The European Commission has proposed up to 15 years of post-accession safeguards to punish new member states in case of bad behaviour, in a long-delayed pre-enlargement policy review out on Tuesday (6 October).
The reforms were initially requested by the European Council in June 2024 to be ready by spring 2025, but were delayed several times due to political sensitivities in EU capitals.
They are aimed at frontrunners for future EU membership – Montenegro, Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine – each of whom will get an accession roadmap this month.
EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has deemed union enlargement a “geopolitical imperative” amid the war in Ukraine and shift towards a new global order.
By expanding, the EU hopes to promote democracy and strengthen the single market.
But this also comes with fears that countries could misbehave after getting in, prompting the commission’s proposed new guardrails.
The commission suggests that new member states promise “not to oppose EU decisions on future enlargements” due “to bilateral disputes” for an unspecified time.
But Marta Kos, the EU’s enlargement commissioner, said this commitment would be voluntary.
Commissioner dismisses ‘two-tier’ concerns
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French borrowing costs are surging and central bankers are starting to fret. Some of them, at least.
The head of the French central bank, Emmanuel Moulin, told the Financial Times that his country risks being “strangled by interest rates”.
The best solution, he made clear, was for the French government to cut costs and reduce the deficit, which, in an unchanged scenario, could reach upwards of six percent next year.
Last week, the French minority government proposed €43bn worth of cuts for 2027. But pushing them through parliament is a tall order in a divided country.
Meanwhile, investors are dumping French bonds, pushing up French government borrowing costs compared to German benchmark Bunds. This is already immensely costly to French society.
“In three weeks, we’ve lost the equivalent of €15bn a year in higher debt-servicing costs over a 10-year horizon, or almost €100bn cumulatively over 10 years!”, French economist Shahin Vallée said on social media last week.
The gap, or spread, between French and German bond yields, historically around 50 basis points (0.5 percentage points), was 109 basis points when he wrote it on Wednesday. It is now 30 points higher.
Spreads are a crucial marker for financial stability because they show how nervous investors are. The bigger the spread, the higher the perceived risk.
And France’s parabolic bond spread is already bringing back unwelcome memories of the eurozone crisis in November 2011, when the spread reached 200 basis points.
Bypass parliament?
The question is what to do about it, and who is best positioned to act. The French government could bypass a parliamentary vote or push through the budget by ordinance, under articles 49.3 and 47 of the constitution, respectively.
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The Commission is “going a bit too fast” in unlocking €4.2bn and restarting the Erasmus+ student exchange programme in Hungary, according to budget committee MEPs.
The EU froze its financial assistance to Hungary in 2022 due to concerns about rule of law breaches and misappropriation of funds by Viktor Orbán’s government.
Green MEP from Germany, Daniel Freund, told EUobserver he “would have taken a more staged approach to not release everything in one go,” admitting that the reform agenda of Péter Magyar’s new government still has some way to go.
The commission’s proposal to unlock part of the €16.4bn in funds available to Hungary requires the green-light from the EU council, representing member states, one month after its announcement on 23 September.
Freund said that he was “happy about the changes we have seen” following his visit to Hungary on 1 October.
“Hungary needs this money, I also want Hungarians to have this money, since for years it was just going to Orbán and his cronies,” he said on Tuesday (6 October).
However, Freund and other MEPs on the fact-finding mission found that “the same risks of corruption exist,” and “there are new laws that are still fragile in their implementation,” French socialist and democrat Jean-Marc Germain told reporters in Strasbourg on Monday.
The Parliament can serve as a pressure point, although the decision on funds is largely in the hands of the commission and the council.
“There is no real political pluralism in Hungary, which may in the long run be a reason for worrying,” he said, adding that most companies are still owned by the same few people as during Orbán’s rule.
The tone is different on the other side of the political spectrum.
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European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has joined MEPs in urging the bloc’s governments not to gut the EU’s next seven-year budget, as talks on spending reach a critical phase.
The commission has proposed a budget worth just under €2 trillion, equivalent to 1.26 percent of the EU’s gross national income, a small increase on the previous seven year spending plan. But the so-called ‘frugal’ group of countries, led by Germany, have demanded hefty cuts, complaining that they are contributing too much.
“Having no new financial framework is by far the most financially advantageous solution for Germany,” chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday.
But 17 EU countries from Southern and Eastern Europe signed a joint letter last week, demanding that farmers’ subsidies via the Common Agricultural Policy are maintained, as well as spending across the EU’s poorest regions, known as cohesion policy
During a press conference on Tuesday, Siegfried Muresan, the Romanian centre-right MEP who is co-leading parliament’s negotiating team on the seven-year budget with Portuguese socialist and democrat Claudia Tavares, said that there was “still time” for the Irish presidency to avoid proposing “unjustified cuts” that “would make Europe weaker and severely undermine the institutional cooperation between parliament and council.”
Though Muresan conceded that governments did not want to increase their national contributions, “there is a way out”, he said.
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Politicians need to solve the affordability crisis to stop the far-right, social democratic Portuguese prime minister Luís Montenegro told MEPs on Tuesday (6 October).
Opening a debate in Strasbourg, Montenegro called for more lax regulation as a way to address the housing crisis, defended strict migration policies, and expressed support for funding poorer regions in the next EU budget.
He also stressed the importance of lowering fuel prices and prioritising the energy transition to “solve the real problems that people wrestle with,” adding that “our response … has to be felt in the lives of Europeans” to avoid disappointed voters turning to populism and extremism.
Back at home, Montenegro has the far-right Chega (Enough) party on his tail: in the 2025 parliamentary elections, they won 23 percent of the ballots against the Montenegro alliance’s 33 percent.
Now, polls give Chega 27 percent of declared votes for the next parliament, slightly less than the Socialist Party (28 percent) and ahead of the current government coalition (24 percent).
For his part, a Chega MEP (Patriots for Europe), António Tânger Corrêa, challenged Montenegro on Tuesday for relying on wind and solar energy without enough storage in case of blackouts and shutting down coal power plants.
He also warned Montenegro against agreeing to limit unanimous votes in the European Council in future, as representing a blow to Portugal’s sovereign powers.
From his left-wing opponents, Portuguese MEP Catarina Martins pointed out the high rent costs in the country and criticised the government for failing to support low-earning tenants.
Montenegro said his government simplified the law around housing construction – much in line with the EU’s focus on deregulation – and proposed tax breaks to encourage investors to build more.
An EU-level policy complementing it “would be very useful,” he said, as long as it simplified existing regulations.
The Affordable Housing Act presented by the EU Commission in early September aims to improve the market for tenants by restricting short-term rentals.
A case of treason on an unprecedented scale is emerging at Germany’s foreign intelligence service, in what German media say could shake the entire agency.
According to the investigative team of WDR, NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), August Hanning, the former head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), is being investigated for alleged espionage detrimental to the state and intelligence activities.
Hanning’s tenure at the BND ended in November 2005.
But he is accused of having illegally obtained secret information for several years after he left the service, which gathers and assesses information on foreign, security, and economic threats.
He was arrested at his home in Nordwalde, near Münster in western Germany, on Tuesday (6 October).
Der Spiegel reported that police arrived at 6.41AM and took him away in a black minibus at 8.58AM.
Another former senior BND employee was also detained in the Bavaria region — apparently the former head of Hanning’s office, who worked for the intelligence service until spring 2026.
Neither German authorities nor Hanning’s representatives had commented on the case by Tuesday noon.
What investigative journalists found
According to investigative journalists, Manfred D. leaked top-secret information from within the BND to Hanning until 2022.
According to Der Spiegel, which cited investigators’ findings, Hanning and Manfred D. agreed, as early as spring 2010, that the latter would, in return for payment, gather intelligence from the BND for his former boss, which Hanning could use in his private security consultancy work.
Investigators are working on the assumption that, in at least one case, Hanning prepared a security analysis for a foreign intelligence service.
According to WDR, NDR and SZ, it was not for Russia.
In another case, he allegedly used information from internal BND documents when communicating with a foreign agent.
