President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has addressed the nation ahead of the elections to the Qurultay, Qazinform News Agency reports, citing the Akorda press service.
"Dear compatriots! This Sunday (23 August), our country will witness a truly historic event – the first elections to the new unicameral Qurultay.
In recent years, our country has been confidently moving along the path of far-reaching reforms. Thanks to unity, harmony, and solidarity, we have achieved significant results in building a Just Kazakhstan. However, there is still much work to be done.
With the entry into force of the People's Constitution, these elections will mark the starting point for new reforms for the benefit of all citizens and will open a new chapter in the history of modern Kazakhstan.
I announced the Qurultay elections well in advance so that all parties could prepare properly.
As a result, the first election campaign for the Qurultay has been substantive, open, competitive, and civilized. This is the common view of our citizens.
Without a doubt, these elections will be remembered as perhaps the most interesting in our country's history.
During meetings with voters, media campaigning, national televised debates, and social media discussions, parties have convincingly presented their platforms.
In other words, citizens have gained the opportunity to assess the political parties' visions for the country's future and their various initiatives for the further development of all areas of life – from the economy to culture," the Head of State said.
The Qurultay elections are scheduledfor 23 August. According to the CEC, 12,605,788 voters have been includedin the electoral rolls.
Kazakhstanis are to elect 145 Qurultay deputies for five-year terms. The CEC has registered candidate lists from seven political parties.
Russian ballistic missile strikes killed 17 people and injured more than 40 in and around the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Thursday, local authorities reported.
The EU has spoken out in support of “all those who have suffered under totalitarian and authoritarian regimes”. This comes on the eve of the Europe-wide Day of Remembrance of the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian regimes on 23 August. Ahead of the Day, senior EU political figures have issued a strongly-worded statement against “hatred, intolerance and the denial of human dignity. The statement was issued by the EC Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen, and Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law, and Consumer Protection Commissioner Michael McGrath (pictured).
It reads: “On 23 August, we commemorate the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed in 1939 between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. “That pact, and the war and devastation that followed, brought intolerable suffering to millions of people across Europe and beyond. The years that followed were marked by occupation, repression, deportation and violence on a massive scale.”
It goes on: “Today, we honour the memory of all those who have suffered under totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. “The pain endured by victims, survivors and their families echoes across generations. Every EU country is now home to a generation that has grown up free from tyranny and oppression.
“For many, freedom, democracy and peace may appear self-evident, but they are not. They were secured through extraordinary courage, sacrifice, resistance and resilience, and they must never be taken for granted. Remembering the past is therefore not only a duty to those who came before us. It is also a responsibility to future generations.”
The statement continues: “This day is a solemn reminder of the consequences of hatred, intolerance and the denial of human dignity.
“It calls on us to remain vigilant in defending the values on which the European Union is founded: respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and fundamental rights.
"By preserving the memory of the past, we reaffirm our commitment to a Europe built on peace, justice and solidarity.”
Special events will take place this weekend to mark the anniversary of the First Battle of Mons on 23 August, the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in World War I.
Commemorations, which take place on Monday 24 August, start at 1pm at the Hôtel de Ville in Mons.
Representatives of RBL Brussels branch will also lay a wreath at the town's British Empire Memorial which was first unveiled by King Baudouin on 11 October 1952.
Several representatives of Royal British Legion Brussels will be taking part.
The RBL delegation is comprised of Captain (retd) Dennis Abbott (RBL Brussels Chair) (pictured); Colonel (retd) William Bache (ex-US Special Forces, Vietnam veteran and Co-Chair Brussels Battles and Books Club) and Lieutenant-Colonel (retd).
Others present will be Matt Hill (ex-US Marine Corps); Andrée Ferrant (RBL Brussels Joint Secretary); Mireille Picron (RBL Brussels Joint Secretary); Freddy Roiseux (RBL Brussels Standard Bearer); Professor Jean-Francois Husson (RBL Brussels committee, Namur representative) and Ela Nora Fidan (Brussels Battles and Books Club).
Wreaths will be laid at the Hôtel de Ville (Dennis Abbott), Nimy railway bridge where Lieutenant Maurice Dease and Private Sidney Godley each won the Victoria Cross (Ela Nora Fidan) and Saint Symphorien military cemetery (Col William Bache at British memorial, Lt Col Hill at German memorial).
Similar wreath-laying commemorations take place at the British Empire memorial at Place de la Bascule (Mireille Picron et Andrée Ferrant) and at the Irish Cross (Jean-François Husson).
There will also be commemorations in Brussels and Antwerp to mark the anniversary of the Liberation (3-4-5 September). Full info/timings are on the RBl Brussels website under “calendar.”
Speaking about the upcoming events, Abbott said: “The Brussels branch of the Royal British Legion has taken part in the commemorations to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Mons since its very formation in 1922.”
He added: "The battle has gone down in the annals of British military history thanks to the heroic stand by troops of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in their first major engagement of 1914. Outnumbered three to one by the Germans, they held out for hours before withdrawing, preventing the enemy from outflanking French positions.
"Wilhelm, the German Kaiser, is said to have dismissed the BEF as a 'contemptible little Army' before the battle, but the British fought tenaciously, none more so than Lieutenant Maurice Dease and Private Private Sidney Godley who were each awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry, for their defence of the railway bridge over the canal at Nimy."
Four German battalions attacked the bridge, which was defended by a company of the Royal Fusiliers.
Despite being mortally injured, Dease held the position until he was overcome by his wounds. Godley took over and despite sustaining a head wound covered the withdrawal before disabling the weapon.
Abbot added: "The branch lays a wreath at the position they held, which is marked by a plaque recalling their exploits."
Lance-Corporal Charles Jarvis and Captain Theodore Wright of the Royal Engineers were also each awarded the VC for preventing the enemy from seizing a bridge at nearby Jemappes. Wright was mortally wounded less than a month later.
The British suffered over 1,600 casualties (killed, wounded or missing) at Mons, around half from two battalions – the 4th Middlesex and 2nd Royal Irish. The German army lost about 5,000 men killed or wounded.
The Germans later established the St Symphorien Military Cemetery which contains the graves of graves of 284 German and 229 British and Commonwealth soldiers.
Among them are the graves of the first and last Commonwealth soldiers killed during the First World War, Private John Parr and Private George Price.
After the war, the veterans who took part in the Battle of Mons proudly called themselves the "Old Contemptibles" in response to the Kaiser's slur.
At the inauguration of the British Empire Memorial in Mons, the British Defence Minister, Field Marshal Lord Alexander of Tunis, recalled his "baptism of fire" in his first action as a young lieutenant in the battle on 23 August 1914.
The VIPs present included Belgian Prime Minister Jean Van Houtte, Major General Sir Edward Spears, who served as a liaison officer with the French forces during the battle, and British Ambassador Sir Christopher Warner, a Captain in the Royal Fusiliers in the First World War.
The memorial was originally erected in the Belfry Park, but was moved to the original frontline at La Bascule crossroads and re-dedicated in 1986. It is close to the Celtic Cross Memorial, which honours the Irish soldiers who fought in the First Battle of August 1914 and the Second Battle of Mons in November 1918.
Kazakhstan plans to turn two of the world’s largest undeveloped tungsten deposits into the country’s first full-cycle tungsten operation, requiring ore to be processed domestically rather than exported as raw material as Astana seeks to capture more value from its critical mineral reserves, writes Assel Satubaldina.
The Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty deposits are being developed by a venture between US-based Cove Capital, which holds a 70% stake, and Kazakhstan’s state mining company Tau-Ken Samruk, with 30%. Cove Capital is expected to provide at least $1.1 billion in financing as well as processing technology and access to international markets. The agreement was signed in November 2025 during President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s visit to Washington DC.
The partners formalized the investment in February, signing a package of transaction documents, including a sale and purchase agreement and a shareholders’ agreement, for the critical minerals project. The mines are located in the Shet district of the Karagandy Region, close to transport and transport and energy communications. Karagandy, the region’s administrative center, is around 130 kilometers from the deposits. “The Northern Katpar project involves establishing a full production cycle in Kazakhstan, from ore mining and beneficiation to metallurgical processing, based on the Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty deposits. This is the first project of its kind to be implemented in Kazakhstan,” Tau-Ken Samruk told The Astana Times. Its planned output includes ammonium paratungstate, or APT, a key processed product in the tungsten supply chain.
The agreement envisages processing all extracted ore domestically and producing higher-value tungsten products in Kazakhstan.
The timeline
The project is currently in the Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) phase, meaning its final production capacity, economics and launch date have yet to be determined. “This work will confirm and optimize the existing feasibility studies, and refine the project’s economic and technical indicators, as well as its mineral resources and reserves. As part of the project’s implementation, preparatory and technical work is scheduled to begin on-site, including topographic surveying, the construction of temporary access roads and fencing, the preparation of drilling sites, the opening of a field office, and other related activities,” said Tau-Ken.
The definitive feasibility study, which began in July, is expected to be completed before the end of 2027, Cove Kaz Capital told The Astana Times. “The principal objective of this stage is to finalize the overall mine plan, define the parameters of the processing facilities and prepare the project for a Final Investment Decision, as well as for detailed due diligence by prospective financing partners,” the company’s CEO Dominic Heaton told The Astana Times. The company said physical activity has commenced at the site in July, including surveying, access road and drill pad preparation, and establishment of field facilities.
Untapped potential
The two deposits are considered among the world’s biggest undeveloped tungsten deposits. Together, the deposits contain an estimated 410,000 metric tons of tungsten trioxide reserves under JORC standards, while total resources are estimated at 1.4 million tons, according to previous studies cited by Tau-Ken. Cove Capital said a key distinction is between mineral resources and mineral reserves. “The current figure represents JORC-compliant [JORC refers to an internationally recognized reporting standard used to classify and publicly report mineral exploration results, mineral resources and ore reserves] mineral resources, while the ongoing DFS [Definitive Feasibility Study] will further update the geological and technical data and optimize the development plan for the deposits,” said Heaton.
“Based on existing studies, Northern Katpar has the potential to support production of approximately 5,000 metric tons per annum, while Upper Kairakty has the potential to contribute approximately 7,000 metric tons per annum. Combined production of approximately 12,000 tons per year would be equivalent to roughly 15% of current global tungsten mine production,” Heaton explained. The company is also developing the Akbulak rare earth project in the Kostanai Region with Qazgeology national geological exploration company.
The financing Under the agreement, the U.S. partner is expected to provide at least $1.1 billion in financing, introduce modern processing and beneficiation technologies, build a complex of production facilities and develop international sales channels for the output. The partners formalized the investment in February, signing a package of transaction documents. Photo credit sk.kz “The approximately $1.1 billion figure represents the current estimate of the total investment required to develop Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty, including the associated mining and processing infrastructure. It does not mean that the full amount has already been financed, committed or deployed,” said Heaton.
At this stage, Cove Kaz Capital Group has financed the acquisition of its 70% controlling stake in Northern Katpar, along with site preparation, drilling and work related to the definitive feasibility study. “An important component of the prospective financing structure is the interest expressed by U.S. government-backed financial institutions. The Export-Import Bank of the United States has issued a Letter of Interest for financing of up to $900 million, while the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation has issued a Letter of Interest for up to $700 million, including project financing and development support,” Heaton explained. Potential financing could reach $1.6 billion, but the figure remains indicative rather than committed, Heaton added.
The amounts represent expressions of interest from prospective lenders, with the final financing package still contingent on completion of the definitive feasibility study, lender due diligence and a final investment decision.
Why it matters
What this project illustrates is that Kazakhstan is betting on higher-value domestic processing rather than remaining primarily a supplier of raw tungsten ore or concentrate. Cove Capital said it seeks to create an integrated domestic value chain in Kazakhstan, spanning mining, beneficiation and downstream chemical processing. “The principal benchmark product currently planned for the Kazakhstan refinery is ammonium paratungstate, or APT, a high-purity intermediate product that is the internationally recognized benchmark product of the tungsten industry.
