A Belgian soldier participating in a NATO mission in Lithuania died during an exercise on Friday, Belgian officials said late Saturday. Belgium’s federal public prosecutor has launched an investigation into the incident. The soldier sustained an injury during a mortar exercise and died in hospital on Saturday, Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken and Chief of Defense Frederik Vansina confirmed in a joint statement. Francken said in a post on X that he is “deeply saddened by the tragic accident,” sending “thoughts and solidarity” to the soldier’s friends and colleagues. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda also offered his condolences in a post, saying Belgian troops serving with NATO in Lithuania “make an invaluable contribution to the security of our nation and the entire Alliance,” adding: “Their dedication and sacrifice will never be forgotten.” The Belgian national, who was not identified, was part of the Artillery Battalion in Brasschaat. Nearly 200 Belgian soldiers have been deployed to Lithuania since the summer, as part of NATO’s Forward Land Forces mission, a series of multinational battle groups stationed in eight Eastern European countries. The Belgian federal public prosecutor’s office said it has opened an investigation into the soldier’s death without providing more information on the case, Belga newswire reported. A federal magistrate and two detectives from the federal police, specializing in military affairs investigations, visited the scene on Saturday, VRT reported.  Belgium’s defense ministry also has launched an internal investigation to determine the exact circumstances of the accident, according to media reports.

KYIV — The fighting in Ukraine no longer resembles the trench warfare of World War I — instead, drones have erased the solid front line by creating a killing zone. The skies over battlefields are now blackened by drones. Some carry cameras and thermal detectors, others are equipped with bombs and guns; some merely lie on the ground beside paths and roads until stirred to life by a passing soldier or vehicle. They use electronic signals or are steered by impossible-to-jam fiber-optic cables. Counter-drones aim to block them while also hunting for the drone pilots hunkered down dozens of kilometers from the front. The result is a gray area of chaos stretching some 20 kilometers from the front, where drones hunt for soldiers, the wounded are left to die because it’s so difficult to evacuate them, and supplies of ammunition, food and water are almost impossible to move up to the fighting troops. “We have now switched to a drone-versus-drone war,” Col. Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of the President’s Office of Ukraine and a former battlefield commander, told POLITICO. “Drones are now able to sit in ambush, intercept enemy logistics and disrupt supplies. They have also made it more difficult to maintain positions: If you are detected, every weapon in the area will immediately rush to destroy you.” A NEW WAY OF WAR Drones played a key role in the fighting from the earliest days of the war in 2022, when Ukraine celebrated the successes of Turkish Bayraktar drones against Russian armored columns. Despite that, both Ukraine and Russia initially prepared to fight a classic war marked by artillery duels, mechanized columns and defensive trenches, Palisa said. In 2023-2024, however, the war changed and trenches started disappearing, said Ivan Sekach, spokesperson for the Ukrainian army’s 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which is fighting in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region. Instead of long lines of trenches, the outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian army created strongpoints and observation posts and relied on drones to make up for a shortage of 155-millimeter artillery ammunition. In response, the Russian army began to reduce the size of its assault units because Ukrainian drones proved capable of pinpointing and destroying larger troop concentrations. Rather than the large-scale “meat-wave” attacks that characterized earlier Russian assaults, when large numbers of men were hurled at Ukrainian defenders, Russia is now attacking in small groups, said Col. Vladyslav Voloshyn, spokesperson for the Ukrainian army’s South command. “It takes time for Russians to assemble a storming group. They are crawling, hiding. It takes two to three days for them to gather a group able to storm our positions,” Voloshyn said. Usually, two Russian soldiers pave the way but only one survives, he explained. Smaller groups are harder to spot for Ukrainian drone operators, especially during fog or rain. “As the result, we got a deep gray zone, where Russians infiltrate behind Ukrainian positions and are hiding there, multiplying in case not spotted and destroyed,” Sekach said. Foul weather helped Russian soldiers break through Ukrainian defenses in Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region earlier this month after a year of attempts, as well as at other points along the front like Novopavlivka village in Dnipropetrovsk and in the central Zaporizhzhia region. For now there appears to be no quick fix to the kill zone created by drones. | Jose Colon/Anadolu via Getty Images “Fog or rain hinders flights of drones, creating the opportunity for safer logistics, rotation or local operations. Therefore, weather windows are used for infiltration or repositioning forces,” Palisa said. Russia is working to make defending Ukraine even more difficult. “The Russian army is trying to make a kill zone as wide as possible, destroying all buildings and shelters with pinpoint strikes, to make it completely bare wasteland where it is impossible to hide,” Voloshyn said. SUPPLY NIGHTMARE Drones are also forcing artillery to move farther from the front and make it almost impossible to use armored vehicles to supply troops. “Drones became handy when it comes to delivery and evacuation, battle reconnaissance and distance mining — tasks usually done by people at war before,” Palisa said. But as drones proliferate, even those uses are now becoming ever more difficult, turning the front into a hellscape. Drones make evacuation and rotation, as well as logistics, deadly exercises. “Most soldiers currently die during rotation,” Voloshyn said. “Any kind of delivery bears grave risks. So, we use drones more often.” As a result, commanders are forcing soldiers to spend weeks at the front — also called the zero line — without rotation. “Usually, during a rotation, a car comes as far as 5 to 6 kilometers from the positions. Soldiers have to walk the rest of the road, hiding in terrain from drones,” Sekach said. That creates problems for morale. “An infantryman who once sat at zero in a hole for 60 to 165 days will not go there again,” said Mykola Bielieskov, research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst at the Come Back Alive Initiatives Center.  VIDEO MEDICINE The wounded have it hardest, as drones critically undermine front-line medicine and evacuation, said Daryna, an anesthesiologist with the Da Vinci Wolves Battalion of the Ukrainian army, who asked to be identified only by first name. “Today an injured soldier frequently has to walk, be carried, or even crawl for up to 5 kilometers from his position until the point where an armored evacuation vehicle can pick him up,” Daryna said. “Then an evacuation vehicle has to make it through swarms of Russian drones that can reach as far as 20-40 kilometers from the front-line positions.” Drones also force Ukrainian combat medics to move their medical points farther from the front line, which prolongs the time it takes to stabilize the wounded. Injured soldiers have to stay at their positions for days or even weeks waiting for evacuation, which is sometimes now performed by land robotic systems. Their inability to reach the wounded has forced Ukrainian combat medics to turn to TV medicine, using a Mavic drone to talk to stranded soldiers. “On a video, we can see how the tourniquet was applied. Then we can contact the fellow soldiers of a wounded [soldier] and direct them how to properly help him,” Daryna said. “Drones also become useful for the delivery of necessary medicine to the positions.” There are also reports from open-source researchers of Russia’s abandoning wounded troops rather than trying to evacuate them. Enemy drones are also making life much more dangerous for the pilots flying them from behind the front. “I remember the times when you could safely go to smoke in a 10 kilometer zone from the contact line. Now we do not enter the zone without a shotgun. Fiber optic cable drones are reaching as far as 15 kilometers already, so you have to be extra careful,” said Sekach. For now there appears to be no quick fix to the kill zone created by drones. “There is currently no doctrine on how to build defense in depth when you have very few infantrymen on the front line, and the enemy is engaged in infiltration, and at the same time, when the enemy cuts off your connection between the front line and the rear and actively knocks out your drone operators on the front line,” Bielieskov said. “This is the recipe for Russian slow advances — the squeezing effect.”

