An anti-corruption investigation reaching from Ukraine's Presidential Office into the management of state-owned Sense Bank has raised questions far beyond the alleged laundering of UAH 150 million. At stake are the governance of nationalised assets, the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption institutions, a planned bank privatisation, an international arbitration worth more than $1 billion and Kyiv's credibility as it moves deeper into EU accession negotiations.

A week after Ukrainian anti-corruption investigators unveiled an operation carrying the improbable codename “Forrest Gump”, the affair has developed into one of the most consequential governance scandals to hit wartime Ukraine.

At its center is a deceptively simple question: Where did UAH 150 million — approximately $3.4 million — used to secure the release on bail of former Justice and Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko, a centerpiece of the biggest corruption scandal of Zelensky government, actually come from?

The answer alleged by Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau, NABU, and Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, SAPO, is extraordinary.

Investigators say criminal proceeds under the supervision and manual management of deputy head of the Office of the president of Ukraine Iryna Mudra were converted into apparently legitimate funds through a series of companies and bank accounts. The source of the money is linked with the main suspect of another corruption scandal Timur Mindich, a close ally of president Zelensky, and the goal was to post bail for a suspect in the Operation Midas investigation into alleged corruption surrounding the state nuclear company Energoatom.

NABU's official account says members of a criminal organisation, acting with representatives and officials of a state-owned bank, arranged the laundering of UAH 150 million during June 2026. The cash was allegedly introduced into the legitimate financial system through accounts belonging to shell companies before being used for bail.

The most revealing evidence released by NABU is not just a bank transfer but Mudra’s own confessions, which give wider picture. In one recorded exchange, a female voice attributed to her says: “Corruption should be systematised and controlled… There is no need to fight it.” A male interlocutor adds: “And lead it.” This is said by one of the highest Ukrainian official in charge of judicial reform. Yet her own words are arguably more disturbing, presenting corruption not as an abuse to be eliminated but as a system to be organised and kept under political management.

Other recordings portray Mudra discussing state owned Sense Bank, where this money-loundering operation took place, as an asset to be under direct political control and used for enrichment. She recounts a proposed arrangement under which political figures politicians from Zelensky party Servant of the People would refrain from attacking the bank while “Sense Bank has to pay them”, and quotes an instruction she received from above to “take over the bank” because it contains “serious flows”. She then describes its managers as compliant figures who would carry money wherever a senior Presidential Office official instructed them, adding that they had “crawled” to her “like kittens” asking to be taken under protection.

NABU’s published recording also appear to show Mudra discussing protection from the institutions supposed to investigate such conduct. She asks how to mobilize votes for “our” candidates to NABU’s Public Oversight Council and describes SAP chief Oleksandr Klymenko as “not one of ours,” warning that if he secured a second term, “we’ll all be fucked.” Taken together, these phrases suggest something broader than participation in a single suspicious transaction: an alleged attempt to control a state-owned bank while influencing the bodies capable of investigating that control. If authenticated and confirmed in context, they would provide unusually direct evidence of political capture and consciousness of wrongdoing. Mudra denies criminal conduct and says the excerpts were released selectively and without their full context.

Taking over the bank  

Revelations are shocking in many dimension and will have influence for years to come. One of the most striking revelation is usage of the state-owned Sense Bank as systemic money-laundering machine.

Sense Bank carries unusual political and legal baggage. Until 2022 it was known as Alfa-Bank Ukraine and was owned through corporate structures associated with ABH Holdings. Among the beneficial shareholders were Russian businessmen including Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven.

Ukraine subsequently imposed sanctions and, in July 2023, the government took Sense Bank into state ownership. Ukraine's Ministry of Finance says the measure was intended to maintain financial stability and protect depositors after sanctions were imposed on significant shareholders. The state today owns 100% of the bank.

It was therefore no ordinary commercial bank allegedly being exploited. It was an asset that Ukraine had taken into public ownership during wartime, in considerable part because of national-security concerns surrounding its previous ownership.

The source material examined by EU Reporter describes this as a crucial feature of the scandal: after nationalisation, the allegation is not simply that corrupt actors conducted transactions through Sense Bank, but that political influence was progressively established over the institution's governance.

That allegation remains contested and has not been established by a court. But documents released by NABU and widely reported by the Kyiv Independent and other leading Ukrainian media raise questions that are difficult for the Ukrainian authorities to ignore. The Kyiv Independent reported on 22 August that internal Nomination Committee records showed attempts to shape Sense Bank's supervisory board following nationalisation. The paper reported that Iryna Mudra, then deputy head of the Office of the President and chair of the committee involved in selecting supervisory-board members, strongly promoted Mykola Hladyshchenko for a place on the board despite objections concerning competence, potential conflicts of interest and previous employment. Hladyshchenko subsequently became chairman of the supervisory board.

The investigation also cited earlier leaked conversations in which prospective board candidates were allegedly described as “our guys”. Six people reportedly discussed in that context were subsequently appointed. EU Reporter has not independently authenticated those recordings or the leaked committee minutes, so their contents must remain attributed to the publications that obtained them.

However, now the anticorruption agencies established with support and guidance of the EU provide their findings suggesting that the bank was deliberately captured for criminal purposes. NABU says that by early June 2026 the alleged organisers had obtained de facto control of Sense Bank, enabling them to use accounts of controlled businesses in the laundering scheme. That allegation has now triggered action at the highest levels of financial regulation.

Bags of cash, shell companies and a banking bottleneck

The alleged mechanics of the operation read more like a crime thriller than a banking-compliance investigation. According to the investigative material compiled in the source document and subsequent Ukrainian reporting, cash was allegedly concentrated through businesses associated with former MP and developer Maksym Mykytas before being exchanged or routed through companies capable of putting apparently legitimate non-cash funds into the banking system.

The source describes alleged deliveries of cash in bags and boxes, routing through companies including Metrobud and other entities, and discussions about how transactions could pass financial-monitoring controls.

Ukraine's anti-money-laundering regime establishes a UAH 400,000 statutory threshold for certain financial-monitoring obligations, alongside wider risk-based requirements. It would be inaccurate to suggest that every payment above UAH 400,000 is automatically prohibited; rather, banks are expected to identify, scrutinise and where necessary report transactions according to statutory and risk criteria.

The significance of the NABU allegation is therefore not simply the size of the payment. Investigators allege that people involved in the transaction were actively discussing how to overcome or circumvent compliance barriers. Published recordings attributed to members of the alleged group include discussion of a Sense Bank compliance official who could prevent the transaction. Mudra in one recording says that she received demand “from above” to fire a bank official who refuse to clear transaction. The scheme released by NABU paint a shocking picture: to make the transfer the bank's automated monitoring arrangements were temporarily taken out of operation during the transaction.

Those are NABU allegations presented to the court. But the Ukrainian government has already treated them seriously enough to take immediate action. This confirms that NABU accusations are well grounded. 

Saving face

On 19 August, the Cabinet suspended supervisory-board chairman Mykola Hladyshchenko for six months and initiated the suspension of management-board chairman Oleksii Stupak. The Finance Ministry explicitly said that its intervention was designed to address risks including the possible use of Sense Bank for money laundering and inadequate oversight of AML procedures.

The following day, National Bank of Ukraine Governor Andriy Pyshnyi went further. The NBU concluded that Hladyshchenko no longer satisfied the statutory independence requirements for membership of the supervisory board and opened proceedings to examine the collective suitability of the entire board. On 21 August, the government terminated Hladyshchenko's powers altogether.  This regulatory reaction matters because it turns the episode from an allegation concerning individual criminal behaviour into a potential failure of corporate governance and banking supervision.

Sense Bank itself has said it is cooperating with the authorities. Following the NABU searches, the bank said it wanted the circumstances established “fully and objectively” and was providing investigators with the information required under legal procedures.

But the key question is different. There have been already multiple accusations of usage of nationalised Sense bank for allegedly corrupt or shadow schemes. NABU revelation did not come from nowhere and were not a separate incidental case. In previous NABU and journalistic investigations shocking facts of how bank has been used were presented. How was it possible that in time of war after nationalisation of one of the biggest banks  it could turn into money-laundering machine?

The Presidential Office role

The highest-profile suspect is Iryna Mudra. Mudra served as deputy head of the Office of the President and held responsibility for major legal and judicial-policy issues, including international mechanisms concerning Russian aggression and frozen Russian assets. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed her on 19 August. Presidential Decree No. 734/2026 confirms the dismissal but does not give a reason.  NABU and SAPO served Mudra with a notice of suspicion. On 25 August, Ukraine's High Anti-Corruption Court ordered her held in custody for 60 days while allowing release if UAH 20 million bail is posted. Prosecutors had requested considerably higher bail.

Mudra denies criminal wrongdoing. She has argued that the published recordings have been presented selectively and out of context. Through her lawyers, she has said that she is cooperating with investigators and is prepared to answer their questions through the proper legal process. The underlying source document expressly records those objections and cautions concerning the provenance and quality of some recordings.

On 24 August President Zelenskyy said the anti-corruption bodies had “no questions” for him regarding the investigation.

The billion-dollar shadow over Sense Bank

There is another legal dimension. Former shareholder ABH Holdings commenced ICSID arbitration against Ukraine after the 2023 nationalisation, seeking more than $1 billion and alleging unlawful expropriation. UNCTAD records the dispute as ABH v Ukraine, ICSID Case No. ARB/24/1, concerning the former ownership of Alfa-Bank/Sense Bank. A separate proceeding, EMIS v Ukraine, also concerns alleged unlawful expropriation of Sense Bank.

The government's 2023 decision was taken in the context of sanctions and financial-stability considerations. Whether it complied with the relevant investment treaties is a matter for international tribunals, not for a criminal investigation conducted three years later. Nevertheless, evidence about how the asset was governed after nationalisation could become relevant contextual material in those proceedings.

ABH's case alleges that the taking of Sense Bank was unlawful. Ukraine will defend the nationalisation on its own legal and national-security grounds. A subsequent allegation that politically connected actors exploited the nationalised institution does not answer that legal dispute, but it could make the factual history of the asset considerably more uncomfortable for Kyiv. The source analysis supplied to EU Reporter correctly identifies this potential intersection. Forrest Gump can raise a question about bad faith in the original nationalisation and the consequences might go much further than a bail for one allegedly corrupt official.

And the cherry on the top: Mudra was also one of the officials responsible for formulating and publicly defending Ukraine’s position against ABH Holdings, the former owner of Sense Bank, in its more than $1 billion ICSID claim over the bank’s nationalisation; she later chaired Ukraine’s delegation in other major international proceedings. This creates a particularly damaging contradiction: an official who defended the takeover as a lawful national-security and financial-stability measure is now accused of helping place the same bank under political control and use it to launder criminal proceeds. The allegations do not by themselves prove that the 2023 nationalisation was unlawful, but they seriously undermine the factual and moral credibility of Ukraine’s case and offer ABH a powerful argument that the bank was not transferred into genuinely independent state management, but into a system vulnerable to political capture.

