Andrew Rettman
Paris could be bartering with Baku to free a French businessman jailed for spying, in return for dropping EU sanctions against a Russian oligarch with friends in high places.
Early poll suggests Swedes reject far-right party in electionA poll by the SVT public broadcaster showed Kristerssen’s liberal-rightwing bloc trailing with 46.8 percent, compared to 51.3 percent for the left-green alliance of former socialist prime minister Magdalena Andersson.
“Faced with this situation, where issues were being held hostage at the expense of people’s suffering, I chose to withdraw my proposal. Dignity is not for sale,” said Belgium’s normally mild-mannered foreign minister.
Belgium’s immigration minister has gone on the warpath against evacuating 13 students from Gaza, but they might still be flying out despite her anti-Arab and pro-Israel dog-whistling.
If the EU wanted some red meat in its next sanctions, there were plenty of billionaires left to bite who, like Abramovich, “generate significant revenues for the Russian government”.
Serbia’s outpouring of grief for the man behind the 1995 Srebrenica genocide exposed a grotesque, regressive nationalism lurking below the surface in politics and society.
It seems impossible not to mention Gaza if you meet Israelis on holiday in EuropeI made friends with two Israeli couples while on holiday in Greece this summer and when the conversation inevitably turned to Palestine, I was struck by how misinformed, scared, and ashamed they were.
Litigious Russians filed some 84 out of the 125 new sanctions cases before the EU’s General Court in 2025, amid member states’ plans to massively expand the Russia blacklist.
“We should make it more difficult for Russian diplomats and spies to operate around Europe … reducing the numbers of Russian diplomats, many of whom are serving agents and just gearing up for a crisis,” Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski said.
Russia has quietly complied with an EU demand to eject some 20 diplomats from Brussels, amid a noisy dispute with Berlin on diplomat expulsions and the Leipzig airport sabotage plot.
Russian airstrikes killed a total of 400 Ukrainian civilians in July because Kyiv did not have enough interceptor missiles, but Greece and Spain declined to open their stockpiles at an EU defence ministers’ meeting in the Druids Glen golf club.
Iceland’s No to EU was poetic, but decadent in a hard-power eraI’m not surprised that Iceland voted No to resuming EU accession talks, but the romance of the old man of the sea is a luxury that may soon pass its sell-by date.
Frankfurt is among the few plausible options to take on EU handling of Israeli bonds, after Ireland and Luxembourg de-banked them on human rights grounds.
Slovenia undermined Western reaction to Israel’s drastic carve-up of the West Bank, signalling that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a new EU inside-man.
Some talented Palestinian students are trapped in Gaza because Belgium says it cannot help them reach universities in Europe – and yet Italy is taking in hundreds of others, amid Israel’s demolition of Palestinian academia.
“Putin Always Chickens Out”, so far, but his humiliations in Ukraine, as well as Chinese pressure, could push him to test Nato resolve like never before.
Morocco has shown it could stop people swimming to Spanish enclaves if it wanted to, amid fears in Spain and Portugal it was abusing the crisis to extort political concessions.
This SUMMER: EU leaders on the beach, Putin blocked by Ukrainian dronesSome EU leaders are jetting to hotels and mansions as Europe slows down for summer, but Putin is not expected at his favourite palace in Sochi due to Ukrainian drones.
Vladimir Putinâs envoy to the EU had a strange career path, a spy-linked uncle, spy friends, and allegedly played a role in pre-Brexit dirty tricks in the UK.
“The option that got the most support was banning trade with illegal settlements,” said EU foreign affairs chief Kallas, after talks with the 27 foreign ministers on Monday.
