US Business

President Joe Biden arrived Sunday in Japan for the second leg of an Asia trip underlining US commitment to the region but overshadowed by concern that North Korea will test a nuclear weapon after ignoring Washington’s attempt at outreach.

Biden, making his first trip to Asia as president, flew from South Korea into Yokota Air Base outside Tokyo, where he will meet with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and emperor on Monday, as well as unveiling a US-led multilateral trade initiative.

On Tuesday, he reinforces the theme of American leadership in the Asia-Pacific by joining the leaders of Australia, India and Japan for a summit of the Quad group.

The trip, which comes as rival China is experiencing significant economic disruption due to Covid outbreaks, has been touted by Washington as a display of US determination to maintain its commercial and military edge across the region.

But hanging over every step of Biden’s tour is fear that unpredictable North Korea will test a nuclear-capable missile or a bomb.

Speculation that this might even happen while Biden was just across the border in Seoul did not materialise. However, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters that the threat remains.

Echoing Biden’s earlier statement that the United States is “prepared for anything North Korea does”, Sullivan said the dictatorship has a choice.

“If North Korea acts, we’ll be prepared to respond. If North Korea doesn’t act, North Korea has the opportunity, as we’ve said repeatedly, to come to the table.”

Pyongyang has so far declined to answer US appeals for dialogue, officials say, even ignoring offers of help to combat a sudden mass outbreak of Covid-19, according to Biden.

And while in Seoul, Biden confirmed he was prepared to meet with Kim Jong Un if the leader-for-life is “sincere”, but Sullivan said that remains far off.

“We’re not even at step one yet,” he said.

Symbolising the apparent one-way conversation, Biden said the only message he has right now for Kim would consist of a single word: “Hello. Period,” he said.

– Military exercises –

Biden spent two days with South Korea’s new President Yoon Suk-yeol, with beefing up the military defence against North Korea high on the agenda.

They issued a statement on Saturday saying that “considering the evolving threat” from Pyongyang, they were looking at expanding the “scope and scale” of joint US-South Korean military exercises.

Joint exercises had been scaled back due to Covid and for Biden and Yoon’s predecessors, Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in, to embark on a round of high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful diplomacy with North Korea.

In contrast to the dovish Moon, Yoon said he and Biden discussed possible “joint drills to prepare for a nuclear attack” and called for more US assets to be deployed to the region.

Any build-up of forces or expansion of joint military exercises would likely enrage Pyongyang, which views the drills as rehearsals for an invasion.

North Korea has conducted a blitz of sanctions-busting weapons tests this year, including firing an intercontinental ballistic missile at full range for the first time since 2017, with satellite imagery indicating a nuclear test is looming.

But its weapons testing schedule may also be affected by a raging Covid-19 outbreak.

More than 2.6 million cases of what the regime calls “fever” have been reported since the Omicron variant was first detected in April, state media said Sunday.

– Economic ties –

Before heading to Japan on Sunday, Biden met with the chairman of Hyundai to celebrate a decision by the South Korean auto giant to invest $5.5 billion in an electric vehicle plant in the southern US state of Georgia.

He also met US and South Korean troops alongside Yoon, a schedule that a senior White House official said was able to “reflect the truly integrated nature” of the countries’ economic and military alliance.

Biden is also emphasising a broader, almost existential aspect to his trip, saying that Asia is a key battleground in the global “competition between democracies and autocracies”.

“We talked in some length about the need for us to make this larger than just the United States, Japan, and Korea, but the entire Pacific and the South Pacific and Indo-Pacific. I think this is an opportunity,” Biden said after meeting Yoon.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi maintained Sunday, however, that US regional involvement was “in essence, a strategy of creating division, inciting confrontation and undermining peace”, according to state media outlet Xinhua.

“No matter how it is packaged or disguised, it will inevitably fail in the end,” he said.

