World

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden is "absolutely not" pulling out of the US presidential race, his spokeswoman said on Wednesday, as pressure mounted following his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.

Panic has gripped his Democratic Party in the wake of last week's TV debate, and internal rumblings about finding a replacement candidate before November's election have been amplified by polls showing Trump extending his lead.

The New York Times and CNN reported that Biden, 81, had acknowledged to a key ally that his reelection bid was on the line if he failed to quickly reassure the public that he was still up to the job.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre rejected those reports outright, insisting Biden has no intention of withdrawing.

"The president is clear-eyed and he is staying in the race," she told reporters.

Biden told a call with campaign and party staffers that he is going nowhere.

"I'm in this race to the end and we're going to win because when Democrats unite, we will always win. Just as we beat Donald Trump in 2020, we're going to beat him again in 2024," he said, according to a source close to the campaign.

He repeated that message in an emergency meeting with Democratic governors, who pledged their continued support, attendees said afterward.

"As the president continued to tell us, and show us, that he was all in... we said that we would stand with him," Maryland Governor Wes Moore, seen as a rising star and potential future presidential candidate, told reporters alongside Minnesota's Tim Walz and Kathy Hochul of New York.

Walz said Biden was "fit to serve".

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who also attended the meeting at the White House and is seen as one of the top picks to replace Biden if he should drop out, said on social media platform X that "he is in it to win it and I support him".

Biden has admitted he performed poorly in the debate, and was blunt in a radio interview recorded on Wednesday with Wisconsin's Civic Media.

“I screwed up. I made a mistake. That’s 90 minutes on stage. Look at what I’ve done in 3.5 years,” he said.

He echoed that sentiment in an interview with Pennsylvania’s WURD radio on Thursday, saying “I had a bad debate.”

Aftermath

The Biden campaign has been desperate to reassure Democratic donors and voters that the president’s performance against Trump was a one-off.

But party figures have voiced bafflement over what they see as deflection and excuses from the president and his aides.

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, told The New York Times that Biden should withdraw.

“Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous,” he said in an email to the paper.

The concern was compounded by a New York Times poll conducted after the debate that showed Trump with his biggest lead ever over Biden — 49 per cent to 43 per cent of likely voters.

It wasn’t until Wednesday — six days after the debate — that Biden completed a round of calls with Democratic congressional leaders, and staffers have also voiced consternation over the glacial pace of the outreach.

“We are getting to the point where it may not have been the debate that did him in, but the aftermath of how they’ve handled it,” a senior Democratic operative told Washington political outlet Axios.

Biden may be tested on his ability to think on his feet when he sits with ABC News on Friday for his first television interview since the debate, and he will also hit the swing states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the coming days.

‘More worrisome’

The president has cited fatigue as a new explanation for his poor debate showing, saying that he was unwise to travel “around the world a couple times” before the debate.

But he had been back in the United States for nearly two weeks and spent two days relaxing and six days preparing before the debate.

Democratic lawmakers have begun to go public with their doubts. Arizona congressman Raul Grijalva became the second sitting Democrat to call on Biden to drop out.

“If he’s the candidate, I’m going to support him, but I think that this is an opportunity to look elsewhere,” Grijalva said, according to the Times.

In the street where the president grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, there was sympathy for Biden — but no campaign signs for either candidate.

“I was embarrassed for him. I felt he didn’t feel well and he probably shouldn’t have gone on the stage,” said 73-year-old Jamie Hayes.

ASTANA, Kazakhstan — The leaders of Russia and China on Wednesday hailed their efforts to harden their anti-Western alliance at a summit in Kazakhstan, seeking to press their influence in the strategic Central Asian region.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were in Astana for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) — a Beijing-led regional bloc that covers Central Asia, India and Iran and is designed as a counterweight to US influence in international affairs.

In televised opening remarks ahead of a bilateral meeting, Putin told Xi that Russia's ties with China were stronger than ever and touted the SCO as a powerful instrument to advance their foreign policy agendas.

"Russian-Chinese relations, our comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation, are experiencing their best period in history," Putin said.

Moscow and Beijing have deepened their political, military and economic links since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Both countries have railed against what they call US-led "hegemony" on the world stage and are trying to advance rival regional groups and alliances to push back against Western influence in regions they see as their backyards.

