An Israeli surveillance technology firm has run a large-scale operation to infect mobile phones with spyware using online advertisements to hack the devices, researchers said on Thursday.
An investigation by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and cybersecurity firm Confiant Threat Intelligence laid bare an ad-based infection technique developed by an Israeli company that researchers named “AdFection.” The hacks weaponized legitimate online ad systems for espionage purposes, allowing spyware manufacturers to connect to millions of devices and identify, track and target victims.
“Plugging into the online ads ecosystem provides the mercenary spyware industry a stealthy delivery system,” said Bill Marczak, senior researcher at The Citizen Lab. He said the findings were “surely just the tip of the iceberg” of how online ads are abused for espionage.
Researchers discovered critical details of the hacking tools by analyzing devices belonging to journalists and staff at the Al Jazeera media network, finding that 45 devices of journalists and staff were targeted and some infected with Israeli-made spyware known as Candiru.
At the heart of the hacking campaign is the Israeli company Discover-Tech that describes itself as an advertising business. Citizen Lab researchers said the company facilitated surveillance for commercial spyware operators. Its platform, called Controlium, allegedly allowed spyware makers like Candiru — which in 2025 was acquired by Integrity Labs — to identify, track and target devices by loading advertisements on websites and apps.
Discover-Tech and Integrity Labs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The scale is striking: An analysis of four billion advertising records found that Discover-Tech’s ads appeared across nearly 200,000 websites and mobile apps in dozens of countries over four months. Among the websites that featured the ads were institutional sites of NATO, the United Nations, the European Parliament, European Commission and Council of the EU.
The technique exploits real-time bidding — the automated system used by platforms such as Google to sell advertising space and target users. Rather than persuading victims to click a malicious link, attackers can exploit advertisements to identify and potentially infect devices without any interaction from the user — a technique known as “zero-click” infections.
Discover-Tech’s advertisements directed millions of devices to servers associated with Candiru, potentially enabling large-scale surveillance and reconnaissance, researchers said. That does not mean all those devices were infected.
The findings triggered calls for further investigation on Thursday. “The possibility that EU institutions have been exposed should set off alarm bells across Brussels,” said Hannah Neumann, a German European Parliament lawmaker of the Greens group. Neumann herself was the victim of a cyber-espionage operation by an Iranian hacking group.
“Europe cannot claim to defend democracy while leaving its own democratic institutions vulnerable to spyware,” Neumann said.
Ukraine’s strikes on data centers inside Russia aimed to disrupt military planning and communication services. There were also reports of another kind of disruption: to customers waiting for their dinner from food-delivery apps.
Kyiv’s drone strikes on three Yandex data centers in Sasovo, Kaluga and Vladimir saw delays and interruptions for thousands of businesses and households that rely on Yandex’s cloud infrastructure, including e-commerce, digital payment platforms and apps of food delivery and car services. Ukrainian drones on Wednesday targeted a major Sberbank data center in Russia’s Saratov region, though a senior company executive said it hadn’t affected operations.
After the strikes on Russian data centers, Kyiv noted that Moscow has already repeatedly targeted its digital infrastructure. “Ukrainians wanted to show Russians that two can play this game,” a senior official familiar with the operation told POLITICO, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The attacks and counter-attacks point to a new frontline in war: the infrastructure powering the digital economy.
The attacks on the buildings that supply compute power are akin to striking a power plant supplying the electricity, heating and fuel that both militaries and civilians depend on. It may weaken an enemy’s war effort but can also bring everyday life to a standstill.
Experts say the cost of rebuilding in Russia will be particularly high as the centers require scarce materials that must be imported. “Obtaining a large amount of equipment to replace what was destroyed is not going to be easy,” said Oleg Shakirov, a cyber policy and international security researcher, noting that most hardware needs to be imported and that is complicated by high global demand and sanctions on Russia.
“To be honest, no one really knows what’s the actual damage. Since two data centers are still offline, we can assume that it’s significant,” said Shakirov.
Joseph Jarnecki, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, warned that normalizing strikes to data centers could have a new set of dangerous consequences.
“These strikes likely breach International Humanitarian Law and it’s a big risk when global populations increasingly rely on digital services,” he told POLITICO.
When servers become targets
Data centers have entered the crosshairs of other recent armed conflicts. During the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran earlier this year, drone strikes hit three Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Since data centers can serve civilian and military purposes simultaneously, the legal status of targeting them is far from straightforward.
Kubo Mačák, an expert on international humanitarian law, said a data center must meet two conditions to qualify as a military objective under the Geneva Conventions: it must make an effective contribution to military operations and destroying it must offer a “definite military advantage.”
A delivery robot from Russian tech giant Yandex moves through Moscow. | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images
“If you know that they are storing military intelligence or that they’re using the data center to power military artificial intelligence tools,” Mačák said, there could be grounds to consider it a military objective.
Following the most recent strikes of the Yandex data centers, users on social media platform X reported a sudden drop in automated bot activity, including from accounts associated with pro-Russian, pro-Trump and Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) narratives.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seized on the reports to boast that the strikes had made social media less toxic, even as independent researchers and national research institutes found no evidence they specifically disrupted any Russian disinformation campaigns.
Mačák said that even if a data center is being used to “let’s say, run some trolls or these bot farms to interfere with elections abroad … that would not be sufficient.” In other words, hosting propaganda bots does not, by itself, make a data center a lawful military target.
The dual-use quandary has often focused on the targeting of energy infrastructure, which has been frequent in the Russia-Ukraine war. On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump urged Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries, blaming the attacks for rising fuel prices. He has since called for both sides to halt attacks on energy infrastructure, although the existence of any ceasefire agreement remains disputed.