While China is the main US rival in the Asia regional struggle, Biden illustrated the acute challenge from Russia when he signed a $40 billion aid bill late Saturday to help Ukraine fight the invasion by Moscow’s forces.

Chile’s Mito Pereira, making only his second major start, teed off with a three-stroke lead in Sunday’s final round of the PGA Championship as Rory McIlroy made a late charge.

Five rivals who also chased a first major victory were also hot on Pereira’s heels at Southern Hills in a tension-packed crucible to decide the Wanamaker Trophy.

“It’s by far the biggest tournament I’ve played, the biggest round of golf,” Pereira said. “I’ll just try to keep it simple, do the same things that I’ve been doing, not even look at the people around me.”

Not since John Daly in 1991 has a player won in his PGA Championship debut.

World number 100 Pereira, who quit golf for two years as a teen for other sports, missed the 2019 US Open cut in his prior major start. 

The 27-year-old from Santiago could become only the third South American man to win a major title after Argentines Roberto de Vicenzo, the 1967 British Open champion, and Angel Cabrera, who took the 2007 US Open and 2009 Masters.

Pereira began on nine-under 201 after 54 holes with England’s Matthew Fitzpatrick and American Will Zalatoris sharing second on six-under.

Seventh-ranked McIlroy, who began nine back, birdied the second through fifth holes to show fast starts were on offer in cool, crisp conditions.

McIlroy missed the green and made bogey at the par-3 sixth, then lipped out a 43-foot birdie putt at the seventh to share fifth on 3-under after eight holes.

Zalatoris, last year’s Masters runner-up, has top-10 finishes in four of seven prior major starts.

Fitzpatrick, a seven-time winner on the DP World Tour, hasn’t cracked the top-six in 27 prior major starts.

World number 17 Fitzpatrick, 27, and 30th-ranked Zalatoris, 25, are the top-rated players without a US PGA Tour victory. Not since 2011 has a player won a major for his first US tour title.

American rookie Cameron Young was fourth on five-under with Mexico’s Abraham Ancer at three-under after an opening bogey alongside Irishman Seamus Power.

Young, 25, has three second-place finishes this season but missed the cut in his three prior major starts.

Ancer, 31, won his first PGA Tour title last August at the WGC St. Jude Invitational.

Power, 35, won his first PGA title at last July’s Barbasol Championship.

“Whoever is going to win it is going to earn it,” Power said. “Every hole here is pretty tough. You have no holes off. You have no easy shots.”

– Spieth, Rahm well back –

No one has ever rallied from more than seven strokes back in the last round to win the PGA, that historic fightback coming by American John Mahaffey in 1978 at Oakmont.

Three US major winners were trying to match that mark as they started seven adrift of Pereira — two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson, 2017 PGA champion Justin Thomas and 49-year-old Stewart Cink, the 2009 British open winner.

Watson matched the course record at the 7,556-yard layout with a 63 in the second round, equaling the mark shared by Ray Floyd and Tiger Woods.

Woods drew huge crowds in the first three rounds at the PGA in his second comeback start after suffering severe leg injuries in a February 2021 car crash, but the 15-time major winner withdrew after Saturday’s third round, when he limped to a 79, the third-worst round of his major career.

It was the first time Woods withdrew from a major as a professional. As an amateur, he pulled out of the 1995 US Open at Shinnecock, where he injured his wrist blasting out of deep grass.

Three-time major champion Jordan Spieth, who could have completed a career Grand Slam with a triumph, fired a 69 to finish on 284.

Second-ranked Jon Rahm, the reigning US Open champion from Spain, would have overtaken Masters winner Scottie Schefflera for the world number one ranking with a victory. He shot 68 to finish on 286.

Russian forces pursued their bombardment of frontline Ukrainian cities on Sunday, seeking to gain military momentum as Kyiv’s diplomatic counter-offensive targeted the world’s business and political elite gathering in Davos.

Shelling and missile strikes hit Kharkiv in the north, and Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia in the south, while eight civilians were killed on the eastern front in the Donbas, Ukrainian officials said.