Putin said on Wednesday that the SCO was "strengthening its role as one of the key pillars of a fair multipolar world order", using language characteristic of how Moscow bashes the West.

Ahead of the gathering, China's foreign ministry said the summit would "make contributions to promoting security, stability and development of member countries", and advance "lasting peace and common prosperity in the world".

China's Xi said Moscow and Beijing needed to continue developing relations despite difficult global circumstances.

"In the face of the turbulent international situation and external environment, the two sides should continue to uphold the original aspiration of friendship for generations to come," Xi told Putin in brief opening remarks.

The five countries — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — are ex-Soviet republics and have historic cultural, linguistic and economic ties to Russia.

But China’s rising economic power and sprawling investment has challenged Russian influence.

Central Asia, key to China’s flagship Belt and Road infrastructure project, is rich in natural resources and crucial for the overland transport of goods between China and Europe.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has also been seen as creating an opening for other powers to swoop into regions that have been traditionally aligned with Moscow.

The ultra-closed Turkmenistan is not a member of the SCO, but the four other Central Asian states are, alongside India, Iran and Pakistan.

The nine-member bloc is complemented by 14 “dialogue partners”, such as Turkey and several Gulf states.

‘Fair peace’

Putin also met Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the summit.

The NATO member, which is positioning itself as a possible mediator in the Ukraine war, is a key trade and finance centre for Moscow, which faces heavy Western sanctions.

Erdogan told Putin that Turkey “can lay the groundwork for a consensus to end the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, first with a ceasefire and then with peace”, according to a readout from the Turkish presidency.

“A fair peace that can satisfy both sides is possible,” it added.

Russia’s close ally Belarus is set to formally join the SCO on Thursday.

In an interview with Kazakh state media, Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko said the group was “demonstrating to the world that there are alternative international platforms, different centres of power”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also planned to address the two-day summit on Thursday.

PARIS — France's prime minister on Wednesday urged voters to form a united front to block the far-right in legislative elections, warning the anti-immigration party of Marine Le Pen was the only faction capable of winning an absolute majority.

With four days to go until the second round in the polls, France's political future remains up in the air as the far-right National Rally (RN) Party seeks to take control of government for the first time.

The RN dominated the first round of polls, presenting the Party of Le Pen with the prospect of forming a government and her protege Jordan Bardella, 28, taking the post of premier in a tense "cohabitation" with President Emmanuel Macron.

But more than 200 candidates from the left and the centre this week dropped out of three-way races in the second round of the contest, aiming to prevent the RN winning the seat.

While the formation of this so-called "Republican Front" seems to have generally been a success for the government, the key question now is whether voters themselves will respond to the pleas to block the RN.

"There is one bloc that is able to have an absolute majority [in the national assembly] and it's the extreme right," Attal told France Inter radio.

"On Sunday evening, what's at stake in the second round is to do everything so that the extreme right does not have an absolute majority," he said.

"It's not nice for many French to have to block [the RN]... by casting a vote they did not want to," he added.

But "it's our responsibility to do this".

'Fighting for this'

In one extreme example of how the united front works, in one constituency in northern France the hard-left candidate pulled out to leave a straight contest between the far right and tough-talking Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin — long a hate figure for some on the left.

Former prime minister Edouard Philippe, still an influential voice in the pro-Macron camp, told TF1 television he would be voting for a Communist candidate to stop the far right in his constituency.

An absolute majority of 289 seats is needed in the 577-seat national assembly for a party to form a government on its own.

But Le Pen has said that the RN will try, if it gets any more than 270 seats, by then winning over other lawmakers.

"At the end of this second round, either power will be in the hands of a far-right government, or power will be in parliament. I am fighting for this second scenario," said Attal.

One option that is the subject of increasing media attention is the possibility that rather than a far-right government, France could be ruled by a broad coalition of pro-Macron centrists, the traditional right, Socialists and Greens.

But Attal was non-committal: “I did not speak about a coalition. I do not want to impose on the French a coalition that they did not choose.”

‘Grotesque image’

Philippe said that after the election he would support a new parliamentary majority that could span “the conservative right to the social democrats” but not include the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI).

His comments were also echoed by Xavier Bertrand, a heavyweight rightwinger who served as a minister under president Nicolas Sarkozy. He called for a “provisional government” focused on “rebuilding our country”.

