Tag: Baltics
Inside Ukraine’s first day as an EU member – POLITICO
This is the moment Ukrainians have been fighting — and dying — for. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is walking up a red carpet in Brussels’ Europa building toward his first meeting of the European Council, the forum where the European Union’s leaders hammer out the bloc’s most perplexing problems.
He has been here before, of course, wearing his olive green sweatshirt in solidarity with the Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the trenches — his eyes exhausted from leading his country through
On the night watch – POLITICO
It’s an hour before dawn breaks over the North Sea. Aboard the KV Bergen, the officer of the watch is wide awake.
The 93-meter long Norwegian Navy Coast Guard vessel is on patrol, 50 miles out to sea. The sky is dark, the sea darker. But off the starboard bow, bright lights gleam through the rain and mist. Something huge and incongruous is looming out of the water, lit like a Christmas display.
“Troll A,” says Torgeir Standal, 49, the
‘Oh my God, it’s really happening’ – POLITICO
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Kaja Kallas had been dreading the call.
“I woke at 5 o’clock,” the Estonian prime minister recalled recently. The phone was ringing. Her Lithuanian counterpart was on the line.
“Oh my God, it’s really happening,” came the ominous words, according to Kallas. Another call came in. This time it was the Latvian prime minister.
It was February 24, 2022. War had begun on the European continent.
The night before,
POLITICO’s most-read stories of 2022 – POLITICO
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The year 2022 will go down in the history books. And it includes a chapter few wanted to see written: War returned to Europe.
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his tanks rolling into Ukraine, marking the start of a brutal conflict that, 10 months later, shows no signs of ending anytime soon. The early weeks of the war saw a wave of refugees flood the EU
A wonk’s guide to the Swedish EU presidency policy agenda – POLITICO
Sweden’s policy smorgasbord is already groaning with some chewy (and even unpalatable) items — but the Commission keeps adding more to its plate.
By this point in a five-year EU election cycle, the vast majority of new policy proposals have already arrived from the EU executive branch, and are already on their legislative journey. But as Sweden takes over the rotating Council presidency with a year-and-a-half left until the next European election, that’s not the case.
With massive official bandwith
When will Europe learn to defend itself? – POLITICO
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PARIS/BERLIN — Thirty years after the horrors of the Balkan wars laid bare Western Europe’s incapacity to deal with conflict on European soil, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is demonstrating how little has changed.
As Yugoslavia started to break apart in 1991, it fell to the Luxembourgish Foreign Minister Jacques Poos to make the ill-fatedly optimistic remark: “This is the hour of Europe, not that of the Americans.”
Since then, there have been years
Putin’s attack on democracy is working. Just look at Europe. – POLITICO
BERLIN — It was a scene that has played out on city squares across Europe for months: jarring eyewitness accounts of the war in Ukraine, a call to arms against colonial conquest and heartfelt appeals for the public to help.
Yet there was one important difference: The participants at this rally in Berlin late last month weren’t flying the Ukrainian colors, but those of the breakaway Kremlin-backed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk. The target of their dark warnings was not
From Madrid summit, NATO steps into more dangerous era – POLITICO
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MADRID — It’s riskier than the Cold War.
It’s less predictable, with fewer ground rules, a real danger of nuclear escalation, attritional bloodletting deeply scarring Ukraine, and no clear path back to any sort of détente.
NATO leaders on Thursday concluded a summit meeting in Madrid that positioned the alliance on the brink of a confrontation with Russia. Allies insisted that they would back Ukraine “as long as it takes” to repel Russian
NATO rushes to halt Russia, leaving China pivot unresolved – POLITICO
NATO leaders will proclaim a united wartime front this week at a summit in Madrid. Yet the quandaries that once left NATO adrift are still bubbling.
Before Russia sent its troops streaming into Ukraine, NATO had been searching for reinvention.
For some, China and its expansive, modernizing military presented NATO’s next big challenge. Others wondered what the Afghanistan war quagmire meant for the alliance’s future. In 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron said NATO was experiencing “brain death.”
Then Vladimir Putin
A wonk’s guide to the Czech EU presidency policy agenda – POLITICO
This article is part of POLITICO’s Guide to the Czech EU Presidency special report.
The Czech presidency needs to carry the EU through an energy crisis, galloping inflation and a war in Ukraine — all on a shoestring budget.
Call it the crisis presidency.
In the midst of a war and a gathering economic crisis, the small Central European country will be tasked with making sure the EU secures a lasting supply of energy while not letting go of its