Poland will introduce restrictions on the movement of Russian diplomats on its territory due to Moscow's involvement in what it deems a hybrid war against the European Union, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Monday.

Relations between Poland and Russia have deteriorated sharply since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022. Warsaw has also accused Moscow of spying and sabotage.

"These are national decisions, but we have evidence that the Russian state is involved in authorizing sabotage in our country as well. We hope that the Russian Federation will treat this as a very serious warning," Radoslaw Sikorski told journalists in Brussels.

The Russian embassy in Warsaw said it could not immediately comment as it had not received official information on the measures.

Sikorski said the embassy would receive a note on the matter soon and that the restriction would apply to all embassy and consulates' personnel except for the ambassador.

They will be allowed to travel only within the province where they are assigned.

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In response to the recent wave of long-range missile strikes by Russian forces on targets in western Ukraine, Polish and allied aircraft were deployed in Polish airspace during the night. This intense activity, observed and reported early Sunday morning by the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces, aimed to ensure the security of Poland’s airspace.

“With the conclusion of the long-range missile strikes by the Russian Federation’s air force on targets in the western part of Ukraine, the operation of military aviation in Polish airspace has been completed, and the deployed forces and resources have returned to standard operational activities,” announced the Operational Command via social media.

The night saw heightened activity from the Russian air force, which conducted missile attacks on various targets, including those in western Ukraine. As a precautionary measure, Polish and allied aircraft were mobilized to operate within Polish airspace, particularly increasing aerial presence in the southeastern regions of the country. This deployment might have led to elevated noise levels in these areas, as noted by the Operational Command.

By morning, the Command confirmed the end of these maneuvers. The last significant activity from the Russian air force in connection with these strikes was recorded during the night of May 7th to 8th.

The Operational Command emphasized that all necessary procedures to ensure the safety of Polish airspace were activated. The situation continues to be closely monitored to respond to any further developments promptly.

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Here is the video interview (2 min)

Jens Stoltenberg says the rules on using Western weapons should be eased

NATO Secretaries-General do not normally attack the policies of the alliance’s biggest and most important member country. But Jens Stoltenberg, whose ten-year stint in charge is coming to an end, has done just that.

In an interview with The Economist on May 24th, he called on NATO allies supplying weapons to Ukraine to end their prohibition on using them to strike military targets in Russia. Mr Stoltenberg’s clear, if unnamed, target was the policy maintained by Joe Biden, America’s president, of controlling what Ukraine can and cannot attack with American-supplied systems.

By Professor Natasha Lindstaedt, Department of Government, University of Essex.

[The island of] Gotland has been a popular holiday destination for decades, but recently Swedish commander-in-chief, Mikael Bydén, claimed that Russian president Vladmir Putin “has his eyes” on the island. Concern was further ramped up, showing Gotland was just one part of Russia’s ambitions in the Baltics, in the last few days when Russia published a document suggesting that it needed to reassess the maritime borders in the Gulf of Finland.

That draft decree by the Russian defence ministry, which has since been removed, proposed that Russia wanted to revise its borders with Finland and Kaliningrad (based on a resolution adopted by the Soviet Union’s council of ministers in 1985) and expand its territorial waters.

Gotland holds a strategically important location of being in the middle of the Baltic Sea (halfway between Sweden and Estonia) and only 300km from where Russia’s Baltic fleet is based. Sweden joining Nato and giving it access to Gotland has significantly increased the alliance’s ability to deploy and sustain its forces in the Baltic Sea region, and this could make a decisive difference in the defence of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Poland.

Because of its strategic importance, for most of the cold war Sweden maintained a large military presence on the island. But Gotland was demilitarised in 2005 in order to promote peace and cooperation in the Baltic region.

This gesture of goodwill was immediately tested by the Russians as, not long after doing so, Russian men who did not fit the usual Gotland tourist profile, began regularly visiting the island.

Then, on March 29 2013, two Tupolev Tu-22M3 nuclear bombers came within 24 miles of Gotland on dummy bombing runs. Sweden’s part-time air force had the weekend off on account of the Easter holiday, emphasising both the country’s military weakness and Gotland’s vulnerability to Russia.

After Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, Sweden took significant steps to protect itself, reintroducing 150 permanent troops on the island in 2016. By 2018, Sweden had expanded the number of permanently placed troops to 400, equipping them with CV90 armoured vehicles and Leopard 2 tanks. Air defence systems were also reactivated by 2021.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to additional reinforcements, exercises, and investment in Gotland’s defence, totalling US$160 million (£125 million). In April 2023, Sweden held its biggest military exercise in 25 years alongside Polish and British troops on the island.

For Swedish commander-in-chief Bydén, the reasons for increasing its defences in Gotland are clear. Gotland is both a major strategic asset and potential liability, and therefore must be protected in order to prevent greater threats from Russia to Nato countries from the sea.

The geographical distances in the Baltics are small, and if Russia seized Gotland in a crisis, it could dominate the Baltic Sea region. This would make it very difficult for the west to provide reinforcement to the Baltic states by sea or by air.

It’s not only Sweden that is concerned. Lithuania borders both the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad (which itself has become increasingly militarised) and Belarus, it is concerned that it could be attacked, and would then be physically isolated from the rest of the Baltics.

In usual Moscow fashion, when the online document about changing Russian maritime borders was spotted in the west, the Kremlin denied that it had any plans to do so. But there was no explanation from Russian officials as to why the ministry proposal was removed from the government’s portal.

As leaders of the Baltic countries sought clarification, Lithuania warned that this was, at the very least, another Russian intimidation tactic. Estonia’s prime minster, Kaja Kallas, went further, claiming that Russia is engaging in a “shadow war” with the west.

Shadow war in the Baltic

The Baltic Sea has already been an area of heightened tensions this year. Russian ships have stoked hostilities due to their increasingly brazen and careless behaviour, breaching maritime rules and sailing old and uninsured oil tankers, which could potentially cause an environmental catastrophe.

Russian shadow tankers (which are ships that are used in countries that have been sanctioned) have been present in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone off the eastern coast of Gotland, and have loitered off Gotland’s east coast. Russia’s fleet consists of about 1,400 ships that are not officially part of Russia’s military.

Many of these shadow tankers refuse pilotage, the practice of directing the movement of a ships by using visual or electronic observations, even when navigating Denmark’s narrow Great Belt. It appears they are engaging in forms of brinkmanship.

These provocations all take place just outside the 12 nautical mile limit (a country’s territorial waters), making it impossible for Sweden to do anything about it, as these commercial tankers are not part of Russia’s official navy. The Swedish navy has warned that Russia is likely to be using these oil tankers to engage in sabotage, reconnaissance and espionage.

Because of these developments, the Swedish prime minister informed citizens in March that they needed to be prepared for war.

In the past, Gotland was a deterrent against Soviet expansion. But Russia today under Putin seems less easily deterred and more risk-acceptant. What’s not clear is if these provocations are part of a Russian shadow war to psychologically divide and terrorise the west, or if this is a prelude to an actual war, which would certainly begin if Russia attacked Gotland.

As Sweden is now a member of Nato, this means that all members must come to Sweden’s defence should it face an attack. On its own, Sweden has a world-class and modern submarine fleet and air force and a technologically advanced defence industrial base.

Given Sweden’s military capabilities, it’s hard to predict if this is enough to deter conflict with Russia. For now, it seems, Russia is determined to create suspense around its intentions in the Baltics — a region that holds both Nato’s greatest assets and vulnerabilities. As a result, the Baltic region has become a playground in Russia’s shadow war.

- Gazprom posted a loss of $7 bln in 2023, first since end-1990s - Gazprom's pipeline gas sales to Europe slump - Russia banks on business with Asia - Price of Russian gas for China seen gradually declining

Kremlin-owned energy kingpin Gazprom, once Russia's most profitable company, could face a long period of poor performance as it struggles to fill the gap of lost European gas sales with its domestic market and Chinese exports.

The company recently announced an annual net loss of $7 billion, its first since 1999, following a steep decline in trade with Europe.

Gazprom's troubles reflect the deep impact the European sanctions have had on Russia's gas industry, as well as the limitations of Moscow's growing partnership with China.

The impact of international sanctions on oil exports has been easier for Moscow to absorb because Russia has been able to redirect sea-borne oil exports to other buyers.