Three months after launching their invasion, Moscow’s forces are focused on securing and expanding their gains in the Donbas region and on Ukraine’s southern coast.

Ukraine’s parliament voted on Sunday to extend martial law for a further three months through to August 23.

Kyiv, meanwhile, is rallying international support and receiving Western weapons supplies, even if EU powers are struggling to agree on expanding sanctions to Russia’s huge energy exports.

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda addressed the Ukrainian parliament and met President Volodymyr Zelensky, a day ahead of the Ukrainian leader’s Davos videoconference.

“After Bucha, Borodianka, Mariupol, there cannot be business as usual with Russia,” Duda told Ukrainian MPs, citing towns and cities where Russian forces have been accused of atrocities against civilians.

“An honest world cannot return to business as usual while forgetting the crimes, the aggression, the fundamental rights that have been trampled on,” he added.

The World Economic Forum brings together the world’s business and political elite in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos, and this year’s gathering will put Ukraine’s crisis centre stage.

– Davos snubs Moscow –

Zelensky is due to hold a videoconference with delegates Monday evening to mark the opening of Ukraine House Davos, a forum for Kyiv and its international backers.

In March, Davos organisers cut ties with Russian firms and officials, and announced that anyone under international sanctions would not be welcome at the event.

Western nations have rallied behind Ukraine’s defence of its territories, led by the United States — which just approved a $40-billion war chest for Kyiv — and neighbours such as Poland.

But some European countries that are dependent on Russian oil supplies, including Hungary, are resisting calls for an embargo on crude — and major EU economic powers like Germany remain huge gas importers.

Duda stressed that Poland and Ukraine have a “common future within the European Union” and warned against some European countries attempting to compromise with Russian or take decisions “behind Ukraine’s back”. 

But some EU members are reticent on Kyiv’s ambitions to join the bloc. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has suggested creating a “European political community” as a kind of antechamber to full membership.

Zelensky has dismissed this idea.

“We don’t need such compromises,” he said Saturday during a news conference with visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa.

“Because, believe me, it will not be compromise with Ukraine in Europe, it will be another compromise between Europe and Russia.”

France’s minister for European affairs, Clement Beaune, said Sunday that Macron’s proposed European community was not an alternative to full membership, but warned that the process of joining the EU would take “15 to 20 years”.

“We have to be honest. If you say Ukraine is going to join the EU in six months, or a year or two, you’re lying,” he told Radio J. “It’s probably in 15 or 20 years, it takes a long time.”

Kyiv, while rejecting any concessions — and fighting to regain territory lost since Moscow began its offensive in late February — has already accepted that talks with Russia will come. 

“There are things that can only be reached at the negotiating table,” Zelensky told Ukrainians Saturday.

The war, he said, “will be bloody, there will be fighting, but it will only definitively end through diplomacy”.

After just over 12 weeks of fierce fighting, Ukrainian forces have halted Russian attempts to seize Kyiv and the northern city of Kharkiv, but they are under intense pressure in the eastern Donbas region.

Moscow’s army has flattened and seized the Black Sea port of Mariupol and subjected Ukrainian troops and towns in the east to relentless ground and artillery attacks.

“There is no work, no food, no water,” said Angela Kopytsa, 52, breaking down into tears as she spoke to AFP reporters on a Russian-organised tour of Mariupol.

– Incessant fighting –

Kopytsa said both her home and life had been destroyed during the fighting in the port and that “children at maternity wards were dying of hunger”. 

The once-bustling Azov Sea port city has been without electricity since early March and has now been reduced to a wasteland, the carcasses of charred buildings standing amid the lush greenery of tree-lined streets and parks.

The incessant fighting of the previous weeks has died down, and the Russian army and its separatist allies now patrol the streets.

Elena Ilyina, who used to teach at a university in Mariupol, sobbed as she told AFP about her life, saying her apartment had been destroyed and she now lives with her daughter.

