Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music In Litauen erreicht der Aufbau der Panzerbrigade 45 einen neuen Meilenstein: Die Multinational Battlegroup Lithuania wird offiziell unterstellt, Deutschlands bislang größtes Auslandsprojekt der Bundeswehr nimmt sichtbar Gestalt an. Rixa Fürsen berichtet direkt aus Kaunas über eisige Temperaturen, fehlende Infrastruktur und warum diese Brigade als Leuchtturm der Zeitenwende gilt. Außerdem: Außenminister Johann Wadephul wirbt in Canberra für ein neues Freihandelsabkommen. Warum Australien strategisch wichtiger wird – als Partner gegen Protektionismus, für Rohstoffsicherheit bei Lithium und Kupfer, und für eine regelbasierte Handelsordnung jenseits von Mercosur und Indien. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski. POLITICO Deutschland – ein Angebot der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH Axel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 Berlin Tel: +49 (30) 2591 0 information@axelspringer.de Sitz: Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg, HRB 196159 B USt-IdNr: DE 214 852 390 Geschäftsführer: Carolin Hulshoff Pol, Mathias Sanchez Luna

The EU’s top sports official has sharply criticized FIFA President Gianni Infantino for saying that world football’s governing body should lift its ban on Russia competing in international tournaments.  Infantino said Monday that Russia, which was banned by FIFA following the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, should be allowed to compete again, claiming that bans and boycotts “create more hatred.” It would send a positive message to have “girls and boys from Russia” participating in football tournaments across Europe, he added.  European Sport Commissioner Glenn Micallef pushed back Wednesday, calling for the ban to remain in place in a social media post with the hashtag #YellowCardForFIFA.  “Sport does not exist in a vacuum. It reflects who we are and what we choose to stand for,” Micallef said. “Letting aggressors return to global football as if nothing happened ignores real security risks and deep pain caused by the war.”  Infantino’s remarks also drew a furious response from Ukraine.   “679 Ukrainian girls and boys will never be able to play football — Russia killed them,” said Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Minister Andrii Sybiha on social media. “And it keeps killing more while moral degenerates suggest lifting bans, despite Russia’s failure to end its war.”  Moscow, unsurprisingly, embraced Infantino’s suggestion. “We have seen these statements [by Infantino], and we welcome them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “It’s high time to think about this.”  The U.S. is hosting the men’s World Cup this summer together with Mexico and Canada. Even if the ban were lifted, Russia could not compete as it did not take part in the qualifying rounds.  Infantino maintains close ties with Donald Trump and in December gave him the newly created FIFA Peace Prize — widely seen as a token honor — after the American president was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The sporting world is increasingly softening in its stance on Russian participation in tournaments, with International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry signaling that Russian athletes shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of their government.

BRUSSELS — Ukraine’s war chest stands to get a vital cash injection after EU envoys agreed on a €90 billion loan to finance Kyiv’s defense against Russia, the Cypriot Council presidency said on Wednesday. “The new financing will help ensure the country’s fierce resilience in the face of Russian aggression,” Cypriot Finance Minister Makis Keravnos said in a statement. Without the loan Ukraine had risked running out of cash by April, which would have been catastrophic for its war effort and could have crippled its negotiating efforts during ongoing American-backed peace talks with Russia. EU lawmakers still have some hurdles to clear, such as agreeing on the conditions Ukraine must satisfy to get a payout, before Brussels can raise money on the global debt market to finance the loan — which is backed by the EU’s seven-year budget. A big point of dispute among EU countries was how Ukraine will be able to spend the money, and who will benefit. One-third of the money will go for normal budgetary needs and the rest for defense. France led efforts to get Ukraine to spend as much of that as possible with EU defense companies, mindful that the bloc’s taxpayers are footing the €3 billion annual bill to cover interest payments on the loan. However, Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian nations pushed to give Ukraine as much flexibility as possible. The draft deal, seen by POLITICO, will allow Ukraine to buy key weapons from third countries — including the U.S. and the U.K. — either when no equivalent product is available in the EU or when there is an urgent need, while also strengthening the oversight of EU states over such derogations. The list of weapons Kyiv will be able to buy outside the bloc includes air and missile defense systems, fighter aircraft ammunition and deep-strike