The European Commission says asylum seekers arriving at EU borders are now being screened, but it makes no mention of the independent rights monitors that EU law requires to oversee those procedures, even as spending on border surveillance surges.
“Screening of people arriving illegally and the border procedures are being carried out,” said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, in a letter addressed to the 27 heads of state and government meeting at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday (15 October).
An annex to her letter, obtained by EUobserver, highlights broad outstanding issues when it comes to implementing new EU-wide asylum laws that kicked into force this past June.
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The EU is preparing to curb Chinese imports of chemicals and industrial machinery, following a successful deal with Beijing that capped hybrid car exports to the bloc.
The European Commission “showed openness” to proposing safeguards, referring to an emergency brake on imports that can cover entire sectors, an EU diplomat told EUobserver on Thursday (15 October).
And there was “broad support” for the idea among member states for the commission to proceed, the diplomat said.
Last week, trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič agreed with Beijing to cap imports of Chinese hybrid cars at 350,000 next year, which was less than half the amount expected this year.
He called the deal a “blueprint” for other sectors, a view which was publicly echoed by EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, also on Thursday.
Under World Trade Organization (WTO) and EU rules, anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases require Brussels to prove that Chinese firms sell at unfairly low prices or receive subsidies.
Safeguards do not need evidence under WTO rules, which allows them to be used as an emergency measure.
And the commission only has to show that a surge in imports is seriously harming European producers.
“We like the idea, chemicals, machinery where there’s still a lot of Chinese overproduction needs to be managed,” said another EU diplomat.
The instrument had its limits: Safeguards have to apply to all countries, not just China, and can last no more than eight years.
The EU rarely uses WTO safeguards, but did so on steel, also aimed at China, which expired in June, after reaching the eight-year limit, and which have since been replaced by a separate EU steel regime.
And the Centre for European Reform, a prominent think-tank in Brussels, previously suggested exempting the EU’s 76 free-trade partners from safeguards so that the measures fell mainly on China.
It was a legal moot point in the WTO if that was OK, but the EU has done something similar before.
Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and 10 other countries were left out of the steel safeguard, but using this tool to address Chinese imports was still seen as a temporary solution.
Before the end of the year, the EU commission aims to present diversification tools to reduce reliance on Chinese goods, as well as a mechanism to compensate companies hit by Chinese countermeasures.
And the package would include an instrument to shut Chinese companies out of the EU market if need be, in a measure first proposed in a Franco-German paper last week.
Slovak prime minister Robert Fico appears to have become Russia’s most prominent ally in the European Union, following the demise of Hungary’s pro-Kremlin leader.
Juraj Blanár, Slovakia’s foreign minister, announced controversial plans to revive a joint committee with Russia back in August – just a day before the anniversary of the Soviets occupying Czechoslovakia in 1968.
His announcement also came before Fico headed off to meet his counterparts at a summit in Brussels on Thursday (15 October).
And “so that there are no surprises, on the 25th [of October] there will … be a meeting of the joint economic commission with the Russian Federation,” Fico told the European affairs committee in Slovakia’s parliament on Wednesday.
The central European leader announced the closer ties with his aggressive neighbour immediately after planning a trip to Lviv in Ukraine early next month.
But if Fico does actually go to Lviv, just over the border from Poland, it would be the deepest he has travelled in the war-torn country so far.
And while he has not visited Kyiv in three years since returning to power, Fico has made plenty of time to go to Moscow during this time.
Many factors point to Slovakia now openly supporting the Kremlin, even as Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians intensify, killing dozens of people.
The Institute for European Security Studies (IESS), a Kyiv-based think tank, noted, in its analysis, that a recent statement by Slovak defence minister Robert Kaliňák did not consider Russia a threat, despite Russian intelligence services having been linked to attacks in Slovakia including, potentially, a drone attack on a manufacturer near Prešov.
The IESS also highlighted the renewed Slovak-Russian cooperation at the level of military attachés, with two Slovak military personnel sent to the Russian capital while a Russian officer went to Bratislava.
This swap of soldiers was promised by Fico to Putin when they met in the Kremlin on 9 May.
And to make matters worse, a Russian military attaché was captured on video handing cash to an associate of the Slovak fake news site Hlavné správy.
The Ukraine think-tank warned that Slovakia’s magnetism towards Russia should not be ignored.
“In the end, by lowering Nato’s guard and reopening the doors to Russian intelligence, Slovakia is doing exactly what Moscow needs: disabling the West’s defences from the inside out,” it said.
Pro-Kremlin all around
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Brussels with two main requests for his meeting with EU leaders on Friday (16 October): more funds for Kyiv for defence and more sanctions against Russia.
“All of us in Europe want this war to end. And for that to happen, strong signals are needed – more real pressure on Russia and more defence support for Ukraine,” he said on X.
“It is especially important now to act together to protect lives,” he added.
Zelensky’s plea comes days after US president Donald Trump announced a deal to bring Russian diesel to the US and global markets, raising questions about the consistency of Western efforts to restrict Russia’s energy revenues that are feeding the Kremlin war machine.
EU leaders are expected to “regret” the Trump-Putin deal in their summit conclusions, where they also mention more financial, humanitarian and diplomatic support to Kyiv ahead of what many predict to be one of the most difficult winters for Ukraine.
Dutch PM Rob Jetten said the diesel deal was “not a good step”, adding that “Europe has to show that we are not only dependent on the US”.
But he also appealed directly to the US, calling for more support: “Do what is necessary to support the Ukrainians. They need not only sufficient weapons to defend Ukraine, but also the information they need to repel Russian attacks.”
Despite the diesel deal, Estonian PM Kristen Michal, whose country hosts a US military base, also said the US is still a “partner” of Europe in the war in Ukraine.
“We will see what happens in the midterm elections. But I will never give up trying to talk to and convince … our transatlantic partners that we are better off united than divided on this issue,” European Parliament president Roberta Metsola said during a press conference on Thursday after meeting EU leaders.
And in a warning to Moscow about Nato’s unity, US top military commander Alexus Grynkewich also said earlier this week in Warsaw that any “foolish” attack on the Nato alliance would be “utterly futile”.
Funding gap
In December 2025, EU leaders failed to agree to use over €210bn in Russian frozen funds sitting in Europe and instead decided to go for a €90bn loan, aimed at covering about two-thirds of Ukraine’s external financing needs.
“The remaining third is the problem,” Tetiana Shevchuk, from the Kyiv-based Anti-Corruption Action Center, told EUobserver, referring to commitments by other countries like Canada and Japan coming only for 2026. “2027 is the real gap”.
The €90bn loan is split into €45bn for 2026 and 2027, but recent reports point to about a €23bn financial gap amid an expected Russian escalation ahead of the winter.
Zelensky has asked Brussels to bring forward part of the loan to cover this gap in the defence ministry. But Brussels fears this advance “could unravel the compromise on gradual instalments and leave a hole later in 2027,” Shevchuk also said.
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The series continues as we report on developments following April’s historic election and on the steps taken since then by the Tisza government. This week, we cover the following topics:
Another blow for Hungary’s richest man;
New chief prosecutor nominee, plus a former chief prosecutor ready to testify on political pressure;
Parliament has adopted the new child-protection law;
A state secretary has unexpectedly left the government;
Orbán to keep quiet on one of Hungary’s most important national holidays;
Ukraine adopts the minority education law;
More EU funds and money from the Norway Grants have become available.
Another blow for Lőrinc Mészáros
Last Friday (9 October), prime minister Péter Magyar and Dávid Vitézy, minister for transport and investments, announced that the state was suspending implementation of one of Hungary’s largest rail projects – the Budapest southern circular railway, and will launch a new public procurement procedure.
The works had been carried out by V-Híd, the most profitable company of Lőrinc Mészáros, who became Hungary’s richest man during Viktor Orbán’s premiership.
However, the European Court of Auditors uncovered serious public-procurement irregularities: V-Híd may have colluded with the company that drafted the project plans and thus already possessed information at the time of the tender that its competitors did not have. Because of this, the European Court of Auditors would withdraw EU funding from the project.
The Hungarian government does not want to forfeit the EU money and make Hungarian taxpayers foot the bill for the costs of the project, which is why it is terminating the contract with Mészáros’s company and launching a new tender.
The Hungarian state had already taken away from Mészáros the right to operate a motorway section, and later also terminated the 35-year motorway concession.