“I have nothing left,” the 55-year-old said. “I’d like to live in my apartment, in peace, go to work and talk to my children.”

burs-dc/har

A US military plane bringing several tons of much-needed baby formula from Germany landed Sunday at an airport in Indiana as authorities scramble to address a critical shortage.

Scarcity of medical-grade baby formula caused by production problems and supply-chain issues has created grave problems for thousands of parents whose infants, allergic to cow’s milk protein, rely on it, sending them in frantic searches for the product.

The cargo plane took off from the US air base at Ramstein, Germany, carrying more than 70,000 pounds of powdered formula, the White House said. 

President Joe Biden posted about the flight on Twitter from Japan, where he is on a five-day Asia trip.

“Our team is working around the clock to get safe formula to everyone who needs it,” he said.

The initial shipment will cover about 15 percent of the immediate need, presidential economics advisor Brian Deese said on CNN.

He added there are “more flights in train that will be coming in early this week” as part of what the administration has dubbed “Operation Fly Formula.”

The formula was flown to Indiana because it is a hub for Nestle, a major domestic producer. It will be quality-tested at a nearby lab before being distributed.

The formula shortage has been developing for months, aggravated not only by supply-chain issues linked to the Covid-19 pandemic but by the closing of the nation’s largest formula-making plant, a Michigan factory owned by Abbott Laboratories, amid concerns that contamination may have led to the deaths of two infants.

“We had a manufacturer that wasn’t following the rules, and that was making formula that had the risk of making babies sick,” Deese said. “So we have to take action.”

Another problem, he said, was that US formula production had become concentrated among just three companies. 

“We’re going to have to work” on ways to increase competition, he said.

Abbott’s CEO, Robert Ford, apologized to consumers in a Washington Post op-ed Sunday, saying: “We’re sorry to every family we’ve let down since our voluntary recall exacerbated our nation’s baby formula shortage.”

Deese was asked separately about growing concerns that the US economy — hit by high inflation, supply chain troubles and the war in Ukraine — may be headed toward a recession. 

“Well, there are always risks,” he said.

“But there’s also no doubt that the United States is in a better position than any other major country around the world to address inflation without giving up all the economic gains that we have had.”

The US inflation rate hit a 40-year high of 8.5 percent in March, but slowed slightly in April to 8.3 percent.

Monkeypox has caught the attention of US President Joe Biden, who said Sunday that people should be on guard against the disease which has the potential for “consequential” impact if it were to spread further.

Several cases of monkeypox have been detected in North America and Europe since early May, sparking concern the disease, endemic in parts of Africa, is spreading.

The US leader, on his maiden trip to Asia as president, said in Seoul that health officials have not fully briefed him about “the level of exposure” in the United States.

“But it is something that everybody should be concerned about,” Biden told reporters before boarding Air Force One to fly to Tokyo.

“It is a concern in that if it were to spread it would be consequential,” he added.

“We’re working on it hard to figure out what we do and what vaccine if any might be available for it.”

There have been thousands of human infections in parts of Central and Western Africa in recent years but it is rare in Europe and North America.

Most people recover within several weeks and monkeypox has only been fatal in rare cases.

The World Health Organization said that as of Saturday there were 92 confirmed cases of the disease in countries where monkeypox is not endemic.

The virus is transmitted to humans from animals, with symptoms very similar to smallpox but less severe clinically.

President Joe Biden arrived Sunday in Japan for the second leg of an Asia trip underlining US commitment to the region but overshadowed by concern that North Korea will test a nuclear weapon after ignoring Washington’s attempt at outreach.

Biden, making his first trip to Asia as president, flew from South Korea into Yokota Air Base outside Tokyo, where he will meet with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and emperor on Monday, as well as unveiling a US-led multilateral trade initiative.

On Tuesday, he reinforces the theme of American leadership in the Asia-Pacific by joining the leaders of Australia, India and Japan for a summit of the Quad group.