capabilities. If the U.K. or other third countries like South Korea, which have signed security deals with the EU and have helped Ukraine, want to take part in procurement deals beyond that, they will have to contribute financially to help cover interest payments on the loan. The European Parliament must now examine the changes the Council has made to the legal text. | Philipp von Ditfurth/picture alliance via Getty Images The text also mentions that the contribution of non-EU countries — to be agreed in upcoming negotiations with the European Commission — should be proportional to how much their defense firms could gain from taking part in the scheme. Canada, which already has a deal to take part in the EU’s separate €150 billion SAFE loans-for-weapons scheme, will not have to pay extra to take part in the Ukraine program, but would have detail the products that could be procured by Kyiv. NEXT STEPS Now that ambassadors have reached a deal, the European Parliament must examine the changes the Council has made to the legal text before approving the measure. If all goes well, Kyiv will get €45 billion from the EU this year in tranches. The remaining cash will arrive in 2027. Ukraine will only repay the money if Moscow ends its full-scale invasion and pays war reparations. If Russia refuses, the EU will consider raiding the Kremlin’s frozen assets lying in financial institutions across the bloc. While the loan will keep Ukrainian forces in the fight, the amount won’t cover Kyiv’s total financing needs — even with another round of loans, worth $8 billion, expected from the International Monetary Fund. By the IMF’s own estimates, Kyiv will need at least €135 billion to sustain its military and budgetary needs this year and next. Meanwhile, U.S. and EU officials are working on a plan to rebuild Ukraine that aims to attract $800 billion in public and private funds over 10 years. For that to happen, the eastern front must first fall silent — a remote likelihood at this point. Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting from Kyiv.

KYIV — U.S. President Donald Trump insists that Vladimir Putin kept his word on a weeklong pause in attacks on Ukrainian cities despite Russia’s massive missile barrage on Monday. Trump told reporters that Putin had made an agreement which expired on Sunday. “It was Sunday to Sunday, and it opened up and he hit them hard last night,” he said at the White House on Tuesday. “He kept his word on that … we’ll take anything, because it’s really, really cold over there.” However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the truce began last Friday, a day after Trump announced he reached a deal with Putin not to bomb Ukraine for a week, as freezing temperatures were coming. The pause was also supposedly tied to ongoing U.S.-led peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, which resumed Wednesday in Abu Dhabi. “We await the reaction of America to the Russian strikes,” Zelenskyy said in a Tuesday evening statement. “It was the U.S. proposal to halt strikes on energy during diplomacy and severe winter weather. The president of the United States made the request personally. Russia responded with a record number of ballistic missiles.” He also called for the U.S. Congress to finally approve new sanctions against Russia. “The U.S. Congress has long been working on a new sanctions bill, and there must be progress on it. European partners can take decisive steps regarding Russian oil tankers’ earnings for the war. Russia must feel pressure so that it moves in negotiations toward peace,” Zelenskyy said. Last week, Zelenskyy told journalists in Kyiv there was no formal agreement between Russia and Ukraine, but both sides agreed on the American proposal to pause strikes on each other’s energy facilities during the previous round of talks in Abu Dhabi.

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor and a foreign affairs columnist at POLITICO Europe. Another round of U.S.-brokered Ukraine talks commence today in Abu Dhabi. The overall outlook remains no less bleak for Ukraine, as it inches toward the fourth anniversary of Russia’s war. Yet there are signs that what comes out of this week’s face-to-face negotiations may finally answer a key question: Is Russian President Vladimir Putin serious? On the eve of the planned two-day talks, Russia resumed its large-scale air assault on Ukraine’s battered infrastructure after a brief weekend hiatus. Striking cities including Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Sumy and Odesa overnight with 450 drones and 71 missiles, including ballistic, Russia hit the country’s energy grid and residential houses as temperatures dropped below -20 degrees Celsius. “Putin must be deprived of illusions that he can achieve anything by his bombing, terror, and aggression,” pleaded Ukraine’s frustrated Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha. “Neither anticipated diplomatic efforts in Abu Dhabi this week nor his promises to the United States kept him from continuing terror against ordinary people in the harshest winter.” According to U.S. President Donald Trump, those promises included refraining from targeting Kyiv and other