BERLIN — Germany’s governing parties moved to provide Ukraine with €3 billion in additional funding, significantly upping military assistance at a time U.S. support for the embattled country is wavering.   During marathon negotiations on a draft 2026 budget that lasted into early Friday morning, coalition lawmakers agreed to increase Ukraine aid to €11.5 billion, bringing Germany’s support for Ukraine to its highest level since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022. The additional money is to be spent on artillery, drones, armored vehicles, and two Patriot air defense systems, according to German media reports citing the defense ministry. Germany is Ukraine’s largest donor of military aid, after the U.S., in absolute terms. But as U.S. aid flows to Ukraine stall, European countries have attempted to pick up the slack. Still, military aid to Ukraine dropped sharply over the summer despite a deal to allow European NATO countries to acquire weapons from U.S. stockpiles. Germany’s overall draft budget deal foresees total expenditure of around €524.5 billion in 2026 — €4 billion more than initially anticipated. Lawmakers on the coalition’s budget committee approved debt of more than €180 billion, a level made possible by a historic reform of spending rules passed earlier this year, which largely exempted defense expenditures and Ukraine aid from Germany’s constitutional “debt brake.” The draft budget must still be approved by lawmakers in Germany’s Bundestag. As Russia’s invasion grinds on, Ukraine’s war chest is running increasingly low. At the same time, European countries’ military aid to Kyiv declined by 57 percent this summer compared to the beginning of the year, according to a report by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. This decline follows U.S. President Donald Trump’s suspension of new aid packages to Ukraine earlier this year. The European Commission wants to use sanctioned Russian cash to fund a €140 billion loan to Ukraine, but the plan is stalled due to Belgian objections. European leaders say they will attempt to reach an agreement to unlock the funds during a summit in December at the latest.

BERLIN — Germany’s top operational commander warned today that Russia could be capable of launching a large-scale attack on NATO “soon” if its military buildup continues unchecked. “Despite the war in Ukraine, Russia still possesses a very large military potential,” Lt. Gen. Alexander Sollfrank, head of the armed forces’ Operational Command, said at the Bundeswehr’s annual conference in Berlin. “That means Russia is already today capable of carrying out a regionally limited attack on NATO territory.” Sollfrank, who oversees all of Germany’s military operations and crisis deployments, warned that the Kremlin is rebuilding its land, artillery and drone forces and plans to expand its active troop strength to 1.5 million soldiers.  “After the end of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and if its rearmament continues unchecked, a large-scale attack on NATO could become possible — and soon,” he said. “That means we have to deal with the possibility of an attack against us, whether we like it or not. And beyond that, we have no time to lose.” The commander presented “Operation Plan Germany,” a new national defense plan aligned with NATO’s regional strategy, as the country’s blueprint for deterrence. The plan organizes how up to 800,000 allied troops could move through Germany within 180 days to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank if war looms. “It’s not a war plan, but rather a war-prevention plan at its core,” Sollfrank said. He pointed to a surge in hybrid attacks and sabotage targeting Germany and its neighbors — including drone sightings, naval incidents and undersea interference — as proof that Moscow is already testing Europe’s defenses. “Deterrence only works if it’s credible,” Sollfrank said. “We must be ready to fight so that we do not have to fight.”