Why Brussels should be watching

Forrest Gump is not an isolated investigation. Its roots reach into Operation Midas, NABU's investigation into alleged large-scale corruption at state nuclear operator Energoatom. NABU says Midas uncovered a criminal structure involved in substantial corruption and subsequent money laundering. Later investigative developments have continued into 2026.

The Forest Gump allegations concern money ultimately used as bail for an individual implicated in that wider investigation. This changes the character of the alleged conduct. If prosecutors prove their case, it would mean that money generated through criminal activity was not merely hidden or spent. It was allegedly recycled back into the criminal-justice system itself to secure the liberty of another suspect.

And here we come to the point vitally important for Brussels.

Ukraine formally opened negotiations on the EU's Fundamentals cluster on 15 June 2026. That cluster includes the judiciary, fundamental rights, justice and security, public procurement and financial control. Crucially, it is the first cluster opened and the last to close, and the European Commission has made clear that progress under it determines the overall pace of accession negotiations.

Ukraine is simultaneously receiving extraordinary financial support from the European Union. The Ukraine Facility provides up to €50 billion between 2024 and 2027, and support is tied to democratic mechanisms, the rule of law, sound financial management, anti-corruption safeguards and reform commitments.

The issue for Brussels is therefore not whether corruption exists in Ukraine. No serious accession process operates on the assumption that candidate countries are free of corruption.

The more important test is whether institutions can discover it, investigate it, prosecute it and correct the governance failures that allowed it without political obstruction. Viewed from that perspective, Forrest Gump presents two competing narratives. The negative interpretation is obvious: people occupying some of the highest positions in the Ukrainian state are alleged to have manipulated a nationalised bank and circumvented controls to launder criminal proceeds.

The more positive institutional interpretation is that Ukraine's own anti-corruption agencies investigated them, published evidence, served suspicion notices, triggered removals at a state bank and brought one of the country's most senior former presidential officials before an independent anti-corruption court.

Which narrative ultimately prevails will depend heavily on what happens next.

Brussels is tightening its grip on some of the internet’s fastest-growing services, designating ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox for heightened scrutiny under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), writes Catherine Feore.

The European Commission said all three services meet the 45 million average monthly users threshold in the EU, triggering the DSA rules reserved for digital players considered large enough to pose systemic risks to European society.

“These new designations mean that ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox will now be held to a higher standard of scrutiny and accountability in the European Union,” said Henna Virkkunen (pictured), the Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy.

The move puts the companies firmly in Brussels’ regulatory crosshairs. They must assess and mitigate risks ranging from illegal content and harm to minors to threats to fundamental rights, elections, public security, and users’ physical and mental well-being. Importantly, the designation also gives the Commission investigative powers to scrutinise relevant features and systems underpinning the services.

ChatGPT has been designated a Very Large Online Search Engine (VLOSE), while Reddit and Roblox are now Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs). They have until the end of January 2027 to comply with the DSA’s tougher obligations.

ChatGPT’s inclusion is particularly significant. The Commission considers the AI service a hybrid product that qualifies as an online search engine because it can search the web when answering users’ queries, bringing a major generative AI service into the DSA’s toughest tier of oversight for the first time.

The Commission will supervise compliance with the DSA, in cooperation with Coimisiún na Meán (Ireland’s media regulator) for ChatGPT and Reddit, and the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) for Roblox.

With the latest additions, 28 platforms and search engines have now received the EU’s “very large” designation.

Photo credit: Commissioner Virkkunnen Photographer: Lukasz Kobus © European Union

Four of CQUR’s five original directors came from VTB Capital or RCB Bank, a Cypriot lender then 46.29 per cent owned by VTB. After the Russian bank sold its stake in May 2022, two senior figures from that network remained as chairman and chief executive and later appeared in CQUR’s disclosed ownership chain. Public records show institutional continuity — but not who financed the sale or whether VTB retained any rights.

On 16 May 2022, less than three months after the United States and Britain imposed blocking sanctions, VTB announced that it had sold its 19 per cent stake in Qatar’s CQUR Bank. It disclosed neither the buyer nor the price.

On paper, VTB’s involvement ended there. The corporate record tells a more complicated story.

CQUR was established in the Qatar Financial Centre in 2019. The five directors named in contemporaneous reports citing the QFC were Makram Abboud, Ziad Al-Amin, Vladimir Zrazhevsky, Vladimir Ostrovsky and Nicolas Neophytou. Abboud and Al-Amin came from VTB Capital. Zrazhevsky and Ostrovsky came from RCB Bank in Cyprus, in which VTB then held 46.29 per cent. Four of CQUR’s five disclosed directors therefore came from VTB Capital or a bank nearly half-owned by VTB.

The board later changed substantially: four of its five current members were not on the 2019 list. But continuity remained at the top. Abboud, now CQUR’s chairman, previously ran VTB Capital’s Middle East and Africa business and sat on the board of VTB Capital plc. Al-Amin, CQUR’s chief executive, worked at VTB Capital and later headed RCB’s Dubai office.

Both men have since appeared inside CQUR’s ownership chain. Abboud is a director of Quince Holding, the bank’s current direct shareholder, and the disclosed significant shareholder of Quince Tree, one of the companies above it. Al-Amin is another director of Quince Holding. They did not simply remain employed by CQUR after VTB’s exit; they later took positions in the companies through which the bank is owned.

There was a striking precedent inside the same network. On 24 February 2022, the day VTB was sanctioned, its 46.29 per cent stake in RCB was acquired by Cypriot shareholders representing RCB’s management. Less than a month later, S&P suspended RCB’s ratings, saying it could not assess either the full effect of the management acquisition or the remaining links between RCB and VTB.

Large assets were also moving back towards the Russian bank. In 2020, VTB assigned CQUR rights to a RussNeft loan and a $100 million Kazchrome tranche. CQUR returned both in February 2022, when their reported value was about $1.18 billion. A month earlier, RCB had returned $1.7 billion in Kazchrome claims.

Audited company accounts therefore establish nearly $2.9 billion in transfers from CQUR and RCB back to VTB in January and February 2022. They do not disclose the price or purpose of those transactions. The transfers demonstrate intensive coordination before VTB’s exit from CQUR; they do not, by themselves, prove control after the sale.

Who bought VTB’s stake remains unclear. An archived CQUR page shows that the other 81 per cent of the bank was held by Amathus Investment Fund SPC, a private fund in the British Virgin Islands. After VTB’s departure, Amathus was the only significant shareholder named by the bank. But no public transfer document reviewed for this investigation identifies it as the buyer of VTB’s shares.

CQUR later said that it had been acquired by Middle Eastern private investors led by management. That wording was absent from the bank’s pages archived in November 2022 and February 2024; it appeared by January 2025. The statement does not reveal who paid VTB, how much was paid or where the money came from.

The ownership structure now recorded in Qatar took shape later. As of 25 August 2026, the QFC register named Quince Holding, incorporated four months earlier, as CQUR’s significant shareholder.

Its disclosed shareholders include Quince Tree, linked to Abboud, and MHF Holding, owned by the established Emirati group Al Hail. That offers a plausible independent explanation for the present structure. But all three vehicles were created after VTB’s exit. They show who sits in the chain now, not who bought the stake in May 2022.

CQUR also retained a clear capacity to serve Russia-linked business. Its latest published terms set a 1pm cut-off for payment orders in Russian roubles. Fix Price’s audited accounts show balances with CQUR worth RUB1.65 billion at the end of 2023 and RUB3.87 billion at the end of 2024. Those amounts are rouble equivalents used in Fix Price’s reporting, not proof that the account itself was denominated in roubles. They do, however, document substantial post-sanctions business with a group focused on the Russian market.

None of this proves sanctions evasion. Rouble payments and service to Russian companies are not illegal in themselves. Such a finding would require evidence of a transaction involving a blocked party, a concealed beneficiary or end user, false trade documents, or a regulator’s action. No such public record involving CQUR was found. The bank says it screens customers, beneficial owners and transactions against UN, Qatari, EU and US sanctions lists.

The evidence supports a firm but bounded conclusion. VTB’s departure did not produce a demonstrable institutional break. CQUR had been built around VTB Capital and RCB personnel; large credit assets returned to VTB shortly before the exit; senior alumni remained at the top and later appeared in the ownership chain; and the bank continued to contemplate rouble payments and serve Russia-linked business.

What the evidence does not establish is whether VTB financed the acquisition, retained voting or economic rights, or issued instructions after the sale. The documents that could answer that question remain undisclosed: the 2022 sale agreement, the identity of the original buyer, proof of funds, voting agreements, pledges, options and any nominee arrangements.

Until those records emerge, VTB’s exit from CQUR can be verified as a change of registered ownership — but not as a clean institutional separation.

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to allow 20 ZYN nicotine pouch products to carry a specific reduced-risk claim has created a striking contrast with the direction of European Union policy, as Brussels prepares new product rules and proposes EU-wide taxation of nicotine pouches.

The United States Food and Drug Administration has authorised 20 ZYN nicotine pouch products to be marketed with a statement informing adult smokers that completely replacing cigarettes with the pouches can reduce the risk of several serious diseases.

The decision, issued on 30 June 2026, represents the first time that the FDA has granted Modified Risk Tobacco Product orders to nicotine pouches.

The authorised wording states:

“Using ZYN instead of cigarettes puts you at a lower risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.”

The orders cover ten varieties of ZYN, each sold in nicotine strengths of 3mg and 6mg. The products include Chill, Cinnamon, Citrus, Coffee, Cool Mint, Menthol, Peppermint, Smooth, Spearmint and Wintergreen.

The manufacturer, Swedish Match USA, is owned by Philip Morris International. The products had already received FDA authorisation to remain on the US market in January 2025, but the new decision goes considerably further by permitting a specific comparative health claim.

The FDA said its decision followed an extensive scientific review and was intended to give adult tobacco users accurate information about differences in risk between products.

“FDA’s review of modified risk products is intended to ensure that adult users have clear, science-based information about the relative harms of tobacco products, so they can make informed choices,” said Bret Koplow, acting director of the FDA’s Centre for Tobacco Products.

The ruling does not mean that ZYN is harmless, nor does it approve the products as medicines or smoking-cessation treatments. Nicotine is addictive, and the FDA continues to advise people who do not currently use tobacco or nicotine not to begin.

The significance of the decision lies instead in the regulator’s formal recognition that nicotine products can present very different levels of risk.

