Biden Apologizes to Zelensky for Monthslong Ukraine Aid Delay

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at U.S. military aid diplomacy with Ukraine, Houthi detentions of United Nations employees, and India’s new governing coalition.

‘We’re Still In’

U.S. President Joe Biden apologized to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris on Friday for the monthslong congressional delay in approving the latest U.S. aid package. The meeting, on the sidelines of D-Day commemoration events, was their first face-to-face encounter since Zelensky visited Washington last December to request greater military support.

U.S. Republicans—some who directly opposed sending additional aid to Ukraine and others who wanted the funding package, which also earmarked billions of dollars in aid for Israel, to include additional money for security at the U.S. southern border—had stalled the nearly $61 billion aid deal for months before passing the package in April. “I apologize for those weeks of not knowing what’s going to happen in terms of funding,” Biden told Zelensky, adding that “we’re still in. Completely. Thoroughly.”

Biden also announced a new $225 million tranche to help Kyiv reconstruct its electric grid, which has been decimated by Russian attacks in recent months. The package also includes air defense interceptors, artillery ammunition, and other critical capabilities to strengthen Ukraine’s war effort. Zelensky, in turn, likened U.S. support to Washington’s efforts in Europe during World War II. On Thursday, amid events marking the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, Biden gave an interview to ABC World News in which he called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a dictator” and drew parallels between Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the actions of Nazi Germany.

“The struggle between a dictatorship and freedom is unending,” Biden said. “To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable. Were we to do that, it means we would be forgetting what happened here on these hallowed beaches.”

Zelensky and Biden will meet again next week at the G-7 summit in Italy, where they will discuss using frozen Russian assets to provide Kyiv with $50 billion in aid. The United States is by far Ukraine’s biggest military supplier. Last week, Biden granted Kyiv permission to use U.S.-supplied weapons to target military sites inside Russian territory near Ukraine’s Kharkiv region so long as the operations are in self-defense. The decision, which Germany quickly copied, comes as Moscow has renewed attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in recent weeks. Kharkiv is located around 25 miles from the Russian border.

In response, Putin warned Washington and its allies on Wednesday that he could deploy weapons to countries within striking distance of the West and that the United States should not assume that Russia will always rule out using nuclear weapons. While at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, though, Putin said there was no need for nuclear warfare right now.

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What We’re Following

U.N. hostages. Houthi rebels detained at least 11 Yemeni United Nations employees as well as staffers from other aid agencies, regional authorities said on Friday. It is unclear why they were taken. Those held include members of local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as well as staff with the U.N. human rights agency, the U.N. development program, the office of the U.N. special envoy to Yemen, the World Food Program, and Save the Children, among others.

“We condemn in the strongest terms this dangerous escalation, which constitutes a violation of the privileges and immunities of United Nations employees granted to them under international law, and we consider it to be oppressive, totalitarian, blackmailing practices to obtain political and economic gains,” the Mayyun Organization for Human Rights, a Yemeni NGO based in Aden, said in a statement. The U.N. also called for the rebel group to immediately release the detained employees.

Over the past several months, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have increased maritime attacks in and around the Red Sea to protest Israel’s war in Gaza while also cracking down on dissent at home. Last weekend, a local Houthi-run court sentenced 44 people to death for allegedly spying for the Saudi-led opposition coalition. Among those sentenced was a businessman who had worked with humanitarian aid groups.

The end of one-party rule. Indian President Droupadi Murmu formally invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday to form a coalition government. Modi heads the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and has been asked to lead the larger National Democratic Alliance. The new government is set to be sworn in on Sunday, when Modi would begin his third consecutive term at the helm of the world’s largest democracy.

This is the first time that the BJP has needed outside party support to form a government since Modi first took the prime minister’s office a decade ago. Polls initially predicted Modi’s BJP to win a landslide election, but results on Tuesday showed a divided India run by “an increasingly self-aggrandising figure, a prisoner of his own delusions of divinity,” Indian political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta wrote for the Indian Express.

Freedom Edge. Japanese, South Korean, and U.S. coast guard ships conducted a trilateral drill on Thursday off Japan’s coast. The exercise was the first part of this summer’s Freedom Edge drills, which the three countries’ defense chiefs announced last Sunday at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. The drills will consist of air, maritime, underwater, and cyber exercises.

Thursday’s patrols were part of regional efforts to counter rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific. This includes skirmishes between Chinese and Philippine vessels at the Second Thomas Shoal, a contested maritime territory in the South China Sea. On Friday, Tokyo also accused four Chinese ships allegedly carrying cannons of entering Japanese waters near the disputed Senkaku Islands, calling it a “breach of international law.” Beijing refuted Tokyo’s claims, with its coast guard saying the patrol was a “routine action.”

Odds and Ends

As Italians participate in EU parliamentary elections this weekend, another decisive vote is gaining speed in one of Italy’s tiniest villages. Two-thirds of Ingria’s population (or 30 of its 46 residents) are vying for positions on the town’s council. Among incumbent Mayor Igor De Santis’s most vocal challengers is his mother, Milena Crosasso, who is backing opposition councilor Renato Poletto. Family Feud, take notes.