ZAGROS MOUNTAINS, Iraq — About 5 kilometers from Iran, aircraft roar overhead. Are the planes American, Israeli, Iranian? The Kurdish fighter shrugged and urged haste. The final stretch to his militia’s base could be reached only on foot, along a steep path covered in loose rock. Out in the open, everyone is vulnerable. A tunnel leads to the underground base in a sliver of the Zagros Mountains in northeastern Iraq. The Iranian-Kurdish guerrilla group, the Kurdistan Free Life Party, is careful to keep its exact location secret. Visitors must switch their smartphones to flight mode before handing them over upon entry. The Kurdistan Free Life Party is in waiting mode, poised along Iran’s western border to move in if a weakened regime opens up a path to strike it. The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO, was granted rare access to the group’s base and its members, who discussed its ideology, goals and under what conditions they’d go into Iran. Militia representative Bahar Avrin said in an interview inside the base that the organization already has elements “inside” Iran, and that deploying a larger force against Tehran is ultimately a question of the right timing and conditions. The border between northern Iraq and Iran runs through the Zagros Mountains and is considered porous — for smugglers, locals and the handful of militias operating there. The Kurdistan Free Life Party, often referred to by its Kurdish acronym PJAK, is part of a coalition of six Kurdish militia groups that want to topple Iran’s Islamist regime and usher in a government that is more democratic and grants more rights and autonomy to Iranian Kurds in Iran. President Donald Trump has said Iraqi and Iranian Kurdish groups are “willing” to participate in a ground offensive against Tehran — but he has said he ruled out the idea to avoid making the war “any more complex than it already is.” A Kurdish assault could spark a sectarian power struggle that destabilizes Iran. And key U.S. allies with their own Kurdish minorities — Iraq and Turkey — have warned the idea could spread unrest elsewhere in the Middle East. The idea could nonetheless prove tempting for Trump as the war, now in its third week, drags on. The ruling regime in Tehran has not capitulated despite punishing airstrikes that have killed scores of its top leaders. Trump could find himself looking for military options that do not trigger the political risk that would accompany deployment of U.S. ground troops. “The president never takes anything fully off the table,” said Victoria Coates, who served as deputy national security adviser for the Middle East in Trump’s first term. “And if you were considering this, this is the last thing you would want the Iranians to know.” TUNNEL VISION PJAK looks ready to go into a fight, with a base that suggests an organized military operation. It consists of a tunnel system running through the mountain’s interior, with electricity and running water. On the walls hang photographs of fallen fighters — many of them young, women and men in their 20s and 30s. Four monitors mounted to the walls display the surrounding terrain outside. Motion sensors control the cameras; when a bird flutters across the screen, the image switches to it automatically. In a dark tunnel, a 20-year-old fighter holding an assault rifle introduced herself as Zilan. Her day begins at 5:30 a.m. and follows a strict schedule. “Our daily life is based on discipline,” she said. Ideological instruction aims at building a democratic society; military training focuses on defending the Kurdish people.Watch: The Conversation “We never want the help of foreign powers like Israel and the United States,” she said. “We are an independent party.” The Kurdistan Free Life Party is one of several Iranian-Kurdish groups in Iraq. In 1979, Kurds in Iran supported the revolution against the shah. When the new Islamic Republic rejected their demands for autonomy, heavy fighting broke out in Iranian Kurdistan. Numerous groups relocated to Iraq, where they now operate freely in northern Iraq, which is largely autonomous from the rest of the country and detached from the central government in Baghdad. The six members of the political and military alliance are not in agreement about whether to invade if called on, and under what conditions they would embark on a full-scale war for their political goals. Some parties appear eager to take on a ground offensive in Iran. Reza Kaabi, secretary-general of the Komala of the Toilers of Kurdistan, has even set out a blueprint, declaring a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone to be a prerequisite for any Kurdish invasion. There is a general sense in the region that PJAK — given its proximity to the Iranian border and its relatively strong military presence — would be one of the first of the six Kurdish militias in the coalition to go into Iran if given U.S. military support. But PJAK publicly rejects the idea that they would do so at the bidding of Washington. It’s a stance rooted in distrust of the U.S. — not least because the United States abruptly withdrew support from the Kurds in Syria in January. Asked under what conditions PJAK would launch an offensive across the Iraqi-Iranian border, Avrin declined to answer. But, she said, her organization has “never waited for any force to bring about