Switching, rather than dual use

A crucial qualification is contained in the phrase “instead of cigarettes”. The authorised claim applies to smokers who replace cigarettes with ZYN. It does not promise the same reduction in risk to consumers who use nicotine pouches while continuing to smoke.

Cigarettes burn tobacco, creating smoke containing toxic substances responsible for most smoking-related cancers, cardiovascular disease and respiratory illness. Nicotine pouches deliver nicotine through the lining of the mouth without burning tobacco or producing smoke.

This difference is central to the principle of tobacco harm reduction: smokers who cannot or do not wish to stop using nicotine may nevertheless reduce their health risks by moving away from combustible products.

The FDA’s decision therefore recognises an important distinction that is frequently blurred in political debate. A product can be addictive and unsuitable for non-users while still being substantially less dangerous than smoking.

UK-based public health commentator Clive Bates, a former director of Action on Smoking and Health, has argued that nicotine pouches could deliver benefits comparable to those associated with the use of Swedish snus in Scandinavia.

“Tobacco-free nicotine pouches with a consumer acceptable nicotine content have the potential to benefit public health in the same way that is documented for Swedish snus in Scandinavia, that is, by serving as a low-risk alternative to cigarettes”, Bates said.

“The European Commission should pay close attention to FDA’s exhaustive process and extensive reasoning. It’s unusual to have anything good to say about the Federal government these days, but this is an important exception, where the right answer has been reached for the right reasons”, he added.

Bates has also argued that poorly designed regulation, including excessively low nicotine limits, could make pouches less effective as substitutes for cigarettes and unintentionally protect the market for combustible tobacco.

Why the FDA decision matters for Europe

The American ruling comes at a particularly important moment for the European Union.

The European Commission is simultaneously advancing a formal proposal to overhaul tobacco taxation (TED) and preparing a broader revision of the EU legislation governing tobacco and nicotine products, their presentation, sale, advertising and promotion.

Nicotine pouches are not comprehensively regulated at EU level under the current Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). Because they contain nicotine but no tobacco, they fall outside many of the harmonised provisions that apply to cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco, heated tobacco and electronic cigarettes. The result is a fragmented European market.

Some member states permit nicotine pouches subject to national restrictions. Others have introduced nicotine limits, packaging and warning requirements or advertising controls, while France has pursued a prohibition.

Different national rules create uncertainty for consumers and manufacturers and complicate enforcement across the EU’s internal market.

The Commission’s April 2026 evaluation of the European tobacco-control framework identified the rapid growth of nicotine pouches, electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products as one of the main challenges that existing EU legislation is no longer adequately equipped to address.

The evaluation concluded that EU rules had contributed to falling smoking rates and smoking-related deaths but were failing to keep pace with changes in products, marketing practices and consumer behaviour.

The EC is particularly concerned about the use of novel nicotine products among children, adolescents and young adults. However, the FDA decision introduces an additional issue that EU policymakers will now find difficult to avoid: whether new EU rules should recognise differences in risk between combustible cigarettes and smoke-free nicotine products.

Two contrasting regulatory philosophies

The emerging difference between Washington and Brussels is not simply that one jurisdiction is permissive and the other restrictive.

The FDA subjects nicotine products to an exceptionally demanding premarket review. Products must receive authorisation before they can legally be marketed, and separate evidence is required before a manufacturer may make a modified-risk claim.

The FDA can impose marketing conditions, require post-market surveillance and withdraw an order if later evidence shows that the product no longer benefits public health.

Its approach nevertheless accepts that consumers should be told when credible evidence shows that completely switching from one product to another reduces disease risk.

The Commission’s current approach places greater emphasis on reducing the overall attractiveness and consumption of tobacco-related and nicotine products. Its taxation proposal explicitly presents nicotine pouches as products that can prolong addiction or act as substitutes for cigarettes, especially among young people.

These positions are not necessarily irreconcilable.

The EU could impose age controls, marketing restrictions, ingredient standards and proportionate nicotine limits while still recognising that adult smokers may benefit from switching completely away from cigarettes.

It could also prohibit unsubstantiated commercial claims while creating an evidence-based process through which manufacturers could apply for permission to communicate verified differences in risk.

The alternative would be to impose increasingly similar taxation, warnings and advertising rules on products with significantly different health consequences.

A test for evidence-based policymaking

The EC ran a public consultation on revisions to both the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and the Tobacco Advertising Directive (TAD) from 22 May to 14 August this year. The consultation, is intended to inform a revision of the legislative framework planned before the end of 2026.

It creates an opportunity to consider evidence that was not available when the current Tobacco Products Directive was adopted in 2014.

Nicotine pouches were then a marginal product. They now represent a rapidly expanding category, and national governments are adopting increasingly divergent responses.

The FDA decision does not compel Europe to follow the US model. The EU has different legal structures, public-health priorities and attitudes towards commercial nicotine.

It does, however, establish a significant regulatory precedent.

One of the world’s most influential public-health authorities has concluded that there is sufficient evidence to tell adult smokers that completely switching to specified nicotine pouches reduces their risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

That finding sits uneasily with any policy or public communication suggesting that cigarettes and smoke-free nicotine products are essentially equivalent.

The issue is particularly relevant to the Commission’s tax proposal. Taxation affects consumer behaviour partly by changing the relative prices of products. If pouches are taxed so heavily that the economic advantage over cigarettes is substantially reduced, smokers may have less incentive to switch.

Conversely, setting taxes too low could increase affordability and use among young people who have never smoked.

The task for EU legislators is therefore not simply to choose between regulation and deregulation. It is to develop a framework that calibrates restrictions, taxation and consumer information according to evidence about risk, behaviour and population-level effects.

Europe’s choice

While Washington is recognising that adults deserve accurate information about lower-risk alternatives, Brussels is looking for ways to restrict, tax or ban them.

Meanwhile, the EU is failing to control illegal disposable vapes, banned flavours, excessive nicotine levels and unauthorised devices moving through black-market channels. Regulated products are demonised, while illegal and unregulated products keep reaching consumers, including young people.

The forthcoming EU debate will test whether Brussels can reconcile its tobacco-free objective with the potential role of lower-risk alternatives.

The FDA decision makes three points that are likely to shape that discussion.

First, nicotine pouches are not harmless and should not be promoted to children or people who do not use nicotine.

Second, the absence of combustion means that their risks can differ substantially from those associated with cigarettes.

Third, the greatest potential benefit arises when smokers switch completely rather than using pouches alongside continued smoking.

The Commission is right to address gaps in the existing legislation and fragmentation between member states. Common product standards, youth protections and enforcement rules may be necessary for the Single Market to function properly.

But regulation that fails to acknowledge relative risk could also have unintended consequences.

Clive Bates and other harm-reduction advocates argue that treating all nicotine products as though they are similarly dangerous can preserve smoking by discouraging consumers from moving to safer alternatives. European health campaigners respond that the growth of commercially marketed nicotine products could create a new generation of dependent users.

The revised Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) will need to address both concerns.

As the EC completes its consultation and develops its legislative proposal, the American decision gives European policymakers a concrete case study rather than a theoretical argument.

The question is no longer whether a regulator could authorise a carefully limited reduced-risk claim for a nicotine pouch. The FDA has now done so.

The question for Europe is whether its forthcoming legislation will allow comparable scientific evidence to influence regulation, taxation and communication — or whether nicotine pouches will be treated principally as another product to be restricted, irrespective of their potential role in moving smokers away from cigarettes.

Adilet wins 110 seats in the 145-member Kurultai, while four smaller parties share the remaining 35, writes Georgi Gotev.

Kazakhstan’s Central Election Commission announced final results on 25 August confirming a decisive victory for the Adilet party in the country’s first elections to the new unicameral Kurultai. Adilet won 71.17 percent of the vote and 110 of the 145 seats, establishing a dominant position in the legislature created under the constitution that took effect on 1 July.

Adilet is the recently formed pro-presidential party in Kazakhstan created months before the elections as the successor after the long-ruling Amanat party dissolved into it.

Final figures show 9,351,539 ballots cast from an electoral roll of 12,623,289, for a turnout of 74.08 percent. Five parties cleared the 5 percent threshold required for representation:

Adilet: 6,528,948 votes (71.17 percent) — 110 seats

Auyl People’s Democratic Patriotic Party: 574,621 votes (6.26 percent) — 10 seats

Respublica: 509,631 votes (5.56 percent) — 9 seats

Aq Zhol Democratic Party: 478,083 votes (5.21 percent) — 8 seats

Nationwide Social Democratic Party: 469,058 votes (5.11 percent) — 8 seats

The People’s Party of Kazakhstan (3.11 percent) and Baytaq Green Party (1.07 percent) fell short. A further 2.51 percent of voters chose the “against all” option.

The Kurultai replaces the former bicameral parliament and is elected entirely by proportional representation from party lists in a single nationwide constituency. The 23 August vote was the first parliamentary election held under the new constitutional framework approved in a March referendum.

First session convened

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has signed a decree convening the inaugural session of the Kurultai for 28 August at 11 a.m. The opening will formally launch the work of the new 145-member legislature and mark the next stage in implementing the institutional changes introduced by the constitution.

Once the Kurultai begins its work, the sitting government is required to resign. Under the new rules, the president will nominate a candidate for prime minister after consultations with the party factions represented in the chamber. The appointed prime minister then has ten days to propose the structure and composition of the cabinet; ministers are appointed by the president following further consultations with the Kurultai.

The constitution also creates the office of vice president. Tokayev has indicated that an appointment — “a well-known person you all know” — would be announced within days of the election and must receive Kurultai approval within two months of the first session. The vice president may not serve as a lawmaker or belong to a political party and would assume presidential powers if the head of state leaves office early.

Experts: Higher stakes for parties and foreign policy

At an expert discussion organised by the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies (KazISS) on 24 August, analysts said the vote raises the stakes for political parties, the functioning of the new parliament, and Kazakhstan’s positioning amid growing geopolitical interest in Central Asia.

KazISS Director Zhandos Shaimardanov highlighted the combination of high turnout and a dominant party alongside four smaller ones as features likely to shape the legislature. “The task now is to understand how this electoral choice will translate into the work of the new Kurultai, its legislative priorities and the parties’ day-to-day activities,” he said.

Italian Asia expert Domenico Palmieri stressed that the election itself is only the beginning. The real test of the institutional reform will come in the months ahead as deputies begin legislating. He noted the relatively high turnout compared with many European countries and described the voting process as technically smooth.

Political scientist Andrey Kazantsev cautioned against reading the strong participation solely as enthusiasm for party politics. In a period of international uncertainty, many voters appeared more concerned with the country’s overall direction and the future for their families. Because deputies are now elected exclusively from party lists, parties face greater responsibility for translating public expectations into concrete policy. “The demand is high. Now the parties have to provide the supply side,” he said.

