Europe

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4131834

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In the text, 'The Baltics: Guarantees of Danger', Nikolai Mezhevich claims that Russia’s “adversaries” among the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and Northern Europe (particularly Finland) are forming a so-called “gray zone” in the Baltic Sea. Mezhevich, a chief research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Europe, writes regularly about the foreign policies of the Baltic countries and NATO’s military activities in the region. He has been publishing in International Affairs since 2016 and often appears in the Russian media with warnings about alleged plots by Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania against Minsk, Moscow, and ethnic Russians.

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[The author] concludes the article with a warning that “geographic location and a complex of historical narratives” force Russia and its adversaries alike to consider the eastern part of the Baltic Sea as a “potential theater of military operations, possibly in classic, possibly in ‘gray’ formats.”

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4126080

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The concerns have intensified since July, when reports surfaced of an alleged €12.3 million contract between 2021 and 2025 for Huawei to store sensitive judicial wiretap data for the interior ministry.

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While the political row has focused on the interior ministry, several public tenders made public in the past weeks reveal contracts for "repairing" or "expanding" existing Huawei storage equipment in other state departments.

Such is the €322.000 two-year contract signed last October by the national railway operator (ADIF) to "repair" Huawei technology already incorporated into the country's rail network communication systems.

Spain's national healthcare system also awarded a €477.000 contract to national telecom giant Telefónica to "maintain" over the next two years an existing Huawei storage hardware installed in its IT department.

“These are common practices to ensure the proper functioning of this equipment,” a healthcare system spokesperson said.

According to them, the hardware “does not store databases or information from social security system applications” but is “used to store server configuration information and analyse anomalies.” Euractiv could not verify this claim independently.

Other public tenders from the Spanish police, dating back to 2022, show Huawei backup systems used in the force's storage infrastructure for the "comprehensive border control storage system of the police."

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In Madrid, magistrates and law enforcement are particularly worried about the Chinese firm handling highly sensitive police wiretap data.

"We are neither blind nor deaf, and the fact that a company has its headquarters outside Spain causes us concern, " a magistrate told Euractiv.

"There may be delays or difficulties in gathering this information, or in the worst case, the request may even be denied due to their own regulations," they said, adding that there is also a risk of "sensitive data being leaked."

Law enforcement agencies share those concerns, especially over the potential exposure of sensitive information at a time when security forces are under intense scrutiny for prosecuting high-profile political figures.

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Europe’s domestic and external biases are feeding off and sustaining each other. This connection is not abstract. It is glaringly visible in the disparity of treatment of Ukraine and Gaza. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine was rightly condemned by the EU, which imposed severe and unprecedented sanctions on Moscow, gave more money to Kyiv and repeatedly condemned other states that did not follow suit. Palestinian lives, however, are treated as expendable, their suffering is minimised while children are robbed of their childhoods. The suffering in Gaza, framed as a humanitarian crisis rather than a deliberate political choice, is decontextualised, depoliticised and sanitised. EU policymakers should listen when the Palestinian-American academic Rashid Khalidi says this conflict is “the last colonial war in the modern age”.

The moral reckoning over the EU’s inaction on Gaza cannot be partial or piecemeal. It must include a recognition of how Europe’s past and present intersect, not only when it comes to Palestine but in many of its actions on the global stage. An EU that sees itself as a defender of international law and global justice should be willing to have these difficult conversations – in fact, it should encourage them. But the largely Eurocentric EU-policy circles see such talk as divisive.

Without serious self-examination and long overdue action, the EU’s very visible double standards will continue to undermine its democracy at home and its credibility abroad.

Tourists from Israel are stuck in Bosnia and Herzegovina, more precisely in a hotel in Sarajevo, because the hotel staff threw away their passports, Žarko Laketa, director of the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs, confirmed to BHRT.

Laketa stated that there were 50 tourists involved, and that everything happened by accident.

The tourists were supposed to return to Israel yesterday, but without their passports they could not do so, so they stayed in the hotel. Some passengers expressed doubts that it was not just a mistake.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4109378

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul sharply criticized China for providing essential support to Russia’s war against Ukraine, as reported by Politico on August 18.

His remarks came ahead of a high-stakes meeting between US President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and other European leaders to address Moscow’s war on Kyiv.

“Russia’s war is made possible by crucial Chinese support,” Wadephul said in a speech at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo during his visit to Japan, according to Politico.

“80 percent of the dual-use goods that Russia uses come from China,” he added. “And at the same time, China is the largest buyer of Russian oil and gas. And this is a development that of course not only runs massively counter to our European security interests, but also those of our partners in the Indo-Pacific.”

Wadephul argued that Beijing’s actions “show that China preaches the principles of non-interference and territorial integrity, but in reality undermines them.”

He also pointed to North Korea’s role in supplying Russia with ammunition and troops—support that, he said, would not be possible without China’s approval.

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4108317

The Hong Kong independence activist Tony Chung says he has been granted asylum in the UK, two years after fleeing the Chinese region.

Chung, 24, revealed the news on his Instagram page on Sunday, the day after the former Hong Kong legislator Ted Hui said he had been granted asylum in Australia. Both Chung and Hui are among dozens of pro-democracy activists targeted with arrest warrants and 1m Hong Kong dollar bounties by authorities.

