Biden to Move Forward With Sale of F-16 Jets to Turkey After Erdogan Greenlights Sweden’s NATO Bid A U.S. Air Force B-1B bomber (top) flies in formation with U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets over the South Korea Peninsula during a joint air drill in South Korea on Feb. 19, 2023. (South Korea Defense Ministry via AP) The United States will move forward with its plan to transfer F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, the White House said on July 11, shortly after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan withdrew his objection...

Vilnius, Lithuania — President Biden was in Lithuania Tuesday for crucial meetings with America's NATO allies. The leaders have a lot to discuss at their two-day summit, but the focus will be almost entirely on Russia and the threat it poses to eastern Europe as Vladimir Putin continues his war against Ukraine. The leaders managed to kick off their summit with a win even before it officially started. An agreement was announced Monday that has seen the government of current NATO member Turkey drop its opposition to Sweden joining the...

President Biden and NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg engaged in talks on Tuesday about Ukraine joining the alliance, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky bashed NATO for not setting a timeline for his war-torn country to join. “We agree on the language that…you proposed, relative to the future of Ukraine being able to join NATO,” Biden said in remarks in Vilnius ahead of his meeting with Stoltenberg. “And we’re looking for a continued united NATO.” Minutes before their remarks, Zelensky said on Twitter that he “received signals that certain wording is...

THE MONARCH AND THE COLONIAL — On the way to a NATO summit in Lithuania, President Joe Biden today made a quick stopover in England for tea with King Charles III — and an unusual discussion of policy. Biden’s first bilateral reception with Charles since he ascended the throne last September was devoted to a dialogue on environmental issues that included a joint briefing from Britain’s Energy Secretary Grant Shapps and U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry on trans-Atlantic attempts to “accelerate the deployment of literally trillions of dollars” of...

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., told the "Brian Kilmeade Show" Monday that President Biden has been indecisive and should have provided Ukraine with more significant weapons much earlier. The senator and Army veteran defended the move to send cluster bombs to Ukraine, arguing that Russia is using the same type of bombs to take control of territory. US TO PROVIDE CLUSTER MUNITIONS TO UKRAINE, $800 MILLION MILITARY AID PACKAGE, OFFICIALS SAY SEN. TOM COTTON: I've been calling for this for months and months. This is yet another example of Biden's indecision...

A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. President Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine has evolved in key ways to give Ukraine ever more deadly firepower for its defense, but he remains opposed to fast-tracking what some allies say is the ultimate protection: inviting Ukraine into NATO. That singular position, meant to avoid dragging the US into war with Russia, has remained even as others have slowly fallen. Fighter jets. After opposing NATO members supplying Ukraine...

President Joe Biden broke royal protocol on Monday when he met with King Charles, repeating a mistake Donald Trump made five years earlier. Biden visited Britain to meet with the king and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of the NATO meeting in Lithuania this week. Biden's trip comes after his decision to send Ukraine cluster munitions, a move that has caused friction between the U.S. and other NATO countries. The president raised eyebrows during his stop at Windsor Castle after he was seen walking ahead of Charles, which is...

President Biden will meet Tuesday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Europe. The bilateral meeting will take place on Tuesday evening in Vilnius, Lithuania, following a family photo with NATO heads of states and a meeting with all NATO heads of state as well as Sweden — which is seeking to enter the organization but faces a roadblock in Turkey’s leader. The Biden administration has been pushing Turkey and Hungary to ratify Sweden’s accession to NATO and Erdoğan on Monday linked Sweden’s...

President Joe Biden will hold two high-profile bilateral meetings during the NATO summit this week, finding time to sit down one-on-one with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The sessions, described to POLITICO by two people familiar with the planning, will come on the sidelines of the two-gathering of transatlantic allies this week. On Tuesday, Biden will sit down with Erdoğan to convince the autocrat that he should accept Sweden as NATO’s 32nd member. Erdoğan has blocked the move for more than a year, claiming that Stockholm was...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to meet with NATO leaders this week as heads of state converge on the Baltic state of Lithuania for a two-day summit. Zelensky’s visit to Vilnius will come on Wednesday, the last day of proceedings, Bloomberg reported. The 45-year-old previously pressed NATO for clarity on whether Ukraine can eventually join the Atlantic alliance. Ahead of the summit, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who recently received a one-year term extension, stressed that the meeting would not result in Ukraine being invited to become the bloc’s 32nd...