The UK and other European states are planning to expose new examples of Russian disinformation as they pursue a more assertive response to alleged interference by the Kremlin in Western elections at a meeting of the European Political Community this week.
European officials said JD Vance’s nomination as Donald Trump’s running mate in his election campaign confirmed their worst fears about the potential next Republican administration.
European Council President Charles Michel fired back at Viktor Orbán to “set the record straight” over the Hungarian premier’s freelance diplomacy with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
UK, EU states plan response to election interference by Russia
The UK and other European states are planning to expose new examples of Russian disinformation as they pursue a more assertive response to alleged interference by the Kremlin in Western elections at a meeting of the European Political Community this week.
With about 45 leaders set to be hosted by new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, European allies were preparing the publication of further evidence that Russia had sought to undermine democracies across Europe, according to people familiar with the matter and documents seen by Bloomberg.
The leaders would “work together to effectively track and stop both legal and illicit money flows that enable interference activities — including in elections” in Europe, according to a document prepared for the summit.
The emphasis highlights interference that Starmer and other European leaders perceive as a growing threat to democracy. At the summit in Oxfordshire, they would discuss how to counter what they see as attempts by Moscow to fund interference in elections across the continent, the people said. A working group on “defending democracy” — one of three at the summit — will be co-chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron.
“European countries need a renewed determination to protect their democracies and a radical change in the scale of the comprehensive response to these challenges,” the document said. The UK Foreign Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Declassifying intelligence on covert Russian operations in Europe is a method that’s been increasingly used by Western governments to shine a light on what they call the hybrid threat posed by Moscow. Earlier this year, UK police charged several men under a new national security law with supporting Russia by carrying out an arson attack against a Ukraine-linked business on British soil.
The hand of Moscow’s GRU military intelligence service is likely to be behind a series of ever-more overt, frequent and coordinated incidents across the continent, European officials previously told Bloomberg.
Trump’s VP pick fuels European anxiety over US backing for Kyiv
When an outraged Ukrainian legislator berated JD Vance at this year’s Munich Security Conference over the Republicans’ blocking of aid to his country, the US senator listened patiently. But Oleksiy Honcharenko couldn’t change his mind.
That task will now fall to European allies and Ukrainian politicians after former President Donald Trump picked Vance as his running mate in his election campaign, in a decisive break with the US foreign policy old guard.
European officials said Vance’s nomination confirmed their worst fears about the potential next Republican administration. It’s a sign they will have to do more to prove to the US that it has an interest in defending the continent through continued support for Kyiv.
Vance is “very smart, sly and cold-blooded”, Honcharenko told Bloomberg on Tuesday. But his nomination was a “very difficult scenario for us. He is very sceptical toward Ukraine and this war”.
That sense of alarm may be more widespread amid calls for US President Joe Biden to withdraw his candidacy just months before the presidential election, compelling foreign partners to more seriously consider the prospect of a second Trump presidency.
During his first four years in office, the Republican president threatened to wind down the US contribution to Nato and hectored alliance members, especially Germany, for not spending enough on defence.
That was before the war in Ukraine, where US military support has been crucial for Kyiv to stay in the fight. Vance has been a staunch critic of this approach. A recent Russian missile attack on a children’s hospital in Kyiv didn’t change his mind.
“It’s tragic and terrible,” Vance, who served with the US military in Iraq, told Bloomberg on Monday. “It doesn’t change my underlying view that America doesn’t have the capacity and doesn’t have the interest to respond to every tragedy that exists in the world.”
Vance has also been very candid about his position on Ukraine in private meetings, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. He argued that the US should spend aid money it gives Kyiv on schools and hospitals at home instead of those in Ukraine, the person said.
In an April op-ed for The New York Times, Vance characterised the war as unwinnable due to Russia’s large military-industrial capacity and the problems that Ukraine’s ageing population presents for further rounds of mobilisation.
“A defensive strategy can work” for Ukraine, he said while making clear he opposed sending Patriot missile systems that enable the country to shoot down Russian missiles and drones.
“He takes an even more radical stance on Ukraine than Trump and wants to end military support,” said Nils Schmid, the foreign affairs spokesman for the ruling Social Democrats in the German parliament. “Vance owes his entire political career to Trump and would also put personal loyalty to Trump above the Constitution as vice-president.”
EU’s Michel hits back at Orbán over Trump peace plan letter
European Council President Charles Michel fired back at Viktor Orbán to “set the record straight” over the Hungarian premier’s freelance diplomacy with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
Michel, who shepherds relations on behalf of European Union leaders, said Orbán had no mandate to use his country’s six-month rotating presidency of the bloc to deviate from jointly agreed foreign policy stances on Ukraine or other issues.
“I cannot accept your claim that we have led a ‘pro-war policy,’” Michel wrote in a letter seen by Bloomberg. “It is quite the opposite. Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is the victim exercising its legitimate right to self-defence.”
Orbán had written to Michel and EU leaders following his self-styled peace mission to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which caused uproar in capitals across Europe.
Trump would be ready to act as a peace broker immediately and had a “detailed and well-founded plan”, the Hungarian prime minister wrote in a letter reported earlier by the Financial Times and later seen by Bloomberg. The former US president has said before that he will seek a quick peace deal if he’s reelected but has yet to provide details of how he intends to do that.