Previously, one of his food-industry companies had EU funding already granted to it withdrawn, while his energy company was excluded from a call for proposals financed from the repatriated RRF funds.
New chief prosecutor nominee, plus former chief prosecutor ready to testify
On Monday (12 October), president András Baka nominated a former chief prosecutor, Péter Fejes, for the post of chief prosecutor. His first nominee, Zoltán Szathmáry, was not voted through by the Tisza group in parliament after it emerged that his brother was implicated in the so-called gold convoy case, in which a Ukrainian cash shipment was stopped and confiscated by the Hungarian authorities.
Fejes was dismissed in 2012 from his position as chief prosecutor of Vas county by Péter Polt, the chief prosecutor serving the Orbán system, citing loss of confidence. Since then he has continued to work within the prosecution service and as a university lecturer, and he has no party affiliation. For the time being neither prime minister Magyar nor the Tisza group has stated whether they support Fejes’s nomination.
Since the change of government, another former chief prosecutor, Pál Fürcht, has frequently spoken to the media. Among other things, he has claimed that the gold convoy case was created for political purposes, and that the authorities raided the Ukrainian cash couriers on Orbán’s orders.
On Sunday (11 October), Magyar sharply criticised Fürcht in a Facebook post, reproaching him for having been a servant of the system himself. According to Magyar, Fürcht constructed a criminal case, on political orders, out of the notorious nightclub altercation for which the prime minister is currently under investigation on charges of theft.
It was likewise Fürcht who left former propaganda minister Antal Rogán out of the corruption case known as the Völner–Schadl affair.
In response to Magyar’s criticism, Fürcht said he was ready to make an official statement before any authority. In parliament on Monday, the prime minister was already referring to the former chief prosecutor as a future witness.
Parliament has adopted the new child-protection law
Child protection was one of the most important topics of the campaign and played a major role in Orbán’s downfall. Magyar kept the issue on the agenda even after his government took office; most recently, last Thursday, the prime minister and the state secretary responsible for the field, Szilvia Gyurkó, presented the report on the children’s home in Bicske.
This home had been run by a director who was decorated by Orbán and later convicted of paedophile crimes, together with his deputy, who helped cover up the abuses. The presidential pardon granted to the deputy shook the Orbán government and helped lead to its collapse.
On Tuesday (13 October), parliament adopted an amendment to the child-protection law, which takes a tougher stance against media content accessible to minors that propagates sexual violence, manipulation and exploitation, and would speed up the placement of babies abandoned in hospital.
The amendment removed those homophobic passages that the Orbán government forced into law in 2021, and which the Court of Justice of the European Union also ruled to be contrary to EU law.
Fidesz, the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) and the far-right Mi Hazánk did not vote for the amendment; Magyar called this a disgrace.
A state secretary unexpectedly leaves the government
On Tuesday, András Tótth, state secretary for energy at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy and minister István Kapitány’s most important aide, unexpectedly resigned.
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Zelensky has lost patience; the US is acting as Putin’s ally.
How Ukrainians attackedRussian targets without Starlink.
If Musk did not switch off Starlink, who did? The main suspects.
Ukrainian attacks on data centres hit Russia where it hurts.
Why this type of attack will continue to escalate and not only in this war.
Videos of the day: a hero robot returns without a wheel; attacks on ammunition depots.
Zelensky has lost patience; the US is Putin’s ally. Despite problems with Starlink, which Kyiv said cut connections with attack drones when they exceeded a certain speed, major Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory continued in recent hours. Long-range strikes over Russia are carried out by drones without Starlink.
These included an attack on the military airfield in Borisoglebsk, more than 300 km from the border, as well as on a refinery in Ryazan, which the local governor confirmed. The Ryazan refinery belongs to Rosneft and is one of the largest, with a capacity of around 17 million tonnes of oil a year.
This came after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told the Financial Times that he had had enough after Russian attacks during the so-called energy truce, and announced that refineries would once again become Ukrainian targets.
It was precisely a limitation of such Ukrainian strikes that US president Donald Trump had demanded, after last week concluding a controversial agreement with Moscow to buy Russian oil without asking for anything in return from the Russian side.
This was followed by steps that raised serious suspicions that Trump had begun acting in favour of Putin’s war against Ukraine.
The US threatened Ukraine with restricting supplies of weapons or critically important intelligence and, ultimately, as we examined on Wednesday in the Ukraine Battlefield update, Ukrainian soldiers began experiencing a serious problem with the full internet connection provided by the military version of Starlink, which Musk’s SpaceX developed for the Pentagon.
This is crucial to the Ukrainian army not only for attacks on Russian logistics at the front, but also in defending against more dangerous Russian jet-powered drones, which have terrorised Ukrainian cities in recent months.
Russia’s pro-Kremlin scene naturally noticed this as well. The Z-blogger Rybar called for the use of an “opportunity” in which Russian forces could inflict maximum damage on Ukrainian infrastructure.
“I think the crisis is entirely clear and understandable. The crisis lies in Trump’s position, which is trying to help Russia in every possible way,” expert Volodymyr Ohryzko commented on the situation.
We write below about what the company’s owner, Elon Musk, has said about these developments.
How Ukrainians attacked without Starlink. In the first of the Ukrainian attacks mentioned above, on the airfield in Borisoglebsk, Ukrainian Neptune missiles were used, according to the Ukrainian navy. Ukrainians said they destroyed as many as six Su-34M aircraft. They have their own navigation systems and do not need SpaceX services.
⚡️ BREAKING: Ukraine’s Navy claims to have struck SIX Russian Su-34M fighter-bombers in a Neptune missile attack on Borisoglebsk military airbase in Russia’s Voronezh region overnight. https://t.co/kMEuVbmrVXpic.twitter.com/fH8igvygd5
The attack on the refinery in Ryazan involved drones that are likewise not connected to Starlink, as SpaceX has geographically restricted Ukraine’s access to both Starlink and Starshield services.
“The Ukrainian armed forces therefore rely on alternative means of communication and point-to-point navigation to strike targets in Russia. The speed restrictions under the Starshield service are unrelated to this and will not prevent the Ukrainian armed forces from attacking Russian oil refineries, data centres and other stationary targets in Russia,” the Institute for the Study of War said.
However, Ukrainians felt the problems mainly at the home front.
An unnamed Ukrainian officer compared it to nuclear strikes in comments to Politico. “All operations have been suspended. It will cost many of us our lives,” an experienced soldier commanding a medium-range unmanned aircraft unit in south-eastern Ukraine told the Brussels-based website.
They use Hornet drones to attack targets at distances of up to 150 km.
Ukrainian soldiers contacted by Politico said the restrictions had halted some medium-range drone attacks over Ukraine, disrupting strikes on Russian logistics and reducing support for Ukrainian units at the front.
The scale of the disruption is unclear, however, and it is not known whether the restriction remains in place.
If Musk did not switch off Starlink, who did? The main suspects. Several Ukrainian soldiers reported on Wednesday that they had had to suspend their operations because of restrictions on satellite connections with drones that exceeded 160 km/h.
According to former minister Mykhailo Fedorov, this capability was later restored. NV sources, by contrast, said the speed limit remained in place on Wednesday evening. The following day, operation of the system was fully restored, according to Ukraine’s defence ministry, while the circumstances of the outage are being investigated.
Importantly, Zelensky said it was not a technical problem but an apparent deliberate act. It is not yet certain who was behind it, although the main suspect is clear.
Musk claims that, because the military version of the Starshield satellite internet connection is military in nature, it is controlled by the US government, which also owns it.
“Any decisions on speed or usage restrictions are made by the US military and, ultimately, the US president (POTUS),” the world’s richest man wrote on his social network X. However, the White House, according to Axios sources, claims it had nothing to do with the restriction and wants Musk’s company to investigate the circumstances.
Republican senator Tom Tillis is also calling for this in Congress. “I do not expect defence secretary Hegseth to ensure transparency, and therefore we will ask the defence department’s inspector general to launch an investigation and report to Congress and the American people,” he wrote on X.
Starshield differs from the regular network in its greater resistance to jamming and its specialisation for military use.
Oleksandr “Serg Marco” Karpiuk, a well-known Ukrainian specialist in military aerial reconnaissance, wrote on Facebook that standard Starlink terminals currently have a preset speed limit of 22 m/s.
