BERLIN — German Defense Minister Boris Pistorus will spend next week touring the Indo-Pacific with a passel of corporate chiefs in tow to make deals across the region. It’s part of an effort to mark a greater impact in an area where Berlin’s presence has been minor, but whose importance is growing as Germany looks to build up access to natural resources, technology and allies in a fracturing world. “If you look at the Indo-Pacific, Germany is essentially starting from scratch,” said Bastian Ernst, a defense lawmaker from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats. “We don’t have an established role yet, we’re only just beginning to figure out what that should be.” Pistorius leaves Friday on an eight-day tour to Japan, Singapore and Australia where he’ll be aiming to build relations with other like-minded middle powers — mirroring countries from France to Canada as they scramble to figure out new relationships in a world destabilized by Russia, China and a United States led by Donald Trump. “Germany recognizes this principle of interconnected theaters,” said Elli-Katharina Pohlkamp, visiting fellow of the Asia Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Berlin, she said, “increasingly sees Europe’s focus on Russia and Asia’s focus on China and North Korea as security issues that are linked.” The military and defense emphasis of next week’s trip marks a departure from Berlin’s 2020 Indo-Pacific guidelines, which laid a much heavier focus on trade and diplomacy. Pistorius’ outreach will be especially important as Germany rapidly ramps up military spending at home. Berlin is on track to boost its defense budget to around €150 billion a year by the end of the decade and is preparing tens of billions in new procurement contracts. But not everything Germany needs can be sourced in Europe. Australia is one of the few alternatives to China in critical minerals essential to the defense industry. It’s a leading supplier of lithium and one of the only significant producers of separated rare earth materials outside China. Australia also looms over a key German defense contract. Berlin is considering whether to stick with a naval laser weapon being developed by homegrown firms Rheinmetall and MBDA, or team up with Australia’s EOS instead. That has become a more sensitive political question in Berlin. WELT, owned by POLITICO’s parent company Axel Springer, reported that lawmakers had stopped the planned contract for the German option, reflecting wider concern over whether Berlin should back a domestic system or move faster with a foreign one. That means what Pistorius sees in Australia could end up shaping a decision back in Germany. TALKING TO TOKYO Japan offers something different — not raw materials but military integration, logistics and technology.  Pohlkamp said the military side of the relationship with Japan is now “very much about interoperability and compatibility, built through joint exercises, mutual visits, closer staff work, expanded information exchange and mutual learning.” She described Japan as “a kind of yardstick for Germany,” a country that lives with “an enormous threat perception” not only militarily but also economically, because it is surrounded by pressure from China, North Korea and Russia.  The Japan-Germany Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement took effect in July 2024, giving the two militaries a framework for reciprocal supplies and services and making future port calls for naval vessels, exercises and recurring cooperation easier to sustain.  Pohlkamp said what matters most to Tokyo are not headline-grabbing deployments but “plannable, recurring contributions, which are more valuable than big, one-off shows of force.” But that ambition only goes so far if Germany’s presence remains sporadic. Bundeswehr recruits march on the market square to take their ceremonial oath in Altenburg on March 19, 2026. | Bodo Schackow/picture alliance via Getty Images Berlin has sent military assets to the region for training exercises in recent years — a frigate in 2021, combat aircraft in 2022, army participation in 2023, and a larger naval mission in 2024. But as pressure grows on Germany to beef up its military to hold off Russia, along with its growing presence in Lithuania and its effort to keep supplying Ukraine with weapons, the attention given to Asia is shrinking. The government told parliament last year it sent no frigate in 2025, plans none in 2026 and has not yet decided on 2027. Germany’s current military engagement in the Indo-Pacific consists of a single P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, sent to India in February as part of the Indo-Pacific Deployment 2026 exercises.  Germany, according to Ernst, is still “relatively blank” in the region. What it can contribute militarily remains narrow: “A bit of maritime patrol, a frigate, mine clearance.” Pohlkamp said Germany’s role in Asia is still being built “in small doses” and is largely symbolic. But what matters is whether Berlin can turn occasional visits and deployments into something steadier and more predictable. The defense ministry insists that is the point of Pistorius’s trip. Ministry spokesperson Mitko Müller said Wednesday that Europe and the Indo-Pacific are “inseparably linked,” citing the rules-based order, sea lanes, international law and the role of the two regions in global supply and value chains.  The new P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft stands in front of a technical hangar at Nordholz airbase on Nov. 20, 2025. | Christian Butt/picture alliance via Getty Images The trip is meant to focus on the regional security situation, expanding strategic dialogue, current and possible military cooperation, joint exercises including future Indo-Pacific deployments, and industrial cooperation. That explains why industry is traveling with Pistorius.  Müller said executives from Airbus, TKMS, MBDA, Quantum Systems, Diehl and Rohde & Schwarz are coming along, suggesting Berlin sees the trip as a chance to widen defense ties on the ground. But any larger German role in Asia would have to careful calibrated to avoid angering China — a key trading partner that is very wary of European powers expanding their regional presence. “That leaves Germany trying to do two things at once,” Pohlkamp said. “First, show up often enough to matter, but not so forcefully that it gets dragged into a confrontation it is neither politically nor militarily prepared to sustain.”

Anton, a 44-year-old Russian soldier who heads a workshop responsible for repairing and supplying drones, was at his kitchen table when he learned last month that Elon Musk’s SpaceX had cut off access to Starlink terminals used by Russian forces. He scrambled for alternatives, but none offered unlimited internet, data plans were restrictive, and coverage did not extend to the areas of Ukraine where his unit operated. It’s not only American tech executives who are narrowing communications options for Russians. Days later, Russian authorities began slowing down access nationwide to the messaging app Telegram, the service that frontline troops use to coordinate directly with one another and bypass slower chains of command. “All military work goes through Telegram — all communication,” Anton, whose name has been changed because he fears government reprisal, told POLITICO in voice messages sent via the app. “That would be like shooting the entire Russian army in the head.” Telegram would be joining a home screen’s worth of apps that have become useless to Russians. Kremlin policymakers have already blocked or limited access to WhatsApp, along with parent company Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Google’s YouTube, Apple’s FaceTime, Snapchat and X, which like SpaceX is owned by Musk. Encrypted messaging apps Signal and Discord, as well as Japanese-owned Viber, have been inaccessible since 2024. Last month, President Vladimir Putin signed a law requiring telecom operators to block cellular and fixed internet access at the request of the Federal Security Service. Shortly after it took effect on March 3, Moscow residents reported widespread problems with mobile internet, calls and text messages across all major operators for several days, with outages affecting mobile service and Wi-Fi even inside the State Duma. Those decisions have left Russians increasingly cut off from both the outside world and one another, complicating battlefield coordination and disrupting online communities that organize volunteer aid, fundraising and discussion of the war effort. Deepening digital isolation could turn Russia into something akin to “a large, nuclear-armed North Korea and a junior partner to China,” according to Alexander Gabuev, the Berlin-based director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. In April, the Kremlin is expected to escalate its campaign against Telegram — already one of Russia’s most popular messaging platforms, but now in the absence of other social-media options, a central hub for news, business and entertainment. It may block the platform altogether. That is likely to fuel an escalating struggle between state censorship and the tools people use to evade it, with Russia’s place in the world hanging in the balance. “It’s turned into a war,” said Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the internet Protection Society, a digital rights group that monitors Russia’s censorship infrastructure. “A guerrilla war. They hunt down the VPNs they can see, they block them — and the ‘partisans’ run, build new bunkers, and come back.” THE APP THAT RUNS THE WAR On Feb. 4, SpaceX tightened the authentication system that Starlink terminals use to connect to its satellite network, introducing stricter verification for registered devices. The change effectively blocked many terminals operated by Russian units relying on unauthorized connections, cutting Starlink traffic inside Ukraine by roughly 75 percent, according to internet traffic analysis by Doug Madory, an analyst at the U.S. network monitoring firm Kentik. The move threw Russian operations into disarray, allowing Ukraine to make battlefield gains. Russia has turned to a workaround widely used before satellite internet was an option: laying fiber-optic lines, from rear areas toward frontline battlefield positions. Until then, Starlink terminals had allowed drone operators to stream live video through platforms such as Discord, which is officially blocked in Russia but still sometimes used by the Russian military via VPNs, to commanders at multiple levels. A battalion commander could watch an assault unfold in real time and issue corrections — “enemy ahead” or “turn left” — via radio or Telegram. What once required layers of approval could now happen in minutes. Satellite-connected messaging apps became the fastest way to transmit coordinates, imagery and targeting data. But on Feb. 10, Roskomnadzor, the Russian communications regulator, began slowing down Telegram for users across Russia, citing alleged violations of Russian law. Russian news outlet RBC reported, citing two sources, that authorities plan to shut down Telegram in early April — though not on the front line. In mid-February, Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev said the government did not yet intend to restrict Telegram at the front but hoped servicemen would gradually transition to other platforms. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said this week the company could avoid a full ban by complying with Russian legislation and maintaining what he described as “flexible contact” with authorities. Roskomnadzor has accused Telegram of failing to protect personal data, combat fraud and prevent its use by terrorists and criminals. Similar accusations have been directed at other foreign tech platforms. In 2022, a Russian court designated Meta an “extremist organization” after the company said it would temporarily allow posts calling for violence against Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine war — a decision authorities used to justify blocking Facebook and Instagram in Russia and increasing pressure on the company’s other services, including WhatsApp. Telegram founder Pavel Durov, a Russian-born entrepreneur now based in the United Arab Emirates, says the throttiling is being used as a pretext to push Russians toward a government-controlled messaging app designed for surveillance and political censorship. That app is MAX, which was launched in March 2025 and has been compared to China’s WeChat in its ambition to anchor a domestic digital ecosystem. Authorities are increasingly steering Russians toward MAX through employers, neighborhood chats and the government services portal Gosuslugi — where citizens retrieve documents, pay fines and book appointments — as well as through banks and retailers. The app’s developer, VK, reports rapid user growth, though those figures are difficult to independently verify. “They didn’t just leave people to fend for themselves — you could say they led them by the hand through that adaptation by offering alternatives,” said Levada Center pollster Denis Volkov, who has studied Russian attitudes toward technology use. The strategy, he said, has been to provide a Russian or state-backed alternative for the majority, while stopping short of fully criminalizing workarounds for more technologically savvy users who do not want to switch. Elena, a 38-year-old Yekaterinburg resident whose surname has been withheld because she fears government reprisal, said her daughter’s primary school moved official communication from WhatsApp to MAX without consulting parents. She keeps MAX installed on a separate tablet that remains mostly in a drawer — a version of what some Russians call a “MAXophone,” gadgets solely for that app, without any other data being left on those phones for the (very real) fear the government could access it. “It works badly. Messages are delayed. Notifications don’t come,” she said. “I don’t trust it … And this whole situation just makes people angry.” THE VPN ARMS RACE Unlike China’s centralized “Great Firewall,” which filters traffic at the country’s digital borders, Russia’s system operates internally. Internet providers are required to route traffic through state-installed deep packet inspection equipment capable of controlling and analyzing data flows in real time. “It’s not one wall,” Klimarev said. “It’s thousands of fences. You climb one, then there’s another.” The architecture allows authorities to slow services without formally banning them — a tactic used against YouTube before its web address was removed from government-run domain-name servers last month. Russian law explicitly provides government authority for blocking websites on grounds such as extremism, terrorism, illegal content or violations of data regulations, but it does not clearly define throttling — slowing traffic rather than blocking it outright — as a formal enforcement mechanism. “The slowdown isn’t described anywhere in legislation,” Klimarev said. “It’s pressure without procedure.” In September, Russia banned advertising for virtual private network services that citizens use to bypass government-imposed restrictions on certain apps or sites. By Klimarev’s estimate, roughly half of Russian internet users now know what a VPN is, and millions pay for one. Polling last year by the Levada Center, Russia’s only major independent pollster, suggests regular use is lower, finding about one-quarter of Russians said they have used VPN services. Russian courts can treat the use of anonymization tools as an aggravating factor in certain crimes — steps that signal growing pressure on circumvention technologies without formally outlawing them. In February, the Federal Antimonopoly Service opened what appears to be the first case against a media outlet for promoting a VPN after the regional publication Serditaya Chuvashiya advertised such a service on its Telegram channel. Surveys in recent years have shown that many Russians, particularly older citizens, support tighter internet regulation, often citing fraud, extremism and online safety. That sentiment gives authorities political space to tighten controls even when the restrictions are unpopular among more technologically savvy users. Even so, the slowdown of Telegram drew criticism from unlikely quarters, including Sergei Mironov, a longtime Kremlin ally and leader of the Just Russia party. In a statement posted on his Telegram channel on Feb. 11, he blasted the regulators behind the move as “idiots,” accusing them of undermining soldiers at the front. He said troops rely on the app to communicate with relatives and organize fundraising for the war effort, warning that restricting it could cost lives. While praising the state-backed messaging app MAX, he argued that Russians should be free to choose which platforms they use. Pro-war Telegram channels frame the government’s blocking techniques as sabotage of the war effort. Ivan Philippov, who tracks Russia’s influential military bloggers, said the reaction inside that ecosystem to news about Telegram has been visceral “rage.” Unlike Starlink, whose cutoff could be blamed on a foreign company, restrictions on Telegram are viewed as self-inflicted. Bloggers accuse regulators of undermining the war effort. Telegram is used not only for battlefield coordination but also for volunteer fundraising networks that provide basic logistics the state does not reliably cover — from transport vehicles and fuel to body armor, trench materials and even evacuation equipment. Telegram serves as the primary hub for donations and reporting back to supporters. “If you break Telegram inside Russia, you break fundraising,” Philippov said. “And without fundraising, a lot of units simply don’t function.” Few in that community trust MAX, citing technical flaws and privacy concerns. Because MAX operates under Russian data-retention laws and is integrated with state services, many assume their communications would be accessible to authorities. Philippov said the app’s prominent defenders are largely figures tied to state media or the presidential administration. “Among independent military bloggers, I haven’t seen a single person who supports it,” he said. Small groups of activists attempted to organize rallies in at least 11 Russian cities, including Moscow, Irkutsk and Novosibirsk, in defense of Telegram. Authorities rejected or obstructed most of the proposed demonstrations — in some cases citing pandemic-era restrictions, weather conditions or vague security concerns — and in several cases revoked previously issued permits. In Novosibirsk, police detained around 15 people ahead of a planned rally. Although a small number of protests were formally approved, no large-scale demonstrations ultimately took place. THE POWER TO PULL THE PLUG The new law signed last month allows Russia’s Federal Security Service to order telecom operators to block cellular and fixed internet access. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said subsequent shutdowns of service in Moscow were linked to security measures aimed at protecting critical infrastructure and countering drone threats, adding that such limitations would remain in place “for as long as necessary.” In practice, the disruptions rarely amount to a total communications blackout. Most target mobile internet rather than all services, while voice calls and SMS often continue to function. Some domestic websites and apps — including government portals or banking services — may remain accessible through “whitelists,” meaning authorities allow certain services to keep operating even while broader internet access is restricted. The restrictions are typically localized and temporary, affecting specific regions or parts of cities rather than the entire country. Internet disruptions have increasingly become a tool of control beyond individual platforms. Research by the independent outlet Meduza and the monitoring project Na Svyazi has documented dozens of regional internet shutdowns and mobile network restrictions across Russia, with disruptions occurring regularly since May 2025. The communications shutdown, and uncertainty around where it will go next, is affecting life for citizens of all kinds, from the elderly struggling to contact family members abroad to tech-savvy users who juggle SIM cards and secondary phones to stay connected. Demand has risen for dated communication devices — including walkie-talkies, pagers and landline phones — along with paper maps as mobile networks become less reliable, according to retailers interviewed by RBC. “It feels like we’re isolating ourselves,” said Dmitry, 35, who splits his time between Moscow and Dubai and whose surname has been withheld to protect his identity under fear of governmental reprisal. “Like building a sovereign grave.” Those who track Russian public opinion say the pattern is consistent: irritation followed by adaptation. When Instagram and YouTube were blocked or slowed in recent years, their audiences shrank rapidly as users migrated to alternative services rather than mobilizing against the restrictions. For now, Russia’s digital tightening resembles managed escalation rather than total isolation. Officials deny plans for a full shutdown, and even critics say a complete severing would cripple banking, logistics and foreign trade. “It’s possible,” Klimarev said. “But if they do that, the internet won’t be the main problem anymore.”