According to information from security circles obtained by WDR, NDR, and SZ reporters, Hanning came under scrutiny after his home and offices were searched in September last year, when the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) was investigating the case of steak empire heiress Christina Block.
According to investigators, Hanning was involved in an earlier attempt to abduct them, accusations he denies.
While assessing material seized from Hanning last year, LKA officers found an electronic data storage device with explosive contents, according to the investigative journalists.
The former official apparently had access to top-secret BND documents from the recent past which, under no circumstances, should have been in his possession.
In total, he obtained around 2,000 documents. In many cases, these were briefings for the so-called intelligence situation meeting at the federal chancellery, where the heads of security agencies exchange information every week.
They included highly sensitive reports, for example, on Iran’s nuclear programme or the Russian military. According to security sources, they also included reports from foreign partner services.
A leak of such material is regarded by intelligence services as an absolute catastrophe. Friendly intelligence services could lose trust in the BND and cut off the institution from crucial information.
After assessing them, the LKA Hamburg police team handed the seized documents over to federal authorities.
And in May 2026, the Federal Public Prosecutor General’s Office ultimately opened confidential proceedings against Hanning and his alleged BND informant. It remains unclear over what period the former intelligence chief was supplied with secret internal information.
According to security sources, the most recently discovered documents date from June 2022.
It also remains unclear how the alleged BND mole managed to remove material from the secured agency. The BND was asked for a statement on the case.
Hanning’s lawyers have not yet responded to a brief request for comment on the allegations.
An affair of historic proportions
For the BND, this is already the second serious incident in the space of a few years.
In 2022, the espionage case involved Russia, when a former head of a BND unit was accused of spying for Moscow together with another man.
It concerned top-secret information on BND cyber operations that was leaked from the service.
As the Tagesschau website noted, if the suspicions against Hanning are confirmed, this would be an espionage affair of historic proportions.
German history has never before seen an alleged case of treason involving such a senior former top official.
According to Der Spiegel, this is unprecedented. This is particularly so because, for many years after leading the intelligence service, Hanning remained among the most important officials in Germany’s security apparatus.
Before becoming BND president, he was responsible for protecting classified information at West Germany’s representation in East Germany.
After serving at the chancellery, including as coordinator of the federal intelligence services, the lawyer, who holds a doctorate, took over the leadership of the BND in 1998.
At the end of 2005, after leaving the intelligence service, Hanning became a state secretary at the interior ministry. He retired four years later.
Questionable business
According to German media, his subsequent activities were seen as problematic. He became known as a businessman and security consultant with a company in Switzerland.
Its German subsidiary was hired for a time in the custody dispute between Block and her former husband.
According to prosecutors, in 2023 he allegedly planned, together with an associate, to “discredit Block’s former husband through false allegations of paedophilia”.
Hanning and his alleged accomplice apparently tried to plant a hard drive containing child sexual abuse images and videos on the father of Block’s children.
The investigation has not yet been concluded. Hanning has previously denied all allegations in the case.
Every day, children are killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Where are the outraged headlines?
The number of children killed in Gaza since Israel started its onslaught, following the Hamas attack on 7 October, 2023, is estimated at more than 21,600.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that since the so-called Israel-Hamas ceasefire, an average of “at least” one child a day – 300 children over 300 days – has been killed in the enclave.
Children, toddlers, and babies are being killed in their homes, schools, hospitals, shelters, and on roads marked by displacement. They are also dying because the basic structures that should protect them – family, healthcare, education, food, water, and refuge – have been systematically destroyed.
Where are the urgent statements from EU and world leaders?
EU governments continue to authorise arms transfers to Israel despite rules which require governments to deny licences where there is a risk that military equipment will be used for serious violations of international humanitarian law.
Every EU member state is also bound by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the EU’s own treaty, which requires the union to promote children’s rights.
Why are these international rules and domestic commitments not being applied to the children of Gaza?
Mourners light candles during a mass funeral and vigil for 105 Palestinians near the rubble of the Al Tajj building in Gaza City on 30 September 2026 (Source: EPA/MOHAMMED SABER)
Children rights beyond Ukraine
The EU does care for children. In Ukraine, the EU treats children as individuals rather than statistics: it convenes coalitions, compiles names, traces families, imposes sanctions, creates mechanisms for return and makes the fate of children a central diplomatic demand.
In her State of the Union address last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – a proud mother and grandmother – introduced and praised the courage of Sasha, a six-year-old Ukrainian girl who lost a leg in a Russian missile strike in Ukraine but has now returned to her beloved gymnastics.
Von der Leyen quite rightly made the suffering of Ukrainian children intimate and personal. It is more than time she did the same for Palestinian children.
But let’s not only blame political leaders for their indifference, their lack of historical knowledge of Palestine’s occupation and their limited understanding of Palestinian calls for justice.
Parts of the legacy media must also own up to their responsibility in normalising the abhorrent.
Powerful mainstream media have preferred to “repeat Israeli propaganda and sometimes simply cut and paste IDF press releases” rather than accept the analysis of Palestinian journalists, writers and scholars, writes Bhakti Shringarpure.
Her criticism reflects a wider ongoing discussion on the sourcing and framing of Gaza coverage, with studies spotlighting how Western media has described Israeli suffering by using emotive language around 11 times more often than Palestinian suffering. References to Israel’s “right to defend itself” appear roughly five times as frequently as references to Palestinian rights.
Also, as the immediate shock of the bombardment recedes – but the killing continues – Gaza has dropped down the news cycle.
Assal Rad, author of “Don’t Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide”, describes the logic: “The façade of a ceasefire has created the space to cover it less. In reality, the conditions on the ground for Palestinians in Gaza have not changed.”
It is also less politically costly for leaders and media to focus on settler violence and settlement in the occupied West Bank, since it can be described as the work of “extremists” rather than of the Israeli government.
EU silence
Our lack of a strong reaction to what is happening is Gaza is also the story of how bystander societies can watch, absorb, and rationalise horrors – and move on.
Additionally, the killing of Palestinian children is preceded by their political “unchilding”, a process which Palestinian scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian says begins before the missile falls, when Palestinian children are imagined not as children with futures but as demographic threats, future militants, or extensions of an armed group.
Their age, instead of guaranteeing greater protection, becomes entangled with suspicion.
Even amid such savage violence, some people are not giving up.
Their bosses may still look the other way, but EU Staff for Peace, which holds vigils in front of the European Commission and the EU Council every Thursday, has held gatherings to read out the names of children killed in Gaza, thereby according individuality to children whom the political and media systems have reduced to numbers.
As one EU staffer told me: “We only have a time slot of three hours and the last time we only managed to read out the names of children up to three years old. It took us one hour to read out the names of Palestinian babies under one-year old.”
Hind Rajab, who was five, was killed on 29 January 2024 by Israeli fire on the car in which she was trapped. Her body was found 12 days later alongside the bodies of members of her family and two paramedics who had gone to rescue her.
Israel has acknowledged firing on the car but has not admitted that her killing was unlawful, citing an ongoing investigation. In other words, there has been no accountability.
The obscenity is not only that Hind was killed, but that by now the killing of children in Gaza has become a familiar event.
The shame is that so many of us have constructed a hierarchy in which some children summon the world’s full moral and political force, while others are ignored.
Omar El Akkad, in his seminal book says that “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.” Given the cowardice on display over the last three years, I sometimes wonder if there will ever really be a true global moral reckoning.
Russia continues to pressure cities, while the first autonomous counter-drone turrets have been deployed in Kyiv.
Ukraine is maintaining pressure on Russia’s oil industry, reporting that it has disabled 51 percent of refinery capacity.
Russia still sees a large pocket of encircled Ukrainians in Kharkiv region, but no such pocket exists.
Ukraine says it destroyed a Russian Su-34 and Su-35 on the ground. Satellite imagery provides no clear evidence.
Maps of the day– Kharkiv region
Videos of the day – intense trench fighting; Russians shot down a balloon carrying an FPV drone; Russia has revived the idea of a barrage of tethered balloons; ground drones repelled an FPV drone attack using a counter-drone net – views from both sides.