Czechia — one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies — is considering cutting the flow of much-needed arms and ammunition to Kyiv’s forces when its new government takes control in the coming weeks, according to a key leader of the incoming coalition. Filip Turek, the president of the right-wing populist Motorists party that this week signed an agreement to help form a national government, said that his country will “maintain NATO commitments and adherence to international law.” However, he went on, “it will prioritize diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine and mitigate risks of conflict in Europe, shifting from military aid funded by the national budget to humanitarian support and focusing on Czech security needs.” The Motorists party was founded in 2022, and clinched six seats in parliament during last month’s nationwide election, making it a pivotal kingmaker in efforts by prime minister-designate Andrej Babiš and his populist ANO faction to form a government. Turek is under consideration to take on the role of foreign minister in the new administration. Babiš has previously publicly cast doubt on the future of a major program led by the current Czech government to provide tens of thousands of artillery shells to Ukraine, but has avoided publicly committing to a position since the election. Responding to the comments, first reported in POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook, outgoing Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský said, “the limitation of Czech military aid to Ukraine is news that will surely bring great joy to Russian soldiers on the front line. Let’s consider it a Christmas gift from Babiš to Vladimir Putin.” According to Lipavský, whose broad center-right platform suffered defeat in October’s election, the new coalition’s policy statements “do not mention the word Russia even once,” and fail to face up to the Kremlin’s aggression. “The new government will be undermining the security of the Czech Republic,” Lipavský said. Turek added that the new Czech government would deal with Moscow in a manner “guided by pragmatic protection of national interests” and avoid “escalation that could endanger Czechia’s energy security or economic stability.” A “broader focus on sovereignty and non-intervention suggests a cautious, interest-based approach,” he said. While the Czech government may change the types of aid it provides to Ukraine, the EU’s main plan to finance Kyiv next year hinges on the use of Russian frozen assets currently held in Belgium. Brussels is in the process of deciding whether to support those measures, and it’s unclear whether Prague would oppose such a move. Babiš, tasked with forming a government within the next month, may face opposition from President Petr Pavel over Turek’s nomination. The likely next foreign minister has faced police investigation over inflammatory social media posts, some of which he has apologized for and others of which he has denied authorship. EU STANCE At the same time, Turek said Prague would prioritize being “a sovereign, confident member of the EU and a firm ally in NATO,” but simultaneously “resist further transfers of powers to Brussels and advocate for a union based on unanimity, mutual respect, and pragmatic policies that avoid overburdening citizens with regulations.” The former racing car driver, who until last month served as a member of the European Parliament and campaigned on an anti-Green Deal platform, branded eco-conscious policies “unsustainable,” calling for a reversal of the 2035 ban on the sale of cars with combustion engines and for emissions trading systems to be dropped altogether. “Real change requires Brussels to prioritize factory floors and family budgets over ideological agendas that only accelerate the offshoring of sophisticated European production to China,” Turek said, “where less efficient plants and long-distance shipping generate higher global emissions, paradoxically contradicting the very climate objectives Brussels claims to pursue.” Babiš will have to present his proposed list of ministers to Czech President Petr Pavel in the coming days before a vote of confidence in the new government can be held.

BRUSSELS — Heard the one about the 12-and-half-hour meeting of 27 national leaders that succeeded in agreeing very little apart from coming up with quite a lot of “let’s decide in a couple of months” or “let’s just all agree on language that means absolutely nothing but looks like we’re united” or “let’s at least celebrate that we got through this packed agenda without having to come back on Friday”? No? Well let us enlighten you. And if that makes you question how we’ve managed to squeeze 29 things out of this, well let’s just say one of these is about badly functioning vending machines… 1 . STRAIGHT OUT OF THE BOX WITH A QUICK WIN ON SANCTIONS … The day was off to a flying start when Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico lifted his veto over the latest raft of Russia sanctions on the eve of the summit — allowing the package to get formally signed off at 8 a.m. before leaders even started talking. Fico rolled over after claiming to achieve what he set out to do: clinch support for Slovakia’s car industry. He found an unusual ally in German Chancellor Friedrich Merz who he met separately to discuss the impact of climate targets on their countries’ automotive sectors. 2. … BUT AGREEMENT ON FROZEN RUSSIAN ASSETS WAS LESS FORTHCOMING There was a moment earlier in the week where the EU looked to be on the cusp of a breakthrough on using Russian frozen assets to fund a €140 billion loan for Ukraine. Belgium, the main holdout, appeared to be warming to the European Commission’s daring idea to crack open the piggy bank. But Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever stuck by his guns , saying he feared taking the assets, which are held in a Brussels-based financial depository, could trigger Moscow to take legal action. 3. BELGIUM DIDN’T MOVE ON ITS BIG THREE BIG DEMANDS The Flemish right-winger’s prerequisites were threefold: the “full mutualization of the risk,” guarantees that if the money has to paid back, “every member state will chip in,” and for every other EU country that holds immobilized assets to also seize them. Leaders eventually agreed on that classic EU summit outcome: a fudge. They tasked the European Commission to “present options” at the next European Council — effectively deciding not to decide. “Political will is clear, and the process will move forward,” said one EU official. But it’s uncertain whether a deal can be brokered by the next summit, currently set for December. 