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Baltic Sea
September 28, 2025 Nato said yesterday it is upgrading its mission in the Baltic Sea, 'in response to drone incursions in Denmark'. The alliance said the new assets included intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms and at least one air-defence frigate. The new assets will enhance Nato's Baltic Sentry mission, launched in January. Nato countries have deployed frigates, patrol aircraft and naval drones as part of the mission, to help protect critical infrastructure. The alliance also launched the Eastern Sentry mission this month, to bolster the defence of Europe's eastern flank. (Source: Asia One - Singapore / Reuters - United Kingdom)
France
28.09.2025 In a statement on the Dubai-headquartered company, Telegram founder Durov today accused France of asking him to remove some Moldovan channels from the social media platform ahead of the country’s presidential election last year. Durov claimed that the French intelligence services asked him through an intermediary to help the Moldovan government to censor certain Telegram channels before the vote on Oct. 20, in which incumbent President Sandu secured a second term in office following a runoff held on Nov. 3. ’The intermediary then informed me that, in exchange for this cooperation, French intelligence would say good things about me to the judge who had ordered my arrest in August last year,’ Durov said. If the agency did not, and merely claimed to have done so, ’then it was exploiting my legal situation in France to influence political developments in Eastern Europe - a pattern we have also observed in Romania,’ he further said. Durov also said that Telegram later received a second list of Moldovan channels, which he noted were “legitimate and fully compliant with our rules.” ’Their only commonality was that they voiced political positions disliked by the French and Moldovan governments. We refused to act on this request,” he went on to say, adding that Telegram is committed to freedom of speech and will not remove content for political reasons. After Romania, Moldova. @durov likes making accusations while elections are ongoing, the French Foreign Ministry, wrote on the US social media company X, in reference to similar accusations he made during Romania’s presidential election in May. Durov was arrested in a Paris airport in August 2024 and later charged on multiple counts, including complicity in the spread of child abuse images and in drug trafficking. Durov denied any guilt and was released on the day of his arrest on €5 million (about $5.4 million) bail under judicial supervision. Moldova is holding parliamentary election. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)
Poland
(30 September 2025) A Ukrainian national has been arrested by police in Pruszkow, near Warsaw, Poland, on suspicion of involvement in a series of explosions that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea. The man, identified as a trained diver called Z, was detained under a European arrest warrant in the early hours of today, a German prosecutors said. The attack on Nord Stream infrastructure concerns one of the pipeline's owners, Gazprom, which directly finances the military operations in Ukraine, the man's lawyer, Paprocki, told Reuters. 'His extradition to Germany would be challenged as the war in Ukraine made the warrant inadmissible'. (Source: BBC - United Kingdom)
Russia
09/29/2025, 11.05 The third International Buddhist Forum on the theme of ‘The Buddhist World in the New Millennium’ was held in Elista, capital of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, the only predominantly Buddhist region in the European part of Russia, near the Urals, welcoming guests from across the Russian Federation and 35 countries around the world. The visitors were able to immerse themselves in the history of Kalmykia and other peoples linked to Tibetan Buddhism in various regions of Russia, as well as in the principles and symbolism of Buddhist philosophy, with the participation of impressive actors and readers. Official delegations from China, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Myanmar, Korea, Belarus, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Brazil, Bhutan and Spain were present. According to the president of the Central Administration of Buddhists in Russia, Lama Kirishov (Gesha Jonten), Buddhism is professed today by three of the eight billion inhabitants of the earth (although the most authoritative statistics on world religions speak of 500 million), and countries with a predominantly Buddhist presence demonstrate greater economic growth than many others. The majority of Buddhist countries have refused to join the sanctions against Russia, and commercial and economic cooperation between the Buddhist world and Russia is constantly growing. The lama also praised the spirit of sacrifice of the Buddhist soldiers participating in the special military operation in Ukraine. (Source: PIME Asia News - Italy)
Serbia
