I asked #NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg after the fall of Kabul whether the Taliban won the war. He deflects that question (x 2) and insists the international community maintains significant leverage over the Taliban to hold it to its word(s). x.com/i/status/1429763850073…

Fiona Hill, the former aide to Trump during his first term, participated in the #Kultaranta Talks, organised by the President of Finland, and gave an interesting interview to the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper. Some excerpts: ▪️Greenland could suffer the same fate as Crimea. ▪️Hill says she sees the United States acting more like Russia, the White House more like the Kremlin, and Trump behaving more like Putin. ▪️Hill says that Trump's desire to take over Greenland is psychological. “He wants to own things. This is about him." ▪️”If we look at history, this is exactly how the Soviet Union acted towards its own Warsaw Pact allies: it occupied Hungary, it occupied Czechoslovakia, and it pressured Poland in a way that led to the declaration of martial law in Poland," Hill says. ▪️”Trump is now essentially treating his NATO allies the same way the Soviet leaders treated the Warsaw Pact members: as vassal states and states that have no decision-making power of their own." ▪️On the stage of the Kultaranta discussions, Hill was asked whether Europe can trust the United States. Hill answered bluntly no. And she reminded that the next administration cannot necessarily be trusted either. 1/

JUST IN: #NATO chief Rutte says he wasn't aware of Healey's resignation over what he finds an unacceptably low defense budget. but said he respects Healey very much. Rutte says govts always have a tradeoff with other expenses but a "core task is ... keeping the country safe."

In my home away from home these days. Among other things joining our friends at @ebsummiteurope for their EU Digital Summit to talk w/ @terischultz about the EU’s recently published Tech Sovereignty Package and its impact on non-European technology providers. Come join👇

Great thread, as William's always are!

How does the US expect Europeans to step up in defense if we cancel sales? And canceling a sale out of concern for Kremlin reaction? Signaling weakness is no way to handle Putin’s Russia. politi.co/4vmpBp0 via @politico

A massive political schism is opening in Europe. While Brussels pushes for total energy decoupling, Germany’s leading opposition party has just bypassed the government to hold direct talks with Gazprom on restarting the Nord Stream pipelines. 🇷🇺🇩🇪🇪🇺 🧵 👇

👀 Taking a page from the U.S., which has always used the granting of visa-free status as leverage over foreign governments.

Norway steps up big-time. 🇳🇴🇫🇷 Thank you @HFayet! Here's a great explainer of the latest in a series of nuclear deterrence agreement signed with France following Macron's landmark speech. Read it here, along with great fact-boxes! @Etienne_Marcuz regjeringen.no/en/whats-new/…

NEW!!! U.S. quietly removes Russian vessels and Igor Sechin’s son from sanctions list 
Latest easing of restrictions drops penalties on several ships and individuals despite continuing Russian war crimes in Ukraine….

Good statement, though its failure to attribute the attack to Russia weakens it. Hopefully to be fixed.

As the U.S. cuts back the pool of capabilities available to #NATO in a crisis & Europeans should seize this opportunity to become stronger within the alliance & design a European way of war. My latest for @RUSI_org @RUSIEurope rusi.org/explore-our-researc…

🇸🇪🇺🇦 The Gripens are coming. Russia tried to break Ukraine from the skies. Ukraine is now building air power with Swedish fighters: buying up to 20 Gripen E/F for its future air force, while Sweden will donate 16 Gripen C/D. A new chapter for Ukraine’s air defence. (1/8)

Building media literacy is slow process, inadequate as policy at this moment, when we should build offensive & defensive capabilities against Rus strategic deception

JUST IN: Sweden is donating Ukraine 16 Gripen fighter jets now and 20 more will be purchased/delivered by the year 2030. President Zelenskyy says the first planes may arrive by December. Pilots have already been trained.

Don’t confuse the U.S. force posture with the #NATO force model ie what troops & capabilities allies assign to NATO in case of crisis or conflict.Some of the forces and capabilities mentioned in @derspiegel aren’t even in Europe but in the US. This is about future contingencies.

Despite Russia’s threats, Estonian diplomats are not leaving Kyiv. Threatening diplomats, foreigners, and civilians is unacceptable and a blatant violation of the UN Charter. Russia’s attempts at intimidation only expose its true face. Estonia will not bow to threats. Our embassy remains open, our diplomats stay in Kyiv, and we continue to stand firmly with Ukraine. We also conveyed this message yesterday to the representative of the Russian Embassy in Tallinn.

Russia is "relentlessly targeting" critical infrastructure and democracy in the UK and across Europe, the head of the intelligence agency @GCHQ will warn. Anne Keast-Butler will also use the first of what is set to be an annual threat assessment to reveal that her officers are helping to counter "reckless sabotage and assassination attempts" by the Kremlin. She will warn that the risk of miscalculation, which could trigger wider conflict, "is as high as I have ever seen it". At the same time, Ms Keast-Butler will say in a lecture on Wednesday that Vladimir Putin is "going backwards on the battlefield" in Ukraine. You can read more here⬇️ news.sky.com/story/russia-re…

Absolutely unacceptable. This is what's left of our @WFP warehouse after a missile strike in Dnipro, Ukraine—and the remaining food stocks for 130K people on the frontlines of war and hunger. These deliberate attacks MUST end. Aid workers and humanitarian assets are #NotATarget.

Extremely interesting and important detail here from @alexcadier. While the meeting was known, it wasn't public what exact cuts the US would convey there. These will sting.

Russia hit a dead-end on the battlefield, so it terrorizes Ukraine with deliberate strikes on city centres. These are abhorrent acts of terror meant to kill as many civilians as possible. Moscow reportedly using Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missiles – systems designed to carry nuclear warheads – is a political scare-tactic and reckless nuclear-brinkmanship. Next week, EU Foreign Ministers will discuss how to dial up the international pressure on Russia.