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  • Scoop! Why Ben from Ben & Jerry’s blames America for war in Ukraine

    Scoop! Why Ben from Ben & Jerry’s blames America for war in Ukraine

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    Ben Cohen wasn’t talking about ice cream. He was talking about American militarism.

    At 72, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is bald and bespectacled. He looks fit, cherubic even, but when he got going on what it was like to grow up during the Cold War, his tone became less playful and more assertive — almost defiant. 

    “I had this image of these two countries facing each other, and each one had this huge pile of shiny, state-of-the-art weapons in front of them,” he said, his arms waving above his head. “And behind them are the people in their countries that are suffering from lack of health care, not enough to eat, not enough housing.”

    “It’s just crazy,” he added. “Approaching relationships with other countries based on threats of annihilating them, it’s just a pretty stupid way to go.”

    It wasn’t a new subject for the famously socially conscious ice cream mogul; Cohen has been leading a crusade against what he sees as Washington’s bellicosity for decades. It’s just that with the war in Ukraine, his position has taken on a new — morally questionable — relevance.

    Cohen, who no longer sits on the board of Ben & Jerry’s, isn’t just one of the most successful marketers of the last century. He’s a leading figure in a small but vocal part of the American left that has stood steadfast in opposition to the United States’ involvement in the war in Ukraine.

    When Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tanks rolling on Kyiv, Cohen didn’t focus his ire on the Kremlin; a group he funds published a full-page ad in the New York Times blaming the act of aggression on “deliberate provocations” by the U.S. and NATO.

    Following months of Russian missile strikes on residential apartment blocks, and after evidence of street executions by Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, he funded a 2022 journalism prize that praised its winner for reporting on “Washington’s true objectives in the Ukraine war, such as urging regime change in Russia.”

    In May, Cohen tweeted approvingly of an op-ed by the academic Jeffrey Sachs that argued “the war in Ukraine was provoked” and called for “negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.”

    Ben Cohen outside the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington this month, before getting arrested | Win McNamee/Getty Images

    I set up a video call with Cohen not because I can’t sympathize with his mistrust of U.S. adventurism, nor because I couldn’t follow the argument that U.S. foreign policy spurred Russia to attack. I called to try to understand how he has maintained his stance even as the Kremlin abducts children, tortures and kills Ukrainians and sends thousands of Russian troops to their deaths in human wave attacks.

    It’s one thing to warn of NATO expansion in peacetime, or to call for a negotiated settlement that leaves Ukrainian citizens safe from further aggression. It’s another to ignore one party’s atrocities and agitate for an outcome that would almost certainly leave millions of people at the mercy of a regime that has demonstrated callousness and cruelty.

    Given the scale of Russia’s brutality in Ukraine, I wanted to understand: How does one justify focusing one’s energies on stopping the efforts to bring it to a halt?

    Masters of war

    Cohen’s political awakening took place against the background of the Cold War and the political upheaval caused by Washington’s involvement in Vietnam.

    He was 11 during the Cuban missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Part of the reason he enrolled in college was to avoid being drafted and sent to the jungle to fight the Viet Cong.

    When I asked how he first became interested in politics, he cited Bob Dylan’s 1963 protest song “Masters of War,” which takes aim at the political leaders and weapons makers who benefit from conflicts and culminates with the singer standing over their graves until he’s sure they’re dead.

    “That was kind of a revelation to me,” Cohen said. Behind him, the sun filtered past a cardboard Ben & Jerry’s sign propped against a window. “I hadn’t understood that, you know, there were these masters of war — essentially I guess what we would now call the military-industrial-congressional complex — that profit from war.”

    Cohen saw people from his high school get drafted and never come back from a war that “wasn’t justified.” As he graduated in the summer of 1969, around half a million U.S. troops were stationed in ‘Nam. Later that year, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched on Washington, D.C. to demand peace.

    It was only much later, while doing “a lot of research” into the “tradeoffs between military spending and spending for human needs,” that Cohen came across a 1953 speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower, which foreshadowed the U.S. president’s 1961 farewell address in which he coined the phrase “military-industrial complex.”

    A Republican president who had served as the supreme allied commander in Europe during World War II, Eisenhower warned against tumbling into an arms race. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he said.

    “That is a foundational thing for me, very inspiring for me, and captures the essence of what I believe,” Cohen said. 

    “If we weren’t wasting all of our money on preparing to kill people, we would actually be able to save and help a lot of people,” he added with a chuckle. “That goes for how we approach the world internationally as well,” he added — including the war in Ukraine. 

    Pierre Ferrari, a former Ben & Jerry’s board member who was with the company from 1997 to 2020, said Cohen’s view of the world was shaped by the events of his youth.

    “We were brought up at a time when the military, the government was just completely out of control,” he said. “We’re both children of the sixties, the Vietnam War and the new futility of war and the way war is used by the military-industrial complex and politics,” Ferrari added, pointing to the peace symbol he wore around his neck.

    Jeff Furman, who has known Cohen for nearly 50 years and once served as Ben & Jerry’s in-house legal counsel, acknowledged that his generation’s views on Ukraine were informed by America’s misadventures in Vietnam.

    “There’s a history of why this war is happening that’s a little bit more complex than who Putin is,” he said. “When you’ve been misled so many times in the past, you have to take this into consideration when you think about it, and really, really try to know what’s happening.”

    Ice-cold activism

    Politics has been a part of the Ben & Jerry’s brand since Cohen and his partner Jerry Greenfield started selling ice cream out of an abandoned gas station in 1978.

    The company’s look and ethos were pure 1960s; they named one of their early flavors, Cherry Garcia, after the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, whose psychedelic riffs formed the soundtrack of the hippy counterculture.

    Social justice was one of the duo’s secret ingredients. For the first-year anniversary of the gas station shop’s opening, they gave away free ice cream for a day. On the flyers printed to promote the event was a quote from Cohen: “Business has a responsibility to give back to the community from which it draws its support.”

    In 1985, after the company went public, they used some of the shares to endow a foundation working for progressive social change and committed Ben & Jerry’s to spend 7.5 percent of its pretax profits on philanthropy.

    In the early years, the company instituted a five-to-one cap on the ratio between the salary of the highest-earning executive and its lowest-paid worker, dropping it only when Cohen was about to step down as CEO in the mid-1990s and they were struggling to find a successor willing to work for what they were offering.

    Most companies try to separate politics and business. Cohen and Greenfield cheerfully mixed them up and served them in a tub of creamy deliciousness (the company’s rich, fatty flavors were in part driven by Cohen’s sinus problems, which dulls his taste).

    In 1988, Cohen founded 1% for Peace, a nonprofit organization seeking to “redirect one percent of the national defense budget to fund peace-promoting activities and projects.” The project was funded in part through sales of a vanilla and dark-chocolate popsicle they called the Peace Pop.

    It was around this time that Cohen opened Ben & Jerry’s in Russia, as “an effort to build a bridge between Communism and capitalism with locally produced Cherry Garcia,” according to a write-up in the New York Times. After years of planning, the outlet opened in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk in 1992. (The company shut the shop down five years later to prioritize growth in the U.S., and also because of the involvement of local mobsters, said Furman, who was involved in the project.)

    Cohen, with co-founder Jerry Greenfield, actress Jane Fonda and other climate activists, in front of the Capitol in 2019 | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

    Even after Ben & Jerry’s was bought by Unilever in 2000, there were few progressive causes the company wasn’t eager to wade into with a campaign or a fancy new flavor.

    The ice cream maker has marketed “Rainforest Crunch” in defense of the Amazon forest, sold “Empower Mint” to combat voter suppression, promoted “Pecan Resist” in opposition to then-U.S. President Donald Trump and launched “Change the Whirled” in partnership with Colin Kaepernick, the American football quarterback whose sports career ended after he started taking a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality.

    More recently, however, the relationship between Cohen, Greenfield and Unilever has been rockier. In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop doing business in the Palestinian territories. Cohen and Greenfield, who are Jewish, defended the company’s decision in an op-ed in the New York Times.

    After the move sparked political backlash, Unilever transferred its license to a local producer, only to be sued by Ben & Jerry’s. In December 2022, Unilever announced in a one-sentence statement that its litigation with its subsidiary “has been resolved.” Ben & Jerry’s ice cream continues to be sold throughout Israel and the West Bank, according to a Unilever spokesperson.

    Cohen himself is no stranger to activism: Earlier this month, he was arrested and detained for a few hours for taking part in a sit-in in front of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was protesting the prosecution of the activist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

    Unilever declined to comment on Cohen’s views. “Ben Cohen no longer has an operational role in Ben & Jerry’s, and his comments are made in a personal capacity,” a spokesperson said.

    Ben & Jerry’s did not respond to a request for comment.

    The world according to Ben

    For Cohen, the war in Ukraine wasn’t just a tragedy. It was, in a sense, a vindication. In 1998, a group he created called Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities published a full-page ad in the New York Times titled “Hey, let’s scare the Russians.”

    The target of the ad was a proposal to expand NATO “toward Russia’s very borders,” with the inclusion of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Doing so, the ad asserted, would provide Russians with “the same feeling of peace and security Americans would have if Russia were in a military alliance with Canada and Mexico, armed to the teeth.”

    Cohen is by no means alone in this view of recent history. The American scholar John Mearsheimer, a prominent expert in international relations, has argued that the “trouble over Ukraine” started after the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest when the alliance opened the door to membership for Ukraine and Georgia.

    In the U.S., this point has been echoed by progressive outlets and thinkers, such as Jeffrey Sachs, the linguist Noam Chomsky, or most recently by the American philosopher, activist and longest-of-long-shots, third-party presidential candidate Cornel West.

    “We told them after they disbanded the Warsaw Pact that we could not expand NATO, not one inch. And we did that, we lied,” said Dennis Fritz, a retired U.S. Air Force official and the head of the Eisenhower Media Network — which describes itself as a group of “National Security Veteran experts, who’ve been there, done that and have an independent, alternative story to tell.” 

    It was Fritz’s organization that argued in a May 2023 ad in the New York Times that although the “immediate cause” of the “disastrous” war in Ukraine was Russia’s invasion, “the plans and actions to expand NATO to Russia’s borders served to provoke Russian fears.” 