Russia continues to pressure cities. Ukraine has begun testing AI-controlled machine-gun turrets in them. The new autonomous weapon is intended to protect key sites from drone attacks, typically bridges and similar infrastructure. Air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat said on Monday that the AI turrets, which receive information from other air-defence components, had achieved their first shoot-downs, including of Geran-5 drones.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky reported on Saturday, before Ihnat’s announcement, that 12 turrets of the kind shown in the military video below had been installed in the capital by that date. Another eight are planned.
They are armed with a 12.7mm heavy machine gun, which is not effective against a Geran flying high and fast, but becomes effective during the final phase of its flight, when it comes within the weapon’s range. The soldier in the footage said 50 rounds were sufficient to shoot down a Geran with AI assistance.
AI is entering Ukraine’s air-defense fight — and it is already helping shoot down Russia’s jet-powered Shaheds.
Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said AI-assisted turrets using machine vision have already successfully engaged Russian Geran-5 jet-powered UAVs.
Details of the turrets’ precise deployment are, understandably, not yet known. However, both Russian and Ukrainian sources commented on them in interesting ways. Ukrainian expert Anatoliy Khrapchynskyi told the NV website, among other things, about the risk that fully autonomous turrets pose to civilians. Serhii Beskrestnov was the first to warn about it on Monday: “I warn you that, for your own safety, you should not stand by windows during an air-raid alert.”
Khrapchynskyi noted that this rule has applied to any weapon since the start of the war. People should not stand by windows during air raids precisely because air defences or debris from downed weapons can damage buildings and injure people. There is a two-wall rule: if you cannot get to a shelter, hide somewhere in your flat protected from a potential blast by two walls, such as in a corridor.
“This does not mean that robotic turrets will fire at windows. They will target moving aerial targets, but they could hit civilian infrastructure,” Khrapchynskyi conceded.
The Russian Telegram channel Two Majors complained that while Ukraine was already using AI turrets in practice, and although promising projects of the same kind existed in Russia, bureaucracy and high costs were holding back their introduction into service.
The same Russian source was among those that published a video showing an entire bridge across the Dnipro in Kyiv being wrapped in a counter-drone net.
But after several days in which Russian Gerans targeted only Kyiv’s bridges, they attacked Zaporizhzhia in the same way overnight from Monday to Tuesday. Russia injured five city residents, including two Red Cross workers, and halted or restricted traffic on several bridges in Zaporizhzhia, causing traffic jams in the city during the morning.
Zaporizhzhia lies about 30 km from the front and is a natural supply route for fighting units. Taking the bridges out of action would create a serious logistical complication, but the same applies as in Kyiv: their complete destruction is unlikely. Russia will also be satisfied with constant attacks causing minor damage, but sufficient to halt traffic.
Among other sites hit by Russian weapons was one of the hospitals in Kryvyi Rih, which was struck by two missiles. Two people were injured during the air raid.
Ukraine is maintaining pressure on Russia’s oil industry, reporting that it has disabled 51 percent of refinery capacity. “More than half of the enemy’s capacity has been taken out of operation. This is the result of carefully planned, methodical and systematic work aimed at exhausting Russia’s war machine and destroying its military-economic potential,” new minister Yevhen Khmara said.
His statement cannot currently be verified, but footage of another fire at oil infrastructure in Russia emerged on Tuesday morning. It was at the Volodarskaya production and distribution centre in Moscow region. It lies just under 40 km southeast of central Moscow in a straight line, and its premises contain a large oil depot. It is also a pipeline junction through which fuel flows to Moscow, including aviation fuel for Moscow’s airports.
Ukrainian attack drones successfully struck Russia's Volodarskaya LPDS tonight, a major storage and distribution hub supplying jet fuel, diesel, and gasoline for the Russian capital, Moscow.
Ukraine says it destroyed a Russian Su-34 and Su-35 on the ground. Satellite imagery provides no clear evidence. The attack targeted Khanskaya airfield in Krasnodar region, from which a training unit normally operates.
The incident took place over the weekend. Satellite images showing clear traces of explosions and fire appeared relatively quickly, but it is not possible to identify what exploded and burned.
The usual Russian source, Fighterbomber, did not comment on the matter at all.
📍Satellite imagery of the aftermath of the UAV attack on "Khanskaya" airfield.
Russia still sees a large pocket of encircled Ukrainians in Kharkiv region, but no such pocket exists. The image below shows a map of the part of Kharkiv region where active military operations are under way. It was produced by the Russian defence ministry and shown by Two Majors on its Telegram account.
Alongside the image, the same source again cited Kremlin claims in listing alleged Russian successes in this sector: “In the Kharkiv direction, the Northern Group of Forces reported further advances. In the Lyptsi sector, our troops advanced near Tokarivka and captured several enemy strongpoints. In the Vovchansk and Velykyi Burluk directions, advances were reported in the areas of Prykolotne, Kotivka, Varvarivka, Reznikove, Mykolaivka, and Annopil.”
We have already written in Ukraine Battlefield update that no pocket exists, and that Ukrainian and independent sources follow the northern part of the front only marginally, because far less is happening there than Russia claims.
Among respected OSINT projects, Playfra most recently covered this battlefield on Saturday. The first map from this source shows the section of the front located at the top right of the Russian map. This is where the alleged encirclement is supposed to be, which various Russian sources have been reporting for almost a month.
The fighting here consists of Russian infiltration attempts, which are “chaotic and unorganised”. Playfra unequivocally rejects any encirclement.
Bilyi Kolodyaz-Velykyi Burluk directions.
No particular changes. The Russians continue infiltration attempts to encircle Ukrainian units in the Dehtiarne salient, though, once again, for now there is definitely no encirclement of the Ukrainians here. Russian infiltrations remain… https://t.co/ZlzDhwdMDhpic.twitter.com/GZz4lHkxSp
The following map from Playfra shows the same section of the battlefield as that seen in the Russian defence ministry’s version. The gap between reality and Russia’s claimed successes here is among the largest along the entire front, from Sumy to Kherson:
For comparison, the same area according to Finland’s Black Bird Group:
And according to the Russian project Slivochny Kapriz, which is relatively reliable. In all cases, Kharkiv is at the bottom left and the village of Dihtiarne, directly on the Ukrainian-Russian border, is at the top right:
Three-quarters of Ukrainians support peace talks. In the second half of September, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology asked respondents whether they supported peace negotiations with Russia.
Exactly three-quarters — 75 percent — said they supported peace talks, 21 percent were against, and the remainder could not give a definite answer. This was virtually identical to the result in February 2025, when 74 percent of respondents answered the same question positively.
This is also shown by the Kyiv polling agency’s graph, whose analysts stressed that willingness to negotiate does not equal willingness to accept Russian terms.
Views on who will win the war have shifted more significantly. As the next graph shows, the difference between February 2025 and September 2026 is again almost zero, but there has been a significant change compared with July this year.
At the beginning of the summer, 60 percent of Ukrainians were certain they would win the war (dark blue), while 25 percent considered it more likely than not. Now, only 47 percent are certain, but 79 percent of respondents in total still expect a Ukrainian victory.
The change was probably driven by optimism in July, when Crimea was almost completely isolated and a successful campaign of medium-range strikes began. Although it continues, the one-off shift in public mood has since returned to its original level.
There have been minimal changes in views on how long Ukrainians are prepared to fight. The largest group — 62 percent — said (dark blue) they were prepared to do so for as long as necessary. Four percent (light blue) said one year, while 23 percent (orange) said they could endure only a few more months. However, the number who say resistance should continue for only months has fluctuated around 20 percent for more than two years.
Videos of the day
Videos like this were common in 2023. It is unclear when this one was made, because the prevailing nature of the fighting is different today. The Ukrainian squad in the footage clears Russian trenches.
In the more than seven-minute recording, views from the ground alternate with those from a reconnaissance drone hovering above the battlefield, which gave the Ukrainians an overview of the enemy. The fighting is confused, but the basic orientation is simple: Ukrainians with green identification markings attack from right to left.