The trip, which comes as rival China is experiencing significant economic disruption due to Covid outbreaks, has been touted by Washington as a display of US determination to maintain its commercial and military edge across the region.

But hanging over every step of Biden’s tour is fear that unpredictable North Korea will test a nuclear-capable missile or a bomb.

Speculation that this might even happen while Biden was just across the border in Seoul did not materialise. However, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters that the threat remains.

Echoing Biden’s earlier statement that the United States is “prepared for anything North Korea does”, Sullivan said the dictatorship has a choice.

“If North Korea acts, we’ll be prepared to respond. If North Korea doesn’t act, North Korea has the opportunity, as we’ve said repeatedly, to come to the table.”

Pyongyang has so far declined to answer US appeals for dialogue, officials say, even ignoring offers of help to combat a sudden mass outbreak of Covid-19, according to Biden.

And while in Seoul, Biden confirmed he was prepared to meet with Kim Jong Un if the leader-for-life is “sincere”, but Sullivan said that remains far off.

“We’re not even at step one yet,” he said.

Symbolising the apparent one-way conversation, Biden said the only message he has right now for Kim would consist of a single word: “Hello. Period,” he said.

– Military exercises –

Biden spent two days with South Korea’s new President Yoon Suk-yeol, with beefing up the military defence against North Korea high on the agenda.

They issued a statement on Saturday saying that “considering the evolving threat” from Pyongyang, they were looking at expanding the “scope and scale” of joint US-South Korean military exercises.

Joint exercises had been scaled back due to Covid and for Biden and Yoon’s predecessors, Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in, to embark on a round of high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful diplomacy with North Korea.

In contrast to the dovish Moon, Yoon said he and Biden discussed possible “joint drills to prepare for a nuclear attack” and called for more US assets to be deployed to the region.

Any build-up of forces or expansion of joint military exercises would likely enrage Pyongyang, which views the drills as rehearsals for an invasion.

North Korea has conducted a blitz of sanctions-busting weapons tests this year, including firing an intercontinental ballistic missile at full range for the first time since 2017, with satellite imagery indicating a nuclear test is looming.

But its weapons testing schedule may also be affected by a raging Covid-19 outbreak.

More than 2.6 million cases of what the regime calls “fever” have been reported since the Omicron variant was first detected in April, state media said Sunday.

– Economic ties –

Before heading to Japan on Sunday, Biden met with the chairman of Hyundai to celebrate a decision by the South Korean auto giant to invest $5.5 billion in an electric vehicle plant in the southern US state of Georgia.

He also met US and South Korean troops alongside Yoon, a schedule that a senior White House official said was able to “reflect the truly integrated nature” of the countries’ economic and military alliance.

Biden is also emphasising a broader, almost existential aspect to his trip, saying that Asia is a key battleground in the global “competition between democracies and autocracies”.

“We talked in some length about the need for us to make this larger than just the United States, Japan, and Korea, but the entire Pacific and the South Pacific and Indo-Pacific. I think this is an opportunity,” Biden said after meeting Yoon.

While China is the main US rival in that struggle, Biden illustrated the acute challenge from Russia when he signed a $40 billion aid bill late Saturday to help Ukraine fight the invasion by Moscow’s forces.

Before President Joe Biden left South Korea for Japan Sunday, he offered a brief message to Kim Jong Un, whose nuclear sabre-rattling has risked overshadowing the US leader’s first Asia trip: “Hello. Period.”

He offered the succinct greeting when reporters asked whether he had anything to say to North Korea’s leader, highlighting his administration’s openness to dialogue with Pyongyang, even as they look to ramp up joint military exercises with South Korea.

Biden said that he was “not concerned” about the risks of a fresh weapons test while he was in the region — something US officials have warned of repeatedly — saying: “We are prepared for anything North Korea does.”