Some 170,000 people have applied to take a test that could see them get a well-paid and secure EU job — but the odds are stacked against them because fewer than 1,500 roles could be available. In a statement on Wednesday, a day after the deadline for candidates to express interest in the hiring competition, the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) revealed how many people had put in applications. “This number has surpassed all expectations,” the agency wrote. “We will inform candidates about the next steps as soon as possible.” The next stage is a process that includes cognitive testing and exams to be held over the coming months. Successful candidates can apply for posts across the EU institutions at AD-5 grade, which pays around €6,000 to €7,000 a month, paving the way to far more senior positions in the future. However, the number of available jobs is far, far smaller than the number of applicants, with around 1,500 spots on the list of positions up for grabs — and even then a role is not guaranteed. The hiring competition — aimed at generalists rather than specialists in areas such as HR, law and translation — has not been held since 2019, meaning many aspiring officials have been working as temporary agents or agency staff, without the job security or benefits of those employed by the EU. A number of countries launched campaigns to try and encourage their citizens to apply, eyeing an opportunity to correct underrepresentation inside the EU and cement their influence for decades to come. Some capitals have even gone as far as paying for test practices and offering mentoring to candidates. Just 22,644 people applied for the AD-5 competition when it was last held seven years ago, and around 50,000 had been initially forecast to take part this year. This year’s EPSO tests, to be scheduled on a date that is yet to be announced, will be conducted virtually rather than in assessment centers, as was the case in the past. However, experts say the logistics of administering the exams on such a large scale would be challenging even with half as many applicants.

When U.S., Mexican and Canadian soccer officials fanned out across the globe nearly a decade ago to sell the 2026 World Cup, they traveled in threes — one representative from each country — to underscore a simple message: North America’s three largest countries were in lockstep. “It was so embedded into everything we did that this was a united bid. Our success was tied to the joint nature of the bid. That was the anchor regarding the premise of what we were trying to do,” said John Kristick, former executive director of the 2026 United Bid Committee. The pitch worked. In 2018, FIFA members awarded the tournament to North America, marking the first time three countries would co-host a men’s World Cup. Bid strategists were delighted when The Washington Post editorial page approvingly called it ”the NAFTA World Cup.” The North American Free Trade Agreement is no more, a victim of President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw during his first term, and the successor U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is now teetering. At almost exactly the midway point of the 39-day tournament, trade ties that link the three countries’ economies will expire. The trilateral relationship is more frayed than it has ever been, tensions reflected in this year’s World Cup itself. Instead of one continental showcase, the 2026 World Cup increasingly resembles three distinct tournaments, with different immigration regimes, security plans and funding models, all a function of different policy choices in each host country. Soccer governing body FIFA “is the only glue that’s holding it together,” said one person intimately involved in the bid who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the sensitive political dynamics. The “United” in the United Bid, once the anchor of the entire project, now competes with three national agendas, each running on its own track. POLITICO spoke to eight people involved in developing a World Cup whose path from conception to execution reflects the crooked arc of North American integration. “When these events are awarded, they’re concepts. They’re ideas. They feel good,” said Lee Igel, a professor of global sport at NYU who has advised the U.S. Conference of Mayors on sports policy. “But between the award and the event itself, the world changes. Politics change. Leaders change.” THE TRUMP TOURNAMENT At the start of the extravagant December event that formally set the World Cup schedule, Trump stood next to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to ceremonially draw the first lottery ball. FIFA officials touted the moment at the Kennedy Center as a milestone: the first time the three leaders had appeared together in person, united by soccer. The trio also met for 90 minutes off stage in a meeting — facilitated by FIFA as part of World Cup planning. That novelty was notable. While each national government has named a “sherpa” to serve as its lead, those officials — including Canadian Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden and Mexican coordinator Gabriela Cuevas — have met only a handful of times in formal trilateral settings. At a January security summit in Colorado Springs, White House FIFA Task Force director Andrew Giuliani did not mention Canada or Mexico during his remarks. Only when FIFA security officer GB Jones took the stage was the international nature of the tournament acknowledged. “We have been and continue to work very closely with officials from all three host countries on topics including safety, security, logistics, transportation and other topics related to hosting a successful FIFA World Cup,” a FIFA spokesperson wrote via email. “This is one World Cup presented across all three host countries and 16 host cities, while showcasing the uniqueness of each individual location and culture.” The soccer federations behind the United Bid have been largely sidelined, with FIFA — rather than national governments — serving as the link between them. It has brought personnel of local host-city organizing committees for quarterly workshops and other meetings, and situated nearly 1,000 of its own employees across all three countries, according to a FIFA spokesperson who says they are “working seamlessly in a united effort.” (The number will swell to more than 4,000 when the tournament is underway.) But those FIFA staff are forced to navigate wildly varied fiscal conditions depending on where they land. Mexico, which will have matches in three cities, has imposed a tax exemption to stimulate investment in the World Cup and related tourist infrastructure in its three host cities. The Canadian government has dedicated well over $300 million to tournament costs, with more than two-thirds going directly to host-city governments. “The federal government are contributing significantly to both Vancouver and Toronto in terms of funding,” said Sharon Bollenbach, the executive director of the FIFA World Cup Toronto Secretariat, which unlike American host committees is run directly out of city hall. American cities, however, have been left to secure their own funding, largely through the pursuit of commercial sponsorships and donations to local organizing committees. Congress has allocated $625 million for the federal government to reimburse host cities in security costs via a grant program. But the partial government shutdown and an attendant decision by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to stop approving FEMA grants is exacerbating a logjam for U.S. states and municipalities — including not only those with World Cup matches but hosting team training camps — that rely on federal funds to coordinate counterterrorism and security efforts. That has left American host cities in very different financial situations just months before the tournament starts. Houston and Dallas-area governments can count on receiving a share of state revenue from Texas’ Major Events Reimbursement Program. The small Boston suburb of Foxborough, Massachusetts, however, is refusing to approve an entertainment license for matches at Gillette Stadium because of an unresolved $7.8 million security bill. Because of the budget squeeze, American cities have cut back on “fan festival” gatherings that will run extend during the tournament’s full length in Canadian and Mexican cities. Jersey City has canceled the fan fest planned at Liberty State Park in favor of smaller community events, and Seattle’s fan fest will be scaled down into a “distributed model” spread cross four locations. The tournament has become tightly intertwined with Trump, as FIFA places an outsized emphasis on courting the man who loves to be seen as the consummate host. Public messaging from the White House has focused almost exclusively on the United States’ role, and Trump rarely mentions Canada or Mexico from the Oval Office or on Truth Social. Since returning to office, Trump has had eight in-person meetings with FIFA President Gianni Infantino — besides the lottery draw at the Kennedy Center — whereas Sheinbaum and Carney have only had one each. While taking questions from the media during a November session with Infantino in the Oval office, Trump did not rule out the use of U.S. military force, including potential land actions, within Mexico to combat drug cartels. Guadalajara, which is set to host four World Cup matches, this weekend erupted in violence after Mexican security forces killed the head of a cartel that Trump last year labeled a “foreign terrorist organization.” A White House spokesperson wrote in a social-media post that the United States provided “intelligence support” to the mission. It is part of a more significant set of conflicts than Trump had with the United States’ neighbors during his first term. In January, Trump claimed that Sheinbaum is “not running Mexico,” while Carney rose to office promising Canadians he would “stand up to President Trump.” Since then, Trump has regularly proposed annexing Canada as the 51st state, as his government offers support to an Alberta separatist movement that could split the country through an independence vote on the province’s October ballot. The July 1 renewal deadline for the five-year-old USMCA has injected urgency into relations among the three leaders. Without an extension, the largely tariff-free trade that underpins North America’s economy would come into question, and governments and businesses would begin planning for a rupture. Trump, who recently called the pact “irrelevant,” has signaled he would be content to let it lapse. Suspense around the free trade zone’s future will engulf preparations for the World Cup, potentially granting Trump related in unrelated negotiations. “In the lead-up to mega-events, geopolitical tensions tend to hover in the background,” Igel said. “Once the matches begin, the show can overwhelm everything else, unless something dramatic like a boycott intervenes. But in the months before? That’s when you see the friction.” THE ORIGINS OF THE UNITED BID It was not supposed to be this way. When North American soccer officials first decided, in 2016, to fuse three national campaigns to host the World Cup into one, they saw unity as the strategic advantage that would distinguish their bid from any competitors. Each country had considered pursuing the World Cup on its own. Canada, looking to build on its success as host of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, wanted to host the larger men’s competition. Mexico, the first country to host it twice, wanted another shot. The United States dusted off an earlier bid for the 2022 tournament, which was awarded to Qatar. Sunil Gulati, a Columbia University economist serving as the U.S. Soccer Federation’s president, envisioned an unprecedented compromise: Instead