Full video.
Original combat POV footage documenting a tactical operation to clear fortified positions in a contested tree line. The video shows real-time close-quarters maneuvers, tactical coordination, and direct trench combat.
— 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝕯𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝕯𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔱 🦩🇬🇪🇺🇦🇺🇲🇬🇷 (@TheDeadDistrict) October 5, 2026
A Russian drone destroyed a balloon carrying a Ukrainian FPV drone beneath it. Ukraine is trying to use favourable wind currents in this way to extend the range of its small drones, which can then operate deeper in the Russian rear.
Twenty-first-century warfare in Moscow. A Russian soldier with a man-portable air-defence system shot down a Ukrainian drone by firing over a busy road.
Russian channels have released previously unseen footage from a drone attack on Moscow-area refineries.
The footage reportedly shows a mobile air-defense team using 9K38 Igla-series MANPADS engaging a Ukrainian FP/Liuity-type drone moments before it struck an oil storage… pic.twitter.com/9dJXPTZ6XG
Tethered balloons saw their greatest use during the Second World War, when they were deployed by armies on both sides. Balloon barrages protected London in the summer of 1940 and the Normandy landing fleet in June 1944, as well as German cities.
The principle was the same as in this Russian propaganda video. Balloons tethered to the ground by cables floated above cities and militarily important targets to prevent enemy aircraft from flying low. Ideally, they would hit the cables and crash. This principle may now be applied against drones.
👀 Russia has begun producing aerostats to protect oil refineries from drones.
A Russian FPV drone was targeting a Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle. Just before impact, it successfully deployed a defensive launchable net.
Footage from a Russian FPV drone shows it diving toward a Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle. Moments before impact, the UGV fires an anti-drone net from its rear section, catching and bringing down the attacking FPV. pic.twitter.com/MednUTUs45
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 3, 2026
This was not an isolated case. Another video from a different location shows a similar situation, but this time from the perspective of a camera on the ground drone.
Se me acaban las palabras para describir esto.
Las imágenes proporcionadas por la cámara instalada en un sistema terrestre no tripulado ucraniano 🇺🇦 muestran su sistema de red anti-drones “KARAKURT” funcionando en condiciones reales de combate.
By Monday (5 October), Russia had verifiably lost 24,170 pieces of heavy equipment (24,138 on Tuesday, 22 September). Of these, Ukraine destroyed 19,133 (19,105), 1,003 (1,000) were damaged, crews abandoned 1,194 (1,194), and the Ukrainian army captured 2,840 (2,839). This includes 4,452 (4,448) tanks, of which 3,357 (3,353) were destroyed in combat.
Ukraine lost 12,238 (12,175) pieces of equipment, of which 9,633 (9,579) were destroyed, 711 (702) damaged, 695 (695) abandoned and 1,199 (1,199) captured. This includes 1,466 (1,464) tanks, of which 1,126 (1,125) were destroyed in combat.
Note: Neither side regularly reports its fatalities or destroyed equipment. Ukraine publishes daily figures for Russian casualties and destroyed equipment, which cannot be independently verified. This overview uses data from the Oryx project, which has compiled a list of equipment losses documented exclusively by photographs since the beginning of the war.
On Wednesday (7 October), the largest group in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP), has scheduled a debate on a “European Parliament resolution on the need for an EU strategy to counter Islamist entryism and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood network.”
The move follows the adoption of an EPP party resolution that treats Muslim civic engagement as inherently suspect and collective religious practice as a potential threat.
It largely mirrored the German Christian Democratic approach of criminalising Muslim civic engagement.
As Brussels-based EU expert and EUobserver’s columnist Shada Islam put it, the supposed fight against “political Islam” “places Muslim political and civic activity inside an almost exclusively security framework,” and thus “European democracy is hollowed out rather than reinforced when an entire religious or ethnic minority and its civil society are regarded as permanently suspect.”
Also, the resolution protects religious freedom for Muslims only as an individual right, explicitly stating that it seeks to ensure “equality among citizens, rather than collective claims,” leaving the collective expression of Islam unprotected and thus hollowing out the very idea of religious freedom.
As also the to be debated motion shows, it is unclear where protected religious activity ends and dangerous political activity begins.
Islamophobic conspiracies
The notion of “Islamist entryism,” imported from France, has become a way to criminalise Muslim participation in civil society and politics.
The resolution describes it as “a political strategy of influence, progressive structuring, institutional penetration and ideological legitimisation,” which it separates from the “peaceful practice of Islam.”
But how does one tell the “good” Muslims, who engage peacefully in politics and lobby policymakers to stand up for their rights, from the bad? Or is the good Muslim simply the apolitical one, who does not stand up for the protection of their collective human rights?
If “political Islam” is a problem because it is described “as a societal project,” how does it differ from the collective efforts of Jews, Christians, and others, who also “produce collective norms,” as the motion puts it?
And if “Islamist influence operates through a broad and fragmented ecosystem of associations, foundations, cultural, educational, religious, charitable, university, youth, anti-discrimination or social action structures,” something equally true of Christian, Jewish, and other religious groups, then where does the EPP draw the line between peaceful Muslim activity and Islamist activity that has to be banned?
Isn’t the claim that Muslim “community allegiances placed above common law” a typical Islamophobic allegation, familiar from the old mistrust of Jews as more loyal to a global Jewish community than to the nation-state?
Is this the old antisemitism in new “Muslim” clothes?
Indeed, the motion lists a catalogue of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories: “separatist narratives, systematic victimhood, antisemitism, hatred of Israel, conspiracy narratives, challenges to secularism … may constitute markers of ideological radicalisation or Islamist influence.” They may. And what if they don’t?
These CSOs are seen as a manifestation of political Islam per se even though they have denied any those connections.
And it is a form of innocence that cannot easily be proven.
The EPP motion claims that “some Islamist networks are able … to adopt the vocabulary of fundamental rights, inclusion, diversity, intercultural dialogue, anti-racism and the fight against discrimination, while promoting in other spaces logics of separation, community pressure or contestation of democratic principles.” In other words, the better integrated Muslims in Europe are, the more suspicious they may become.
Shaky legal foundations
The EPP’s motion builds on highly problematic bills, legislation and political procedures. It quotes the French ministry of the interior’s 2025 report “Muslim Brotherhood and political Islamism in France,” which has been harshly criticised.
It also cites a resolution of the French National Assembly from January 2026 that urged the European Union to add the Muslim Brotherhood to its list of terrorist organisations and to lobby for it.
The resolution was voted against by 101 members of parliament, some of whom called it “Islamophobic.” The motion also invokes the contested Austrian Symbols Act, which prohibits the symbols of non-violent organisations that are not considered illegal under domestic legislation and lumps them together with those of jihadist groups ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
A further cited motion is from the Dutch parliament in March 2026 and calls for a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood and linked organisations, but it too has no legislative relevance so far.
None of these motions or laws has outlawed “Islamist entryism” or the “Muslim Brotherhood networks.”
Yet the EPP resolution builds on exactly this shaky ground while pretending that its own motion is solid.
More importantly, the way Austria and France treat their Muslims is well documented: from the infamous, massive and racist police raids known as Operation Luxor to the French state’s Systemic Obstruction policy, which resulted in 101 government units nationwide monitoring Islam and Muslims, 24,887 Muslim organizations and businesses placed on a secret blacklist and under strict monitoring, and the closure of 718 Muslim-owned organizations and businesses, with €46m seized. There is nothing here that should be emulated elsewhere.
Crude logic
The EPP’s argument that “Hamas on the EU list of terrorist organisations historically originates from the Muslim Brotherhood movement” rests on crude logic.
Both the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the secular Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), similarly considered a “terrorist organization,” have Marxist origins. Outlaw the S&D as a consequence?
Today, it is Muslims who are being surveilled, monitored and criminalised. Who is it tomorrow? If this resolution passes, life for politically conscious Muslims who are defending their right to exist in Europe will become even more difficult. And tomorrow potentially everybody’s life.