4. DE WEVER REJECTS THE ‘BAD BOY’ LABEL After POLITICO ranked the Belgian leader among its list of “bad boys” likely to disrupt Thursday’s summit (rightfully, might we add), he protested the branding. “A bad boy! Me? … If you talk about the immobilized assets, we’re the very, very best,” he said. The day was off to a flying start when Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico lifted his veto over the latest raft of Russia sanctions on the eve of the summit. | Olivier Hoslet/EPA 5. URSULA VON DER LEYEN ALSO CONCEDED THEY’RE NOT QUITE THERE YET The high-level talks “allowed us to identify points we need to clarify,” the Commission president said tactfully. “Nobody vetoed nothing today,” European Council President António Costa chimed in. “The technical and legal aspects of Europe’s support need to be worked upon.” Translation in case you didn’t understand the double negative: The EU needs to come up with a better plan to reassure Belgium — and fast. 6. UKRAINE: EVER THE OPTIMIST Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ― a guest of the summit ― told reporters Russia must pay the price for its invasion, calling on the EU to follow through with its frozen assets proposal, adding he thought the leaders were “close” to an agreement. “If Russia brought war to our land, they have to pay for this war,” he said. 7. AND ZELENSKYY IS STILL HOLDING OUT FOR TOMAHAWKS “We will see,” was Zelenskyy’s message on the topic of acquiring the long-range missiles from the U.S., which Donald Trump has so far ruled out selling to Kyiv. “Each day brings something … maybe tomorrow we will have Tomahawks,” Zelenskyy said. “I don’t know.” 8. UKRAINE WANTS GERMANY TO SEND MORE WEAPONS TOO Merz held a meeting with Zelenskyy about “the situation in Washington and the American plans that are now on the table,” a German official said, adding Zelenskyy made “specific requests” to the chancellor about helping Ukraine with its “defense capabilities.” After the summit, the German leader said Berlin would review a proposal on how German technologies could help to protect Ukrainian’s energy and water infrastructure. 9. THUMBS UP TO DEFENSE ROADMAP! EU leaders endorsed the Defense Readiness Roadmap 2030 presented last week by the Commission, which aims to prepare member countries for war by 2030. One of its main objectives is to fill EU capability gaps in nine areas: air and missile defense, enablers, military mobility, artillery systems, AI and cyber, missile and ammunition, drones and anti-drones, ground combat, and maritime. The plan also mentions areas like defense readiness and the role of Ukraine, which would be heavily armed and supported to become a “steel porcupine” able to deter Russian aggression. As leaders deliberated, a Russian fighter jet and a refueling aircraft briefly crossed into Lithuanian airspace from the Kaliningrad region, underscoring the need for the EU to protect its skies. 10. KYIV IS PROMISING TO BUY EUROPEAN — MOSTLY Ukraine will prioritize domestic and European industry when spending cash from the proposed reparation loan funded by Russia’s frozen assets, Zelenskyy told leaders at the summit — but wants to be able to go across the pond when necessary. 11. MUCH THE SAME FOR SPAIN Spanish leader Pedro Sánchez said the country had committed to contributing cash to a fund organized by NATO to buy weapons for Ukraine from the U.S. | Nicolas Tucat/Getty Images Spanish leader Pedro Sánchez said the country had committed to contributing cash to a fund organized by NATO to buy weapons for Ukraine from the U.S. “Today, most of the air defense components, such as Patriots or Tomahawks … which Ukraine clearly needs, are only manufactured in the United States,” he said. Madrid has been a thorn in Washington’s side over its lax defense spending. 12. THERE WAS A MERCOSUR SURPRISE Merz stunned trade watchers when he announced the leaders had backed a controversial trade agreement with Latin American countries. “We voted on it today: The Mercosur agreement can be ratified,” the German chancellor told reporters, adding that he was “very happy” about that. “All 27 countries voted unanimously in favor,” Merz added on Mercosur. “It’s done.” The remark sparked confusion amongst delegations, as the European Council doesn’t usually vote on trade agreements — let alone one as controversial as the mammoth agreement with the countries of the Latin American bloc of Mercosur, which has been in negotiations for over 25 years. One EU diplomat clarified that it’s because European Council President António Costa sought confirmation from EU leaders that they would agree to take a stance on the deal by the end of this year — and no formal vote was taken yet. 13. CLIMATE TALKS PASSED WITHOUT A HITCH One of the hotter potatoes ahead of the summit passed surprisingly smoothly. Leaders ultimately refrained from bulldozing the EU’s climate targets, agreeing to a vaguely worded commitment to a green transition, though without committing to a 2040 goal, which proposes cutting emissions by 90 percent compared to 1990 levels. In the words of one diplomat: “Classic balance, everyone equally unhappy.” 14. AT LEAST ONE LEADER SEEMED PLEASED, THOUGH Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the summit a “turning point” in Europe’s approach to green policy, adding he succeeded in inserting a “revision clause” into the EU’s plan to extend its carbon-trading system to heating and transport emissions that will give member countries the option to delay or adjust the rollout. “We’ve defused a threat to Polish families and drivers,” he declared, calling the change a signal that “Europe is finally speaking our language.” 15. BUT THE ISSUE WON’T STAY BURIED FOR LONG Ministers are set to reconvene and cast a vote on the 2040 goal on Nov. 4, described by one diplomat as “groundhog day.” 16. MEANWHILE, THERE WAS NOTHING ON MIGRATION … Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the summit a “turning point” in Europe’s approach to green policy. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images Aside from promising to make migration a “priority,” the EU’s leaders failed to make any kind of breakthrough on a stalled proposal for burden-sharing. Reminder: The EU missed a deadline last week to agree on a new way of deciding which member countries are under stress from receiving migrants and ways of sharing the responsibility more equally across the bloc. 17. … BUT THE ANTI-MIGRANT BREAKFAST CLUB LIVES ON Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen and the Netherlands’ Dick Schoof have kept up their informal pre-summit “migration breakfasts” since last June, swapping innovative ideas on tougher border and asylum policies. They met again on Thursday with von der Leyen, who updated them on the EU’s latest plans for accelerating migrant returns, and the trio agreed an informal summit will take place next month in Rome. 18. NOR DID THE EU’S SOCIAL MEDIA BAN GET MUCH OF A LOOK IN As expected, the leaders endorsed a “possible” minimum age for kids to use social media, but failed to commit to a bloc-wide ban, with capitals divided on whether to make the age 15 or 16, as well as on the issue of parental consent. 19. THERE WAS A WHOLE LOT OF WAITING FOR NEWS… Journalists were frantically pressing their sources in the Council and national delegations to find out what was happening at the leaders’ table as the meeting dragged into the late hours. It eventually finished at 10.30 p.m. ― 12 and a half hours after it began. 