of competing with one another they would work together — with the United States using its economic primacy and geographical centrality to ensure it remained the tournament’s focal point. The three countries’ economies had been deeply intertwined for nearly a quarter-century. Their leaders signed NAFTA in 1992, lowering trade barriers and snaking supply chains across borders that had previous isolated economic activity. But the trade pact triggered a broad backlash in the United States that allied labor unions on the left and isolationists on the right. That political disquiet exploded with the candidacy of Donald Trump, who called NAFTA “the worst trade deal” and immediately moved to renegotiate it upon taking office. Gulati, meanwhile, was pitching Emilio Azcárraga Jean, CEO and chair of Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa, and Canada Soccer President Victor Montagliani, on his own plan for regional integration. They agreed to sketch out a tournament that would have 75 percent of the games held in the U.S. with the remainder split between Canada and Mexico. “I’d rather have a 90 percent chance of winning 75 percent of the World Cup than a 75 percent chance of, you know, winning all of it,” Gulati told the U.S. Soccer board, according to two people who heard him say it. Montagliani and Mexico Football Federation President Decio de María joined Gulati to formally announce the so-called United Bid in New York in April 2017. The three federation presidents knew that the thrust of their pitch had to be more emotional and inclusive than “we are big, rich and have tons of ready-built stadiums,” as one of the bid organizers put it. Kristick laced a theme of “community” through the 1,500-page prospectus known to insiders as a bid book. “In 2026, we can create a bold new legacy for players, for fans and for football by hosting a FIFA World Cup that is more inclusive, more universal than ever,” declared a campaign video that the United Bid showed to the organization’s voting members. “Not because of who we are as nations, but because of what we believe in as neighbors. To bid together, countries come together.” It was a sentiment increasingly out of sync with the times. The same month that Gulati had stood with his counterparts in New York announcing the joint bid, Trump was busy demanding that Congress include funding for a wall along the border with Mexico. He told then-Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto and then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA, using aluminum and steel tariffs as a cudgel. Carlos Cordeiro, who displaced Gulati as U.S. Soccer president during the bid process in 2018, became the driving force of the lobbying effort to sell the idea to 211 national federations that would vote on it. In Cordeiro’s view, according to two Americans intimately involved in the bid at the time, the bid’s biggest challenge was assuring voters that the tournament would be more than a U.S. event dressed up with the flags of its neighbors. Teams fanned out across each of soccer’s six regional confederations to make their pitch, each presentation designed to paint a picture of tri-national cooperation, and returned to a temporary base in London to debrief. “It was very pragmatic. It was like Carlos, or another U.S. representative, would say this and talk about this. The Canada representative will then talk about this. The Mexico representative will talk about this. And it was very much trying to be even across the three in terms of who was speaking,” one person on the traveling team said. When the United Bid finally prevailed in June 2018, defeating a rival bid from Morocco, Trump celebrated it as an equal triumph for the three countries. “The U.S., together with Mexico and Canada, just got the World Cup,” he wrote on Twitter, now known as X. “Congratulations — a great deal of hard work!” THREE DIFFERENT TOURNAMENTS What began with a united bid is turning into parallel tournaments: with different fan bases, security procedures and off-field programs, all a function of different policy choices in each host country. Fans from Iran and Haiti are barred from entering the United States under travel restrictions imposed by Trump, while other World Cup countries are subject to elevated scrutiny that could block travel plans. (Official team delegations are exempt.) Canada and Mexico do not impose the same restrictions, creating uneven access across the tournament: fans traveling from Ivory Coast will likely find it much easier to reach Toronto for a June 20 match against Germany than one in Philadelphia five days later against Curaçao. “FIFA recognizes that immigration policy falls within the jurisdiction of sovereign governments,” read a statement provided by the FIFA spokesperson. “Engagement therefore focuses on dialogue and cooperation with host authorities to support inclusive tournament delivery, while respecting national law.” A fan who does cross borders will encounte a patchwork of security régimes depending on which government is in charge. Mexican authorities draw from deep experience policing soccer matches, with a mix of traditional crowd-control tactics and advanced technology like four-legged robots. The United States is emphasizing novel drone defenses and asked other countries for lists of its most problematic fans. Ongoing immigration enforcement actions in the U.S. have also prompted concern among the international soccer community and calls for a boycott of the tournament. The White House this month issued clarifying talking points to host cities to buttress the “shared commitment to safety, hospitality, and a successful tournament experience for all.” The document confirms that U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement “may have a presence” at the tournament to assist with non-immigration-related functions like aviation security and anti-human trafficking efforts. No where is the fragmentation more glaring among countries than on human rights. After previous World Cups were accused of “sportswashing” autocratic regimes in Qatar and Russia, the United Bid made “human rights and labor standards” a centerpiece of its proposal to FIFA. The bid stipulated that each host city by August 2025 must submit concrete plans for how the city would protect individual rights, including respect for “indigenous peoples, migrant workers and their families, national, ethnic and religious minorities, people with disabilities, women, race, LGBTQI+, journalists, and human rights defenders.” “Human rights were embedded in the bid from the beginning,” said Human Rights Watch director of global initiatives Minky Worden, who worked closely with Mary Harvey, a former U.S. goalkeeper and soccer executive who now leads the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, on the language. Harvey consulted with 70 civil-society groups across the three countries while developing the strategy. That deadline passed without a single U.S. city submitting their plan on time. Now just months before the kickoff, host cities have finally started to release their reports, creating a patchwork of approaches. While Vancouver’s report makes multiple references to respecting LGBTQ+ populations, Houston’s has no mention of sexual orientation and identity at all. The FIFA spokesperson says the organization has embedded inclusion and human rights commitments directly into agreements signed by host countries, cities and stadium operators, and that dedicated FIFA Human Rights, Safeguarding and Anti-Discrimination teams will monitor implementation and hold local organizers to account for violations. “All of these standards were supposed to be uniform across these three countries,” said Worden. “It wasn’t supposed to be the lowest common denominator with the U.S. being really low.”

Scattered among the candy shelves and freezer cabinets in Russian supermarkets across Germany are advertisements promoting a business with a service the government has tried to outlaw: a logistics company specialized in moving packages from the heart of Germany to Russia, in defiance of European Union sanctions. Trade restrictions have been in place since 2014 and were tightened just after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when Western nations began to impose far-reaching financial and trade sanctions on Russia. But an investigation by the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO, has identified a clandestine Berlin-based postal system that exploits the special status of postal parcels to transport all kinds of European goods — including banned electronics components — into President Vladimir Putin’s empire. We know every stop and turn in the route because we sent five packages and used digital tracking devices to follow them — through an illicit 1,100-mile journey that undermines the sanctions regime European policymakers consider their strongest tool to generate political pressure on Russian leaders by weakening their country’s economy. LS Logistics said its internal controls make violations of EU sanctions “virtually impossible” but that it was not immune from customers making fraudulent declarations about the goods they ship. “Sanctions enforcement is whack-a-mole,” said David Goldwyn, who worked on sanctions policy as U.S. State Department coordinator for international energy affairs and now chairs the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center’s energy advisory group. “It’s a hard process, and you have to constantly be adapting to how the evaders are adapting.” THE UZBEK LABEL In late December, we packed five square brown parcels with electronic components specifically banned under EU sanctions and addressed the parcels to locations in Moscow and St. Petersburg. When we brought our parcels to the counters of Russian supermarkets in Berlin, we told salespeople the packages included books, scarves and hats. But they never checked inside the packages, which in fact held banned electronic components we rendered unusable before packing. Salespeople charged us 13 euros per kilogram, about $7 per pound, refusing to provide receipts. What makes these cardboard packages even more special is their disguise: The employee does not affix Russian postal stickers to the boxes, but rather those of UzPost, the national postal service of Uzbekistan. The former Soviet republic is not subject to EU sanctions. UzPost maintains close ties to the Russian postal service, according to a person familiar with the entities’ history of cooperation granted anonymity to discuss confidential business practices. Tatyana Kim, the CEO of Russian ecommerce marketplace Wildberries and reputedly her country’s richest woman, recently acquired a large stake in UzPost, according to media reports. “We work with partners, including private postal service providers,” the Uzbek postal service stated in response to our inquiry. “They can use our solutions for deliveries.” In Germany, registered logistics companies are permitted to provide postal services — including pick-up, sorting and delivery — for international postal operators. However, the Federal Network Agency, which is responsible for postal oversight, says the Uzbek postal service is not authorized to perform any of these functions in Germany. (The Federal Network Agency said in a response to our inquiry that it is “currently reviewing” the case and that it would pursue penalties for LS if it is found to be using Uzbek documents without authorization.) After our packages spent one to two days at the supermarkets, we saw them begin to move. Inside each package we had placed a small black GPS device, naming them “Alpha,” “Beta,” “Gamma,” “Delta” and “Epsi.” We could track their movements in real time in an app, watching them closely as they wound through Berlin’s roads to Schönefeld, site of the capital’s international airport. There