    The ad noted that American foreign policy heavyweights, including Robert Gates and Henry Kissinger, had warned of the dangers of NATO expansion. “Why did the U.S. persist in expanding NATO despite such warnings?” it asked. “Profit from weapons sales was a major factor.”

    Cohen and Greenfield announce a new flavor, Justice Remix’d, in 2019 | Win McNamee/Getty Images

    When I spoke to Cohen, the group’s primary donor, according to Fritz, he echoed the ad’s key points, saying U.S. arms manufacturers saw NATO’s expansion as a “financial bonanza.”

    “In the end, money won,” he said with a resigned tone. “And today, not only are they providing weapons to all the new NATO countries, but they’re providing weapons to Ukraine.”

    I told Cohen I could understand his opposition to the war and follow his critique of U.S. foreign policy, but I couldn’t grasp how he could take a position that put him in the same corner as a government that is bombing civilians. He refused to be drawn in.

    “I’m not supporting Russia, I’m not supporting Ukraine,” he said. “I’m supporting negotiations to end the war instead of providing more weapons to continue the war.” 

    The Grayzone

    I tried to get a better answer when I spoke to Aaron Maté, the Canadian-born journalist who won the award for “defense reporting and analysis” that Cohen was instrumental in funding.

    Named after the late Pierre Sprey, a defense analyst who campaigned against the development of F-35 fighter jets as overly complex and expensive, the award recognized Maté’s “continued work dissecting establishment propaganda on issues such as Russian interference in U.S. politics, or the war in Syria.”

    Maté, who was photographed with Cohen’s arm around his shoulders at the awards ceremony in March, writes for the Grayzone, a far-left website that has acquired a reputation for publishing stories backing the narratives of authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia or Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. His reports deny the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria, and he has briefed the U.N. Security Council at Moscow’s invitation.

    When I spoke to Maté, he was friendly but guarded. (The Pierre Sprey award noted that “his empiricist reporting give the lie to the charge of ‘disinformation’ routinely leveled by those whose nostrums he challenges.”)

    He was happy however to walk me through his claims that, based on statements by U.S. officials since the start of the war, Washington is using Kyiv to wage a “proxy war” against Moscow. Much of his information, he said, came from Western journalism. “I point out examples where, buried at the bottom of articles, sometimes the truth is admitted,” he explained.

    He declined to be described as pro-Putin. “That kind of ‘guilt-by-association’ reasoning is not serious thinking,” he said. “It’s not how adults think about things.” When I asked if he believed that Russia had committed war crimes in Ukraine, he answered: “I’m sure they have. I’ve never heard of a war where war crimes are not committed.”

    Still, he said, the U.S. was responsible for “prolonging” the war and “sabotaging the diplomacy that could have ended it.”

    ‘Come to Ukraine’

    The best answer I got to my question came not from Cohen or others in his circle but from a fellow traveler who hasn’t chosen to follow critics of NATO on their latest journey.

    A self-described “radical anti-imperialist,” Gilbert Achcar is a professor of development studies and international relations at SOAS University of London. He has described the expansion of NATO in the 1990s as a decision that “laid the ground for a new cold war” pitting the West against Russia and China.

    But while he sees the war in Ukraine as the latest chapter in this showdown, he has warned against calls for a rush to the negotiating table. Instead, he has advocated for the complete withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine and “the delivery of defensive weapons to the victims of aggression with no strings attached.”

    “To give those who are fighting a just war the means to fight against a much more powerful aggressor is an elementary internationalist duty,” he wrote three days after Russia launched its attack on Kyiv, comparing the invasion to the U.S.’s intervention in Vietnam. 

    Achcar said he understood the conclusions being drawn by people like Cohen about Washington’s interventions in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. But, he said, “it leads a lot of people on the left into … [a] knee-jerk opposition to anything the United States does.” 

    What they fail to account for, however, is the Ukrainian people.

    “In a way, part of the Western left is ethnocentric,” said Achcar, who was born in Senegal and grew up in Lebanon. “They look at the whole world just by their opposition to their own government and therefore forget about other people’s rights.”

    Cohen, with late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon in 2011 | Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Ben & Jerry’s

    His point was echoed in the last conversation I had when researching this article, with Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and a former economy minister.

    “It doesn’t really matter who promised what to whom in the 1990s,” Mylovanov said. “What matters is that there was Mariupol and Bucha, where tens of thousands of people were killed.”

    Mylovanov taught economics at the University of Pittsburgh until he returned to Ukraine four days before Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    “Things like war are difficult to understand unless you experience them,” he said. “This is very easy to get confused when you are sitting, you know, somewhere far from the facts and you have surrounded yourself by an echo chamber of people and sources that you agree with.”

    “In that sense,” he added. “I invite these people to come to Ukraine and judge for themselves what the truth is.”

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    Nicolas Camut

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  • Ukraine F-16 fighter pilot training to start soon in Romania

    Ukraine F-16 fighter pilot training to start soon in Romania

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    Ukraine’s defence minister says he hopes training lasts no longer than 6 months so fighter planes can be in combat against Russia soon.

    The training of Ukrainian pilots on United States-made F-16 fighter jets is to begin in Romania in August, officials have said on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Lithuania.

    Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov announced the Romania training programme on Tuesday alongside Dutch Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren and Denmark’s acting Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen.

    “Hopefully, we will be able to see results in the beginning of next year,” Poulsen told reporters.

    Resnikov said he hoped the training would last no longer than six months and that by that point, Ukraine will be using the combat aircraft in its fight against Russia’s invasion of his country.

    [Al Jazeera]

    The Netherlands and Denmark are leading an 11-nation coalition to train Ukrainian pilots on the US fighter jets, which Ukraine argues will help turn the tide of the war in its favour.

    Training Ukrainian pilots in the use of advanced fighter planes was previously seen as controversial but received the green light in May at the G7 summit in Japan.

    Russia later warned that providing Kyiv with F-16 would be a “colossal risk” as it threatens spreading the war to other parts of Europe.

    Though Ukraine’s allies have committed to providing training and other support, the opening of the fighter pilot school does not mean F-16s will actually be delivered to Kyiv. Ukraine’s military supporters have yet to commit to sending warplanes.

    Romania announced last week that it intended to set up an F-16 training centre for military pilots from NATO partner states and Ukraine.

     

    Romania, which shares a long border with Ukraine and has been a NATO member since 2004 and a European Union member since 2007, has increased defence spending in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    After Moscow’s forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, NATO increased its presence on Europe’s eastern flank by sending additional multinational battlegroups to alliance members Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia.

    The fighter pilot training facility will aim to position Romania as “a regional leader in the field of F-16 pilot training” and contribute to “improving cohesion, demonstrating unity and strengthening the deterrence and defence posture Euro-Atlantic”, the Romanian government said in a statement.

    Romania has played an increasingly prominent role in the alliance throughout Russia’s war in Ukraine, including hosting a NATO meeting of foreign ministers in November. The government has also approved the acquisition of an unspecified number of “latest generation” US-made F-35 fighter jets as part of Romania’s push to modernise its air force.

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  • EU raises bar for punishing countries that help Russia beat sanctions

    EU raises bar for punishing countries that help Russia beat sanctions

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    The EU is creating a new sanctions weapon, but is afraid to load it.

    After adopting 10 sanctions packages following Russia’s attempted invasion of Ukraine, the EU is now designing a new mechanism to punish countries that enable sanctions evasion. If third countries, for example in Central Asia, fail to comply with Western sanctions against Moscow or can’t explain a sudden rise in trade in banned goods, they would face EU punishment.

    The sanctions have so far been effective in curbing direct exports of sanctions from the EU to Russia, according to new research by a group of European experts, while the increase in imports from non-sanctioning countries has substituted no more than a quarter of missing volumes.

    But there has been a spike in volumes of certain items previously sold to Russia being exported to neighboring or nearby countries like Turkey, Kazakhstan and Armenia. The evidence here points to the rerouting of popular consumer electronics like cell phones and computers — but microchips that might be of military use may also be slipping through the net.

    One recent investigation has, meanwhile, found evidence that sensitive technologies — such as drones and microelectronics — have found their way to Russia through third countries like Kazakhstan with the help of local companies founded by Russian owners.

    By putting a gun on the table, the EU hopes more countries will comply. 

    But that proposal is now being watered down, according to the latest version of the draft proposal, dated Wednesday and seen by POLITICO.

    This comes after concerns expressed by several EU countries, including heavy-hitter Germany. They fear such a mechanism would hurt diplomatic relations, and even drive countries into the arms of Russia and China. Rather than hitting the countries that are allowing sanctioned goods to be re-exported to Russia, Berlin is proposing to focus on companies, according to an earlier discussion document dated May 5 and seen by POLITICO.

    To win over the skeptics, the European Commission has included more safeguards. 

    The most recent version of the sanctions proposal sets out a more careful and step-by-step approach before targeting third countries. For example, it classifies such steps as “exceptional, last resort measures.” And, as a latest change to the draft, the Commission would have to demonstrate that “alternative measures taken have been ineffective” before punishing third countries.

    This is the second time the Commission has been introducing extra safeguards in the proposal to accommodate countries’ concerns, even though sanctions experts have warned that the threat of the instrument has to be credible enough in order for it to work.

    The anti-circumvention ban is not the only outstanding issue. Greece and Hungary are still holding out over Ukraine listing some of their companies as “war sponsors.” Athens and Budapest want some of their companies struck off this list before they will agree to the sanctions package. 

    EU countries now hope to get a deal on the package done next week, three EU diplomats said. There will be consultations ahead of the next discussion by EU envoys on June 7. “An agreement is within reach,” said one of them, while adding that the exact timing is “still hard to predict.”

    This story has been updated.

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    Barbara Moens and Leonie Kijewski

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  • Turkey’s Erdoğan wins again

    Turkey’s Erdoğan wins again

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    Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is set for another five years as Turkey’s president after winning a divisive election that at one point seemed to threaten his hold on power.

    The 69-year-old, who has dominated his country’s politics for two decades, was on track to win the runoff vote by 52 percent to 48 percent, with more than 99 percent of ballot boxes counted, beating opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, according to preliminary official results from Turkey’s Supreme Election Council.

    In the first round of voting on May 14, the president also came out on top, defying the polls, but fell short of an outright majority, which triggered the runoff vote.

    Erdoğan declared victory in front of his residence in Istanbul, singing his campaign song before his speech. “I thank our nation, which gave us the responsibility of governing again for the next five years,” he said. 

