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Belgium
(3 December 2025) The European Commission was due to make public later today details of its proposal to use the Russian money as collateral to help meet Ukraine’s considerable needs through a 'reparations loan.' Russia has described the scheme as 'theft.' Ukraine’s budget and military needs for 2026 and 2027 are estimated to total around 130 billion euros ($150 billion). The European Union has already poured in over 170 billion euros ($197 billion) since 2022. Belgium rejects the plan, saying it is too risky, it fails to address its concerns. EU leaders are due to discuss the scheme and Ukraine's economic and military needs at a summit in Brussels on December 18. (Source: TRT World - Turkey)
Germany
December 1, 2025 The topic in question: the past and future of German militarism and its meaning for German society. After the Nazi surrender, the Allies destroyed what was left of Germany’s war machine and put its leaders on trial for crimes against humanity. At first, disarmament was imposed on Germany. American and Russian forces seized weapons depots, sealed off factories, and sent trainloads of military equipment out of the country. During the Cold War, countering the Soviet threat required a new West German military, always under Washington’s supervision. After the Cold War, the country’s pacifism became a mark of its faith in a global system of rules and treaties. Germany, the thinking went, could relinquish its own self-defense because brutish competition for continental dominance was over. U.S. power signs in Germany were everywhere - on bases where American troops were deployed and American nuclear weapons were stored, in cafés where Radio Free Europe broadcast American news and music, in schools and hospitals rebuilt under the Marshall Plan. Now Germany is arming itself again. The Bendlerblock once served as the headquarters of the Wehrmacht. Now the complex houses Germany’s defense ministry. This past summer Lieutenant General Freuding was in charge of the ministry’s Ukraine unit. The next chief of the army’s role - inspector of the army - he assumed in October. His grandfather served in both world wars and was imprisoned by Allied forces in 1945. Freuding said that he spent time as a teenager in the 1980s at American bars in Grafenwöhr, a town near a U.S. Army garrison that serves as one of NATO’s most important training bases. American soldiers were a constant presence, and he liked them. But now that order is vanishing, Freuding said. Communication with his counterparts in Washington had been “cut off, really cut off,” he said. „The Trump administration had offered no warning, for instance, about its move to suspend certain weapons shipments to Ukraine”. For information about American policy, Freuding has looked to the German embassy in Washington, where “there is somebody who tries to find somebody in the Pentagon.” ’You not only have an enemy knocking at the door, but you also are in the process of losing a true ally and friend.” Freuding said. ’So Germany has recognized that it needs to rearm’. „As the United States upends the global order it created, Germany may have no other choice’. Pistorius. His father was a pacifist who didn’t allow toy guns in the house. During the Cold War, Pistorius joined the Social Democratic Party, which had made Ostpolitik, aimed at easing relations with Moscow, the center of its foreign policy. After the Iron Curtain fell, Pistorius recalled, Germans thought they were living in a world without threats. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, in 2014, Germany agreed to work toward spending 2 percent of its economic output on defense within a decade. Trump complained in his first term that Germany and other NATO members weren’t paying their share. It was common then for members of the officer corps to purchase their own gear: boots, pants, field jackets, German soldiers told. In 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Germany’s army chief admitted in a public post that the forces under his command were more or less bare. The German government promised a burst of cash for the Bundeswehr that would bring the country in line with NATO targets. On the main stage of the Munich Security Conference last February, the vice president was attacking America’s NATO partners, comparing European democracies to authoritarian regimes and accusing Europe’s leaders of stifling free speech and suppressing support for ’far-right’ parties. The targets of his criticism sat before him: the presidents of the European Commission and the European Council; heads of government from countries including Germany, Sweden, Ireland, and Latvia. A stunned silence fell over the grand hall of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia; it’s not China. What I worry about is the threat from within” he said. Criticism of the host country is considered uncouth. That is unacceptable, German defense minister Pistorius shouted in English from the second row. Vance continued, unfazed. The White House was pressing for a quick settlement to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and signaling that Europe would have to enforce the terms. After the Munich Security Conference, when German officials ’watched in disbelief’ as Trump, in a televised Oval Office