change.” CNN recently reported that just a few days into the Iran war, Trump spoke with Mustafa Hijri, the secretary-general of another group in the Kurdish-Iranian opposition alliance: the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, or PDKI. It is one of the oldest Iranian-Kurdish opposition parties and has maintained armed units operating from exile in northern Iraq. PDKI executive committee member Hassan Sharafi said in an interview that he could “neither confirm nor deny” whether such a conversation had taken place, in part because of the limited contact among the group’s leadership maintained for security reasons. Sharafi said the PDKI had “no operational relations” with the United States on the ground in Iraq. At the political level, however, contacts exist: “In Washington, Paris, and London we have contacts, and our representatives there maintain relations. Our relations are diplomatic and political.” Such links, he said, were long-standing: “For more than 20 years we have had relations with the United States and with all European countries. We have contacts with all of them.” THE ROAD TO TEHRAN From Tehran’s perspective, the militias represent a serious threat. Iranian artillery has struck in the border region multiple times in recent days, hitting villages near the frontier. These attacks primarily affect civilians. The Kurdish guerrillas sheltered inside the mountain remain protected. Other militia groups, whose positions are located in more exposed terrain, have also come under fire. A 2023 security agreement between Iran and Iraq obliged Baghdad to disarm Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups, dismantle their bases and relocate them deeper into Iraqi territory. Now that the Kurdish groups are openly considering an offensive in Iran, Tehran has concluded that the agreement has failed, according to Kamaran Osman, an Iraq-based human rights officer with a nonprofit organization called Community Peacemaker Teams that monitors human rights abuses in conflict zones. “Now it believes it must target, destroy and defeat these groups,” Osman said, speaking in the Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, about a two-hour drive from the PJAK base. As of Monday, his organization had recorded 307 Iranian attacks on the Kurdistan region in Iraq, leaving eight people killed and 51 injured. He sees only grim scenarios for the Kurdish people in Iran. “If the regime falls, there is a risk of civil war in Iran,” he said. If the regime survives, he fears more retaliation from Tehran against Kurds in Iraq — both Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups and the Kurdistan Regional Government. Should northern Iraq become destabilized, a power vacuum could emerge. The last time order eroded here, in 2014, ISIS militants seized control of a swathe of territory stretching from Iraq to Syria, a landmass nearly as large as the United Kingdom. PJAK has ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a militant group that has fought against the Turkish government, and is listed as a terrorist organization there — as well as in the EU and the U.S. The United States has a troubled history of making big promises to ethnic Kurdish groups — and then abandoning them at the worst possible moment. After calling on Iraqis to rise up and overthrow then-dictator Saddam Hussein in 1991, President George H.W. Bush declined to intervene when Hussein began slaughtering Iraqi Kurds who took up the U.S. president’s call. And as recently as this January, the Trump administration stood by as a Syrian Kurdish militia that led the U.S.-backed campaign to defeat ISIS just a few years ago was attacked by Syria’s new government. The big question for U.S. policymakers may be how much they would need to support a Kurdish assault on Iran to make it successful. Former U.S. intelligence and special forces experts believe it would require the type of commitment he might prefer to avoid: large infusions of cash and weapons, close air support, and potentially even on-the-ground aid from U.S. special forces. Even then, a Kurdish-led attack could fizzle, leaving Trump with two grim choices: Abandon the Kurds, or come to their rescue with even greater U.S. combat support. “It would require a lot of commitment on the U.S. side with a very unclear end state,” said Alex Plitsas, a former senior Pentagon official who worked on special operations and counterterrorism policy in the Middle East. While Coates cautioned that Trump had other, better options at hand, she argued that even modest U.S. military support for the Kurds — such as small arms shipments and limited air support — could threaten Iran’s increasingly brittle regime. The key, she said, was arming the exiled Kurds in Iraq in conjunction with other Iranian resistance groups inside the country to avoid the perception it was coming from outside. “The way this is going to be effective,” Coates said, “is not by a bunch of Iraqis invading Iran.” Drüten of WELT reported from Iraq. Sakellariadis reported from Washington. 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, the outlets reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