EUobserver is proud to have an editorial partnership with Europod to co-publish the podcast series “Briefed” hosted by Léa Marchal. The podcast is available on all major platforms.
Find the full transcript below:
The EU wants to bring new countries on board faster. But after years of waiting, will the Commission’s new proposals actually make enlargement easier?
On Tuesday (6 October), the European Commission is expected to propose changes to the EU’s enlargement process. The goal is clear: speed things up. Some candidate countries have been waiting for more than a decade, without a single new member joining the EU.
And geopolitics is adding to the pressure. With Russia’s war against Ukraine and a changing global balance of power, EU leaders increasingly see enlargement as a way of strengthening Europe’s weight on the international stage.
But bringing one, two, or several new countries into the EU raises some very complicated questions. One of them is decision-making. Another is money. So, what is the Commission proposing?
First, it wants to change the way enlargement negotiations are approved. At the moment, EU countries have to agree unanimously on several key steps in the process — including granting candidate status and opening different chapters of negotiations.
The Commission wants to make some of those decisions easier and faster, while keeping unanimity for the final decision on membership.
The other idea is gradual integration. In other words, candidate countries could take part in more EU programmes and benefit from certain forms of integration before actually becoming full members.
This is not exactly new. MEP’s think tankers, EU member states have been raising that idea for a while. And candidate countries already have access to a number of EU programmes and funding mechanisms. The idea is to give countries something concrete while they are still going through the accession process.
Now, there is an even bigger obstacle: money. The EU would have to finance enlargement at a time when its budget is already under pressure.
Because none of the countries currently considered likely to join in the nearer term would be expected to become a net contributor to the EU budget. In other words, they would likely receive more from the EU than they would contribute.
Ukraine is the obvious example. Despite being a big country with a solid economy, its current situation makes it fragile and unable to contribute largely to the EU budget.
Its accession could have a significant impact on EU spending, particularly through the Common Agricultural Policy and cohesion funds.
So the Commission is considering a transition period during which new members would not immediately have full access to all EU programmes.
That could make enlargement financially easier in the short term. But it doesn’t solve the problem permanently. Once the transition period ends, the same question comes back.
And there is a broader issue too: would the EU itself be able to function as a union of more than 30 countries? What could prove difficult, is that many important decisions still require unanimity — including areas such as foreign policy, taxation and parts of the EU budget.
Changing that would require treaty reform, which is politically extremely sensitive because member states would have to give up some of their veto powers.
Andrew Duff, a former British liberal MEP who has written about enlargement for the European Policy Centre, argues that the EU should have started thinking about this much earlier — particularly after Brexit. In his view, the EU has not carried out the kind of institutional reform that would prepare it for a much larger membership.
So in the end, today’s proposals could make the accession process more flexible and give candidate countries more opportunities to integrate before membership.
But they don’t resolve two of the biggest questions: how to finance enlargement, and how to reform EU decision-making.
Before we wrap up, a quick word on the countries which are believed to become members next. The frontrunner is Montenegro. The most optimistic forecasts suggest it could potentially become an EU member as early as 2028. Then comes Albania, which is also well advanced in the process.
Having said several months ago that he had no intention of a ‘rerun’ of the Brexit debate, UK prime minister Andy Burnham told Labour delegates at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool last week that nothing should be off the table as far as EU-UK relations are concerned.
Brexit had “done more harm than good”, he said, adding that “we will not give Britain the clear path we need into the rest of the century until we decide on a long-term relationship with what is still our largest market.”
In fact, Britain could “go all the way” back into the EU, said Burnham.
The new prime minister is still enjoying something of a honeymoon period. His Labour party now tops the opinion polls, albeit by less than 30 percent, and his early policy announcements on nationalising utilities and pension reform are the most radical in a generation.
Even so, Burnham’s remarks were a surprise that left pro-European columnists positively giddy with optimism over the weekend.
In truth, rejoining the EU – if it happens – would probably take a decade.
Burnham didn’t offer any timetable or any other specifics, and has said that no moves towards EU membership would be taken before the next UK election due in 2029. And talk of rejoining the EU is not purely borne out of pro-European enthusiasm.
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Almost 150 European politicians have become targets of AI-generated deepfake pornography, 50 of whom are MEPs. The EU’s Green party has now taken the fight to the upper echelons of EU authority to push a ban on ‘nudifying’ apps.
Research by the think tank Agora Digital Transformation (ADT), published on Monday (5 October), found that 50 MEPs have been targeted by digital platforms able to digitally strip anyone whose picture is uploaded to it. Of these, 46 are women.
Another ADT study published in September found that the chances of becoming a victim of false sexualised portrayals are one in 14 for women, against one in 500 for male politicians.
Most worryingly, a woman has no way of knowing she’s been targeted because “the harm is often unseen until it has spread,” Monday’s study read.
MEPs have rallied behind the Green party in demanding EU leaders take concrete steps to limit the influence of such software, while requiring member states to set up national authorities to roll out an effective ban on ‘nudifier’ apps from 2 December 2026.
The Green party initiated an open letter, which was endorsed by 119 MEPs from the Socialists and Democrats, liberal Renew Europe and the Left, calling on the European Commission and member states to take decisive action against AI deepfakes of women politicians.
The appeal asks to strengthen EU resolutions on AI and digital protection by requesting that the commission guide national authorities on enforcing the ban, and that there be a designated and properly resourced body in every member state ready to implement the ban from December.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina’s election, held on Sunday (4 October), has reinforced the country’s deep ethnic and political divisions, with nationalist parties retaining a strong grip on power and low turnout underscoring voters’ growing disillusionment with a political system that has long frustrated the country’s ambitions to join the European Union.
Public support for EU membership remains strong. According to a 2026 survey by Bosnia’s directorate for European integration, 74.4 percent of citizens said they would vote for EU membership in a referendum. Even in Republika Srpska, the ethnic Serb component, where support is lower, 54.1 percent said they would back joining the bloc.
And Bosnia became an EU candidate in 2022, but its path towards membership remains stalled.
The European Commission has identified 14 priorities that the country must address before it can move towards opening accession negotiations. So far, it has not opened a single accession-talks chapter and does not have a chief negotiator for EU membership.
Meanwhile, Bosnia’s complicated political system, built around three constituent ethnic groups, continues to hamper the adoption of reforms.
Forgotten elections
The Bosnian nationwide turnout was just 42 percent, reflecting political apathy, but the complexity of its system also means few people in the EU followed what went on.
Instead of a single president, Bosnia and Herzegovina has a tripartite presidency comprising one Bosniak (South Slavic ethnic group), one Croat, and one Serb.
Voters registered in the federation may vote for either the Bosniak or Croat member, but not both. Voters in Republika Srpska elect the Serb member.
From the provisional results, on Sunday, Denis Becirović won a second term as the Bosniak member of the presidency with 38.12 percent.
He is to be joined by Darijana Filipović (46.55 percent) of the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) as the Croat member, and Željka Cvijanović of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) as the Serb member (55.37 percent).
In light green is the Republika Srpbska. In dark green is the region of Brcko who has another legal status.
The Bosnian system excludes citizens who do not identify as Serb, Croat, or Bosnian from standing for the presidency.
And the post-war power sharing agreement includes 14 parliaments and governments in total for the country of some 3.1 million people, making reforms hard to push through.
But amid the complexities, the biggest winner from Sunday’s elections could be Serb nationalist politician Milorad Dodik, while the big loser could be the EU, according to Adi Ćerimagić, a senior analyst on the Western Balkans at the European Stability Initiative think tank.
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After years without being able to pass a budget, a coalition that wavered over every major proposal, the Ceuta crisis, a string of corruption cases and people taking to the streets over the housing crisis, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called snap elections for 29 November — just as a rightwing victory appears increasingly unstoppable.
Monday’s (5 October) move is barely a surprise. Sánchez’s gambles have proven effective in the past to keep his grasp on power.
