US President Joe Biden said that Finland’s decision to buy American-made F-35 fighter jets will pave the way to closer military ties in the coming years and shared “concerns” about Russia with his colleague in Helsinki.
Speaking with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö on Monday, Biden praised Finland’s decision to buy 64 jets from Lockheed Martin, to replace its aging American-made F/A-18s, calling the purchase “a strong foundation for even closer bilateral defense ties for years to come.”
The two leaders also “discussed their shared concerns about Russia’s destabilizing military buildup along Ukraine’s border and the importance of transatlantic efforts to de-escalate the situation,” the White House said.
Helsinki’s readout of the call said the main topic of the conversation was “the worrisome situation at the borders of Ukraine” and that both presidents “considered it important to cooperate in order to find a diplomatic resolution to the tense situation.”
Niinistö also said he appreciated NATO’s Open Door policy, but did not mention F-35s at all. He is due to call Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
The F-35 deal, announced Friday, is worth 8.378 billion euros ($9.44 billion) and includes the fighter jets, armaments and maintenance through 2030. Finland is expecting to start phasing the jets into service in 2027, according to its air force commander Pasi Jokinen.
Lockheed Martin won out in the competition between Boeing, France’s Dassault, Eurofighter, and the neighboring Sweden’s Saab. Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen insisted that “all countries involved are very close and valued partners of Finland.”
Finland is the second neutral European country to opt for the troubled and pricey US-made jet, which the Pentagon itself described as a “failure” in February. In June, Switzerland announced a $6,352 million deal for 36 units of the F-35A.
Lilongwe, Malawi, Dec 13 (IPS) – When a former deputy speaker of Parliament shot himself dead within the National Assembly buildings in Lilongwe in September 2021, it shook Malawi. It also turned attention to the mental health burden in the country.
Afro-Cuban rapper Yotuel Romero discusses the song that won Song of the Year and inspired protesters in one of the biggest waves of demonstrations in Cuba in decades.
(Image credit: Chris Pizzello/Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa was caught on video dancing maskless during a trip to Ghana, only days before he tested positive for Covid-19, as his country battles a wave of cases sparked by the Omicron variant.
The footage, circulating on Twitter, shows Ramaphosa, 69, forgoing a mask while dancing with a partner, as music plays, during his foreign trip last week, despite the spread of the virus back in his home country.
Ramaphosa’s office announced on Sunday that he had tested positive for Covid-19, and that he would temporarily delegate his responsibilities to the deputy president. The South African president, who is fully vaccinated, was tested after falling ill following a state memorial service over the weekend.
While recovering, Ramaphosa is self-isolating in Cape Town. He recently returned from a trip around multiple African countries, with some members of his delegation testing positive while visiting Nigeria.
On Sunday, South Africa reported more than 18,000 new daily infections, with 70 percent of them estimated to be from the Omicron strain of the virus, according to the country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases. Since the start of the pandemic, the country has recorded more than 90,000 deaths from Covid-19.