The war with Iran is sucking up expensive U.S. air defense munitions that Ukraine desperately needs, putting future deliveries at risk and threatening Kyiv’s ability to counter Russian ballistic missile attacks. The U.S. and Gulf allies have burned through hundreds of Patriot missiles shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles and attack drones, eating up stockpiles that might have gone to Ukraine. The dynamic has put the Trump administration’s expanding war against the Iranian regime in direct conflict with Kyiv’s reliance on contracts for U.S.-made air defenses, according to interviews with 10 top European officials and two U.S. lawmakers. Those allies fear that Russia will seize the initiative by attempting to lay waste to more of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and try to move the front lines while the U.S. and Europe are distracted with a separate war — and stockpile concerns — of their own. “If [Vladimir] Putin was feeling any pressure to negotiate before, and it’s not clear he was, it’s gone for now,” said a EU official. “The U.S. is distracted and burning through some of the weapons Europe wants to purchase for Ukraine. … It’s a very gloomy scenario.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday warned of impending shortages. The overall deficit of missiles for Patriot systems “is not because of this war in the Middle East,” Zelenskyy told WELT, part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO. But “this war will have [an] influence on decreasing the number of missiles, decreasing the opportunity to get more missiles” for Ukraine. The scale of attacks against American and allied forces in the Gulf is beyond anything seen in decades. The United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry said Tuesday that Iran had launched 1,475 drones, 262 ballistic missiles and eight cruise missiles at the country since the war began, many of which were met with U.S.-made Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles. More than 1,600 of those drones and missiles were brought down — underscoring the intensity of the air defense fire. A Bloomberg Intelligence report estimated that the U.S. and its partners in the region have fired as many as 1,000 PAC-3 Patriot interceptors at Iranian missiles and drones since the start of the war, a number that dwarfs the replacement rate for the expensive — and hard to produce — weapon. The missiles take months to manufacture, and the war in Ukraine has led to allies across the globe rushing to put in new orders. Lockheed Martin agreed in January to triple its production of Patriot missiles — in part due to demands from the Trump administration — going from about 600 annually in 2025 to 2,000 to meet exploding worldwide demand. But it will take several years for the company’s factories to expand capacity sufficiently to meet any new requirements. “There’s a lot of confusion on that question, of what the priorities are going to be for Ukraine versus the Middle East, and specifically, how long and how high the demands are for these munitions,” said U.S. Sen Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and Ukraine ally. “Europeans are frustrated that we’re not more forthcoming in terms of our production capacity, and that the difficulty of ramping up production is used as an excuse for failing to provide more.” In the years before conflicts erupted in Europe and the Middle East, the U.S. only produced about 270 Patriot missiles a year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Industry has a long way to go before it can meet expected demand. “It goes without saying that Ukraine will be affected as the U.S. will prioritize national needs” in the coming months, an official from a NATO country said. The official, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive national defense issues. One German official said that “sluggish” deliveries of weapons to Ukraine in November and December have significantly contributed to the destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. And that could just be the start. “The worry is that [Donald] Trump will break agreements, withhold supplies, and that Putin will ruthlessly exploit this,” the official said. Allies also are increasingly concerned about skyrocketing prices for sought-after American weapons. “Some prices of weapon systems are clearly doubled,” said a second official from a NATO country. “That’s the ballpark and degree of price issues we are having.” Beyond the near-term scramble for air defenses, Europeans are worried that the broader Ukrainian arms pipeline could be in jeopardy as U.S. forces — and their allies — expand their arsenals amid escalating conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. and NATO set up the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, last year as a way to keep weapons flowing into Ukraine, including helping Kyiv procure much-needed Patriot air defense interceptors. The Trump administration stopped American military aid for Ukraine last year, and PURL has served as a way to keep the spigot open. It allows European countries to buy American equipment and then donate it to Kyiv. Finnish defense secretary Antti Häkkänen said his government has “emphasized there has to be some kind of a European industry pillar, and Ukrainian pillar,” that would allow some manufacturing to move from the U.S. to the continent so Ukraine can quickly get what it needs. Stefanie Bolzen at WELT, Joe Gould and Eli Stokols contributed to this report.