Ken Moriyasu of the Hudson Institute placed the transition in a wider regional and global context. Interest in Central Asia has risen in both Washington and Beijing as the United States seeks to diversify critical mineral supplies away from China and Beijing looks to overland Eurasian routes less vulnerable to maritime disruption. “Both China and the U.S. are trying to escape each other, and they’re meeting each other in Central Asia,” Moriyasu observed. Greater clarity and stability in Kazakhstan’s domestic institutions, he argued, could strengthen Astana’s ability to maintain its multi-vector foreign policy and contribute to gradual regional consolidation.

What comes next

With final results certified and the first session scheduled for 28 August, attention turns to the practical launch of the new system: formation of the government, the appointment of a vice president, and the early legislative agenda of a chamber in which one party holds a commanding majority while four others retain a formal presence.

The high turnout and orderly conduct of the vote have been widely noted. Whether the new Kurultai delivers more responsive and effective governance – and how the dominant Adilet faction works with the smaller parties – will determine if the constitutional redesign of 2026 translates into lasting political change.

The blue economy is no longer limited to traditional activities such as fishing, shipping, or offshore energy. A new generation of startups is applying climate technology, AI, robotics, biotechnology, and advanced water treatment to make the use of oceans and water resources cleaner, safer, and more efficient.

EU-Startups’ 2026 coverage shows Europe’s blue economy attracting capital across a widening range of technologies and business models. Among the larger disclosed rounds were €17 million for cargo.one alongside its acquisition of ocean-freight platform Cargofive or €10 million for marine-biofuel developer Kvasir Technologies.

These deals form part of a broader funding landscape in which startups are tackling an increasingly diverse set of challenges linked to how Europe uses, manages and protects its water and marine resources.

From restoring coastal ecosystems and generating tidal power to removing hazardous pollutants, improving wastewater treatment, supporting aquaculture, automating maritime operations, and digitalising shipping workflows. The 10 startups featured below, founded between 2020 and 2026, show how innovation is reshaping the sector, in alphabetical order.

Apolownia is a Paris-based ClimateTech startup committed to making the world more environmentally responsible. It develops end-to-end coastal ecosystem restoration and blue carbon projects, including mangroves and seagrass, which help absorb carbon, reduce coastal flooding and erosion, improve water quality, and provide vital habitats for fish and other marine life.

Its projects use satellite imagery, drones, field data and AI to monitor ecosystem recovery, estimate carbon capture and verify environmental results in a clear, data-driven way. Founded in 2024, it has raised €1 million in funding.

Headquartered in Heidelberg, Blue Activity develops sustainable water treatment solutions for industrial cooling systems. Its technology replaces toxic biocides with natural microorganisms and uses biopolymer-based additives, supported by digital monitoring. This reduces chemical use, water and energy consumption, maintenance needs, and operating costs.

They promote cleaner industrial water use and reduce harmful substances discharged into the environment, contributing to healthier water resources and more sustainable industry. Founded in 2021, Blue Activity secured €8.5 million in funding.

Launched in 2024 in Oxford, Caudal Energy takes a bio-inspired approach to tidal power, using ocean currents to generate predictable renewable electricity. Its system replaces conventional rotating turbines with moving fins inspired by marine animals, offering a lower-impact solution with simpler installation and maintenance.

This activity matters because tidal energy provides a more predictable source of renewable power than solar and wind, which are more dependent on weather conditions. By harnessing ocean currents, Caudal Energy can support the transition away from fossil fuels while making sustainable use of marine resources. Its innovative approach has enabled them to raise €6.43 million in total funding.

Heidelberg-based Enzo focuses on preventing water damage before it becomes costly. Its one-drop sensor attaches to a building’s main water pipe. The startup uses AI to identify unusual water-use patterns and small leaks in real time, allowing homeowners, property managers, and insurers to act before major damage occurs.

Its activity is especially useful as early leak detection can prevent water waste, expensive repairs, and unnecessary use of materials and energy, contributing to more sustainable water management. Launched in 2021, Enzo raised €6.3 million in funding.

Lir Labs develops an AI-powered microscopy for wastewater treatment, turning microscopic activity in water into real-time operational insights. Its automated sensors use deep-learning models to identify changes in microorganisms and particles, allowing treatment plants to detect problems earlier and adjust processes before they become costly or disruptive.

Their approach to better wastewater monitoring can reduce pollution, unnecessary energy and chemical use, and the risk of poorly treated water reaching natural ecosystems. Founded in 2025 in London, Lir Labs raised €245k in funding.

Mirai Robotics is a Maritime Technology startup building AI-powered systems that allow boats and other maritime vehicles to operate with little or no human control. Its technology can guide vessels, process data from onboard sensors, and make real-time decisions during activities such as sea patrols, inspections, monitoring, and transport.

Its activity is relevant to the blue economy because it can make maritime operations safer, faster, and more efficient, particularly in remote or hazardous areas where deploying human crews can be costly or risky. Launched in 2025 in Bari, this innovative approach to maritime automation and safety has helped Mirai Robotics secure €3.6 million in funding.

Founded in 2023 in Ireland, Nernst Electric develops on-site oxygen generation for aquaculture. Its technology uses ceramic membranes to separate high-purity oxygen directly from the surrounding air, allowing fish farms to produce oxygen where it is needed instead of relying on costly deliveries. A reliable oxygen supply is essential for maintaining healthy fish and productive farming conditions, particularly at remote sites.

Its efficient way of producing oxygen can make aquaculture more reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable while reducing energy use and dependence on transported liquid oxygen. Nernst Electric has a total funding of €1.7 million.

NPHarvest has developed a new hardware solution for the collection and recycling of nutrients from wastewater, turning them into valuable ingredients for fertilisers. Installed at wastewater, biogas, and agricultural facilities, its system captures nitrogen and phosphorus that would otherwise be lost as waste and converts them into reusable resources. The technology can recover up to 90% of these nutrients while operating with relatively low energy use.

As excesses of nitrogen and phosphorus can pollute waterways and contribute to eutrophication, managing levels in the water is important. By recovering these nutrients before they reach the environment, NPHarvest supports cleaner aquatic ecosystems while creating a circular source of fertiliser. Founded in 2023 in Espoo, they raised €3.4 million in total funding.

Zürich-based Oxyle tackles some of the hardest-to-remove pollutants in water, particularly PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals”. Rather than simply filtering these substances out, the company’s treatment systems break them down at the molecular level, preventing them from being transferred into another waste stream. The technology is designed for contaminated groundwater and industrial wastewater across sectors such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and waste management.

Removing hazardous chemicals from wastewater helps prevent them from reaching rivers, groundwater, and marine ecosystems, supporting cleaner and safer water resources. Founded in 2020, Oxyle has raised €19 million in funding.

Founded in 2021 in Berlin, Tilla is a MaritimeTech startup bringing greater efficiency to crew changes in the shipping industry. Its digital platform brings voyage schedules, crew information, port services, flights, and travel requirements into one place, allowing shipping companies to plan and manage crew movements with fewer manual tasks, lower costs, and better coordination.

By digitalising a process still heavily dependent on spreadsheets, emails, and manual coordination, Tilla supports more efficient maritime operations and improves the working experience of seafarers. The company raised €4 million in total funding.

Episode 12 of the DGT podcast: Languages and Technology is now available.

How does a European Commission document become 24 equally valid language versions of itself?

Anna Holmén takes us behind the scenes with Ivana Zeljković and Iva Vatova-Ivanova from DG Translation’s Demand Management Unit. They reveal how translation work is planned and coordinated, how tight deadlines are managed, and how technology and human expertise come together to keep multilingual Europe running — with deadline compliance above 99%.

Step inside the engine room of EU multilingualism and discover the people and processes that make 24-language communication possible every day.

Tune in to hear more

As negotiations enter their final phase in Brussels, the ECB's electronic money project for 2029 transcends the technical aspects. It is a geopolitical imperative in the face of American payment giants.

The European Union's financial landscape is poised for its biggest transformation since the introduction of banknotes in 2002. The European Parliament, the Council, and the European Central Bank (ECB) are intensifying their discussions to finalize the regulatory framework for the digital euro. If the draft legislation is adopted as planned by the end of the year, the first large-scale practical tests with financial institutions will begin in the autumn of 2027.

The goal? Official rollout to citizens by 2029.

This gradual rollout is not accidental. It is designed to guarantee the stability of an interconnected banking system. The digital euro will not be a private or speculative cryptocurrency, but rather an electronic extension of fiat money, issued and guaranteed directly by the ECB. It will function as a direct complement to coins and banknotes, without ever replacing them.

For European citizens, this innovation will represent a public and sovereign alternative to the private tech and credit giants. In practical terms, everyone will be able to use these services directly through their own commercial bank's app.

The major technical advance lies in offline use.

Money transfers between devices will occur simply by being near each other, even without an internet connection or in the event of a power outage. This option will also guarantee complete confidentiality, since peer-to-peer transactions will not pass through commercial servers.

To reassure the traditional banking sector and prevent a massive flight of deposits during the crisis, the ECB will impose a strict limit. The current holding ceiling is €3,000 per person. Any excess amount received in this public wallet will automatically be transferred to the user's regular commercial bank account.

Beyond the technical aspects, the issue is crucial for the real economy, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the tourism sector within the single market. Currently, almost all European merchants rely on payment infrastructures controlled by American companies, such as Visa and Mastercard. With each transaction, the local economy relinquishes a portion of its profit margins in intermediation fees.

The digital euro aims to break this dependence.

The European Parliament is pushing for acceptance fees imposed on merchants to be significantly lower than current rates, or even completely free for microtransactions.

Intra-European tourism will also benefit from increased fluidity. A traveler will be able to pay for their expenses instantly in any member state using their home country's electronic wallet, without friction, without going through third-party networks and without hidden cross-border fees.

Despite the Commission's optimistic pronouncements, the European banking sector remains on the defensive. Banks are concerned about the operational costs associated with upgrading their technological systems, but above all about the risk of liquidity loss if clients choose to place their funds under the direct custody of the central bank.

The decisions made in the coming months will therefore be highly political. The challenge will be to define the necessary economic incentives for banks to agree to distribute this currency. For the European Union, the 2029 deadline provides the necessary time to orchestrate this new era of financial autonomy and strategic sovereignty.

A leading Belgian animal park is doing its bit to save a critically endangered species.

International Orangutan Day was recently celebrated (August 19) to raise global awareness about the status of orangutans and the urgent need to protect their natural habitats.

All three species—the Bornean, Sumatran, and Tapanuli orangutans—face a high risk of extinction due to rapid habitat loss.

Widespread deforestation for palm oil plantations, illegal logging, mining, and the illegal pet trade threaten their survival.

