Five Things to Know, July 3, 2023

1.   The Department of Veterans Affairs and Stanford University's medical school are planning to launch a cancer research and treatment center at the VA's Palo Alto, Calif., hospital, the organizations announced Friday. While plans for the center are in very preliminary stages, officials said they hope to have the center open in as little as five years through an agreement the VA and Stanford Medicine signed Friday.

2.   Russia’s armed forces are bruised but by no means beaten in the war in Ukraine, a top NATO military officer said Monday, as he laid out the biggest revamp to the organization’s military plans since the Cold War should Moscow dare to widen the conflict. “They might not be 11 feet tall, but they are certainly not 2 feet tall,” the Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, told reporters. “So, we should never underestimate the Russians and their ability to bounce back.”

3.   President Joe Biden will head to Europe at week’s end for a three-country trip intended to bolster the international coalition against Russian aggression as the war in Ukraine extends well into its second year. The main focus of Biden’s five-day visit will be the annual NATO summit, held this year in Vilnius, Lithuania. Also planned are stops in Helsinki, Finland, to commemorate the Nordic country’s entrance into the 31-nation military alliance in April, and Britain, the White House announced Sunday.

4.   President Vladimir Putin will participate this week in his first multilateral summit since an armed rebellion rattled Russia, as part of a rare international grouping in which his country still enjoys support. Leaders will convene virtually on Tuesday for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security grouping founded by Russia and China to counter Western alliances from East Asia to the Indian Ocean.

5.   The Navy announced Friday that it is halting a plan to force the service’s recruiters to work six days a week. That about-face comes a day after Navy Times reported that the service’s roughly 3,900 recruiters had been told they would have to work an extra day each week starting July 8, as the Navy and other branches grapple with a recruiting crisis.