they stopped, unloaded into a modern warehouse that has been repurposed into a Russian shadow postal service. COLOGNE, TECHNICALLY In 2014, a retired professional gymnast was tasked with launching a subsidiary of Russia’s national postal service, the RusPost GmbH, which would operate with official authorization to collect, process and deliver postal items in Germany, according to a former employee granted anonymity to speak openly about the business. For 18 years, the St. Petersburg-raised Alexey Grigoryev had competed and coached at Germany’s highest levels, winning three national championship titles with the KTV Straubenhardt team and working with an Olympic gold medalist on the high bar. But he had no evident experience in the postal business. RusPost’s German business model collapsed upon the imposition of an expanded sanctions package in the weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Much like American sanctions on Russia, the European Union blocks sensitive technical materials that could boost the Russian defense sector, while allowing the export of personal effects and quotidian consumer items. “The sanctions are accompanied by far-reaching export bans, particularly on goods relevant to the war, in order to put pressure on the Russian war economy,” according to a statement the Federal Ministry of Economics provided us. In March 2022, while conducting random checks of postal traffic to Moscow, customs officials discovered sanctioned goods (including cash, jewelry and electrical appliances) in numerous RusPost packages. The Berlin public prosecutor’s office launched an investigation of the company, concluding that a former RusPost managing director had deliberately failed to set up effective control mechanisms, in breach of his duties. He was charged with 62 counts of attempting to violate the Foreign Trade and Payments Act over an eight-month period; criminal proceedings are ongoing. The Russian postal network did not quite disappear, however. A new company called LS Logistics Solution GmbH was formed in December 2022, according to corporate filings. LS filled its top jobs, including customs manager and head of customer service, with former RusPost employees, according to their LinkedIn profiles. The new company listed as its business address an inconspicuous semi-detached house in a residential area of Cologne, across from a church. When we visited, we found an old white mailbox whose plated sign lists LS Logistics alongside dozens of other companies supposed to be housed there. But none of them seemed to be active. The building was empty during business hours, its mailbox overflowing with discolored brochures and old newspapers. The operational heart of LS is the warehouse complex in Berlin-Schönefeld, just a few minutes from the capital’s airport. The building itself is functional and anonymous: a long, gray industrial structure with several metal rolling doors, some fitted with narrow window slits. Through them, towering stacks of parcels are visible, packed tightly, sorted roughly, stretching deep into the hall. Trucks arrive and depart regularly, from loading bays lit by harsh white floodlights that cut through the otherwise quiet industrial area. Behind the warehouse lies a wide concrete parking lot where a black BMW SUV with a license plate bearing the initials AG is often parked. We saw a man resembling Grigoryev enter the car. The former head of RusPost officially withdrew from the postal business after authorities froze the company’s operations. Unofficially, however, the 50-year-old’s continued presence in Schönefeld suggests otherwise. According to one former RusPost employee, the warehouse near the airport serves as a collection point for parcels from all over Europe. Other logistics companies with Russian management have listed the warehouse as their business address, some of their logos decorating the façade. LS Logistics Solution GmbH has the largest sign of them all. THE A2 GETAWAY According to tracking devices, our packages spent several days in the warehouse before being loaded onto 40-ton trucks covered with grey tarps, among several that leave every day loaded with mail. They were then driven toward the Polish border, through the German city of Frankfurt (Oder). Without any long stops, the 40-ton trucks traversed Poland on the A2 motorway, past Warsaw. Two days after leaving Berlin, they were approaching the eastern edge of the European Union. They arrived at a border checkpoint in Brest, the Belarusian city where more than a hundred years ago Russia signed a peace pact with Germany to withdraw from World War I. Now it marked the last place for European officials to identify contraband leaving for countries they consider adversaries. In 2022, the European Union applied a separate set of sanctions on Belarus because its leader, Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, has supported Russia’s presence in Ukraine. Yet despite provisions that should have stopped our packages from leaving Poland, they moved onward into Belarus, their tracking devices apparently undetected. What makes this possible is the special legal status that accompanies international mail. While a formal export declaration is required for the export of regular goods, such as those moving via container ship or rail freight, simplified paperwork helps speed up the departure process for postal items. At Europe’s borders, this distinction becomes crucial, as postal packages are examined largely on risk-based checks rather than comprehensive inspections. “International postal items are subject to the regular provisions of customs supervision both on import and on export and transit and are checked on a risk-oriented basis in accordance with applicable EU and national legislation, including with regard to compliance with sanctions regulations,” the German General Customs Directorate stated in response to our inquiry. Two of our tracking devices briefly lost their signal in Belarus — likely part of a widespread pattern of satellite navigation systems being disrupted across Eastern Europe — but after a journey of around 1,100 miles, they all showed the same destination. Our packages had reached Russia’s largest cities. Ukrainian authorities told us they were not surprised by our investigation. The country’s presidential envoy for sanctions policy, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, said at the Ukrainian embassy in Berlin that his government regularly collects intelligence on such schemes and shares it with international partners. “Nobody is doing enough, if you look at the number of cases,” Vlasiuk said. ONE STEP BEHIND After the arrival of the packages, we confronted all parties involved, including LS Logistics Solution GmbH, the mysterious shipper that helped transport the goods from Europe to Russia. We called Grigoryev several times, but he never answered; efforts to reach him through the company failed as well. An LS executive would not answer our questions about his role. “Our internal control mechanisms are designed in such a way that violations of EU sanctions are virtually impossible,” LS managing director Anjelika Crone wrote to us. “Shipments that do not meet the legal requirements are not processed further. We are not immune to fraudulent misdeclarations, such as those that obviously underlie the ‘test shipments’ you refer to.” Crone said she could not answer further questions due to data protection and contractual confidentiality concerns. This month, Germany took steps to strengthen enforcement of its sanctions regime, expanding the range of violations subject to criminal penalties. The law, passed by the Bundestag in January, amends the country’s Foreign Trade and Payments Act to integrate a European Union directive harmonizing criminal sanctions law across its 27 member states and ensure efficient, uniform enforcement. Germany was one of the 18 countries put on notice by EU officials last May for having failed to follow the 2024 directive. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, which is responsible for implementing the new policy, argued in a statement to the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network that the very ingenuity of the logistics network we unmasked operating within Germany was a testament to the strength of the country’s sanctions regime. “The state-organized Russian procurement systems operate at enormous financial expense to create ever new and more complex diversion routes,” said ministry spokesperson Tim-Niklas Wentzel. “This confirms that the considerable compliance efforts of many companies and the work of the sanctions enforcement authorities in combating circumvention are also having a practical effect. Procurement is becoming increasingly difficult, time-consuming, and expensive for Russia.” According to those who have tried to administer sanctions laws, that argument rings true — but only partly. “It’s probably more fair to say that sanctions had a material impact and increased the cost of bad actors to achieve their goals. But to say that they’re working well is probably overstating the truth of the matter,” said Max Meizlish, formerly an official with the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and now a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “When there’s evasion, it requires enforcement,” Meizlish went on. “And when you need more enforcement I think it’s hard to make a compelling case that the tool is working as intended.” The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network is a multi-publication initiative publishing scoops, investigations, interviews, op-eds and analysis that reverberate across the world. It connects journalists from Axel Springer brands—including POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, and Onet— on major stories for an international audience. Their ambitious reporting stretches across Axel Springer platforms: online, print, TV, and audio. Together, these outlets reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever said the Port of Antwerp-Bruges will get its own anti-aircraft defenses by next year, as the Belgian government moves to fortify one of Europe’s most critical trade gateways. De Wever also confirmed that Belgium has ordered a separate anti-drone system after multiple drone sightings last year forced the temporary closure of Belgian airports and a military airbase, the Gazet van Antwerpen reported. “An air-defense system is coming to the port of Antwerp. It’s a NASAMS type and has already been ordered,” De Wever said at the port, according to the Gazet report. Belgium said last October that it had purchased NASAMS systems without disclosing where they would be deployed. De Wever had already pushed for air defenses at the Antwerp port in 2024, warning that “if you want peace, prepare for war.” NASAMS — a Norwegian-American medium-range air-defense system — is built to intercept aircraft and drones, and is typically used to shield high-value infrastructure. The Antwerp port, Europe’s second-largest, is a petrochemical powerhouse and a key NATO logistics hub, including for the flow of U.S. military equipment into Europe. Drone incursions last year caused major disruptions in Belgium and other NATO countries, with drones spotted over the Port of Antwerp — including the BASF chemical site and the Europa terminal — as well as over nuclear facilities elsewhere in the country. The move to boost defenses in Antwerp comes amid Belgium’s effort to strengthen ground-based air defenses after decades of underinvestment. NATO allies including Spain and the Netherlands have fielded NASAMS for years. With Russia’s war in Ukraine having just entered its fifth year and transatlantic nerves fraying, EU capitals are increasingly preparing to protect critical infrastructure themselves rather than assuming Washington will step in.