Even before the summer, an early election wasn’t considered a far-fetched possibility. Sources in Sánchez’s centre-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and its allies linked it to the budget vote anytime from October onwards, with some analysts pointing to November 2026 as a politically attractive date.
Spain now faces a 54-day sprint to the polls, the shortest window the law allows, with Sánchez betting that the housing issue can turn the campaign in his favour.
But why now?
The eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her rental home after 70 years on 23 September prompted people across the country to take to the streets against Spain’s ongoing housing crisis.
And last Friday, the Spanish lower house in parliament rejected two new housing decree-laws. It was the centre-right People’s Party (PP), far-right Vox, Catalan pro-independence party Junts and Navarrese regional party UPN who voted them down, exposing once again how fragile Sánchez’s parliamentary coalition is.
But with parliament dissolved, a political manoeuvre could now see similar housing decrees approved anyway – helping Sánchez make the housing crisis his main election motto.
Housing bet
In Spain, when parliament is dissolved ahead of an election, responsibility for ratifying government-approved laws passes to a smaller standing committee of 69 lawmakers, known as the Diputación Permanente [Permanent Deputation], which continues to operate until the new parliament is sworn in.
The maths in that body favours Sánchez. His socialist party and the left-wing and regional parties that backed the original housing decrees hold 35 seats, against 34 for the opposition.
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Two human rights defenders are facing a Greek court in Rhodes and 20 years in jail over allegations they belong to a criminal organisation.
The hearing targets Norwegian activist Tommy Olsen and Panayote Dimitras, a legal administrator and representative of the NGO Greek Helsinki Monitor.
“They want to shut me up because what I’ve been doing over the last six to seven years is revealing their wrongdoings,” Olsen told EUobserver on Monday (5 October).
The hearing, which is taking place on Tuesday, is years in the making, following repeated attempt by Greek authorities to punish the pair for helping people seek asylum on the island of Kos in 2021.
Both deny any wrongdoing and Amnesty International earlier this year said the two were being prosecuted for their human-rights work of documenting serious rights violations.
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Russia is making no progress at all on the front, and September was among its worst months.
Russia wants to cause Kyiv’s economic collapse, and pontoon bridges are being prepared in the city.
Ukraine’s air defences neutralised 83 percent of drones launched in September, compared with 92 percent in May.
Videos of the day – attacks on Kyiv’s bridges; what a TM-62 anti-tank mine can do; what anti-drone protection for the Kerch Bridge looks like; Russian communists shouted “Down with the tsar!”, and frontline sounds from a Russian soldier’s video.
Russia is making no progress at all on the front, and September was among its worst months. Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed in Valdai at the beginning of the month that his subjects had captured 1,300 square km of territory in September. This is further evidence that he is either being given completely fabricated figures or is deliberately lying himself.
If Putin were right, his army would have experienced its most successful period since the first two months of the invasion. Defence ministry reports reflect this. Almost every day, they report the capture of more and more villages. In reality, the situation is different. Russian forces became bogged down in every direction even before the rains arrived, and throughout the year they have failed to achieve any operational success that would justify the further hundreds of thousands killed and wounded.
As every month, various analysts have again published their calculations of how the front line moved. Not even estimates from Putin’s own Z channels agree with his figure.
“The average daily rate of advance by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the SVO zone [special military operation] in September 2026 was +5.9 km². The average rate of advance over the entire offensive up to October 2026 is +9.92 km² per day,” Russian project Slivochny Kapriz wrote about September.
It, too, is an unreliable source that regularly overestimates the significance of “flag operations”, but even its data makes it clear that 2026 is lagging significantly behind the previous year.
Even if this author’s figures were correct, the Russians advanced by 177 square km during September’s 30 days, more than seven times less than Putin claims.
Ukrainians from DeepStateUA also published an estimate very close to Slivochny Kapriz’s figures. According to this OSINT project, Ukraine lost 154 square km in September.
However, the Ukrainian analysts treat their own data cautiously and warn their readers that “the operational security of our forces remains the highest priority in our work”.
In other words, during Ukrainian counter-offensives, DeepStateUA only reports successes after a delay so as not to jeopardise the operations’ success.
They therefore now recall that their statistics do not yet include 270 to 320 square km of liberated Ukrainian territory in various sectors. “July will therefore also end as a month in which the Armed Forces of Ukraine have the upper hand, while for August and September this will only become clear when official announcements of successes are available. In the meantime, part of the liberated territories may be lost again,” DeepStateUA wrote on Friday (2 October).
The most optimistic by far are currently Finnish analysts from the Black Bird Group, who see a balance of 190 square kms in Ukraine’s favour in September.
Over the month of September, the Russian net gains were negative 190 km2. This marks the greatest monthly net territorial loss for Russia in our dataset since the June of 2023.
Emil Kastehelmi, one of the project’s authors, pointed out that the sharp change for the better stems from the fact that it also captures some changes that DeepStateUA has not yet taken into account. Nevertheless, he said: “Russia has failed to reverse a situation that has persisted for almost the entire year. The results of the major Russian offensive are minimal, and this is likely to remain the case for the rest of 2026.”
Among Western analysts, the most sceptical is Konrad Muzyka of Rochan Consulting, who credits the Russians with even more gains than Slivochny Kapriz — as much as 235 square kms of advance. Yet this figure still does not come close to Putin’s. Even if it were the most accurate of all, which cannot be determined, it would amount to an area roughly equivalent to the size of Košice, including all its suburbs, forests and agricultural land within the city’s administrative boundaries.
The plan for this year, meanwhile, was to capture the rest of Donetsk region, including the remaining large cities of Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. The Russians are closest to doing so in Kostiantynivka, but Ukrainian soldiers remain there too.
Here is a short summary of territorial changes in Ukraine for September 2026. Our dataset shows an overall Russian territorial gain in September, but a sharply uneven pattern: gains around Dobropillia, Velykyi Burluk, Kramatorsk and Komyshuvakha coincided with substantial losses… pic.twitter.com/jrq0zXiqri
— Konrad Muzyka – Rochan Consulting (@konrad_muzyka) October 1, 2026
Russia wants to cause Kyiv’s economic collapse, and pontoon bridges are being prepared in the city. There is now no doubt that the Russian army has begun a systematic effort to disrupt transport between western and eastern Kyiv. Over the weekend, further drones struck several bridges across the Dnipro.
They included the Northern Bridge, which a Russian drone attacked during the day amid heavy traffic.
🚨 BREAKING: Russian forces launched a drone strike hitting the Northern Bridge in Kyiv, damaging the road surface.
The strike coincides with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s unannounced visit to the capital to meet with Ukrainian leadership. pic.twitter.com/j1UHYoBMa7
Ukraine’s transport minister Mykola Kalashnyk said 600,000 cars cross Kyiv’s bridges every day. In an interview with Suspilne, he announced that construction of embankments and pontoon bridges would begin this week. If the existing bridges become impassable, they are intended to maintain as much traffic as possible between the river’s two banks. Kalashnyk said the temporary crossings should have at least half the capacity.
However, this will take around three months; in the meantime, work will also be carried out to improve the resilience of road bridges.
Transport expert Dmytro Bespalov is sceptical. As he said in an interview with NV, Kyiv’s bridges are irreplaceable, and the only thing that can keep traffic moving across the Dnipro is the military.
However, the task of keeping the bridges operational is complicated by their poor technical condition. Because of their age and the lack of maintenance funding, Bespalov rates the Southern and Northern bridges at four on a scale of one to five, where one is ideal condition and five is emergency condition. He says two other bridges are at level five.
Even in this condition, such large structures are not easy to destroy, but they are certainly more vulnerable. Like many others, Bespalov believes that Russia lacks the means to destroy the bridges completely and is seeking to disrupt traffic during the winter. “The aim is probably an economic blow. I fear it will be very painful. It will not kill us, but I am very concerned about the economic consequences it will have,” he added.
Air defences neutralised 83 percent of drones launched in September, compared with 92 percent in May. This follows from data by the Shahed Tracker project, which recorded 6,732 Russian drones launched against Ukraine over the month, of which 5,561 were shot down or disabled through electronic jamming.