As data centers become increasingly central to national economies, they will become more consequential targets. A senior NATO official granted anonymity to discuss the matter told POLITICO that data centers are already considered potential targets and that the alliance is factoring their vulnerability into its planning.
NATO allies recognize that their data centers could come under attack in a conflict, the official said: “We would get it in a fight.”
Veronika Melkozerova in Kyiv contributed to this report.
LONDON — Andy Burnham appeared to rule out cooperating with the Green Party on Wednesday, after the left-wing force passed a motion declaring that Zionism is a form of racism.
At prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons, Burnham condemned the motion approved at the Greens’ annual conference earlier this month, which defines Zionism as supporting “an ethnonationalist Jewish state.” Party members also backed a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine.”
Asked by Conservative Shadow Paymaster General Harriett Baldwin if he would rule out cooperating with the Greens, Burnham said: “We will always take the right response when it comes to any partnerships we have with other parties. We cannot support a partnership with a party that holds a position that has recently been adopted.”
On the motion, he said: “It is wrong. It is antisemitic, and this side of the house will have nothing to do with it.”
Burnham currently has a House of Commons majority, but a seat model by YouGov published last month suggests Labour would be the largest party in a hung parliament at the next general election — not due until the middle of 2029.
The Greens currently have five MPs in the Commons after winning their first by-election in Greater Manchester from Labour in February. Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, failed to take the Holborn and St Pancras constituency from Labour in a by-election early this month, days after the party conference motion was passed.
A Labour party official was unable to immediately clarify what Burnham’s stance means for local government partnerships between Labour and the Greens.
Polanski said he wouldn’t have supported the motion but did not vote because he was campaigning in the contest. Senior party figures, including former leaders Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay and Westminster leader Ellie Chowns, opposed the motion. Co-Deputy Leader Mothin Ali supported the motion.
In a joint statement after the vote, Polanski, the co-deputy leaders and party MPs said the Green Party “will never tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment.” It said, “there is no conflict between supporting the rights of Palestinians and the rights of Jewish people.”
In the wake of a summer migration crisis that rocked Madrid, Spaniards fear ongoing tensions could spiral into an armed conflict with the country’s North African neighbor.
The sudden arrival of more than 70,000 migrants in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in late July fueled criticism of Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist government and its handling of the border, as well as its lone opposition to tough new EU migration policies. It also raised questions about Morocco’s role in the mass influx—something Sánchez repeatedly rejected.
A September poll by POLITICO, conducted by independent pollster PF Global weeks before Sánchez called a snap election and published exclusively in POLITICO’s new Madrid Playbook, found that 58 percent of respondents believed tensions over Ceuta and Melilla — which Morocco considers occupied territories — were likely to trigger an armed conflict between Spain and Morocco within the next decade.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the conservative People’s Party currently polling ahead of Sánchez’s Socialists, claimed the crisis has been “spearheaded and coordinated by Morocco” and that the government had covered it up. Sumar, a junior partner in Sánchez’s government, also questioned Rabat’s role, and a police report alleged Moroccan agents had helped orchestrate the mass movement.
The people, power moves and policies shaping Spanish politics.
Sánchez described the surge as an attack on Spain’s territorial integrity but repeatedly dismissed claims that Rabat was behind it, instead accusing smugglers.
Still, in the POLITICO survey, three-quarters of Spaniards said Morocco poses a real threat to their country’s territorial integrity.
People who said they’d cast their votes for Feijóo or the far-right Vox party in the next election were both more likely to consider Morocco a threat to Spain, and more likely to think that tensions over the exclaves could lead to an armed conflict this decade. More than three-quarters of Vox supporters and 68% of People’s Party supporters thought a conflict in the next decade was likely.
Even among supporters of Sánchez’s own Socialist Party, nearly two-thirds considered Morocco a genuine threat. The party’s support base was split about the likelihood of a conflict, with 47% saying an armed conflict is likely but 43% saying it is not.
The poll shows that Morocco was widely seen as a threat to Spain. Over 80% of Spaniards said it posed a moderate to significant risk to Spain, putting the country well ahead of other foreign powers such as China, the U.S. and Russia.
Still, two-thirds of Spaniards in the survey said they expected Ceuta and Melilla would still be under Spanish control in 20 years’ time.
The bloc is now discussing emergency measures to deal with mass movements that may be engineered or weaponized, but both the Commission and ministers have connected that emergency response framework to the role of smugglers and criminal networks.
For Spaniards, the idea that Morocco could engineer a situation to annex Ceuta and Melilla is far from theoretical speculation. Many still remember Morocco’s 1975 “Green March,” an operation mobilizing tens of thousands of civilians to force Madrid to hand over the territory of Spanish Sahara.
The numbers show Madrid is walking a tightrope in its handling of the exclaves, just as Spanish King Felipe VI’s tours Ceuta and Melilla from Tuesday — a visit which is being closely watched on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar and expected to put Madrid’s diplomatic relations with Rabat further on edge.
Felipe is expected to visit the Sidi Embarek cemetery, where around 90 people who died in the crisis are buried. Ceuta’s Deputy Mayor Kissy Chandiramani told POLITICO that Morocco refused to repatriate them — a gesture which analyst Ignacio Cembrero described as “a slap in the face.”
Critics will also be looking out for the king’s carefully worded evening speech at the Parador hotel after Defense Minister Margarita Robles called Ceuta and Melilla “unquestionably Spanish” this week.
Morocco’s response so far has been notably muted: In King Mohammed VI’s first public appearance since the crisis, he said cooperation with Spain faced “major challenges” but did not refer directly to the visit.
While Chandiramani hopes the Spanish king’s visit will unite the “broken city,” a protest is expected in Fnideq, across the border, on Oct. 14 as soon as he leaves the exclave.
Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Bryant rejected furious accusations from the U.K. region’s unionists Monday that he had “bent the knee” to Irish republicans blocking a long-disputed Protestant march.
Bryant told the House of Commons that his decision to ban what had been a legally authorized parade by the Orange Order — a pro-British Protestant brotherhood reviled by many of Northern Ireland’s Catholics — had been taken principally to avoid violence. Thousands led by Sinn Fein, the main Irish republican party, had spent nearly two weeks blocking the Orangemen’s intended path down the Garvaghy Road, the main Catholic district in the town of Portadown, but police kept the two sides apart.
“The Orange Order obtained a legal right to parade, but … upholding the determination does not come at any cost. Upholding the law also means judiciously preventing serious disorder,” Bryant said in defense of his intervention Friday night.
Democratic Unionist leader Gavin Robinson accused Bryant of bowing to a threat of violence from Irish Republican Army militants who featured prominently within the Garvaghy Road crowd. Most IRA members have observed a cease-fire since 1997 and officially disarmed in 2005, but several small factions still plot occasional bomb and gun attacks.
Robinson said Northern Ireland’s unionists “know that this British government has bent the knee to them.”
But Bryant said his decision to bar the Orangemen — despite a decision last month by the region’s independent Parades Commission to permit a heavily restricted march by 35 Orangemen — had so far kept violence at bay.
“I utterly reject the charge that I have in any way succumbed to mob rule. The truth is, things have actually passed remarkably peacefully,” he said, adding: “I don’t think anybody seriously proposed that the police should drag people off the street.”
He spoke hours after two courts in Northern Ireland tangled with the conflict of rights stirred up by the revival of the Orange marching demands in Portadown, a sectarian dispute that triggered bloodshed and rioting across Northern Ireland in the mid-1990s.
The Court of Appeal, overseen by Northern Ireland’s highest judge, rejected a lawsuit by the Garvaghy Road protesters seeking to challenge the original Parades Commission ruling. Orange supporters said this judgment kept the door open for an eventual parade down Garvaghy Road for the first time since 1997, when police backed by British soldiers forced the parade through with the use of armored vehicles and volleys of plastic bullets.
A separate Belfast High Court hearing gave the go-ahead for Portadown’s Orange lodge to pursue a legal challenge against both Bryant and Northern Ireland’s police commander, Chief Constable Jon Boutcher. That case will be heard starting next Monday.
Boutcher, rejecting unionist calls for him to resign, issued his own lengthy defense of his officers’ management of the Portadown standoff. He appealed to both sides to respect a legal process that could take months to conclude — including potential charges against senior Sinn Féin figures involved in the Garvaghy Road blockade.
The legal fight over whose rights should prevail is fracturing Northern Ireland’s cross-community government, a bitterness on full display Monday night at Stormont, the center of government on a hill overlooking Belfast.
After a three-hour debate in the Northern Ireland Assembly, unionist members voted unanimously to oust the four Sinn Féin ministers from their supposed unity government. Unionists accused all four, led by First Minister Michelle O’Neill, of breaking their ministerial pledge to uphold the law of the land by joining and encouraging the Garvaghy Road protests.
O’Neill accused her accusers on the other side of the chamber of being reactionary bigots.
“It’s no surprise to me that the three unionist parties have signed up to this motion. They have never accepted the reality that an Irish republican is now the first minister, and a woman at that. They have never accepted equality,” she said.
The unionists’ motion of no confidence bore no legal weight because of Stormont’s peculiar power-sharing rules. This would have required Sinn Féin members to join the unionists in voting to punish their own leaders.
In the end, four motions — seeking the expulsion from office for a year of O’Neill, Finance Minister John O’Dowd, Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald and Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins — all failed on virtually identical sectarian tests. While 33 to 34 unionists voted to kick out each one, 35 lawmakers from Sinn Féin and a smaller Irish nationalist party, the SDLP, voted to keep them in office.
O’Neill’s official co-leader of Northern Ireland’s four-party government, Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly of the Democratic Unionists, said she understood the law as a barrister — and her government colleague had broken it by leading a “mob” that included well-known figures from multiple IRA factions “threatening violence and disorder.”
WARSAW — NATO must modernize its military infrastructure to move forces and equipment from Western to Eastern Europe “where we would expect any future conflict,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said Monday.
Speaking on a panel at the Warsaw Security Forum, Whitaker’s comments came as Washington reviews its military presence on the continent — with the ambassador saying that Europe ranks fourth among Washington’s strategic priorities, behind homeland security, the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific.
He pointed to outdated military bases, fuel supply chains and agreements governing the stationing of American troops in Europe as areas requiring attention under the ongoing U.S. force posture and basing review.
He emphasized the importance of military mobility and “moving things from the west to the east,” citing discussions with EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius. European officials warn that Russia could be ready to attack a NATO country by the end of the decade.
Whitaker did not announce any decisions to relocate or withdraw American forces. He nevertheless made clear that Washington is reassessing its global commitments to avoid spreading its military resources too thin.
“Superpowers and great global powers have mostly had challenges when they get overextended,” Whitaker said, adding that U.S. President Donald Trump wants allies to become “capable and not dependent.”
“The United States isn’t stepping back. We’re just asking you to step forward,” he said.
Whitaker also criticized countries that are falling short of their defense-spending commitments.
He said he had recently delivered a “very strong message” to political leaders in Czechia. The country’s defense spending for this year is approximately 1.8% of GDP, falling short of NATO’s current 2% benchmark.
European governments must continue strengthening their armed forces, he argued, warning that the continent still lacks many of the capabilities it needs to defend itself.
Kubilius, meanwhile, stressed the need to reduce Europe’s military dependence on Washington, highlighting EU efforts to develop its own drone defenses, satellite communications and surveillance capabilities.