Orangutans mainly eat fruit and are essential for dispersing seeds across the rainforest, helping the wider ecosystem flourish. They are known as gardeners of the forest.

For every captive orangutan sold in the exotic pet market, up to 11 other orangutans are killed while trying to protect the poached ape. Many captive animals also don’t survive the journey.

Pairi Daiza,  privately owned zoo and botanical garden located in Brugelette, Hainaut, Belgium is playing its part in trying to save the species.

It is home to nine Sumatran orangutans living in two family groups in the park’s “Kingdom of Ganesha.”

Ujian, Sari, Berani and Mathaï live in the Flower Temple. Just opposite them, Kembali, Rosa, Indah, Yori and Bukit have found their home in the “House of the Artisan.”

The second family arrived at the park in November last year from Frankfurt Zoo as part of the European Ex Situ Programme coordinated by the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria.

Their arrival enabled the five orangutans to remain together while contributing to the responsible management of a healthy European population of this critically endangered species.

In July, both orangutan families were outside at the same time for the very first time, “a wonderful milestone for us,” said Niels Vandemeulebroucke, orangutan care taker at Pairi Daiza.

“For Kembali and his family, almost everything was new: trees to climb, ropes and branches to explore, birds, toys, places to rest, and an entire world of movement around them.

“You could really see how stimulating their new environment was,” added Niels.

“Their neighbours in the Flower Temple were just as intrigued. At first, the whole family climbed high into the trees to get a better look at the newcomers. Interestingly, there were no striking vocalisations or direct interactions, and the initial curiosity quickly settled down.

“Today, both families are once again mainly focused on the relationships within their own group.”

As “ambassadors” for their species, Pairi Daiza’s orangutans help visitors understand the “extraordinary intelligence” of these great apes, he added.

They also provide a powerful connection with their wild relatives and the rapidly disappearing forests on which their survival depends.

Niels went on: “Our role is to keep challenging them.

“We continuously create new enrichments and opportunities to explore, think and interact, because orangutans are exceptionally intelligent animals. I’m looking forward to sharing those observations, and some of their individual personalities, with visitors during this special weekend."

The 75-hectare large animal park is located on the site of the former Cistercian Cambron Abbey, and is home to over 7,000 animals.

On 13 August, Zambia re-elected President Hakainde Hichilema for a second term in a historic landslide vote which was independently verified against public polling-station records. Yet since that day, a handful of so-called statistical critiques have circulated questioning the result. It is crucial to walk through what the underlying data actually show, writes Dr Namuunda Mutombo.

Start with how the count was verified from the more than 13,000 polling stations. Results in Zambia are recorded on Gen 20 forms, completed and displayed publicly at each polling station, in front of party agents and observers, before a single figure travels anywhere. That is the record of what happened, station by station, and it is available for anyone to check against the final declaration. Independent monitors did check it. Transparency International Zambia ran its own parallel count against those station-level forms and found it matched the electoral commission's figures to within roughly one percentage point. SADC observers, covering the near totality of the polling stations they visited, reported a calm and orderly process. None of this is the electoral commission grading its own homework. It is outside verification, against a public paper trail, converging on the same number.

The other claim making the rounds is more technical: that in some constituencies, more people voted for president than for their MP, and that this gap is suspicious. As a statistician, I would ask anyone making that argument to first rule out the far more mundane explanation, which is roll-off, the well-documented tendency, in any democracy holding simultaneous elections, for turnout to differ across the ballot depending on how satisfied voters are with each race. Survey work published earlier this year (ironically by those academics now making the negative claims), before a single vote was cast, already told us to expect exactly this pattern here: strong national approval for the president alongside real frustration with sitting MPs in specific provinces. When the geography of the "gap" lines up precisely with where that pre-election dissatisfaction was strongest, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. It is not manipulation. It is Zambians voting for a president and against an MP in the same afternoon, which is their right; and exactly what was predicted.

No election, anywhere, is without noise, complaint, or contested reading of the data. That is not a Zambian shortcoming; it is what elections are in democracies worldwide. The standard by which a result should be judged is not whether every number is uncontested, because by that standard no democracy on earth would ever pass. The standard is whether the process was open enough, and the paper trail public enough, that the disputes can actually be checked, and whether they change the outcome when you do. Here, they don't. Even the more skeptical readings of the data, taken at face value, leave the president's win comfortably intact.

That is, in the end, also the judgment the country's own political actors have reached. The National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Progress, the opposition party which fought a hard campaign and won roughly 60 parliamentary seats in the process, has formally accepted the result, congratulated President Hichilema, and said it will now focus on its role as a check on government from within Parliament. That is what functioning democratic competition looks like: parties that contest hard, then accept the count and get to work.

Zambia's constitution provides a clear, evidence-tested route for any candidate who still disputes the outcome: a petition to the courts, not a headline. That door remains open. What the data do not support is the idea that the result itself is in doubt. I would simply ask that the same rigor applied to the graphs be applied to the conclusions drawn from them.

Dr Namuunda Mutombo is a seasoned Demographer with over two decades of experience. He holds PhD, MA, and BA degrees in Demography, and serves as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Demography, Population Science, Monitoring & Evaluation at the University of Zambia.

Thirty-five years after Kazakhstan closed one of the most notorious nuclear weapons testing grounds in history, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has used the anniversary to deliver a pointed message to the world’s nuclear powers: resume dialogue, strengthen arms control and ensure that nuclear testing never returns.

At a time when the international security order is under growing pressure and some of the agreements that helped contain nuclear rivalry after the Cold War have weakened, Kazakhstan is seeking to turn its own traumatic nuclear history into a renewed diplomatic argument for disarmament.

Marking the International Day against Nuclear Tests on 29 August, Tokayev called on nuclear-armed states to return to negotiations and urged the earliest possible entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, or CTBT.

“Our country’s position as one of the leaders of the global anti-nuclear movement remains unchanged,” Tokayev said, according to Kazakhstan's presidential administration.

He called for negotiations between nuclear powers and “decisive multilateral action to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons use”.

For Kazakhstan, the date carries significance far beyond diplomatic symbolism.

On 29 August 1991, the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in north-eastern Kazakhstan was closed. It had been the Soviet Union's principal nuclear weapons testing ground and the location of 456 nuclear tests between 1949 and 1989, including atmospheric and underground detonations.

The consequences extended far beyond the perimeter of the test site. The United Nations has estimated that nearly 1.5 million people were affected by nuclear testing, while extensive areas were contaminated by radiation.

That history gives Kazakhstan a distinctive voice in the international nuclear debate.

Tokayev described the closure of Semipalatinsk as a warning that should continue to resonate worldwide.

“Thirty-five years later, this date will serve as a reminder to all humanity of the tragic consequences of nuclear tests and as a call to prevent them from ever happening again,” he said.

A country that gave up nuclear weapons

Kazakhstan's argument is strengthened by another remarkable chapter of its post-Soviet history.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Kazakhstan found itself with a huge nuclear weapons infrastructure on its territory. Rather than retain the capability, the newly independent country chose to relinquish the weapons and establish itself internationally as a non-nuclear state.

Tokayev described that decision as a deliberate choice in favour of peace and long-term security.

“By voluntarily renouncing the fourth-largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, Kazakhstan made a historic choice in favor of peace, security and sustainable development,” he said.

It has subsequently made nuclear non-proliferation one of the defining elements of its foreign policy.

Kazakhstan was also responsible for proposing the creation of the International Day against Nuclear Tests, an initiative unanimously supported by the UN General Assembly. The first international observance took place in 2010.

This history matters because Tokayev's appeal comes at an increasingly uncertain moment for nuclear arms control.

An unfinished treaty

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty was opened for signature in 1996 with a simple but profound objective: to prohibit nuclear test explosions anywhere in the world.

Thirty years later, however, the treaty has still not formally entered into force.

The CTBT currently has 188 signatories and 179 ratifications, demonstrating overwhelming international support. But its provisions require ratification by a specified group of 44 states possessing nuclear technology when the treaty was negotiated before it can become legally binding.

Nine of those states have yet to ratify: China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the United States.

India, North Korea and Pakistan have not signed it.

Russia had ratified the treaty but revoked its ratification in November 2023. China and the United States signed it in 1996 but have never completed ratification.

The treaty nevertheless represents one of the more successful international norms of the post-Cold War period.

More than 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out during the five decades before the CTBT opened for signature. Since 1996, nuclear tests have occurred on only ten occasions, according to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, and North Korea is the only country to have conducted nuclear explosive tests during the 21st century.

Tokayev's warning is therefore also a defence of a system that has largely succeeded in suppressing nuclear testing — but whose legal foundations remain incomplete.

Nuclear weapons and nuclear energy are not the same debate

There is another important dimension to Kazakhstan's position.

Tokayev's opposition to nuclear weapons does not translate into opposition to nuclear technology.

On the contrary, Kazakhstan is now moving towards the development of civilian nuclear power. Tokayev emphasised that nuclear energy should be used for “exclusively peaceful and constructive purposes”, presenting civilian nuclear development as compatible with the country's anti-nuclear weapons philosophy.

This distinction has particular relevance for Europe.

Kazakhstan is already an important part of Europe's nuclear energy supply chain. According to the Euratom Supply Agency, Kazakhstan supplied 20.31% of the natural uranium delivered to EU utilities in 2025, making it the EU's second-largest source after Canada.

The connection became even more politically significant during Tokayev's visit to Brussels in June.

Following meetings with European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on 23 June 2026, the EU and Kazakhstan specifically identified energy security as an area for deeper strategic cooperation.

Their joint statement recognised Kazakhstan as an important supplier of oil and uranium to Europe and highlighted the potential for increased cooperation in both renewable energy and civil nuclear energy.

That places Kazakhstan in an unusual position.

It is simultaneously one of the world's most prominent advocates of nuclear disarmament and one of the most important suppliers of the raw material on which civilian nuclear power depends.

Rather than regarding those positions as contradictory, Astana's policy is increasingly built around distinguishing sharply between the destructive and peaceful uses of atomic technology.

Europe has a stake in the argument

For the European Union, Tokayev's intervention is therefore not an abstract diplomatic message from a distant Central Asian state.

Kazakhstan has become increasingly significant to Europe's efforts to diversify energy supplies and strategic raw materials, particularly as Brussels attempts to reduce potentially dangerous dependencies.

EU-Kazakhstan relations have also expanded far beyond energy.

During Tokayev's June visit to Brussels, European and Kazakh leaders agreed to deepen their strategic partnership in critical raw materials, transport, digitalisation and emerging technologies. They also reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening the international disarmament and non-proliferation regime.

Kazakhstan's geopolitical position adds another dimension.

It shares a vast border with Russia and another with China, while simultaneously developing closer political and economic relationships with the European Union and maintaining partnerships with the United States and other Western countries.

