Deadly strike on Israel's Beer-Sheva moments before ceasefire
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24/06/2025
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Middle East
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Europe
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Tehran denies Israel's claims of ceasefire violation
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Trump announces Israel-Iran ceasefire, but fragile truce hangs in balance
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World leaders gather for historic NATO summit with plans for massive spending boost
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New York votes in mayoral primary as Cuomo seeks comeback
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Trump heads to NATO summit with alliance's unity on the line
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The strategic importance of US base in Qatar targeted by Iran
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After 12 days of war with Iran, what gains for Israel?
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France 24
an hour ago
- France 24
The 12-day war: will Israel-Iran conflict reshape the region?
42:29 Donald Trump first going all in with B2 bomber raids against Iran's nuclear installations and then surprising allies and adversaries alike with a late Monday ceasefire announcement. All this for a victory lap at the NATO summit opening in the Netherlands? Whether it's strategy or impulse that's driving the US president, we'll attempt to make sense of an operation resisted for decades by all of his predecessors including himself in his first term. Why did Israel finally get its wish of a US-backed direct confrontation with Iran? Will it reshape a region where it's as much Israel as the United States that's imposed its will on Tehran's proxies and allies in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza? Who owns this one? And what does this seeming once in a generation shift in the balance of power mean for the Middle East and for the planet? Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.
Euronews
2 hours ago
- Euronews
NATO shifts focus as US retreats from leading role on Ukraine
All 32 NATO allies are meeting in The Hague for the annual leaders summit where NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters that Russia remains "the most significant and direct threat facing the alliance." But in contrast to last year, the focus on Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine is notably diminished from formal discussions. Instead, the summit is pursuing a narrower ambition of pushing for allies to commit to spending 5% of GDP on defence. "We know that the position of the United States has changed and therefore also here at the NATO Summit", Dutch Defence minister Ruben Brekelmans told Euronews. "The main topic, of course, is the 5% is a new, this historic step for our defence. But Ukraine remains equally important to us", he said. Ukrainian President Zelensky is attending the dinner the Netherlands' King Willem-Alexander alongside leaders, and is also expected to meet with President Trump on the side-lines of the summit. However, this year he won't be present at the North Atlantic Council of heads of state and government. In contrast, at last year's NATO summit under the Biden administration Ukraine was given "irreversible" assurances of a path to membership. Allies assured Kyiv that it was on an "indestructible bridge" to join the alliance. "Trump signalled he wanted the indestructible bridge off the table from the start," Jason Israel, former member of the Biden administration's National Security Council and senior director for defence, told Euronews. "If I was Ukraine, of course I'd be nervous about how this is playing out at the moment," he said. There's a growing acceptance that the US - although still providing Ukraine with vital intelligence - will no longer provide Ukraine with lethal weapons similar to that donated by the Biden administration. "The real issue, is that the US does not see Ukrainian security as essential to European security, and our European allies do so," said Kurt Volker, former US representative to Ukraine in the last Trump administration. Europe "feels that if Putin is allowed to prevail in Ukraine, or if Ukraine does not survive as a sovereign, independent state, they are at risk, and that is a big security threat for Europe and NATO," he said ahead of the summit at an event organised by the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Europe sees "the need to support Ukraine as integral to our security through NATO, the US simply doesn't see it that way," said Volker. At the same time, NATO officials warn Russia is continuing to make gains around Sumy Oblast and Eastern Ukraine, although their assessment doesn't predict Ukraine will be encircled. Instead a high attrition rate and a slow, protracted conflict is expected to continue. This is despite the remarkably high casualty rate – NATO says Russia's troop losses have surpassed one million since the start of the full scale invasion. Russia is currently "taking" 1,100 daily casualties, "down from peak in January of 1,500," they said.
Euronews
2 hours ago
- Euronews
NATO's ‘tech race': This is how it aims to harness new defence tech
As defence technologies and the geopolitical climate rapidly evolve, NATO has formally launched a plan to speed the adoption of new tech products. World leaders gathered at the NATO summit at the Hague on Tuesday, with the organisation's new secretary general Mark Rutte and many allies ready to sign on to raising core defence spending to 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035. One of the main points to be decided is the Rapid Adoption Action plan. As its name suggests, it aims to speed up how NATO and its allies can integrate technologies from companies so it can use the latest tech products within a maximum of 24 months. 'We are in what we call a tech race,' Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe, NATO assistant secretary general for innovation, hybrid, and cyber, said in a press briefing which Euronews Next attended. He said that in Russia's war against Ukraine, Russia has reduced the product development cycle to as short as two to 12 weeks. Meanwhile, he said China has 'a serious integration of their defence industry and their defence forces'. 'We have a defence industry that has been struggling to keep up pace. We've seen it following the war in Ukraine as we've been emptying our stocks. Production lines have had difficulties to keeping up the pace,' Ellermann-Kingombe said. Lessons from Ukraine Ellermann-Kingombe also said that the first starting point for NATO will be looking at what tech has to offer. He said the speed of artificial intelligence (AI) advancements and the rapid development of drones during the war in Ukraine show that 'tech today is ready and able to actually fill some of the gaps'. AI, for example, has helped NATO by enabling precision strikes and reducing decision time by 90 per cent. But the organisation said it needs to adapt to working with start-ups and tech companies. 'The new ecosystems work in a different way than we're used to,' said Ellermann-Kingombe, referring to procurement requirements. 'So if we want to exploit what that ecosystem has to offer, we also need to adapt to the way that they work,' he added. The Rapid Adoption Action plan aims to bridge this divide by sharing market research on a voluntary basis among allies and increasing testing to lower risks from new tech, among other measures. But access to governments or defence ministries is lucrative, and it is difficult for start-ups to get a foot in the door, Euronews Next previously reported. A tech company working with NATO said the organisation's 'stamp of approval' helped it work with governments. NATO said in the press conference that it aims to provide a so-called badge of approval to companies that show their solutions to the military, either through a NATO programme or another way. The badge would work as a form of recognition from NATIO that the companies could then use. NATO has test centres in 29 allied nations and innovators from 20 countries, said John Ridge, chief adoption officer at the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF). The NIF Fund is a deep tech venture capital fund that is supported by 24 of NATO's 32 nations. It focuses on deep tech dual-use investments that support defence, security and resilience. It works with NATO's Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA), a NATO body that aims to find and accelerate dual-use innovation capacity. However, NIF does not have to invest in technologies identified by DIANA. What tech is NATO interested in? DIANA innovators are now working on a range of new tech, including power generation on the high seas and advanced passive exoskeletons that give soldiers more strength on the battlefield and people with disabilities more mobility at home, Ridge said at the press conference attended by Euronews Next. Some of the technologies NATO has invested in include Portuguese drone company Tekever and Germany's robotics company ARX Robotics GmbH, both of which are used in Ukraine. NATO has looked at more than 2,000 start-ups and has invested in 12, said Ridge. The organisation is looking into autonomy and keeping soldiers out of risk as it considers the future of defence. 'It seems to me as if that's a sort of a direction which all militaries are going to go. The way you can remove human beings from harm's way, why wouldn't you? So that's one of the trends that we're all ready to see, and I suspect we'll double down onto that,' said Ridge. Ridge also wants to make industrial bases more resilient so they can operate in war time, for example, by investing in semiconductor companies to make them more scalable. 'One of the lessons we should be drawing out of Ukraine is how you're able to mobilise your industry base at time of [war] to really ramp up production,' Ridge said. 'That's not a new lesson. That's a World War One lesson. That's a World War II lesson'.
