This ends our live blogging for June 29. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Russia To Move 10,000 Troops To West; Baltic Fleet Chief Sacked
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says Russia will deploy some 10,000 soldiers to the western part of the country because the situation there is "unstable."
Shoigu told defense officials in Moscow on June 29 that "the military and political situation on [Russia's] western borders remains unstable."
He pointed to the United States and other NATO members continuing "to increase their military potential, primarily in countries neighboring Russia."
Shoigu was referring to plans by NATO to deploy new battalions to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to ease fears in those countries following Russia’s forcible annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 as well as Moscow's support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin has condemned those plans along with the deployment of a missile shield in Eastern Europe as direct threats to Russia's national security.
Meanwhile, Shoigu announced the same day that he had sacked the commander of Russia's Baltic Fleet, Viktor Kravchuk, and the fleet's chief of staff, Sergei Popov, for "dereliction of duty" and "distortion of the real state of things."
Based on reporting by Reuters, dpa, and The Moscow Times
Top U.S. Diplomat Touts Benefits Of NATO, Other Military Alliances
By RFE/RL
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. State Department’s No. 2 official made a robust defense of alliances like NATO, pushing back against public discussion about whether the United States should pull back from such relationships.
The remarks by Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken appeared to be a response in part to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has said NATO is too expensive for Washington to maintain.
They also come a week before NATO leaders gather for a summit in Warsaw, where they are expected to endorse larger forward forces of alliance troops in Poland and some Baltic states -- a direct response to European fears over Russian belligerence.
Speaking June 29 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, Blinken gave a laundry list of benefits that the United States gains from NATO and other alliances: economic, military, and democracy promotion.
And he dismissed assertions that alliances are more of a burden than a benefit.
“This argument remains in my judgment fundamentally flawed, overstating the costs of alliances, while underestimating the risks of turning inward and abandoning them, and certainly downplaying their benefits and virtues,” he said.
Blinken also specifically cited the sanctions imposed on Russia following its forcible annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014, and the conflict that erupted thereafter in eastern Ukraine.
“Our continued unity on sanctions has sent a strong signal to Russia that we will not allow borders to be redrawn at the barrel of a gun,” he said.
At a rally in April, Trump, the billionaire real estate developer whose campaign has upended many expectations in the presidential race, complained that many allies weren’t paying their fair share for maintaining the alliance’s military readiness. He also called NATO obsolete.
Blinken’s remarks also come as U.S. allies in Europe grapple with the fallout from Britian’s decision to withdraw from the European Union. Some officials in Europe and the United States have fretted that the withdrawal, if it happens, might undermine NATO’s unity as well
“Now is not the time to abandon the core of our liberal international order, this is a time to strengthen it,” Blinken said.