20. … AND THE GREENS SEIZED THEIR MOMENT The EU Parliament’s Greens group co-chair Bas Eickhout wandered the hallways of the Justus Lipsius building ready to brief bored journalists about the wonders of the Green Deal — while leaders debated how to unravel it in the other room. 21. THE COMBUSTION ENGINE BAN FELL FLAT One of the pillars of the EU’s green transition, its 2035 de facto combustion engine ban, was set to play a major role in the competitiveness and climate discussions, with Merz and Fico spoiling for a fight over the proposal — yet it barely registered as a footnote. Slovakia used the climate talks to oppose the ban, and the Czech Republic chimed in to agree, but in the end the summit’s official conclusions welcomed the Commission’s proposed ban without mentioning how it should be watered down. 22. THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL’S VENDING MACHINES AREN’T VERY, ER, COMPETITIVE Officials and journalists alike found that the vending machines in the EU’s Justus Lipsius building, which incidentally is due for a €1 billion renovation, about as efficient as a roundtable of 27 national leaders lasting 12 and a half hours. 23. THE BLOC IS WORRIED ABOUT CHINA… Beijing’s export controls on rare earths came up in the talks on competitiveness, according to two EU officials, with some leaders expressing their concerns. 24. … BUT THEY’RE NOT READY TO GO NUCLEAR — YET One of the officials said the EU’s most powerful trade weapon, the Anti-Coercion Instrument, was mentioned, but didn’t garner much interest around the table. 25. HOUSING GETS 40 MINUTES — NOT BAD FOR A FIRST RUN Leaders spent a chunk of time discussing the continent’s housing crisis. A solid start for the topic, which made it onto the agenda for the first time at Costa’s behest. The EU executive “is ready to help,” von der Leyen said after the summit, announcing a European Affordable Housing Plan is in the pipeline and the first EU Housing Summit in 2026. | Dursun Aydemir/Getty Images During talks, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called on the Commission to create a database tracking which housing policies work — and which don’t — across Europe. Most leaders agreed that, while housing remains a national competence, the EU still has a role to play. 26. AND THE COMMISSION WANTS TO ROLL UP ITS SLEEVES The EU executive “is ready to help,” von der Leyen said after the summit, announcing a European Affordable Housing Plan is in the pipeline and the first EU Housing Summit in 2026. 27. LEADERS ENJOYED A FEAST OR TWO For lunch, langoustine with yuzu, celeriac and apple, fillet of veal with artichokes and crispy polenta, and a selection of fresh fruit. For dinner, cannelloni with herbs, courgette velouté, fillet of brill with chorizo and pepper, and fig meringue cake. Yum. 28. THOUGH A FEW COULDN’T MAKE IT Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the most notable absence, rocking up several hours late due to a national holiday in Budapest. Portugal and Slovenia’s leaders were also absent at one point. 29. AND COSTA KEPT HIS PROMISE … JUST The European Council president pledged to streamline summits under his watch, making them one-day affairs instead of two. And with just a couple hours to spare, he was successful. Okay, breathe. Did we miss anything? (Don’t answer that.) Gerardo Fortuna, Max Griera Andrieu, Jordyn Dahl, Gabriel Gavin, Hanne Cokelaere, Clea Caulcutt, Hans von der Burchard, Kathryn Carlson, Tim Ross, Jacopo Barigazzi, Gregorio Sorgi, Eliza Gkritsi, Carlo Martuscelli, Nicholas Vinocur, Saga Ringmar, Sarah Wheaton, Louise Guillot, Zia Weise, Camille Gijs, Bartosz Brzezinski and Giedre Peseckyte contributed to this report.

The UK government is “deeply concerned” about clashes and the return of violence in Gaza, despite Donald Trump’s peace deal being in place since last week. On Sunday, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper wrote on X that the “escalation” in Gaza is “deeply concerning.” Israel’s military said it had struck multiple targets in Gaza on Sunday, using aircraft and artillery, after it said that Hamas militants had shot at Israeli soldiers. The strikes killed at least 26 people, according to Reuters. Cooper, Britain’s top diplomat, said that the ceasefire “must hold and humanitarian aid must get through to those in need.” She urged that “all parties” uphold the ceasefire agreement to “avoid any further bloodshed.” Speaking to reporters on Air Force One Sunday night, US President Donald Trump said the ceasefire in Gaza was still in effect, despite the deadly strikes. Trump was unable to say if the Israeli strikes were justified: “I’d have to get back to you on that.” The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza says Israel has killed 97 Palestinians and violated the ceasefire agreement 80 times since it went into force.

Israel said it launched airstrikes and artillery fire at targets in southern Gaza on Sunday, trading blame with Hamas and dimming hopes that a ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump can lead to a lasting peace. “Earlier today, terrorists fired an anti-tank missile and gunfire toward IDF troops operating to dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the Rafah area, in southern Gaza, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement,” the Israel Defense Forces said. “In response, the IDF has begun striking in the area to eliminate the threat and dismantle tunnel shafts and military structures used for terrorist activity,” it said. According to media reports, Hamas said it was “unaware” of any clashes in Rafah and that it “remains committed to the ceasefire agreement.” It also accused Israel of “violating the deal and fabricating pretexts to justify its crimes.” The Israeli far right in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government coalition is using the moment to call for a full resumption of the war. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called on Israel to renew its military operations in the Gaza Strip “in full force” following the IDF reports, writes Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The far-right minister said Saturday that he had given Netanyahu a deadline to dismantle Hamas and enact the death penalty for terrorists, threatening that if his conditions were not met, his far-right Otzma Yehudit party would quit the government, writes another Israeli daily, the Times of Israel. Also on Saturday, the U.S. State Department said in a statement that it has “credible reports” that Hamas could violate the ceasefire with an attack on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. If the attack takes place, it “would constitute a direct and grave violation” of the agreement forged by Trump to end the two-year war between Israel and Hamas, the statement said. According to Bloomberg, an Israeli official said there are tentative plans for U.S. Vice President JD Vance to accompany White House mediator Steve Witkoff to the Middle East in the coming week, a signal of American seriousness about shoring up the deal. The U.S embassy in Jerusalem had no immediate comment, it said.