major cities for a whole week during a period of “extraordinary cold.” But no sooner had Trump spoken than Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov warned the break would only last a weekend. That’s hardly an auspicious launchpad to negotiations, and has many Ukrainian politicians arguing that Russia is merely going through the motions to ensure it doesn’t end up on the wrong side of an unpredictable U.S. leader — albeit one who seems inordinately patient with Putin, and much less so with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Not that Ukrainians had put much store in a week-long “energy ceasefire” to begin with. A vicious war has taught them to expect the worst. “Unfortunately, everything is entirely predictable,” posted Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak on Tuesday. “This is what a Russian ‘ceasefire’ looks like: during a brief thaw, stockpile enough missiles and then strike at night when temperatures drop to minus 24 Celsius or lower, targeting civilians. Russia sees no reason whatsoever to stop the war, halt genocidal practices, or engage in diplomacy. Only large-scale freezing tactics.” It’s difficult to quibble with his pessimism. Putin’s Kremlin has a long track record of using peace talks to delay, obfuscate, exhaust opponents and continue with war. It’s part of a playbook the Russian leader and his lugubrious Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov have used time and again in Ukraine, and for years in Syria. Nonetheless, according to some Ukrainian and U.S. sources familiar with the conduct of the talks, there are indications that the current negotiations may be more promising than widely credited. They say both sides are actually being more “constructive” — which, admittedly, is an adjective that has often been misused. “Before, these negotiations were like pulling teeth without anesthetic,” said a Republican foreign policy expert who has counseled Kyiv. Granted anonymity in order to speak freely, he said: “Before, I felt like screaming whenever I had to see another readout that said the discussions were ‘constructive.’ But now, I think they are constructive in some ways. I’m noticing the Russians are taking these talks more seriously.” It’s part of a playbook the Russian leader and his lugubrious Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov have used time and again in Ukraine, and for years in Syria. | Maxim Shipenkov/EPA Some of this, he said, owes to the skill of those now leading the Ukrainian team after the departure of Zelenskyy’s powerful former chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. Among the smartest and most able are: Yermak’s replacement as head of the Office of the President and former chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate Kyrylo Budanov; Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Rustem Umerov; and Davyd Arakhamia, who heads the parliamentary faction of Zelenskyy’s ruling Servant of the People party. “I am noticing since Davyd got involved … there’s been a noticeable improvement with the Russian negotiators. I think that’s because they respect them — especially Davyd — and because they see them as people who are living in reality and are prepared to compromise,” the expert explained. “I’m cautiously optimistic that we have a reasonable chance to end this conflict in the spring.” A former senior Ukrainian official who was also granted anonymity to speak to POLITICO was less optimistic, but even he concurred there’s been a shift in the mood music and a change in tone from Russia at the negotiating table. Describing the head of the Russian delegation, chief of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Igor Kostyukov, and Military Intelligence officer Alexander Zorin as practical men, he said neither were prone to giving long lectures on the conflict’s “root causes” — unlike Lavrov and Putin. “The Russian intelligence officers have been workmanlike, digging into practical details,” noted the former official, whom Zelenskyy’s office still consults. He hazards that the change may have to do with the Kremlin’s reading that Europe is getting more serious about continent-wide defense, ramping up weapons production and trying to become less dependent on the U.S. for its overall security. “Putin must be deprived of illusions that he can achieve anything by his bombing, terror, and aggression,” pleaded Ukraine’s frustrated Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha. | Olivier Matthys/EPA “A peace deal, an end of the war, could take a lot of the momentum out of this — European leaders would have a much tougher time selling to their voters the sacrifices that will be needed to shift to higher defense spending,” he said. Of course, Russia’s shift in tone may be another attempt to string Trump along. “Putin has almost nothing to show for the massive costs of the war. Accepting a negotiated settlement now, where he cannot claim a clear ‘win’ for Russia and for the Russian people, would be a big problem domestically,” argued retired Australian general Mick Ryan. Whatever the reasons, what emerges from Abu Dhabi in the coming days will likely tell us if Putin finally means business.