He has spent two days with South Korea’s newly elected President Yoon Suk-yeol, with the pair saying Saturday that “considering the evolving threat” from Pyongyang, they were looking at expanding the “scope and scale” of joint military exercises.

North Korea has conducted a blitz of sanctions-busting weapons tests this year, including firing an intercontinental ballistic missile at full range for the first time since 2017, with satellite imagery indicating a nuclear test is looming.

Joint exercises had been scaled back due to Covid and in order for Biden and Yoon’s predecessors, Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in, to embark on a round of high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful diplomacy with North Korea.

In contrast to the dovish Moon, Yoon said he and Biden discussed possible “joint drills to prepare for a nuclear attack” and called for more tactical US assets to be deployed to the region.

Any build-up of forces or expansion of joint military exercises would likely enrage Pyongyang, which views the drills as rehearsals for invasion.

North Korea’s weapons testing schedule may also be affected by a raging Covid-19 outbreak.

More than 2.6 million cases of “fever” have been reported since the Omicron coronavirus variant was first detected in April, state media said Sunday.

Biden and Yoon extended an offer of help to North Korea, which has an unvaccinated population and a crumbling healthcare system, saying in a statement they were “willing to work with the international community to provide assistance”.

Biden added that he would not exclude a meeting with Kim if the North Korean leader were “sincere”.

“We’ve offered vaccines, not only to North Korea but to China as well and we’re prepared to do that immediately,” Biden said at a press conference with Yoon. “We’ve got no response.”

– Economic ties –

Early Sunday, Biden met with the chairman of Hyundai to celebrate a decision by the South Korean auto giant to invest $5.5 billion in an electric vehicle plant in the southern US state of Georgia.

He also met US and South Korean troops alongside Yoon, a schedule that a senior White House official said was able to “reflect the truly integrated nature” of the countries’ economic and military alliance.

Biden has used his visit to call for the allies to deepen ties, saying at a press conference with Yoon that Asia was a key battleground in the global “competition between democracies and autocracies”.

“We talked in some length about the need for us to make this larger than just the United States, Japan, and Korea, but the entire Pacific and the South Pacific and Indo-Pacific. I think this is an opportunity,” Biden said.

While China is the main US rival in that struggle, Biden illustrated the acute challenge from Russia when he signed a $40 billion aid bill late Saturday to help Ukraine fight the invasion by Moscow’s forces.

The bill, passed earlier by Congress, was flown to Seoul so that Biden could make it law without having to wait for his return to Washington next Tuesday.

In Japan, Biden will meet with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Emperor Naruhito on Monday ahead of Tuesday’s Quad summit, bringing together the leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the United States.

Also on Monday, Biden will unveil a major new US initiative for regional trade, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned only a diplomatic breakthrough rather than an outright military victory can end Russia’s war on his country, while pushing its case for EU membership.

Zelensky also appealed for more military aid, even as US President Joe Biden formally signed off on a $40-billion package of aid for the Ukrainian war effort.

That call came just hours after Russia claimed to have destroyed a cache of Western-delivered arms in the country’s northwest.

Zelensky also insisted his war-ravaged country should be a full candidate to join the EU, rejecting a suggestion from France’s President Emmanuel Macron and some other EU leaders that a sort of associated political community be created as a waiting zone for a membership bid.

“We don’t need such compromises,” Zelensky said Saturday during a joint news conference with visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa.

“Because, believe me, it will not be compromise with Ukraine in Europe, it will be another compromise between Europe and Russia.”

Zelensky, who will speak to the world’s political and business elite at the exclusive Davos forum via videolink on Monday, told Ukrainians in a televised address: “There are things that can only be reached at the negotiating table.”

The war “will be bloody, there will be fighting but will only definitively end through diplomacy”.

“Discussions between Ukraine and Russia will decidedly take place. Under what format I don’t know,” he added.

But he promised that the result would be “fair” for Ukraine.

– Cruise missile ‘strike’ –

After just over 12 weeks of fierce fighting, Ukrainian forces have halted Russian attempts to seize Kyiv and the northern city of Kharkiv, but they are under intense pressure in the eastern Donbas region.