    “We have opened the door of Turkey’s century without compromising our democracy, development and our objectives,” he added.

    Erdoğan also called on his supporters to take Istanbul back in the next local elections in 2024. His AK Party lost the city to the opposition in the 2019.  

    The triumphant president continued his campaign tactic of targeting LGBTQ+ people. “Can LGBT infiltrate AK Party or other members of the People’s Alliance [the broader coalition backing Erdoğan]? Family is sacred to us,” he said.

    Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and French leader Emmanuel Macron were among the first world leaders to congratulate Erdoğan on his victory. Both leaders emphasized working together on world affairs. The government of Qatar and Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, also congratulated the re-elected president.  

    Erdoğan’s victory follows a campaign in which he accused his rival of being linked to terrorism and argued that the country faced chaos if the six-party opposition alliance came to power.

    He has ruled Turkey since 2003, first as prime minister and then as president, and the election has been widely seen as a defining moment for the country. 

    Erdoğan’s supporters say he has made the country stronger, but his critics argue that his authoritarian approach to power is fatally undermining Turkey’s democracy.

    Kılıçdaroğlu said it had been “the most unfair election process in years” in his own post-election speech.

    “All the resources of the state have been mobilized for one political party. They have been spread at the feet of one man,” he said. 

    The opposition candidate gave no indication that he was planning to resign, adding that the struggle would go on. 

    Erdogan taunted his rival, saying: “Bye, bye, bye Kemal.”

    By contrast with earlier elections in which the president and his Islamist-oriented AK party easily beat their secular rivals, Erdoğan headed into this May’s contest behind in the polls.

    His reelection campaign had to contend with economic problems such as painfully high inflation — currently 43 percent — and a weak currency, as well as the legacy of February’s devastating earthquake. At least 50,000 died in the disaster and the government was criticized for poor construction standards and its own slow response.

    But Erdoğan’s first round performance on May 14 put him five percentage points ahead of Kılıçdaroğlu and just a few hundred thousand votes short of an absolute majority.

    The opposition candidate then shifted to a more nationalist stance, promising to deport millions of Syrians and Afghans, but that move proved ultimately unsuccessful. Sinan Oğan, the nationalist candidate who won 5 percent in the first round then endorsed Erdoğan, not Kılıçdaroğlu.

    Political analysts say Erdoğan’s victory highlights the polarization in Turkish society, particularly divisions between Islamists and secularists. While much of Turkey’s coastline, the big cities and the largely Kurdish southeast voted for Kılıçdaroğlu, the heartlands strongly favored Erdoğan.

    Opposition supporters also argue that the election reflected Erdoğan’s grip on power, including his near-total influence on the country’s media, which is largely controlled by groups friendly toward the governing party.

    After Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy was backed by Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party, Erdoğan accused his rival of being in league with Kurdish terrorists, showing a doctored video in the closing days of the campaign to make his case.

    This article has been updated to include reaction from Erdoğan.

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    Elçin Poyrazlar

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  • Weird and wonderful trains that break the rules | CNN

    Weird and wonderful trains that break the rules | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel’s weekly newsletter. Get the latest news in aviation, food and drink, where to stay and other travel developments.



    CNN
     — 

    Whether we call them railways or railroads, we’re all familiar with the concept – big, heavy vehicles that can’t climb steep hills, running on two steel rails. That’s the pattern, right?

    Well, railway technology is more versatile than you think. Over the last 200 years it has evolved to conquer cities, mountains, deep mines and some of the world’s most extreme climates. Here’s a selection of unusual railways that break the rules in order to reach the places other trains can’t roll.

    If ever a railway was perfectly suited to its environment, it’s the legendary Schwebebahn monorail in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia region. Built to link several industrial towns along the narrow, twisting valley of the Wupper river, the suspended monorail was completed in 1901 and was instrumental in the growth of the towns, which eventually merged to become the city of Wuppertal in 1929.

    It might look unusual to visitors, but to the people of Wuppertal it’s the backbone of the city’s transit network, gliding up to 40 feet above congested streets to offer fast, direct journeys along an eight-mile route.

    The single rails carrying the trains are supported by a series of 486 steel portals weighing almost 20,000 tonnes in total. More than 80,000 people a day are transported by 31 modern articulated cars traveling at up to 37 mph (60 kph). A replica of the vintage Kaiserwagen (Emperor’s Car) used by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1900 also operates on special occasions but is currently being restored; it’s hoped that it will return to service by spring 2024.

    Current holder of the record for the world’s steepest public railway, Switzerland’s Stoosbahn opened in December 2017 and has become a global tourist attraction in its own right.

    The unique cars with their rotating “barrels” allow passengers to stay level and travel serenely up the mountain at gradients of up to 110%. On a route of just over one mile (1.74 kilometers), the railway climbs almost 2,450 feet (744 meters) from the valley station in just five minutes.

    Stoosbahn is far more than just a joyride though – it’s a vital lifeline for the car-free village of Stoos, which sits high on a mountain near the town of Schwyz, south of Zürich. Each car is fitted with three passenger “barrels” plus a further section for freight. Every year, up to 10,000 tonnes of freight is carried – essential supplies going up the hill to restaurants and hotels, garbage and recycling traveling back down. Up to 1,500 passengers an hour, plus their skis or snowboards, can also be carried – a 50% increase over the previous funicular railway.

    Riding the Stoosbahn is a unique experience, even if you’re a connoisseur of mountain railways. The smooth transition from level to almost vertical happens very quickly and the view from the rotating cabins is exceptional. You’d have to be very jaded not to be impressed with such an astonishing piece of railway engineering.

    Pier railways were an attraction at several British seaside resorts in the 19th century, the most famous being the mile-long trip to the tip of Southend Pier on the country’s east coast – which you can still experience today. Most were built for pleasure, usually to save visitors a long walk back to shore.

    Hythe Pier Railway, on the south coast of England, has always been a little different though; it provides a unique link between dry land and the Hythe Ferry, which has shuttled to and fro across Southampton Water since the Middle Ages.

    The current pier opened in 1881 and a quirky 2,100-foot railway was added in 1909. It is the oldest continuously operating pier railway in the world. Wagons were initially propelled by hand but in 1922 a new narrow gauge electric railway replaced the original track. Two Army surplus electric locomotives, originally built to work in a World War I mustard gas factory, have worked the trains ever since.

    The bizarre-looking locomotives continue to pull (or push) their weatherbeaten little coaches along the pier to meet every ferry to and from Southampton Town Quay, despite numerous threats of closure. Visit it while you still can.

    Monorails have been around for more than a century and examples can be found all over the world, but they’ve never quite fulfilled the futuristic promises of their early promoters. That said, there are a few places where the unique qualities offered by monorails are ideally suited to their environment.

    Chongqing in China is home to the world’s longest and one of its busiest monorail system, carrying millions of passengers a year on two high-capacity “straddle beam” lines totaling 61 miles in length. At just over 34 miles, Line 3 is also the world’s longest single monorail line with an annual ridership of around 250 million. Opened between 2005 and 2016, the two lines have 70 stations with a mix of underground and elevated sections. Famously, one section of Line 2 passes through the heart of a high-rise apartment block.

    The city’s unique topography, with extreme differences in altitude between its densely populated mountain plateaus and the Yangtze and Jialing river valleys forced Chongqing’s transit authorities to seek an alternative to conventional metro trains. Monorail’s ability to negotiate steep climbs and tight curves made it the ideal solution when this megacity needed to transform its public transit system.

    Is it a train? Or is it a bus? Neither, it’s a Ferrobus – a unique form of improvised transport found across mountainous regions of South America.

    Combining old road bus bodies with rail wheels, these wobbly-looking contraptions are a lifeline for remote mountain villages lacking official road access. Using otherwise abandoned rail lines – often built in the 19th and early 20th century to exploit mineral deposits – Ferrobus routes can be found in Chile, Bolivia and Colombia, climbing high into the Andes.

    Ferrobus trips are increasingly popular with tourists seeking an unforgettable experience, and likely wanting to avoid uncomfortable and often dangerous road journeys. Chile’s Gondola Carril from Los Andes to Rio Blanco, north of Santiago, operates purely for tourists, but others provide regular, if somewhat unpredictable, transport for locals and tourists alike.

    Bolivia is arguably the epicenter of the Ferrobus world, with at least three routes, although there’s a constant risk of derailments, not to mention disruption from floods, rockfalls and extreme weather.

    Riding a Ferrobus requires patience and stamina, but you’re guaranteed to return with some hair-raising stories to tell your friends.

    Gotta catch ‘em all? Here’s one that will appeal to fans of Pokémon and trains. An otherwise ordinary Japanese local train has been dressed up to resemble the all-conquering franchise’s most famous character – Pikachu.

    The bright yellow signature color dominates inside and out, with Pikachu motifs covering everything from floor to walls and curtains. One car has seating, while the second car has been fitted out as a fabulous mobile playroom for junior Pokémon trainers. During the two-hour trip from Ichinoseki to Kesennuma in the Tõhoku Region, children can play, nap and socialize with giant plush Pikachus or even pretend to drive the train.

    Introduced in 2017 to put a smile on local faces after the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 2011, which also prompted the reactor meltdown in the neighboring Fukushima region, Pokémon with You is one of several “Joyful Trains” operated by railway company JR East. Ranging from traditional steam trains to luxurious, exotically decorated expresses between cities and resorts, they’re part of an incredibly rich and vibrant railway culture that attracts visitors from all over the world to Japan.

    Which city is home to mainland Europe’s oldest underground railway? Paris? Berlin? Vienna? In fact, it’s the Hungarian capital Budapest, where line M1 has been operating since May 1896.

    In the late-19th and early 20th centuries Hungary – then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – was a vigorous pioneer of new railway technology. This short (2.3-mile) line under Andrássy Avenue on the Pest side of the Danube river was only the third underground electric railway in the world, opening shortly after similar lines in London and Liverpool, England.

    Like London’s tiny “tube trains” of the same era, the first tunnels in Budapest were built to an unusually small profile and the effects of that decision can still be encountered today on what the locals call “a kisföldalatti,” or “the small underground.” The original trains, more akin to freight cars fitted with wooden shelters, were replaced in 1973 when line M1 was rebuilt and extended, but a ride on M1 is still a very different experience from the city’s later metro lines with their wide-bodied trains and airy stations.

