“It is not clear whether the Kremlin is ready for diplomacy” – Update on the war in Ukraine from July 16

Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday announced his running mate for November: Ohio Senator JD Vance, a staunch ally of the former president and a staunch isolationist who has fought against U.S. aid to Ukraine for years.

The 39-year-old Marine Corps veteran and Yale Law School graduate worked as a venture capitalist before running for Ohio’s Senate seat in 2022 with the backing of wealthy Silicon Valley residents. It is his first time holding public office.

Aside from railing against US foreign aid at every opportunity, Vance is perhaps best known for his 2016 memoir: “Hillbilly Elegy: Memories of a family and culture in crisis”, a chronicle of his youth in the poverty-stricken Appalachian Mountains.

He is against a woman’s right to have an abortion, a big supporter of Trump’s crusade to build a wall on the southern US border to keep out immigrants, a climate change denier, and says he believes the 2020 election, which Trump lost, was rigged.

The right-wing community, including other potential candidates for vice president, loudly welcomed the decision.

Perhaps the most important role of the U.S. vice president is to cast a deciding vote in the 100-member Senate, a body currently evenly divided between Democrats and their allied independents, as well as Republicans.

The other very important role, of course, is that he or she is the next in line to become president should the president no longer be able to hold office. That possibility is at the center of American attention after Trump narrowly escaped assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend.

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Grenade thrown at army recruitment center in western Ukraine

No one was injured in the incident. The facade and windows of the building were damaged, regional police said.

While Ohio is firmly in Republican hands, neighboring Pennsylvania, Biden’s home state, was an open field in the last election. And that’s the other important role of a vice president, at least as a candidate: getting votes.

Rather than targeting a potential candidate from a swing state or a woman or minority to bolster his vote in those marginal states, selecting Vance, a white man from a safe Republican state, can be seen as a way for Trump to solidify his right-wing base.

A significant portion of the Republican Party, including Vance, had distanced themselves from Trump in recent years as his election denial and legal troubles gained momentum. In recent months, however, Vance appears to have returned to the former president’s good graces, even after Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts related to campaign finance and banking and found liable for $454 million in connection with sexual assaults the former president was accused of in a civil case. He also continues to struggle with Trump, among many other legal problems he still faces.

The US State Department agrees in principle to invite Zelensky to Russia for the next summit

After President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that Russia should be invited to the next peace summit, the administration of US President Joe Biden responded that this sounded like a good idea in theory. However, doubts were expressed as to whether the Kremlin was even ready to negotiate.

Zelensky returned from the NATO summit at the weekend with a brief stopover in Ireland and brought home a message of peace.

Moscow did not receive an invitation to the conference of 90 participants that was to discuss the framework of a treaty in Switzerland in June. Many countries spoke out in favor of a just peace, but without representatives of the Kremlin the summit was inconclusive. The Kremlin called the meeting “absurd.”

Vice President Kamala Harris led the U.S. delegation as Biden was scheduled to attend a campaign fundraiser in California sponsored by George Clooney, Julia Roberts and other Hollywood Democratic donors.

“If they want to invite Russia to this summit, of course we support that,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a briefing. “We have always supported diplomacy when Ukraine is ready for it, but it has never been clear that the Kremlin is ready for actual diplomacy.”

Zelensky has been saying for months that the support he has received from his allies so far is enough to keep the Russians at bay, but not enough for a final victory. At a press conference on Monday, for example, he reiterated: “The decision to supply F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine was strategic, but their number was not strategic,” the state media outlet Ukrinform quoted the president as saying.

He also estimated that 25 Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems would be enough to defend the entire Ukraine. According to open sources, Ukraine currently has only two systems to protect its airspace, while three systems are being delivered there by a coalition of US and European allies.

EU representatives refuse to attend Hungarian foreign summit because of Orban’s Moscow visit

Following Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s recent “peace trips” to Russia and China during his EU Council Presidency, many members of the Union are canceling their plans for an external summit in Budapest. The European Commission is holding a separate summit instead.

EU Commission spokesman Eric Mamer announced on Monday that President Ursula von der Leyen had cancelled her visit to Hungary and would send officials to attend instead.

Mamer said the decision was taken “in light of recent developments surrounding the start of the Hungarian Council Presidency” and was in line with the EU Commission’s promise to take action against Orban’s unauthorized visits to Moscow and Beijing.

In the meantime, Politico reported on Monday that three unnamed diplomats said that EU High Commissioner Josep Borrel would hold a “formal” meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council at the same time as the summit with Hungary at the end of August 2024. A source told the political magazine that EU foreign ministers wanted to “send a clear signal that Hungary does not speak for the EU.”

At the beginning of the month, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden had already announced that their countries would only send officials to government meetings in connection with the Hungarian EU Council Presidency.