NATO Head Sees ‘Strong Message’ on Ukraine’s Membership Bid at Summit 

A NATO flag stands on the day of a NATO leaders summit in Vilnius, Lithuania July 11, 2023. (Reuters)
A NATO flag stands on the day of a NATO leaders summit in Vilnius, Lithuania July 11, 2023. (Reuters)
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NATO Head Sees ‘Strong Message’ on Ukraine’s Membership Bid at Summit 

A NATO flag stands on the day of a NATO leaders summit in Vilnius, Lithuania July 11, 2023. (Reuters)
A NATO flag stands on the day of a NATO leaders summit in Vilnius, Lithuania July 11, 2023. (Reuters)

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraine would get a "positive and strong message" on its path to membership on Tuesday, as leaders of the Western military alliance meet to discuss the fallout from Russia's invasion that brought war to their doorstep.

Divisions among NATO's 31 members mean there will not be a straightforward invitation for Ukraine to join, something its Soviet-era overlord Moscow says would threaten its national security.

But Stoltenberg said Kyiv would get more military aid and an easing of formal conditions to join, as well as a new format of cooperation with the alliance, the so-called NATO-Ukraine Council.

"I am confident it will be a positive and strong message on Ukraine and the path forward for membership," Stoltenberg said before hosting a summit in the Lithuanian capital.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan also said the gathering would send a "positive signal" about Kyiv's membership bid. Diplomats were upbeat as negotiators were drawing close on the final agreement.

US President Joe Biden, speaking alongside Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, whose country in extremely wary of consequences of Russia's war in Ukraine for eastern Europe, reaffirmed Washington's commitment to the alliance.

"Our pledge to be with you has not wavered," he said.

The summit is also set to approve NATO's first comprehensive plans since the end of the Cold War to defend against any attack from Russia.

Moscow has criticized the two-day summit. Russia's state RIA news agency quoted a Vienna-based senior Russian diplomat as warning that Europe would be the first to face "catastrophic consequences" should the war in Ukraine escalate.

While NATO members agree Kyiv cannot join during the war, they have disagreed over how quickly it could happen afterwards and under what conditions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, due to attend the Vilnius gathering, has been pressing NATO for a clear path for Ukraine to join once the war is over. On Tuesday, he said Ukrainian troops were keeping Russian aggression from Europe.

"The eastern border of Ukraine, the border of our state and the positions of our warriors are the line that the Russian dictatorship... will never cross again," he said on Twitter.

Ukraine waits, Sweden on its way in

NATO members in Eastern Europe have backed Kyiv's stance, arguing that bringing Ukraine under NATO's collective security umbrella is the best way to deter Russia from attacking again.

Countries such as the United States and Germany have been more cautious, wary of any move that they fear could draw NATO into a direct conflict with Russia and potentially spark a global war.

NATO was formed in 1949 with the primary aim of countering the risk of a Soviet attack on allied territory.

The NATO-Ukraine Council, due to hold its first session in Vilnius on Wednesday, is not dissimilar from a coordination platform NATO had with Russia from 2002. That stopped after Moscow annexed Crimea from Kyiv in 2014 and then went on to back rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine.

Stoltenberg said Ukraine could now skip a Membership Action Plan (MAP) - a process for meeting political, economic and military goals before becoming a NATO member.

Lithuania's NATO ambassador said the summit would commit 500 million euros a year in non-lethal help to Ukraine, including medical supplies and de-mining. Norway said it would increase military aid to Kyiv.

"It's important that they win. It's important for our common security," Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt told Reuters.

While Ukraine was set to be kept waiting, another country seemingly secured a breakthrough on its path to NATO membership.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan late on Monday agreed to forward Sweden's bid to join to his parliament for ratification, appearing to end months of opposition that strained the bloc.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was what prompted Sweden - and its Nordic neighbor Finland - to abandon decades of military non-alignment and apply to join NATO.

Finland became NATO's 31st member in April but Sweden's accession has been held up by a dispute with Türkiye, where Erdogan had accused Sweden of not doing enough to crack down on militants that Ankara sees as terrorists.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Erdogan agreed to step up cooperation on fighting terrorism. The United States also promised to move forward with the transfer of F-16 fighter jets to Türkiye, Sullivan said.

Biden said he was "not at all" surprised Türkiye ended up lifting its veto.

Back in Kyiv, Ukraine's military said Russia launched drone attacks on the southern port of Odessa and the country's capital itself in early hours on Tuesday.



Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.