That makes Astana one of a relatively small number of governments able to maintain meaningful dialogue across increasingly divided geopolitical blocs.

In an era when communication between major powers has become more difficult, that may make Kazakhstan's diplomatic role increasingly relevant.

A warning written into the landscape

The ruins of Semipalatinsk remain a stark physical reminder of what the nuclear arms race once meant.

Between 1949 and 1989, explosions equivalent collectively to thousands of Hiroshima-sized bombs were detonated at the site, according to UN documentation. Communities surrounding the testing ground were exposed to radioactive fallout whose health and environmental effects endured long after the final explosion.

Kazakhstan has sought to transform that legacy from one of victimhood into one of diplomacy.

Semipalatinsk's closure was followed by the relinquishment of nuclear weapons, Kazakhstan's participation in the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone and its persistent advocacy of nuclear disarmament.

But Tokayev's latest message contains an uncomfortable implication.

The political assumptions that allowed the world to move progressively away from nuclear testing after the Cold War cannot simply be taken for granted.

The CTBT is now 30 years old and still awaits entry into force. Relations between the major nuclear powers are deeply strained. Nuclear weapons have again assumed a conspicuous place in geopolitical confrontation.

Against that background, Kazakhstan's argument has an unusual moral force.

Few countries have experienced nuclear testing on the scale Kazakhstan did. Fewer still subsequently possessed nuclear weapons and voluntarily relinquished them.

Thirty-five years after the gates of Semipalatinsk were closed, Tokayev is effectively asking the world's nuclear powers to remember why they were closed in the first place.

The message from Astana is straightforward: nuclear deterrence may remain part of international politics, but nuclear testing does not have to be — and dialogue between nuclear powers is more essential when relations are deteriorating, not less.

For Europe, confronting war on its eastern frontier while simultaneously reconsidering energy security and strategic autonomy, that is a message worth hearing.

Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Helen McEntee TD has provided an update on Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, highlighting progress made during its first two months and the Government’s focus on delivering practical results for people, communities and businesses.

Since Ireland assumed the Presidency on 1 July, work has advanced across its three core priorities of competitiveness, values and security.

Early achievements include renewed momentum on EU enlargement, agreement on a further package of sanctions against Russia, progress on measures to better protect children from sexual abuse online, and advancing measures aimed at strengthening Europe’s competitiveness.

Over the coming months, Ireland will lead negotiations and discussions on some of the biggest issues facing Europe, including the next EU budget, reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens on businesses, supporting sustainable and competitive agriculture, strengthening communities and regions through cohesion funding, and improving road safety.

Minister McEntee said: “We began this Presidency with a clear objective: to use Ireland’s six months leading the Council to deliver practical results that make a difference to people’s lives.

“That means making it easier for Irish and European businesses to grow, invest and create jobs. We are committed protecting children online, supporting our farmers and rural communities, strengthening Europe’s security and standing firmly with Ukraine. And we are making every effort to ensure that the European Union remains competitive in a rapidly changing global economy.

“We have made real progress during our first two months. There is a great deal more work ahead of us, but Ireland is now in a strong position to secure important agreements before the end of the year.”

The Presidency meetings programme will return to full pace following the summer period.

On Monday and Tuesday (31 August-1 September), Minister McEntee will host EU Defence Ministers in Co. Wicklow for an informal meeting chaired by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas.

She will also host EU Foreign Ministers in Wicklow on Tuesday and Wednesday (2 SEptember) for the traditional informal “Gymnich” meeting.

These are among 16 informal meetings of EU Ministers being hosted in Ireland up to the end of November. Ministers will meet across the country to advance work in areas including energy, housing, health, consumer protection, competitiveness and security.

Minister McEntee said: “Measures at a European level have a direct impact here at home. They affect the cost of doing business, the security of our energy supply, the opportunities available to our farmers and exporters, and our ability to respond to challenges such as war, economic instability and technological change.

“The Presidency provides Ireland with an opportunity to shape these decisions and to push for solutions that deliver for people right across Ireland and the EU.

“We are also bringing these meetings beyond Dublin. Communities across Ireland are hosting thousands of visitors during our Presidency and are showcasing all that Ireland has to offer to our European partners.”

The Presidency is also providing opportunities for people across Ireland to engage directly with the European Union and Ireland’s role within it.

Through the Presidency County Pairings Programme, each EU Member State has been paired with an Irish county, with events and initiatives taking place throughout the autumn to strengthen links between communities in Ireland and across Europe.

New resources for schools will also be launched in September, including a children’s version of the Presidency Policy Programme for primary school pupils and a reading guide aimed at Transition Year students.

Minister McEntee said: “EU membership has transformed Ireland. It has helped create jobs and investment, opened opportunities for Irish businesses and our young people, supported our farmers and communities and given Ireland a much stronger voice in the world.

“Our Presidency is an opportunity to bring that European story closer to communities across the country.

“I want people, and especially our young people, to understand that Europe is not something distant that happens in Brussels. The decisions we make together affect our jobs, our economy, our security and the opportunities available to the next generation.

“The Presidency County Pairings Programme and our work with schools are about ensuring that people across Ireland can participate in this Presidency and strengthen the relationships with our European partners that have served Ireland so well.”

Details of the Presidency policy programme, the calendar of Presidency meetings and events, and other updates are available on the Irish Presidency website at www.eire2026.eu and www.ireland2026.eu.

Sudan's war has entered a more dangerous phase after fighting spilled across the country's borders, raising fresh concerns about the conflict's regional consequences, writes Mohsin Osman.

The Chadian army accused the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) of carrying out an airstrike against a convoy inside Chadian territory. According to the Chadian General Staff, the attack occurred at about 8 p.m. on August 20 in the Mourdi department of Ennedi-Est province, near the Sudanese border. It said aircraft and drones believed to belong to the SAF or its allies pursued and struck the convoy more than 100 kilometres inside Chad. The convoy was reportedly carrying reinforcements for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which the Sudanese army regards as a rebel group.

The US has since condemned the airstrikes, calling for an end to external forces supporting the conflict. Massad Boulos, the US president's senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, said the US government opposed the expansion of violence beyond Sudan's borders and stressed that there is no military solution to the conflict.

“The parties must immediately accept a humanitarian truce, protect civilians, and allow unhindered humanitarian access,” he said.

Bolous also called for the expansion of the UN arms embargo, currently focused on Darfur, to cover the whole of Sudan, while accusing foreign powers of escalating the war.

“The UN Security Council must also act with urgency to ensure that the arms embargo and sanctions regime reflect the realities of the conflict today and hold those fueling and expanding this war accountable. External financial and military support to the warring parties must stop,” he said.

The US has also warned that external support was escalating the war, just as that the growing use of armed drones was obstructing the peace process.

The war began on April 15, 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) amid a deepening power struggle over Sudan’s political transition and the proposed integration of the RSF into the regular army. It has continued despite repeated ceasefire efforts and international initiatives to end the conflict.

The recent strike in Chad has now brought into sharper focus how far the war is spreading and how much the SAF's expanding aerial capabilities depend on foreign support, especially with the presence and prominent use of Turkish drones.

French report highlights Turkey's involvement

French newspaper Le Monde reported that Turkey has emerged as the Sudanese army's principal military supporter since the war began. The report said the Turkish government supplied Bayraktar TB2 and Akıncı drones and deployed instructors alongside them. It also reported that Saudi Arabia financed purchases of Turkish drones and Pakistani weapons for the SAF.

The report comes on the heels of Turkey's deepening political relationship with Sudan's military leadership. On August 7, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement, which provides that an armed attack against any one of the three countries would be regarded as an attack against all three.

According to Le Monde, cooperation among the three countries over Sudan predates the agreement, with Riyadh financing Turkish drones and Pakistani weapons for the SAF. The newspaper also reported a $1.5 billion Pakistani arms contract involving fighter jets, armoured vehicles and drones.

Since late 2024, Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 and Akıncı drones have reportedly become part of the Sudanese army’s expanding aerial arsenal. The SAF has also used Iranian-made Mohajer-6 drones, while Chinese-made CH-95 and FH-95 systems have been deployed by the RSF, reflecting the growing role of foreign-supplied drone technology in Sudan’s war.

While there is no concrete evidence that a Bayraktar drone carried out the specific strike inside Chad, the presence of Turkish military technology in the Sudanese conflict is increasingly well documented.

In March 2025, The Washington Post reported that Turkish defence company Baykar had supplied the Sudanese army with at least $120 million worth of military equipment, including TB2 drones and hundreds of warheads. The investigation, based on contracts, correspondence, registries and visual material, also documented Baykar personnel providing technical support in Sudan.

In May 2026, Chatham House examined reports of Turkish drone supplies to the SAF while noting Ankara's denial of direct deliveries. The relationship took on a clearer political dimension in June, when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Ankara. The Turkish presidency said the two countries were seeking to expand cooperation in trade, agriculture, energy and defence.

This places Turkey's role in Sudan beyond the question of individual drone deliveries. Turkey is deepening ties with the military leadership while presenting itself as a diplomatic actor in the conflict.

Beyond the current battlefield, Turkey's relationship with Sudan dates back decades. But Erdoğan's 2017 meeting with Omar al-Bashir and the agreement to redevelop Suakin underscored Ankara's strategic interest in Sudan's Red Sea coast.

The potential economic stakes here are also substantial. Sudan's eventual reconstruction will require major investment in infrastructure, energy, agriculture and other sectors, while its Red Sea coastline and mineral resources offer significant strategic and commercial opportunities.

Foreign powers are therefore increasingly shaping not only how the war is fought but also the interests that will surround Sudan after the fighting ends. Turkey's expanding relationship with the SAF is part of that wider contest, while the strike inside Chad shows how increasingly difficult it is to contain the war's consequences within Sudan.

EU Reporter journalist Derya Soysal was among the members of the press given direct access to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in Astana after he cast his vote in Kazakhstan’s first elections to the newly established Kurultai — an opportunity that offered a rare first-hand insight into the President’s thinking on political reform, government, youth, artificial intelligence and the country’s future direction.

For a journalist covering the rapidly changing political landscape of Central Asia, there are moments when being in the room matters.

For EU Reporter journalist Derya Soysal (pictured with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev) Kazakhstan’s historic Kurultai election provided precisely such an opportunity.

After President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev cast his vote in the country’s first election to the newly established Kurultai, Soysal was among the journalists with privileged access to the President during the press briefing that followed.

It gave EU Reporter a first-hand opportunity to hear Tokayev address some of the most important questions facing Kazakhstan as the country enters a new political chapter.

The exchanges went far beyond election day itself.

Questions ranged from the consequences of constitutional reform and the creation of the Vice Presidency to the future composition of the government, the role of younger politicians and the increasingly important place of artificial intelligence in Kazakhstan’s economic and social development.