Moscow’s army has flattened and seized the Black Sea port of Mariupol and subjected Ukrainian troops and towns in the east to relentless ground and artillery attacks.

On Saturday, Russia’s defence ministry claimed to have destroyed a large stockpile of weapons supplied by the West in a cruise missile strike on the town of Malyn in the northwest Zhytomyr region.

“Long-range, high-precision Kalibr missiles, launched from the sea, destroyed a large consignment of weapons and military equipment supplied by the United States and European countries,” the ministry said. 

While local authorities acknowledged three missiles had damaged “civil infrastructure” in Malyn, Ukraine’s defence ministry made no mention of the Russian claim in its Sunday briefing and the existence of an arms depot has yet to be independently confirmed.

– Russia cuts Finland’s gas-

Zelensky’s Western allies have shipped a steady stream of modern weaponry to his forces and imposed sweeping sanctions on the Russian economy and President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.  

The Kremlin has responded by disrupting European energy supplies.

On Saturday, Russian energy giant Gazprom said it had halted gas supplies to Finland after Helsinki refused to pay its bill in rubles, which Moscow had demanded in a bid to side-step financial sanctions.

Finland’s state-owned energy company Gasum said it would use other sources, such as the Balticconnector pipeline, which links Finland to fellow EU member Estonia.

Moscow cut off gas to Poland and Bulgaria last month, a move the European Union denounced as “blackmail”.

The row over Finland’s gas bill comes just days after it joined Sweden in breaking their historical military non-alignment and applying to join NATO.

Moscow has warned Finland that joining NATO would be “a grave mistake with far-reaching consequences”, and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has said it will respond by building military bases in western Russia.

But both Finland and Sweden are now apparently on the fast track to join the military alliance, with Biden offering “full, total, complete backing” to their bids.

All 30 existing NATO members must agree, however, and Turkey has condemned Sweden’s alleged tolerance for the presence of exiled Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants

– Dogged resistance –

On the ground in Ukraine, the fighting remains fiercest in the eastern region of Donbas, a Russian-speaking area partially controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014.

In Severodonetsk, a frontline city now at risk of encirclement, 12 people were killed and another 40 wounded by Russian shelling, said regional governor Sergiy Gaiday.

“The Russians are using artillery day and night,” he said.

In the neighbouring Donetsk region, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Telegram on Saturday that seven civilians had been killed and 10 wounded.

Further north in Kharkiv, just 50 kilometres from the border with Russia, new networks of trenches and checkpoints have cropped up as the city prepares to defend against a fresh assault.

“When we were here on the 24th of February there were no positions at all,” says “Doctor”, a medic with the National Guard, referring to the day the Russians invaded.

“But now we have trenches, we have well-protected zones, so for them, it would be impossibly hard to capture (this position).” 

On the roads leading out of the city — some of which have been closed off — civilians help soldiers fill sandbags for the checkpoints.

“We have a problem, we are at war,” jokes a soldier as he checks a vehicle and turns it back.

-Prisoner swap mooted-

On Friday, Moscow declared its bloody, months-long battle for the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol at an end.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenko said 2,439 Ukrainian personnel had surrendered at the plant since May 16, the final 500 on Friday.

Ukraine hopes to exchange the surrendering soldiers for Russian prisoners. But in Donetsk, pro-Kremlin authorities have threatened to put some of them on trial.

A Russian negotiator on Saturday said Moscow would consider exchanging prisoners from Ukraine’s far-right Azov battalion for Viktor Medvedchuk, a wealthy Ukrainian businessman known for his close ties to Putin.

“We are going to study the possibility,” said Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia’s negotiating team, speaking from the separatist city of Donetsk, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Medvedchuk, 67, is a politician and one of Ukraine’s richest people. He escaped from house arrest after Russia invaded in February but was re-arrested in mid-April.

burs-jj/har/cwl/mtp

As a child, punk-poet icon Patti Smith was instructed never to accept anything from strangers — which meant one day she was forced to decline a campaign button she coveted and everyone else had.