“The only thing that is possible is to understand that there are alternatives other than a majority with an RN government or a backroom coalition,” he told TF1.

Le Pen meanwhile angrily denounced the tactical moves and alliances.

“The political class is giving an increasingly grotesque image of itself,” she wrote on X.

Macron has kept his distance from the final phase of voting, which will reveal the outcome of his election gamble that baffled even close colleagues.

He has not spoken in public since an EU summit on Thursday.

Speaking to a cabinet meeting, he said there was “no question” that a post-election coalition could include the LFI, a participant told AFP.

NAIROBI — Kenya has seen peaceful marches mostly led by Gen-Z youth against now-scrapped tax hikes descend into violence, with dozens killed in clashes with police as protesters accuse “goons” of hijacking demonstrations.

What does this mean for the movement, and what next for President William Ruto?

What happened? 

Protests broke out two weeks ago, sparked by proposed tax hikes included in the annual finance bill, and took Ruto’s government by surprise. 

Initially peaceful and organised on social media, the protests spiralled into violence in the capital Nairobi and elsewhere, with demonstrators ransacking the partly ablaze parliament complex and police firing live rounds at crowds last week.

At least 39 people have died, according to rights groups.

A planned march on Tuesday again descended into violence, with the police later announcing the arrests of nearly 300 people for “engaging in criminal activities in the guise of protesting”.

How has the president reacted?

Following last week’s unprecedented scenes showing parliament in chaos and partially on fire, Ruto pulled the finance bill and called for dialogue with the protesters.

But he also likened some of the demonstrators to “criminals”, while praising the police for having “done the best they could”, further inflaming the situation, analysts said.

“There is a general feeling that Ruto is tone deaf to both public concern and the magnitude of this crisis,” Declan Galvin, managing director of Exigent Risk Advisory, told AFP.

“Without a change in course in the coming days, Ruto’s spectacular rise and political career could be derailed.”

Are the protests still going?

It’s complicated. 

Many prominent demonstrators are sharing posters for fresh peaceful rallies and calling for Ruto to resign. 

But the situation on the ground is another story.

On Tuesday, what were billed as peaceful marches degenerated into running battles between stone-throwing young men and tear gas-firing cops. There were also multiple instances of looting in Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa. 

As images of the chaos hit Kenyan TV channels, one prominent protester said the rallies had been infiltrated by “goons”.

Another rally is planned for Thursday but some demonstrators told AFP on Wednesday that they were confused about what was happening and were not sure if they would hit the streets again — with one suggesting the movement might migrate entirely online.

Surely this is good news for Ruto?

Not really. 

The protests have tapped into long-running issues that Kenya is grappling with, say analysts.

Chiefly sparked by a cost-of-living crisis and corruption, public anger then shifted to the heavy-handed police response. 

And late Tuesday, when news broke of MPs poised to receive an annual salary hike, it added yet another dimension to the movement.

“The protest movement across Kenya is evolving from social and economic grievances associated with the Finance Bill into something more anti-government,” Galvin noted.

What can Ruto do? 

Galvin said the Kenyan leader could de-escalate the situation by organising a Cabinet reshuffle, while announcing tax cuts in line with demonstrators’ demands.

But Gabrielle Lynch, professor of comparative politics at the University of Warwick, said Ruto — a political outsider with a profound sense of faith — has a history of succeeding despite adversity.

“There’s a sense that God has willed it, and he should be there,” she told AFP. 

“It doesn’t look like he’ll change how he’s behaving... he seems to think that he’ll weather the storm, and he’ll see this decline in the protests as evidence of that.”

What happens next?

People are waiting to see what happens on Thursday.

Even if fewer people show up, Lynch said the strength of the movement should not be underestimated.

“I think it is a signal of deep-seated issues that are going to come back and again and again,” she said, suggesting it was also building on last year’s opposition protests against the previous finance bill.

PAKISTAN — A former Pakistan senator running in a by-election was killed on Wednesday along with four others in a targeted attack on their car near the border with Afghanistan.

“It appears that a remote-controlled bomb targeted the car carrying the former senator,” a district police spokesman told AFP, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media. 

“An investigation is currently underway to ascertain the type of explosives used and who was behind it. But miscreants have stepped up their activities in the region lately.” 

Former senator Hidayatullah Khan, his two companions and two police guards were killed in Bajaur district, just 45 kilometres from the Afghan border, in an area where militancy has been rising since the Taliban took control of Kabul in 2021.

