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The days when Chinese industry received a free pass from the Budapest government are over. A water shortage has seen to that. Source: PAP/EPA/Zsolt Czegledi HUNGARY OUT/TVP World Hungary faces an unprecedented water crisis. There are several causes, among them the years-long campaign by Viktor Orbán’s government to lure heavily polluting and water-hungry Chinese battery factories to the country. During Orbán’s 16 years in power, he guaranteed to Chinese investors vast amounts

According to Danish state authorities, there were no major foreign influence campaigns to speak of in the lead-up to Denmark’s March 2026 parliamentary election. Local fact-checkers and journalists tracked pro-Russian narratives and fringe propaganda channels, but nothing resembling a broad, coordinated campaign with significant reach emerged. Monitoring and analysis by Defense Innovation Highway and OpenMinds of part of the Danish online information environment during the ca

Europe will struggle to defend itself against Russia without the aid of Ukraine’s battle-tested legions. Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Russia’s recent missile and drone strikes and follow-on attacks against Ukraine represent a cruel exercise in signaling. Following a brief ceasefire, Russia revealed that it can breach Ukraine’s aerial defenses. By deploying an unparalleled barrage, Putin arguably sent a veiled warning to Europe that their cities and fac

Dating apps promise connection, chemistry, and maybe even love. For Ukrainian and Russian intelligence services, they also offer something else: data, emotional vulnerability, and a private channel to manipulate targets. When Russia launched its full-scale illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the front lines extended beyond the physical battlefield into the digital space. Among many other sites, dating platforms such as Tinder and its local equivalents became operati

Drones are powerful — and can cause chaos. Remedies are urgent to deploy them safely. Source: Jessica Tisemann / Neue Deister-Zeitung A busy commercial airport cancels all flights twice in quick succession. The trigger? Small, remote-controlled, low-flying objects. Safety concerns over drone activity and the defensive measures in place to deal with drones caused chaos this year at El Paso’s international airport. Cheap, expendable drones also dominate modern battlefields. Th

How Georgia’s billionaire Ivanishvili misread Moscow, and why Washington shouldn't reward his overtures. Bidzina Ivanishvili / Source TV Pirveli Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze flew to Yerevan in May, shook hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after years of poisonous relations, and spoke about the Middle Corridor transport and energy route. Weeks earlier, the ruling Georgian Dream party had announced the first, belated arrests of law-enforcement offic

The Kremlin’s intention to control its digital environment is not new. Even Russians’ most widely used messaging app, Telegram, was not spared from it. However, a failed 2018 effort to block the app exposed the limits of direct restriction. Despite regulatory pressure, the platform continued to operate, creating a ‘grey zone’ where even pro-government voices could express limited forms of dissent. In 2026, this phase appears to be ending. Besides blocking external platforms,

Ukraine’s mid-range strike capacity is growing and smashing Russian supply lines, with autonomous systems taking the lead. Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine At the turn of 2026, Russia appeared to pose the greater mid-range threat. Its forces were striking Ukraine’s rear with drones at will, using satellite links, including Starlink, to bypass electronic warfare. It had also increased its use of cheap Molniya medium-range strike drones, with varied control

Source: NATO Multinational Battlegroup Estonia Washington—As Ukrainian and Russian delegates take stock of resuming peace talks—temporarily on a “situational” hold amid the US conflict with Iran—there is growing agreement among Kyiv’s partners that, after an agreement is reached, Western troops will be needed in Ukraine to monitor and enforce it. Several Western states have already committed to contribute forces, with the United Kingdom and France recently announcing their wi

Armenia is building closer relations with the EU, underlining Russia’s diminishing influence in the South Caucasus. Source: Nikol Pashinyan on X For decades, Moscow’s power in the South Caucasus rested on military presence, conflict-management formats, energy leverage, and economic influence. This is now under visible strain. Armenia is actively engaging the European Union (EU), Azerbaijan has grown significantly more assertive in its foreign policy, while Georgia is deepenin