From the SWAP: A Secret History of the New Cold War by Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson. Copyright © 2025 by Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson. Published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. In the third week of March 2023, Vladimir Putin dialed onto a video call and reached for a winning tactic he had been honing since his first weeks as president. He approved the arrest of another American. By then, Russia’s president was running the world’s largest landmass from a series of elaborately constructed, identical conference rooms. As far as the CIA could tell, there were at least three of them across Russia, each custom-built and furnished to the exact same specifications, down to the precise positioning of a presidential pencil holder, engraved with a double-headed eagle, the state symbol tracing back five centuries, on the lacquered wooden desk. Neither the 10 perfectly sharpened pencils inside nor any other detail in the windowless rooms, with their beige-paneled walls and a decor of corporate efficiency, offered a clue to Putin’s true location. Russia’s president refused to use a cell phone and rarely used the internet. Instead, he conducted meetings through the glow of a large screen monitor, perched on a stand rolled in on wheels. The grim-faced officials flickering onto the screen, many of whom had spent decades in his close company, often were not aware from which of the country’s 11 time zones their commander in chief was calling. Putin’s staff sometimes announced he was leaving one city for another, then dispatched an empty motorcade to the airport and a decoy plane before he appeared on a videoconference, pretending to be somewhere he was not. From these Zoom-era bunkers, he had been governing a country at war, issuing orders to front-line commanders in Ukraine, and tightening restrictions at home. Engineers from the Presidential Communications Directorate had been sending truckloads of equipment across Russia to sustain the routine they called Special Comms, to encrypt the calls of “the boss.” The computers on his desks remained strictly air-gapped, or unconnected to the web. Some engineers joked nervously about the “information cocoon” the president was operating in. But even from this isolation, the president could still leverage an asymmetric advantage against the country his circle called their “main enemy.” One of the spy chiefs on the call was proposing an escalation against America. Tall, mustachioed, and unsmiling, Major General Vladislav Menschikov ranked among one of the siloviki, or “men of strength” from the security services who had risen in Putin’s slipstream. The president trusted him enough to run Russia’s nuclear bunkers and he played ice hockey with his deputies. Few people outside a small circle of Kremlinologists had heard of Menschikov, head of the First Service of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor to the KGB. But everybody in America had watched the spectacular operation he had pulled off just a few months earlier. An elite spy agency under his command orchestrated the arrest of an American basketball champion, Brittney Griner. Hollywood stars and NBA legends including Steph Curry and LeBron James demanded President Joe Biden ensure her swift return, wearing “We Are BG” shirts on court. Menschikov helped oversee her exchange in a prisoner swap for Viktor Bout, an infamous Russian arms dealer nicknamed “the Merchant of Death,” serving 25 years in an Illinois penitentiary. This account is based on interviews with former and current Russian, U.S. and European intelligence officials, including those who have personally been on a video call with Putin, and the recollections of an officer in the Russian leader’s Presidential Communications Directorate, whose account of Putin’s conference call routine matched publicly available information. Those sources were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive details of the president’s calls. Trading a notorious gunrunner for a basketball player was a stunning example of Russia’s advantage in “hostage diplomacy,” a form of statecraft that died with the Cold War only for Putin to resurrect it. In penal colonies across Russia, Menschikov’s subordinates were holding still more Americans, ready to swap for the right price. They included a former Marine, mistaken for an intelligence officer, who had come to Moscow for a wedding, and a high school history teacher whose students had included the CIA director’s daughter, caught in the airport carrying medical marijuana. Disappointingly, neither of their ordeals had yet to bring the desired offer from Washington. Menschikov’s proposal was to cross a threshold Moscow hadn’t breached since the Cold War and jail an American journalist for espionage. A young reporter from New Jersey — our Wall Street Journal colleague and friend Evan Gershkovich — was flying from Moscow to Yekaterinburg to report on the increased output of a local tank factory. If the operation went to plan, the reporter could be exchanged for the prisoner Putin referred to as “a patriot,” an FSB officer serving a life sentence in Germany for gunning down one of Russia’s enemies in front of a Berlin coffee shop called All You Need Is Love. The murderer had told the police nothing, not even his name. From the moment Putin gave his assent, a new round of the game of human poker would begin that would see a cavalcade of spies, diplomats and wannabe mediators including oligarchs, academy award-winning filmmakers and celebrities seek to help inch a trade towards fruition. The unlikely combination of Hillary Clinton and Tucker Carlson would both step in to advance talks, alongside the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who would wrestle with whether to fly to Moscow to personally petition Putin. All told, CIA officers would fly thousands of miles to orchestrate a deal that would come to encompass 24 prisoners. On the Russian side: hackers, smugglers, spies and Vadim Krasikov, the murderer Putin had set out to free were all released. In return, the U.S. and its allies were able to free dissidents, westerners serving draconian sentences, former Marine Paul Whelan, and journalists that included the Washington Post’s Vladimir Kara-Murza, Radio Free Europe’s Alsu Kurmasheva, and our newspaper’s Gershkovich. Looking back, what is remarkable is how well it all went for the autocrat in the Kremlin, who would manage to outplay his fifth U.S. president in a contest of taking and trading prisoners once plied by the KGB he joined in his youth. An adage goes that Russia, in the 21st century, has played a poor hand well. The unbelievable events that followed also raise the question of how much blind luck — and America’s own vulnerabilities — have favored the man in the “information cocoon.” The prisoner game continues even under President Donald Trump, who in his second term’s opening months conducted two swaps with Putin, then in May discussed the prospect of an even larger trade. It is a lesser-known item of the Russian president’s biography that he grabbed his first American bargaining chip just eight days after his March 2000 election, when the FSB arrested a former naval officer, Edmond Pope, on espionage charges. It took a phone call from Bill Clinton for the youthful Putin to pardon Pope, an act of swift clemency he would never repeat. Twenty-three years later, on the videoconference call with General Menschikov, Putin was in a far less accommodating mood. He wanted to force a trade to bring back the FSB hitman he privately called “the patriot” — he’d been so close to Krasikov, they’d fired rounds together on the shooting range. Some CIA analysts believed he was Putin’s personal bodyguard. In the previous months, before he approved Gershkovich’s arrest, three Russian spy chiefs asked the CIA if they could trade Krasikov, only to hear that rescuing a Russian assassin from a German jail was a delusional request of the United States. Days before the call, one of Putin’s aides phoned CIA Director Bill Burns and asked once more for good measure and was told, again, the entire idea was beyond the pale. Menschikov’s officers would test that point of principle. His men would arrest the reporter, once he arrived in Yekaterinburg. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was just after 1 p.m. in The Wall Street Journal’s small security office in New Jersey, and Gershkovich’s tracking app was no longer pinging. The small team of analysts monitoring signals from reporters deployed across the front lines of Ukraine and other global trouble spots had noticed his phone was offline, but there was no need to raise an immediate alarm. Yekaterinburg, where the Russia correspondent was reporting, was east of the Ural Mountains, a thousand miles from the artillery and missile barrages pummeling neighboring Ukraine. Journal staff regularly switched off their phones, slipped beyond the reach of cell service, or just ran out of battery. The security team made a note in the log. It was probably nothing. A text came in to the Journal’s security manager. “Have you been in touch with Evan?” The security manager had spent the day monitoring reporters near the Ukrainian front lines, or others in Kyiv who’d taken shelter during a missile bombardment. But he noticed Gershkovich had missed two check-ins and was ordering the New Jersey team to keep trying him. “Shit,” he texted back, then fired off a message to senior editors. The Journal’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan looked out through a cold March sky onto Sixth Avenue. Within minutes, staff gathering in the 45-story News Corporation Building or dialing in from Europe were scrambling to reach contacts and piece together what was happening in Russia. The paper’s foreign correspondents with experience in Moscow were pivoting from finalizing stories to calling sources who could locate their colleague. One reached a taxi driver in Yekaterinburg and urged him to stop by the apartment where Gershkovich was staying. The chauffeur called back minutes later, saying he’d found only dark windows, the curtains still open. “Let’s hope for the best,” he said. Though there were still no news reports on Gershkovich’s disappearance nor official comment from Russia’s government, the data points suggested something had gone badly wrong. The Journal scheduled a call with the Russian ambassador in Washington but when the hour came was told, “He is unfortunately not available.” The problem reached the new editor- in-chief, Emma Tucker, who listened quietly before responding in a voice laced with dread. “I understand. Now what do we do?” Only eight weeks into the job — in a Manhattan apartment so new it was furnished with a only mattress on the floor — Tucker was still trying to understand the Journal’s global org chart, and had met Gershkovich just once, in the paper’s U.K. office. Now she was corralling editors, lawyersand foreign correspondents from Dubai to London onto conference calls to figure out how to find him. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and Russia specialist on her staff made a grim prediction. If the FSB had him, it wasn’t going to be a short ordeal: “He’s going to spend his 30s in prison.” And when editors finally located the Journal’s publisher to inform him of what was going on, they hoped it wasn’t an omen. Almar Latour was touring Robben Island, the prison off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela served 18 of his 27 years of incarceration. There was a reporter nobody mentioned, but whose face was engraved into a plaque on the newsroom wall. Latour had once sat next to Daniel “Danny” Pearl, the paper’s intrepid and gregarious South Asia correspondent. In 2002, the 38-year-old was lured into an interview that turned out to be his own abduction, and was beheaded on camera by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 — leaving behind a pregnant wife and a newsroom left to report the murder of their friend. Paul Beckett, the Washington bureau chief and one of the last reporters to see Pearl alive, had thought of him immediately. He managed to get Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the phone. America’s top diplomat knew exactly who Evan was; just that morning he had emailed fellow administration officials the reporter’s latest front-page article, detailing how and where Western sanctions were exacting long-term damage on Russia’s economy. It was an example, Blinken told his office, of the great reporting still being done in Russia. “Terrible situation,” Blinken told Beckett, before adding a promise America would pay a steep price to keep: “We will get him back.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Biden White House’s first move after learning of Gershkovich’s arrest was to call the Kremlin — an attempt to bypass the FSB. The arrest of an American reporter was a major escalation and if National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan could reach Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy specialist, Sullivan hoped he could convince Ushakov to step back from the brink. At best, he assessed his odds of success at 10 percent, but this was a crisis that seemed likely to either be resolved with a quick call or drag on for who knows how long, and at what cost. “We’ve got a big problem,” Sullivan told Ushakov. “We’ve got to resolve this.” The answer that came back was swift and unambiguous. “This is a legal process,” Ushakov said. There would be no presidential clemency — only a trial, and if Washington wanted a prisoner trade, they were going to have to arrange it through what the Russians called “the special channel.” In other words, the CIA would have to talk to the FSB. Sullivan hung up, and his team braced themselves to brief the Journal: the newspaper was going to need to be patient. The White House was trapped in a rigged game, facing the crude asymmetry between the U.S. and Russia, whose leader, in power for a quarter-century, could simply order foreigners plucked from their hotel rooms and sentenced to decades on spurious charges. Griner, the basketball champion, hadn’t even returned to the basketball court in the three months since her exchange for “the Merchant of Death,” yet already, the Russians had scooped up another high-profile chip. The CIA and its European allies had been quietly trying to fight back in this game of human poker. They had spent enormous energy tracking and rounding up the Russians Putin valued most: deep-cover spies, or “illegals,” who spent years building false lives undercover, taking on foreign mannerisms and tongues. Norwegian police, with U.S. help, had nabbed an agent for Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, posing as a Brazilian arctic security professor in Norway’s far north. Poland had arrested a Spanish-Russian freelance journalist: His iCloud held the reports he’d filed for the GRU, on the women — dissidents and journalists — he’d wooed across Central and Eastern Europe. It had taken the spy service of the Alpine nation of Slovenia, known as Owl, nearly a year to find, then jail, a carefully hidden pair of married spies, pretending to be Argentines running an art gallery — sleeper agents working for Moscow’s SVR foreign intelligence agency. Not even their Buenos Aires-born children, who they spoke to in fluent Spanish, knew their parents’ true nationality or calling. Yet for all that work, none of these prisoners worked for the agency that mattered most in Russia and ran the “special channel” — the FSB. Putin himself had once run Russia’s primary intelligence agency, and now it was in the hands of his siloviki, the security men he’d known for decades who included Menschikov. There was, the CIA knew, only one prisoner the FSB wanted back: Krasikov, the FSB officer serving life in a German prison. America was stuck. Every stick it could beat Russia with was already being wielded. The world’s financial superpower was drowning Putin’s elite in sanctions, and almost every week Sullivan authorized another carefully designed shipment of weaponry to the battlegrounds of Ukraine, whose government complained bitterly it was being given just enough to perpetuate a war, not enough to win. And yet America’s government had to worry about the conflict tipping into a nuclear exchange. What else is there in our toolbag? Sullivan asked himself. We’re doing everything we can. But the game was rigged. Which is why Putin kept playing it.