While dejectedly walking to her New Jersey family home, she vowed to her future self that she would soon acquire her own medals to add to her lapel. 

On Saturday, the 75-year-old rock legend made good on that promise, as France’s ambassador to the United States Philippe Etienne bestowed her with the Legion d’Honneur, his country’s highest order of merit.

Smith regaled a rapt audience with that touching anecdote after her medal ceremony in central Brooklyn, where crowds gathered for the “Night of Ideas,” an annual marathon of philosophy and performance put on by the French Embassy’s Villa Albertine in partnership with the Brooklyn Public Library.

“It’s an indescribable honor, I understand the gravity of it,” she told AFP backstage, after delivering a spirited performance alongside her daughter Jesse on piano and her long-time collaborator and guitarist Lenny Kaye.

“For someone… who has been greatly shaped by French culture, French literature, French art, and film, just my whole life — it’s especially meaningful,” she continued. 

“I embraced France my whole life, and to receive an embrace like this in return is a wonderful thing.”

For more than half-a-century, Smith has been celebrated as an artist’s artist, adored for her music, songwriting, poetry and deeply introspective, raw writing that in 2010 won the US National Book Award for her stirring memoir “Just Kids.”

The book sees Smith excavate memories from her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, the late photographer with whom she shared a deep friendship, romance and creative bond.

“I feel like it’s very fitting to have such an accolade here in Brooklyn — it’s only a couple of subway stops away that Robert Mapplethorpe and I lived at 20-years-old,” she told the audience. “At night, when Robert couldn’t sleep, he would ask me to read him French poetry… I remember those nights so clearly.”

Smith also felt a particular kinship to the venue of Saturday’s ceremony.

“It’s also fitting that it should be a library, because coming from a very rural area of South Jersey, with very little culture in the ’50s and mid-’60s, I depended on the library to open and expand my world,” she said.

In typical Smith fashion, she honored the artists who came before her in closing her acceptance speech, having opened with a performance of her 1996 song “Wing.”

The rock laureate read the final letter by spiritual-surrealist poet Rene Daumal, which he wrote to his wife before his death.

“Seeing that you are nothing you desire to become,” Smith read. “In desiring to become, you begin to live.”

– People make change –

Following the ceremony Smith — donning her signature black blazer atop a black vest, along with combat boots and her long, gray hair flowing as a few small braids framed her face — delighted fans with a show that included her hit “People Have The Power,” which she wrote with her late husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith.

Speaking to AFP, she said that while “artists can always inspire people, they can rally people, give people hope… in the end, it’s not artists who make change, it’s the people.”

“Through voting, through initiative, through mass marches — it’s the people that make change.”

Citing the ongoing pandemic and the “pain of war,” Smith said “we are living in a very troubled world,” underscoring climate change as the great crisis of our time.

“There are heat waves right now that are unprecedented… there’s tremendous famine, and violent weather patterns we’ve never seen,” she said. 

“The only way it can be solved is a global effort, and I think more than anything… that is the most important thing that people have to address.

“However small the gesture, every gesture is important.”

Smith is set in the fall to release a new book entitled “A Book Of Days,” a visual collection inspired by her beloved Instagram account.

These days “I’m writing just as always,” she told AFP, “writing songs, writing poems, writing another book — I’m always busy, always doing something.”

After her performance, Smith said the medal inspired her to do “more work, better work,” and it “felt very fitting to work right after I received it.”

“I still feel like I’ve got a little, you know, that post-performance adrenaline,” she smiled, “but also just the excitement and happiness… of receiving such an honor.”

“That I would be chosen to, you know, be a sort of a mini-ambassador for the country is really a great joy for me,” she said. 

“So you leave me a happy girl.”

mdo/aha