    Thousand of people a day squeeze into the little yellow trains – a much higher ridership than when it was completed. But with its low platforms and short, angular trains, it’s very different to the usual city metro experience.

    Over the last two decades, China’s rail industry has become the largest and most varied in the world, helped by the astonishing expansion of the country’s high-speed network and global exports.

    But there’s far more to China than sleek high-speed trains and megacity subways; the size and diversity of this enormous nation demands ingenious solutions to serve areas conventional trains can’t reach.

    A unique example is the world’s first hanging monorail with a glass floor, now running in Sichuan Province. The Dayi Air Rail Project connects four stations at busy tourist spots over a seven-mile (11.5 kilometer) route in the city of Chengdu.

    Unusually, the lightweight car bodies are constructed from carbon fiber and composite foam material. They are powered by rechargeable batteries with electricity from renewable sources. But the panoramic windows and transparent floor are their most spectacular features, allowing up to 120 passengers per trip a 270-degree view combining clean, efficient and quiet transport with a memorable sightseeing trip.

    Trains, roads: Get you a vehicle that can do both.

    Imagine a vehicle that can pick you up outside your home, drive to the nearest railway line, convert itself into a train and then switch back to drop you in the center of a nearby town. It may sound like a story from “Thomas the Tank Engine,” but that exactly what Japan’s DMV Road-Rail buses have been doing since they launched on Christmas Day 2021.

    The buses, carrying around 20 passengers per trip, run a 30-mile route between the town of Kaiyo in Tokushima and the city of Muroto, Kochi Prefecture. Six miles of the route are along a rural railway line, with the rest in bus mode.

    With a capacity of 23, including passengers and crew, the DMV is a diesel-powered bus fitted with a set of retractable rail wheels which can be deployed in about 15 seconds. Lighter than a traditional train, the DMV also consumes less fuel and is cheaper to maintain.

    Billed as “the world’s first operational dual-mode vehicle,” it is actually the latest in a long series of similar experiments to improve rural rail services and reduce their costs. As far back as the 1930s, road buses were converted into railcars in Ireland and similar vehicles to the DMV were tested in England in the 1930s and West Germany in the 1950s.

    Tokushima prefectural government hopes the DMV buses will become a tourist draw in their own right. It also believes that the vehicles could also be useful for reaching isolated communities in the event of natural disasters such as earthquakes, which can leave sections of roads or railway lines unusable.

    Not far from the wonderful city of Sydney is a railway experience unlike anything else in the world. Situated in the heart of the Blue Mountains, the Katoomba Scenic Railway is another contender for the title of the world’s steepest railway. But, unlike Switzerland’s Stoosbahn, this railway delivers a hair-raising descent down sandstone cliffs and through epic rock formations and tunnels perched over a stunning rainforest landscape.

    Glass-roofed cars take up to 84 visitors per trip down the 52-degree (128%) incline, although if you’re feeling brave you can adjust the angle of your seat to the “Cliffhanger” position at 64 degrees. Fortunately, there’s also a “Laidback” option for the less adventurous.

    The rope-hauled railway dates back to the late-1800s when it was part of the Katoomba mining tramways, but since 1945 the remaining line has been a thrilling tourist attraction. More than 25 million people have braved the trip since it opened and the latest generation of cars feature panoramic roofs, allowing visitors to get an even better view of the forest canopy and rock formations.

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  • Be open to foreigners, Pope Francis tells Hungarians

    Be open to foreigners, Pope Francis tells Hungarians

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    Pope Francis called for open doors and inclusivity during a visit to Hungary on Sunday. 

    The Hungarian government has long faced criticism over anti-immigration policies and rhetoric that has stoked xenophobia at home. Concerns about Budapest’s treatment of minorities were exacerbated on the eve of the pope’s three-day visit when Hungarian President Katalin Novák unexpectedly pardoned a far-right terrorist. 

    Speaking to a large crowd in central Budapest on Sunday morning before wrapping up his trip, the pope did not directly address the Hungarian government’s policies but was blunt about the need to embrace outsiders. 

    “How sad and painful it is to see closed doors,” the pope said at an outdoor mass, pointing to “the closed doors of our indifference towards the underprivileged and those who suffer; the doors we close towards those who are foreign or unlike us, towards migrants or the poor.”

    “Please, brothers and sisters, let us open those doors!” he added. “Let us try to be — in our words, deeds and daily activities — like Jesus, an open door: a door that is never shut in anyone’s face, a door that enables everyone to enter and experience the beauty of the Lord’s love and forgiveness.” 

    Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — who is not Catholic himself but has close political allies who emphasize their Catholic roots — has tried to capitalize on the pope’s visit, tweeting on Friday that “it is a privilege to welcome” the pontiff and that “Hungary has a future if it stays on the Christian path.”

    On Sunday, however, Pope Francis underscored that his message is directed at Hungary itself. 

    “I say this also to our lay brothers and sisters, to catechists and pastoral workers, to those with political and social responsibilities, and to those who simply go about their daily lives, which at times are not easy. Be open doors!” he said. 

    “Be open and inclusive,” the pope added, “then, and in this way, help Hungary to grow in fraternity, which is the path of peace.” 

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    Lili Bayer

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  • ‘What?!’ Orbán throws cold water on Ukraine’s NATO hopes

    ‘What?!’ Orbán throws cold water on Ukraine’s NATO hopes

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    Hungary’s troubled relationship with neighboring Ukraine spiraled again Friday as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán dismissed the country’s NATO dreams with a one-word tweet. 

    “What?!” the prime minister exclaimed in a Twitter post responding to a POLITICO article on NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s declaration in Kyiv on Thursday that “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO.”

    Relations between Budapest and Kyiv are tense. Hungary spent years blocking high-level NATO sessions with Ukrainian officials, ostensibly over concerns about the rights of Hungarian speakers in western Ukraine. 

    And despite condemning Russia’s full-scale invasion, Hungary has refused to send weapons to aid its neighbor. Senior Hungarian officials, meanwhile, continue to regularly visit Moscow and maintain close ties to the Kremlin. At the same time, Hungary joining Turkey in blocking Sweden’s NATO bid has frustrated Western capitals.

    NATO allies — including Hungary — decided back in 2008 that Ukraine will eventually join the alliance. But Kyiv’s path to NATO has stalled, and in September Ukraine’s leadership requested an “accelerated accession” to join. 

    But the issue is highly sensitive. Most NATO allies — including the U.S. — want to avoid any big moves on the accession process for Ukraine while the war is ongoing. 

    A group of eastern members is now pushing for NATO to give Kyiv a signal that it is moving closer to the alliance. 

    During his visit to Kyiv, Stoltenberg said he discussed a multi-year NATO initiative to help Ukraine transition away from Soviet-era military equipment to the alliance’s own standards. 

    But it remains unclear what kind of political signal NATO leaders will opt to give Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the alliance’s upcoming summit, scheduled for July. 

    Speaking in Germany on Friday morning, as Ukraine’s partners gathered at Ramstein Air Base to discuss further assistance to Kyiv, Stoltenberg reiterated that for now allies want to keep their eyes on the pressing challenge of helping Ukraine win. 

    “All NATO allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a NATO member,” he said. “But the main focus now is of course on how to ensure that Ukraine prevails.”

    “What we do know is that our support helps Ukraine move toward the Euro-Atlantic integration,” he said, adding, “without a sovereign, independent Ukraine, there is no meaning in discussing membership.”

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    Lili Bayer

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  • French-Russian nuclear relations turn radioactive

    French-Russian nuclear relations turn radioactive

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    BRUSSELS — Pressure is building on France to fully cut ties with Russia’s atomic sector as the EU mulls its latest sanctions package against Moscow.

    The European Commission is set to meet with diplomats from the EU’s 27 member countries on Friday to start discussions on the bloc’s 11th round of Russia sanctions. Hitting Moscow’s state-run nuclear company Rosatom — a divisive issue for some EU countries reliant on Russia for nuclear fuel — is likely come under the spotlight once again.

    That means increased scrutiny of France’s ties to Rosatom, the Moscow-based atomic firm.

    Although much commercial cooperation has been frozen or suspended in the past year, French state-controlled companies continue to maintain some ties with Rosatom.

    That’s prompting calls by Ukraine and diplomats from several EU countries for Paris to sever all links with Rosatom, especially given its role in overseeing the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine.

    “I am sure” that Paris has a moral duty to encourage its state-backed companies to cut ties with Rosatom, Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko told POLITICO last month, adding that Kyiv wants all EU countries with links to Russian’s nuclear industry to cut them.

    “All of our public scrutiny has been on Germany and not so much on France,” for ties with Russia, said a diplomat from one EU country, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “whereas I think if you look closely … they haven’t been the best kid in the class either.”

    Paris should at least back long-standing demands from the Baltic countries and Poland to sanction Rosatom, Sven Giegold, a state secretary at Germany’s energy ministry, tweeted last week. “We will try to convince France.”

    In late February, the U.S. slapped sanctions on Rosatom; both Washington and London have sanctioned some of its executives for “deep connections to the Russian military-industrial complex.”

    A Rosatom spokesperson told POLITICO the company has “always taken the view that nuclear energy should remain outside of politics.”

    Despite a strong push from some EU countries and the Commission to target Rosatom executives during previous sanctions discussions, those efforts floundered partly due to pressure from Hungary, where Rosatom is in charge of the expansion of its Paks nuclear power plant. France is also resisting sanctions.

    Although other bigger countries have also not spoken up during discussions, diplomats from four EU countries argued Paris was hiding behind Budapest on nuclear sanctions.

    Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said that Kyiv wants all EU countries to cut links to Russian’s nuclear industry | Stephanie Lecocq/EPA-EFE

    “Because Hungary has been very clear, very vocal, very visible on that question, I think some other countries, including France … don’t really need to lobby for their cause,” said one of the diplomats.

    The French foreign ministry told POLITICO: “The European Union and its member states have not adopted sanctions targeting civil nuclear power,” while adding that “France and the United States … continue to cooperate with Russia in the areas of nuclear safety and security.”

    Close ties

    For France, “Rosatom is above all a client,” said Valérie Faudon, general delegate with the French Nuclear Energy Society, while adding that Paris doesn’t depend on Russia for its security of supply.