The project may also have the potential to produce other tungsten compounds depending on the final technical configuration,” Heaton explained. Deeper processing would allow Kazakhstan to retain more of the value generated from its tungsten resources rather than exporting mainly ore or concentrate. “APT is subsequently used to produce tungsten oxides and powders, tungsten carbide, hard metals and other specialized materials used across advanced manufacturing, high-technology and defense-related industries,” said Heaton. Kazakhstan launched the Boguty facility, its first tungsten project, in 2024 in the Almaty Region.
Global tungsten dynamics
According to the US Geological Survey, tungsten is a strategically important metal used primarily in tungsten carbide for mining, construction and metalworking, as well as in electronics, aerospace, high-performance alloys and defense applications. Its combination of hardness, heat resistance and high density makes it difficult to substitute in many industrial uses. Tungsten is relatively scarce in the Earth’s crust, ranking 57th among chemical elements by abundance. Its wide industrial use stems from a combination of distinctive properties. No other known metal matches tungsten in heat resistance, and its boiling point is close to the temperature at the Sun’s surface.
China has remained the world’s leading producer, importer and consumer of tungsten concentrates. The project is advancing at a time when tungsten is taking an increasingly greater geopolitical importance as the U.S. and other economies seek to diversify critical mineral supply chains away from China. Beijing tightened controls on exports of selected tungsten products and related technologies in February 2025, adding pressure to already concentrated global supply chains.
The restrictions, alongside growing demand and trade tensions, helped push tungsten prices sharply higher in 2025. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, throughout 2025, prices went up from $266 to $551 per metric ton unit for 65% concentrate and from $331 to $675 per metric ton unit for APT. “At the same time, the strategic importance of secure and diversified critical mineral supply chains is growing rapidly. The United States, the G7 and other advanced economies are actively seeking to reduce reliance on highly concentrated sources of supply and support the development of alternative supply chains. Tungsten is one of the critical minerals receiving particular attention in this context,” said Heaton.
Kazakhstan is emerging as a potential alternative supplier. Production began at the Boguty tungsten deposit in the Almaty Region in 2024, operated by Aral Kegen, a subsidiary of China’s Jiaxin International Resources Investment. The project with Cove Capital is also emerging as part of a broader build-out of Kazakhstan’s tungsten industry, with additional deposits moving toward development. The country’s total tungsten trioxide reserves are estimated at more than two million metric tons. Esil-Mining, owned by Britain’s Resources Enterprise Limited, plans to begin developing the Aksoran deposit in northern Kazakhstan in 2027, with production targeted for 2028.
The planned development of Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty would take the country further downstream by combining extraction with domestic processing rather than exporting raw material. “More broadly, our strategy is to build a portfolio of critical mineral assets in Kazakhstan and Central Asia supported by domestic processing and refining capacity,” said Heaton. He emphasized this ambition is supported by the country’s substantial mineral resource base, a mature mining sector, extensive geological data and established industrial infrastructure. “Just as importantly, Kazakhstan is increasingly focused on moving beyond the extraction and export of raw materials toward higher-value processing and manufacturing,” he added. The project illustrates Kazakhstan’s broader effort to extract more economic value from its mineral wealth by pairing foreign capital with domestic processing. But major questions, including production capacity, final economics and the start of commercial output, remain unresolved while the venture completes its definitive feasibility study.
The European Commission has approved, under the EU Merger Regulation, the creation of a joint venture by AI Infrastructure Development, S.L. (‘ACS AIID'), Telefónica S.A. (‘Telefónica'), Banco Santander, S.A. and Entidad Pública Empresarial Sociedad Española para la Transformación Tecnológica, E.P.E. (‘SETT'), all of Spain.
The transaction relates primarily to third-party data centre colocation services in Spain and contributes to the EU's tech sovereignty strategy of strengthening and expanding sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure in Europe, as part of the EU's AI Gigafactories Initiative.
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.
The EU economy’s seasonally adjusted greenhouse gas emissions in the first quarter of 2026 were estimated at 837 million tonnes of CO2-equivalents (CO2-eq), a 0.3% increase compared with the fourth quarter of 2025 (835 million tonnes of CO2-eq). At the same time, there was no change to the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2026, compared with the last quarter of 2025.
The economic sector with the largest increase in greenhouse gas emissions was electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (+4.8%), while households (-1.3%), manufacturing and transportation and storage (both -0.6%) recorded the biggest decreases.
Compared with the first quarter of 2025, emissions went down by 1.2%, while the EU’s GDP increased by 0.8%.
Greenhouse gas emissions decreased in 7 EU countries
In the first quarter of 2026, seasonally adjusted greenhouse gas emissions increased in 20 EU countries and decreased in 7 countries, compared with the fourth quarter of 2025.
The largest reductions in greenhouse gases were estimated for Slovenia (-5.0%), Luxembourg (-3.8%) and Romania (-2.7%).
The largest increases in greenhouse gas emissions were estimated for Estonia (+9.7%), Finland (+6.4%) and Bulgaria (+4.6%). The increases in these countries are largely due to growing emissions by economic producers in construction and electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply.
In the first quarter of 2026, 20 EU countries recorded increases in greenhouse gas emissions, out of which 18 also increased their GDP. 7 countries reduced their greenhouse gas emissions. Out of these, 4 countries recorded a higher or stable GDP.
The data presented here are estimates by Eurostat, except for the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain which provided their own data.
The greenhouse gas emission figures are seasonally adjusted. These adjusted series enable quarter-on-quarter change analyses. Data provided by countries are seasonally adjusted by Eurostat. The GDP figures are seasonally and calendar adjusted. More information on the seasonal adjustment is provided in atechnical note. Eurostat’s methodology attributes international transport emissions to individual countries according to the country of residence of the emitting economic producer, following the international System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) standard. This is in line with the European System of Accounts used for the GDP and differs from the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement rules.
The EU and the EU countries report annually on their greenhouse gas emissions to the UN. The so-called ‘Kyoto basket’ of greenhouse gases includes carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and fluorinated gases. They are expressed in a common unit: CO2-equivalents. EU countries are required to monitor their emissions of these gases for all source sectors based on internationally agreed obligations and rules. The EU greenhouse gas inventory managed by the European Environment Agency covers emissions from 1990 to 2 years before the current year and is submitted to the UN each spring after quality checks.
According to theEuropean Climate Law, the EU’s climate target is to achieve a -55% net reduction by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050. The European Commission monitors and reports progress towards their GHG emission reduction targets on an annual basis using the inventory data in the Climate Action Progress Report.
The Commission has presented an action plan for the chemicals industry to strengthen the competitiveness and modernization of this sector.
The action plan addresses key challenges – high energy costs, unfair global competition, and weak demand, while promoting investment in innovation and sustainability. It proposes the following measures
Resilience and level playing field: establishing a Critical Chemical Alliance to address the risks of capacity closures in the sector and applying trade defence measures to ensure fair competition
Affordable energy and decarbonisation: swiftlyimplementing the Affordable Energy Action Planto help reduce high energy and feedstock costs
Lead markets and innovation: highlighting fiscal incentives and tax measures to boost demand for clean chemicals
Taking action on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS): minimizing PFAS emissions through a robust, science-based restriction, while ensuring continued use in critical applications under strict conditions where no alternatives are available
The plan is accompanied by a simplification package, the so-called 6th Omnibus, to further streamline and simplify key EU chemicals legislation. This includes simplifying hazardous chemical labelling rules, clarifying EU cosmetics regulations, and easing registration for EU fertilising products. These measures should save at least €363 million annually for the industry.
The EU chemical industry is the 4th largest manufacturing sector, with 29 000 companies providing 1.2 million direct jobs and supporting 19 million across supply chains. The European chemicals industry action plan builds on the Competitiveness Compass and Clean Industrial Deal, while the simplification package delivers on President von der Leyen's commitmentto simplify EU laws and cut administrative burdens, helping businesses innovate and grow.
In 2023, public spending on education (from pre-primary to the tertiary level) in the EU accounted for 4.7% of its gross domestic product (GDP). Compared with 2022, this figure did not change; however, it represents a slight decrease of 0.3 percentage points (pp) from 2020 (5.0%), the year with the highest level of public expenditure on education since the data collection started in 2012.
Among the EU countries, the highest level of public expenditure on education relative to the GDP was observed in Sweden (6.8%), followed by Finland (6.3%) and Belgium (6.2%). The lowest levels were registered in Romania (3.0%), Greece (3.3%) and Malta (3.4%).
In 2025, the EU produced 3.44 billion litres of ice cream, representing a 1.9% increase compared with 2024 (3.38 billion litres).
Germany remained the top producer of ice cream in the EU, with 608 million litres in 2025. Italy (549 million litres) and France (525 million litres) followed at the top. The list of main producers also included Spain (457 million litres) and Belgium (274 million litres).
Compared with 2024, all of these 5 EU countries registered an increase in production; +10% for Italy, +6% for Belgium, +4% for France, +2% for Spain and +0.2% for Germany.
In 2025, EU countriesexported289.8 million kg of ice cream to non-EU countries and imported77.8 million kg. Exports increased by 10% compared with 2024 (+26 million kg), while imports rose by 12% (+8.5 million kg).
As in previous years, France was the largest ice cream exporter in the EU, exporting 59.1 million kg of ice cream to non-EU countries in 2025. This represented a fifth of the total extra-EU ice cream exports (20%). France was followed by Italy (55.2 million kg of ice cream; 19% of EU ice cream exports), Belgium (34.5 million kg; 12%), Germany (29.9 million kg; 10%), and the Netherlands (26.5 million kg; 9%).
Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta: exempt from providing data on production due to their economic sizes.
Production ranking is based on available and non-confidential data. Sold production quantities are confidential for Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Sweden.
In this news article, production of ice cream is expressed in litres, while imports and exports are expressed in kg.
In the face of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the EU, together with Ukraine and Moldova launched the EU-Ukraine Solidarity Lanes in May 2022, establishing new transport routes to keep Ukraine’s imports and exports flowing via rail, road and inland waterways. Today, the EU-Ukraine Solidarity Lanes have become a lifeline for Ukraine’s economy.
In July 2026 the Solidarity Lanes allowed:
Around 90% of Ukrainian imports (in comparison to around 10% through the Black Sea)
Around 95% of Ukrainian exports of non-agricultural products (in comparison to around 5% through the Black Sea)
Around 20% of Ukrainian exports of grain, oilseeds and related products (in comparison to around 80% through the Black Sea)
Ukrainian exports
Since May 2022, the Solidarity Lanes have allowed Ukraine to export ca. 230 million tonnes (Mt) of goods, according to data from the Ukrainian customs registers. Within this amount, it can be estimated that the Solidarity Lanes enabled exports of around 103 million tonnes of Ukrainian agricultural products (including ca. 95 million tonnes of Ukrainian grain, oilseeds and related products) and around 127 million tonnes of non-agricultural goods including ores, steel and related products.
In total, around 255 Mt of Ukrainian grain, oilseeds and related products were exported through the Solidarity Lanes (40%) and the Ukrainian Black Sea ports (60%) since May 2022 [1].
Imports to Ukraine
The Solidarity Lanes also play a crucial role for Ukrainian imports. Since May 2022, they have allowed Ukraine to import ca. 111 Mt of goods, such as fuel, vehicles, fertilisers as well as military and humanitarian assistance.
Value of trade
The total value of trade via the Solidarity Lanes since May 2022 is estimated at around EUR 304 billion, with around EUR 78 billion for Ukrainian exports. The total value of imports to Ukraine is estimated at ca. EUR 226 billion.
Background
Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the blockade of Ukrainian seaports, Ukraine has been unable to export its produce and import what it needs via its usual transport routes.
Against this background, the EU established 'Solidarity Lanes' to ensure Ukraine can export grain, iron ore, steel and other products and to import the goods it needs, from fuel to military and humanitarian assistance, via alternative transport routes: inland waterways, rail and road. The Solidarity Lanes cover trade across all sectors and are an unprecedented cooperation of authorities and businesses in EU Member States, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova.
The Solidarity Lanes’ work is carried out in close cooperation between the European Commission, concerned authorities and the transport community. The focus is on addressing bottlenecks to enhance the capacity and smooth functioning of the Solidarity Lanes to sustain Ukrainian exports and imports across sectors. This includes measures to improve traffic management and streamlining of border procedures and checks, as well as investments in infrastructure or logistics equipment.
The Solidarity Lanes are also laying the ground for the longer-term connectivity between Ukraine and the EU and will play a key role for Ukraine’s reconstruction and integration in the EU single market.
[1] Between May and July 2022, the Solidarity Lanes were the only option for Ukraine to export its agricultural produce. In August 2022, the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI) helped relaunch grain shipments from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. In mid-July 2023, Russia terminated its participation in the BSGI, which was consequently discontinued.
In August 2023, Ukraine launched a new Black Sea corridor for trade vessels heading to and from Ukrainian sea ports despite Russia’s withdrawal from the BSGI. Ca. 2.4 Mt of grain, oilseeds and other related products have been exported this way in July 2026.
This week, Mark Leonard is joined by Janka Oertel, director of ECFR’s DARE* initiative, and Andrew Small, head of ECFR’s Asia programme, to examine the growing impact of the “China shock 2.0” on Germany and Europe.
A new wave of Chinese competition, driven by overcapacity and state-backed industrial strength, is hitting sectors such as car manufacturing, chemicals and machine tools. Germany is at the epicentre, with mounting job losses raising questions about Europe’s long-term economic resilience and competitiveness. The crisis is reshaping German politics, exposing government divisions and putting pressure on Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of September’s potentially divisive regional elections.
Together, Mark, Janka and Andrew discuss the policy options being considered in Brussels and in European capitals—from emergency trade measures to new industrial strategies. Can Europe protect its industrial base without triggering a damaging escalation with China? Is Germany able to lead a coherent European response amid its own political turbulence?
The disputed 2020 presidential election and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine accelerated Belarus’s integration into Moscow’s military strategy, with the country becoming a rear-operating base.
Since 2023, Russian deployments have increasingly positioned Belarus as a potential forward-operating base. Nuclear-capable systems, missile forces and military infrastructure on Belarusian territory mean that the Russian threat extends further along the EU’s eastern border.
Europe wants to preserve Belarus as a strategic buffer, yet sanctions and diplomatic isolation have not slowed Russian military entrenchment. Its continued path risks further binding Minsk to Moscow. Belarus has quietly become a major frontline security challenge for Europe.
The EU should move away from relying mostly on sanctions and economic pressure, and instead pursue a pragmatic strategy which aims to increase Minsk’s autonomy from Moscow. In the meantime, Europe must remain supportive of Belarusian exiles and its diaspora community.
The EU also needs to complement existing NATO deterrence with stronger support for countries on its eastern border, namely Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. This would reduce opportunities for Russian coercion and support Europe’s long-term plan for Belarus.
A satellite state
Take a map of Europe and find Belarus. Trace a finger clockwise, from the country’s northern borders and around to the east, where Russia is followed by Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Belarus’s capital, Minsk, is itself almost at the exact geographic heart of the country, surrounded by hills, with vast forests sprawled out like capillaries beyond.
It is from here that Belarus’s longtime leader, Alexander Lukashenko, looks out from his “Palace of Independence” on Minsk’s Pieramozcau Avenue. To the east, in Russia, his fellow authoritarian Vladimir Putin continues to decimate Ukraine from its eastern borders and scheme to undermine European political interests. To the west, stretching hundreds of kilometres past Belarus’s western border with Poland and across Germany, lies Brussels. Faced with instability across the continent, the EU’s capital is increasingly unsure about what to do with its problematic Belarusian neighbour.
The EU downgraded its diplomatic relations with Belarus in 2020 after the latter’s disputed presidential election, which saw Lukashenko’s government violently repress protestors who took to the streets to oppose the president seizing victory by undemocratic means. Although bilateral trade between the EU and Belarus was largely undamaged in the subsequent years, the fall in trade with the bloc after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 created an economic gap which Russia has exploited. For example, it has stepped up its own trading relationship with Belarus and become a key market for exports of Belarusian goods such as dairy products and petrochemicals—also allowing Moscow to evade EU sanctions. In doing so, Russia filled a vacuum for Belarus; Lukashenko, facing limited alternatives, deepened his dependence on Moscow.
Although Belarus did not formally commit troops to Russia’s war of aggression, it did allow the latter to house missiles, tanks, artillery, helicopters, aeroplanes and other military equipment in its territory prior to the invasion. It also provided military and civil infrastructure for Russia’s use, including airfields, hospitals and railway lines. This year alone, Russia has transferred more missiles—including dual-capable, hypersonic missiles—to Belarusian territory and conducted joint exercises encompassing the Belarusian Armed Forces. This, combined with a breakdown in dialogue between the EU and Belarus, gives Putin yet more sway in his quest to entrench Russia further into Belarusian structures.
Now that Belarus is apparently firmly committed to the supranational union of Belarus and Russia, known as the Union State, it has become a structural security concern for Europe. Russian deployment of nuclear-capable weapons on Belarusian territory makes Europe’s eastern flank more vulnerable, while Belarus’s already tense relations with neighbouring border states Poland, Latvia and Lithuania are at risk of deteriorating further. At the same time, Belarus has 879 political prisoners languishing, with Lukashenko’s regime having essentially outlawed any political or civic activity which the authorities see as a threat.
All this has compounded the breakdown in relations between Belarus and Europe. Russia is further emboldened to entrench its military deeper into Belarusian territory, tighten its economic dependencies and integrate the country further into its nuclear strategy.
This paper examines Belarus’s transformation from a problematic but stable buffer state between western Europe and Russia to a country which poses an increasing military and security threat to the EU. It argues that the EU should move away from relying solely on economic leverage and the blanket application of sanctions—which are pushing Belarus to rely more heavily on Russia—and develop a more targeted approach. Europeans need to actively contain the growing military and nuclear threat by finding new avenues of diplomatic negotiation, and by incorporating NATO-inspired approaches into its defence policy for its vulnerable eastern states.
Perhaps most importantly, Europeans need to assess to what extent they can treat Minsk as an autonomous actor capable of making decisions independently from Moscow. Europeans should take recent developments, such as Ukraine’s discovery of four signal relay stations in two Belarusian oblasts and their subsequent removal, as proof that Lukashenko retains the authority to make territorial-based decisions—especially under pressure from Russia.
However, for as long as Lukashenko remains in power, Belarus will never be entirely free of Moscow: he is an authoritarian, and Minsk remains sanctioned due to its breach of human rights clauses and mistreatment of its population. Belarus’s geopolitical position is also at least partly down to early decisions that Lukashenko made when he turned towards Moscow in the mid-1990s—a time when most other former Soviet nations chose real independence. Long before 2020, this posture led to missed opportunities with the EU, reinforced Lukashenko’s propensity to commit human rights violations and kickstarted Belarus’s deepening economic and military integration with Russia.
In its pursuit of a new strategy, the EU needs to recognise that—even if Belarus remains a stable, contained buffer zone—the country will not undergo a full democratic transformation. Europeans are thus searching for a Belarus which no longer presents an urgent security threat on its eastern border. They should aim to help shape a country whose stability reduces geopolitical risk without abandoning the EU’s long-standing commitment to democracy, human rights and the well-being of Belarusian society.
Belarus as a security actor
Belarus declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. But, with what Russia perceived as the NATO and European sphere of influence shifting eastwards, Belarus became increasingly valuable to Moscow—especially because of the Suwalki Gap, which lies between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarusian territory. The Russia-Belarus relationship became more entrenched once Lukashenko and Putin came to power in 1994 and 1999, respectively. The two leaders are hardly close personal friends—but they have nonetheless developed strong cultural and economic ties based on the similarity of their two anti-Western and authoritarian regimes, and their notion of a shared history.
Over the past 30 years, Belarus has moved closer to Russia in economy, trade and idea sharing. But it has gone beyond simply sharing a similar geopolitical outlook; now it is a militarised actor on the EU’s eastern flank. The first tipping point came with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. At this point, Lukashenko was already politically entangled with Moscow due to its support for Belarus’s trade network and economic sector after Minsk’s break with Europe in 2020. But the invasion meant that Belarus also became entrenched in the Russian military machine: in the early phase of Russia’s invasion, it became a launchpad for Russian ground offensives towards Kyiv and Chernihiv, and for missile strikes and combat aviation operations.
Since this period, Russia has attempted to consolidate its control even further. Now it has approximately 2,000 troops concentrated around air-defence systems, training facilities, logistics hubs and long-standing Russian military installations. Between 2022 and 2023, ammunition transfers from Belarus to Russia exceeded 130,000 tonnes. Since then, joint training centres, storage bases and transport corridors (many inherited from the Soviet period) have been repurposed and modernised under Belarus-Russia Union State programmes to support Russian operational needs. Rail-linked depots, armament storage facilities and training grounds now serve as key infrastructure for Russian forces on its western flank.
The second tipping point came with the two countries regularly staging recurring joint military exercises that institutionalise operational integration, such as the Zapad military drills which have been taking place since before 2022. Now Russia is eyeing up Belarus as a key component of its nuclear ambitions and has also deployed Oreshnik intermediate-range missile systems in Belarus. In April this year, Belarus confirmed it would no longer allow Russian conscripts who desert the military to leave via its border. Belarus is also a staging post for Russian nuclear missiles and joint military exercises.
The country has thus become Russia’s territorial, militaristic and logistical resource, achieved through durability, military routinisation and institutional embedding. The military aspect of this entrenchment is also compounded through hybrid attacks. For example, as early as November 2021 the EU condemned Belarus for facilitating the weaponisation of migrants—predominantly from conflict areas such as Iraq and Syria—who it had apparently encouraged to breach the borders of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
This form of hybrid warfare has continued into 2026: recent reports say that Lithuanian authorities have discovered a cross-border tunnel from Belarus to Lithuania, which they suspect is to continue to facilitate the potential movement of migrants through European territories. Now, with the Union State increasingly functioning as a homogeneous force, there is a threat that Belarus will become more emboldened to facilitate further dangerous hybrid manoeuvring. It intends to check Europe’s readiness and destabilise it from the inside.
Belarus as a threat to Europe
The difference in the threat which Belarus now poses to Europe lies in its shift—which has taken place over the past six years—from being Russia’s “rear-operating base” to Russia’s “forward-operating base”.
As Russia’s rear-operating base, Belarus functioned as a non-combat zone for logistics and maintenance. While it supported Russian military activity and provided strategic depth by shifting military infrastructure and combat flashpoints away from Russian territory, as a rear-operating base Belarus avoided deploying its own forces into Ukraine and directly engaging in combat operations. This allowed Lukashenko to avoid many of the challenges that Putin is experiencing, including politically sensitive military mobilisation, high personnel casualties and mounting internal economic pressure. This approach had previously provided Lukashenko with the degree of political deniability and diplomatic leverage necessary to continue negotiating with Western economies on economic sanctions and market access. He was able to point to Belarus’s arm’s-length approach to the war in Ukraine as proof that he was willing to engage with Europeans at a diplomatic and economic level.
However, Belarus’s position has changed since 2022. Evidence collected by the author demonstrates that Russia is increasingly establishing the country as a forward-operating base. Moscow is building on its routinisation and institutional embedding of military infrastructure to deploy personnel on Belarusian territory and undertake recurring joint military exercises, lately including nuclear forces preparation. Minsk’s rhetoric is changing to match these actions. In 2022, Belarus changed its constitution to allow Russia to store nuclear missiles on its territory; in a “Militarization of Europe” meeting held in June 2026, Belarus’s deputy minister of foreign affairs Igor Sekreta said he was “deeply concerned by… military exercises on NATO’s eastern flank” and “the EU and NATO… systematically promoting a militarist agenda at all levels.”
The Belarusian government is simultaneously becoming a component of Russian forward-military position and aligning ideologically with Russia’s view that Europe (and the West in general) constitutes an existential threat. Lukashenko himself reiterated this in May 2026, when he declared that “… [Belarus is] ready in every possible way to defend our common fatherland from Brest to Vladivostok.” The change is especially worrying for Ukraine, which is already fighting a war against Russia on several fronts. Its brow-beaten army could soon be required to deploy yet more resources to another defensive line on its northern border. Belarusian state media have suggested that Putin desires to open a “second front” against Ukraine, using Belarus as a launchpad for further attacks.
Indeed, evidence suggests that Russia is already using Belarusian infrastructure to gain an advantage in its drone warfare against Ukraine: in June 2026, Ukrainian intelligence services discovered four signal relay stations in the Belarusian oblasts of Homiel and Brest. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, appealed directly to Belarus to dismantle the sites or face potential Ukrainian consequences. The Belarusian president apparently acquiesced—although no public statement or confirmation has been made.
Belarus’s transformation into a forward-operating base was further bolstered in 2023, when Russia deposited tactical Iskander nuclear-capable warheads on its territory. Then, in early 2025, Russia moved Oreshnik hypersonic missiles to a location which experts estimate to be around 60km south of Minsk. This has changed the calculus for the rest of Europe. Europeans must contend with an additional nuclear threat right on its border (aside from Kaliningrad) and consider how this could compromise security along its eastern flank.
Meanwhile, as noted above, Belarus is mixing concrete actions with rhetoric that suggests it sees Europe as a threat to its own sovereignty. In the same speech, Sekreta commented that Poland, Latvia and Lithuania have a combined defence expenditure of €52bn, which is apparently “25 times more than Belarus allocates for defence”. This suggests that Belarus increasingly views European and NATO defence investments through the lens of Russian military planning. If left unchecked, Russian influence will leave EU member states more vulnerable to further hybrid attacks from Union State forces.
For Europeans, there is also potential for escalation in how these border countries respond, and uncertainty about where escalation could lead. For example, the Zapad-2025 military drills, which took place on September 12th 2025, prompted Poland to close its border with Belarus due to “heightened security concerns”. Prior to this, on September 9th and 10th, Russia had flown several drones into Polish airspace during an attack on Ukraine. Lithuania also closed its border with Belarus for a whole month in October 2025 (and refused to enter negotiations to reopen it) after meteorological balloons travelled into its airspace from Belarus. The latter responded by accusing Lithuania of “pursuing an anti-Belarus policy”. Latvia, for its part, is struggling to deal with Belarus’s tactic of sending illegal migrants over its border. As of July 21st 2026, the Latvian government had recorded 8,413 instances of migrants attempting to cross into its territory this calendar year, stirring discontent prior to the parliamentary election in October. The country has also uncovered several sabotage operations that have appear to have been carried out by Belarusian and Russian spies.
European leaders heating up their confrontations in such critical areas is further adding to NATO’s headache. Belarus’s degradation as a buffer zone between western Europe and Russia means the potential for these flashpoints to drift further west is growing, not helped by a continually deteriorating diplomatic relationship between the Lukashenko government and the governments of neighbouring EU states. The proximity of Russian missiles and personnel to European territory could compromise NATO warning systems; it also suggests that the Union State is becoming increasingly willing to test European responses to its increasingly integrated deterrent.
Now the EU needs to reconfigure its strategy towards Belarus. The goal should be to ensure that Lukashenko does not limit his room for manoeuvre so much that he has no choice but to descend into a fully armoured satellite state; and that he has no choice but to react to any order Putin gives.
What Europe is doing…
On sanctions
Since Belarus’s flagrantly undemocratic 2020 presidential election, which sparked the country’s largest political crisis since independence, the EU and Belarus have downgraded their diplomatic relations. This is a cycle which Europe and Belarus have found themselves in since at least 2006: repression conducted by the regime triggers sanctions and isolation from Europe, which are followed by limited thaws and diplomatic re-engagement, which are then interrupted by renewed crackdowns—and so on. This time, however, the diplomatic downgrading was mutual: Lukashenko made Poland and Lithuania’s ambassadors leave Minsk in October 2020, and requested the EU ambassador return to Brussels.
In 2021, following Lukashenko’s contested re-election, Europe’s approach became more actively political. Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya lobbied European governments to move beyond broad economic measures, such as existing targeted sanctions, to adopt harsher and broader sectoral sanctions. These were directed at, for example, specific officials, judges, prosecutors and police officers responsible for repression of Belarusian citizens. Belarus, for its part, suspended participation in the Eastern Partnership, an initiative which aims to strengthen political and economic relations between the EU, its member states and the partner countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
Europe’s response remains to take a blanket approach to sanctions towards Belarus. It reinforced its sanctions cycle even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the EU’s approach to Belarus is embedded within its anti-Russia packages. This means that the EU not only targets individuals involved in conflict operations, but also bundles Minsk in together with the trade restrictions, export controls and financial measures which it aims at Moscow. Europeans have fallen into the trap of treating their Belarus policy as an extension of their Russia policy, although some politicians—including French president Emmanuel Macron and, back in 2021, former German chancellor Angela Merkel—have also pursued limited efforts to test whether targeted incentives could shape Minsk’s behaviour.
However, some EU sources say that Minsk is an unwilling negotiating partner. It remains to be seen whether it will be explicit about the desire to reshape engagement with Europe. As of 2026, EU–Belarus relations remain largely frozen. They have seen only minimal diplomatic engagement and sustained sanctions, and only limited, transactional contact has emerged—for example, in negotiations over political prisoners and technical discussions over border management. In its latest sanctions announcement, the European Council extended its sanctions regime against Belarus until 2027.
The EU is thus in a difficult position when it comes to pursuing normalisation with Minsk. Since Europe’s Belarus policy is considerably shaped by Belarus’s neighbours, Lithuania and Poland—and Vilnius is especially reluctant to open any dialogue with Minsk—other member states are less emboldened to force through normalisation policies which are at risk of simply being blocked. What is clear is that, unless Belarus makes clear improvements in its human rights conditions and clearly distances itself from Russia’s war in Ukraine, European policy will remain structured around three aspects: progressive sanctions targeting regime elites and key economic sectors; political non-recognition of the legitimacy of Lukashenko’s rule; and support for Belarusian civil society and exiles.
Another problem for Europe is that continuing to heavily limit industrial trade and the transfer of dual-use goods and military equipment to Belarus could see Lukashenko rely more heavily on Putin’s open markets. But, if Europeans do not pursue sanctions, they indirectly aid Russia: Lukashenko supports Russia’s war against Ukraine by selling military and dual-use goods to Russia, thus helping it circumvent sanctions. This, in turn, creates a cycle of obligation whereby Minsk acquiesces to future military requests from Moscow and Russia further entrenches along Europe’s eastern flank.
The EU approach broadly treats Belarus as a subsidiary of Russia and narrows Europeans’ ability to develop a tailored security policy which directly targets Belarus as a forward-operating base. As things stand, sanctions on the economy and trade are not adequately addressing the developing threat that Belarus poses to European security. And they do not help alleviate the suffering of the ordinary Belarusians at home and in exile.
On the diaspora
Since 2020, Lukashenko has stepped up his repression and exile of Belarusian civil society actors opposed to his regime. Evidence collected by the author through focus groups carried out for ECFR suggests that, for Belarusians, exile is no longer perceived as a temporary or marginal condition. Rather, it has become a structural feature of Lukashenko’s authoritarian governance. Participants consistently described forced migration as a way for the Lukashenko regime to externalise dissent to maintain internal stability. The government pushes out political activists, journalists, researchers and civic organisers to reduce domestic pressure, while the regime projects an external image of control and normalisation.
This means that Belarus has shifted much of its political contestation into European societies. As a result, the EU has faced myriad challenges related to diaspora governance, transnational repression (including surveillance, intimidation, pressure on relatives and legal harassment across borders) and social cohesion. The EU has, particularly after 2020, provided unprecedented political recognition and support to Belarus’s democratic forces, including security guarantees and sustained funding. For Lukashenko, exile therefore functions as a strategic arena.
How Europeans govern this space—through legal regimes, funding structures or protection mechanisms—directly shapes whether repression through exile succeeds as a long-term strategy.
On its foreign policy approach
The EU’s treatment of Belarus as having limited sovereignty over its foreign policy is also at odds with the US approach. Washington’s current relationship with Minsk is based on President Donald Trump recognising Lukashenko as legitimate, and the US agreeing to negotiate sanctions relief in exchange for the release of political prisoners. America still casts Belarus as a strategic adversary; but it nonetheless accepts that the country needs careful handling to safeguard American and NATO interests in Europe. EU member states, which eye Washington’s approaches to Minsk with caution, have ramped up their scepticism further since Lukashenko joined Trump’s questionable “Board of Peace” (despite the Belarusian leader lending credence to Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine).
Overall, America is searching for “visible deals” whereby it can secure humanitarian wins via economic channels. The clearest example of this is its pursuit of calibrated sanctions relief: in 2025, Belarus released 123 political prisoners in return for the US easing sanctions on the Belarusian potash industry. And it could be argued that this has paid some dividends: lifting sanctions on Belarus helps ease the domestic economic pressure on Lukashenko, which leaves him less dependent on support from Russia for trade.
However, the thaw in America’s approach does nothing to address Belarus’s increasingly entrenched role as a Russian military staging post. Indeed, no approach taken by any American president ever has. And while former president Joe Biden synchronised Washington’s policy towards Belarus with that of Brussels, under his successor, Trump, the two approaches are disparate. Of course, the US does not have the major consideration of the security challenges which Belarus poses to Europe’s borders. But this divergence between America’s prioritisation of transactionalism and the EU’s prioritisation of security will only grow in the absence of a coordinated transatlantic framework towards Belarus.
There also exists the possibility that Lukashenko could exploit the gap between America’s leverage-based approach and Europe’s risk-based approach, to play each side against the other. From the US, Lukashenko has already achieved incremental sanctions relief and diplomatic rehabilitation while continuing to align Belarusian security with Russian territorial involvement and pursuing domestic repression. As it stands, all signs point to US bargaining having no impact on Belarus’s strategic alignment or its military cooperation with Russia. Human rights abuses remain.
What Europe can do next
Europe’s continued policy of isolating Belarus and imposing sanctions is turning the country towards Russia as a more attractive option for trade and investment. However, Europeans cannot simply restore diplomatic relations, even to their pre-2020 iteration: they need to hold Lukashenko accountable for his disregard of democratic norms and civilian abuse, and accountable militarily for his assistance to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
This requires developing an alternative approach which goes beyond the current binary choice of engagement or isolation and identifies as a priority exactly the type of Belarus that Europeans want to—or are willing to—work with. Europeans need to examine existing EU and US approaches to Belarus, and discover where Lukashenko could exploit gaps in their divergence—and where room for leverage and leeway exists.
This also requires Europeans to understand the type of pressure that Russia is exerting on Belarus. It is true that Russia continues to provide loans to Belarus, open its market to sanctioned Belarusian goods and give Belarus access to infrastructure through which it can continue exporting goods to Brazil, China and India. But this is illusory: Russia exerting “real” pressure would amount to trade wars, blockades of Belarusian goods, cutting off financial aid and propaganda attacking Lukashenko. Putin has exercised similar measures before, when Moscow was unhappy with Minsk. Now, in 2026, their actions might be well coordinated, but Russia has not established any real economic, financial, military, informational or political coercion against Lukashenko and his government.
Europeans could use this distinction to consider the type of Belarus they want to shape. This should be a Belarus which has secure, meaningful economic alternatives to Russia; a Belarus which sees the geopolitical and economic sense of having a choice of trading partners; a Belarus which has functioning communication channels. Overall, Europeans should expect that their future relationship with Belarus will go beyond mere transactionalism and value the voices of those who Lukashenko continues to silence. Europeans should seek a Belarus which retains a degree of political room for manoeuvre away from Putin’s military and political influence. The following recommendations set out how it can achieve this.
Support eastern border states
The EU has already made progress in strengthening its defence security arrangements for its eastern flank. For example, the 2022 Strategic Compass aimed to prevent crises in states most vulnerable to Russian (or indeed Belarusian) encroachment, and the EU has developed a targeted “Communication on the EU’s Eastern Regions Bordering Russia, Belarus and Ukraine” (or “Strong regions for a safer Europe”) programme. This includes the five priority areas of security and resilience; growth and regional prosperity; building on local strengths; connectivity; and empowering its people. The bloc is also channelling funds into shoring up transit routes and financing, including the customs infrastructure along its eastern border which is a target for Russian and Belarusian interference.
However, the EU should more deeply incorporate its support for states that border Belarus—which are facing hybrid pressure, border incidents and spillover risks—into a defence strategy which builds on the NATO model, particularly in its approach to deconfliction. This would mean better aligning military preparedness with diplomatic signalling and crisis-management channels.
For example, NATO maintains a partnership with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe which promotes risk-reduction frameworks and transparency measures among signatory states—including the Vienna Document, which has been signed by the US, all European nations and Russia. Europeans could establish a similar partnership with selected states which builds on Lukashenko’s willingness—up to now—to notify his Western counterparts about activities such as Zapad military drills, where in some instances he has even invited them as observers.
Strengthen connections inside Belarus
To go one step further, however, Europeans—and especially EU border states—should maintain established working-level diplomatic contacts in Belarus, especially those located at EU member-state embassies in Minsk. These could also be third-party intermediaries or use technical-level communication formats, such as hotlines, to relay information about military movements or developments.
This could also rely on trusting selected contacts inside the country itself: for example, there are several initiatives which hold meetings which bring speakers and thinkers together to share both Western and non-Western perspectives, including from inside Belarus and Russia. By acting as a conduit for open communication—and by remaining open and depoliticised—protecting such channels encourages a more open dialogue. This, in turn, mitigates the risk of miscalculation and helps develop a diplomatic environment in Belarus which is less dependent on the relations created through the Union State. The aim for Europeans should be to build a pro-EU constituency inside Belarus through democratic initiatives—not with the intention of overthrowing the regime tomorrow, but rather to embolden those who see it in their interest for Belarus to have normal working relations with the EU.
Europeans could also continue to financially support or work with Belarus’s small- and medium-sized businesses, both inside and outside the country. Directing economic support and capacity building to enterprises within its borders would strengthen the country’s independent economic capacity by allowing it to gradually decouple from other trade relationships. At the external level, in 2022 the EU and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development pledged €4bn for SMEs which had relocated their businesses abroad. The EU should explore ways in which it can strengthen Belarus’s SMEs inside the country, to help build a constituency which sees partnership with the West, not just Russia, as an advantage.
Opportunities exist for cooperation at the non-profit level, too. While not directly related to European security policy, concerted work by the EU to fund Belarusian NGOs and support apolitical initiatives can help strengthen the country’s national identity and foster conditions for a more fruitful working relationship. Europeans can connect with Belarusian youth and help shape a more democratic future of Belarusian leaders through the funding of communal projects such as Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps for Belarusian students.
The European Commission is funding ArtPower Belarus, in collaboration with the Belarusian Council for Culture and Danish Cultural Institute, from 2022-2028. This demonstrates how outreach in Belarus—with willing internal institutions—can forge a common sense of purpose and prevent the “othering” of either side. The EU should continue to strive for flexible support for civic and political activism, especially at the grassroots level, through institutions such as the European Endowment for Democracy.
Engage with the Belarusian diaspora
Europeans should treat the Belarusian diaspora as a “strategic constituency” and help secure their participation in national and international civil life. For example, despite Belarus’s exit from the Eastern Partnership, the country’s civil society remains active in the initiative. This political knowledge and organisational capacity are vital for educating Europeans and ensuring that Lukashenko’s approach does not condemn the country and its people for any longer than it already has. Indeed, the EU needs to ensure that the Belarusian diaspora remains at the forefront of its policies regarding safe migration and access; it must avoid inadvertently reinforcing the regime’s strategy of repression through exile, lest any temporary or fragmented protections undermine diaspora members’ political and institutional capacity.
The EU should prioritise legal stability and predictability for Belarusian exiles. Where possible, longer-term residence pathways, access to labour markets and recognition of professional qualifications should be expanded and harmonised across member states. Indeed, Europeans need to take transnational repression seriously as a security issue, not only a human rights concern. Surveillance, digital harassment, pressure on family members remaining in Belarus and alleged monitoring activities in EU states challenge European sovereignty and social cohesion. To counter this, the EU should keep pursuing democratic initiatives such as the project “Towards a Local Democracy Agency (LDA) Belarus in Exile”. Its establishment has helped reinforce the notion that exile is not a temporary condition and encourages the need for “sustainable democratic infrastructure” which supports communities in exile. Addressing these practices strengthens both diaspora resilience and internal EU security norms.
In the long term, the EU should introduce more permanent diverse and sustainable funding streams, and move away from reliance on emergency or externally volatile sources. While several exile-based civil society institutions have benefited from multi-year EU funding frameworks—and the EU has committed €200m since 2020 in supporting the Belarusian people—recent reductions in US assistance have exposed structural vulnerabilities. The EU needs to use such funding streams to support independent media, research organisations and civic initiatives in exile, since they are repositories of political memory and organisational capacity.
Europeans should also continue to engage with Belarus’s political opposition on a more formal level, rather than treating it as a protest movement. For example, they generally treat Tsikhanouskaya as the de facto leader of Belarus from her base in Warsaw. This gives Europeans access to a political figure with different views and priorities, and could see the two sides shape future engagement with Belarus via insights from the country’s more civic-minded, democratic channels. The EU should be wary of treating her as the sole alternative to Lukashenko, especially because it is unlikely that Tsikhanouskaya will be installed as his successor—but openness to her influence will bolster trust between Europeans and Belarusian exiled civic society. It will also provide EU member states with an understanding of how the Belarusian state works.
Link diplomacy with action
EU engagement should focus on areas where European interests are directly implicated and where limited leverage still exists. Recent developments, including prisoner releases secured through negotiations with the US and Lukashenko inviting Western officials to observe military drills, suggest that Minsk remains open to selective forms of engagement.
But while targeted incentives can produce limited concessions, the EU should avoid simply replicating the American model. Instead, the bloc must approach conditional engagement as a security instrument rather than simply a human rights policy. Unlike Washington, it has long-term security interests in Belarus—regional stability, border security, migration management, securing its eastern frontier—and needs engagement to be more strategic than transactional.
Europeans should therefore try to couch any diplomatic, economic or symbolic concessions (such as forming high-level diplomatic contacts, limited sanctions relief or participation in dialogue formats) in measurable and verifiable actions. These could include independent verification of the release and treatment of named political prisoners, a sustained halt to politically motivated detentions and access for international humanitarian organisations.
This could build on Lukashenko’s demands for sanctions relief in exchange for Belarus releasing political prisoners and ceasing its aggravation towards Europe’s eastern borders by making such concessions with the conditionality just described. Such engagement with Belarus could help generate durable behavioural change and address underlying sources of regional insecurity.
Untangle Minsk from Moscow
Europeans can also adapt their approach to Minsk based on how America treats it: as a viable, autonomous actor, not an extension of Moscow. The fact that negotiations between Trump and Lukashenko led to the release of prisoners—albeit with hundreds still being held—suggests that the Belarusian leader remains sensitive to economic pressure and to the optics of his own international legitimacy. Trump’s recognition of Lukashenko as Belarus’s legitimate president has only served to reinforce the latter’s willingness to reestablish closer contacts between Minsk and Washington. The US can use this thaw to its advantage to leverage selective sanctions adjustments (for example, easing restrictions on Belarusian potash exports in response to global fertiliser market pressures) and further widen Lukashenko’s limited transactional opening.
Europeans should consider whether closer coordination with Washington, whereby both camps identify common red lines and incentives for better diplomatic ties with Minsk, would deter potential coercion by Lukashenko and prevent him playing the US and Europe against each other. Indeed, the two erstwhile allies finding common ground in their strategy towards Belarus could secure further progress on humanitarian issues and demonstrate to Lukashenko that the US remains key in the protection of Europe’s eastern frontier. It is worth noting that, in this event, the EU should strongly articulate its own priorities—particularly regarding border security and societal agency—and pursue pragmatic coordination at the level of officials, agencies and technical experts.
A practical example of Belarus demonstrating more autonomy is the recent ultimatum proposed to Belarus by Ukraine. Zelensky’s bold statement over the four signal relay stations in Belarus led to their quiet removal (or they were at least turned off), suggesting that Lukashenko can roll back certain decisions—even on military issues. And, even if reports that it was in fact Ukraine which destroyed them are true, Lukashenko has accepted this development without retaliation. His response suggests that he fears the consequences of escalation from Ukraine and other Western allies. But it also supposes that Putin is not yet able to dictate Lukashenko’s every move, not even in zones which Union State forces could view as fundamental to ensuring their continued sovereignty. This episode shows that Lukashenko still retains meaningful room for manoeuvre even in matters of security, and that calibrated pressure from neighbouring states can shape his decisions.
Europeans should exploit this hint of residual agency to discover in which other areas Lukashenko retains an interest in limiting escalation or preserving his room for manoeuvre. They should determine in which other areas calibrated diplomatic and economic pressure could shape Belarusian behaviour and complicate Russian military planning. This could help decouple Belarusian decision-making from Russian power structures and isolate Lukashenko into a more favourable position for further negotiations.
Shaping stabilisation on European terms
By reducing the opportunities for Russian coercion and Belarusian-enabled hybrid pressure on the eastern flank, Europeans can better counter the impact of Russian entrenchment on their neighbour. But Europeans should not frame the recommendations as a part of a rehabilitation for the Belarusian regime. Rather, these policy suggestions should function to safeguard against further deterioration of the stable buffer zone that Belarus once provided for western Europe. Most importantly, they need to address the Belarus that has been created since 2020 and seek to prevent its further entrenchment as a Russian satellite state.
To achieve this, the most important thing Europeans can do is move beyond the false dichotomy between isolation and engagement. Europe can still rebuke Belarus as an externally managed satellite state, for example by disavowing the Lukashenko regime, while providing incentives which help it shape the conditions under which stabilisation unfolds. Europe cannot force rapid change in Minsk’s strategic alignment, but it could help prevent the complete consolidation of a security order in which Europe has no voice.
Europeans should also focus on how their approach to Belarus differs in the short and the long term. In the short term, Europeans need to prioritise preventing Russia’s military configuration in Belarus from becoming permanent and irreversible, and work to limit the extent to which Russia has entrenched itself into Belarusian military institutions. They should aim to separate Belarus from Russia as much as possible by ensuring that Moscow ceases stationing its weapons (conventional or otherwise) on Belarusian territory. At the same time, Europeans need to be aware of continued escalation, such as further military deployments on Belarus’s territory, applying hybrid pressure on member states or facilitating cross-border incidents.
In the long term, Europeans should not aim for Belarus to be aligned with the West; nor should they expect that their intervention will transform Belarus into a democratic state. But the EU should work towards Belarus becoming a country that is sovereign enough to resist becoming a permanent forward base for Russian power, and open enough to maintain a managed relationship with both Europe and Russia. Ideally, Belarus should become sovereign enough that it can make rational decisions—based on the best interests of its country and its people—regarding with which power it wants to be aligned.
As it stands, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine shows no signs of abating. America, for its part, is increasingly reluctant to fund deterrence in EU countries, including those which border Belarus. It is, under Trump, using economic and political posturing to exert pressure on the Lukashenko regime. But Europeans can still find the avenues of cooperation which still exist in the allies’ fractured relationship. Most importantly, the EU needs to grant a degree of agency to its most problematic neighbour.
About the author
Vasil Navumau is a former visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He now works as a researcher at the University of Siegen, where he focuses on civic activism in eastern European countries, particularly Ukraine and Belarus, and its transformation via information and communication technologies.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Pavel Slunkin and the ECFR editorial team (in particular Amy Sandys and Portia Kentish) for their valuable input and suggestions, as well as Nastassia Zenovich for her graphics.
This work was produced as part of the project “Portrait of Exiled Belarusians and the Role of Belarus in Russia’s War on Ukraine”, financed by the European Union under the EU4Belarus – Support to Advanced Learning and Training (SALT II) programme.
This document has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.
France 24 a suivi pendant une nuit des migrants mineurs encore présents à Ceuta. Entre la peur, le froid et l’attente, de jeunes Marocains en quête d'une vie meilleure ont confié les détails poignants d'une histoire qui les a amenés à s'échouer dans l'enclave espagnole.
The increasing intensity of heatwaves is generally attributed to climate change as a result of the global reliance on fossil fuels. While cutting carbon emissions remains the focus of EU climate policy, European governments also need to ensure that their societies can better adapt to extreme weather. Many households have already taken matters into their own hands by turning to portable air conditioners—often Chinese-made—for relief.
And China’s air-conditioner export boom points to a broader challenge: whether confronting extreme weather or fragile economic dependencies, Europeans need to adapt to the consequences while also addressing underlying sources of vulnerability. They should not just accept the status quo; here, some answers may lie in the lessons of China’s own industrial transformation.
China leads on AC
Once again, when Europe looks for a climate solution, China has one ready to ship. China is a powerhouse in technologies used to mitigate climate change, from solar panels to wind turbines; it is also a vital player in helping Europe adapt to warmer temperatures. China produces over 80% of the world’s air conditioners: exports of Chinese AC units to the EU rose by 43% year on year in the first half of 2026. Chinese brands now account for 41% of the European market, up from 27% in 2023.
This success is not only about price and scale. Chinese manufacturers have adapted their products for the European market: for example, Midea’s PortaSplit model is tailored to overcome cumbersome building regulations and high installation costs. Chinese manufacturers were also early adopters of refrigerants less harmful to the climate, ensuring their products meet Europe’s strict environmental rules.
But this is not all. Chinese commentators say that Europe should not only adapt to the hotter climate—it should adapt to the patterns of EU-China trade. They portray the EU’s de-risking and trade-defence measures to tackle economic imbalance with China as economically self-defeating, arguing that Europe lacks confidence in its own industries. European policymakers, they say, are approaching trade as a game of “cold statistics” that will ultimately hurt ordinary consumers.
This is a fatalistic prescription for industrial policy from a country that refuses to accept that its position in global supply chains or its existing competitive advantage is fixed. For decades, Beijing has made industrial upgrading a central policy objective that has reoriented global trade patterns. Europeans are experiencing this firsthand in the AC boom, where China’s position reflects decades of deliberate industrial upgrading. And now Beijing is advising Europe to be content with trade patterns as they stand: strange advice, given that this would not pass the political sniff test in Zhongnanhai.
Since Deng Xiaoping, Chinese leaders have not simply passively adapted to their inherited competitive advantages. Neither do they treat the existing global division of labour as an efficient market outcome to be preserved. This is especially the case when such patterns risk constraining China from developing the sectors it considers strategically important—robotics, clean technology or aviation, for example.
These policies helped Chinese firms “import, digest and absorb” foreign know-how, build scale, and create globally competitive and innovative companies across supply chains. But while the European debate on competitiveness centres on many of the same concepts, European politicians, industries and member states are divided over future industrial policy. One prevailing idea is that Europe should pull a “reverse Deng” by ushering in a new era of industrial policy capable of matching the scale of support and protection that China extended to its domestic industries during the 1990s and 2000s.
Europeans should preserve their ability to source and scale critical technologies through viable alternatives, ensuring they have options should conditions change
But Europe should be cautious in trying to beat China at its own game. It has no centralised state to direct capital and help companies navigate commercial losses in pursuit of their goals. The main lessons from China’s industrial policy lie in the assumptions behind it: Europeans should minimise dependencies that could be strategically constraining; industrial competitiveness is not only about efficient production; Europeans should preserve their ability to source and scale critical technologies through viable alternatives, ensuring they have options should conditions change.
This logic is becoming more relevant as climate shocks intensify and geopolitics grows more volatile.
What Europeans should do
Europeans need to consider what such options would look like in practice. To borrow the question posed by Chinese commentators: what could Europe do right now without Chinese air conditioners?
Cooling is becoming essential infrastructure. Much like heating and water, Europe will need a broader portfolio of solutions to meet demand. AC is part of the answer, alongside low-energy and passive-cooling technologies such as evaporative cooling, reflective roofs and building retrofits, and stronger building standards. But Europe does not need to develop every solution itself; it could build a network of alternative suppliers and production capabilities.
For example, Singapore and the Gulf states are confronting many similar challenges and could be potential partners in deploying more efficient solutions such as district cooling. Europe can build similar partnerships in clean-tech supply chains. South Korea, the second-largest battery manufacturer globally, holds 78% of installed battery capacity in Europe. It can learn from countries such as Japan, which has diversified its rare-earth supply through partnerships with Australia and Malaysia, as well as Vietnam. India doubled solar-cell manufacturing capacity in the first half of 2026 alone, backed by localisation incentives extending to upstream components like ingots and polysilicon.
China will remain part of Europe’s clean-tech supply chains. For Europe, preserving its options does not mean that it needs to produce every critical technology in the clean-tech supply chain. But it should work with external partners to maintain commercially viable alternatives at scale. This can be done through reciprocal access to public procurement markets, targeted incentives and shared product standards.
Where climate and competitiveness collide
Fundamentally, having options means being able to adapt to a problem while tackling its cause. Climate policy offers a useful framework: Europeans have concluded that the impact of heatwaves or floods are not inevitable; they are not relying on AC, seawalls and floodgates as their only response. Instead, they are tackling the cause of climate change by pursuing adaptation while mitigating the underlying problem through cuts in fossil-fuel emissions.
Europe should dare to do the same with its competitiveness and economic dependencies. Rather than simply adapting to change, its governments should invest in Europe’s capacity to innovate, work with partners and build alternatives, with the aim of reducing vulnerabilities and helping preserve its choices.
The summer heat of 2026 is a reminder of the cost of delayed climate action. The same lesson applies to economic security: adapting to today’s dependencies in the name of efficiency will leave Europe with fewer options—and come with a larger bill—tomorrow.
Cover image: picture alliance / NurPhoto | Jonathan Raa
Summary
Europe faces a dual drone threat, and it is escalating. Small drones regularly disrupt airports and hover over Europe’s critical infrastructure; at the eastern flank, larger military drones are crossing ever more often into EU and NATO territory.
EU member states are struggling to mount an effective response to the drones spotted over their critical infrastructure, and those countries farther from the eastern flank tend to focus disproportionately on this side of the threat.
At the flank, efforts to defend against military drone incursions are resulting in a hotch-potch of NATO, EU and national projects. This risks duplicating efforts and stalling progress towards a common operating picture.
National initiatives at the eastern flank seem the most promising, but the EU still has a role to play in funding and incentivising these efforts. The bloc should also help establish the common operating picture and best practice for legal regulations, and work to improve data sharing.
The EU and member states should then apply lessons from the eastern flank to the related but different threat to their critical infrastructure. That way, they can help Europe move closer to a continent-wide response to both sides of this continent-wide problem.
Today’s problem
On August 5th 2026, a small drone armed with explosives was found at Leipzig airport in Germany. The presence of explosive material marks this out from previous incidents at airports, as does the fact that authorities recovered the drone. But Europe’s new normal is for small drones to disrupt its airports and buzz around other critical infrastructure, including French nuclear submarine bases, Belgian nuclear power plants and German liquefied natural gas terminals. Some of these sightings are likely part of Russia’s hybrid war against Europe. Yet the drones are probably flown from inside European countries or from ships in the North and Baltic seas, and definitive attribution to Russia or any other actor remains elusive.
The countries along Europe’s eastern flank have another new normal to contend with. This entails the connected but different threat of military drones crossing into EU and NATO territory from Russia, Belarus and, because of the Russian aggression against it, Ukraine. The most egregious incursion so far took place in September 2025, when around 20 Russian military drones crossed into Poland’s airspace, leading it to invoke Article 4 of NATO’s Washington Treaty. That episode also prompted NATO to launch Operation Eastern Sentry to increase its vigilance at the border.
Unlike the small drones hovering over critical infrastructure, the origin of the military drones crossing into EU and NATO territory is no mystery. The attribution problem here relates to intention, as Russia can claim—sometimes plausibly, sometimes less so—that incursions at the eastern flank are accidents resulting from its war against Ukraine.
The eastern flank
Russia and Belarus are acting antagonistically towards European countries, while Ukraine is a partner nation and an EU candidate country. But incursions of military drones into EU and NATO territory come from all three countries. The term “eastern flank” thus refers to the EU’s 4,000km border with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, as well as the Black Sea coast. The flank extends through nine countries: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
Almost a year on from the Poland incident, the member states that line the eastern flank face military drone incursions with alarming (and increasing) regularity. The end of July, for example, saw Romania shoot down three suspected Russian drones in as many days. This followed another incursion in the country in May when a drone crashed into the roof of a ten-storey building in Galati and exploded, starting a fire in one of the apartments. A 14-year-old and his mother were injured, and 70 residents were evacuated. The Romanian military had tracked the drone and deployed two F-16 fighter jets in response to the threat. But the jets were unable to fire at the target for “operational reasons and [because of] certain legal limitations”.
The incidents in Romania lay bare some of the difficulties for Europe in defending its eastern flank against military drones. Over the past year, NATO’s operation has swiftly been joined by a hotch-potch of national and EU projects, including the bloc’s ambitious and wide-ranging European Drone Defence Initiative. But as things stand, military drones still either fly unhindered into EU and NATO territory or are intercepted through the costliest means possible, namely missiles fired from fighter jets.
Police forces across the continent, meanwhile, are struggling to mount an effective response to the problem of the small drones over their critical infrastructure. And countries farther from the eastern flank tend not to make the link between this largely civil threat and the military threat in the east: when the EU first proposed its initiative, for example, western European states were unconvinced that the bloc should fund drone defences at the eastern flank.
But, as this paper argues, all European countries need to act to secure the eastern flank—both to defend EU and NATO territory against military drones and to inform Europe’s response to small drones flying over its critical infrastructure. National efforts at the flank are promising but will likely prove insufficient. The EU will therefore have to spread the costs of defending the eastern flank, as efforts there contribute to the defence of the entire continent against military drone attacks. That small drones flying over critical infrastructure are a problem everywhere should further incentivise all Europeans to speed up their work on drone defence. And as this paper shows, the EU and member states can apply lessons learned at the eastern flank across Europe and reuse technology battle-tested in the east to protect their critical infrastructure.
The dual threat
The two sides of Europe’s drone threat are different, but they still share important similarities: they involve the same tools—drones of one type or another—and some likely have the same perpetrator—Russia. Mapping just a selection of drone overflights of critical infrastructure and incursions at the eastern flank since August 2024 lays bare the extent of the dual drone threat Europe is facing. And every time an overflight of critical infrastructure or incursion at the eastern flank happens, wherever it comes from, Russia learns something about Europe’s ability to fight (or otherwise) against these systems.
Drones over critical infrastructure
Drones are regularly spotted over critical infrastructure across Europe. The German aviation agency reported 227 drone sightings by pilots in 2025. These numbers have been rising steadily since reporting began in 2020, and the 2026 numbers are well on track to surpass last year’s.[1] Such incidents are largely a civil matter, which means responsibility for recording, identifying and countering them falls on local authorities such as police forces.
The overflights near airports tend to grab the most attention for three reasons. First, drones pose an extreme risk to aircraft and have the potential to cause mass casualty events, with the incident in Leipzig perhaps the closest call so far. German newspaper Die Zeitreports that CCTV footage from the airport shows the drone flying towards an Antonov cargo plane parked on the runway, hitting one of the wings and then falling to the ground. It was later discovered on the tarmac by a bus driver, who alerted security. Had the explosives detonated, the consequences could have been catastrophic. But even without explosives, drones have the potential to cause an air disaster if they collide with a plane, particularly if it is taking off or landing. Second, drones near airports cause significant economic harm: Copenhagen airport had to close for four hours in September 2025, while more than 30 flights were cancelled in Munich following drone sightings in March 2025. Third, airport closures tangibly affect citizens, which is likely why they are such common targets in the first place.
But from a security standpoint, equally concerning are sightings over other critical infrastructure like energy hubs and military installations. Drones can, for instance, help hostile operators gather intelligence about the security arrangements at these installations. They could then use this to enable future sabotage or attacks.
Among these sites, drone activity around military installations could be highly consequential. In early 2025, the German ministry of defence logged six instances of drone overflights at Schwesing airbase, a Bundeswehr base where Ukrainian soldiers were trained to use Patriot air-defence missile systems. It is plausible that the drones carried signals-intelligence equipment that could identify soldiers’ mobile phones. Once it had identified the phones, Russia may have been able to locate them again months later at the Ukrainian front line—and with them, the valuable and increasingly scarce Patriot batteries. This is a direct concern for the Ukrainian defence effort. But it also points to a larger problem for Europe, as it illustrates the type of information Russia could be collecting about European armed forces.
It remains unproven where most of the drones used in overflights come from and who controls them. But it is probable that at least some of the drones flying over critical infrastructure are part of Russia’s hybrid war against Europe. For years, Russia has conducted attacks against military and civil infrastructure as well as government entities. Some attacks take place in the cyber-realm; some involve physical sabotage, like igniting air freight packages in Britain, Germany and Poland, and damaging submarine cables in the Baltic Sea. US intelligence also helped Germany foil a plot to assassinate Armin Papperger, the CEO of arms manufacturer Rheinmetall. Sweden, meanwhile, has faced attacks on its telecommunications network. And disinformation campaigns have targeted the whole of Europe for years, including in the aftermath of drone sightings and disruption.
German chancellor Friedrich Merz has noted that Russian agents may be behind at least some of the overflights; Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen said she could not “rule out in any way that it [was] Russia” behind the airport disruptions in Copenhagen; and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has argued that “the drone incidents across Europe clearly show that Russia is prepared to escalate this war and that it has never been just about Ukraine.” Moreover, in 2025 investigative journalists traced several drone flights back to Russian ships in the North and Baltic seas. Since then, a June 2026 report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies has assessed it is “highly likely” Russia conducted a drone campaign against Europe, largely towards the end of 2025. This research also found that the source of some of these drones may have been Russian shadow fleet vessels.
The types of drones used in these operations have not been definitively identified. However, analyses of images as well as eye-witness accounts point to fixed-wing surveillance drones, as well as quadcopter systems. In at least one incident there were reports of a “mothership” drone, a larger fixed-wing system which carries smaller quadcopter drones. The Leipzig drone has been identified as a quadcopter, roughly the size of a microwave oven.
A camera drone at dusk. [picture alliance / dpa | Matthias Balk]
Quadcopter drones
Quadcopter drones are systems with four rotors, which enable them to take off and land vertically, without any type of runway. They are flown via handheld console or smartphone app. Quadcopters have been the typical model for hobbyist drones as they are easy to use and do not require additional equipment. They are also particularly good at hovering in one place and flying slowly, making them the ideal system to follow and surveil people.
Their main vulnerabilities are endurance and range limitations due to weight: unlike fixed-wing systems which can glide, quadcopters require a continuous power supply to fly, thus draining their batteries quickly. As batteries are also their heaviest part, their range is limited. And heavier systems require more power, which means they need larger and heavier batteries. As more civilian systems have entered the military drone space, quadcopters and other multicopters have multiplied on the battlefield.
Still, definitive proof of the types of drone used in overflights or where they come from will depend on police forces apprehending more of them. The fact that local authorities across Europe have been unable to do this could compound a feeling among the public of failure by the state and leave the information vacuum wide open. The lack of information also means it is impossible to distinguish between real sightings and false alarms—like the 2016 case of a drone sighting from an aeroplane which turned out most likely to have been a plastic bag.
European authorities should also be able to stop drones around their critical infrastructure regardless of who flies them. The context of the Russia-Ukraine war has turned the drone threat into a geopolitical problem, yet non-state actors pose their own threat. Given the availability of drones, drone terrorism is a rising security concern—and far-right groups in the US, for example, are reportedly looking into first-person view drones to target law enforcement. But to date no major terrorist attacks by drone have taken place, only some thwarted plans, which is surprising.
But Europe’s drone problem also has a military side, and the continent seems equally unprepared to counter it efficiently and effectively.
Drones crossing the eastern flank
Alongside dealing with overflights, countries along the eastern flank must contend with military drones threatening EU and NATO territory from the east. Such incursions have taken place regularly since Russia began its war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022 and have intensified since 2025.
Only two weeks after the full-scale invasion, a drone (most likely Ukrainian) flew undetected for hundreds of kilometres over Romania and Hungary, before crashing near Zagreb in Croatia. Russian drones came down in Romania in 2023, and in Poland and Lithuania in 2025.
But the number of incidents has grown significantly in 2026. Russian and (more frequently) Ukrainian drones have veered off course since the start of the year, coming down in Finland, Lithuania, Estonia and elsewhere. In May, people took shelter in Lithuania when a drone alert brought Vilnius to a standstill; and across the border in Latvia, both the defence minister and the prime minister lost their jobs over a political response to drone incursions that was deemed insufficient. When the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting over the Galati incident in June, Romania’s minister for foreign affairs noted that it was just one of more than 40 incursions into the country’s airspace in 2026 alone—a number which has grown significantly since then.
Initially such incidents appeared to be accidents, caused by guidance-systems failures, operating errors and interference by electronic countermeasures. But the September 2025 incident in which around 20 military drones entered Poland from different places raised concerns that some might be deliberate provocations. The increasing intensity since then has done nothing to alleviate those concerns. After one May incursion in Latvia, Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said that Russian electronic warfare systems “deliberately diverted Ukrainian drones from their targets in Russia”—not going quite as far as to argue Russia was deliberately sending drones over NATO and EU territory, though this is a possible conclusion.
The drones that crashed in Poland were later identified as Russian Gerberas, an unarmed variant of what was originally the Iranian Shahed-136 loitering munition.
A Gerbera drone downed in Ukraine similar to those that entered Polish airspace in September 2025. [Wikimedia Commons]
Gerans and Gerberas
Russia manufactures its own version of the Iranian Shaheds in the Geran and Gerbera variants.
These are “kamikaze drones”, or one-way loitering munitions, which explode upon reaching their target. Russia is using the drone in ever greater numbers in Ukraine: since 2025, almost 1000 drones have been used in single-night attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure. The current Geran iteration, the Geran-3, is a turbo-engined variant that can fly up to 800km, but many different variants exist. When employed in large numbers, they can overwhelm Ukrainian defences. The Gerbera is a lesser-known variant which is generally used as a decoy, or to relay signals for other, armed drones. The average price tag of drones like these is around €10,000.
In response to the incursions, Poland scrambled F-16 fighter jets and several military helicopters. Other NATO states provided support with aerial assets, most notably Dutch F-35s. Together they shot down three of the drones, with the rest crashing on Polish territory, luckily not causing any casualties. Debris was later found in an area spanning hundreds of square kilometres.
While NATO has not disclosed the exact costs of the operation, the missiles the jets fired cost between several hundred thousand and a million euros, depending on the type. Flight hours of F-16s and the much more expensive F-35s run into the tens of thousands of euros. So a single, only partly successful, counter-drone operation cost European countries millions, while Russia likely forked out less than €250,000 to prompt that response.
Drones continue to cross into NATO and EU territory. Sometimes they are intercepted, but more often they simply crash into the ground, occasionally even going undetected until they do. Were European countries to face an attack involving even a fraction of the numbers Ukraine regularly faces, the consequences would likely be catastrophic—and preventing them would be prohibitively expensive. Once the war ends, and if and when Ukraine becomes an EU or NATO member, defences along the western Ukrainian border—with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania—can move to Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia. In the meantime however, the EU, NATO and member states need to learn from Ukraine to secure the flank themselves.
Drones are a whole-of-Europe problem, which means all European countries need to invest in counter-drone capabilities. But starting at the eastern flank makes sense. Compared with the overflights of critical infrastructure, the flank is a more defined threat in a geographically bounded area. If the EU and member states can build an effective response here, it could inform efforts across the rest of the continent, both in terms of what can transfer to that different context and what cannot.
What a protected eastern flank looks like
Europe’s eastern flank spans different climate zones and topography, urban and rural territory, and forests and agricultural land. Given this and the drone threat discussed above, drone defences will have to be multi-layered. The eastern flank will need a detector layer with several sensor options, a defensive layer with several different countermeasures (“multi-effector”), and the ability to engage several drones at the same time (“multi-shot”). All these systems would ideally feed their data into a common operating picture to create a comprehensive view of the eastern flank. This element will be crucial to detect attacks that may be happening at the same time but hundreds if not thousands of kilometres apart.
Detector layer
The detector layer will comprise various radar and sensor systems. These will have to be spaced along the eastern flank depending on the topography and the presence of buildings, forests, agriculture and similar criteria. Today the eastern flank is monitored primarily through NATO assets and national systems, which focus more on the threat from missiles and aircraft, rather than smaller and slower drones.
Radars offer long-range coverage but can struggle to track smaller drones. Their sensitivity is improving all the time but birds still cause false positives; and as drones can be made from an array of materials, it is possible to manufacture them with minimal, or unusual, radar signatures. Moreover, traditional active radar systems that send an electromagnetic pulse and capture its return signal can be too easy for adversaries to identify. To overcome this problem, passive radar systems that work by sensing changes in the electromagnetic spectrum as objects move through space are in development.
Electro-optical sensors would complement radar. These can identify drones based on visual and temperature identifiers, which helps operators establish what kind of drone they are dealing with. But they require a clear line of sight, making them less usable in urban or forest environments. Unless they are AI-enabled, electro-optical sensors also require human intervention in real-time to verify whether an image is showing a drone or not, and thus increase staffing requirements. Radio frequency scanning, meanwhile, identifies drones by monitoring common frequency bands, though its accuracy is limited.
Finally, Ukraine has had considerable success with acoustic sensors and has installed thousands across the country. But Ukrainian experiences have also shown that these sensors do not work equally well in all contexts: environments with lots of sounds, like forests, urban areas and agricultural land, can hinder their usefulness.
Defensive layer
As with detection sensors, the defensive layer will have to incorporate several different features, from electronic countermeasures to kinetic solutions.
Electronic countermeasures include spoofing of positioning systems like GPS, and radio frequency jamming that blocks the connection between drone and operator. But these systems can be quite disruptive as they often interfere with all systems in range, making them less useful in urban contexts and near airports. Their effectiveness also often depends on continuous transmission, and they only work on drones that require a connection to the operator. This means they would be ineffective against autonomous, pre-programmed and tethered systems.
Electronic countermeasures have proven highly effective in Ukraine. But Russia has developed several workarounds to Ukraine’s efforts since the start of the war, and vice versa. Today Ukraine’s entire front line is GPS denied, so all drones operating there do so without relying on satellite guidance. Electronic countermeasures are also being circumvented by drones carrying with them up to 40km of fibre-optic cable through which signals are sent. This underlines the need for drone defences at the eastern flank to involve multiple systems.
Radio-frequency-based “cyber takeover” aims to take command of unwelcome drones and safely land them. This is a particularly desirable option as it preserves the drone for analysis. Yet it hinges on the cyber takeover’s ability to work on every drone system, including unknown ones.
Finally, Europe’s eastern flank will require a range of kinetic counter-drone tools—as a last resort for when electronic measures have failed to take down drones. These should include rifle-mounted systems, larger cannon-type systems, guided missiles and drones to fight drones. While generally effective, most kinetic solutions create the danger of collateral damage, as both projectile and drone come crashing down. During the Polish drone incursion in September 2025, the only property damage was caused by a missile that aimed to shoot down the drones.
Ukraine is now using interceptor drones, or drones that take out other drones. These include several systems, like drones with nets or those that ram hostile drones or blow up warheads that come near. (Incidentally, the existence of these systems has led to some confusion over the term “drone wall”, as some reports have suggested that it would be a wall made of drones, a misunderstanding helped along by the fact that a German firm had proposed such a project previously.)
Other countermeasures such as lasers, electromagnetic pulses, strong light and microwave weapons exist, but have not yet matured sufficiently and face similar limitations to those mentioned above, such as the need for line-of-sight or the risk of collateral damage.
Command and control
Crucially, Europe needs a command-and-control node to collect data. For drone defence to be truly integrated and European, the goal should be for this data to feed into a common operating picture that covers the entire flank, from Nuorgam in northern Finland to Burgas in southern Bulgaria. How to respond to a given threat should remain a more local decision, but information-sharing will still be crucial to understand any attack situation. It is equally desirable for European countries to exchange information with NATO’s Integrated Air and Missile Defence. AI and automation may also prove useful, though it will be necessary to heed the lessons of over-reliance on technology and automation, for instance, from the October 7th attacks against Israel.
*
Building a multi-layered system of systems like this on the eastern flank may seem a daunting task, not to mention an expensive one. But as the alternative is for EU and NATO countries to continue spending tens of thousands of euros to shoot down a single drone, or not to detect or shoot it down at all, it is a task in which the EU and all European countries have a stake.
The progress so far
The work has already begun. The European Commission has been most vocal about its plans to build up an ambitious “drone wall”, now rebranded as the European Drone Defence Initiative. NATO launched Operation Eastern Sentry in September 2025 and runs counter-drone trials with companies. At the national level, many border states are pursuing counter-drone efforts of varying ambition and scope. But the eastern flank remains a long way away from the defences described above, and the lack of coordination could undermine both the initiatives’ efficacy and their cost-efficiency.
The EU
By accident of the calendar, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union address took place just a day after the Poland incident in 2025. In her speech, she called for the EU to establish a “drone wall” that would be the “foundation of a credible European defence” and announced the “Eastern Flank Watch” to conduct real-time surveillance of the eastern border.
Von der Leyen offered more details in another speech at the European parliament a few weeks later, noting that using expensive fighter jets to take down cheap, mass-produced drones was “absolutely not sustainable”. Instead, the drone wall should be a system that performs “swift detection, swift interception, and when needed, swift neutralisation”. In October 2025, the informal European Council meeting in Copenhagen endorsed these projects.
Almost a year on, and the European Drone Defence Initiative and Eastern Flank Watch are two of four EU readiness flagship efforts, alongside the European air and space shields. Yet the Drone Defence Initiative and the Eastern Flank Watch are linked in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish between the two. The official commission communication notes, for example, that “anti-drone capabilities will form a core component of the Eastern Flank Watch flagship”. In any case, the projects aim to reach initial capacity by end of this year, and full capacity by end of 2027 and 2028, respectively.
While the intention of the EU’s effort is good, its stated scope sounds overly ambitious. For example, the October 2025 Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030 notes that “the counter-drone network will be adaptable for civ-mil and dual use purposes and help deal with non-defence related threats or other hazards common to every EU border. This includes border protection, weaponisation of migration, protection of critical infrastructure and transnational organised crime.” Von der Leyen expressed similarly wide-ranging aspirations in her speech to parliament, and added guarding the southern flank to the mix as well as countering the Russian shadow fleet—all with the aid of autonomous systems.
Such an all-encompassing proposal appears set for failure, however, and likely only became so inflated in the first place to placate member states away from the eastern flank.
NATO
Today, NATO is the most active body in fighting drone incursions. After Poland invoked Article 4, the alliance launched Operation Eastern Sentry which increased vigilance along the eastern flank. In many instances when drones have been shot down, it was by fighter jets under NATO command.
NATO also plays a useful role in testing counter-drone technologies for member states to procure. The alliance is, for example, running exercises under its “Layered Counter-Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS) Initiative Crucible”. The first of these took place in Romania and focused on how various sensors, effectors and command-and-control systems could operate as a single, layered defence. Over 250 systems were involved, including radars, acoustic and radio-frequency detectors, electronic warfare tools, and kinetic and non-kinetic effectors. The exercise’s scenario involved drone swarms flown over the Black Sea and included representatives from Ukraine who advised on drone tactics and evolving threats.
Still, NATO’s approach remains primarily focused on fighter jets, as they are at the alliance’s disposal. Any longer-term, more cost-effective solution will depend on member state buy-in and member state efforts.
National efforts
For the moment, national-level counter-drone efforts look most promising. Yet the level of development varies significantly along the eastern flank.
Poland’s plans seem most advanced. In January 2026, the Polish government announced the launch of an “anti-drone wall”, reportedly Europe’s largest counter-drone system. The project is estimated at €3.8bn and brings together a consortium of three companies: the state-owned Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa, the Norwegian firm Kongsberg and the Polish company Advanced Protection Systems.
According to Poland’s defence minister, the system will include 18 anti-drone batteries, 52 firing platoons, 18 command platoons, and 703 military trucks and reconnaissance vehicles. The sensor layer will include short- and medium-range radars, passive electronic detection sensors and electro-optical systems. The defensive layer will be based on Kongsberg’s “Protector” family of weapons and include 35mm anti-aircraft guns, capable of firing programmable and high-velocity ammunition; 30mm cannons; 12.7mm multi-barrel heavy machine guns, intended for short-range threats; laser-guided rockets; and interceptor drones. It will also include non-kinetic defences, including electronic warfare capabilities. Deputy defence minister Cezary Tomczyk noted that different systems would be used in different contexts. Referring to the danger from debris, he said: “Some of this is for use only in extreme or war conditions. For example, these multi-barrel machine guns are difficult to use in peacetime, because everything that goes up must go down.”
The Polish initiative’s command-and-control layer integrates fire control, system management and tactical situational awareness, enabling real-time coordination of sensors and effectors. Initial operational capabilities are scheduled for delivery before the end of 2026, with the aim of it being fully operational by the end of 2027. For Poland, the drone wall is only one element of stronger fortifications on its borders with Belarus and the Russian Kaliningrad exclave.
In cooperation with the European Commission, Poland has also announced the creation of a “drone valley”, a hub of drone-related research and testing in the south-east of the country, in Rzeszow—a city that has become the hub for logistical support to Ukraine. Companies are increasingly entering the defence field, so such a hub will host some of the trade fairs and hackathons on counter-drone measures that are becoming more common in Europe.
Further north in the Baltic countries, in February 2025, a consortium of several companies led by the Estonian Defence Industry Cluster initiated the “Baltic drone wall”. The effort includes companies from Poland and Finland, but a request for funding from the EU was rejected in March 2025. Media sources report a multi-layered short-range drone countermeasure system, and efforts to build a common operational picture. But so far, nothing comprehensive has come to pass. Still, in June Estonia began deploying its first fixed drone detection and monitoring systems along its border with Russia. The systems are installed on three sections of the border between the Luhamaa crossing and the tri-border area where Estonia, Latvia, and Russia meet.
Finland’s government announced in April 2026 that it is allocating €44m to the Border Guard to procure drone detection systems, and fixed and mobile counter-drone technologies. It has also been working on drone detection along the border for several months.
As of summer 2026, Romania is experiencing the most frequent incursions. But it only recently began looking into counter-drone systems. The country is now investing heavily in its defences, specifically its aerial defences, which include counter-drone systems. These initiatives are in part financed by EU loans through the re-armament initiative SAFE. The country has also turned to NATO as well as allied countries to help it fight against drone incursions.
In Bulgaria, drone defences have not yet become a priority. The country is, however, looking into the acquisition of counter-drone systems, funded through the EU loan mechanism. Hungary and Slovakia were absent from initial EU drone defence discussions with the other eastern flank states. Slovakia joined later exchanges and has looked into the acquisition of counter-drone systems, but it does not appear to have a more comprehensive counter-drone initiative. In July, Slovakia hosted a NATO test of emerging capabilities which included counter-drone technology, though this was not its main focus.
How to turn the hotch-potch into a whole
It is positive that the EU, NATO and the eastern flank states are working on solutions. But too many initiatives exist, which risks duplicating conceptual work and creating uncertainty for companies that do not know who to work with. The further along individual projects are, the harder it will be to combine them and to facilitate the kind of information exchange needed for a common operating picture. To ensure coherence and interoperability, especially at the data-exchange level, more coordination needs to happen now.
The EU should view this as an opportunity to fulfil its ambitious goal. Although it should drop the aim to create a drone wall that can do just about everything, it can play the coordinating role of bringing the relevant actors together. To do so, the EU should focus on the following five priorities:
Support more ambitious and advanced efforts like the Polish and Baltic state counter-drone initiatives. The EU should, for example, identify where gaps or barriers remain in these efforts and where there may be risk of duplication. This would enable the EU to direct its funding, as well as its regulatory and legal expertise, in ways that accelerates those efforts.
Fund and incentivise counter-drone efforts in eastern states that are not yet pursuing drone defences with the required urgency: Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia, but also Romania, would benefit from European finance and guidance in scaling up the ambition and scope of their defences.
Encourage member states to share best practices, including on regulation and questions of jurisdiction, and establish links between actors and companies already in the field. For example, Germany has reworked its national law to allow the armed forces to intercept drones in extreme cases. In France, a new law allows private companies to ensure protection against drones for civilian infrastructure. There is no reason why every EU member state needs to work out these laws for itself.
Create, in cooperation with NATO, common standards and certifications for quality control and to ensure products from different companies are interoperable. This could take the form of a suitability certificate for companies whose systems have proven their usefulness in exercises.
Establish a joint operating picture by building a command-and-control node in which data from all eastern flank detection stations are collected. This would enable truly European coordination to bring together national efforts and turn a piecemeal effort into a militarily useful whole.
The EU is already organising virtual meetings between the involved states. It should now develop this coordinating role to share legal best practices and develop common rules regarding when and how military drones can be intercepted in a civilian setting. For example, one reason the drone flying into Romanian airspace in May was not intercepted was uncertainty over the legality of interception: “Ukraine is at war, but Romania is at peace”, a military representative said. All eastern flank states share the same situation. And the fact that many of the national efforts are funded with the help of the SAFE defence loan programme boosts the EU’s legitimacy in taking on this role.
And apply the lessons to the rest of Europe
Organisationally, national police forces deal with drones over critical infrastructure. And the EU is well-placed to help spread insights from counter-drone operations at the eastern flank farther west. Technologically, member states’ experiences at the eastern flank also hold several lessons for the rest of the continent: which systems work and in which environments, for example, and how different technologies can work together. Again, the EU can help to compile and share this valuable information, reducing the burden on member states to collect it themselves.
Countering drones flying over critical infrastructure will not require something quite as elaborate and unified as defences at the eastern flank:
Detector layer: Lessons from the eastern flank on how best to install detection layers and which systems work best can inform local authorities’ decisions about what would work near critical infrastructure. Here, the EU and local authorities will need to take different environments into account: critical infrastructure is often in more urban areas, whereas the eastern flank is generally more rural. Yet the flank includes a multitude of different environments, including forests and swamps, and agricultural and some urban areas, which means detection systems will be tested in numerous areas that can still inform how they might perform nearer cities.
Defensive layer: The EU and local authorities should apply a similar principle to the defensive elements. This includes lessons on how to best layer countermeasures, and which systems work best in which environment. Not all systems that operate at the eastern flank will qualify for deployment in civilian contexts: kinetic systems in particular, would only be used in the most extreme cases to protect critical infrastructure from an immediate threat. But insights from electronic countermeasures and cyber takeover may be transferable to a civilian context.
Information exchange: The EU and member states should establish an information exchange on drone incidents near critical infrastructure throughout the union. Countering the threat to critical infrastructure does not require the joint operating picture that military defence does. But collecting and sharing information on drone overflights (as well as other hybrid attacks) over critical infrastructure would allow authorities to detect concerted attack operations.
Today’s solution
Europeans face a dual drone threat over their critical infrastructure and at the eastern flank. They need to address both sides of this problem. While there is no wall to be built and no umbrella to open over the entire continent, insights from one side of the threat can inform the other.
The EU should start by turning its overly ambitious Drone Defence Initiative into something operable. To do so, it should focus on supporting existing national initiatives on the eastern flank and incentivising budding ones. It should also prioritise data-sharing and establishing a joint operating picture, and collecting information on which systems work in what context. The EU should then use this information to help all member states counter drones beyond the eastern flank.
This policy brief focused drone defence—a crucial skill for all European states as drones are without question a threat they will continue to encounter. Yet, with regard to the drone threat from Russia, a better option than to defend against overflights and incursions is to stop them from happening in the first place: no build-up of European defences can replace diplomatic, political and military efforts to end the Russian aggression against Ukraine and Russia’s hybrid attacks against European nations; even if better defences would contribute to deterrence by denial in the meantime.
About the author
Dr Ulrike Franke is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in the Paris office. Her areas of focus include German and European security and defence, the future of warfare, and the impact of new technologies such as drones and AI on geopolitics and warfare.
[1]DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung, Drone Report, July 2026.
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