroffensive or retake large swaths of territory from Russia until next year. Donations of missiles, combat vehicles, ammunition and air defenses from the United States and European countries will take weeks, if not months, to reach the front lines. Some of the newly committed weapons have not yet been bought or built. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said long-anticipated F-16s fighter jets would be delivered to Ukraine this summer. But even then, they might be used mostly defensively, as allies debated on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington whether the warplanes could fly into Russian airspace to attack. Separately, a senior US defense official said the Ukrainians would remain on the defensive for the next six months, but in a constant churn on the battlefield that would ultimately fail to gain significant ground. Both officials spoke on the condition that they not be identified in keeping with alliance protocols. Last spring, Mr. Zelensky had asked for seven sophisticated Patriot air defense systems to defend Ukraine’s cities but came up far short at the summit. Instead, Ukraine will receive three additional Patriot batteries: two from Germany and Romania that were previously announced, and one from the United States. – NYT

NATO leadership affirmed an “irreversible path” towards Ukraine’s membership in the alliance – but still without a clear timetable. My analysis: That was greeted with a thump here in Ukraine based on my own conversations with a wide variety of people. As I told BBC News Television: “Finally, finally the Ukrainians can feel their footing on a bridge to NATO membership. Unfortunately, due to the vague wording (on a timetable) they can’t yet see the light at the end of that bridge.” I added that, while tens of billions of euros in new aid and more air defense systems were welcomed, on the back of that horrific Russian missile strike on Kyiv on Monday, one would’ve expected it to spark NATO leaders to take more aggressive action to deter Russian and to strengthen Ukraine’s hand.

US President Joe Biden, who is under intense scrutiny amid questions over his age, says he is in good health and the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in a defiant hour-long news conference. The president stood firm in the rare solo appearance before reporters, who asked repeated questions about the crisis engulfing his candidacy – “I've gotta finish the job,” he said. But the conference was also marred by occasional verbal mistakes, including mistakenly referring to his Vice-President Kamala Harris as "Vice-President Trump.” And earlier in the evening, the president introduced Ukraine's leader as Vladimir Putin at a NATO event, triggering gasps in the room, before quickly correcting himself. More members of his own Democratic Party have called for him to stand aside, after a stumbling debate performance last month fueled concerns over his age – BBC

Several of President Joe Biden’s closest allies, including three people who are directly involved in efforts to re-elect him, told NBC News they now see his chances of winning as zero — and the likelihood of him taking down fellow Democratic candidates growing. “He needs to drop out,” one Biden campaign official said. “He will never recover from this.” For two weeks, Biden has struggled to stabilize his campaign following a late-June debate debacle. His ongoing clean-up effort, which is scheduled to include top aides meeting privately with Democratic senators and a presidential news conference Thursday, has done little to reassure lawmakers and party officials. Instead, the reverse is happening. The set of Democrats who think he should reconsider his decision to stay in the race has grown to include aides, operatives and officials tasked with guiding his campaign to victory. Those who spoke to NBC News said the sentiment that he should exit and leave the Democratic nomination to someone else — most likely Vice President Kamala Harris — is widespread even within the ranks of the campaign and the outside Democratic entities supporting it. “No one involved in the effort thinks he has a path,” said a second person working to elect him. A third person close to the re-election campaign said the present situation — the questions swirling around Biden’s cognitive abilities, the dearth of fundraising and more polls showing Biden dropping in support and other candidates faring better — is unsustainable. This person also said they didn’t see how the campaign could win. – NBC News

The German government said on Thursday that it had reached an agreement with major telecom companies to have them stop using critical Huawei and ZTE components in their 5G mobile infrastructure in five years, the latest step by a European country to ban Chinese companies from critical telecommunications infrastructure. “We are protecting the central nervous system of the German economy — and we are protecting the communication of citizens, companies and the state,” Nancy Faeser, the interior minister, said in a news conference in Berlin on Thursday. – NYT

Ukraine has seized an international freighter it says was transporting stolen Ukrainian grain from Russian-occupied Crimea. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said on Thursday that its forces stopped the vessel in the Black Sea near Ukraine’s Odesa region, seizing it and apprehending its captain. The Cameroon-flagged vessel, Usko Mfu, had been working for Russia to export grain to the Middle East, the SBU said. It had repeatedly docked at the Crimean sea port of Sevastopol since last year to pick up several tonnes of the “looted” products, the statement said. Sevastopol is an important military hub for Russia on the Black Sea. To conceal its movements, the SBU said, the vessel regularly shut off its GPS tracker and logged false travel information – Al Jazeera

More than 60 media and civil society organizations have signed an open letter urging Israel to give journalists independent access to Gaza. The organizations – which include the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Washington Post – highlight that no independent media access to Gaza has been permitted since the start of the war, increasing the pressure on domestic journalists, and creating a space for mis- and disinformation to flourish. “More than 100 journalists have been killed since the start of the war and those who remain are working in conditions of extreme deprivation. The result is that information from Gaza is becoming harder and harder to obtain and that the reporting which does get through is subject to repeated questions over its veracity,” the organizations say in the letter, which was coordinated by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).