meeting, reprimanded Zelensky for refusing peace on terms dictated by the White House, Freuding said that ’he had never sent as many texts in a single night as he did on that occasion, to his friends and colleagues in Ukraine’. For Merz, a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, then the chancellor-in-waiting, ’the confrontation made clear that Europe could no longer rely on the United States’. A senior German official told that Merz is haunted by the question “Will America serve its allies to the dogs?” After the spectacle in the Oval Office, ’he became convinced of the need to amend Germany’s constitution to authorize unlimited government borrowing for defense’. Within a month, the Bundestag approved the reform. Across the Spree river from the Bundestag is an office building occupied by a start-up called Stark, founded in Berlin in 2024, that makes suicide drones. The drone is named Virtus. Guided by artificial intelligence, it circles a target area, identifies an enemy asset, and slams into it with an explosive warhead. The government plans to purchase a large stock of such drones next year. The start-up has begun supplying the German armed forces with weapons for testing and certification. Stark now has outposts in both England and Ukraine. It works only with NATO ’and allied’ militaries. The company’s pitch is that a drone is cheaper, and more cost-effective, than a tank. Powered by a battery, Virtus can fly for about 60 minutes at a cruising speed of 75 miles an hour. It’s easy to order it, easy to produce it, and easy to pay for it, Arlt, a former air-force officer and Social Democratic Party politician who is now a Stark executive, told. Thiel, ’a Vance mentor ’has invested in Stark. Another is the American venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital, whose most outspoken partner, Maguire, is a prominent Trump supporter. The Germans still need to import weapons from abroad. Colonel Krüger at the General Steinhoff Barracks, home to Germany’s air force showed a retired Patriot launcher, made in the United States. The anti-ballistic-missile system is a pillar of NATO air defense. Krüger told about traveling to Tel Aviv to fine-tune a missile-defense system purchased from the Israelis that can intercept and destroy long-range ballistic missiles in space. For decades, Germany has been a top exporter of arms to Israel, its commitment to the security of the Jewish state a legacy of the Holocaust. Arrow 3, the largest defense deal in Israeli history, reverses that logic by making Israel a guarantor of German safety. Last February, then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz heralded the city Görlitz, adjacent to the Polish border. as a hub of rearmament. Production lines once used for double-decker train cars are being altered to make parts for Leopard 2 battle tanks, Puma infantry fighting vehicles, and Boxer armored vehicles. The defense firm KNDS is taking over a factory from the rail company Alstom. The transition will be complete in 2027. By one estimate, Germany had only about 340 tanks by 2021. ’According to Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, effective European deterrence - averting a Russian invasion of the Baltics, for example - would require 1,400 tanks and 2,000 infantry fighting vehicles, more than the combined capabilities of Germany, France, Britain, and Italy’. ’Germany will devote more than 460 billion euros, or $538 billion, to the Bundeswehr over the next four years’. The ’far-right’ Alternative for Germany is the largest opposition bloc in the Bundestag, controlling nearly a quarter of the seats. The AfD’s national co-leader Chrupalla, who represents Görlitz in the Bundestag, is ’scornful’ of the need to deter Russia. In a recent interview with a German broadcaster, he asked, ’Do we really believe that we can defeat the world’s greatest nuclear power and win this war that isn’t even ours?” Weapons made in the city must be used only to defend Germany, not to arm Ukraine, Wippel, the AfD candidate who narrowly lost Görlitz’s mayoral race in 2019, told. Deterrence, he said, can’t mean threatening Russia. Some on the left are also skeptical of rearmament. Environmental and social activists protested in the spring against the planned assembly of weapons in Görlitz. In the decades since World War II, Germans have developed a deep aversion to anything that resembles the Nazi veneration of the soldier. They’ve been outraged by recent scandals that seem to reflect the Third Reich’s lasting imprint on some corners of the military. Today, screening for extremism is a Bundeswehr priority. Röwekamp, who chairs the Bundestag’s defense committee, told that the government needs to convince a generation raised in peacetime ’that they can’t take their safety for granted anymore’. Germany is set to begin compulsory military screening in 2026. Conscription was suspended more than a decade ago. All 18-year-olds will receive a questionnaire assessing their willingness to join the armed forces; men must respond, and women will have the option to do so. Pistorius still hopes that a voluntary model can work. Recruitment advertising is everywhere. Calls to enlist adorn train stations and buses, even fast-food packaging’s texts printed on pizza boxes. NATO targets call for a German fighting force of 260,000, far