The result was a revealing picture of how Tokayev sees the next phase of his country’s transformation.

A historic political moment

Tokayev himself described the election as a historic milestone and the beginning of a new stage in Kazakhstan’s development.

The establishment of the Kurultai forms part of a much broader restructuring of the country’s political institutions.

During the briefing, the President was questioned about what ordinary citizens should expect from the constitutional reforms, how the newly created Vice Presidency would operate and what role the Kazakhstan People’s Council would play.

Tokayev portrayed the changes as essential components of a renewed political system.

He stressed the importance of the Vice Presidency as an institution capable of supporting effective governance during difficult periods, while describing the Kazakhstan People’s Council as a mechanism intended to strengthen public participation and national cohesion.

But the President’s vision was not restricted to political architecture.

He also pointed to ambitious infrastructure and development programmes encompassing healthcare facilities, rehabilitation centres, urban modernisation and environmental projects.

The question everyone wanted answered

Among the most politically sensitive questions put to Tokayev concerned his own future.

Could he stand again for President?

Following recent constitutional developments concerning his eligibility for a future presidential election, journalists pressed Tokayev on whether he intended to seek another term.

His response was deliberately cautious.

While acknowledging that the legal possibility exists, Tokayev rejected speculation about a future campaign as premature.

Instead, he argued that Kazakhstan should be concentrating on the immediate challenges of modernisation, economic growth, social development and stability in an increasingly unpredictable international environment.

It was a response that sought to move attention away from political succession and back towards the governing agenda.

What kind of politicians does Kazakhstan need?

Soysal’s access to the presidential briefing also provided an opportunity to hear Tokayev set out his expectations of the people who will serve in the new political institutions.

Asked what qualities Kurultai deputies should possess, the President emphasised responsibility and accountability.

Members, he said, should be judged by the quality of the legislation they adopt, whether they fulfil promises made to voters and whether the programmes they pursue genuinely contribute to Kazakhstan’s development.

A recurring theme throughout the briefing was generational change.

Tokayev again argued that Kazakhstan needs younger people to play a greater role in public life.

New faces and new thinking, he suggested, will be essential if the country is to maintain momentum in the years ahead.

A new government — but not change for change’s sake

The creation of the Kurultai also has consequences for the government.

Journalists therefore questioned Tokayev about the future administration and whether Kazakhstan should expect major personnel changes.

The President praised the work of the existing government but confirmed that changes would come.

At the same time, he cautioned against replacing officials simply to create the appearance of political renewal.

For Tokayev, modernisation appears to mean continuous institutional renewal rather than political theatre: bringing in new energy and expertise where necessary while retaining effective administration.

Was the election genuinely competitive?

Another important exchange concerned political competition.

Asked whether the campaign had demonstrated genuine competition, Tokayev pointed to televised debates, public engagement and particularly strong interest among younger voters.

He characterised the electoral process as another milestone in Kazakhstan’s continuing political modernisation and said the campaign had brought new political voices and new ideas into public debate.

For an international audience, however, the question of political pluralism remains one of the key issues against which Kazakhstan’s reforms will ultimately be judged.

The significance of the new institutions will therefore depend not only upon their constitutional design, but on how independently and effectively they operate in practice.

The generation that will inherit Kazakhstan

Young people repeatedly returned to the centre of the discussion.

With a significant number of younger candidates participating in the electoral process, Tokayev was asked whether this generation could genuinely transform the country’s political system.

His answer was notable for combining optimism with a measure of realism.

He acknowledged that not every young official promoted into senior positions in recent years had been successful.

Nevertheless, Tokayev insisted that Kazakhstan must continue putting its confidence in younger generations.

For a country with a comparatively young population, he suggested, long-term success will depend heavily upon the responsibility, engagement and leadership of its youth.

Politics is also about culture

Some of the most revealing exchanges witnessed by Soysal moved beyond constitutions and elections.

Tokayev was questioned about his repeated calls for greater civic responsibility, discipline, respect and public ethics.

The President argued that national modernisation cannot be measured solely in economic growth rates or institutional reforms.

It also requires changes in behaviour and public culture.

He connected those ideas with the Taza Kazakhstan initiative, explaining that cleanliness should be understood both literally and symbolically — encompassing respect for public spaces but also ideas of dignity, moral responsibility and civic consciousness.

From smartphones to artificial intelligence

Perhaps the most forward-looking discussion concerned Kazakhstan’s digital ambitions.

Artificial intelligence has become a central part of Tokayev’s political and economic agenda.

Asked to assess progress in digitalisation, the President argued that Kazakhstan had already completed an important first stage in constructing a digital state by making electronic public services widely accessible.

Citizens can now carry out administrative tasks from home that once required lengthy bureaucratic procedures.

But Tokayev made clear that he regards this as only the beginning.

The next challenge, he said, is to move artificial intelligence and digital technology beyond conferences, presentations and policy documents and turn them into instruments that deliver practical economic benefits.

He highlighted entrepreneurs, farmers and regional communities as groups that should increasingly be able to use technology to improve productivity and generate income.

His message was strikingly simple: the smartphone should no longer be regarded merely as an entertainment device but as an instrument of economic opportunity.

The value of being in the room

For EU Reporter, Soysal’s participation in the presidential briefing provided something increasingly valuable in international reporting: direct access to the political decision-maker at the centre of the story.

Rather than interpreting Tokayev’s position through official statements alone, she was able to witness at first hand how the President responded when confronted with questions about political succession, institutional change, government performance and the expectations of Kazakhstan’s younger generation.

Soysal’s access is particularly significant at a moment when Kazakhstan is seeking to redefine both its domestic political institutions and its place internationally.

The country occupies an increasingly important strategic position between Europe and Asia, while its economic, energy and diplomatic relationships with the European Union continue to develop.

Understanding the direction Kazakhstan takes therefore matters well beyond its own borders.

A country debating what comes next

What emerged from the presidential exchange in Astana was not simply a discussion about one election.

It was a debate about what kind of Kazakhstan should emerge from the reforms now under way.

How much influence will the new institutions exercise?

Will younger politicians genuinely reshape public life?

Can artificial intelligence translate into economic opportunity outside Kazakhstan’s major cities?

And how far will political modernisation alter the relationship between the state and its citizens?

Those questions will not be answered by one election or one presidential press briefing.

But Derya Soysal’s privileged position inside that briefing gave EU Reporter readers a valuable first-hand view of how Kazakhstan’s President himself answers them.

As the first Kurultai begins its work, the importance of the election may ultimately be judged not by the symbolism of its creation, but by what Kazakhstan’s new political institutions actually deliver.

For the moment, however, one thing is clear: the country has entered a new phase, and the political conversation about what comes next has already begun.

Derya Soysal is an EU Reporter journalist covering European and international affairs. She attended President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s press briefing in Astana following his vote in Kazakhstan’s first Kurultai elections.

Kazakhstan is moving rapidly to position artificial intelligence at the center of its economic modernization strategy, investing in computing infrastructure, skills, startups and Kazakh-language technologies as governments worldwide compete for a place in the emerging AI economy, writes Assel Satubaldina.

Kazakhstan has an increasingly ambitious AI agenda. The government has made AI part of its broader economic modernization strategy, betting that it can improve public services, attract investment and help the country generate more value beyond its traditional reliance on raw materials.  It has been investing heavily in computing infrastructure, training, startup ecosystems, and Kazakh-language models. At the 38th plenary session of the Foreign Investors’ Council in July, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev explicitly called the integration of AI into state investment policy a “critically important priority”. 

The government has adopted a Digital Code and a law on artificial intelligence, launched the Digital Qazaqstan strategy, established a Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development, and designated 2026 as the Year of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development. This push comes at a time as AI is becoming both a major global industry and an increasingly important source of economic and strategic power. UN Trade and Development estimates the global AI market will rise from $189 billion in 2023 to $4.8 trillion by 2033. This is a 25-fold increase in just a decade. 

Globally, AI push is concentrated among a handful of countries. U.S. private AI investment alone reached nearly $286 billion in 2025, more than 23 times the level in China, according to Stanford University’s 2026 AI Index.  Global corporate AI investment more than doubled in 2025, while private companies produced more than 90% of the year’s notable AI models. For emerging economies, the concentration of AI infrastructure in a small number of countries can make this race appear expensive, not to mention that training large language models requires massive quantities of computing power, electricity, connectivity and capital. Kazakhstan is unlikely to compete with the United States or China at the most capital-intensive layer of the AI industry nor does it need to. Experts say its opportunity lies in combining global AI technologies with domestic expertise, while building its own capabilities in areas where dependence creates economic or strategic vulnerabilities.

Strong foundation
The country’s AI push builds on years of its experience of deploying digital technologies at a scale. Advanced technologies are increasingly embedded in government services and banking. “Right now, especially in the artificial intelligence applications in fintech, Kazakhstan is one of the most progressive countries in the world,” Huseyin Atakan Varol, dean of the School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence and director of the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence at Nazarbayev University, told The Astana Times.  He pointed to technologies including palm-recognition authentication and AI-powered banking assistants as examples of how quickly digital tools have entered everyday life. International indicators tell a similar story but also expose an important weakness.

Kazakhstan ranks 10th globally for online government services, according to figures from the World Intellectual Property Organization. Yet it ranks 115th for university-industry collaboration and 112th for venture-capital deal activity relative to the size of its economy. Dr. Varol said Kazakhstan still allocates a relatively small share of its economy to research and development, with the government providing most of that funding. While spending on science has increased in recent years, spending on research and development does not reach 1%.  “Nearly all of this allocation comes from the state, very little from the private companies,” he said. “So basically, industry, academia, government interaction, the triple helix structure is not yet fully working in Kazakhstan.”

That may prove to be one of the important constraints on Kazakhstan’s AI ambitions. While the government can establish institutions, purchase computing infrastructure and train specialistics, building a durable innovation economy requires more. Alem.AI center in Astana is intended to help close that gap by connecting education, research, startups and companies.  “We have some real and simple goals. The first one is to build a community of professionals, who not just use but understand what AI actually is. It means that we train different categories,” Alyona Slavkina, head of the Alem.AI Development Office, told The Astana Times. 

The community is supposed to include schoolchildren, students, working professionals, researchers and entrepreneurs. The idea is to create a pathway from first exposure to AI to education, research and eventually the development of commercial products. The challenge, however, is that AI is evolving faster than conventional education systems. Olzhas Urazalin, head of Tomorrow School, said technologies and development tools can change within months, while formal academic programs often require years to adapt. “Many graduates have strong theoretical knowledge, but very limited experience working with modern AI tools, real data sets, and product development.