Shahed type OWA-UAS stats Sep2026 [per UA Air Force Reports]
As the same source’s chart for August shows, the effectiveness rate did not change, but the number of drones launched by Russia rose sharply month on month by almost 1,600.
Shahed type OWA-UAS stats Aug2026 [per UA Air Force Reports]
In May, when Russia used a record 8,150 drones, it was as high as 92 percent. At that time, the Russian army began a mass transition to jet-powered drones, leading to a temporary slowing of the pace of attacks. The trend is now unfavourable: monthly attack statistics have begun to rise sharply, while the effectiveness of countermeasures is declining, as Geran-4 drones and especially Geran-5 drones still present a serious problem.
Shahed type OWA-UAS stats May2026 [per UA Air Force Reports]
Total: 8150 (New Record) Claimed Intercepted: 7476 (Official: 5053 Shahed type OWA-UAS) Hits: 508 (674 Not Intercepted) Interception Rate: ~92%
As another video showing the moment a Geran-5 was hit demonstrates. Technical solutions already exist, but faster interceptor drones are not yet available in sufficient numbers.
Another Geran-5 drone shot down by a STING S interceptor drone from Wild Hornets. Combat work by pilots of the 1020th ZRP. pic.twitter.com/kkPHaCIrKG
One TM-62 anti-tank mine contains seven and a half kilograms of explosives. This is enough to destroy the remains of a building used as a shelter by Russian soldiers.
❗️A Ukrainian heavy Baba Yaga-type drone destroys a building with Russian soldiers inside by dropping a TM-62 anti-tank mine. pic.twitter.com/XClgIqMvwe
A video recently circulated online showing Kyiv residents protesting against tree felling. It was widely used as alleged evidence that Ukrainians have had enough of the government. However, their protest was civic, not political. These Muscovites are communists and dared, very timidly, to chant “Down with the tsar!” Police intervened immediately.
У Москві комуністи зібралися на погоджений мітинг, почали скандувати «Долой царя», і після цього їх побили й розігнали мусора. pic.twitter.com/MD6MVxSBPS
This video must be watched with the sound on. It illustrates the saturation of the battlefield with drones. The Russian soldier who recorded it says he counted five drones.
"I’ve already counted five. It’s a damn swarm." position of 🇷🇺1199th Motorized Rifle Regiment (probably occupied south 🇺🇦) 🍂 is coming pic.twitter.com/K9H3wcRdse
Three lines of anti-drone barriers protect the Kerch Bridge, which links Crimea to Russia, from attacks from the sea.
Exilenova+ says Russia has set up layered defenses around the approaches to the Crimean Bridge, with multiple lines against Ukrainian surface and underwater USVs plus FSB patrol ships. The stated aim is to shield the bridge’s vulnerable elements. pic.twitter.com/rxMPPe6gXW
By Monday (5 October), Russia had verifiably lost 24,170 pieces of heavy equipment (24,138 on Tuesday, 22 September). Of these, 19,133 (19,105) were destroyed by Ukraine, 1,003 (1,000) damaged, 1,194 (1,194) abandoned by their crews and 2,840 (2,839) captured by the Ukrainian army. This includes 4,452 (4,448) tanks, of which 3,357 (3,353) were destroyed in combat.
Ukraine lost 12,238 (12,175) pieces of equipment, of which 9,633 (9,579) were destroyed, 711 (702) damaged, 695 (695) abandoned and 1,199 (1,199) captured. This includes 1,466 (1,464) tanks, of which 1,126 (1,125) were destroyed in combat.
Note: Neither side regularly reports on its own dead or destroyed equipment. Ukraine publishes daily figures for Russian casualties and destroyed equipment, which cannot be independently verified. This overview uses data from the Oryx project, which has compiled a list of equipment losses documented exclusively by photographs since the beginning of the war.
Flávio Bolsonaro surprisingly topped the polls in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday (4 October), making him the favourite to topple President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the run-off in three weeks.
The result is the latest in a series of strong performances by far-right candidates in Latin America. US president Donald Trump has been particularly invested in Brazil.
Despite lagging behind in most pre-election polls, senator Flávio Bolsonaro (45), the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, won around 47 percent of the vote, with votes from more than 99.9 percent of districts counted. Bolsonaro was strongest in the country’s southern states.
President Lula took 45 percent, after performing strongest in Brazil’s north-east, and advanced to the second round, to be held on 25 October.
Latin American experts believe thatBolsonaro will likely win the second round as most of the candidates who failed to reach the runoff are ideologically closer to him than Lula.
Although voting is compulsory in Brazil, one in five of eligible voters did not take part in the first round.
This year’s election has been widely described as one of the most significant in modern Brazilian history, its outcome exceptionally important for the United States and Europe. It is also key for the rest of the planet, given the global impact of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
Conservative forces aligned with Bolsonaro also made gains in the elections to Congress. Jair Bolsonaro’s wife Michelle won a senate seat. She had previously fallen out with Flávio but the two have since publicly reconciled. And the former president’s son Carlos Bolsonaro also won a seat, while another son, Jair Renan, was elected to the lower house of congress.
Trump’s stake in Brazil
Though the campaign focused primarily on domestic issues, particularly the economy, security and corruption, Trump’s influence loomed large.
Trump criticised Brazil’s judiciary when Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years following an unsuccessful attempted coup after he narrowly lost the 2022 election to Lula. The former Brazilian president is under house arrest due to health problems, and a court ruled he could not stand.
The US president described the trial of Bolsonaro as a “witch hunt”. Although Trump did not openly endorse Flávio Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro played up his ideological proximity to him.
In contrast, Lula sharply criticised Trump and built a reputation as a leader unafraid to stand up to Trump. Americas Quarterly editor Brian Winter said some in Brazil joke that Lula’s most effective surrogate is Trump.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva delivers a speech after learning the official results election on Sunday (4 October).
Lula is known for his multipolar foreign policy. He seeks “pragmatic relations” with the US, China, Russia and others. Lula maintains friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, although he recently spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine.
If Bolsonaro were to win the second round, Brazil would probably join a coalition of countries conducting military operations against drug cartels alongside the Pentagon. It is a controversial initiative, and like other left leaders in the region, Lula has rejected it.
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EUobserver is proud to have an editorial partnership with Europod to co-publish the podcast series “Briefed” hosted by Léa Marchal. The podcast is available on all major platforms.
Find the full transcript below:
Germany shut down its last nuclear power plants in 2023, bringing Angela Merkel’s nuclear exit policy to its conclusion. But now, nuclear power is making a strong comeback everywhere in Europe. Will Germany return to nuclear policy?
Until now, German chancellor Friedrich Merz had been reluctant to bring the nuclear topic on the table, partly because there was no agreement within his coalition. He has even said that Germany’s nuclear phase-out was irreversible. But that position is not shared by everyone in his own party.
And as support for the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany) grows — a party that is strongly in favour of nuclear power — nuclear energy is becoming less politically taboo in Germany.
According to a non-public document sent by Berlin to other EU member states and reported by the media Euractiv (currently Rapporteur), the German government wants nuclear energy to be taken into account when the EU sets its climate targets for 2040.
For now, those discussions focus on renewable energy. Germany is not proposing to abandon renewable-energy targets, but rather to leave room for other low-carbon technologies, including nuclear power and carbon capture.
The logic is similar to the debate over the EU’s 2035 target for new cars: the overall objective remains, but countries could have more flexibility over how they achieve it.
And that proposal is likely to be welcomed in France. But could they convince a majority of EU countries? The picture across Europe is changing.
Many EU countries already operate nuclear power plants, while others are building new reactors or considering a return to nuclear. Italy, for example, is looking to revive a nuclear industry after abandoning nuclear power following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Poland has never operated a nuclear power plant, but it is now developing its first one. And several other countries that currently have no reactors are seriously considering building them.
Only a small group of EU countries remain opposed to developing nuclear power, including Austria, Portugal, Luxembourg and Malta.