Polish presidential adviser Marcin Przydacz, also on the panel, urged Western European allies to accelerate defense spending while emphasizing that NATO, rather than the EU, must remain responsible for Europe’s collective defense.
KYIV — Russia’s Vladimir Putin is preparing for a broader confrontation with Europe amid an uptick in the Kremlin’s hybrid attacks on the continent, Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has warned.
In an interview with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, Kuleba, who was Ukraine’s foreign policy chief from 2020 to 2024, said that Russia’s continued war preparations and anti-European propaganda are signs that Putin is planning attacks on other European countries.
“Anti-European hysteria is being fueled in Russia, which I interpret as the preparation for a broader conflict with the rest of Europe,” said Kuleba, before adding: “We [Ukrainians] don’t have to drag you — Putin will drag you into the war.”
European officials say Moscow has upped its hybrid campaign across the continent in recent months, using cyberattacks, sabotage and disinformation to disrupt critical infrastructure and weaken support for Ukraine.
Kuleba said the failed drone attack on the Leipzig airport in Germany in August was a sign of “growing preparation” for an offensive on the continent. “They see how your intelligence operates. They see how your security forces operate. They see how you react and they draw conclusions,” he added.
In the aftermath of the incident, the German government concluded that Moscow was responsible for the attack, and ordered a review of security around sensitive locations.
However, Kuleba, who stood down as Ukraine’s foreign policy chief in September 2024, does not think Russia is preparing a full-scale offensive beyond Ukraine. In his view, Moscow is more likely to launch an attack on NATO countries involving drones targeting key infrastructure that would test the alliance’s unity and preparedness.
“The truth is that Russia does not need 400,000 more people to wage that war. It needs five drones,” he said, adding that in the event of an attack, “[Europeans] can call for NATO consultations… can call for restraint. But this will only encourage Putin to make the next step … He will always have enough drone and missile capabilities.”
Kuleba no longer believes Putin can be persuaded to end the war through negotiations. “He’s not looking for a solution, for a pause, and there will be no moment when he will start looking for it,” he said, concluding: “Putin is a guarantee of war: anyone after Putin is a chance for peace.”
According to Kuleba, any attempts at negotiating with Putin, or pushing for peace, are a waste of time. “The sooner we come to terms with reality, the better policies we can develop to address it,” he said.
He noted that while Europe’s political culture is based on “a win-win approach” in which both sides can benefit, Putin’s outlook is very different: “For him, a solution that benefits both sides is not the best option. For him, the world works on the principle of victory and defeat. One side has to win and the other has to lose,” said Kuleba.
The former foreign minister also warned that Ukraine would face its worst ever winter as Moscow ups its attacks against civilians in a bid to break their spirit.
In recent months, Russian strikes have hit Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and transport links, including bridges over the Dnipro river, as well as homes and civilian sites such as bus stops, schools, postal depots and internet providers. The attacks have disrupted power, transport and daily life as winter approaches.
On Thursday, at least 33 people were killed in a Russian attack on two buses in Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Kuleba explained why he believed Moscow has now sharply escalated its airstrikes: “The bombing of cities is a direct consequence of Russia’s failure to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield.” He continued: “The main target of Russian drones and missiles is the Ukrainians’ will to resist — but also the will of Ukraine’s friends abroad to keep supporting it.”
He added:“They don’t just want to turn out the lights in Ukraine. They want to paralyze the country.”
Kuleba described the worst-case scenario in Ukraine as “the collapse of the systems that make life in a big city possible,” such as electricity, water and drainage services.
Could Russia succeed? “I believe Ukraine is too large, too mobile and too adaptable. That’s why I think we’ll get through this winter,” said Kuleba.
“The price will be much higher than last year’s.”
The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network harnesses the resources of the company’s newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, The Telegraph, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms: online, print, TV and audio.
A Russian attack that killed at least 17 people including three children in Ukraine are Moscow’s “thanks for the lifting on sanctions on diesel exports,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday.
A series of strikes on the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia also injured at least 18 people, including three children, Ukraine’s state emergency services said on Saturday afternoon.
“People continue to be searched for under the rubble of destroyed houses. Rescue operations continue,” said Mykhailo Semikin, acting head of Zaporizhzhia regional military administration in a Telegram post.
“Today, Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Zelenskyy said on X.
The strikes took place just one day after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would temporarily lift sanctions on Russian diesel in a bid to bring soaring prices down.
Ukrainian officials were meeting on the same day with European and U.S. officials in Miami in a fresh diplomatic push to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Zelenskyy criticized the deal on Friday and accused Trump of using the peace talks as a “smokescreen” while pursuing a deal with the Kremlin.
Even though the talks were supposed to last two days, the Ukrainian team decided to return home earlier then planned “because they managed to talk everything through earlier,” a senior official familiar with the matter told POLITICO. Ukraine will continue to bomb Russian oil refineries despite US-Russia deals, the official added.
The Ukrainian armed forces said Saturday they struck a major oil facility in Russia’s Samara region overnight.
Zelenskyy is currently busy coordinating with Europeans and preparing several high-level meetings, the official said. He spoke on Saturday with leaders of France, Norway and Finland.
“Russian strikes killed over 80 Ukrainian civilians in two days. Moreover, it has stepped up its hybrid attacks against Europe, both EU Member States and NATO Allies,” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said Saturday. “Suspending sanctions on Russian diesel provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war.”
“On Monday, EU Foreign Ministers intend to approve the biggest set of sanctions listings targeting Russia’s war machine since the start of the war,” Kallas added.
Seoul recalled its ambassador to Ukraine on Thursday, two weeks after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed the transfer of North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea, triggering a diplomatic spat.
“The government hopes that pending bilateral issues will be resolved smoothly and will continue consultations with the Ukrainian side to that end,” the South Korean ministry’s statement said.