Presented as an instrument aimed at strengthening farmers’ position in the food supply chain, the targeted revision of the Regulation on the Common Market Organisation was intended to address structural challenges within the sector. Yet, as the trilogue approaches, the debate has gradually crystallized around a different issue: restricting certain denominations used for plant-based products. This shift deserves careful scrutiny. How would limiting widely understood terms concretely improve farmers’ position in the food chain? The connection between the original objective of the proposal and the measure currently under discussion remains insufficiently substantiated. If the stated ambition is to reinforce resilience and fairness within the agricultural chain, it is legitimate to question whether terminology restrictions meaningfully contribute to that goal. > How would limiting widely understood terms concretely improve farmers’ > position in the food chain? In a letter addressed to Members of the European Parliament, GAIA calls for maintaining the current regulatory framework and rejecting the proposed restrictions, whether concerning existing plant-based products or future products derived from cellular agriculture. The objective is clear: to preserve coherent and proportionate regulation that protects consumers without weakening an innovative and strategic sector. Behind a word: a market and jobs Europe holds a leading position in several innovative segments of plant-based alternatives. The European market was estimated at €2.7 billion in 2024 and continues to structure a dynamic industrial ecosystem across member states. Companies operating in this field invest significantly in research and development, expand production capacities, create qualified jobs and actively contribute to the industrial dynamism of the single market. This ecosystem extends well beyond food production. It supports technological innovation, specialised logistics, supply chain transformation and new forms of industrial cooperation. It contributes to the modernization of the European agri-food sector and strengthens the competitiveness of the internal market. In a period where industrial policy and strategic autonomy are central to the European agenda, introducing regulatory uncertainty risks undermining a competitive advantage built on sustained investment and innovation. > The issue therefore goes beyond semantics: it concerns the stability and > predictability of the European regulatory framework. “Behind denominations lies a real European economy: jobs, innovation and competitiveness.” Restricting widely understood terms would entail compliance costs, packaging adjustments, potential litigation and a risk of divergent interpretations across member states. The issue therefore goes beyond semantics: it concerns the stability and predictability of the European regulatory framework — factors that are essential for long-term investment decisions and business planning. Cellular agriculture: anticipate without destabilizing The same reasoning applies to products derived from cellular agriculture. Although not yet present on European shelves, these technologies hold significant potential for future development. Estimates suggest that the cultivated protein value chain could represent between €15 billion and €80 billion in new markets, with the potential to create between 25,000 and 90,000 jobs in Europe. The European Union already counts 47 companies active in cultivated meat out of 174 worldwide, as well as 61 out of 158 companies operating in precision fermentation and biomass technologies. This demonstrates that Europe is not a passive observer but an active participant in emerging food technologies. Yet European investment in novel foods currently represents less than 1 percent of total agri-food innovation funding. In this context, regulatory stability becomes a decisive factor in consolidating emerging technological leadership and retaining investment within the EU. Introducing additional denomination restrictions at such an early stage may send an unintended signal of unpredictability. For innovative sectors that depend on long development cycles and significant capital expenditure, clarity and proportionality in regulation are structural conditions for growth. “Europe can be demanding. It cannot afford to be unpredictable in sectors where it seeks to innovate.” Consumer protection: a framework already validated Consumer protection is a legitimate objective and a cornerstone of EU law. However, it operates within an already established and functional legal framework. The Food Information to Consumers Regulation requires clear, accurate and non-misleading labeling. Annex VI explicitly provides that the absence or substitution of animal-derived ingredients must be indicated. In case C-438/23, the Court of Justice of the European Union confirmed that this framework provides sufficient safeguards against misleading practices. “The Court of Justice of the European Union has confirmed it: EU law already protects consumers.” > A plant-based product clearly identified as such does not constitute > linguistic ambiguity for the vast majority of consumers. The central argument in favor of additional restrictions rests on an assumption of consumer confusion. Yet available evidence indicates that consumers clearly distinguish animal-based products from plant-based alternatives when origin and composition are explicitly stated. Labeling transparency, rather than categorical prohibitions, remains the key instrument for ensuring informed choice. A plant-based product clearly identified as such does not constitute linguistic ambiguity for the vast majority of consumers. The debate should not be trivialized, but one principle deserves emphasis: regulation must protect without infantilizing. Suggesting that a single word, taken in isolation, would systematically mislead consumers underestimates their ability to read labels, understand context and make informed decisions. “Protecting consumers does not mean presuming a lack of discernment.” More than 600 companies and organizations from 22 member states have called for maintaining the current framework, underlining the importance of preserving single market coherence and avoiding regulatory fragmentation detrimental to innovation and competitiveness. Europe can reconcile consumer protection, legal certainty and competitiveness. It can do so by fully enforcing existing rules and targeting actual abuses rather than introducing general prohibitions that generate costs, legal uncertainty and unintended economic consequences. Ultimately, the question is not whether a word is liked or disliked. It is whether, in a context marked by major challenges related to industrial competitiveness, climate transition, economic security and geopolitical tension, this is where the union should concentrate its political and regulatory capital.

Ukraine condemned “ultimatums ⁠and blackmail” by the governments of Hungary and Slovakia on Saturday, after Budapest and Bratislava threatened to stop electricity supplies to Ukraine unless ⁠Kyiv restarts flows of Russian oil. Shipments of Russian oil to Hungary and ⁠Slovakia have been cut off since Jan. 27, when Kyiv says a Russian drone strike hit pipeline equipment in western Ukraine. Slovakia and Hungary accuse Ukraine of slow-walking the repairs for political purposes. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Saturday that he would cut off emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine unless Kyiv resumes Russian oil transit to Slovakia ⁠over Ukrainian territory. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán made a similar threat days earlier. In a statement posted on X late Saturday, Ukraine’s foreign ministry blasted the actions as “irresponsible,” saying they risked exacerbating the growing energy crisis that has followed months of Russian airstrikes against Ukrainian grids and power stations, leaving thousands of Ukrainians without heat and electricity in the depths of winter. “Such actions, in the context of massive and targeted Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and Moscow’s attempts to deprive Ukrainians of electricity, heating, and gas during extreme cold weather, are provocative, irresponsible, and threaten the energy security of the entire region,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “In doing so, the governments of Hungary and Slovakia are not only playing into the hands of the aggressor, but also harming their own energy companies that supply energy on a commercial basis.” Kyiv said it is also considering activating emergency energy supply measures under Ukraine’s association agreement with the EU. The 4,000-kilometer Druzhba pipeline — which runs from eastern Russia into Central Europe — is a key source of oil for both Slovakia and Hungary, both of which are exempt from EU sanctions on imports of Russian refined oil. It has become a major flashpoint over the past week as Budapest and Bratislava accuse Kyiv of deliberately delaying the repair of the pipeline to exert political pressure. It’s a politically sensitive moment for Orbán in particular, who is trailing in the polls behind the opposition Tisza party ahead of national elections in April that threaten to spell the end of his 16-year rule. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó ramped up the pressure further on Sunday, vowing to block the EU’s latest raft of sanctions against Russia, which member countries are hoping to adopt on Monday. Budapest has separately threatened to block a €90 billion loan to Ukraine that the country needs to keep fighting before its war chest runs dry in April. Kyiv said over the weekend it was working round the clock to repair the damaged pipeline and that it had already offered to help restore flows to Slovakia and Hungary via alternative routes. It separately suggested to the European Commission that it supply the countries through its own transportation system or via Black Sea ports, according to a letter seen by POLITICO. It emphasized its “continuous readiness” to supply oil to the countries within legal bounds, calling on the Commission to help with logistics. Ukrainian specialists are “assessing the technical feasibility and conditions for the prompt restoration of oil transportation via the said pipeline,” it added.