The deadly blast took place ahead of by-elections due on July 11 in which he was running as an independent candidate.

In January, a candidate supporting jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan was shot dead in the same district ahead of the general elections, in an attack claimed by the local chapter of the Islamic State group.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — a separate group from the Afghan Taliban but with a similar ideology — and groups linked to it are the most active in the region, largely targeting security officials. 

No group has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack, which the TTP denied involvement in.

Last month, the government announced the launch of a new counterterrorism operation to support armed forces in their fight against militancy.

MOSCOW/ KYIV — Russia claimed Tuesday to have destroyed or damaged five Ukrainian military jets in a strike on an air base, as Kyiv prepares for the arrival of long-awaited F-16 fighters.

Russia's defence ministry said it fired Iskander-M missiles at an air base near the central Ukrainian city of Myrgorod, around 150 kilometres from the Russian border.

"As a result of the Russian army strike, five operational SU-27 multirole fighters were destroyed, and two that were under repair were damaged," it said in a statement on Telegram.

The ministry also published footage of what it said was the strike and its aftermath, showing grey smoke billowing at the airfield, where some parked planes were visible and charred black earth.

AFP could not immediately verify the footage or the claims.

Russian and Ukrainian military bloggers previously reported the strike on Monday.

Ukraine's air force declined to comment when asked by AFP about Russia's claims.

In a social media post, air force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said: "Ukrainian aircraft continue to successfully carry out combat missions, conduct missile and bomb attacks on the positions of the occupiers and eliminate important military facilities."

He posted footage of what he said was a Ukrainian attack on an ammunition depot in Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed in 2014, carried out on Monday.

But Ukrainian military bloggers and analysts said Kyiv had suffered equipment losses in Myrgorod, with some angry at commanders for parking the planes in the open without sufficient protection.

Kyiv hopes the arrival of Western F-16 fighters will enable it to better protect itself from Russian bombardment.

Ukraine has been calling for the US-made jets since the start of the conflict.

Several NATO countries have pledged to supply them and have been training Ukrainian pilots and crews for months.

The first deliveries, including from The Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark are expected to arrive in the country imminently.

But recent strikes on Ukrainian airfields have raised questions about Kyiv’s ability to protect the multi-million-dollar planes from Russian fire.

“As Ukraine waits for the F-16s, the question of ensuring their safety on the ground remains,” the Ukraine-based Defense Express think tank said on Tuesday.

Russia has promised to target and destroy F-16s, along with all other Western military hardware shipped to Kyiv.

Ukraine has not said where it will base the F-16s.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s Moscow-friendly prime minister Viktor Orban urged Kyiv on Tuesday to work towards a “quick ceasefire” in Ukraine that could pave the way for negotiations with Russia to end more than two years of war.

Orban issued the appeal standing next to President Volodymyr Zelensky during a surprise visit to Ukraine, the first by the vocal critic of Western support for Kyiv.

“I asked the president to consider whether... a quick ceasefire could speed up the peace talks,” Orban told reporters, adding that the ceasefire he envisions would be “time-limited”.

Ukraine has repeatedly rejected calls for a pause in fighting, which it says would just give Russia time to regroup for a fresh assault.

The United States meanwhile on Tuesday announced new security aid for Ukraine worth $2.3 billion.

Unlike many other European leaders, Orban had not visited Kyiv since Russia invaded in February 2022 and is widely seen as the 27-member bloc’s most pro-Russian leader.

In October 2023 he met Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Beijing, becoming the first EU leader to do so since the start of the war.

Orban regularly criticises Europe’s financial and military support for Kyiv, temporarily blocking a 50-billion-euro ($53-billion) aid package for weeks.

And he openly opposes holding EU membership talks with Kyiv as well as Brussels’ sanctions on Moscow — though Budapest has not used its veto to block the moves.

A ‘just peace’

The visit comes the day after Hungary took over the EU’s rotating presidency, a position which gives the central European state sway over the bloc’s agenda and priorities for the next six months.

Orban said he would report on his talks with Zelensky to EU prime ministers “so that the necessary European decisions can be taken.”

Zelensky said the timing of the visit was symbolic.

“This is a clear indication of our common European priorities, of how important it is to bring a just peace to Ukraine,” he said, urging European countries to maintain military support.