Donald Trump’s signature Board of Peace has run straight into the war in Iran, slowing what little progress it had made since the president — and a phalanx of world leaders — heralded its creation last month. So far, the board has set up its accounts at the World Bank and JP Morgan Chase, a Trump administration official said Tuesday. “We are currently working with countries that made the pledges to get them the wiring info,” added the official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. Some two dozen member countries pledged more than $16 billion to the board in February, with the U.S. promising a $10 billion lion’s share. But since then, the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran have brought about chaos that has reversed even the modest gains White House negotiating duo Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had been making. When the Board of Peace was announced as part of the ceasefire the U.S. secured in October between Israel and Hamas, backed up with U.N. Security Council approval, it was meant to set the framework for rebuilding Gaza — and much more. The charter of the board, according to a leaked copy, laid out a mission to build “peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.” And, with the close attention of Witkoff and Kushner, Israel and Hamas exchanged hostages and prisoners, and Israel opened the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza. Now, the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran appear to be getting in the way. Indonesia’s president threatened to quit if the board doesn’t benefit Palestinians, Reuters reported, and the country’s foreign minister said all talks about the board had been stopped due to the Iran war. That could put in jeopardy the 8,000 troops Indonesia committed to an international stabilization force. The Trump administration official said talks with Indonesia continue and that “the Board of Peace is committed to providing stabilization and prosperity to the people of Gaza.” To be sure, other countries, for example, Azerbaijan and Jordan, said they were still committed. But the Board of Peace’s animating force — rebuilding Gaza — remains far from fulfilled. A key condition for reconstruction is disarming Hamas, the militant group that attacked Israel in 2023, but little has been announced on that front. Israel has also closed the Rafah border crossing citing the war with Iran. That has rolled back a milestone in the ceasefire plan and led to a drop in aid getting into the enclave. Asked about the border, the administration official referred POLITICO to the Israeli government. COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees civilian affairs in Gaza, said: “At this stage, the Rafah Crossing remains temporarily closed due to the missile threat. It will reopen as soon as the security situation allows.” Zaha Hassan, who advised the Palestinian negotiating team during its bid for U.N. membership, noted that the Board of Peace’s mandate with the Security Council expires at the end of 2027. “If you’re saying the Board of Peace is the only way, and the Board of Peace can’t even influence Israel on its obligations, it doesn’t look very good for its prospects, especially given its sunset,” said Hassan, now senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There’s clearly some backsliding on what little progress may have been made,” said David Schenker, who served as assistant secretary of State for Near East Affairs in the first Trump administration and is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Schenker added that the short bench of Trump officials empowered to make foreign policy decisions is likely exacerbating the problem. “There’s a number of issues, in addition to Gaza, that have fallen off the agenda temporarily given the prioritization of Iran and the war.” Trump continues to put his faith in Witkoff and Kushner, saying the pair are “doing a great job.” The two had been set to visit Israel Tuesday, but postponed the trip. Witkoff, for his part, has offered a rosy view that the war with Iran could lead to broader regional cooperation. Speaking Tuesday on CNBC, he said Gulf countries facing Iranian drones and missiles were “coming out of the woodwork, calling us, multiple, multiple reach-outs for countries who want to be a part of the Abraham peace accords.” If the Board of Peace fails on its broader mission to disarm Hamas and rebuild the enclave, the stakes are high. Palestinian journalist Mohammed R. Mhawish observed this week in The Nation that the regional turmoil sparked by the strikes on Iran had left Gaza “more exposed to Israeli escalation than at any point since October 2023.” Asked about Hamas disarmament in an interview with BILD, which like POLITICO belongs to the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said, “I would not now put this as the top priority. … Everybody knows that Israel is ready to do the job if needed, but let’s give it to others to do. There’s now the technocrats’ government. That’s their test.” Like this content? Consider signing up for POLITICO’s National Security Daily newsletter.