When Russia sent Georgy Avaliani to fight in Ukraine, he did exactly what German leaders proposed: He ran. A pacifist who fled the front after being forcibly conscripted, he says he survived beatings and mock executions in a “torture basement” before escaping Russia altogether. Last week, Germany told him it would be safe to go back. In a letter, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) rejected the 47-year-old’s asylum application, concluding he was unlikely to face persecution if he returned to Russia — a decision that has alarmed networks helping Russian soldiers flee the war. Advocates for deserters say the ruling reinforces Russian President Vladimir Putin’s message that there is no safe exit for those who flee the front, as European governments harden asylum policies and as peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have stalled. “Even if I could escape death, I’d get sent to the front or face a 15-year prison sentence,” said Avaliani, who is planning to appeal the decision.  The rejection comes at a sensitive time for Russians seeking to rebuild new lives abroad.  The United States last summer began deporting asylum seekers back to Russia, with the latest planeload landing just last week. And in November the EU tightened its visa rules for Russian citizens. “European politicians say that Russians need to fight Putin, that they need to resist,” said Alexei Alshansky, a former sergeant-major turned analyst at A Farewell to Arms, a group that assists Russian deserters.  “At the same time, people who have actually refused to fight for Putin and have gone through a very difficult journey are not receiving any help from those same countries,” he added.  FLEEING THE WAR Avaliani was among tens of thousands of Russians who were served call-up papers in September 2022 as part of Putin’s “partial mobilization” drive. A construction engineer and father of three, Avaliani said he had made it clear from the outset that he wouldn’t fight. “This is not my war. I’m a pacifist,” he told POLITICO. But his appeals for an exemption on health and family grounds were rejected. Tens of thousands of Russians were served call-up papers in 2022. | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images “It’s useless to try to fight the system,” he said. “If it wants to devour you, it will devour you. So I decided I had to act.” Within weeks of arriving at the front in eastern Ukraine, Avaliani fled — only to be captured and taken to what he describes as a “torture basement” in Russian-occupied Luhansk. There, he says, he was beaten and subjected to mock executions. The conditions, he said, were “inhumane.”  Returned to the front, he escaped again and was captured a second time. Finally, on his third try, he crossed into Belarus and from there traveled to Uzbekistan. While Avaliani lived in hiding abroad, he said, police visited his home and questioned his wife. In 2025 he and his family were reunited and applied for political asylum in Germany. CHANGE OF TUNE The decision to return Avaliani marks a stark reversal from Germany’s stance at the start of Russia’s full-on invasion of Ukraine. In September 2022, Marco Buschmann, then Germany’s justice minister, hailed the exodus of Russians of fighting age, saying on X that “anyone who hates Putin’s policies and loves liberal democracy is very welcome here in Germany.” The interior minister at the time, Nancy Faeser, echoed that sentiment, telling the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper that “anyone who courageously opposes President Vladimir Putin’s regime and therefore puts themselves in grave danger can apply for asylum in Germany on grounds of political persecution.”  In 2022 and 2023 about one in 10 Russian men of military age who reached Germany received some form of legal protection from the country. In 2024 and 2025 that number dropped sharply to around 4 percent.  The change coincided with a shift in the political climate. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government, which took office last May, has led a crackdown on migration, hoping to lure voters away from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) — now the largest opposition party in Germany’s Bundestag. The rejection letter that Avaliani received, seen by POLITICO, stated he was unlikely to face persecution in Russia beyond a fine. Russia, it added, is no longer actively mobilizing men. Friedrich Merz’s government has led a crackdown on migration. | Nadja Wohlleben/Getty Images When it comes to defectors like Avaliani, the letter concludes, there is no “considerable likelihood of concrete and sustained interest in them on the part of the Russian state or other actors.”  CARBON COPY Rights activists argue that the assessment of the German authorities denies what is going on in Russia. Many who were mobilized and sent to the front in 2022 have yet to come home. Russia continues to recruit some 30,000 soldiers monthly.  The letter to Avaliani reads like a carbon copy of rejections sent to other defectors, said Artyom Klyga, a lawyer with Connection, an organization that helps conscientious objectors.  “It’s like they [the authorities] use a single Word document, a template that they slightly adapt,” Klyga said.  He argued that German authorities fail to distinguish between draft dodgers — men who fled the country to avoid being mobilized — and defectors like Avaliani, who were actually served call-up papers.   For them, the risk of returning to Russia is not a fine but jail time or a forced return to the front.  Asked for a reaction, Germany’s BAMF migration office said it couldn’t comment on individual cases but noted that every asylum application “involves an examination of each individual case, in which every refugee story presented is carefully reviewed.” The agency added that protection is only granted to applicants with a well-founded fear of persecution. BURDEN OF PROOF In practice, some argue, applicants like Avaliani face an impossible burden of proof.  “Ultimately, [the German authorities] try to talk their way out of [granting asylum] with statistics,” said Peter von Auer, a legal expert at German refugee advocacy organization Pro Asyl.  “They argue that it is statistically unlikely that what asylum seekers suspect or fear will happen, will befall them.” Out of 8,201 Russian men of military age who have applied for asylum in Germany since 2022, just 416 — about 5 percent — were granted some form of protection, such as being given asylum status, according to figures provided by the government in response to a parliamentary question. Deserters presumably comprise a small minority of those cases, given the significant barriers faced by those who have already been drafted to make their way out of Russia and then on to Europe. Alshansky, the A Farewell to Arms co-founder, argued that deporting people like Avaliani undercuts Europe’s promise to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia. The asylum rejection “helps Putin to maintain the idea that it’s useless to run.” In fact, he said, the calculus is simple: “The more deserters there are, the easier it will be to defend Ukraine.”

