As NATO members gathered in Spain on Tuesday, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced the alliance reached a deal with Turkey to accept membership bids from Sweden and Finland.
The two nations moved to join NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raised fears about Russian aggression elsewhere.
The summit is arguably the most important meeting of the alliance in recent months, with member countries and non-NATO allies, such as Australia and South Korea, set to discuss the war in Ukraine and how to confront an increasingly hostile Russia.
On Monday, Stoltenberg said the Western military organization would increase the number of troops within its rapid response force — which comprises land, air, sea and special forces units that are capable of being deployed quickly — to 300,000 from the current level of around 40,000 personnel.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the leaders of the G-7 nations on Monday, pressing them for more heavy weaponry and help to end the war before winter sets in.
Ukraine’s emergency services said the Russian missile strikes on a Ukrainian shopping mall yesterday killed at least 18 people and wounded 59 others.
The man considered to be the wealthiest oligarch in Russia, who has been photographed playing ice hockey with President Vladimir Putin, joins a growing list of those transferring — or, sailing — their prized assets to Dubai as the West tightens its massive sanctions program on Russia’s economy.
Vladimir Potanin, head of the world’s largest refined nickel and palladium producer, may not be sanctioned by the United States or Europe yet; such sanctions could roil metal markets and potentially disrupt supply chains, experts say. As the biggest shareholder in mining company Nornickel, Potanin had a personal fortune of $30.6 billion before the war on Ukraine, according to Forbes.
But like an increasing number of blacklisted Russian oligarchs, he has apparently taken the precaution of moving his $300 million superyacht to the safe haven of Dubai, in the U.S.-allied United Arab Emirates.
It is called the Nirvana, and the sleek 88-meter-long (289-foot-long) superyacht, equipped with a glass elevator, gym, hot tub, 3D cinema and two terrariums of exotic reptiles, stands out even in a port full of flashy, floating mansions.
The giant Dutch-built vessel with a navy blue hull was docked on Tuesday flying the flag of the Cayman Islands when Associated Press journalists observed the ship at Dubai’s Port Rashid — in the eyeshot of sanctioned Russian parliamentarian Andrei Skoch’s $156 million Madame Gu.
— Associated Press