“To be able to fly at speeds above 22 m/s, Ukraine signed contracts for the Starshield system, which is managed by the Pentagon. This is a military system using Starlink terminals that offer greater functionality, although these accounts are substantially more expensive,” he explained. According to him, the Pentagon did two things within a single day: it restricted intelligence-sharing and changed the parameters of Starshield accounts.
“It was a decision by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, evidently on Trump’s orders,” Karpiuk believes, as quoted by Illia Ponomarenko in a post.
Pro-Kremlin propaganda has welcomed the latest developments.
The Russian daily Kommersant quoted a Musk post in which he wrote that it was “time for Zelensky to leave”. His words followed Trump once again pushing Ukraine to hold elections in which it would choose a new president.
Zelensky responded that they would be happy to organise elections if Russia observed a 60-day ceasefire.
Experts agree that it is unrealistic to organise a proper vote under the wartime conditions Ukraine faces.
Ukrainian attacks on data centres hit Russia where it hurts. Although it has not yet been confirmed that pro-Kremlin bots became less active after Ukrainian drones struck Russian servers, ordinary Russians felt the impact. Russia started such attacks in September, amid escalating air raids on Kyiv.
As many as around 100,000 households lost internet access at the time. Now, this tactic has been turned against Moscow.
Researchers studying Russian trolling did not observe any real decline in the activity of pro-Putin bots either, according to a BBC analysis. Far more interesting, however, are the real-world consequences of Ukrainian attacks on the data centres of Yandex, Russia’s Google, which have manifested themselves in a range of ways.
According to Politico sources, Ukrainians wanted to show Russians that it takes two to play this game. According to the Financial Times, they have already managed to seriously damage three of Yandex’s six data centres: in Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir.
The consequences of these attacks subsequently showed how vulnerable Russia’s centralised internet ecosystem is.
“Russia has become a victim of its own policies, which has led to the worst possible scenario,” Alena Epifanova, an expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, told the FT.
The impact of the Ukrainian attack has affected the daily lives of Russians. Here overview of services that were affected to a greater or lesser extent, according to the British daily:
problems accessing Yandex email;
Yandex Taxi was taken offline;
several websites — including a dating app and the Russian equivalent of McDonald’s — were inaccessible;
saved files and documents could not be opened;
bus timetables disappeared in some cities;
residents of some Moscow apartment buildings could not get through electric gates;
banking services were not fully operational.
All the affected data centres also have supercomputers used to train AI, which is playing an increasingly important role on the battlefield.
For example, one of Yandex’s three supercomputers — Chervonenkis — in Sasovo had long ranked among the world’s 100 most powerful supercomputers, and only in 2026 fell to 101st place, according to the BBC.
However, it has not been confirmed that Ukrainian attacks damaged any of them. According to the Russians, an attack on a similar Sberbank facility did not cause significant damage.
“If the supercomputers are damaged, replacing the loss will be difficult — they were powered by chips from the US company Nvidia, which Yandex imported through ‘complex and complicated schemes’ because of sanctions,” a former company employee told the BBC.
Given the current shortage of Nvidia chips, Yandex’s data centres may not be restored until 2028, according to the website.
Why this could escalate. Attacks on buildings that provide computing capacity are comparable, according to Politico, to strikes on a power plant supplying electricity, heat and fuel, on which both military and civilian functions depend.
That is also why this type of attack sits on the edge of international law.
“It may weaken the enemy’s military effort, but it can also completely paralyse ordinary life,” the Brussels-based website wrote. According to Politico, the cost of restoring data centres in Russia is particularly high because the necessary materials are scarce and their import is restricted by Western sanctions.
“Obtaining a large quantity of equipment to replace what has been destroyed will not be easy,” cyber specialist Oleg Shakirov told Politico.
For now, Ukrainian expert Yevhen Pronin is cautious in assessing the effectiveness of attacks on data centres. “For example, after the attack on Sberbank’s data centre — Russia’s largest bank and one of its key technology companies — its representatives said its systems were operating without disruption, and reports indicated that the centre itself was still under construction,” Pronin told Denník N.
However, a series of such strikes fundamentally changes the scale of the risk, he said. If attacks continue to hit large operational centres on which banks, state services and corporate services depend, the consequences could be far more serious.
“They range from widespread outages to data loss and disruption to critical digital infrastructure. We do not yet see a catastrophe for all of Russia, but rather the vulnerability of a system that is increasingly dependent on a few major technological hubs,” he added.
Attacks on data centres themselves are not a new feature of the Russia-Ukraine war.
At the start of Trump’s war against Iran, Amazon data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were hit. This was followed by an attack on a data centre in Tehran, after which soldiers’ salary payments were interrupted and banks’ online services stopped working.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies examined at the time how data had become a new front line of warfare. Following a trip to Kyiv, its researcher Emily Harding concluded that “state-of-the-art software, flexible operational procedures, and the strategic migration of data to cloud storage both inside and outside the country have given Ukraine the advantage it needs to fight”.
The problems linked to Starlink only confirm this digital vulnerability of modern warfare.
Videos of the day
It returned even in critical condition. Ground robots are being deployed increasingly often at the Ukrainian front, saving more and more lives in the deadly zone where drones hunt people. In this case, one such robot returned from a demanding mission even without one wheel.
A Ukrainian logistics UGV returns from a combat mission despite sustaining critical damage pic.twitter.com/d8fT8sh21T
Attacks on ammunition depots. FPV drone operators from Artan, a special unit of Ukrainian military intelligence — apparently also thanks to Starlink — launched a series of attacks on field ammunition depots. Over several months, they reportedly struck 2,308 enemy targets.
Enemy tanks and self-propelled artillery systems probably accounted for a significant proportion of them.
By Tuesday (13 October), Russia had demonstrably lost 24,192 pieces of heavy equipment (24,170 on Monday, 5 October). Of these, 19,155 (19,133) were destroyed by Ukrainians, 1,002 (1,003) were damaged, 1,194 (1,194) were abandoned by their crews, and 2,841 (2,840) were captured by the Ukrainian army. This includes 4,453 (4,452) tanks, of which 3,358 (3,357) were destroyed in combat.
Ukraine lost 12,259 (12,238) pieces of equipment, of which 9,652 (9,633) were destroyed, 713 (711) damaged, 695 (695) abandoned and 1,199 (1,199) captured. This includes 1,471 (1,466) tanks, of which 1,131 (1,126) were destroyed in combat.
Note: Neither side regularly reports its dead or destroyed equipment. Ukraine publishes daily figures for Russian casualties and destroyed equipment, which cannot be independently verified. In this overview, we use data from the Oryx project, which has compiled a list of equipment losses documented exclusively by photographs since the beginning of the war.
Europe’s trade deficit with China reached a record $34.8bn [€31bn] in September, as EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday (15 October) to discuss Europe’s competitiveness agenda and what they call “macroeconomic imbalances” — a euphemism to avoid mentioning China by name.
EU heads of state and government are expected to give a mandate to the EU Commission to propose a set of trade defence measures and tools to reduce the EU’s reliance on Chinese industry, based on a new Franco-German blueprint, as a united front spreads across the bloc.
There was a move towards a “surprising unitary position” on Beijing among member states, said an EU diplomat, ahead of a two-day summit in Brussels which began on Thursday (15 October).
A joint letter and policy paper submitted by French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz to commission president Ursula von der Leyen last week was viewed by many EU diplomats as marking a decisive shift towards a more consolidated EU stance on trade relations with China.
“For a long time, there were significant differences between these two countries on how to deal with China, how to address the economic situation,” parliament president Roberta Metsola told reporters on Thursday.
The diplomat added that the commission’s trade diversification package, designed to reduce the bloc’s reliance on Chinese industrial inputs and curb Chinese exports, will be presented by the end of the year and will be based on the Franco-German paper.
But the commission, for its part, has downplayed the prospect of rapid progress to EU-Chinese trade statistics. “It’s an issue which is not going to be solved in a couple of months,” said one official.
‘Be ready for escalation’ but do nothing
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When European Union leaders meet in Brussels later on Thursday (15 October), migration will be high on the agenda. Amid political panic — real and manufactured — over the events in Ceuta this summer, the European Commission has come out with a five-point plan promising more border surveillance and policing, more dodgy deals with countries outside the EU, and more deportations.
It also includes an ominous plan to devise a new “emergency response instrument” that could allow for the total suspension of access to asylum, which is likely to result in summary mass deportations, in situations when third countries are blamed for ‘instrumentalising’ migration movements.