On Sept 24, South Korean president Lee Jae-myung accused Ukraine of breaching a confidentiality agreement between Seoul and Kyiv after Zelenskyy disclosed the transfer of two North Korean soldiers to its neighbour to the south.
While Seoul publicly pledged to accept North Korean prisoners of war in 2025, Lee said the disclosure on such a “highly sensitive issue” may cause “many problems.”
Kyiv initially denied such an agreement existed according to Ukrainian media, while Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha later described the situation as a “diplomatic misunderstanding.”
His South Korean counterpart Cho Hyun said Tuesday Sybiha had issued an apology, but suggested it was insufficient. “Because there is some gap with the level we envisioned, we intend to take resolute measures,” he told South Korean lawmakers Tuesday, broadcaster SBS reported.
“This week, we invited the Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to Ukraine to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to present our position and seek constructive solutions. The Ukrainian side’s position was conveyed to him,” Heorhii Tykhyi, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian’s foreign ministry, told reporters on Thursday. “We are convinced that diplomacy must prevail over emotions. Despite Seoul’s decision to recall the ambassador, Ukraine remains open to resuming a constructive dialogue — even if it takes time,” he added.
South Korea has been broadly supportive of Kyiv since the start of Russia’s full-scale war, which has also strengthened ties between Moscow and Pyongyang. Tens of thousands of North Korean soldiers have been sent to join Russian troops, and Zelenskyy claimed in June that Russia was seeking to bring more North Koreans to the conflict.
This article was updated.Veronika Melkozerova contributed reporting.
MADRID — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has finally done something the far right approves of — calling a snap election on Nov. 29 that the anti-immigrant Vox party is hailing as “Spain’s last chance to be Spain again.”
Polling third in the race, Vox is Spain’s leading nationalist, euroskeptic force and it sees next month’s contest as its prime opportunity to remold the country after eight years of Sánchez’s socialist premiership by getting its people into top ministerial jobs.
Party leader Santiago Abascal greeted Monday’s election announcement as “excellent news.” His delight is hardly surprising given that polls suggest Vox is on track to make the biggest gains of any major party.
While the center-right People’s Party is expected to come first — with about 33% of the vote, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls — it will almost certainly have to team up with Vox, which commands support of about 18%, to build a stable coalition.
Abascal will then be able to demand the inclusion of key elements of Vox’s agenda as its price for that partnership. Its goals include deportations of undocumented migrants, a benefits preference for Spaniards over foreign nationals, slashing EU health and safety rules in the farming sector and rolling back support for gender equality and the LGBTQ+ community.
Vox secured 33 of the 350 seats in Congress in 2023, but is now set to double that. Under the PP’s coalition leadership, it should be able to form part of a comfortable majority.
“This time round, Vox is much stronger,” José Antonio Fúster, spokesperson for the party and a member of the Madrid regional parliament, said. “We are going into a very important election, not so much for us, as for Spaniards … This is the last hope for Spain to be Spain again.”
Fúster would not be drawn on which ministries his party has set its sights on, warning against “selling the bearskin before it has been hunted.”
Pointing to talks with the PP in recent months in four regions where the two parties now govern in coalition, he said the shaping of policy was being prioritized ahead of institutional power. “That is the last thing we negotiate because it is the least important,” he said.
Pet portfolios
In August, Vox MEP Jorge Buxadé told POLITICO that forming part of the government was not the only option open to his party, but that in a hypothetical coalition with the PP, his party would seek a number of ministries “in proportion to our vote share.”
That would amount to a significant percentage. If current polls translate into results in November, Vox would be in a position to claim about a third of ministerial posts.
Analysts expect Vox to press for portfolios that focus on its pet policies, such as agriculture, domestic policy, immigration and industry. The culture and education portfolios could also be of interest to the party, given their relevance in the hard right’s campaign against so-called wokeism.
The regions where the PP and Vox currently govern together — Andalusia, Aragón, Castile and León, and Extremadura — offer clues: The government departments that Vox controls are mainly linked to agriculture, welfare benefits and the family.
The party is heading into the election campaign espousing three main ideas: the concept of “national priority” — ensuring that Spaniards have access to public services and benefits ahead of foreign nationals — a clampdown on immigration and broad deregulation.
Although Vox’s rise to prominence was driven by its fierce stance against Catalan nationalism nearly a decade ago, that debate has faded from the political arena. Now, its focus is, like its European far-right counterparts, more firmly on immigration-related matters.
“Before, Vox talked about immigration, but it wasn’t the nuclear issue it has become,” said Guillermo Fernández Vázquez, a political scientist at Carlos III University and author of a book about the European far right. “Now, when Vox talks about social security payments, it talks about immigration; when it talks about the economy, it talks about immigration. Immigration is the issue that dictates everything.”
Vox also subscribes to the “remigration” policy being touted by many far-right parties, under which undocumented migrants and those who commit crimes would be deported. The PP has appeared to respond to Vox’s hard line by toughening its own stance, calling for the expulsion of foreign criminals and opposing a government migrant legalization program.
In each of the regions where the two parties are in coalition, Vox has ensured that its senior partner agreed to formally include the national priority principle in their governing agreement.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo speaks at the People’s Party congress in Madrid on June 5, 2026. | Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images
“But when it comes to national priority, the PP has added the caveat that it has to be implemented in line with the law,” said Miguel González, a journalist at the El País daily newspaper and author of a book about Vox. Legislation prevents discrimination against foreign nationals when it comes to accessing public benefits and services, meaning the policy is currently little more than symbolic in those regions.
“In reality, in order to implement this properly, you’d have to change the immigration law,” González added.
Vox is eyeing an overhaul of that legislation to make it a workable policy.