A top Pentagon policy official went to Munich this week to deliver a wake-up call to America’s NATO allies. Elbridge Colby, an under secretary of defense, warned them that the days when the U.S. served as the primary guarantor of European security are gone: “The core strategic reality …. is this: Europe must assume primary responsibility for its own conventional defense.” It’s a message that President Donald Trump himself conveyed in his own brash way to America’s allies across the Atlantic, and which his administration has forcefully underscored in its latest strategic documents. But it’s still an idea that leaves Europeans scratching their heads: Where is Trump’s aggressive new stance toward the NATO alliance coming from? One answer can be found in an unexpected place: a 2023 white paper authored by the British academic and conservative historian Sumantra Maitra. In the paper, published by the Trump-aligned think tank Center for Renewing America, Maitra sketched out a theory of what he called “Dormant NATO” — a radically re-imagined Western alliance in which America plays a much more minor role relative to its European allies. This new NATO would be “dormant,” Maitra wrote, kept in a kind of cryogenic sleep unless a “hegemonic” threat to Western security emerged. Maitra’s paper — which he later turned into a much-talked about essay in Foreign Affairs — was reportedly handed around among Trump’s inner circle of foreign policy advisors, and his major policy recommendations have since been incorporated into the administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. Both documents stressed the importance of “burden shifting” between the United States and its European allies — a term that Maitra has pushed in lieu of the gentler “burden sharing” advocated by past administrations. As this year’s Munich Security Conference got underway, POLITICO Magazine spoke with Maitra about the rationale for Trump’s new policy and what Europeans should expect as the U.S. pushes the alliance into this more “dormant” posture. “If I were advising a European government, I would say to sit down with the U.S. and ask for a timeline and an outline of a troop drawdown,” Maitra said. “That is inevitably going to happen someday, so they might as well prepare for it.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What is “Dormant NATO?” Dormant NATO is a theoretical doctrine which deals with the concept of burden shifting. It tries to find a middle ground between complete U.S. retrenchment from Europe on the one hand and the continuation of the current U.S. strategy of forward defense and forward positioning and complete primacy over the European continent. Essentially, it has three components, which are very similar to the kind of thing that you’re going to find in the National Security Strategy — but Dormant NATO said it first. First, it has “burden shifting,” a phrase I helped coin. The debate was about “burden sharing,” but now it is about“burden shifting” — the United States can keep the nuclear umbrella or the naval power in Europe, but most of the logistics, the intelligence, the army and the infantry are going to be in the hands of the Europeans. The second thing is that the Europeans will have commands. Right now, the United States is the head of the combatant commands in NATO, and that will transfer to the hands of the European generals and European admirals. And the final phase would be a pledge to have no new expansion of NATO. NATO needs to be finite, because you cannot have a grand strategy of an entity if it’s constantly mutating and shifting. NATO, the way it is now, is going to be a closed club, and that is it. Why is this shift in posture necessary? What problem is it trying to solve? The foreign policy of any country is determinant on structural factors, and the structural reality of the world that we live now is this: On one hand, you have the rise of China as a peer rival in Asia, which is in a different league compared to pretty much every other great power rival the United States has faced in his entire history. The second thing is the Global War on Terror that went on for 20 years, and it’s decimated American coffers. The U.S. is in massive debt, and people are unhappy about forever wars. So I think the best way to move forward would be to radically change the grand strategy to an offshore balancing of position. That means that Europe is extremely important to us, but fundamentally we are going to be a Western Hemisphere power. We will obviously go to Europe if there is a hegemonic threat, but if there is no hegemonic threat, Europe is stable, it’s rich, it’s powerful, and they’re allied to us, so they can take a lot more burden when it comes to continental security. How are you seeing these ideas reflected in the administration’s policy? There is a lot of overlap. I don’t speak for the administration, but I know the administration has read Dormant NATO, and if you look at the policy suggestions coming out of the administration, you know you’re going to see a lot of similarity between the two doctrines — even using the phrase “burden shifting.” So there are quite a few things that are happening. Secretary of Defense [Pete] Hegseth gave a speech in Brussels last year where he talked about no NATO expansion [into Ukraine]. Obviously the NSS and the NDS talk about burden shifting and they talk about no NATO expansion. The NSS specifically mentions that there shouldn’t be any NATO expansion. You have seen combatant commands being handed over to the British, to the Germans, the Poles and the Italians — so that is another pillar of Dormant NATO that is being utilized in the American strategy. The administration is signaling a major pullback from Europe, but at the same time it’s announcing relatively minor troop withdrawals. How do you square the ambition of its rhetoric with the relatively small-bore nature of its with troop withdrawal commitments? The troop withdrawal could do a little bit more, if I’m being honest with you, but I also don’t think that troop withdrawals are the be-all-and-end-all of the administration strategy. At the end of the day, troop deployment is completely in the hands of the president, depending on the president’s will, so that is not the big part of it. The bigger shifts are happening in two directions: One, we are handing over the combatant commands and the Joint Forces commands to the Europeans. That trains the European officer class to be in a position where they are going to have a lot more power and commanding interoperability, and where they can do things in Europe without the Americans having to spoonfeed them every single detail. That itself is a major change. The second thing that’s happening is that, at the end of the day, a country’s strategy is dependent on the documents that it puts out — so, for example, if the National Security Strategy comes out and includes burden shifting, the Europeans will take that as the grand strategy of the Republic, and they, in turn, develop their forces depending on that strategy. We have seen that before with George H.W. Bush’s New World Order, or George W Bush’s War on Terror, or Biden’s “autocracy versus democracy” framing. The NSS shapes how European powers position their military and their capability, so I think the fact that we are pretty openly talking about burden shifting will in itself shape the European capability in a way. They are going to be like, “Fine, these guys are moving out, and we have to do something about it,” and that will create a snowballing effect in Europe. Some of your critics charge that a dormant NATO will inevitably become a “dead NATO” because it would neuter the Article 5 commitment. How do you respond to that? In what type of scenario would a dormant NATO reactivate and wake up? For pretty much the entirety of its first phase [between 1949 and 1991], NATO was essentially a dormant NATO. It was a defensive alliance which was only there in case of a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency scenario. And if you actually read Dormant NATO, you will see that at no point does it suggest a complete withdrawal, and at no point does it suggest that we shouldn’t be part of the common defense or Europe. NATO Article 5 says one single thing: if one of the countries is attacked, it has the right to call the other countries and they’re going to come to the table. And depending on the kind of threat, they’re going to decide on what kind of participation they’re going to have in the future. That isn’t changing with Dormant NATO. If we are called to the defense of Europe, and if we foresee a hegemonic threat, the U.S Congress still has the power to decide that we are going to go there and defend. The question then becomes what kind of threat Europe is facing. If it’s genuinely facing something like the Third Reich or something like the USSR, that’s a whole different thing. At that point of time, clearly the United States has to go and defend, because the U.S. grand strategy has forever been to oppose a unified Europe under one single hegemon. That hasn’t changed. Other than that, I think Dormant NATO is essentially how NATO was in its first phase. There is a revanchist power in Europe at this point in Putin’s Russia, so how do you respond to the counterargument that now is simply not the time for the U.S. to carry through on this strategy? I think Colby is completely right in his assessment that Russia is a regional nuisance. It is a power, but it’s also a very odd kind of power. It can be revanchist, but, like, I can want to be James Bond, but I’m not capable of doing that. Putin’s Russia is not capable of being a hegemonic threat to the European continent. Under no military scenario can one foresee Russian tanks rolling through Poland or Germany or France. Russia is, though, a big power with 6,000 nukes, so we have to figure out a way that Russian interests are sort of satiated without them being any kind of genuine revanchist threat. So we have to talk to the Russians and to the Germans and say, “Hey, by the way, you guys have to talk too, and we can only do so much from this distance.” And if this is not the time, when will it be the time? If Russians are a revanchist threat to Europe, does that not push the Europeans to rearm rapidly? If that doesn’t push the Europeans to rearm rapidly, what would? In his speech, Colby said there’s nothing “anti-European” about this strategy, but other administration officials have made some rather pointed comments about Europe, and the NSS openly criticized Europe for overseeing “civilizational erasure.” What do you make of the administration’s rhetoric around this sort of civilizational politics? Personally, I’m a military historian and a realist, so let me put it this way: Historically, there is no evidence that kinship or culture is solid ground for any kind of solidarity or alliance. Alliances are built on interest. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who’s ruling Western Europe — Germany, France or the U.K. Those are the countries which will be the most important to us purely because of geography and because of manpower and production capacity. So I don’t really buy some of those civilizational arguments, and I think some of that is basically rhetorical. But is it counterproductive? Does it make it harder to effectuate this change in military strategy if America’s political leaders are privately and publicly casting aspersions on European political leadership? If it were me, I would probably be a little bit more disciplined when it comes to rhetorical extremes about Europe. But that being said, one has to differentiate between a private chat, for example, and the actual grand strategy. I might hate my neighbor, but if their house is on fire, I’m still going to try and save it. So spin this forward a bit. What moves in this direction should Europe expect next from the U.S., and how should they best prepare for them? If I were advising a European government, I would say to sit down with the U.S. and ask for a timeline and an outline of a troop drawdown. That is inevitably going to happen someday, so they might as well prepare for it. The way that they have reacted to the combatant command change to and the burden shifting is pretty optimistic. They were expecting that, and they saw it coming, so that was fine. I think they have to figure out two things. One, they have to accept that it is the U.S. that is ideally positioned to provide the nuclear deterrence to Europe, so any idea of a European nuclear weapon is completely dead on arrival. That is not going to happen, and they are just wasting time if they keep on talking about that nonsense. Second, I think they need to sit down among themselves and figure out the nitty-gritty details of basic things like troop movements and logistical movements. They need to talk to Americans and say “Fine, we understand that you want to shift some of the logistical burden on the infantry, so give us a timeline, and let’s decide on when you’re going to do it.” For example, if the U.S. wants to move back the surge of 20,000 troops that happened after the Russian invasion [of Ukraine] under Biden, the Americans should just tell the Europeans, “By the way, this is 2026, and by 2028 we’re moving that out, so figure it out.” That kind of simple logistical conversation is going to be very helpful.