more than the country’s current roster of about 182,000 active-duty soldiers. The last time Germany had a permanent armed presence in Lithuania was during the Nazi occupation, when the Wehrmacht swept east, invading the Soviet Union. Vilnius, the capital city, once was called the Jerusalem of the North. By the end of the war, the Jewish population of Lithuania had been slaughtered. Now Germans carrying guns are back in Lithuania, a NATO member since 2004. They’re stationed in Vilnius, in the city’s business district. Across the street from the brigade’s headquarters is the old Jewish cemetery. Memories of Soviet terror are fresher, and fears of Russian aggression are ever present. Panzerbrigade 45 is the first permanent foreign deployment of German troops since the Second World War. The German military is more popular in Vilnius than in Görlitz. The German soldiers’ mission is to help fend off a Russian attack. The brigade is projected to number about 5,000 by 2027. A permanent base will lie near the border with Belarus, that serves as a depot for dozens of Moscow’s nuclear weapons. Lithuania is located along the Suwałki Gap, the 60-mile expanse separating the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad from Belarus. That strip of land is NATO’s only overland route connecting Western Europe to the Baltic states. Brigadier General Huber leads the German soldiers in Lithuania. Huber is studying Russia’s tactics in Ukraine, ’anticipating the war of the future.’ In June, members of the Panzerbrigade cleaned up graves at a Jewish cemetery in Merkinė, a Lithuanian town where hundreds of Jews were shot by Nazi forces and local collaborators in 1941. ’The fear of a weak and indecisive Germany is bigger than the fear of a strong Germany,’ Pistorius said. A bronze statue of a naked man with bound wrists is in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock honors the army officers who plotted to kill Hitler, and who were shot in the courtyard on a summer day in 1944. Germany must be the only country in the world, to place a memorial to an attempted coup within its defense ministry. He appreciates the statue as a reminder of the democratic sources of his country’s military power. Pistorius said, no oath is ever taken again on a leader, but on a constitution. But constitutions can be amended, the oaths of soldiers can change as well. An illiberal German government could reverse the country’s international allegiances - the tanks and drones now equipping the Ukrainian resistance instead ’advancing Russian interests’. Militarism can serve illiberal ends anywhere. (Source: The Atlantic - U.S.)
by Stanley-Becker
European Central Bank
(2 December 2025) The European Central Bank has refused to backstop a €140bn payment to Ukraine, dealing a blow to an EU plan to raise a 'reparations loan' backed by frozen Russian assets. The ECB concluded that the European Commission proposal violated its mandate. (Source: Luxembourg Times)
European Commission
04/12/2025 16:50 Mogherini, the former EU foreign policy chief resigns as College of Europe rector, the university specialised in European affairs, amid fraud accusations. (Source: Euronews - based in Lyon, France)
Dec 4, 2025 Viktor Orbán is hardly short of material. ’EEAS-gate’ engulfing the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the College of Europe - two bastions of the EU establishment - comes hot on the heels of Qatargate, Huawei-gate, and the charges filed against Reynders, the former justice commissioner who regularly lectured Hungary on the rule of law. The corruption scandals have touched figures from all three of the mainstream political families: socialists, liberals, and conservatives. At the EEAS, Kallas is trying to steady the institution, promising transparency, including a Q&A with diplomats. “It’s not just dysfunctional but a corrupt organisation,” his senior adviser Orbán – no relation – told in Brussels. He argued the EEAS should be disbanded and reduced to a technocratic body that coordinates foreign policy positions without political influence. At the Commission, however, the crisis comms (read: stonewalling) aren’t going well. Sannino – the DG MENA chief now a suspect – told staff in an internal email that he would step down at the end of the year. It was the first major scalp of the scandal, and an unusual way for a director-general to exit. Sannino was due to retire as planned at the end of December and would take leave until then ’in light of allegations’ from prosecutors, a spokesperson said. Well, which version is true? As for Mogherini crisis meetings will take place today at the College as outrage, speculation, and memes ricochet through the student and alumni community. For Viktor Orbán, it proves everything he’s ever said about Brussels elites who hammer him ’for his Russia-friendly populism’. “These are just signs of Brussels leadership failing,” he said, who will lead the ruling party’s campaign in the run-up to the election next spring, casting the EU establishment firmly as the enemy. Also enjoying the ride: the ’far right’. And questions are mounting over why the Socialists & Democrats let Qatargate MEP back in the EP. They reinstated an Italian PD lawmaker, MEP Moretti they knew was under scrutiny in the Qatargate probe, linked to Panzeri and accused of taking direction from Qatar and Morocco. S&D suspended her in March. Yet she was quietly readmitted in July. MEPs have endorsed Germany’s Ritter to succeed Romania’s Codruța Kövesi at the helm of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office next year, handing him a docket packed with some of Brussels’ most sensitive investigations. (Source: Euractiv - Brussels, Belgium)