“It’s very possible to change laws that are bad for Spaniards, so we have to roll them back and introduce new laws, making sure that Spaniards are not last in line,” Fúster said.
Deregulation nation
Deregulation also offers a platform from which to attack EU health-and-safety norms that are reviled by the farming sector, one of Vox’s main voter bases.
Fúster accepted that this could lead to clashes with the European Commission, but insisted that pressure from what he described as a rising tide of European parties sharing Vox’s values would “make sure that Brussels returns to the path of common sense.”
PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has criticized phytosanitary restrictions on farmers but has shown little appetite for conflict with European institutions.
In social policy, González said Vox might use the broader notion of deregulation to dismantle funding for gender equality and LGBTQ+ departments and projects, as it has done on a local level. Fúster was reluctant to be drawn on this: “We believe in the equality of Spaniards,” he said. “We don’t believe that anyone should have privileges above others.”
Fernández Vázquez of Carlos III University said that the origins of Vox suggest a bumpy ride for the PP. Vox would be the first far-right party to enter government in half a century since the death of Francisco Franco in 1975 — and there would likely be clashes.
The far-right party formed in 2013 as a breakaway from the conservatives in frustration at what its founders saw as the pusillanimity of the PP in the face of Catalan separatism.
“I think the relationship between Vox and PP [in government] will be a bad one,” the researcher said. “Abascal and his colleagues are going to enjoy showing up Feijóo whenever they can, portraying him as lukewarm and weak.”
Fúster accepted “it could be a difficult relationship,” adding that the PP “don’t see things the way we do and we don’t share their vision.”
“We’re not willing to make concessions, we’re willing to have a frank, open and reasonable negotiation.”
But for now, the priority is simply to remove the Socialists. In his traditionally combative style, Abascal insisted the election was a chance to hold on to “the peace, prosperity and freedom that a mafioso government wants to snatch from us forever.”
LONDON — Britain and the U.S. sought to ease friction Monday after American bombers were suddenly moved amid major security concerns at the base that hosted U.S. aircraft used to strike Iran.
The U.S. move is the latest stumbling block in the special relationship between the allies and underscores reservations in Donald Trump’s administration about how the U.K. is handling its defense and security commitments.
The Pentagon confirmed on Sunday that it had removed all B-1 bombers from the RAF Fairford air base — where they were deployed to conduct what have been termed as “defensive” strikes against Iran — and sent them back to their home stations in America.
Trump went further, telling journalists Monday evening: “We had an idea that there might be a threat, and why would I leave them there? … If we’re going to be threatened we’re just going to move them, and that sort of alleviates that.”
It comes as Britain’s counter-terrorism agencies investigate a suspected terror plot against the air base, which the U.K. government believes involves Tehran.
Trump on Monday added: “We actually know the people that made the threat, and they’ve got themselves a big problem,” adding in response to a follow-up question: “They would be linked to Iran.”
He later said that he believes the U.K. is still a safe place for U.S. forces.
Downing Street had earlier insisted that the base was safe, but refused to comment directly on America’s decision to remove the bombers from the area.
The move comes as the Trump administration has grown increasingly frustrated with the U.K.’s defense spending and the White House’s continuing anger that the U.K. didn’t send warships to the Middle East to help with the American blockade of Iranian shipping.
Something deeper is wrong
London has yet to outline a path to meet the NATO standard of spending 3.5% of GDP on defense by 2035 — up from its current level of around 2.7%. It has also been shut out of a subgroup within the alliance convened by Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby. The group is slated to meet again in Poland some time later this month.
Late last month, Colby hinted at that frustration with London, saying the countries’ long history will continue to bind them, but the British government needs to make the case to its people for spending more on defense.
“There’s this incredible legacy, and that’s what we want to rekindle,” Colby said. “Exactly how you convince the British people [to spend more on defense] I would not presume to say, but … there’s probably sort of a degree of reconciliation between what the U.K. wants to be doing, what it spends, and what it spends on, because you know a modern military is not cheap.”
The U.S. is also conducting a sweeping review of its posture in European NATO countries — including the U.K. — which will determine the number of American troops and military assets on the continent.
Sophia Gaston, a senior national security researcher at King’s College London, said: “The Trump administration is undeniably sensitive to the costs of the Iran conflict as they head into the midterms next month, so their caution is understandable.
An armored vehicle is seen at RAF Fairford on Sept. 28, 2026. | Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images
“It’s also hard not to, at some level, perceive a degree of uncertainty about the capacity of the British services to currently prevent such an attack. That partly reflects the innate challenge drones and other aspects of modern warfare pose to the sitting ducks of expensive kit.
“But it also speaks to the American wariness towards the pressured state of Britain’s military capabilities. Not only does Washington no longer wish to be solely responsible for allies’ protection, its expectations for the security allies offer its bases has also increased.”
Trump on Monday praised his relationship with new U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham. He said: “He’s liberal, very liberal, but I hear he’s going to open up North Sea oil if he does that in Aberdeen. If he does that, you’re going to have a rich country. If he doesn’t, you’re going to have a bankrupt country.”
Britain’s security concerns
In May, the U.K. raised its terrorism threat level to “severe” — meaning a terrorist attack is highly likely — after its MI5 security service said the U.K. had been “experiencing a gradual increase in terrorist threats for some time” including from hostile states like Iran.
In Britain, police and the security services are dealing with a three-fold threat from Iran-backed groups: attacks against Iranian dissidents, attacks against the country’s Jewish population, and the targeting of U.S. assets such as those used for strikes against Tehran.
Counter Terrorism Policing is currently investigating potential Iranian state involvement in a major incident at RAF Fairford on Sept. 27, when police were alerted to three suspicious vehicles near the base.