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.

Satellite images captured after Saturday’s US and Israeli strikes on Tehran show that the residence of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sustained severe damage. The photos, which show several collapsed buildings inside a compound in Tehran known to be one of Khamenei’s main residences, were provided to Business Insider by Airbus. It’s unclear if the Iranian leader was present at the time of the strikes, and his exact status is unknown. Reuters, citing an unnamed source, earlier reported that Khamenei had been moved out of Tehran, and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told the BBC on Saturday evening that Khamenei was still alive. It’s also not yet clear if it was Israel or the US that carried out this particular strike. Representatives for the Pentagon and Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on the hit when asked by Business Insider. One of the heavily damaged buildings in the compound is the House of Leadership, which is known as Khamenei’s office and principal place of residence. In the images, smoke appears to be rising from its roof. Much of the compound has been obliterated, with felled trees and several more smoking buildings. The images show the Imam Khomeini Hussainia, a place of worship used by Iranian leaders for religious ceremonies and political speeches. It’s unclear whether this larger building was also attacked, but what looks like debris can be seen on its roof. A satellite image taken a year earlier shows the complex included at least six buildings, all of which are now damaged by the strikes. “It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations,” Trump said. The US and Israel began their attacks on Saturday morning local time, hitting Tehran and several other Iranian cities in what has been one of the largest strike campaigns in recent years. The full outcomes of these strikes are still being assessed, and much remains unclear about Tel Aviv and Washington’s exact objectives behind the attacks. Meanwhile, Iran has responded by firing dozens of ballistic missiles and drones at its neighbors, saying it is targeting US military bases. 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. Its ambitious reporting stretches across Axel Springer platforms: online, print, TV, and audio. Together, these outlets reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

“All we’ve got left now,” the Russian soldier said, “are radios, cables and pigeons.” A decision earlier this month by SpaceX to shut down access to Starlink satellite-internet terminals caused immediate chaos among Russian forces who had become increasingly reliant upon the Elon Musk-owned company’s technology to sustain their occupation of Ukraine, according to radio transmissions intercepted by a Ukrainian reconnaissance unit and shared with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, to which POLITICO belongs. The communications breakdown significantly constrained Russian military capabilities, creating new opportunities for Ukrainian forces. In the days following the shutdown, Ukraine recaptured roughly 77 square miles in the country’s southeast, according to calculations by the news agency Agence France-Presse based on data from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. SpaceX began requiring verification of Starlink terminals on Feb. 4, blocking unverified Russian units from accessing its services. Almost immediately, Ukrainian eavesdroppers heard Russian soldiers complaining about the failure of “Kosmos” and “Sinka” — apparently code names for Starlink satellite internet and the messaging service Telegram. “Damn it! Looks like they’ve switched off all the Starlinks,” one Russian soldier exclaimed. “The connection is gone, completely gone. The images aren’t being transmitted,” another shouted. Dozens of the recordings were played for Axel Springer Global Reporter Network reporters in an underground listening post maintained by the Bureviy Brigade in northeastern Ukraine. Neither SpaceX nor the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to requests for comment. “On the Russian side, we observed on the very day Starlink was shut down that artillery and mortar fire dropped drastically. Drone drops and FPV attacks also suddenly decreased,” said a Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance operator from the Bureviy Brigade who would agree to be identified only by the call sign Mustang, referring to first-person view drones. “Coordination between their units has also become more difficult since then.” The satellite internet network has become a crucial tool on the battlefield, sustaining high-tech drone operations and replacing walkie-talkies in low-tech combat. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, which destroyed much of Ukraine’s traditional communications infrastructure, Western governments have provided thousands of the Starlink units to Kyiv. With the portable terminals, there is no need to lay kilometers of cable that can be damaged by shelling or drone strikes. Drone footage can be transmitted in real time to command posts, artillery and mortar fire can be corrected with precision, and operational information can be shared instantly via encrypted messaging apps such as Signal or Telegram. At the outset of the Russian invasion, Starlink access gave Ukraine’s defenders a decisive operational advantage. Those in besieged Mariupol sent signs of life in spring 2022 via the backpack-size white dishes, and army units used them to coordinate during brutal house-to-house fighting in Bakhmut in 2023. Satellite internet became “one of, if not the most important components” of Ukraine’s way of war, according to military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady, an adviser to European governments and security agencies who regularly visits Ukrainian units. “Starlink constituted the backbone of connectivity that enabled accelerated kill chains by helping create a semi-transparent battlefield.” The operational advantages of Starlink did not go unnoticed by Russian forces. By the third year of the war, Starlink terminals were increasingly turning up in Russian-occupied territory. One of the first documented cases surfaced in January 2024 in the Serebryansky forest. Month by month, Ukrainian reconnaissance drones spotted more of the devices. The Ukrainian government subsequently contacted Musk’s company, urging it to block Russian access to the network. Mykhailo Fedorov, then digital minister and now defense minister, alleged Russian forces were acquiring the devices via third countries. “Ukraine will continue using Starlink, and Russian use will be restricted to the maximum extent possible,” Fedorov pledged in spring 2024. Yet Russian use of the terminals continued to grow throughout 2025, and their use was not limited to artillery or drone units. Even Russian infantry soldiers were carrying mini Starlink terminals in their backpacks. “We found Starlink terminals at virtually every Russian position along the contact line,” said Mustang. “At some point, it felt like the Russians had more devices than we did.” In the listening post this month, he scrolled through more than a dozen images from late 2025 showing Russian Starlink terminals set up between trees or beside the entrances to their positions. “We targeted their positions deliberately,” Mustang continued. “But even if we destroyed a terminal in the morning or evening, a new one was already installed by the next morning.” In the Russian-occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Kreminna, there was even a shop where soldiers could buy Starlink terminals starting in 2024. According to Ukrainian officials, these devices were not registered in Russia. SpaceX’s move in early February to enforce a stricter verification system effectively cut off unregistered Starlink terminals operating in Russian-occupied areas. Only devices approved and placed on a Ukrainian Ministry of Defense “whitelist” remained active, while terminals used by Russian forces were remotely deactivated. “That’s it, basically no one has internet at all,” a Russian soldier said in one of the messages played for Axel Springer reporters. “Everything’s off, everything’s off.” The temporary shutdown allowed Ukraine to slow the momentum of Vladimir Putin’s forces, although the localized counteroffensives do not represent a fundamental shift along the front. Soldiers from other Ukrainian units, including the Black Arrow battalion, confirmed the military consequences of the Starlink outage for Russian forces in their sectors in interviews with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network. By mid-February, Russian shelling had increased again, though largely against frontline positions that had long been identified and precisely mapped — suggesting that Russia has yet to fully restore all of its lost capabilities. Now, analysts from the Bureviy Brigade say Russian forces are scrambling for alternatives. They have been forced to rely far more heavily on radio communication, according to Mustang, which creates additional opportunities for interception. Russian units will likely attempt to switch to their own satellite terminals. But their speed and connection quality are significantly lower, Mustang says. And because of their size, the devices are difficult to conceal.”The shutdown of Starlink, even if only of limited effect for now, highlights the limited ability of the Russian armed forces to rapidly implement ongoing cycles of innovation,” said Col. Markus Reisner of the Austrian Armed Forces. “This could represent a potential point of leverage for Western supporters to provide swift and sustainable support to Ukraine at this stage.“ 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. Its ambitious reporting stretches across Axel Springer platforms: online, print, TV, and audio. Together, these outlets reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide.