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Germany
May 28, 2025 Military-industrial cooperation. Germany and Ukraine 'sign €5B deal on long-range weapons cooperation with Berlin committing to co-develop weapons systems and finance critical battlefield infrastructure. 'Our defense ministers will sign a letter of intent today on procuring long-range weapon systems produced in Ukraine', Chancellor Friedrich Merz said during a joint press conference with Zelenskyy in Berlin. ’There will be no restrictions on range.’ The package covers new contracts for air defense systems, munitions, and logistical support, including maintenance infrastructure and satellite communications. ’The Taurus system, with a range of over 500 kilometers, would enable high-precision strikes deep behind Russian lines’. Germany also confirmed it will finance a significant portion of Starlink satellite coverage in Ukraine. Merz refused to comment on specific weapons systems. (Source: Politico - headquarters U.S., owned by a German company)
Luxembourg
(28 May 2025) Luxembourg has joined 19 other EU countries led by the Netherlands in calling on the European Commission to expeditiously take action against Hungary over a draft law which would ban the country’s annual pride if the Hungarian authorities do not reverse the measures themselves. They published a joint declaration yesterday. „A number of measures adopted by the Hungarian Parliament" in recent years are targeting the LGBTQ+ community, in particular a law passed in mid-March banning certain events, such as the Pride March. „Constitutional changes” are infringing on the fundamental rights of LGBTIQ+ people, the declaration states. The European Commission has remained largely silent. The European Commission’s Presidency Office had even discreetly recommended that European commissioners should not take part in the Pride March, in order to avoid provoking Viktor Orbán. The organisers have said that they will hold the event regardless, and many MEPs have stated that they will attend. Luxembourg MEP Angel (LSAP) is one of the European parliamentarians who will be attending the Pride March on 28 June. Angel is openly gay. Der Leyen was elected on the promise of a „pro-European, pro-democracy coalition’, so now is the time to prove where she stands, Luxembourg MEP Angel said. Also read: Luxembourg continues decline in LGBTQ+ rights ranking. Together with his Italian MEP Zan (S&D), Angel has initiated a parliamentary petition, published yesterday and addressed to the president of the European Commission, der Leyen, expressing deep concern at the decision to advise European commissioners not to attend the next Pride in Budapest. A first step could be to send a representative of the European Commission to the Budapest Pride event to show that the European Union 'is defending its values', said Angel. The ideal candidate, according to Angel, is the EU’s Equality Commissioner Lahbib, whose mandate includes proposing a renewed strategy for equal treatment of LGBTQ+ people. The former Commissioner for Equality, Dalli, attended such events. On 28 June in Budapest, delegations from ’the progressive forces’ in the European Parliament are expected to attend. (Source: Luxembourg Times / Virgule = Luxembourg)
Poland
28 May 2025 In April, five members of the US federal judiciary committee wrote to European Commission President der Leyen regarding rule-of-law concerns in Poland. They also targeted what they saw as double standards in the way EU funds were blocked under the PiS government and then promptly released when Tusk’s administration came into office. The chairman of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Mast, has demanded that European Commission President der Leyen clarify concerns over the financing of the Polish election campaign of Trzaskowski, the candidate of the ruling centre-left coalition government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk on June 1, in the second round vote between Trzaskowski and opposition Conservatives (PiS) hopeful Nawrocki. Mast’s letter of May 27 was critical of the positions taken by the European Commission thus far on the situation in Poland. Online accounts have emerged attacking right-wing presidential candidates Nawrocki and the Confederation party’s Mentzen, placed third in the first round, while simultaneously posting content supporting Trzaskowski. These accounts were reported to have spent sums in excess of €200,000 and, 'according to published reports in the Polish media', the funding came from sources in Hungary and Belgium. Mast has written on behalf of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee to der Leyen to address funding concerns, stating that such activities taking place should be met by a reaction of the European Commission if it wishes to avoid being accused of applying double standards with regard to the observance of the rule of law in Poland. Mast’s letter marked further criticism from the US Republicans over Poland. Despite the vocal criticism of the European Commission and the decision to block [billions] of EU funds for Poland for alleged rule-of-law violations under the previous PiS government, it has remained silent with regard to the actions of the present government despite clear evidence that it is not transgressing in this area, Mast wrote. The letter also asked “what role was played by the company Estratos and its shareholders linked to the Democratic Party’ and whether the financing of such activities was in any way connected with funds associated with the US philanthropist and billionaire Soros. It also queried what the European Commission was planning to do about alleged evidence of foreign funding in Poland’s election campaign given it had taken a determined stance in supporting legal action over alleged foreign interference in the Romanian presidential elections last year. Also yesterday, US president Trump’s security secretary Noem attended a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) in Rzeszów, Poland and endorsed Nawrocki ahead of the decisive second-round vote. She pledged to Poles that if they elected a leader who will work with President Trump, the Polish people will have a strong ally. ’You will continue to have a US military presence here,’ Noem added. Earlier in May, Nawrocki was invited for talks with Washington officials, including a meeting with the US President in the Oval Office. Trump has long enjoyed close relations with the PiS and Poland’s current PiS-aligned President Duda. (Source: Brussels Signal - Belgium)
Romania
28 May 2025 NATO-standard munitions co-production project - the United States and Romania can enhance defense production capabilities via potential co-production of both NATO-standard 155-millimeter artillery shells and 120-millimeter NATO tank ammunition. 'These projects are supported by a $920M foreign military financing loan from the U.S. Department of State announced in September 2024. (Source: U.S. Embeassy in Romania)
Russia
28th of May 2025 The major international treaties that are supposed to limit the number of certain missile types and nuclear warheads have fallen apart and the built-in mechanisms for conducting inspections at the opponent’s nuclear facilities have been put on hold. Officially, there has not been a single on-site inspection between the United States and Russia since April 2020. Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces form the backbone of the country’s three-legged nuclear deterrent. In addition to the heavy nuclear bombs that the Missile Forces can launch from buried silos or vehicles, Russia also has air- and sea-based nuclear weapons that can be launched from special bomber aircraft or submarines. Over 50,000 soldiers are part of the Missile Forces, which are divided into three armies, 12 divisions and more than 40 regiments. According to experts, the close to 900 operational nuclear warheads at the missile bases, and the intercontinental missiles that can launch them, ’have more than anything a psychological significance. These are weapons that can theoretically be used. Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces see themselves as a last resort, a purely destructive force that only comes into play when all hope is lost. Their official motto is as poetic as it is terrifying: ’After us – silence.’ ’Danwatch, in collaboration with German Der Spiegel, can for the first time reveal previously unknown details about the enormous upgrade of the military infrastructure at Russia’s most protected facilities’. Danwatch and Der Spiegel has gained access to hundreds of highly detailed blueprints showing how Russia is carrying out an enormous modernization of some of the world’s most sensitive nuclear weapons facilities. „Together we have analyzed more than two million documents relating to Russian military procurement that Danwatch systematically retrieved from a public database over a period of many months. The Russian authorities have gradually restricted access to the database, but we managed to circumvent these restrictions by using a veriety of digital techniques, including a network of servers located in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus’. “Documents like these for extremely sensitive defense projects should never have been publicly available in any way, shape, or form”. ’Danwatch and Der Spiegel have reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for a comment on whether they regard it as a security breach that blueprints have been released to a public database. We have also asked whether they assess that the documents would reveal the bases’ vulnerabilities. They have not responded to our inquiries. (Source: Danwatch - Denmark)
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