5 TIMES THE WINTER OLYMPICS GOT SUPER POLITICAL Invasions, nuclear crises and Nazi propaganda: The Games have seen it all. By SEBASTIAN STARCEVIC Illustration by Natália Delgado /POLITICO The Winter Olympics return to Europe this week, with Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo set to host the world’s greatest athletes against the snowy backdrop of the Italian Alps. But beyond the ice rinks and ski runs, the Games have long doubled as a stage for global alliances, heated political rivalries and diplomatic crises.  “An event like the Olympics is inherently political because it is effectively a competition between nations,” said Madrid’s IE Assistant Professor Andrew Bertoli, who studies the intersection of sport and politics. “So the Games can effectively become an arena where nations compete for prestige, respect and soft power.” If history is any guide, this time won’t be any different. From invasions to the Nazis to nuclear crises, here are five times politics and the Winter Olympics collided. 1980: AMERICA’S “MIRACLE ON ICE” One of the most iconic moments in Olympic history came about amid a resurgence in Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The USSR had invaded Afghanistan only months earlier, and Washington’s rhetoric toward Moscow had hardened, with Ronald Reagan storming to the presidency a month prior on an aggressive anti-Soviet platform. At the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York, that superpower rivalry was on full display on the ice. The U.S. men’s ice hockey team — made up largely of college players and amateurs — faced off against the Soviet squad, a battle-hardened, gold medal-winning machine. The Americans weren’t supposed to stand a chance. Then the impossible happened. In a stunning upset, the U.S. team skated to a 4-3 victory, a win that helped them clinch the gold medal. As the final seconds ticked away, ABC broadcaster Al Michaels famously cried, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” The impact echoed far beyond the rink. For many Americans, the victory was a morale boost in a period marked by geopolitical anxiety and division. Reagan later said it was proof “nice guys in a tough world can finish first.” The miracle’s legacy has endured well into the 21st century, with U.S. President Donald Trump awarding members of the hockey team the Congressional Gold Medal in December last year. 2014: RUSSIA INVADES CRIMEA AFTER SOCHI Four days. That’s how long Moscow waited after hosting the Winter Olympics in the Russian resort city of Sochi before sending troops into Crimea, occupying and annexing the Ukrainian peninsula. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had fled to Moscow days earlier, ousted by protesters demanding democracy and closer integration with the EU. As demonstrators filled Kyiv’s Independence Square, their clashes with government forces played on television screens around the world alongside highlights from the Games, in which Russia dominated the medal tally. Vladimir Putin poses with Russian athletes while visiting the Coastal Cluster Olympic Village ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. | Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images No sooner was the Olympic flame extinguished in Sochi on Feb. 23 than on Feb. 27 trucks and tanks rolled into Crimea. Soldiers in unmarked uniforms set up roadblocks, stormed Crimean government buildings and raised the Russian flag high above them. Later that year, Moscow would face allegations of a state-sponsored doping program and many of its athletes were ultimately stripped of their gold medals. 2022: RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE … AGAIN There’s a theme here. Russian President Vladimir Putin made an appearance at the opening ceremony of Beijing’s Winter Games in 2022, meeting on the sidelines with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and declaring a “no limits” partnership. Four days after the end of the Games, on Feb. 24, Putin announced a “special military operation,” declaring war on Ukraine. Within minutes, Russian troops flooded into Ukraine, and missiles rained down on Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities across the country. According to U.S. intelligence, The New York Times reported, Chinese officials asked the Kremlin to delay launching its attack until after the Games had wrapped up. Beijing denied it had advance knowledge of the invasion. 2018: KOREAN UNITY ON DISPLAY As South Korea prepared to host the Winter Games in its mountainous Pyeongchang region, just a few hundred kilometers over the border, the North Koreans were conducting nuclear missile tests, sparking global alarm and leading U.S. President Donald Trump to threaten to strike the country. The IOC said it was “closely monitoring” the situation amid concerns about whether the Games could be held safely on the peninsula. South Korean Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-Sung, shakes hands with the head of North Korean delegation Jon Jong-Su after their meeting on January 17, 2018 in Panmunjom, South Korea. | South Korean Unification Ministry via Getty Images But then in his New Year’s address, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un signaled openness to participating in the Winter Olympics. In