Chung was one of the youngest people to be sentenced to jail under Hong Kong’s draconian national security law, which was imposed by China in 2020 and essentially criminalised dissent in the former British colony.

He posted a photo of a letter from the UK Home Office saying he had been granted refugee status and five years of residency in the UK. “This means that we accept you have a well-founded fear of persecution and therefore cannot return to your country,” the letter said.

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Archive: https://archive.ph/2025.08.18-223241/https://www.ft.com/content/8dad9c67-59da-4f38-b43a-3d6ba5f1df57

Marius Borg Høiby, the son of the Norwegian crown princess, has been charged with 32 offences including four counts of rape, a prosecutor has said.

Høiby, whose mother is the crown princess, Mette-Marit, and whose stepfather is the crown prince, Haakon, Norway’s future king, is expected to stand trial early next year and could face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of the most serious charges.

The charges, made public on Monday, include the rape of four different women, domestic abuse of a former partner, and illegally filming a number of women, including their genitals, without their knowledge or consent.

He is also charged with harassment of police and traffic violations.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4099038

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On Monday, just days after hosting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, U.S. President Donald Trump is set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders at the White House to discuss the war.

In the early hours that same day, Russian drones struck a five-story apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. At least seven people were killed, including five members of one family — a father and mother, their 16-year-old son, an 18-month-old daughter, and the children’s grandmother. More than 30 others were injured, according to Governor Oleh Syniehubov.

Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said the building had been deliberately targeted while residents were sleeping. “This is pure terror. Terror that has no explanation, no justification,” he wrote on Telegram.

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In Russia, barter is back for the first time since the chaos of the 1990s as settlement problems resulting from the conflict in Ukraine have forced at least one Chinese company to seek steel and aluminium alloys in exchange for engines.

In the economic and political chaos which followed the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, spiralling inflation and chronic shortages of funds forced enterprises across the land to agree to payment in kind.

Barter, though, sowed even more chaos through the economy as vast chains of contingent deals were set up for everything from electricity and oil to flour, sugar and boots, making pricing even harder to determine, and earning some people fortunes.

More than three years into the Ukraine war, barter is back again in Russia.

At the Kazan Expo business forum on Monday, Chinese companies cited settlement issues and Russian demands that they bring production to Russia as major issues hindering the development of bilateral trade.

"We offer innovative cooperation models aimed at reducing settlement risks," Xu Xinjing from Hainan Longpan Oilfield Technology Co., Ltd told the forum through a translator, adding that "we offer a model of barter trade."

In exchange for the power equipment, his company wants to receive Russian shipbuilding materials.

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Henrik Landerholm, a longstanding friend of the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, appeared on Monday in front of a packed gallery at Attunda district court in Sollentuna, north of Stockholm.

His trial is expected to centre on the events of March 2023 when Landerholm is alleged to have left documents in an unlocked safe at a hotel conference venue. Much of the proceedings will be held behind closed doors due to the information said to be contained in the documents.

One of the witnesses, a member of the military, will reportedly be questioned under a codename during the three-day trial. Witnesses are also expected to include staff at Gällöfsta Kursgård, a conference centre north of Stockholm where the documents were left.

A record number of electric cars were registered in western Europe between April and June, as more affordable battery-powered cars came to market, according to new research.

Nearly 600,000 battery electric vehicles (BEV) hit the roads in the last quarter in a boost to sales that had been rising more slowly than previously forecast in the last year.

The record rollout, which is likely to be topped in the current quarter, has come as more affordable BEVs enter the market and sales in southern Europe have accelerated, according to Matthias Schmidt, a Berlin-based automotive analyst.

“Electric vehicles are becoming more affordable and more attractive to private consumers for the first time. Previously, it was just corporate consumers, company car drivers,” Schmidt said.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4097108

Ukraine is negotiating a deal with Azerbaijan to import gas from the South Caucasus country this year, Kyiv's energy minister said on Monday.

"We are currently in talks. Azerbaijan is interested in this," Svitlana Hrynchuk [said] ... Ukraine plans to have 13.2 billion cubic metres of gas in its underground storage for the upcoming heating season, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

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Meanwhile, Russian oil flows to Hungary and Slovakia halted allegedly after an Ukrainian attack.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russia's energy infrastructure, a key conduit for generating money for Kremlin's war efforts, with oil and gas sales accounting for a quarter of Russia's state total budget proceeds.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha neither confirmed nor denied the account of the latest attack, but wrote on [social media] that Hungary "can now send complaints" to Moscow, not Kyiv.

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A United Airlines flight illegally transported four ammunition handling systems – among military cargo overwhelmingly funded by the US government – to Israel through Irish territory this morning.

The munitions systems, as well as other military parts, are being delivered to Elbit Systems, Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) largest weapons supplier.

Most of the 19 shipments – more than two tonnes in total – identified by The Ditch were marked Foreign Military Financing, meaning the US is funding their supply to the Israeli armed forces.

United Airlines flight UA84 left Newark Liberty International Airport yesterday, on its way to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. The flight was carrying passengers and commercial cargo.

More than two tonnes of military goods ordered by Israel’s biggest arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems, were onboard.