29/09/2025 In late April, the Holocaust Memorial, three synagogues and a restaurant in Paris were defaced with green paint. Nine heads of pigs, considered impure in Islam, were found in early September outside mosques in Paris and the surrounding region, sparking outrage and alarm over rising-anti-Muslim hatred. Three Serbs have since been charged and jailed in France as part of the investigation. Serbian police have arrested 11 people today, accused of inciting hatred in France and Germany, including by placing pigs' heads and throwing paint. The arrests took place in Serbia's capital, Belgrade, and in Velika Plana. The group of Serbian nationals were allegedly trained by another suspect, 'acting under the instructions of a foreign intelligence service,' who is currently on the run, the interior ministry said. (Source: France 24 "with AFP" = France)
Ukraine
28 September 2025 Russia carried out a 12-hour air assault on Ukraine overnight from Saturday to today, launching nearly 500 drones and over 40 missiles across multiple regions. The main targets were Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia, with extensive damage to residential areas and critical infrastructure. In Kyiv, 20 separate locations across six city districts were hit. The strikes also hit Sumy, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Khmelnytskyi, and Chernihiv regions. Russia claimed the targets were military facilities, including airbases and defence industry locations. The Ukrainian air force said the attack involved Tu-95 bombers from the Murmansk and Engels air bases and MiG-31K aircraft. (Source: Helsinki Times - Finland)
Europe
Monday 29 September 2025 Which countries are the key military backers behind war in Europe? The Trump administration has been highly resistant to sending the levels of weaponry provided to Ukraine during the Biden era. Zelensky asked the US to sell ’highly coveted weapons, long-range Tomahawk missiles, with a range of 2,500km, to European nations’ that would send them to Ukraine, adding Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine’s artillery would put Russia’s capital within Kyiv’s range. That could be seen by Putin as an escalation in the war. President Trump ’appears to be more accepting’ of Zelensky’s requests. The US leader suggested in June that the US could send more Patriot missile systems to Ukraine. “They do want to have the anti-missile missiles, OK, as they call them, the Patriots,” the US president said at the recent Nato summit in the Netherlands. “And we’re going to see if we can make some available. We need them, too. We’re supplying them to Israel, and they’re very effective, 100 per cent effective. Hard to believe how effective. They do want that more than any other thing.” Who is arming Ukraine? ’EU member states have provided more than 67 billion euros of military aid to Ukraine’ between January 2022 and June 2025. ’Europe, including the UK, has totalled €167.4bn’. A small snapshot of the vast array of different weapons, both defensive and offensive, provided to Ukraine by countries across Europe: hundreds of tanks from Poland and Germany including the German Leopard 2, nearly 300 Dutch infantry vehicles, 76 howitzers from Italy, 16 Czech air defence systems. Germany has provided military aid at €16.5bn. The UK has committed up to £21.8bn, including £5.3bn on non-military and £13,8bn on military support - dozens of howitzers, a number of Storm Shadow missiles, six multiple launch rocket systems and 13 Raven air defence systems. Washington has provided more than €64 bn (£55bn) in military support. Since November, the US-made ATACMS missiles have been used by Ukraine in crucial strikes on targets deep inside Russia, with a range of around 300km. F-16 fighter jets built in the US, hundreds of M777 howitzers, dozens of HIMARS multiple rocket launchers and Abrams tanks, and more than 300 infantry vehicles are among the weapons sent to Ukraine by the US. Kyiv is persistently pushed for long-range and more powerful weapons - Tomahawks - to allow it to strike targets deeper inside Russia. US aid has totalled €114.6bn of financial, humanitarian and military donations to Ukraine since the war began, as of June this year, the Kiel Institute said. Who is arming Russia? The exact picture is a little more blurred. Iran has provided crucial support for Russia’s air capabilities, providing it with thousands of Shahed drones. Tehran’s importance as a supplier has declined as Russia has localised production of the drones. After signing a treaty which includes a mutual defence pact, Kim is said to have sent around 12,000 North Korean troops, who assisted Russian forces in driving the Ukrainian military out of the Russia’s Kursk region. Russia and China have built an increasingly close bond since the war began. Presidents Xi and Putin signed a no-limits partnership and have repeatedly hailed each other as dear friends. Western countries claim China is militarily supporting the war effort in Ukraine. Beijing has been sending so-called dual-use technology, which can be used for both civilian and military purposes, leaving plausible deniability for China to avoid Western sanctions. Russian imports of drones and ceramics – which is a component used in body armour – has significantly increased since the war began. The Wall Street Journal reports that dual-use navigation equipment, jamming technology, and fighter jet parts were sold to Russian state-owned companies. In April, Zelensky said that gunpowder and artillery had been supplied by Chinese enterprises. On Thursday, China’s foreign ministry denied it was supplying weapons to parties in the Ukraine war. (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)
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