the end, North Korean athletes not only participated in the Games, but at the opening ceremony they marched with their South Korean counterparts under a single flag, that of a unified Korea. Pyongyang and Seoul also joined forces in women’s ice hockey, sending a single team to compete — another rare show of unity that helped restart diplomatic talks between the capitals, though tensions ultimately resumed after the Games and continue to this day. 1936: HITLER INVADES THE RHINELAND Much has been said about the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, in which the Nazi regime barred Jewish athletes from participating and used the Games to spread propaganda. But a few months earlier Germany also hosted the Winter Olympics in the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, allowing the Nazis to project an image of a peaceful, prosperous Germany and restore its global standing nearly two decades after World War I. A famous photograph from the event even shows Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels signing autographs for the Canadian figure skating team. Weeks after the Games ended, Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, a major violation of the Treaty of Versailles that was met with little pushback from France and Britain, and which some historians argue emboldened the Nazis to eventually invade Poland, triggering World War II.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Kiew im tiefsten Winter: minus 20 Grad, Angriffe auf Energieanlagen, Menschen ohne Strom und Heizung. Trotz angekündigter Feuerpause setzt Russland seine Attacken fort. Während Präsident Wolodymyr Selenskyj gemeinsam mit NATO-Generalsekretär Mark Rutte Blumen niederlegt, heulen in der Hauptstadt erneut die Sirenen. Im Gespräch mit dem Sicherheits- und Ukraine-Experten Nico Lange wird deutlich, wie dramatisch die Lage ist und warum Europas Reaktion weit hinter dem Notwendigen zurückbleibt. Es geht um fehlende Luftverteidigung, zu langsame Lieferungen von Patriot-Systemen, die weiterhin aktive russische Schattenflotte und die politischen Illusionen rund um schnelle Deals und große Friedensversprechen. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski. POLITICO Deutschland – ein Angebot der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH Axel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 Berlin Tel: +49 (30) 2591 0 information@axelspringer.de Sitz: Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg, HRB 196159 B USt-IdNr: DE 214 852 390 Geschäftsführer: Carolin Hulshoff Pol, Mathias Sanchez Luna

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday preparatory work was under way to restart direct discussions between Europe and Russia over the war in Ukraine. “It has to be prepared, so technical discussions are under way to prepare for this,” Macron said, answering a reporter who asked the president about his call in December to restart talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It is important that Europeans restore their own channels of communication, it is being prepared at the technical level,” Macron added, during a visit to farmers in the Haute-Saône department. Macron said talks with Putin should be coordinated with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his “main European colleagues,” insisting on the role of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” which brings together like-minded countries supporting Ukraine. The president was, however, quick to note that, by continuing to bomb Ukraine, Russia was not showing any willingness to negotiate a peace deal. “First and foremost, today, we continue to support Ukraine, which is under bombs, in the cold, with attacks on civilians and on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure by the Russians, which are intolerable and don’t show a real willingness to negotiate for peace.”

FIFA President Gianni Infantino said Monday the world football governing body should lift its ban on Russia competing in international tournaments. Russia was banned from taking part in international football tournaments by FIFA immediately following the country’s invasion of Ukraine in the winter of 2022. The ban has remained in place, though youth teams have been allowed to compete since 2023. “We have to,” Infantino told Sky News in an interview when asked if he would look into lifting the ban. “I’m against bans, I’m against boycotts as well,” he added, saying they just “create more hatred.”  It would send a positive message to have “girls and boys from Russia” participating in football tournaments across Europe, he said.   Infantino maintains close ties with U.S. President Donald Trump and awarded him the newly created FIFA Peace Prize — widely seen as a token honor after the American president did not get the Nobel Peace Prize despite campaigning heavily for it — in December. FIFA also opened an office in New York’s Trump Tower in July and appointed Trump’s daughter Ivanka to the board of an education charity project co-funded by 2026 FIFA World Cup ticket sales.  The U.S. is hosting the World Cup this summer together with Mexico and Canada and has faced calls for boycotts from some quarters of politics and society over the Trump administration’s foreign policy. Russia hosted the tournament in 2018.