BRUSSELS ― European governments and corporations are racing to reduce their exposure to U.S. technology, military hardware and energy resources as transatlantic relations sour.  For decades, the EU relied on NATO guarantees to ensure security in the bloc, and on American technology to power its business. Donald Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, and aggressive comments about Europe by members of his administration, have given fresh impetus to European leaders’ call for “independence.” “If we want to be taken seriously again, we will have to learn the language of power politics,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said last week. From orders banning civil servants from using U.S.-based videoconferencing tools to trade deals with countries like India to a push to diversify Europe’s energy suppliers, efforts to minimize European dependence on the U.S. are gathering pace. EU leaders warn that transatlantic relations are unlikely to return to the pre-Trump status quo. EU officials stress that such measures amount to “de-risking” Europe’s relationship with the U.S., rather than “decoupling” — a term that implies a clean break in economic and strategic ties. Until recently, both expressions were mainly applied to European efforts to reduce dependence on China. Now, they are coming up in relation to the U.S., Europe’s main trade partner and security benefactor. The decoupling drive is in its infancy. The U.S. remains by far the largest trading partner for Europe, and it will take years for the bloc to wean itself off American tech and military support, according to Jean-Luc Demarty, who was in charge of the European Commission’s trade department under the body’s former president, Jean-Claude Juncker. Donald Trump’s threats to take over Greenland, and aggressive comments about Europe by members of his administration, have given fresh impetus to European leaders’ call for “independence.” | Kristian Tuxen Ladegaard Berg/NurPhoto via Getty Images “In terms of trade, they [the U.S.] represent a significant share of our exports,” said Demarty. “So it’s a lot, but it’s not a matter of life and death.” The push to diversify away from the U.S. has seen Brussels strike trade deals with the Mercosur bloc of Latin American countries, India and Indonesia in recent months. The Commission also revamped its deal with Mexico, and revived stalled negotiations with Australia. DEFENDING EUROPE: FROM NATO TO THE EU Since the continent emerged from the ashes of World War II, Europe has relied for its security on NATO — which the U.S. contributes the bulk of funding to. At a weekend retreat in Zagreb, Croatia, conservative European leaders including Merz said it was time for the bloc to beef up its homegrown mutual-defense clause, which binds EU countries to an agreement to defend any EU country that comes under attack. While it has existed since 2009, the EU’s Article 42.7 mutual defense clause was rarely seen as necessary because NATO’s Article 5 served a similar purpose. But Europe’s governments have started to doubt whether the U.S. really would come to Europe’s rescue. In Zagreb, the leaders embraced the EU’s new role as a security actor, tasking two leaders, as yet unnamed, with rapidly cooking up plans to turn the EU clause from words to an ironclad security guarantee. “For decades, some countries said ‘We have NATO, why should we have parallel structures?’” said a senior EU diplomat who was granted anonymity to talk about confidential summit preparations. After Trump’s Greenland saber-rattling, “we are faced with the necessity, we have to set up military command structures within the EU.” At a weekend retreat in Zagreb, Croatia, conservative European leaders including Merz said it was time for the bloc to beef up its homegrown mutual-defense clause, which binds EU countries to an agreement to defend any EU country that comes under attack. | Marko Perkov/AFP via Getty Images In comments to EU lawmakers last week, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that anyone who believes Europe can defend itself without the U.S. should “keep on dreaming.” Europe remains heavily reliant on U.S. military capabilities, most notably in its support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. But some Europeans are now openly talking about the price of reducing exposure to the U.S. — and saying it’s manageable. TECHNOLOGY: TEAMS OUT, VISIO IN The mood shift is clearest when it comes to technology, where European reliance on platforms such as X, Meta and Google has long troubled EU voters, as evidenced by broad support for the bloc’s tech legislation. French President Emmanuel Macron’s government is planning to ban officials from using U.S.-based videoconferencing tools. Other countries like Germany are contemplating similar moves. “It’s very clear that Europe is having our independence moment,” EU tech czar Henna Virkkunen told a POLITICO conference last week. “During the last year, everybody has really realized how important it is that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to some very critical technologies.” France is moving to ban public officials from using American platforms including Google Meet, Zoom and Teams, a government spokesperson told POLITICO. Officials will soon make the switch to Visio, a videoconferencing tool that runs on infrastructure provided by French firm Outscale. In the European Parliament, lawmakers are urging its president, Roberta Metsola, to ditch U.S. software and hardware, as well as a U.S.-based travel booking tool. In Germany, politicians want a potential German or European substitute for software made by U.S. data analysis firm Palantir. “Such dependencies on key technologies are naturally a major problem,” Sebastian Fiedler, an SPD lawmaker and expert on policing, told POLITICO. Even in the Netherlands, among Europe’s more pro-American countries, there are growing calls from lawmakers and voters to ring-fence sensitive technologies from U.S. influence. Dutch lawmakers are reviewing a petition signed by 140,000 people calling on the state to block the acquisition of a state identity verification tool by a U.S. company. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in late January, German entrepreneur Anna Zeiter announced the launch of a Europe-based social media platform called W that could rival Elon Musk’s X, which has faced fines for breaching the EU’s content moderation rules. W plans to host its data on “European servers owned by European companies” and limits its investors to Europeans, Zeiter told Euronews. So far, Brussels has yet to codify any such moves into law. But upcoming legislation on cloud and AI services are expected to send signals about the need to Europeanize the bloc’s tech offerings. ENERGY: TIME TO DIVERSIFY On energy, the same trend is apparent. The United States provides more than a quarter of the EU’s gas, a share set to rise further as a full ban on Russian imports takes effect. But EU officials warn about the risk of increasing Europe’s dependency on the U.S. in yet another area. Trump’s claims on Greenland were a “clear wake-up call” for the EU, showing that energy can no longer be seen in isolation from geopolitical trends, EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen said last Wednesday. The Greenland crisis reinforced concerns that the bloc risks “replacing one dependency with another,” said Jørgensen, adding that as a result, Brussels is stepping up efforts to diversify, deepening talks with alternative suppliers including Canada, Qatar and North African countries such as Algeria. FINANCE: MOVING TO EUROPEAN PAYMENTS Payment systems are also drawing scrutiny, with lawmakers warning about over-reliance on U.S. payment systems such as Mastercard and Visa. The digital euro, a digital version of cash that the European Central Bank is preparing to issue in 2029, aims to cut these dependencies and provide a pan-European sovereign means of payment. “With the digital euro, Europeans would remain in control of their money, their choices and their future,” ECB President Christine Lagarde said last year. In Germany, some politicians are sounding the alarm about 1,236 tons of gold reserves that Germany keeps in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “In a time of growing global uncertainty and under President Trump’s unpredictable U.S. policy, it’s no longer acceptable” to have that much in gold reserves in the U.S., Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the German politician from the liberal Free Democratic Party, who chairs the Parliament’s defense committee, told Der Spiegel. Several European countries are pushing the EU to privilege European manufacturers when it comes to spending EU public money via “Buy European” clauses. Until a few years ago, countries like Poland, the Netherlands or the Baltic states would never have agreed on such “Buy European” clauses. But even those countries are now backing calls to prioritize purchases from EU-based companies. MILITARY INVESTMENT: BOOSTING OWN CAPACITY A €150 billion EU program to help countries boost their defense investments, finalized in May of last year, states that no more than 35 percent of the components in a given purchase, by cost, should originate from outside the EU and partner states like Norway and Ukraine. The U.S. is not considered a partner country under the scheme. For now, European countries rely heavily on the U.S. for military enablers including surveillance and reconnaissance, intelligence, strategic lift, missile defense and space-based assets. But the powerful conservative umbrella group, the European People Party, says these are precisely the areas where Europe needs to ramp up its own capacities. When EU leaders from the EPP agreed on their 2026 roadmap in Zagreb, they stated that the “Buy European” principle should apply to an upcoming Commission proposal on joint procurement. The title of the EPP’s 2026 roadmap? “Time for independence.” Camille Gijs, Jacopo Barigazzi, Mathieu Pollet, Giovanna Faggionato, Eliza Gkritsi, Elena Giordano, Ben Munster and Sam Clark contributed reporting from Brussels. James Angelos contributed reporting from Berlin.