Jens Stoltenberg at the Warsaw Security Forum: NATO’s failure to arm Ukraine after 2014 was a strategic mistake. “If you want peace, prepare for war. NATO didn’t prepare for war after 2014, and war is what it got.” The former NATO Secretary General said that had more weapons

Yulia Navalnaya at the Warsaw Security Forum: “Putin will go further and further, and he will not stop.” “Putin is a war criminal and the most corrupt person in the world.” “He should spend the rest of his life in prison for all that he did.” “I do not support any sanctions

War of words between Orbán and Poland. After Orbán told Donald Tusk he was “playing a dangerous game” by saying the Ukraine war is also Poland’s war, deputy foreign minister Władysław Teofil Bartoszewski shot back: “Mr Prime Minister, you are financing this war by buying Russian

The US is basically spelling it out now – the security guarantee to Europe is over. Trump and his defence secretary Pete Hegseth told America’s top brass that the military is no longer about global policing but about fighting the “enemy within” at home. Hegseth said the

Viktor Orbán dismissed reports of Hungarian drones crossing into Ukraine, saying even if they did, “Ukraine is not a sovereign country.” But he might want to look a little closer to home. Hungary is in the EU. That means EU law trumps Hungarian law in most areas of the

Czechs are heading to the polls today in an election that could bring Andrej Babiš back to power and shift Prague’s stance on Ukraine closer to Hungary and Slovakia. Voting runs across two days, closing tomorrow afternoon, with results expected Saturday night. Babiš, the

So, the first results are in from the Czech elections, and Andrej Babiš is way out in front. With about five percent of the votes counted, his ANO movement is sitting at around 40 percent. That’s expected to drop a little once results from Prague and other big cities roll in,

So, Andrej Babiš is back and the question everyone’s asking is whether he’ll become the next Orbán or Fico. His ANO movement scored a decisive win in the Czech elections, taking around 35 percent of the vote with nearly all districts counted. Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s Spolu

There’s no CzexIt coming, but probably no UkraJoin either. What we’ll get with Andrej Babiš’s new government in Czechia is plug-and-play populism, a pragmatic, transactional system where everyone gets something, as long as there’s a return for Babiš. He’ll stay in the EU and

The contrast inside Poland’s security policy came into sharp focus at last week’s Warsaw Security Forum. For months it’s been clear that Warsaw is effectively running two foreign policies at once, but the conference made the split impossible to ignore. President Nawrocki’s line

Angela Merkel has just said something that will go down badly in Warsaw and across the Baltics. In a new interview with Hungarian outlet Partizan, the former German chancellor blamed Poland and the Baltic states for Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Merkel argued that

Both the Moldovan and Czech elections were called “litmus tests” for the European Union. But they can’t both be. In Moldova, voters defied Russian interference and handed victory to the pro-EU Party of Action and Solidarity. Commentators said it proved Europe still inspires,

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine will join the European Union – “with or without Orbán.” Speaking in Kyiv alongside Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s path to EU membership “is the choice of the Ukrainian people,” and no single leader will stop it.

Angela Merkel blames the East. Donald Tusk says the problem was Germany. Merkel told a Hungarian magazine that Poland and the Baltic states share some responsibility for the war because they blocked an EU–Russia summit in 2021. She implied that more diplomacy might have stopped

On the same day Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, wrote in The New York Times that Russia can only be negotiated with from a position of strength, Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, showed what that means in practice. At a meeting

A big win for Warsaw. Brussels is set to exempt Poland from the EU’s new migration pact , sparing it from migrant relocation quotas and the financial penalties tied to “mandatory solidarity.” According to radio station RMF FM, the European Commission plans to formally grant

Lower Silesia is now richer than Greater Manchester when you adjust for prices. This is what I just read in the Sunday Times. I've always been bullish about Poland and it's prospects. But when I came here in 1996 the idea that I would read something like that would have seemed