That the idea is even on the table is a measure of how far the EU’s approach to migration has degenerated.
There is a jarring disconnect between commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s insistence on European values and the rules-based order and the willingness to throw the right to asylum out the window.
It is a short-sighted and dangerous hypocrisy that will harm women, men, and children at EU borders and potentially beyond if it encourages other states to adopt a similar approach.
If a 20-year-old man I interviewed in Ceuta in August were at the summit in Brussels, he might help guide the debate back to the realities of why people flee and seek safety, their needs and aspirations and hopefully toward a policy informed by shared humanity.
A Ceuta story
He told me he escaped from his village in Somalia in November 2024 when the Islamist armed group Al-Shabab attacked it. He went to Libya and spent six months detained in a smuggler’s warehouse in Kufra, where he said he witnessed many deaths from nightly beatings. He escaped, reached Morocco, and after months of hardship there saw his chance to seek safety on 31 July, when he swam to Ceuta.
It may well be that instrumentalisation played a role, among many other factors, in the arrival of more than 72,000 people there during two days at the end of July.
For many, the decision to cross may have been opportunistic and fuelled by disinformation on social media. Yet that cannot justify violence, summary returns, degrading treatment, or denying access to asylum procedures, in Ceuta or elsewhere.
Among the thousands who have remained in Ceuta are asylum seekers from strife-torn Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Chad, and elsewhere.
Suspending asylum completely would not only thwart their chances to find protection. It would rupture the EU’s commitment to the rules-based international order in a profound way.
Rupture of rights
The right to seek asylum is embedded in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the related prohibition of refoulement — sending someone to a place where they face serious harm — is a red line through international human rights and refugee law.
The focus on deterrence and externalisation over the past decade – coinciding with the growing influence of the far-right in European politics – has arguably made this previously unthinkable option part of the conversation.
Both Greece (temporarily in 2020 and 2025) and Poland (continuously at its border with Belarus since March 2025) have suspended asylum without significant reaction from the commission or other member states.
The Crisis Regulation, part of the pact, already allows a member state to depart from normal border procedures and curtail important safeguards in a situation of mass arrivals and/or when a third country or hostile non-state actor instrumentalises migration. While the regulation causes concern about potential misuse and unjustified restrictions on access to asylum, it does not allow for wholesale suspension of the right.
A difficult situation was compounded by recriminations against Spain from other EU countries, exploitation by far-right groups, and neglect and hostility that led to people living on the streets, in the forests, and in makeshift huts on the beach in an apparent effort to compel them to go back to Morocco. It took Spain weeks to begin housing and registering people.
Spain did not invoke the Crisis regulation. Rather than adding new measures, policymakers should be wrestling with why it didn’t use supposedly tailor-made EU legislation and addressing how mismanagement and a finger-pointing lack of cooperation among EU states create an endless loop of crises that feed xenophobia.
EU leaders should keep sight of the people affected and basic principles at stake. They should reject approaches to migration that so clearly violate fundamental rights and normalise cruelty.
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:
Ten years after the Brexit vote, more and more Britons are asking whether they should go back. According to a YouGov poll conducted earlier this month, 52% would vote to rejoin the EU in a referendum.
And the UK’s new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, seems to be keeping that door open.
But how realistic is that? Andy Burnham became Prime Minister this summer. And since then, he has been dropping hints here and there about a possible return to the EU. A few months ago, he was saying it was too early to even discuss it.
So what changed? Perhaps the international context, but also the realisation that the UK cannot get everything it wants while staying outside the Union.
On 20 November, EU leaders will have the opportunity to discuss the relationship with the UK during a bilateral summit. They will try to reach agreements on a number of issues that have stalled.
What are those topics? First, food. Today, agri-food products face checks and certification when they enter the EU, and that slows trade down. The solution on the table is for the UK to align its sanitary and phytosanitary standards with the EU’s. But the details still need to be agreed.
Second, people. Right now, a European who wants to work in the UK needs a visa. The two sides could agree on a scheme to make mobility easier, especially for young people.
Third, carbon. The British would like to link their carbon market to the EU’s, so that their exporters don’t have to pay extra for their emissions when they sell to Europe. In practice, that means avoiding the EU’s carbon border tax.
Last but not least, industry. And this is a big part of the discussion. As the EU moves towards giving priority to European products, the British fear being left out of this “European preference”.
Now, you might say: in all these cases, isn’t this a bit like being in the EU, without the drawbacks? That’s exactly what critics call cherry-picking.
At the heart of the problem is a simple question: where do you draw the line between being a member and being a partner? It’s the same debate the EU has with Switzerland, which wants to stay very close but not be part of the bloc.
Now, is a return to the EU a realistic scenario? The door is open, as Emmanuel Macron and others have put it.
The UK could apply, and it’s unlikely that any member state would block the process. But the European Commission has already warned: there would be no special treatment for the British.
On the positive side, the UK would start from a good position. It already applies a good part of EU legislation, and it meets the rule-of-law criteria.
But all these years after leaving the EU, the two sides are still negotiating. There are sticking points on free movement and on standards. And those disagreements would make any accession talks that much harder.
Let’s see what comes out of the summit on 20 November.
As EU leaders gather in Brussels on Thursday and Friday (15-16 October) to discuss, among other things, the issue of Europe’s southern border, countless Moroccan families cling to the hope they may see their children again after they entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in north Africa in July.
“Ayoub left on 30 July at 2PM. Since that day, I haven’t heard anything from him, apart from the fact that he went to Ceuta,” his brother said.
Ayoub Elkhamlichi was 27 when he left the north of Morocco for the nearby border with Ceuta, a half-hour drive from his home.
In the commotion that accompanied the rush of an estimated 72,000 mostly Moroccans into the enclave over 30 and 31 July 2026, 141 people were reported to have lost their lives while attempting the crossing.
Those that have not been heard of since that deadly July remain innumerable.
Among them is Ayoub, who had been working in a local konafa shop before leaving.
His brother Mohamed Ali laments that he’d forgotten his ID card, which will reduce the chances he’ll be identified if he’s ever found.
“The border with Ceuta was opened, so everyone left Morocco, because the city of Tetouan offers few job opportunities,” Mohamed Ali told EUobserver, from his home in one of Morocco’s closest cities to the Spanish border.
“Ayoub managed to find a job, but the pay was low. So he went to Ceuta,” he said. His family, meanwhile, “are in a state of anxiety and fear.”
It has been 11 weeks since Khaled’s dad Said has also seen his son, 26, who left for Ceuta from Tidass, a small Moroccan town, which Said said “has its problems.”
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“As we close the tap on Russian energy, we open the doors to a more diverse range of reliable suppliers,” EU energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen wrote in an op-ed for EUobserver this week.
“And these suppliers know that we are reliable buyers.”
One of those ‘reliable’ suppliers is the US, which provided 57 percent of the EU’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) last year and is on course to supply two-thirds this year, according to IEEFA.
Four out of five overseas gas cargoes arriving in the EU will be American by 2028, the think tank estimates. These expensive cargoes have kept coming in. But how reliable is that supply likely to remain?
US officials have already shown their willingness to use their gas dominance for strategic gain. In March, US ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder threatened that Europe could lose its favourable access to American LNG if it tried to reopen the ‘Turnberry’ bilateral trade deal.
“In switching from Russia to the US, the EU has jumped from the frying pan into the fire,” Pascoe Sabido, a researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory, wrote in a comment under Jørgensen’s op-ed.
And recent developments prove his point.
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A backlash is building against an EU ‘omnibus’ bill that seeks to make it easier to authorise and use pesticides across the bloc.
MEPs are still yet to set a date to vote on the European Commission’s proposal to extend how long pesticide active substances can stay approved in the EU, amid a series of protest letters from scientists, UN health experts, and divisions among member states.
EI parliament’s environment and agriculture committees were originally expected to hold a joint vote on a compromise text on 5 October, but shelved that date without proposing another as this article went to publication.
Sustained criticism has come from the scientific community.
Last month, a group of more than 500 scientists signed an open letter to the commission on 16 September demanding a pause on the file pending “an independent assessment, whether carried out by parliament’s own research service or by an equivalent independent body.”
They warned that the commission’s plan to extend grace periods for products withdrawn on safety grounds, widen derogations for hazardous substances, and restrict the use of the latest independent scientific evidence “seem difficult to reconcile with the precautionary principle and with obligations to respect, protect and fulfil human rights, including the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas”.