Source: Rumen Radev Facebook page In early May, former Bulgarian president Rumen Radev was appointed as the country’s new prime minister, potentially bringing one of Europe’s longest-running political crises in recent years to an end. Since 2021, Bulgaria has endured a prolonged period of political instability marked by fragmented parliaments, collapsing coalitions, caretaker governments, and repeated elections. The crisis culminated in the eighth parliamentary election in un

The Kremlin has long injected propaganda into the Russian educational system in order to boost the ‘patriotism’ of Russian youth. Putin’s future ‘child soldiers’ not only take part in regular flag raisings, anthem singings, and meetings with ‘heroes’ of the ‘special military operation’ (‘SVO’) in Ukraine. They also participate in drone assembly and other types of military training. Besides patriotic rituals, the authorities also indoctrinate Russian schoolkids by systematical

The dead of World War II are now conscripts for the Putin’s regime’s battle to own 20th century history. The Immortal Regiment march in Montpellier, France / Source polk.press On May 8 and 9, so-called Immortal Regiment marches were staged across dozens of countries, with crowds carrying portraits of Russian relatives who died in World War II. The significance is far greater than mere commemoration; however, the Kremlin-aided parades represent a key regime propaganda event.

‘We didn’t kidnap anyone’, Russia’s then-ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, insisted in 2023. ‘We saved these children’. The ambassador was not simply denying the systematic deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children by Russian occupation forces in Ukraine, a crime for which there is a growing body of evidence from international organisations, researchers, and human rights groups. He was using a well-known playbook – an information campaign seeking to paint t

The EU's new defense industry program has the right architecture. The factories, the workers, and the political will are another matter. Rheinmetall AG artillery ammunition factory in Lithuania / A. Pliadis / Lithuanian MOD Europe’s new €1.5bn ($1.8bn) defense industry program has a line item nobody expected. Factories built to produce counter-drone weapons can now claim EU money to protect themselves from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Commission adopted the work progr

An exercise testing NATO responses to hybrid attacks revealed a need for the West to be more nimble, and willing to mimic enemy tactics to defend itself. Source: NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) At Lithuania’s Šiauliai International Airport, a delegation receives reports of sudden signal degradation and communications disruption across Ukraine. The news is an early indicator of spillover from an enhanced Russian jamming operation and raises serious quest

One of the features that makes propaganda effective is that it reshapes how people understand the world around them, turning war into ‘peace’ and lies into ‘truth’. Propaganda, disinformation, and information manipulation more generally do not work like an order from a commander which makes a person take up arms; its influence is more gradual and more insidious. The non-governmental group LingvaLexa, with the support of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and the

Russia continues its attempts to disrupt and interfere with democracies in its neighbourhood. Learning from its failure in its attempt in the latest parliamentary elections in Moldova, Russia shifted its focus to the upcoming parliamentary elections in Armenia – and this time with a head start, nearly a year before elections are set to take place. Russia tested the ground throughout the winter, seeding hostile narratives against the current Armenian authorities and candidates

Ukraine’s women are central to sustaining the state, supporting the front and holding society together under the extreme pressure of Russian aggression. Photo: Daniel Kosoy / UNITED24 The country offers a striking case study of the way war reshapes the roles of women and men, not only on the battlefield, but across society, the economy, and national recovery. Approximately 100,000 women are serving in Ukraine’s armed forces out of a total of one million personnel. Around 5,50

Western nations can do more to stop criminal gangs forcing Ukrainians into sexual slavery. By Luca Iaconelli / Unsplash Amid widespread suffering and more than 180,000 documented war crimes committed by Russia during its war on Ukraine, the heightened risk of sex trafficking of Ukrainians has been largely absent from US and European policy discussions. Millions of forcibly displaced people, in particular women and children, have become increasingly vulnerable to transnationa