Orbán added he was “convinced that in the likely outcome of the victory of President Trump, the proportion of the financial burden between the US and the EU will significantly change to the EU’s disadvantage when it comes to the financial support of Ukraine” and that Europe’s strategy had copied the “pro-war strategy of the US”.
The Hungarian premier proposed high-level talks with China on the modalities of a peace conference and reopening diplomatic channels with Russia.
Michel replied that “no discussion about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine” and “the most direct way to peace is for Russia to withdraw all of its forces from Ukraine” and respect the country’s territorial integrity. He also noted that the EU had worked to build support for a just and lasting peace based on the United Nations charter and international law, and had reached out to all key partners, including China.
Ukraine hails arrival of first 50,000 rounds in Czech initiative
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said his nation had received the first 50,000 rounds of heavy ammunition as part of a Czech-led initiative.
Some of the ammunition has already arrived on the battlefield, the premier told reporters in Prague on Tuesday after a joint meeting of the Czech and Ukrainian cabinets.
Ukraine has been facing a lack of ammunition for months and delays in military assistance from its partners have allowed Russia to take the initiative on the battlefield, causing difficulties for the Ukrainian army to regain it, President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters on Monday.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said Czechs had trained a total of about 6,000 Ukrainian soldiers, including 1,700 this year.
The Czech Republic initiated and coordinated an international effort to garner hundreds of thousands of ammunition rounds for the Ukrainian army this year. Defence Minister Jana Cernochova said a total of 500,000 heavy ammunition rounds would be shipped to Ukraine this year under the plan.
EU aims for Ukraine loans proposal ‘very soon’
The European Commission would make a proposal on its part of a package of $50-billion of loans to support Ukraine “very soon” to meet a year-end deadline to complete legislative work, said Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni.
The plan for aid based on the windfall profits generated by frozen Russian sovereign assets would be discussed by Group of Seven finance chiefs in Rio de Janeiro next week, he told reporters, following on from the breakthrough deal reached at a G7 leaders summit last month.
“The starting moment of this process is very urgent,” Gentiloni said. “This is the reason why, also because of the G7 next week, the commission is working intensively to have the proposal on the table as soon as possible, meaning very soon.”
He told a news conference that European Union finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday had shown “unanimous support” for the swift adoption of a plan.
G7 nations agreed on a loan syndicate based on the size of their economies to provide critical support for Ukraine in the medium term and help cover its financing needs through 2025 and beyond. The loans would be paid by using profits from blocked Russian funds.
Russia plans to make Opec+ compensation oil cuts in warm seasons
Russia planned to make extra crude production cuts to compensate for pumping above its Opec+ quota in the warm seasons of this year and next, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Moscow’s additional curbs would most probably happen in summer and early autumn for technical reasons, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information isn’t public. Also, the nation needed more crude for domestic consumption during the cold months, they said.
Russia, currently the largest crude producer among the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, has also been one of the group’s principal laggards in implementing the supply agreement intended to shore up global prices. Last month, the nation pledged to compensate for overproduction that has occurred since April, with the compensation period set to last until the end of September 2025.
Ever since the start of its cooperation with Opec, Russia has said it can’t cut production significantly in late autumn and in winter due to the geology of its oil fields and climate conditions.
The extra curbs are expected to happen at Western Siberian fields, where production can be regulated, the people said. That is Russia’s more mature oil province, producing lower-quality oil than East Siberian projects pumping the premium ESPO crude blend.
Russia faces power outages after malfunction at nuclear plant
Several Russian regions faced power outages after a malfunction at a nuclear power plant forced authorities to limit electricity to the grid amid soaring temperatures in the south of the country.
Russia temporarily restricted the electricity supply in some southern regions by 1.5 gigawatts after power-generating equipment malfunctioned at the Rostov Nuclear Power Plant, the Energy Ministry said in a Telegram post on Tuesday. Later, the ministry said that it eased power restrictions by 500 megawatts.
Some consumers in occupied Crimea and Sevastopol were left without electricity due to an overloading of the grid, the state-run Tass news service reported, citing regional power providers. Southern areas of the country have been experiencing temperatures of around 40°C.
Russia ahead in bid to build Turkey’s next nuclear power plant
Russia’s state-owned Rosatom is “ahead” in a bid to build Turkey’s second nuclear power plant, in the latest sign of Ankara’s growing energy ties with Moscow.
Rosatom already has experience in Turkey’s nuclear sector, starting commissioning work at the nation’s first atomic plant in Akkuyu in April. That made it well placed to also build the Sinop plant, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in an interview.
“This is the main reason why they’re naturally keen and in this sense I and many others think they’re ahead,” he said. Rosatom was “a company that’s invested in Turkey and has gained experience”.
South Korea is the other country that’s known to have held talks on the planned four-reactor facility on the Black Sea coast. The Sinop plant could involve a joint venture between the public and private sectors, and licensing was expected to take two or three years, said Bayraktar.
His comments underlined the strategic relationship between Turkey and the Kremlin at a time when Ankara’s Nato allies are cutting reliance on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. Russia is already Turkey’s main supplier of crude oil and natural gas, and its involvement in nuclear energy there will give it a foothold in the electricity market supplying some 85 million people.
Turkey currently aims to add more than 20 gigawatts of nuclear capacity to its energy mix by 2050. But it could reach that target in the 2040s if the Sinop site and another planned nuclear plant in the Thrace region are expanded to their maximum capacity of eight reactors each, said Bayraktar. DM