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The Black Sea has become a new frontline between Russia and Ukraine, as the two agricultural powers join battle to halt each other’s exports.
On Tuesday (13 October), the Ukrainian-owned Chelsea 3, sailing under a Maltese flag, was struck by three drones only 30km off Bulgaria.
According to Bulgarian prime minister Rumen Radev, two ships were hit by drones, one of which sank.
The recent incidents underline the vulnerability of commercial shipping in a region where Russia and Ukraine depend on maritime routes for their international trade.
And on the coast, Bulgaria’s position is particularly sensitive, as a Nato member bordering the Black Sea.
EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen condemned the attacks on social media, calling them an “escalation” of the Russian war in Ukraine.
Nato general secretary Mark Rutte also reiterated the alliance’s commitment to regional security. “Nato would continue working closely with its Black Sea allies and had strengthened its posture along the eastern flank,” he said.
Shipping route under pressure
For Ukraine, access to the Black Sea is essential to exporting grain, sunflower oil, metals and other goods.
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian Black Sea ports handled exports worth more than $40bn (€35.74bn).
Russian attacks on port infrastructure and shipping have severely undermined this trade, while the threat of further strikes raises the cost and risk of operating in the region.
Severe problems with Ukrainian agricultural exports became apparent as early as August, when the country managed to export only 20 percent of the grain it had shipped during the same period the previous year.
“With grain, it is more difficult,” Ukrainian agriculture minister Taras Vysotsky said.
He added that Ukraine’s domestic market was not suffering for now. Although buckwheat could become scarce, the main challenge for Kyiv now is to be able to export the supplies before they perish.
And alternative routes offer only partial relief.
Ukraine has increasingly relied on Danube ports, including Izmail and Reni, with cargo moving towards Romania’s Constanța port before being transferred to larger vessels for international markets.
But this corridor is under growing pressure from low water levels on the Danube, congested terminals and also drone attacks.
Waiting times for vessels seeking access to the river have exceeded two weeks.
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The EU is shying away from triggering rules that would shield people and companies working at or with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague from US sanctions, preferring instead months-long diplomatic outreach.
The European Commission on Wednesday (14 October) told reporters in Brussels that it was doing everything to seek “practical solutions”, while hoping that its diplomacy will help the court, which prosecutes people for war crimes, genocide, and other atrocities.
“We haven’t made any decisions yet. But we continue to discuss at every level,” said a commission spokesperson, when pressed on whether a little-known blocking statue, which would presumably damper the impact of the US sanctions, remains an option.
And an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday is expected to ask the US to reverse the decision, according to draft conclusions seen by EUobserver.
The EU’s little-known “blocking statute” would prevent EU companies and banks from complying with the sanctions. It was first used against US sanctions on Cuba, Iran and Libya.
The Trump administration had, last Friday, announced financial sanctions on the ICC as part of a larger assault to dismantle the court, after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, its former defence minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif.
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The Russians are making a mockery of Trump’s energy ceasefire.
What the restrictions on Starlink mean and how they are being felt.
The Russians are pushing towards Dobropillia.
The 3rd Army Corps reported on the next phase of Operation Vivaldi, but we learned nothing new.
Maps of the day — Lyman, Dobropillia
Videos of the day — a drone hit a flying Mi-28 helicopter; how a heavy machine gun is used in drone warfare; civilians fleeing the fighting were struck by artillery and mortar fire
Trump’s America is becoming a rogue state. Ukraine, as well as Europe as a whole, must now accept that the United States is openly supporting Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Under the pretext of efforts to end the war, the US government — and, as of Tuesday, a major technology company as well — are openly backing the fight against Ukraine and, therefore, against European security.
The United States has recently taken several decisions in quick succession that could help Russia win the war, at a time when it was failing to do so on the battlefield.
US president Donald Trump eased sanctions on trade in Russian oil, enabling Russian president Vladimir Putin to better finance his aggression against Ukraine, and effectively called for the overthrow of Ukraine’s legitimate president.
A growing number of voices claim that the US has stopped providing intelligence on Russian air raids (this has not been confirmed, and some authorities deny it).
And the United States has now also deprived the Ukrainian army of the ability to carry out effective medium-range strikes.
It did so by dramatically restricting the Starlink service over Ukraine’s occupied territories. In practice, this will have serious consequences for the Ukrainian army’s ability to use drones for its previously highly effective attacks on Russian logistics.
What the restrictions on Starlink mean and how they are being felt. Since this morning, the Ukrainian army has reported restrictions on the operation of receivers for SpaceX’s satellite system.
Thanks to Starlink boss Elon Musk’s equipment, they destroy hundreds of Russian army trucks and other military equipment every month at distances of 30 to more than 100 km.
However, on the night of 14 October, Ukrainians lost access to the military part of the system known as Starshield, meaning that the devices did not function at speeds above 160km/h. This means drones cannot carry out combat missions because their operators cannot guide them to their targets.
The situation deteriorated further during the day. Serhii Sternenko reported that the army later reported losing control at speeds above 70 km/h. This means grounding Ukraine’s drone fleet for medium-range attacks.
It is highly likely that this is not a technical problem but a response to a request from the Trump administration, since otherwise the Ukrainian army would have received an explanation — which, according to Ukrainian sources, did not happen.
According to our observations, communications may have been interrupted for 10 to 20 seconds during drone flights,even at speeds of 110 to 120 kilometres per hour,” Oboronka news outlet quoted a military source.
A technical problem is unlikely, as the Ukrainian military would have received an explanation in that case, which,according to Ukrainian sources, did not happen. The question now is how long the outage will last. It is also unclear to what extent the decision was made by Musk and to what extent by Trump.
“Our defence forces received no warning of such a restriction, which led to the cancellation of several missions. It is clear that this is no coincidence and is connected to the current political situation,” wrote Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, for example.
He described as an even more serious problem than the restriction of medium-range attacks the fact that Starlink is now crucial to intercepting Russian air raids on Ukrainian cities.
“Through their actions, our partners are depriving us of one of the few means of protecting the country against jet-powered Shahed drones,” said Beskrestnov, a leading drone expert.
Among European politicians, Poland’s foreign minister responded by asking Musk whether he was once again engaging in politics, and reminding him that his European customers were watching him closely.
Naturally, the Russians are delighted.
However, the change will not affect Ukrainian long-range air strikes. The drones carrying them out are not guided using Starlink, so the restrictions will not affect their operations.
Hey, @elonmusk, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you. https://t.co/T385xpUEUu
The Russians are making a mockery of Trump’s energy ceasefire. The US president characteristically announced with great fanfare that he had brokered an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
Although the Russian army did not observe it for a single day, the Ukrainians stayed away from Russian refineries for 48 hours. That is no longer the case after today, but before then the Russians carried out a massive air raid, including on the capital.
They used as many as 39 ballistic missiles and more than 100 drones. Since Trump had earlier deprived Ukraine of effective air defence in the form of missiles for Patriot systems, it has nothing with which to defend itself against such attacks. As a result, the Russians struck three Kyiv thermal power plants on Wednesday.
Overnight, the Russians used 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 attack drones and loitering munitions against our energy and critical infrastructure in Kyiv, the Kyiv region, and Kharkiv. A targeted Russian ballistic missile strike specifically against energy infrastructure…
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 14, 2026
The Kremlin does not even conceal that a Trump ceasefire means nothing to it.
“Tonight, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out a massive strike using precision-guided weapons and long-range strike drones against communications and energy infrastructure facilities in Kyiv, Kyiv region and Kharkiv region,” said a statement by the Russian defence ministry.
It also included a list of the power plants hit. The Russians boasted that they had struck six of them. For each one, they used the formula that it was “supplying electricity to military logistics facilities, weapons depots and military equipment”.
Mike Pence, who served as Trump’s vice-president during his first term, wrote that Putin did not want peace but Ukraine, and that Trump should impose harsh sanctions rather than strike a deal with Putin. None of this, however, will happen.
Putin doesn’t want peace. Putin wants Ukraine. Enough is enough.
President Trump should rescind the diesel deal with Russia and return to the strong policies of our four years in the White House; use the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia Act to impose harsh sanctions on any… pic.twitter.com/uw11mEkh0x
The Russians are pushing towards Dobropillia. All analysts agree on this. Their advance is slow, but persistent. It is enabled by the mass deployment of Russian soldiers.