Six men — including a British-Iranian national — have so far been arrested on suspicion of terror offenses. All have subsequently been released on bail while police continue their investigation.
US strike capability
Though the Pentagon stressed that bombers remain “ready to deliver precision global strike capabilities” — including from the U.S. mainland — removing them would make any further American strikes on Iran more complex, since the bombers would have to double their flight path from the continental U.S. to the Middle East.
There is a fresh U.S. buildup in the region, with a third aircraft carrier currently steaming across the Pacific along with several large amphibious ships carrying 2,500 Marines, joining the 2,500 already at sea in the Middle East, giving President Donald Trump more options should he restart the bombing campaign after the U.S. midterm elections in early November.
Christoph Bergs, a research analyst at the RUSI defense think tank, said: “The basing of US B-1 bombers at RAF Fairford for operational employment against Iran was based on the UK stipulation that these were only used for defensive strikes. This likely included a more modest targeting list. Their withdrawal reduces the capacity to quickly surge sorties against Iran, reducing the threat level somewhat.”
The Pentagon declined to comment on whether it will, or is considering, the removal of other aircraft from British bases used to support operations against Iran.
This article has been updated with comments from Donald Trump.
BERLIN — The European Commission needs the power to act much faster against trade threats, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron urged in a joint letter on Monday.
The leaders of the EU’s two most powerful and populous countries want Brussels to be able to act more quickly and decisively in a trade confrontation — while making it harder for EU capitals to block action.
The proposal seeks to strengthen the hand of Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, who flies to Beijing on Thursday for the final round of talks in a four-month process where Brussels is seeking to rebalance the EU’s trading relationship with China.
Merz and Macron said the Commission should be empowered to restrict, or even completely cut off, imports from countries seen as creating “severe and systematic distortions” in the single market. In their letter and a joint position paper, they call for urgent action, saying the EU’s existing trade defense toolbox “does not suffice anymore.”
“Without delaying the full use of the existing set of instruments, we need a comprehensive framework to complement our toolbox with new legal instruments — in a lean and non-bureaucratic way,” they wrote.
One senior German official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, described the tool as a “second-strike weapon” that could be deployed in the event of an escalating trade war.
“We can see that certain players have important, powerful instruments at their disposal,” the official said, pointing to the sweeping so-called Section 301 tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s dominance of critical-mineral supply chains. The EU, they explained, needed its own countermeasures.
“When trade rules are not respected, we need to be credible regarding the fact that access to the internal market cannot be guaranteed,” said an official from Macron’s office, noting that “dialogue does not preclude our determination to protect our most vulnerable sectors.”
The French official said the procedure for activating the new measures should be based on the one that already exists for anti-dumping cases. This allows the Commission to take action without first seeking a green light from EU capitals.
“We can’t keep waiting — for months or sometimes even years,” the French official said.
A new bazooka
While the joint letter doesn’t mention China by name, it clearly relates to the bloc’s €1-billion-a-day trade deficit with the world’s leading exporter and growing concerns about the impact of Chinese overcapacity on European industry.
The existing Anti-Coercion Instrument, also known as the EU’s trade “bazooka,” in theory gives the Commission enormous powers to restrict imports in response to actions that are considered economic coercion.
In practice, however, activating the ACI requires months of investigation and the support of a qualified majority of EU governments. Divisions among capitals have previously complicated efforts to agree on trade measures targeting China.
The new instrument proposed by Berlin and Paris — which could either update or replace the ACI — would make it much harder for EU member countries to block swift action. Commission measures would stand unless a “reverse” qualified majority of countries voted to block them.
Bernd Lange, who heads the European Parliament’s trade committee, welcomed the Franco-German letter as a step forward. The German Social Democrat negotiated on behalf of the Parliament during the development of the ACI, pushing unsuccessfully to give the Commission more leeway to activate the instrument.
“It was so complicated,” Lange said. “If there is now a shift in the mindset of the Council, it’s really good.”
Watershed moment
Sander Tordoir, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, called the letter and position paper a “watershed” moment.
“What the two leading European capitals are signaling is that they want to flip the switch and have a more structured, comprehensive set of policies to slow down the impact of the second China shock on European industry,” said Tordoir, who has advocated that Europe adopt U.S.-style 301 tariffs in the past.
Germany’s shift toward a more aggressive trade posture is particularly significant given Berlin’s previous reluctance to back stronger EU trade defenses.
“One of the major actors watering down the ACI back in the day was in fact Germany,” Tordoir said. “Germany has transitioned from hesitator-in-chief on stronger European trade tools to actively backing a number of concrete proposals.”
The document is part of broader Franco-German negotiations on the EU’s top economic files. The talks were launched by Macron and Merz after a joint ministerial meeting in Cologne in July, when the two leaders said they were converging on a more aggressive stance toward China.
The Franco-German letter also calls on the Commission to take new steps to diversify European supply chains and lessen dependency on Chinese imports. The Berlaymont has already announced that it is developing a diversification instrument aimed at encouraging manufacturers to wean themselves off cheap Chinese imports. It plans to publish the proposal by the end of the year.
Hans von der Burchard reported from Berlin, Giorgio Leali from Paris and Carlo Martuscelli, Jordyn Dahl and Camille Gijs from Brussels. This article has been updated.
BERLIN — Germany’s foreign intelligence chief warned Monday of the rising risk of a direct clash with Russia as the Kremlin escalates its “shadow war” on Berlin and hits Ukraine with increasing brutality.
“Germany is in danger of being drawn into a violent conflict with Russia,” Martin Jäger, the head of the German’s foreign intelligence agency, or BND, told parliamentarians, citing what he called Russia’s attempted attack on a Ukrainian Antonov cargo plane at Leipzig Airport in August as an example. “Germany has become a major obstacle to Russia’s hegemonic power projection in Europe and, as a result, a primary target of Russian actions.”