    Paris and Moscow’s nuclear ties, which date back to the Cold War, are most apparent in the links between Rosatom and state-controlled EDF, France’s largest utility that runs the country’s nuclear fleet. It signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Rosatom on green hydrogen in 2021, as well as a joint declaration to develop research cooperation.

    The Rosatom spokesperson called it “a win-win partnership” that is “a driver of development both in the field of nuclear energy and scientific projects.”

    “There are areas in which we mutually develop our relations, for example, projects in third countries, nuclear fuel cycle development, exchange of experience in nuclear safety development,” the spokesperson said.

    That’s not the only link.

    When Rosatom builds a nuclear plant abroad, it often relies on technology from French companies — typically spending up to €1 billion per project, Faudon said. Those orders usually include command and control systems from Framatome, which is majority-owned by EDF.

    Framatome has an ongoing role in Russian nuclear construction projects around the world, including at Paks. The company aims to set up a joint venture with Rosatom to produce nuclear fuel in western Germany, a project that has been sharply criticized by local authorities.

    The French firm also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Rosatom in December 2021 to expand collaboration on fuel fabrication and other technologies. 

    Framatome didn’t comment on its ongoing contracts but with reference to the 2021 agreement, a company spokesperson said: “Everything has been postponed until further notice,” adding that Framatome will “re-examine the agreement if and when that is appropriate.”

    EDF declined to comment.

    French company Framatome has an ongoing role in Russian nuclear construction projects around the world | Pool photo by Laurent Cipriani/EPA-EFE

    Orano, a French firm specializing in nuclear fuel that is partly state-owned, sold used uranium fuel stocks to Rosatom for reuse outside France until late last year. The company said this contract is “now settled” and it has “set up a specific process for monitoring and prior approval of activities” relating to any “Russian stakeholder.”

    And while France isn’t dependent on Russia for its nuclear fuel and security of supply, it bought enriched uranium worth €359 million from Moscow last year, more than three times the amount it bought in 2021.

    It’s not the only such sale to the West. The U.S. bought $830 million of enriched uranium from Russia last year. Moscow also supplies fuel to reactors in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Slovakia and Hungary.

    Decontamination effort

    Those close commercial links are leading to calls for action by lawmakers and diplomats.

    “It would be the right thing to do for the French government to, like the German government, make great effort to … stop [nuclear] cooperation as long as Putin does not end the war against Ukraine,” said Engin Eroglu, a German MEP with the Renew grouping who has been vocal on Russian nuclear issues.

    In February, the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on Rosatom to face sanctions. 

    Although France hasn’t backed sanctions against Rosatom, it says it’s working to help other EU countries shift away from Russia on nuclear and the country said it would fall in line with any trade measures.

    “The principle of sanctions is that they should do more damage to the Russians than to the Europeans,” said a senior official with the French energy ministry. “France, for its part, does not depend in any way on Russian natural uranium. We are working with our partners who are dependent on Russian uranium to put an end to this dependence.”

    France last week also joined a G7-related alliance “aimed at displacing Putin from the international nuclear energy market” alongside Britain, the U.S., Canada and Japan.

    Despite that, diplomats from five EU countries told POLITICO that French state firms have an ethical responsibility to fully sever links with Rosatom.

    “State-backed companies have a moral duty to cut ties” with Moscow, said one of the diplomats, to avoid “supporting the system.”

    Giorgio Leali contributed reporting.

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    Victor Jack

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  • Here’s what the leaked US war files tell us about Europe

    Here’s what the leaked US war files tell us about Europe

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    Europe has special forces on the ground in Ukraine. Poland and Slovenia are providing nearly half of the tanks heading to Kyiv. And Hungary may be letting arms through its airspace.

    Those are just a few of the eye-catching details about Europe’s participation in the war buried in a 53-page dossier POLITICO reviewed from a leak of unverified U.S. military intelligence documents. 

    The disclosure has generated a tempest of head-spinning revelations that has the U.S. playing clean-up with allies. The documents detail American doubts about Ukraine’s spring offensive, suggest it was spying on South Korea and display intelligence accusing Egypt of plotting to prop up Russia’s quixotic war.

    Yet Europe, for the most part, has been spared these relationship-damaging divulgences.

    That doesn’t mean there isn’t knowledge to be gleaned about Europe’s war effort from the documents, however. The leaked files contain insights on everything from a U.K.-dominated special forces group in Ukraine to how — and when — France and Spain are getting a key missile system to the battlefield. The documents also contain allegations that Turkey is a potential source of arms for Russian mercenaries.

    POLITICO has not independently verified the documents, and there have been indications that some of the leaked pages were doctored. But the U.S. has acknowledged the intelligence breach and arrested a suspect late on Thursday.

    Here are a few of POLITICO’s findings after poring over the file.

    Europe has boots on the ground

    There is a Europe-heavy special forces group operating in Ukraine — at least as of March 23 — according to the documents. 

    The United Kingdom dominates the 97-person strong “US/NATO” contingent with 50 special forces members. The group also includes 17 people from Latvia, 15 from France and one from the Netherlands. Fourteen U.S. personnel round out the team.

    The leaked information does not specify which activities the forces are carrying out or their location in Ukraine. The documents also show the U.S. has about 100 personnel in total in the country.

    Predictably, governments have remained mostly mum on the subject. The Brits have refused to comment, while the White House has conceded there is a “small U.S. military presence” at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, stressing that the troops “are not fighting on the battlefield.” France previously denied that its forces were “engaged in operations in Ukraine.”

    The rest of the countries did not reply to a request for comment. 

    Europe is providing the bulk of the tanks

    A Ukrainian tank drives down a street in the heavily damaged town of Siversk | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

    Tanks are one area where Europe — collectively — is outpacing America.

    Within the file, one page gives an overview of the 200 tanks that U.S. allies have committed to sending Ukraine — 53 short of what the document says Ukraine needs for its spring offensive. 

    Poland and Slovenia appear to be the largest contributors, committing nearly half of the total, according to an assessment dated February 23. France and the U.K. are also key players, pitching in 14 tanks each. 

    Then there’s the Leopard 2 crew, which is donating versions of the modern German battle tanks that Ukraine spent months convincing allies it needed. That lineup includes Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Finland. 

    The document indicates Germany had committed just four Leopard 2s — the most high-end model — but Berlin said in late March that it had delivered 18 Leopards to Ukraine. It also shows Sweden pledging 10 tanks of an “unknown type,” which media reports suggest may be Leopards. 

    Separately, the U.S. has said it will send Ukraine 31 of its modern tanks, though those aren’t expected to arrive until at least the fall. 

    Europe’s deliveries are lagging, too

    The idea behind Europe taking the lead on tanks was partly that it could get the tanks to Ukraine and ready for battle swiftly — ideally in time for the spring offensive.

    But the document shows that as of February 23, only 31 percent of the 200 tanks pledged had gotten to the battlefield. It did note, however, that the remaining 120 tanks were on track to be transferred.

    Separately, another leaked page recounts that France told Italy on February 22 that a joint missile system would not be ready for Ukraine until June. That’s the very end of a timeline the Italian defense ministry laid out in February, when officials said the anti-aircraft defense system would be delivered to Ukraine “in the spring of 2023.”

    Hungary sees America as the enemy — but might be letting allies use its airspace

    Hungary pops up a couple of times in the pile of creased pages, offering more insights into a country that regularly perplexes its own allies.

    The most eye-popping nugget is buried in a “top secret” CIA update from March 2, which says Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán branded the U.S. “one of his party’s top three adversaries during a political strategy session” on February 22.

    The remarks, it notes, constitute “an escalation of the level of anti-American rhetoric” from Orbán.

    Indeed, Orbán’s government has charted its own course during the war, promoting Russia-friendly narratives, essentially calling on Ukraine to quit and caustically dismissing allied efforts to isolate Russia’s economy. 

    However, the leaked U.S. documents also indicate Hungary — which shares a small border with Ukraine — may be secretly letting allies use its airspace to move arms toward the battlefield, despite pledges to bar such transfers.

    Intelligence leaks suspect Jack Teixeira reflected in an image of the Pentagon in Washington, DC | Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

    One of the leaked documents details a plan for Ukrainian pilots to fly donated helicopters from Croatia to Ukraine “through Hungarian air space.” If true, the information would not only show Hungary is letting arms pass through its skies, but also contradict press reports indicating the helicopters would be transferred on the ground or through flights into Poland. 

    Hungarian and Croatian officials didn’t reply to requests for comment.

    Did the Brits downplay a confrontation with Russia?

    Publicly, the U.K. has told a consistent story: A Russian fighter jet “released” a missile “in the vicinity” of a U.K. surveillance plane over the Black Sea last September. A close call, to be sure, but not a major incident.

    The leaked U.S. dossier, however, hints at something more serious. It describes the incident as a “near shoot-down” of the British aircraft. The language appears to go beyond what U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told lawmakers last October. This week, The New York Times reported that the Russian pilot had locked on the British aircraft before the missile failed to fire properly.

    The document also details several other close encounters in recent months between Russian fighter jets and U.S., U.K. and French surveillance aircraft — a subject that jumped into the news last month when a Russian fighter jet collided with a U.S. drone, sending it crashing into the Black Sea. 

    Wallace has not commented on the leaked description, and a ministry spokesperson on Thursday pointed to a prior statement saying there was a “serious level of inaccuracy” in the divulged dossier. 

    Turkey is the war’s middleman in Europe

    Turkey has portrayed itself as a conciliator between Ukraine and Russia, helping negotiate a deal to keep grain shipments flowing through the Black Sea and maintaining diplomatic ties with Russia while also providing Ukraine with drones. 

    The leaked pile of clandestine U.S. intelligence reports, however, shows a darker side to Turkey’s position as a middleman that distinctly favors Russia. 

    One page describes how Turkey helped both Russia and its ally Belarus evade strict Western sanctions — a concern U.S. officials have expressed publicly.

    For Belarus, the document says, “Turkish companies purchased sanctioned goods” and then “sold them in European markets.” In the opposite direction, it adds, these companies “resold goods from Europe to Russia.” 

    More alarming is another leaked document that describes a meeting in February between “Turkish contacts” and the Wagner Group, the private militia firm fighting for the Kremlin. It says Wagner was seeking “to purchase weapons and equipment from Turkey” for the group’s “efforts in Mali and Ukraine.”

    The information, which the document says came from “signals intelligence” — a euphemism for digital surveillance — does not explain whether the purchases have occurred.