The Kremlin has currently concentrated its largest number of forces in this sector. It therefore appears that the capture of Dobropillia is the Russian command’s main objective in these weeks.
“The Russians here have a seemingly endless pool of manpower and a clear numerical advantage, allowing them to significantly increase the flow of infiltrators and thus the likelihood that some will penetrate Ukrainian defences,” wrote the OSINT account Playfra, whose map can be found below. However, the price of the unceasing waves of infantry is, according to it, “colossal losses” on the Russian side.
Dobropillia sector.
In the same way, this sector is also worsening.
The Russians have a seemingly infinite manpower pool here and a clear numerical advantage, which allows them to significantly increase the flow of infiltrators and, as such, the chance of some passing through… https://t.co/BoiqRuCRs5pic.twitter.com/pKBIhHZW3d
French analyst Clément Molin published a time-lapse map of the past four months based on DeepStateUA data. Its latest version is not the most accurate and does not correspond to other sources, but it illustrates the slow pace of the Russian advance.
During the last 4 months, Russia 🇷🇺 made a slow but steady progress in the direction of Dobropilla
Russian forces continue to advance and capture villages and small towns south of Dobropilla. Shevchenko and Bilytske fell, Russian forces are now attacking Dobropilla from the… pic.twitter.com/mTDRo4DcPf
The Polish analytical account Thorkill examined the situation north-east of Dobropillia in greater detail. It sees a significant Russian advance there.
It bases this assessment on Sentinel satellite data which, it said, showed no signs of Russian bombardment in the areas of Zolotyi Kolodiaz, Novotroitske and Andriivka — an indication, in its view, that they are under Russian army control.
Sytuacja w rejonie: Zołote Kołodiazi – Nowotroickie – Andrivka (Dobropole).
Mniej więcej miesiąc temu we wpisie o bardzo dużej liczbie FAB-ów z modułami UMPK zrzucanych przez rus w rejonie Andrivki, sygnalizowałem że sytuacja 1 Korpusu "Azowa" GN na płn od Dobropola jest dużo… pic.twitter.com/KihWWAuI7u
Playfra sees the situation far less negatively. It did confirm Russian infiltration in Andriivka, which lies as much as 20 km behind the notional front line, but said that around eight Russian groups of two to four soldiers were moving throughout the area and did not pose a threat.
For easier orientation: Zolotyi Kolodiaz is at the tip of the green salient on Playfra’s map. On Thorkill’s map above, it is located in the lower centre, within the red area.
The two depictions of the situation therefore differ radically. However, there is agreement that the Russians are currently exerting the greatest pressure near Dobropillia and are advancing slowly.
Dobropillia direction.
The situation is quite peculiar tactically:
South, after the clearing conducted since August, some Russian groups still remain in the dotted square, mixed with some new infiltrators, but they aren't significant.
The 3rd Army Corps reported on the next phase of Operation Vivaldi, but we learned nothing new. Andrii Biletskyi, the commander of what is perhaps the strongest component of Ukraine’s army, published a new video confirming the liberation of another 101 square kms north of Lyman. Since the start of Operation Vivaldi, this brings the total to 277 square km.
Четвертий сезон операції «Вівальді»: Білецький оголосив про взяття ще 101 км²
Третій армійський корпус та придані підрозділи звільнили ще три населені пункти — Зелену Долину, Липове й Колодязі, — повідомив у своєму зверненні бригадний генерал Андрій Білецький. Протягом… pic.twitter.com/0Msxrau6yw
The Ukrainian project DeepStateUA, which is close to the army and respects the operational silence it has declared, also published its map of the area.
The latest version includes the liberation of the villages of Kolodiazi, Zelena Dolyna and Lypove. However, this is not new information but merely reflects changes that have been discussed since August.
Russian sources, especially Rybar, have also repeatedly reported that fighting is actually taking place further east. According to them, Ukrainian soldiers have already reached several locations, including the village of Terny on the Zherebets River. This area is marked red on DeepStateUA’s map, indicating that it is under Russian control.
Poland’s Thorkill has more recent data. Over the weekend, it published a map consistent with Rybar’s claims that Ukrainians had reached the Zherebets near Terny and further north.
Sytuacja w rejonie Nowego (Łyman), część IV.
Po blisko miesięcznej przerwie wczoraj w Donbasie była w końcu bezchmurna pogoda i można było przyjrzeć się na Sentinelu co się mniej więcej dzieje na tych najciekawszych odcinkach frontu. Jeżeli chodzi o rejon na płn od Łymanu -… pic.twitter.com/2yods3H3Yk
A Ukrainian drone pursued and caught up with a Russian Mi-28 attack helicopter in Kharkiv region. The Russians were on a combat mission; the footage clearly shows a missile being launched. The outcome of the attack is not yet known.
Ukraine's 115th Mechanized Brigade "Aliens" struck a Russian Mi-28 with drone, downing it pic.twitter.com/wefYKaMDk4
The following photographs are related to the previous video. The image on the left appeared on the Russian internet at the beginning of the month, described as the result of an FPV drone strike. It is currently unknown whether this is the same incident or another, as yet unidentified one.
In early October, Russian sources published photos showing damage to the right side of a Mi-28 attack helicopter, specifically the pneumatic emergency escape ladder just below the pilot’s cockpit, claiming it had been hit by an FPV drone.
A 12.7mm US heavy machine gun being fired. The close-up footage shows what the trigger looks like, but above all reveals the tactics for using the weapon. The machine gunner fires a short burst at Russian positions, then reports over the radio that the task has been completed.
A confirming “plus, plus” is heard twice from the other end — “plus” is used in radio communication to confirm receipt of a message — after which the soldier covers the machine-gun position with a camouflage net and goes into hiding to avoid being detected by Russian drones.
Ukrainian soldier supresses Russian assault with a Browning M2 from WW2.
Only the Ukrainian version of events is known about the footage below. It shows civilians from the Kupiansk area attempting to move to safety. However, they are struck by fire while on the move — the number of casualties is unknown and they cannot be seen in the footage.
According to the Khartiia unit, which published the video, the Russian army subjected the group to artillery and mortar fire. The claim cannot be verified. In any case, it illustrates that it is a mistake to remain in areas affected by fighting.
Цивільні – живий щит росіян, а потім – їхня мішень для інформаційної провокації.
У Купʼянську вранці 13 жовтня росіяни прикривалися мирними жителями, виводячи їх до труби газогону, й самі ж накрили групу мінометним та артилерійським вогнем. Серед людей були жінки та дитина. pic.twitter.com/lB6AGd7fFk
By Tuesday (13 October), Russia had verifiably lost 24,192 pieces of heavy equipment (24,170 on Monday, 5 October). Of these, 19,155 (19,133) were destroyed by Ukrainians, 1,002 (1,003) were damaged, 1,194 (1,194) were abandoned by their crews, and 2,841 (2,840) were captured by the Ukrainian army. This includes 4,453 (4,452) tanks, of which 3,358 (3,357) were destroyed in combat.
Ukraine lost 12,259 (12,238) pieces of equipment, of which 9,652 (9,633) were destroyed, 713 (711) damaged, 695 (695) abandoned and 1,199 (1,199) captured. This includes 1,471 (1,466) tanks, of which 1,131 (1,126) 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 start of the war.
The European Union has continued its scientific cooperation with Israeli firms and institutions implicated in genocide and apartheid throughout Israel’s three-year old assault on Gaza. Such complicity must stop.
Israel has been associated with the €95.5bn Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (2021-2027), and, according to the European Commission’s detailed Horizon dashboard, the EU’s net contribution to Israel amounts to €1.02bn.
While much of the funding supports legitimate research, the programme also channels substantial resources to Israeli universities and companies, some closely connected to Israel’s military and security apparatus.
Pointing to just such EU-Israel collaboration, Francesca Albanese’s UN report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” published last year, estimated EU research funding to Israeli entities at over €2.12bn since 2014.
Horizon Europe funds collaborative projects and European Research Council grants.
But it is the European Innovation Council (EIC) and schemes which include the EIC Accelerator, the EIC STEP Scale-up and the Scaleup Europe Fund which are especially relevant to the question of EU complicity in Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.
Horizon Europe is formally limited to civilian research, but Israeli companies with links to Israel’s military and security establishment have received funding through these schemes.