Dec 2, 2025 - 17:23 Around 10 officers dressed in civilian clothes entered the European External Action Service (EEAS) headquarters at 7:30 am today. Belgian police arrested the EU’s former top diplomat Mogherini, a socialist who headed the EU’s foreign service between 2014 and 2019, and senior Commission official Sannino, a fellow Italian diplomat who heads the Commission’s directorate general for the Middle East and Northern Africa (DG-MENA), as part a sweeping fraud investigation, renewing fears about corruption in the highest ranks of the European bureaucracy. The ongoing probe involves alleged misuse of EU funds. A third person, who works in the executive education department of the College of Europe, was also detained. All three were questioned on suspicion of procurement fraud, corruption, and criminal conflict of interest. A spokesperson for the EEAS said to requests for comment he ’had no information’. The affair the latest major scandal to hit the EU in the wake of the Huawei and ‘Qatargate‘ investigations. Authorities suspect the College of Europe and its representatives had privileged access to confidential information about a public tender launched by the EEAS to host a new EU diplomatic academy, giving them an unfair advantage over other bidders. Mogherini was rector of the College of Europe and Sannino, who had worked for Mogherini in the Italian foreign ministry, was secretary-general of the EU’s foreign service, a position that may have given him sway over the tender. The tender ended in Mogherini’s favour. In addition to running the College of Europe, she now also oversees the new EU Diplomatic Academy. She began a second five-year term in Bruges this year. During the period under scrutiny, the EEAS was led by another socialist former foreign minister, Spain’s Borrell. (Source: Euractiv - headquarters located in Brussels, Belgium)
Russia
(Thursday), December 4, 2025 11:57 AM ET Putin says there are points he can't agree to in the U.S. proposal to end Ukraine war. He said his five-hour talks Tuesday in the Kremlin with Witkoff and Kushner were necessary and useful, but also difficult work, and some proposals were unacceptable. In Tuesday's talks, the sides "had to go through each point" of the U.S. peace proposal, which is why it took so long. "This was a necessary conversation, a very concrete one," he said, with provisions that Moscow was ready to discuss, while others "we can't agree to." Putin spoke to the India Today TV channel before he landed today in New Delhi for a state visit. (Source: NPR / The Associated Press = U.S.)
Thursday 04 December 2025 11:28 GMT 'If the crazy European Union does, after all, try to steal Russian assets frozen in Belgium under the guise of a so-called ‘reparations loan’, Russia may well view this move as tantamount to a casus belli (an act that justifies war) with all the relevant implications for Brussels and individual EU countries,' Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, wrote on X. Der Leyen said the reparations loan plan had been 'positively received' by US Treasury Secretary Bessent. 'The Commission said the EU could proceed with the scheme if 15 out of 27 member countries, representing at least 65 per cent of the bloc's population, voted in favour'. (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)
Thursday 04 December 2025 09:56 GMT Russian President Putin has declared in an interview published today in India Today that Moscow intends to seize full control of Ukraine's Donbas region through military force, unless Ukrainian troops withdraw. (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)
December 03, 2025 at 12:33 pm Putin accepted some US proposals on Ukraine and rejected others in what was a normal negotiation process, Kremlin spokesperson Peskov said. (Source: Times - South Africa)
11:22 PM CET, December 2, 2025 Today, Putin accused Kyiv’s European allies of sabotaging U.S.-led efforts to end the war in Ukraine. 'They don’t have a peace agenda, they’re on the side of the war,' Putin said of the 'Europeans'. He also reiterated his long-held position that Russia has no plans to attack Europe - a concern regularly voiced by some European countries. But if Europe suddenly wants to wage a war with us and starts it, we are ready right away. There can be no doubt about that, Putin said. (Source: AP - U.S.)
December 2, 2025 4:24 AM Putin claims a significant victory in Ukraine, saying his forces had taken full control of Pokrovsk - Krasnoarmeysk - in the east, a logistics center for supplying the Ukrainian forces - a battlefield development that, if confirmed, would strengthen Russia’s hand in the negotiations. Witkoff and Putin are due to meet at around 5 p.m. local time in Moscow (10 a.m. ET). They will discuss the revised version of Trump’s peace plan following U.S.-Ukraine negotiations on an earlier draft proposal that Kyiv viewed as too strongly weighted in Russia’s favor. (Source: Miami Herald / Newsweek = U.S.)