    The Turkish Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

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    Cristina Gallardo and Jacopo Barigazzi

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  • Ukraine’s bumper grain exports rile allies in eastern EU

    Ukraine’s bumper grain exports rile allies in eastern EU

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    Ukraine’s farmers played an iconic role in the first weeks of Russia’s invasion, towing away abandoned enemy tanks with their tractors.

    Now, though, their prodigious grain output is causing some of Ukraine’s staunchest allies to waver, as disrupted shipments are redirected onto neighboring markets.

    The most striking is Poland, which has played a leading role so far in supporting Ukraine, acting as the main transit hub for Western weaponry and sending plenty of its own. But grain shipments in the other direction have irked Polish farmers who are being undercut — just months before a national election where the rural vote will be crucial.

    Diplomats are floundering. After a planned Friday meeting between the Polish and Ukrainian agriculture ministers was postponed, the Polish government on Saturday announced a ban on imports of farm products from Ukraine. Hungary late Saturday said it would do the same.

    Ukraine is among the world’s top exporters of wheat and other grains, which are ordinarily shipped to markets as distant as Egypt and Pakistan. Russia’s invasion last year disrupted the main Black Sea export route, and a United Nations-brokered deal to lift the blockade has been only partially effective. In consequence, Ukrainian produce has been diverted to bordering EU countries: Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

    At first, those governments supported EU plans to shift the surplus grain. But instead of transiting seamlessly onto global markets, the supply glut has depressed prices in Europe. Farmers have risen up in protest, and Polish Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk was forced out earlier this month.

    Now, governments’ focus has shifted to restricting Ukrainian imports to protect their own markets. After hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Warsaw in early April, Polish President Andrzej Duda said resolving the import glut was “a matter of introducing additional restrictions.”

    The following day, Poland suspended imports of Ukrainian grain, saying the idea had come from Kyiv. On Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, after an emergency cabinet meeting, said the import ban would cover grain and certain other farm products and would include products intended for other countries. A few hours later, the Hungarian government announced similar measures. Both countries said the bans would last until the end of June.

    The European Commission is seeking further information on the import restrictions from Warsaw and Budapest “to be able to assess the measures,” according to a statement on Sunday. “Trade policy is of EU exclusive competence and, therefore, unilateral actions are not acceptable,” it said.

    While the EU’s free-trade agreement with Ukraine prevents governments from introducing tariffs, they still have plenty of tools available to disrupt shipments.

    Neighboring countries and nearby Bulgaria have stepped up sanitary checks on Ukrainian grain, arguing they are doing so to protect the health of their own citizens. They have also requested financial support from Brussels and have already received more than €50 million from the EU’s agricultural crisis reserve, with more money on the way.

    Restrictions could do further harm to Ukraine’s battered economy, and by extension its war effort. The economy has shrunk by 29.1 percent since the invasion, according to statistics released this month, and agricultural exports are an important source of revenue.

    Cracks in the alliance

    The trade tensions sit at odds with these countries’ political position on Ukraine, which — with the exception of Hungary — has been strongly supportive. Poland has taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees, while weapons and ammunition flow in the opposite direction; Romania has helped transport millions of tons of Ukrainian corn and wheat.

    Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki | Omar Marques/Getty Images

    Some Western European governments, which had to be goaded by Poland and others into sending heavy weaponry to Kyiv, are quick to point out the change in direction.

    “Curious to see that some of these countries are [always] asking for more on sanctions, more on ammunition, etc. But when it affects them, they turn to Brussels begging for financial support,” said one diplomat from a Western country, speaking on condition of anonymity.

    Some EU countries also oppose the import restrictions for economic reasons. For instance, Spain and the Netherlands are some of the biggest recipients of Ukrainian grain, which they use to supply their livestock industries.

    Politically, though, the Central and Eastern European governments have limited room for maneuver. Poland and Slovakia are both heading into general elections later this year. Bulgaria has had a caretaker government since last year. Romania’s agriculture minister has faced calls to resign, including from a compatriot former EU agriculture commissioner.

    And farmers are a strong constituency. Poland’s right-wing Law & Justice (PiS) party won the last general election in 2019 thanks in large part to rural voters. The Ukrainian grain issue has already cost a Polish agriculture minister his job; the government as a whole will have to tread carefully to avoid the same fate.

    This article has been updated.

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    Bartosz Brzezinski

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  • Finland to join NATO on Tuesday 

    Finland to join NATO on Tuesday 

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    Finland will formally become a full-fledged NATO ally on Tuesday, the alliance’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday. 

    “This is an historic week,” the NATO chief told reporters. “Tomorrow, we will welcome Finland as the 31st member of NATO, making Finland safer and our alliance stronger.” 

    A ceremony marking Finland’s accession is set to take place Tuesday afternoon. 

    “We will raise the Finnish flag for the first time here at the NATO headquarters,” Stoltenberg said, adding: “It will be a good day for Finland’s security, for Nordic security, and for NATO as a whole.”

    The move comes after Hungary and Turkey ratified Finland’s membership bid last week, removing the last hurdles to Helsinki’s accession. 

    Sweden’s membership aspiration, however, remains in limbo as Budapest and Ankara continue to withhold support. 

    Speaking ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Stoltenberg reiterated that he believes Stockholm is still on its way to ultimately joining the alliance as well. 

    “All allies,” he said, “agree that Sweden’s accession should be completed quickly.”

    At their meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, ministers will discuss the alliance’s defense spending goals and future relationship with Kyiv. 

    They will also attend a session of the NATO-Ukraine Commission together with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and meet with partners from ​Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

    In his press conference, the NATO chief also addressed multiple challenges facing the transatlantic alliance, including Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that Russia will deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. 

    Putin’s announcement is “part of a pattern of dangerous, reckless nuclear rhetoric” and an effort to use nuclear weapons as “intimidation, coercion to stop NATO allies and partners from supporting Ukraine.”

    “We will not be intimidated,” the NATO boss said.

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin of Finland | Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images

    The alliance “remains vigilant, we monitor very closely what Russia does,” he said. “But so far,” he added, “we haven’t seen any changes in their nuclear posture” that require any change in NATO’s nuclear stance.

    In a statement Monday, the Finnish president’s office said that, “Finland will deposit its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty with the U.S. State Department in Brussels on Tuesday” before the start of NATO foreign ministers’ session. 

    Sanna Marin, the prime minister when Finland applied to join NATO, suffered defeat in a national election on Sunday. Her Social Democrats finished third, with the center-right National Coalition Party coming out on top.

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  • Finland cleared to join NATO following Turkish vote

    Finland cleared to join NATO following Turkish vote

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    The Turkish parliament on Thursday unanimously ratified Finland’s accession to NATO, effectively allowing Helsinki to join the military alliance but leaving Sweden out in the cold.

    Finland could now become a formal member of NATO within days. 

    “All 30 NATO members have now ratified Finland’s membership,” Finnish President Sauli Niinistö tweeted. “I want to thank every one of them for their trust and support. Finland will be a strong and capable Ally, committed to the security of the Alliance,” he said. 

    His country, the president added, “is now ready to join NATO.” 

    The Turkish vote, occurring minutes before midnight in Ankara, comes after months of delays. 

    Finland and Sweden initially applied for membership last May, prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And while the two countries were formally invited to join the alliance last summer, both Turkey and Hungary have been stalling on ratifying their memberships.  

    Ankara has raised concerns about the countries’ support of Kurdish groups and limitations on arms exports. But despite striking a deal with both Helsinki and Stockholm that spurred policy changes, Ankara ultimately decided to greenlight Finland while holding Sweden back.

    Hungary’s parliament on Monday also ratified Finland’s membership but like Turkey has yet to schedule a vote on Sweden. 

    Western officials had hoped that both countries would become full members before a summit of NATO leaders scheduled to take place in Vilnius in July, but it remains uncertain whether Sweden could still become a member before the gathering. 

    Turkey is set to hold elections in May, fuelling speculation that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is withholding support for Sweden for domestic political reasons and could change his mind at a later stage. 

    Niinistö, the Finnish president, said in his tweet late Thursday that “we look forward to welcoming Sweden to join us as soon as possible.” 

    Now that Finland has Turkey’s formal support, only procedural steps are left before Helsinki officially joins NATO. 

    Finland will soon get a formal invitation from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and then give the U.S. its so-called instrument of accession. The U.S. will then issue a statement that Finland is now part of the North Atlantic Treaty.

    The NATO chief welcomed Turkey’s vote.

    “This,” Stoltenberg tweeted, “will make the whole NATO family stronger & safer.” 

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  • Finland on course for NATO membership after Hungarian vote

    Finland on course for NATO membership after Hungarian vote

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    The Hungarian parliament ratified Finland’s NATO membership on Monday, putting Helsinki one step closer to joining the alliance but leaving Sweden waiting in the wings. 

    Members of Hungary’s parliament voted by a margin of 182 to 6 in favor of Finnish accession.

    Helsinki now only needs the Turkish parliament’s approval — expected soon — to become a NATO member. 

    Hungary’s move comes after repeated delays and political U-turns. 

    Hungarian officials spent months telling counterparts they had no objections and their parliament was simply busy with other business. 

    Budapest then changed its narrative last month, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — who has an iron grip over his ruling Fidesz party — arguing the point that some of his legislators had qualms regarding criticism of the state of Hungarian democracy. 

    Finland and Sweden have been at the forefront of safeguarding democratic standards in Hungary, speaking out on the matter long before many of their counterparts.

    But earlier this month — just as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that he will support Finland’s NATO membership — the Fidesz position flipped again, with its parliamentary group chair then announcing support for Helsinki’s bid.

    Turkey’s parliament is expected to ratify Finnish membership soon. But it is keeping Sweden in limbo, as Turkish officials say they want to see the country implement new anti-terror policies before giving Ankara’s green light. 

    Following in Turkey’s footsteps, Hungary is now also delaying a decision on Sweden indefinitely — prompting criticism from Orbán’s critics. 

    Attila Ara-Kovács, a member of the European Parliament from Hungary’s opposition Democratic Coalition, said that Orbán’s moves are part of a strategy to fuel anti-Western attitudes at home. 

    The government’s aim is “further inciting anti-Western and anti-NATO sentiment within Hungary, especially among Orbán’s fanatical supporters — and besides, of course, to serve Russian interests,” he said. 

