A distant explosion rings out near the entrance to Zawtar al-Gharbiyah, but the Lebanese soldier at the checkpoint doesn't blink. In this southern village, designated a 'pilot zone' for reconstruction, the peace is punctuated by the constant buzz of surveillance drones and the wreckage of homes lost to artillery fire.
For years, Alexander Lukashenko played a cynical game of political blackmail, leveraging the threat of Western rapprochement to extract concessions from Moscow. According to former UN special rapporteur Anaïs Marin, that era of autonomy ended in 2020, leaving the Belarusian leader tethered to the Kremlin’s survival.
Conflict lead: While German officials finally point to Moscow as the architect of recent sabotage attempts, military expert Nico Lange argues that Berlin’s long-standing paralysis stems from an irrational fear of escalation. For the Kremlin, this is not a hybrid campaign but a continuous, multi-front war against Western supporters of Ukraine.
While Vladimir Putin publicly dismisses the prospect of a new mobilization wave as Western propaganda, the Kremlin has spent the last year quietly building a rigid legal and administrative architecture that would allow for rapid, forced conscription the moment the decision is made.
Skarżysko and Lublin firefighters spent the final days of August battling blazes at drone manufacturing sites, marking the latest targets in a widening shadow war. From explosive payloads at Leipzig airport to arson attempts in Slovakia, these incidents signal a coordinated escalation in Russia’s hybrid campaign against Western infrastructure.
Conflict: Despite years of failed appeals, Russian elites remain undeterred in their legal offensive against European sanctions. As Brussels prepares to expand its blacklist by hundreds of names, attorneys report that the appetite for litigation in Luxembourg courts shows no signs of waning, challenging the EU's restrictive measures head-on.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is pinning his re-election hopes on a 2.5 percent GDP growth forecast, a figure that dwarfs the European Union average. Yet, as Swedes head to the polls on 13 September, this macroeconomic optimism is colliding with deep-seated public anxiety over welfare, education, and persistent gang violence.
With a 79 percent surge in defence spending since 2020, European nations are scrambling to fortify their borders against potential Russian aggression. Yet, a new report from the European Court of Auditors suggests that massive capital injections may fail to yield actual readiness without a fundamental shift in procurement strategy.
Romania is set to lose €770 million in European Union funding after political parties failed to finalize a public-sector wage reform. Despite long-standing commitments to Brussels, the inability to reconcile conflicting fiscal demands between the Social Democrats and the Liberal caretaker government has effectively shuttered access to the Recovery and Resilience Facility.
Europe’s ambitious plans to overhaul its infrastructure and accelerate the green transition are colliding with a painful fiscal reality. As borrowing costs hit multi-year highs across the eurozone, the capital required to fund defense, power grids, and renewable energy is becoming significantly more expensive, threatening to stall the continent's long-term investment goals.
“We will not give up and we will not give in,” European Parliament president Roberta Metsola declared Thursday, responding to an eight-to-one jury verdict that cleared Maltese tycoon Yorgen Fenech of masterminding the 2017 assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
The European Commission is demanding clarity from Spain regarding its formal request for an expanded Frontex presence in Ceuta. While Brussels prioritizes the proposal following a sharp rise in border crossings, officials insist that specific operational questions must be resolved before the agency can extend its reach beyond current port duties.
A small flower tattoo on a female applicant’s calf became the focal point of a legal battle against Italy’s state police, as the European Court of Justice found that rigid uniform requirements—specifically the mandate for women to wear skirts—constitute gender-based discrimination in the recruitment process.
Anna Unger faces a monumental challenge as the newly elected president of the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office, tasked with reclaiming assets siphoned during sixteen years of Fidesz rule. Her appointment has already ignited fierce debate over whether her mandate should focus on legal precision or historical accountability.
A violent confrontation between Ukraine’s SBU and HUR intelligence services in Kyiv has left three officers injured and prompted an urgent rebuke from President Volodymyr Zelensky. The incident, which saw elite units trading gunfire in a residential district, highlights a deepening, public rivalry between the country’s primary security agencies.