Ukraine
December 3, 2025, 9:58 AM ' Any potential peace deal to end Russia’s war with Ukraine is likely to feature some form of security guarantee that is designed to ensure foreign assistance for Ukrainians in the event of a renewed Russian attack. But whether any such guarantee would ever be credible is unclear. The United States has categorically refused to deploy troops under any potential scenario. Europeans have likewise made it clear that they are not ready to die for Ukraine either. The original draft of the peace deal placed a permanent veto on Ukraine’s NATO membership on Russia’s behalf, as well as on the deployment of European troops, presumably even as trainers. It even alluded to a rollback of NATO infrastructure, with European fighter jets to be deployed in Poland. All of that is ostensibly in exchange for a vague mention of security guarantees that will be decided at a later stage. Europeans are livid, sidelined and desperate to find a way to influence Trump. But they have also engaged half-heartedly to support Ukraine - sending some weapons, blocking more - since 2022. They have not worded the end game, which is likely to avoid being cornered into matching that ambition with action. France and the U.K. have been taking a lead on deciding future guarantees for Ukraine through what’s called a coalition of the willing - a total of31 nations. Each country is expected to deliver in a specific way to aid Ukraine’s future defense. Europeans are still arguing over whether to use, or not to use, frozen Russian assets - worth more than $300 billion, the largest share of which lies in European countries - to help Ukraine rebuild its cities and strengthen its defense sector. Ukrainians have been in the trenches for nearly four years. ’In just the first seven months of 2025, 110,000 cases of soldiers going absent without leave’ were registered. “Anything that limits the size of armed forces, anything that limits what outside guarantors can do inside Ukraine or on behalf of Ukraine, puts limits on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, especially when no such limits are placed on Russia,” Loss, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations said. ’Increasingly, Ukrainians and their European allies are realizing that their best hope for a lasting peace may be an explicit reliance on the Ukrainian military’. ’Ukraine must turn itself into a militarily strong country like Israel’. French President Macron said soldiers from France, the U.K., and Turkey - which has friendlier ties with Russia - could be sent to Ukraine as part of a so-called reassurance force that’s expected to monitor the peace deal once an agreement is reached. Europeans have no idea what to do if such a force is deployed and a European contingent is attacked by Russia, said an EU official. The first security guarantee for Ukraine will be the strength of its army, the second will be European support, and the third, hopefully, will be an American commitment, a source in the French president’s office said. A militarily strong Ukraine and a strong and large Ukrainian army, however, is also a buffer for Europe. Europeans are increasingly earnest about arranging funding to pay salaries, pensions, and benefits for Ukrainian soldiers, as well as developing mechanisms to jointly produce and procure key equipment such as ammunition, drones, and air defense systems. According to a Ukrainian assessment shared with Europe, the cost of country’s defense needs will range anywhere from $70 to $100 billion for next year. Despite the endless privations of war, the heartache, the pain and loneliness, Ukrainians have no other option but to train, arm, and remain wary. ' (Source: Foreign Policy - U.S.)
by Vohra, a Brussels-based columnist
(Sunday) November 30, 2025, 9:02 AM Russia launched overnight aerial strike with drones on Vyshhorod, Kyiv region. Zelenskyy's top advisers traveled to the United States for talks with the Trump administration over its proposed plan for peace between Russia and Ukraine. They are expected today in Florida, where Secretary of State Rubio, Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Kushner are due to lead the talks. Ukraine is trying to hammer out its best starting position before White House special envoy Witkoff early next week goes to Putin who has already signalled he won’t compromise - saying any talks with Zelenskyy are pointless. Today's talks are the first high-level negotiations between the U.S. and Ukraine since they met in Geneva, Switzerland. Those talks had begun with a 28-point plan proposed by the United States, which through negotiations became a 19-point plan. ’But even that revised plan had not settled what were perhaps the most difficult issues - including whether Ukraine would cede any territory to Russia and whether Ukraine could in the future apply for NATO membership’. The Ukrainian delegation is being led by Umerov, the head of the National Security Council. It follows Zelenskyy’s Chief of Staff Yermak being forced to resign amid a corruption scandal that has rocked the country and „left Zelenskyy without his right-hand man’. We need real, reliable solutions that will help end this war. I thank everyone who is helping, Zelenskyy said. Umerov was questioned in connection with the scandal by investigators, according to Reuters and local media, but he has not been formally accused of wrongdoing. (Source: ABC News – U.S.)
NATO
3 Dec (2025), 22:02 Leading European NATO countries do not want peace in Ukraine; they want war with Russia, Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjártó told reporters. "I can tell you that NATO member countries belonging to the European mainstream do not want peace. The mainstream does not want peace, it wants war against Russia and therefore seeks to undermine peace efforts [to settle the conflict in Ukraine],' the top diplomat said at a press conference following a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels. (Source: TASS - Russia)
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