In March 2026, for example, members of the European Parliament tabled a written parliamentary question asking the European Commission specifically about such companies including Sightec, an Israeli drone-navigation firm that received almost €2.5m through the EIC Accelerator and whose chief executive has described its technology as “combat-proven and deployed on over 3,000 drones in critical missions”.
The issue is not confined to overtly military applications. EU-funded civilian technologies can also serve Israel’s settler-colonial project.
Should European public money finance, for example, orange-harvesting robots that help Israel manage what it euphemistically calls a “labour shortage” in settlements built on occupied Palestinian land?
The EIC also goes beyond grants. Through the EIC fund, the EU can take equity in companies it supports; the new Scaleup Europe Fund is explicitly designed to make direct equity investments in strategic technology firms, and is open to companies based in countries associated with Pillar III of Horizon Europe, including Israel.
The EU can therefore not only subsidise Israeli technology firms but also acquire a financial stake in them and potentially profit from their future growth.
And it could get worse.
The EIC’s 2026 work programme expands the type of projects that can be funded by including ‘dual use’ applications that are both civilian and military.
This opens the door for the EU to fund nuclear-related Israeli projects although Israel is not a member of the European Atomic Energy community (Euratom).
But none of this is inevitable.
Next EU budget and credibility at stake
Israel’s association with the current Horizon Europe programme runs only until 2027 and the shape and scale of the EU’s next Horizon programme will be decided during ongoing negotiations on the bloc’s seven-year Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF).
There are also clear signs that Israel is likely to participate in the next Horizon programme (2028-2034).
Only a few weeks ago, Ekaterina Zaharieva, European commissioner for startups, research and innovation, met with the head of the Israel Space Agency, Shimrit Mama.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and her team must ask themselves if the EU should be building an innovation architecture in which Israeli firms and state institutions, which are already deeply integrated into Israel’s military-industrial ecosystem, could receive European support for technologies explicitly framed as dual-use or defence-related.
Are they comfortable with funding companies that help develop the type of violent technologies described in the award-winning documentary NAZA, which exposes the systems and AI technology used during the military campaign in Gaza?
Audience members hold signs supporting Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s documentary Naza after it wins the European Film Audience Award at the 74th San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, 26 September 2026 (Source: EPA/JUAN HERRERO)
Last year, under public pressure, von der Leyen proposed a partial suspension of Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe by specifically excluding Israeli entities from new EIC Accelerator grants and investment support.
The proposal was modest: it would have affected future funding only, not existing agreements, and covered roughly 20 percent of EU financial flows to Israel under the programme.
It required a qualified majority in the Council but did not secure the necessary votes. It is, however, technically “still on the table”, according to commissioner Zaharieva.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Navi Pillay concluded in 2025 that Israel’s actions have “consistently pointed toward a singular, harrowing objective – the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza”.
The EU has done little so far to stop the genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank, and arguably – through trade and weapons’ exports – is actually contributing to it.
Now the EU faces a clear choice. It can continue to fund, co-invest in and deepen research ties with an Israeli innovation sector increasingly oriented towards dual-use and defence technologies.
Or it can stand with the winner of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, draw a line and decide that there will be no Israeli participation in the next Horizon programme, no EU equity in Israeli firms, and no public money for technologies that may be used to sustain genocide, occupation, surveillance and war.
The credibility of the EU and the values it proclaims depends on the choice it makes.
The Irish text, known in Brussels as the negobox, keeps all three of the commission’s borrowing programmes that sit outside the budget’s normal limits: Catalyst Europe, a €150bn lending facility; a crisis mechanism of up to €395bn for major unforeseen shocks; and support for Ukraine of up to €100bn.
Add loans for defence and lending to other non-EU countries and, by our estimates, joint borrowing could still equal around 44 per cent of the new budget, about €800bn at current prices, up from 41 per cent under the Commission’s proposal. The budget shrinks, but the borrowing hardly changes.
Ireland’s proposed budget is too small for Europe’s mounting common challenges, and its borrowing approach is too ad hoc and risky.
Excluding the distorting effects of NextGenerationEU (NGEU), the Covid recovery fund, the Commission’s budget proposal is already far smaller than the headline figures suggest, and Ireland’s proposal would make it smaller still.
That matters because, as the Draghi report argued, Europe’s shared challenges such as Ukraine, rearmament and competitiveness require European public goods because no single member state captures their full benefits.
A budget worth just over one percent of the EU’s gross national income (GNI) is a poor match for that responsibility.
By comparison, total government expenditure across EU countries comes to close to half of their combined GNI. Keeping most fiscal capacity at national level, while expecting such a modest EU budget to finance increasingly vital continental priorities, is a bad use of public resources.
A stronger common budget needs more of its own revenue, at least what the Commission proposes in its Own Resources Decision, which Parliament broadly supports and which would raise nearly €60bn extra a year.
The Irish plan’s acceptance of five new resources is encouraging. But it has to survive the negotiations, and the details of the final reform will decide whether it means anything.
The Council’s approach to common borrowing remains haphazard, lacking a permanent framework and relying on crisis-driven compromises. Governments may not like it, but a more European approach is coming, and the €800bn is likely to grow.
And a successor to SAFE, the EU’s defence loan scheme, is widely expected, since €150bn has proved far from enough for Europe’s rearmament.
France has just shown what it costs to borrow alone. Its yields recently hit a 24-year high, and the state now pays more to borrow than some major French companies. Sharing the effort through the common budget, including prudent joint borrowing, would help spread that risk.
Yet Europe has no clear, sustainable plan for borrowing. To date, EU governments have reluctantly signed up to each new borrowing instrument and called it an exception.
European borrowing capacity has been assembled one crisis at a time, starting with the euro area crisis and accelerating since the pandemic.
NGEU was accepted by fiscally cautious states as a one-off decision to deal with the Covid-19 emergency. Then the war in Ukraine and the need to fund rearmament produced new exceptions.
This year, EU governments used enhanced cooperation, a procedure that lets a subset of member states go ahead without the rest, to approve the €90bn Ukraine Support Loan, the EU’s largest foreign loan ever.
For defence, they reached for Article 122, the treaties’ emergency clause, to set up SAFE. Parliament, which felt sidelined, decided to sue the Council before the European Court of Justice.
There is a catch though.
These exceptional programmes are guaranteed by the so-called budget headroom, the margin between the EU’s revenue ceiling and the spending limits in the seven-year budget, rather than by money set aside in advance.
In barely five years, headroom-backed exposure has climbed to €681bn (see Figure 1), 82 percent of all EU debt.
The European Court of Auditors has warned that if a Ukraine loan guaranteed this way goes bad, future EU budgets, and the national contributions that fund them, would have to cover the loss.
Frugals vs Friends of Cohesion
EU capitals remain divided over the new budget and over joint borrowing. Net contributors, sometimes referred to as the Frugal Six, want deep cuts in the commission’s proposal, argue that new common borrowing is not the solution and have misgivings about the creation of new own resources.
By contrast, a group of sixteen southern and eastern countries, that call themselves the “Friends of Cohesion”, are much more open to joint borrowing and back an approach closer to the Commission and Parliament on the budget and own resources.
Ireland’s plan largely reflects the influence of the frugal countries, yet one diplomat has already dismissed it as “not even close to a landing zone.”
Europe needs an ambitious budget, backed by at least the Commission’s proposed new own resources, so it relies less on national contributions based on GNI. Joint borrowing should become a permanent, predictable part of it, with safeguards.
First, it should fund loans, not grants, as the Commission suggests. Second, riskier exposures, especially to non-EU countries, should be at least partly backed by money set aside in advance, as the Court of Auditors recommends.
Where it makes sense, the headroom guarantee could be topped up with national guarantees in proportion to each country’s size, as under SURE, and like-minded partners outside the EU could sometimes take part.
Stronger capital at institutions such as the EIB, or at any future defence-financing vehicle, would also let Europe borrow more together without putting its creditworthiness at risk.
Governments should also consider deferring repayment of the NGEU bonds, as the Draghi report suggested, especially if the own-resources reform falls short. It would protect priority spending when it is needed most.
Sustained joint borrowing brings a bonus: more common safe assets in euros, which strengthens the euro’s international role. The demand is already there.
Wobbles in US bond markets, which partly reflect doubts about America’s fiscal health, its reliability as a partner and the dollar’s safe-haven status, give the euro an opening.
But it can only take it if EU governments put their own fiscal houses in order.