    “This has its consequences,” Ara-Kovács said, adding that “support for the EU and NATO in the country is significantly and constantly decreasing.”

    A recent Eurobarometer poll found that 39 percent of Hungarians view the EU positively. A NATO report, published last week, shows that 77 percent of Hungarians would vote to stay in the alliance — compared to 89 percent in Poland and 84 percent in Romania.

    But Hungarian officials are adding the spin that they do support Sweden’s NATO membership. 

    The Swedish government “constantly questioning the state of Hungarian democracy” is “insulting our voters, MPs and the country as a whole,” said Balázs Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister’s political director (no relation to the prime minister).

    It is “up to the Swedes to make sure that Hungarian MPs’ concerns are addressed,” he tweeted on Sunday. “Our goal,” he added, “is to support Sweden’s NATO accession with a parliamentary majority as broad as possible.” 

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    Lili Bayer

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  • EU looks to dedicate €1B to howitzer shells for Ukraine

    EU looks to dedicate €1B to howitzer shells for Ukraine

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    BRUSSELS — In a new blueprint for military support to Ukraine, the European Union will propose that €1 billion should be specifically dedicated to ammunition, particularly 155mm artillery shells, according to a document seen by POLITICO.

    The EU is helping supply Ukraine with arms through an off-budget, inter-governmental cash pot called the European Peace Facility, which is used to reimburse countries that export arms to Ukraine. So far, the facility has disbursed €3.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine, with member countries deciding last December to increase its funding by €2 billion in 2023.

    To date, the spending needs have been loosely defined but the EU is now placing heavy emphasis on artillery ammunition — as Ukrainian forces are locked in attritional howitzer battles with the Russians in the east, around towns such as Bakhmut.

    Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell intends to propose an “extraordinary support package” of €1 billion focused on the delivery of ammunition, according to the EU document, drafted by the bloc’s diplomatic service, the European Commission and the European Defence Agency.

    The document said the extraordinary €1 billion should be focused on ammunition — “notably 155mm” — as soon as the €2 billion top-up of the European Peace Facility is “operationalised.” This means that half of this year’s top-up should be dedicated to ammunition, mainly shells, according to an EU official.

    The EU document also envisages ramping up European industrial production, which is straining to produce ammunition at the rate demanded by the war.

    The proposal cites “a favourable reimbursement rate, for instance up to 90% … given the extreme urgency and the depletion of Member States’ stocks.”

    Such a high rate could be to reassure member countries that provide major military help. When the reimbursement rate last year dropped below 50 percent, this created problems for some EU nations, in particular Poland, one of the EU’s largest weapons donors to Ukraine.

    The funding proposal also provides a possible way out by citing “voluntary financial contributions” for countries not to take part, such as Austria, which is neutral; or that are reluctant to provide weapons, such as Hungary.

    It stresses that the specific legal constraints of certain countries “will be taken into consideration,” mentioning also a possibility “to constructively abstain from lethal assistance measures.” 

    Teaming up

    Regarding joint procurement — meaning EU countries teaming up to buy arms — the European Defence Agency, together with member countries, would use a new scheme “encompassing seven categories from small arms calibres up to 155mm.”

    This project is to be “launched for a duration of seven years” and so far, 25 EU member states plus Norway have already confirmed their interest in participating, according to the document.

    Ukrainian artillery shells Russian troops’ position on the front line near Lysychansk in the Luhansk region on April 12, 2022 | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images

    In particular, procurement of 155mm ammunition should be accelerated “through a fast-track procedure for direct negotiation” with several providers. This type of ammunition is especially in demand as Ukrainian forces use it in long-range, precise artillery barrages.

    Here, time is of the essence: “In view of the urgency, the Project Arrangement needs to be signed no later than March.” And contracts should “be tentatively concluded between end-April and end-May.”

    The document also maps out the need for increased support to ramp up manufacturing, as European weapons factories are almost at full capacity and prices are already spiraling.

    Concrete measures could include “identifying and helping to remove production bottlenecks in the EU” as well as “facilitating the collaboration of relevant companies in a joint industry effort to ensure availability and supply.”

    The document will be discussed by defense ministers at an informal meeting in Stockholm next week and is then expected to be formally agreed by foreign and defense ministers on March 20. Leaders are also expected to give their final blessing at a meeting on March 23 and 24.

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    Jacopo Barigazzi

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  • Baltics and Poland push to make sanctioning oligarchs’ associates easier

    Baltics and Poland push to make sanctioning oligarchs’ associates easier

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    The Baltic states and Poland want to make it easier to sanction the family members and entourage of Russia’s richest men and women but are facing resistance from Hungary, several EU diplomats told POLITICO.

    Under its current rules, the EU can freeze the assets and impose visa bans on “leading businesspersons operating in Russia.” Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland now want to expand this definition, according to their proposal seen by POLITICO, to include “their immediate family members, or other natural persons, benefitting from them.”

    The EU has sanctioned more than 1,400 people in relation to Russia’s activities in Ukraine, many of who are Russian oligarchs. An additional 96 people could be added to the EU’s next sanctions package, draft documents seen by POLITICO indicate. Including oligarchs’ family members and other associates of oligarchs would make it possible to sanctions thousands more people without having to prove that they are directly involved in the war in Ukraine or acting in the economic interest of the Russian state.

    This could, for example, apply to the ex-wife of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lyudmila Ocheretnaya, whose daughters have been sanctioned but has not been herself, and other members of the oligarchs’ entourage.

    While some countries had doubts, legal experts are on board, said one of the diplomats.

    Yet, in a meeting on Tuesday, at which EU ambassadors discussed the bloc’s next round of sanctions, Hungary resisted such plans, the diplomats said. Budapest argued that this is not part of the 10th sanctions package, said one of the diplomats. Hungary has long been skeptical of including too many names on the list.

    Hungary also pushed to strike four people out the already existing sanctions list, two of the diplomats said.

    It was not immediately possible to learn the identity of the four individuals.

    That request is igniting tensions, and will be likely subject to another heated debate during a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday. During that meeting, they will not only discuss the new package of sanctions against Russia, but also the so-called rollover of the 1,400-plus names already on the list to keep them sanctioned.

    That’s because the regime is subject to a six-month review, which has hitherto been more or less a formality. Now, Hungary is using this extension review as leverage by insisting that four specific people have to be struck from the EU’s existing sanctions list before it will agree to the rollover. If Hungary blocks the rollover and refuses to compromise, all 1,400 people would be de-listed, the two diplomats warned.

    One of the diplomats didn’t hide his frustration: “It shows Hungary’s disregard for unity and European values that they are willing to risk this in the week where we commemorate one year since the Russian invasion,” he said.

    And those aren’t the only measure that Hungary takes issue with. It also is chiefly against sanctioning personnel working in the nuclear sector.

    But a Hungarian official poured water on this last point, saying that “the only open issue for Hungary is with the length of the rollover and not with the listings.”

    On the oligarchs issue and the proposal of the Baltics and Poland, the same Hungarian official said that this is not part of the 10th package.

    As all EU countries have to agree to the proposal, any country could veto the move even if all other 26 EU countries were in favor. Time is running out, with the EU wanting to adopt the 10th sanctions package before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Friday.

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  • Hungary’s Viktor Orbán plays spoilsport on NATO accession for Finland, Sweden

    Hungary’s Viktor Orbán plays spoilsport on NATO accession for Finland, Sweden

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    Hungary’s reputation as the troublemaker of Europe will be burnished on Wednesday as its parliament begins debating a contentious issue: whether to give Finland and Sweden the green light to join NATO.

    Along with Turkey, Hungary has yet to ratify the applications of Finland and Sweden to join the transatlantic defense alliance more than eight months after NATO leaders signed off on their membership bid at a summit in Madrid.

    While NATO members are more concerned about the potential of Turkey to stonewall accession for the Nordic countries — President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been blocking Sweden’s application, alleging that Stockholm is harboring Kurdish militants — the government of Viktor Orbán has also been dragging its heels on parliamentary approval for the process.

    Hungary’s ratification process will finally begin on Wednesday, with a debate due to kick off in the parliament in Budapest ahead of a vote — expected in the second half of March.

    But already, there are signs of trouble ahead.

    Máté Kocsis, head of Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party caucus in parliament, said last week that a “serious debate” had now emerged over the accession of the two countries. Hungary now plans to send a delegation to Sweden and Finland to examine “political disputes” that have arisen.

    Orbán himself echoed such views. The Hungarian leader, who has an iron grip on his Fidesz party, said in an interview on Friday that “while we support Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO in principle, we first need to have some serious discussions.”

    He pointed to Finland and Sweden’s previous criticism of Hungary’s record on rule-of-law issues, asserting that some in his party are questioning the wisdom of admitting countries that are “spreading blatant lies about Hungary, about the rule of law in Hungary, about democracy, about life here.”

    “How, this argument runs, can anyone want to be our ally in a military system while they’re shamelessly spreading lies about Hungary?”

    Orbán’s comments have confirmed fears in Brussels that the Hungarian leader could try to use his leverage over NATO enlargement to extract concessions on rule-of-law issues. 

    Finland and Sweden have been among the most critical voices around the EU table over rule-of-law concerns in Hungary, with Budapest still locked in a dispute with the European Union over the disbursal of funds due to Brussels’ protests over its democratic standards. 

    European Commission Vice-President Věra Jourová said earlier this month that Hungary must sort out the independence of its judiciary “very soon” if it wants to receive €5.8 billion in grants due from the EU’s COVID-19 recovery fund. 

    Helsinki and Stockholm have kept largely silent on the looming vote in Budapest, reflecting in part a reluctance to stir up controversy ahead of time.

    Sweden, in particular, has been treading a fine line with Turkey, seeking not to alienate Erdoğan even as allies now acknowledge the possibility of the two countries joining at different times — an apparent acceptance that Erdoğan could further hold up Sweden’s bid. 

    NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg visited Helsinki Monday, where Finland’s push to join the alliance topped the agenda. He urged both Turkey and Hungary to confirm the membership bids — and soon. 

    “I hope that they will ratify soon,” Stoltenberg said of the Hungarian parliament’s discussions. Asked if he was in contact with Hungary on the issue, he replied that it was a decision for sovereign national parliaments, adding: “The time has come. Finland meets all the criteria, as does Sweden. So we are working hard, and the aim is to have this in place as soon as possible.”