Jäger also warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is entering its most dangerous phase yet as President Vladimir Putin faces growing domestic pressure to show military progress with the war entering its fifth winter.
“Russia is determined to bring Ukraine to its knees this coming winter,” Jäger said. “We must expect Russian attacks of a severity and brutality that we have not yet seen on this scale. The war in Ukraine is entering a new and extremely dangerous phase.”
Jäger’s comments come a day after a politically weakened Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Kyiv in what appeared to be an attempt to show resolve following two first-place finishes by the Kremlin-friendly Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in regional elections last month. Those AfD victories, blamed in large part on the chancellor’s historically low domestic approval ratings, raised concerns in Ukraine and across the EU that German support for Ukraine might waver due to the chancellor’s troubles at home.
With his highly symbolic visit to Kyiv on Sunday, Merz sought to illustrate that he remains firmly at the helm and unflinching in his support for Ukraine.
“Mr. Putin, put an end to this senseless war,” Merz said during the visit, echoing one of his political heroes, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his famous Cold War speech at the Brandenburg Gate alongside the Berlin Wall in 1987: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
In his comments Monday, Jäger suggested Russia’s escalation was in part driven by the fact that Putin had been backed into a corner as Moscow faces rising economic pressure and burns through resources to wage its war on Ukraine.
Putin, he said, has “passed the point where he could simply call off the attack on Ukraine without jeopardizing his domestic power base,” adding, “He must demonstrate a success in Ukraine that, from Russia’s perspective, justifies the immense sacrifices made so far.”
Jäger also said he currently sees “no evidence” for a large-scale Russian attack on a NATO member country. Yet “we consider it entirely possible that Russia might carry out targeted, smaller-scale operations” like the “little green men” who spearheaded the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Decades ago, the world treated global trade as a neutral ground that helped energy markets in becoming more integrated, as we still see them today. The standard view in policy circles was that trade made countries more secure and stable. Governments therefore now use tariffs and export controls as a chokepoint of power. Today interdependence between countries became a double-edged sword. Europe, for instance, faced this back in 2022, when the Russian gas that it long treated as a reliable commodity became a prominent tool of pressure overnight.
Mouza Hasan Almarzooqi, director of the Economic Studies Department, TRENDS Research and Advisory
Despite the shifts towards digital economies and the massive investments that countries have been pouring in it, a major share of world trade still goes through narrow water ways. The Strait of Hormuz, Suez Canal, bab el-Mandeb Strait and many more corridors could lead to world trade disruption if partly closed. In 2023 attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea led to big containers switching their usual route through the Suez Canal and going around Africa instead. It resulted in higher insurances, increased fuel consumption and longer delivery times. At the same time, extreme drought forced the Panama Canal to cut daily Transits. Two of the worlds key sea shortcuts were constrained at once. Securing energy and trade flows in geo-economic conflicts is no longer only about protecting ships and pipelines; it is also about building systems flexible enough to absorb shocks that are now certain to come. The Hormuz crisis of 2026 made that lesson costly, and the states that act on it now will set the terms of the next era of global trade.
Despite the shifts towards digital economies and the massive investments that countries have been pouring in it, a major share of world trade still goes through narrow water ways.
Two years later, on the 28th of February 2026 as the US-Israel-Iran war started, The Iran Revolutionary Guard shut the Strait of Hormuz to control the oil that was being exported from the Gulf Cooperation Council. Within two weeks, the International Energy Agency ‘IEA’ reported that the exports through the Strait of Hormuz had fallen to a tenth of normal flows. Asian importers took the worst hit, as they highly depend on the Gulf’s crude. The damage, however, showed up in prices other than oil; for instance, urea fertilizers also flow through the strait, and its supply disruption led to higher food prices. Gulf countries demonstrated their resilience by finding alternatives to exporting away from the strait of Hormuz. The UAE, for example, Created the Habshan-Fujeirah line, which started construction in 2008 and was finished in 2012, to secure energy trade even if faced by geographical obstacles. Securing energy and trade flows is a significant topic to be discussed at the TRENDS Annual Forum on October 12, 2026, under the theme “Sustainable Security: The Post-War Future of the Middle East”.
The Middle East plays a crucial role in the global economy. It’s often faced with exposure to regional conflict, but it can secure trade through several approaches.
Via TRENDS
The Middle East plays a crucial role in the global economy. It’s often faced with exposure to regional conflict, but it can secure trade through several approaches. First, spreading the risk by creating more routes through land. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, currently in the developments phase, is one initiative that seeks to connect several countries through one line of trade. The second approach is “Friend-shoring”, which protects sensitive supply chains by moving them to ally countries. This can be high in cost but works most efficiently when a country is faced by war. This approach demonstrates the benefits of economic partnerships and investing in ports in different geographies to secure supply chains especially given that more the 80 percent of world trade moves by sea. The third option is stockpiling. In March of 2026 the IEA agreed to release 400 million barrels of emergency reserves. Those reserves will not end the whole crises but will provide time for diplomacy to act.
These matters influence not just local residents but also have global repercussions, affecting everyday experiences worldwide through shifting costs for fuel, farming, and food supplies.
Trends Global, operating as part of TRENDS Group, is organizing its Annual Forum to examine critical issues and inquiries impacting the security of the Middle East. These matters influence not just local residents but also have global repercussions, affecting everyday experiences worldwide through shifting costs for fuel, farming, and food supplies. By gathering a diverse group of political figures, scholars, and leaders from the corporate and defense sectors, the event intends to explore the ongoing transformation of the territory. Establishing lasting stability in the post-conflict Middle East requires a departure from past patterns, ensuring that future security is not merely a reaction to a continuous cycle of emergencies.
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