A blue Trabant parked beneath the stage in Rosslau serves as a backdrop for Ulrich Siegmund’s promise of a national rebirth. As the AfD’s candidate for Saxony-Anhalt, the 35-year-old is mobilizing voters with a vision of a transformed Germany, where nationalist pride dictates policy and the east leads the political shift.
As Hungary dismantles the state-sponsored patronage networks of Viktor Orbán, those same tactics are surfacing in Serbia. Just weeks before critical national elections, private intermediaries linked to Budapest have moved to acquire the country's last remaining independent broadcasters, raising urgent questions about the export of authoritarian media control.
Farmers from France to Poland have taken to the streets to protest the EU-Mercosur deal, highlighting a growing disconnect between Brussels' trade strategy and local economic realities. As the bloc pushes forward, new research suggests that while most regions stand to gain, the benefits remain unevenly distributed across the continent.
European ministers gather in Dublin this Thursday to navigate a widening rift over the bloc’s seven-year budget, where a sharp disconnect between grand political ambitions and proposed fiscal constraints threatens to paralyze negotiations. Lead negotiators are already signaling deep frustration with member states demanding increased output while simultaneously pushing for massive cuts.
If the Alternative for Germany (AfD) secures a state victory this Sunday, the party’s primary target will not be political rivals, but the press. With polls placing the party 17 points clear in Saxony-Anhalt, the radical-right group has already signaled that crippling public media is their first order of business.
Seven million pairs of Meta’s updated Ray-Ban smart glasses have hit the market in 2025, sparking a wave of non-consensual filming that has left privacy advocates demanding an EU-wide ban. Brussels, however, insists that existing data protection laws already cover the wearable tech, effectively side-stepping calls for new, specific regulation.
“Our ally, Germany, has been attacked in what appears to be a series of actions of state terrorism,” Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski stated on Wednesday. Following a foiled bomb plot at Leipzig airport, Warsaw is spearheading a push to expel more Russian diplomats and restrict intelligence operations across the continent.
European trade officials are finalizing a new instrument requiring companies in critical sectors to expand their supplier networks, aiming to dismantle the bloc’s growing reliance on Chinese imports. Ditte Juul Jørgensen, the Commission’s director-general for trade, confirmed the move during a Wednesday hearing before the European Parliament’s international trade committee.
European ministers gather in Dublin this Thursday to break a persistent deadlock over the next seven-year EU budget. As the Irish presidency attempts to reconcile the demands of fiscally conservative nations against those prioritizing regional subsidies, the current proposal sits between commission ambitions and the resistance of net-contributor states.
Sixty-six percent of Israelis now fear their country is spiraling into a pariah state, yet the German government remains trapped by a rigid interpretation of its own historical responsibilities. While Berlin debates sanctioning extremist ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir, the focus on individuals ignores the systemic erosion of Palestinian statehood.
The rapid expansion of Russia’s jet-powered drone fleet has fundamentally altered the aerial battlefield, forcing Ukraine to grapple with a new class of weaponry that defies traditional interception methods. By integrating Soviet-era industrial scale with agile private innovation, Moscow is successfully outpacing current defensive capabilities as winter approaches.
Pierre Wunsch, governor of the National Bank of Belgium, has challenged the European Union’s commitment to its 2050 climate goals. Speaking in Brussels, the European Central Bank policymaker warned that maintaining targets widely perceived as unattainable risks undermining the overall legitimacy of the bloc’s environmental policy framework.
A coalition of 29 US states recently secured a landmark settlement with Meta, compelling the tech giant to impose daily time limits and nighttime blackouts for users under 18. As the European Commission pursues its own investigation into Meta’s addictive design, regulators are weighing if similar concessions are feasible in Brussels.
Russia has recalled approximately 20 diplomats from its mission to the European Union, meeting a strict September 1 deadline imposed by Brussels. The move, which notably lacks the usual retaliatory measures against EU staff in Moscow, follows allegations that the Russian delegation was used as a cover for espionage activities.
Council of Europe human rights commissioner Michael O’Flaherty recently framed rising hostility toward the LGBTI community as a terminal symptom of democratic decay. Yet, by conflating distinct legal and social conflicts under a single narrative of backlash, his analysis risks undermining the very democratic protections it seeks to defend.