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    Suzanne Lynch

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  • Biden wants Poland’s opinion — but he still has the power

    Biden wants Poland’s opinion — but he still has the power

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    MUNICH — NATO’s eastern flank has found its voice — but Joe Biden’s visit is a reminder that Western capitals still have the weight. 

    After Russia bombed its way into Ukraine, the military alliance’s eastern members won praise for their prescient warnings (not to mention a few apologies). They garnered respect for quickly emptying their weapons stockpiles for Kyiv and boosting defense spending to new heights. Now, they’re driving the conversation on how to deal with Russia.

    In short, eastern countries suddenly have the ear of traditional Western powers — and they are trying to move the needle. 

    “We draw the red line, then we waste the time, then we cross this red line,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said over the weekend at the Munich Security Conference, describing a now-familiar cycle of debates among Ukraine’s partners as eastern capitals push others to move faster.

    The region’s sudden prominence will be on full display as U.S. President Joe Biden travels to Poland this week, where he will sit down with leaders of the so-called Bucharest Nine — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. 

    The choice is both symbolic and practical. Washington is keen to show its eastern partners it wants their input — and to remind Vladimir Putin of the consequences should the Kremlin leader spread his war into NATO territory. 

    Yet when it comes to allies’ most contentious decisions, like what arms to place where, the eastern leaders ultimately still have to defer to leaders like Biden — and his colleagues in Western powers like Germany. They are the ones holding the largest quantities of modern tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles, after all. 

    “My job,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in Munich, is “to move the pendulum of imagination of my partners in western Europe.”

    “Our region has risen in relevance,” added Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský in an interview. But Western countries are still “much stronger” on the economic and military front, he added. “They are still the backbone.”

    They’re listening … now

    When Latvian Defense Minister Ināra Mūrniece entered politics over a decade ago, she recalled the skepticism that greeted her and like-minded countries when they discussed Russia on the global stage.

    “They didn’t understand us,” she said in an interview earlier this month. People saw the region as “escalating the picture,” she added. 

    Latvian Defense Minister Ināra Mūrniece | Gints Ivuskans/AFP via Getty Images

    February 24, 2022, changed things. The images of Russia rolling tanks and troops into Ukraine shocked many Westerners — and started changing minds. The Russian atrocities that came shortly after in places like Bucha and Irpin were “another turning point,” Mūrniece said. 

    Now, the eastern flank plays a key role in defining the alliance’s narrative — and its understanding of Russia. 

    “Our voice is now louder and more heard,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. 

    The Bucharest Nine — an informal format that brings together the region for dialogue with the U.S. and occasionally other partners — is one of the vehicles regional governments are using to showcase their interests.

    “It has become an authoritative voice in terms of assessment of the security situation, in terms of assessment of needs,” Aurescu said in an interview in Munich. NATO is listening to the group for a simple reason, he noted: “The security threats are coming from this part of our neighborhood.” 

    Power shifts … slowly

    While the eastern flank has prodded its western partners to send once-unthinkable weapons to Ukraine, the power balance has not completely flipped. Far from it. 

    Washington officials retain the most sway in the Western alliance. Behind them, several western European capitals take the lead.

    “Without the Germans things don’t move — without the Americans things don’t move for sure,” said one senior western European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly. 

    And at this stage of the war, as Ukraine pushes for donations of the most modern weapons — fighter jets, advanced tanks, longer-range missile systems — it’s the alliance’s largest economies and populations that are in focus. 

    “It’s very easy for me to say that, ‘Of course, give fighter jets’ — I don’t have them,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told reporters earlier this month. 

    Asked if his country would supply Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets, Morawiecki conceded in Munich, “we have not too many of them.” | Omar Marques/Getty Images

    “So it’s up to those countries to say who have,” she said. “If I would have, I would give — but I don’t.”

    And even some eastern countries who have jets don’t want to move without their Western counterparts. 

    Asked if his country would supply Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets, Morawiecki conceded in Munich, “we have not too many of them.” He did say, however, that Poland could offer older jets — if the allies could pull together a coalition, that is.

    Another challenge for advocates of a powerful eastern voice within NATO is that the eastern flank itself is diverse. 

    Priorities vary even among like-minded countries based on their geographies. And, notably, there are some Russia-friendly outliers. 

    Hungary, for example, does not provide any weapons assistance to Ukraine and continues to maintain a relationship with the Kremlin. In fact, Budapest has become so isolated in Western policy circles that no Hungarian government officials attended the Munich Security Conference. 

    “I think the biggest problem in Hungary is the rhetoric of leadership, which sometimes really crosses the red line,” said the Czech Republic’s Lipavský, who was cautious to add that Budapest does fulfill NATO obligations, participating in alliance defense efforts. 

    Just for now?

    There are also questions about whether the east’s moment in the limelight is a permanent fixture or product of the moment. After all, China, not Russia, may be seizing western attention in the future.

    “It’s obvious that their voice is becoming louder, but that’s also a consequence of the geopolitical situation we’re in,” said the senior western European diplomat. “I’m not sure if it’s sustainable in the long run.” 

    A second senior western European diplomat, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal alliance dynamics, said that the eastern flank countries sometimes take a tough tone “because of the fear of the pivot to China.”

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has also reiterated that western alliance members play a role in defending the eastern flank | Johannes Simon/Getty Images

    Asked if the war has changed the balance of influence within the alliance, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said: “Yes and no.” 

    “We have to defend our territories, it is as simple as that,” she told POLITICO in Munich. “In order to do so we had to reinforce the eastern flank — Russia is on that part of the continent.” 

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has also reiterated that western alliance members play a role in defending the eastern flank. 

    Asked whether NATO’s center of gravity is shifting east, he said on a panel in Munich that “what has shifted east is NATO’s presence.”

    But, he added, “of course many of those troops come from the western part of the alliance — so this demonstrates how NATO is together and how we support each other.” 

    And in western Europe, there is a sense that the east does deserve attention at the moment. 

    “They might not have all the might,” said the second senior western European diplomat. “But they deserve solidarity.”

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    Lili Bayer

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  • Xinjiang governor cancels EU visit amid Uyghur abuse blowback

    Xinjiang governor cancels EU visit amid Uyghur abuse blowback

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    BRUSSELS — The governor of the Xinjiang region in China has canceled his controversial trip to Paris and Brussels, three people with knowledge of his plan told POLITICO.

    The cancelation of Erkin Tuniyaz’s tour followed widespread concerns from lawmakers and activists that Europe would be rolling out the red carpet for the man in charge of the Chinese region where extreme measures against the Uyghur Muslim community amounted to what the U.N. calls potential crimes against humanity.

    News of the trip being called off was relayed to people invited to his reception parties planned by Chinese diplomats in France and Belgium. “Due to scheduling reasons … [the event] is postponed,” according to an email sent to the EU guests in Brussels, the text of which was seen by POLITICO.

    The one sent to invitees in Paris cited “an important domestic agenda.” Those sharing the information with POLITICO did so on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the Xinjiang governor’s trip publicly.

    An emailed inquiry from POLITICO to the Chinese embassy in London, where Tuniyaz was supposed to begin his tour on Monday, was not answered. It remains unclear whether he will still go to London.

    POLITICO reported on his planned trip to Brussels last week following a report by the Guardian on his London visit. It later emerged that he was also scheduled to go to Paris.

    Critics questioned the British Foreign Office and the EU foreign policy arm for an initial plan to invite Tuniyaz for meetings during his trip. Some threatened legal action against him while he’s on European soil. The EU later defended its decision, saying they turned down Beijing’s requests to meet more senior EU officials.

    The Chinese foreign ministry didn’t confirm Tuniyaz’s initial trip plan.

    On the other hand, it announced that the Chinese foreign policy chief, Wang Yi, will be visiting Russia and four EU countries: France, Germany, Italy and Hungary. He’s also expected to speak at the Munich Security Conference. This will be Wang’s first trip to Europe since his promotion from foreign minister to the Communist Party Politburo late last year.

    In the meantime the EU is expected to relaunch the human rights dialogue with China later this month, the first time since Beijing imposed sanctions on European diplomats, lawmakers and scholars in 2020, according to an EU official on foreign policy.

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    Stuart Lau

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  • The delayed impact of the EU’s wartime sanctions on Russia

    The delayed impact of the EU’s wartime sanctions on Russia

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    The EU was quick to hit Russia with sanctions after Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine — but it took time and an escalation of measures before Moscow started to feel any real damage.

    Since the war started in late February last year, November was the first month when the value of EU imports from Russia was lower than in the same month of 2021. Until then, the bloc had been sending more cash than before the conflict — every month, for nine months. More recent data is not yet available.

    The main reason behind this? Energy dependency on Russia and skyrocketing energy prices. But that’s not the whole story: Some EU countries were much quicker than others to reduce trade flows with Moscow — and some were still increasing them at the end of last year.

    Here is a full breakdown of how the war has changed EU trade with Russia, in figures and charts:

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  • Finland may need to join NATO without Sweden, foreign minister says

    Finland may need to join NATO without Sweden, foreign minister says

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    Finland could reconsider its joint NATO bid with Sweden if Stockholm’s application is delayed further, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Tuesday, a day after Turkey said it would not support the Swedish candidacy.

    “You have to assess the situation,” Haavisto told Finnish public broadcaster Yle. “Has something happened that the longer term would prevent the Swedish project from going ahead? It [is] too early to take a position on that.”

    Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO together last October, as a consequence of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    Turkey and Hungary are the last two members of the military alliance who still need to ratify the joint bid.

    While Budapest has pledged it would sign off the bid, Ankara is yet to follow suit.

    But relations between Sweden and Turkey have taken a turn for the worse in recent days, after a far-right Danish-Swedish politician burned a copy of the Quran during a protest in Stockholm last Saturday.

    On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the burning was an insult, and that Sweden would not receive “any support from [Turkey] on the NATO issue.”

    Haavisto seemed more restrained in an interview to Reuters, also on Tuesday morning. When asked if Finland could join NATO on its own, the Foreign Minister said: “I do not see the need for a discussion about that.”

    Haavisto also told Reuters the three-way talks between Finland, Sweden and Turkey on NATO accession would be paused “for a couple of weeks” until “the dust has settled after the current situation.”

    “No conclusions should be drawn yet,” Haavisto added.

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    Nicolas Camut

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