Mark T. Kimmitt is a retired U.S. Army brigadier general and has also served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. Support for a postwar European mission in Ukraine is growing within the White House and the Pentagon. If carried out, this would mean an operation starting with the principles of European forces and resources, alongside U.S. assistance in areas like intelligence and air support — but no U.S. troops on the ground. Crucially, a mission like this would establish somewhat of a security guarantee for Ukraine. Certainly not the NATO Article 5 guarantee sought by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but probably the best he can expect at this juncture. It would also provide numerous other benefits to Europe, NATO and the U.S. First, the presence of European troops on the ground would be a visible and credible deterrent to Russian President Vladimir Putin. As continuing Russian operations further west in Ukraine and beyond would come at the cost of European casualties — and an inevitable response — it would be essential to answering the question: Will Putin want more? And should Russian forces then attack into NATO lands, these troops would function as a tripwire, providing critical time for a far larger and more robust force to arm, mobilize and prepare. Deployed as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve (OAR), the 6,000 U.S. tankers, infantrymen, artillery and aviation troops in Europe are more than a deterrence — they are a credible force, ready today, and a down payment on a far larger U.S. deployment if necessary. Together, the European tripwire and OAR would thus provide time and space to deploy most, if not all, the forces needed to face any Russian attack. Second, deploying a peace enforcement or peacekeeping force in Ukraine would also improve Europe’s independent operational capabilities. While many of the EU-led missions, such as those in Bosnia, Kosovo, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean have been successful — and greatly appreciated — they weren’t of the size or scale of full-spectrum combat, or even of the size that would be needed in Ukraine. For half a century, nations like France have aspired to achieve credible military force structures and capabilities apart from their dependence on the U.S. A European mission in Ukraine — supported by U.S. “over the horizon” assets — would deliver the next step in this process.  Moreover, such a mission would help reveal and rebuild the continent’s sorely needed force structures, manpower, combat equipment and logistics capability, which dissipated over its decades-long “holiday from history.” Indeed, great strides have been made since Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, but far more are needed. Ukraine has disabused both Europe and the U.S. of the notion of short wars and small budgets. And though the rearmament of European militaries is impressive, it’s still inadequate to combat a full-scale Russian invasion. Along these lines, such a deployment would reveal the shortfalls of Europe’s forces in full-spectrum operational capabilities. For example, while the lack of helicopters, artillery ammunition and strategic airlift has been an openly recognized problem for years, an operation in Ukraine would make apparent the lack of smaller items needed to conduct synchronized forces — or what George Patton called the “symphony of Mars.” Keeping a force in the field requires fuel and water tankers, camouflage nets, heaters for troop tents and hundreds of other items that are likely missing from current supply points. If leaders aren’t already aware, their troops will tell them. Together, the European tripwire and OAR would thus provide time and space to deploy most, if not all, the forces needed to face any Russian attack. | Mateusz Slodkowski/AFP via Getty Images U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan doesn’t call for abandoning Europe. America can and likely will provide significant enablers outside of Ukraine, including command and control, logistics, in-theater air transport and other assets that aren’t constrained by the tyranny of long distances. Delivering long-range air defense, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance reports are just as valuable, whether provided to the European force from Kyiv or Krakow. The truth is, should this mission be realized, there will be inevitable calls for more, as well as more proximate U.S. support. Mission creep is endemic to well-meaning American military leaders that operate with allies. In one personal example, when NATO agreed to take over sectors of Afghanistan from the U.S. in 2006, alliance members initially agreed they’d be self-sufficient. But soon after their contingents started deployment planning, requests for U.S. helicopters, quick reaction forces, special forces and intel support began to come in. As always, the U.S. supported within its means. In the case of Ukraine, however, the White House is setting a clear geographic dividing line, and so, for that matter, are the American people. A European force in postwar Ukraine is an important mission for Zelenskyy and his people. They have fought bravely and stubbornly against a larger Russian Army, which was once thought unstoppable. Now, they’re asking for security guarantees to ensure Putin doesn’t attack subsequently — as he did in 2022 despite a ceasefire in 2014 — having swallowed Crimea and a large chunk of eastern Ukraine.  If properly manned, trained and equipped, this mission wouldn’t just benefit Ukraine — it would have significant collateral benefits for European defense, both as a short-term tripwire and in rebuilding much-needed defense capability in the longer term. The most difficult part, of course, will be convincing European voters of the importance of forming and deploying such a force, as they will be putting their sons and daughters in harm’s way. But, this is the cost of providing a security guarantee, ensuring an enduring peace and, if that peace should fail, being ready to defend not only Ukraine but the whole of Europe.