\This indeed creates a gap between learning and creation. Young specialists often learn how to use existing AI solutions, but they rarely get the opportunity to understand how these systems are built, or how to develop new ones,” Urazalin said.  Tomorrow School is built around an alternative model. Students learn primarily through projects rather than conventional lectures and work on real problems brought into the curriculum by businesses. The program is free, runs for 18 months and is open to applicants without traditional technology backgrounds. “In my opinion, Kazakhstan must focus on developing, first of all, creators, not only consumers of AI technology,” he said, highlighting talent, infrastructure, and international collaboration as priorities. 

Development pathways
Dr. Varol describes two broad pathways for technological development. One is indigenous development, which requires substantial investment, time and a long-term commitment. The other is what he calls “technological piggybacking,” adopting technologies already developed elsewhere. For Kazakhstan, Varol said that generative AI requires elements of both approaches.  “We have been also debating and discussing a lot about what is the best strategy for Kazakhstan, especially in the development of generative AI technologies. Our internal deliberations always pointed out that we must develop these technologies indigenously as well,” he said. 

Varol also stressed that developing domestic capabilities is not only about owning a model, but also about creating a pool of specialists with expertise who can later move into startups, established companies and new commercial products. Recent events also demonstrated that access to foreign technologies can become subject to government restrictions. In June, the US government temporarily imposed export controls barring foreign nationals from accessing Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, including foreign-national employees of Anthropic itself.  “Creators of these technologies can stop your access to these technologies and this creates a very big dependence risk,” said Dr. Varol. 

Technological sovereignty, however, should not be confused with technological self-sufficiency. Mohamed Eissa, chief investment officer at the International Finance Corporation, emphasized that this explains why emerging markets are unlikely to compete directly at that layer of the industry.  “You are not seeing LLMs [large language models] being developed in emerging markets because you need compute, connectivity, power,” Eissa said. “Those things are big infrastructure gaps in emerging markets.” But he draws an important distinction between building AI infrastructure and using AI.

He pointed to a rapidly growing AI company in content creation that originated from Kazakhstan as an example. “But using AI in emerging markets, you don’t need to build that to be able to use it. That is an opportunity in emerging markets: finding innovative people who have really good ICT skills, have focused on a business problem and now have the tools to compete with Silicon Valley,” he said during The Development Podcast on the World Bank Group YouTube channel. 

That may be one of the most important opportunities for Kazakhstan. According to him, in emerging markets, the much larger opportunity may be the application of AI to businesses that already exist. Likewise, in Kazakhstan, potential economic impact of AI should not be measured only by how many programmers, AI startups or research laboratories the nation generates, but rather by whether this technology raises productivity gains across the wider economy. 

Existing strengths
Dr. Varol said some of the applications of AI lie in sectors where the country already has an expertise. Mining, energy and logistics are among them.  “Kazakhstan is one of the richest countries with respect to mining and natural resources, but most of these natural resources are exported with a small amount of added value to other countries,” he said.  Using AI and digital technologies in those industries, he noted, could allow Kazakhstan to generate more value from resources before they leave the country. Where dependence matters  There are areas, however, where Kazakhstan has stronger reasons to maintain domestic capabilities. Dr. Varol said questions about where information is processed and stored become significantly more consequential when AI systems are used by companies or public institutions.

“In general, I believe this is also very important with respect to the sovereignty aspects of a country,” he added.  Language presents a different form of dependence. Global AI systems are trained on enormous quantities of data, but languages are represented very unevenly in those datasets.  Dr. Varol said approximately half of publicly accessible internet content is in English, compared with only around 0.03% in Kazakh. That means developing Kazakh-language AI starts long before a model is trained. ISSAI, which was founded in 2019, has developed the country’s first LLM in 2024. Drawing on the institute’s experience, Dr. Varol explained that researchers first need to collect texts and other data, remove poor-quality material, organize the information and convert it into formats suitable for machine learning. Researchers faced another problem once a model has been trained on how to determine whether it actually understands the language. “Because the internationally accepted method for doing this is called model benchmarking and all model benchmarks are in English language or Chinese language, but none were in Kazakh language. Basically, we also have created a suite of benchmarking data sets,” he said. 

The development of Kazakhstan’s LLM illustrates another benefit of indigenous AI development. The process itself creates capabilities. The team had to recruit and train specialists while learning to operate multi-node AI computing infrastructure, expertise that had not previously been used at that scale. The significance of the project therefore extends beyond the model it produced. It helped build a domestic pool of engineers with experience in the infrastructure and workflows required for advanced AI development. Kazakhstan’s AI strategy therefore does not require choosing between complete technological independence and reliance on global platforms. The more realistic task is to determine which capabilities the country needs to control, which technologies it can efficiently import and where AI can create the greatest economic value.

The European Commission has approved, under the EU Merger Regulation, the acquisition of joint control of Eurowind Energy A/S by Norlys a.m.b.a. and EWE Holding ApS (‘EWH'), all of Denmark, and Blackstone Inc. of the US.

The transaction relates primarily to the development, construction, and operation of wind and solar farms in Europe, the wholesale of electricity, the provision of electricity balancing and ancillary services, as well as the development of renewable energy solutions.

The Commission concluded that the notified transaction would not raise competition concerns, given the companies' limited market positions resulting from the proposed transaction. The notified transaction was examined under the simplified merger review procedure.

More information is available on the Commission's competition website, in the public case register under the case number M.12473.

In the second quarter of 2026, the EU imported €701.8 billion in goods from non-EU countries and exported €680.0 billion. Compared with the previous quarter, both imports and exports increased, by 9.9% and 5.4%, respectively. Compared with the second quarter of 2025, imports increased by 11.7% and exports by 4.5%.

China was the EU’s largest supplier, accounting for €153.6 billion (21.9% of all imports). The United States came second (€98.7 billion; 14.1%), followed by the United Kingdom (€43.4 billion; 6.2%), Switzerland (€36.9 billion; 5.3%) and Türkiye (€25.5 billion; 3.6%). 

The EU increased imports from the United States (+11.5%), the United Kingdom (+8.8%), China (+7.9%) and Switzerland (+2.1%) compared with the second quarter of 2025, while imports from Türkiye declined slightly (-0.6%).

Click to enlarge

Source dataset: ext_st_eu27_2020sitc

The EU exported €127.7 billion of goods to the United States, making it the EU’s main export destination (18.8% of all exports). The United Kingdom came second with €92.7 billion (13.6%), followed by Switzerland (€60.5 billion; 8.9%), China (€50.3 billion; 7.4%) and Türkiye (€27.3 billion; 4.0%).

Exports to Switzerland rose sharply (+16.1%) compared with the same quarter of 2025. Exports to the United Kingdom (+5.6%) and China (+2.8%) also increased, while those to the United States (-5.6%) and Türkiye (-4.9%) decreased.

For more information

• Statistics Explained article on extra-EU trade in goods - latest developments
• Statistics Explained on the EU trade with the US – latest developments
• Statistics Explained on the EU trade with China - latest developments
• Thematic section on international trade in goods
• Database on international trade in goods
• International trade in goods – a statistical picture

On 26 August, Romania received its first payment of €2.5 billion under the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defence instrument, representing 15% of its total allocation of €16.7 billion.

SAFE is a €150 billion financial instrument providing loans to member states. It primarily funds joint procurement of ammunition, missiles, air defence, and ground combat systems produced within the EU. It is part of the European Commission's ReArm Europe/Readiness 2030 plan, which aims to unlock over €800 billion in defence investment across the European Union.

The pre-financing will help Romania accelerate priority defence investments, strengthen resilience, and modernise its military capabilities in line with shared European goals. SAFE is designed to enable swift, co-ordinated action, improve the ability of European forces to work together, and strengthen Europe's defence industry, including through joint procurement and closer cross-border co-operation.

Defence and Space Commissioner Andrius Kubilius (pictured) said: "Today's €2.5 billion payment to Romania under SAFE is a major milestone for European defence and a more sovereign Europe. This funding will strengthen Romania's defence capabilities and industrial base, while contributing to Europe's overall security. SAFE is a clear demonstration of our strong commitment to European security, and to the resilience and to defence of our Eastern Flank."

This payment follows the completion of all required procedural steps and reflects the EU's commitment to providing timely, practical support through SAFE. Further payments will follow, as agreed milestones and implementation are met.

The SAFE instrument is financed by EU borrowing on the financial markets. This enables competitively priced and attractively structured long-duration loans to requesting Member States. The terms of the SAFE loans benefit from the EU's strong credit rating.

The recent decision of the Lukashenka regime to designate the websites and social media of EUvsDisinfo, of the EU-supported SALT and “Education for Belarusians” programmes, and of Lithuania’s Central Project Management Agency (CPVA) as “extremist information sources” is yet another example of the regime’s systematic efforts to suppress critical thinking, restrict fundamental freedoms and shrink civic space. The European Union strongly condemns such actions.

This unjustified decision seeks to restrict Belarusians’ access to independent information and educational opportunities. EUvsDisinfo works to raise awareness of disinformation and information manipulation, while the SALT and “Education for Belarusians” programmes have enabled Belarusian students and researchers to study and advance their work in Europe. These initiatives reflect the EU’s commitment to supporting the Belarusian people and maintaining people-to-people contacts. 

We call on the Belarusian regime to reverse this decision without delay and end their ongoing repression of the Belarusian people. 

The EU will continue to stand with the Belarusian people and support their right to unbiased information and opportunities for them to study, learn and work in an environment of academic freedom.

The European Commission has approved a €20 million state aid scheme for agricultural and fishing companies in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia that are facing increased fuel and fertiliser prices due to the Middle East crisis. The scheme was approved under the Middle East Crisis Temporary State Aid Framework (METSAF) adopted by the Commission on 29 April 2026.

The scheme, which will run until 31 December 2026, aims at mitigating the impact of the increase in agricultural fuel and fertiliser prices, as well as in fishery and aquaculture fuel prices. The aid will take the form of direct grants and subsidised loans. It will be determined on the basis of the size of land used for the primary production of agricultural products, and on the basis of estimates of fuel consumption in the primary production of fishery and aquaculture products, capped to €50,000 per beneficiary. The aid is paid by the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia.

The Commission assessed the scheme under EU State aid rules, in particular Article 107(3)(c) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, which enables member states to support the development of certain economic activities subject to certain conditions, as well as Sections 1 and 2.1 of the METSAF. The Commission found that the scheme is in line with the conditions set out in the METSAF. In particular, aid will be granted based on a scheme with a clear estimated budget and will be provided to temporarily support the development of companies active in primary production of agricultural products. The Commission concluded that the scheme is necessary, appropriate and proportionate to facilitate the development of an economic activity and does not adversely affect trading conditions to an extent contrary to the common interest. On this basis, the Commission approved the Italian regional scheme under EU state aid rules.

For more information