Ongoing tensions in the French bond market provide a clear warning. Putting France’s finances on a sustainable path would do more than reassure markets about the euro. It would restore French debt as a safe euro asset.
EU leaders meet on Thursday and Friday in Brussels. Whatever they discuss (and later decide) on the budget, Europe should keep borrowing together, and in large amounts.
The task now is to give that borrowing a coherent plan: a permanent framework, money set aside in advance and safeguards that cautious capitals can accept.
Belgium’s foreign minister has called on the EU to deepen its economic, trade, and defence ties with Turkey, amid concerns from Ankara that it risks being shut out of the bloc’s new rules on industrial supply chains and multi-billion euro defence procurement scheme.
Speaking at a Turkey-EU business forum in Brussels on Tuesday (13 October), Belgian foreign minister Maxime Pévot said that European manufacturers were increasingly looking for reliable partners closer to home as they seek to reduce their reliance on Chinese inputs.
“We should make values of its proximity, particularly in sectors where Europe needs to reduce strategic dependencies,” he added.
“Our economic relationship should no longer be limited to buying and selling goods. We should also be developing, producing, and investing together,” he said.
For his part, following talks with Ankara’s trade minister, Ömer Bolat, EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told reporters that the two sides had agreed on reforms to Turkey’s import control system to make the system easier for EU exporters to use and a mutual recognition pact on trusted traders.
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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:
Two ships have been hit by drones in Bulgarian waters in the Black Sea on Monday. Several other ships have been targeted in recent weeks, at a time when Russia is intensifying its attacks on Ukraine.
So, at what point does a hybrid attack become an attack on Nato? On Monday, two ships were hit by drones in the Bulgarian economic zone in the Black Sea.
One of them sank, with 11 crew members missing. The second vessel, which belonged to Ukraine, was damaged but did not sink, and all 15 people on board were rescued.
A week earlier, two other cargo ships had been attacked by drones in the same area, killing 10 people. And on 5 October, a Turkish cargo ship carrying grain was sunk by drones shortly after leaving Ukraine.
There is currently no evidence proving that Russia was behind these attacks, and Moscow has not claimed responsibility.
But that did not stop Bulgarian Prime Minister Roumen Radev from summoning Russia’s ambassador. Radev said that, while there was no conclusive evidence, the outcome of these attacks clearly benefited Russia more than anyone else.
Russia’s ambassador to Bulgaria, Eleonora Mitrofanova, said she had received no information from the Russian defence ministry about the attacks. She also suggested that they could have been provocations carried out by a third party.
And that uncertainty is important, because it makes it much harder for Nato countries to decide when an incident should be treated as an attack.
So how do Europeans cope with these attacks? We’ve already seen several Russian drones end up inside EU territory in recent months. And in some cases, they have been clearly identified.
Take the Russian drone that crashed on a residential building in the Romanian city of Galați in May and injured two people. Or the two drones found at Leipzig airport in Germany this summer, charged with explosives. They were all identified as Russian.
So far, however, the response has consisted mainly of diplomatic measures and political statements. Neither Bulgaria nor Germany has requested formal consultations under Article 4 of the Nato treaty.
Article 4 allows a Nato member to ask for consultations when it believes its territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Radev has spoken with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte about the incidents, which are serious enough to be discussed at Nato level. But Bulgaria has not gone as far as triggering Article 4.
One reason is precisely the ambiguity surrounding all these drone attacks: who is controlling them, whether they were deliberately sent into EU territory, and whether they were jammed or diverted.
But if an attack were clearly attributed to Russia, how would Nato respond? That’s one of the questions currently being discussed within the alliance.
On Monday, Nato’s top military commander, US General Alexus Grynkewich, said he did not believe a conflict between Russia and Nato was imminent or inevitable.
But he also presented what Nato calls a “theory of victory”: a plan designed to ensure that the alliance could rapidly neutralise an enemy attacking one of its members.
The strategy rests on several pillars. One is establishing clear red lines that an adversary should not cross. Another is investing in new military technologies, with drones playing a central role. And the third is maintaining the ability and readiness to fight at short notice.
The idea is not only to be able to respond if a direct attack happens, but also to deter Russia from continuing what Nato describes as hybrid activities against its members.
Last month, a coalition of economists, politicians and AI experts released a report entitled Transformative AI Strategy for Europe. It provides yet more disturbing analysis of Europe’s deep dependency on overseas providers of essential AI. The concept of ‘Transformational AI’ is clearly gaining currency among policy elites as are the dangers it represents.
Co-signatory of the report, ex vice president of the European Commission, Margaret Vestager rightly comments: “We cannot allow Europe to become a playground for foreign powers. Our citizens are already bearing the economic and social consequences of decisions taken elsewhere. AI will accelerate this development, transforming our personal lives and relations, learning and jobs at an unprecedented pace.”
Unrelated to the report, European Central Bank chair Christine Lagarde has also said: “A withdrawal of access [to AI models], or a change in its terms, would … reach every sector at once … That is leverage of a kind no trade partner has ever held over Europe, and it could be used in any negotiation, on tariffs or on digital taxes, for example.”
This is going to be expensive
Yet the solutions proposed by this assembly of experts would exacerbate, not mitigate, the control over European economy and society currently wielded by a handful of ultra-dominant, mainly US-headquartered, corporations.
Two approaches are outlined by the signatories of the report. One is to invest and build European frontier models to compete and participate as equals in the transformation AI economy. This, however, is almost immediately written off as too costly and too high risk to undertake.
The second, strongly recommended route, suggests trading power and land for access to frontier models – Europe will fast-track Big Tech build out on European soil in exchange for “guaranteed” preferential access to their frontier models.
This is little more than capitulation to the dominance of that handful of mega corporations under the control of foreign regimes. It is ironically resonant, in times when we speak of frontier models, of Native Americans trading land for a few trinkets – and we know how well that worked out.
Naïve expectation
It is naïve in the extreme to expect to negotiate lasting privileged access to frontier models in return for power and land in Europe. For one thing – Big Tech already has this access. Europe has a weak hand if trying to extract conditions in return for inward investment to build capacity that it needs.
In addition, current behaviours suggest that corporations and nation states already appreciate and are leveraging the economic and political power that possession of leading frontier models confers. Export restrictions on latest models are already in place, as are mark-ups of 20-50 percent to run models within defined jurisdictional boundaries, like EU clouds.
This clearly illustrates that OpenAI, and surely others, are keeping the best models to use internally. It is therefore inconceivable that Europe, or anyone, will really be able to negotiate access to the true frontier – we would be paying more for a worse model. This is not how you get ahead.
Surrender is not an option
Europe needs sovereign capacity and models to benefit from, rather than become subject to, transformational AI. Europe does not have to accept the Big Tech narrative on what or where the frontier is. Deciding for ourselves how AI can and should be deployed to have the most beneficial impact and best support European values is within our control and is our responsibility.
Regulation gets a bad rap, but one reason we have regulation is to enforce the values we share as Europeans. We care about product safety, fairness, and personal freedom. We do not accept intellectual property theft at massive scale in the name of technological innovation.
We may never catch-up to the US or Chinese frontier Large Language Models, but perhaps we should not blindly accept this as the right race to run. Asking ourselves how can AI positively transform what we already value in Europe must be the first question: what do we really want AI for? Then, perhaps Europe can work on its own large but focused AI models to leapfrog and create AI transformation that matters to us and conforms to our ideals and values.
First, stop digging!
Action is clearly needed, and urgently. But the first step cannot be to negotiate away our assets be they land, power, data or values as part of a surrender to the status quo ante bellum.
The saying goes that when you find yourself in a hole (as Europe most surely is) stop digging. That means, as of now, stop giving new workloads to overseas AI and cloud giants by default.
We already have European alternatives for the majority of cloud services, and for AI, there are both European and open weight models that run with European providers – why are we not using them? Where there are gaps, we can develop bespoke European solutions with European providers. This creates reliable demand for homegrown AI models and compute capacity. It allows sovereign models to train and improve on sovereign data. Crucially, it deprives oversees models from using our data, resources and energy to further cement their control and dominance.
Buy or build European
Nudging public procurement towards European players grows the market and creates reliable demand against which venture capital and corporate funds can invest.
Only by flipping the paradigm – so that the default action is to consider how can we use or create a European solution first – can we fully prepare for the AI transformation and maintain our sovereign control.
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