So why has nuclear power become more politically acceptable again? The legacy of Chernobyl and Fukushima still matters. But Europe’s energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also changed the debate.
The shock of soaring fossil-fuel prices has encouraged governments to look for energy sources that can provide electricity without relying on fossil fuels — and nuclear power is increasingly being presented as one of them. Although there are major questions around that argument.
Nuclear power can provide large amounts of low-carbon electricity once a reactor is operating. But building and renovating reactors is extremely expensive and can take decades.
Take France’s Flamanville reactor: its final cost has been estimated at around €23bn , compared with an initial estimate of around €3bn.
There are also questions over nuclear waste, the risk of accidents, and the security of uranium supplies. European countries remain partly dependent on foreign suppliers, including Russia, for uranium.
Russia will use nuclear weapons if Nato tries to blockade Kaliningrad. That was the blunt warning from the Kremlin last week. In truth, this is an empty threat against an invented danger. Russia’s nuclear bluff is worn out from overuse, and Nato has no such intention.
But the outburst does signal something useful: Russia’s sensitivity about Kaliningrad.
The northern half of the former German territory of East Prussia is the Kremlin’s last great trophy from the Soviet victory over Hitler in 1945.
Like many trophies, it is less impressive on close inspection. Kaliningrad is an artificial creation, from its name (after the war criminal Mikhail Kalinin) to its population (imported after ethnic cleansing) and its southern border (a crude straight line, of the kind European colonists inflicted on African countries).
Now Moscow’s grip on this exclave — an island of Russian territory sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania — is increasingly fragile. Not because anyone will sever the precarious air, sea, and land routes that keep it supplied, but because of Russia’s all-too-real, corrupt, authoritarian, and incompetent system of government.
The weakness of the Russian system, aggravated by the cost of the disastrous war in Ukraine, makes holding on to Kaliningrad unsustainable: economically, socially, demographically, and politically.
Outside commentary mostly misses this, depicting Kaliningrad as a fortress from which Russia can menace its neighbours.
It is more realistic to see it the other way round, as Russia’s greatest strategic vulnerability: an Achilles’ heel.
The name poses an implicit question: do you really believe that Kaliningrad will still be under Moscow’s rule by the middle of the century? It looks increasingly unlikely.
BISC will this week convene 20 experts for crisis simulations examining how Kremlin rule might unravel, and how neighbouring countries could, would, and should react.
The causes are imaginary, for now. But an environmental disaster, a breakdown in fuel supplies, or a public-health emergency, such as the one now unfolding in Siberia, are all entirely possible in Russia’s current ramshackle state. Decision-makers will have to react to the resulting refugee flows, pollution, and humanitarian needs.
We do not yet know the BISC study’s outcome: as with military ‘war games’, the aim of these exercises is to test how different scenarios play out. We hope the conclusions will be useful for those who deal with these dilemmas in real life.
Next up will be a book, Fragile Fortress, to be published later this year. Edited by the British Russia-watcher Christopher Peters, and written by local and foreign experts, it explores topics including memory politics, economic weaknesses, internal repression, and the state of public opinion. The main message: Kaliningrad survives only thanks to economic subsidy and political support from Moscow.
These efforts could hardly be more topical.
While the Kremlin blusters about a threat from Nato, social media scare stories depict supposed Russian invasion plans to be launched from Kaliningrad, with maps showing thick red arrows piercing the Suwałki Gap, a strategic stretch of land which links Poland and Lithuania.
But as the book’s military chapter shows, such an attack is impossible in current (or likely) conditions. Russia has almost no ground forces left in Kaliningrad: they have all gone to Ukraine. Nor does the Russian air force there have the kind of airfields and hangars needed for a real war.
Nato, especially since Sweden and Finland joined the alliance, is overwhelmingly dominant in land, sea, and air in the region: a point underlined by its recent surveillance exercises in the region.
In short, the nuclear bluster is irrelevant. Nobody is menacing Kaliningrad from the outside. And the real question is when and how, but not if, the Kremlin will lose it in the end.
EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and Chinese commerce minister Wang Wentao are meeting in Beijing on Thursday (8 October) to discuss China’s growing trade surplus with the EU.
The surplus reached a record €360.6bn in 2025, up 15 percent from 2024, and widened another 10 percent in the first four months of this year.
The visit follows a meeting in Brussels in June, where Šefčovič said he wanted the dialogue to deliver tangible results by October, and the two sides set up working groups on trade balance, export controls, intellectual property and WTO reform. China has sent mixed signals, with Beijing reportedly showing openness to purchase agreements for European goods and possibly lower tariffs, while China’s commerce ministry insisted Brussels should not treat China as the source of the EU’s problems.
The EU put tariffs on Chinese electric cars in 2024, with extra duties ranging from 7.8 percent to 35.3 percent depending on the manufacturer. But hybrids weren’t covered, and Chinese hybrid exports to the EU jumped from 3,800 vehicles in October 2024 to roughly 50,000 in July 2026, adding to pressure on European carmakers already struggling to compete with Chinese manufacturers.
Šefčovič will also be hoping to secure assurances from his Chinese counterpart on access to rare earths and minerals for European companies, with a one-year moratorium on extra restrictions on rare earth and minerals exports from China – which also applies to the United States – due to expire in the coming weeks. In June, China assured Šefčovič that existing controls on rare earths and permanent magnets would not disrupt EU supply chains.
Meanwhile, there have been reports of some German companies stockpiling rare earths in case the Šefčovič-Wentao talks fail to break the deadlock and China imposes new export controls in retaliation for the EU’s ‘Made in Europe’ plan to protect its industrial supply chain.
If the Beijing talks fail, Germany and France could push for tougher measures at next week’s EU leaders’ summit, including a cap on Chinese hybrid-car exports, preference for European vehicles in public procurement and tighter limits on Chinese takeovers of European companies.
But China recently said it would “respond firmly” if the EU imposed restrictions on Chinese businesses or products.
Long-delayed accession reforms
In Strasbourg on Tuesday (6 October), the European Commission is expected to present its long-delayed pre-enlargement policy reviews to prepare the 27-nation bloc for the integration of candidate countries like Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova.
EU capitals fear that enlargement could disrupt businesses and that new member states could use their veto to block decisions.
In response, the commission proposal is set to rely less on consensus and more on majority voting, including in sensitive areas such as security and defence, sanctions, human rights and enlargement itself – a change that could help speed up bids such as Ukraine’s.
Ironically, to get rid of unanimity in certain votes, von der Leyen’s proposal will need the unanimous approval of all 27 member states.
The text is also expected to set temporary limits on new members’ vetoes, longer safeguard periods, and cut the number of commissioners to two-thirds of the number of member states, with equal rotation.
Alongside the internal rules review, the commission is expected to unveil a revision of the standardisation regulation to fix gaps and increase transparency.
On Monday (5 October), EU chief diplomat Kaja Kallas will host Moldovan PM Vasile Tofan in Brussels for a regular meeting on the progress of the country’s association bid.
The Eurogroup will also meet on Thursday in Luxembourg while EU financial ministers will meet on Friday.
On Wednesday, they will debate priorities for the EU budget for 2028-2034 (the Multiannual Financial Framework – MFF) with signals of more money for Erasmus+.
And MEPs will vote on Tuesday on whether to inject €115m into a pilot programme to accelerate the development of military technologies called Agile. This comes as Putin escalates hybrid warfare against Europe.
Controversy is expected ahead of a vote to scrutinise the funding and political influence of Islamist groups in Europe. European Conservative and Reformists (ECR) have previously called for the Muslim Brotherhood to be considered terrorists.
Those feeling stressed in their jobs can look forward to mental health protections for workers if parliament votes to ask the commission to propose new rules for EU employers.
Portuguese prime minister Luís Montenegro will deliver a speech on Tuesday.
And a debate with Ursula von der Leyen and the Irish Council presidency will shape priorities for the EU summit later this month, 15-16 October.
Plenary talks will also address the migrant surge in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta this summer and how Europe should respond.
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