Gazprom relied on Europe as its largest sales market until 2022, when Russia's conflict with Ukraine prompted the EU to cut Gazprom gas imports.

Russia supplied a total of around 63.8 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas to Europe by various routes in 2022, according to Gazprom data and Reuters calculations. The volume decreased further, by 55.6%, to 28.3 bcm last year.

That's compared to a peak of 200.8 bcm Gazprom pumped in 2018 to the EU and other countries, such as Turkey.

Mysterious blasts at Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines from Russia to Germany in September 2022 also significantly undermined Russian gas trade with Europe. Russia has turned to China, seeking to boost its pipeline gas sales to 100 bcm a year by 2030. Gazprom started pipeline gas supplies to China via the Power of Siberia in the end of 2019.

It plans to reach the 38 bcm annual capacity of Power of Siberia by the end of this year, while Moscow and Beijing also agreed in 2022 about exports of 10 bcm from the Pacific island of Sakhalin.

Russia's biggest hope is the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline via Mongolia, which is planned to export 50 bcm per year. But that has hit some pitfalls due to the lack of agreement over pricing and other issues.

"While Gazprom will see some additional export revenues when all those pipelines will be up and running, it will never be able to offset completely the business it has lost to Europe," Kateryna Filippenko, a research director on gas and LNG at Wood Mackenzie, said.

Chinese pipedream?

Russia has also struggled so far to establish a gas trading centre in Turkey, an idea first floated by President Vladimir Putin in October 2022. No significant development has been reported since.

Even if Gazprom can get its pipeline supply to China up and running, sales revenues will be much lower than from Europe.

According to Moscow-based BCS brokerage, Gazprom's revenue from gas sales to Europe in 2015-2019 averaged at $3.3 billion per month thanks to monthly supplies of 15.5 bcm.

Taking into account a price of $286.9 per 1,000 cubic metres, as reported by the Russian economy ministry, and Gazprom's gas exports of 22.7 bcm last year, the total value of the company's gas sold to China could have reach $6.5 billion for the whole of 2023.

Gazprom did not reveal its revenue from sales to Europe or China for 2023 separately.

Dr Michal Meidan, head of China Energy Research at Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said China is unlikely to replace Europe for Russia as a highly profitable gas export market.

"China gives Russia an outlet but at much lower prices and revenue than Europe," she said.

In 2023, Russian pipeline gas was sold at $6.6 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) to China and slightly lower than that in the first quarter 2024 at $6.4/mmBtu.

That's compared to an average price of Russian gas in Europe of $12.9/mmBtu last year.

According to a document seen by Reuters last month, Russia expects its gas price for China to continue gradually declining in next four years, while a worst-case scenario does not rule out a 45% fall to $156.7 per 1,000 cubic metres (around $4.4 per mmBtu) in 2027 versus 2023.

It didn't say what might drive prices down, but Russia is facing rivalry from other pipeline gas suppliers to China, such as Turkmenistan, as well as sea-borne liquefied natural gas.

The financials of Gazprom, which also include its oil and power units, showed that the revenue from the natural gas business more than halved last year, to just over 3.1 trillion roubles, while oil and gas condensate sales amounted to 4.1 trillion roubles, up 4.3%, according to BCS brokerage.

Alexei Belogoriyev of Moscow-based Institute for Energy and Finance said it would be impossible for Gazprom to restore profitability relying solely on its gas business. He said strategic shift to production and export of ammonia, methanol and other gas processing products for Gazprom is possible, but it will not give a quick return.

"At the same time, the prospects for the Power of Siberia 2 remain vague: China most likely won't need for so much additional imports in 2030s due to the likely slowdown in demand growth and high domestic gas production rates," he said.

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Romanian prosecutors announced Friday that they had ordered the arrest of a man suspected of spying for Moscow, while the government declared a Russian diplomat persona non grata.

The arrest of a person suspected of spying marks the first of its kind in Romania since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

Prosecutors said the arrested man, a Romanian citizen, had "since 2022, been monitoring Romanian or NATO military objectives located near the municipality of Tulcea," a town near the border with Ukraine.

He is suspected of "collecting military information and taking photographs of military combat equipment and the movement of personnel in the border area with Ukraine, which he transmitted to diplomats from the Russian embassy in Bucharest," prosecutors added.

Authorities did not disclose the man's age or identity.

Romania's Foreign Ministry later said a diplomat from the Russian embassy had been declared "persona non grata on the territory of Romania" for activities in breach of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

The ministry said it had summoned the Russian charge d'affaires to notify the latter of the decision.

[Edit typo.]

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Regional countries have agreed to create a “drone wall” to protect their external borders using unmanned aerial vehicles, Lithuanian Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė has said.

She made the remarks after a meeting on Friday in Latvia with her counterparts from the other two Baltic states, Poland, Finland, and Norway.

“This is a completely new thing – a drone wall stretching from Norway to Poland – and the goal is to use drones and other technologies to protect our borders [...] against provocations from unfriendly countries and to prevent smuggling,” Bilotaitė told BNS.

To create such a “drone wall”, countries would use UAVs to monitor their border area, as well as anti-drone systems to stop drones from hostile countries being used for smuggling and provocations.

According to Bilotaitė, Lithuania has already made plans to step up the protection of its border with the help of drones. Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service has recently established a UAV unit and is in the process of acquiring additional drones and anti-drone systems, she stressed.

Now, the countries will assess what “homework” they need to do and then, with the help of experts, national authorities will draw up a plan to implement the “drone wall”.

The Lithuanian minister could not say when the idea would be implemented but noted that the “drone wall” could be created using EU funds.

The ministers also agreed to organise joint evacuation drills in the countries involved, Bilotaitė said.

“We agreed to hold regional drills to ensure the evacuation of the population, to see how our institutions are prepared to work, to interact with each other, what our capacity is to accommodate people, what the capacity of other countries is, whether they are ready to receive a certain number of our people,” the interior minister said.

“We still have a lot of questions; we need to look at all those algorithms. Drills would be very valuable as we would look at things, evaluate them and we would strengthen our preparedness,” she added.

Lithuania’s preparedness is currently being assessed by an EU evacuation mission, which is expected to make its recommendations in June.

Corbyn, who led Labour between 2015 and 2019, was initially expelled from the party and had the whip withdrawn in April 2020, under the leadership of his erstwhile ally Keir Starmer.

The expulsion came after Corbyn said that claims of antisemitism during his time as a leader had been "overstated" for political reasons, in response to an investigation into his handling of the issue.

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- Chinese dissidents living in the EU fear that the People's Republic of China may abuse this agreement - Use of Chinese technology companies could complicate Hungary's relations with NATO

The investigative portal VSquare reports that in accordance with the agreement between China and Hungary, surveillance cameras with facial recognition software will be installed in the European country. The website claims that using this technology could complicate Hungary's relations with NATO allies.

At the beginning of March, the media reported on the agreement between the ministries of interior affairs Hungarian and China, which allows Chinese police patrols in Hungary. The government in Budapest then announced that the aim of the cooperation was to improve safety in places visited by tourists from the People's Republic of China.

On Thursday, the VSquare portal reported that during the visit of the leader of communist China, Xi Jinping, to Budapest in early May, an agreement was also to be reached on the deployment of cameras with advanced artificial intelligence functions, including facial recognition, in Hungary.

Use of technology 'may complicate Hungary's relations with NATO allies'

“Even if the equipment is allegedly intended to monitor Chinese investments, institutions and personnel, the potential involvement of Chinese technology companies, some of which have ties to the People's Liberation Army or Chinese intelligence and are subject to Western sanctions, could complicate Hungary's relations with NATO allies.” writes VSquare.

“Chinese dissidents living in the EU fear that the People's Republic of China may abuse this agreement,” the portal adds. According to the German daily “Die Welt”, which reported in March about possible Chinese police patrols in Hungary, Beijing wants to control its citizens around the world, now gaining access to dissidents in one of the EU countries.

Hungary has the best relations with China among all EU countries; these were tightened during Xi's last visit. China is investing billions of euros in the electric car sector in Hungary and also expects the country to influence other EU countries in terms of policy towards the People's Republic of China.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15968878

‘Let yourself be monitored’: EU governments to agree on Chat Control with user “consent” [updated]

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The Bulgarian prosecutor’s office has filed a lawsuit seeking to shut down two pro-Russian paramilitary groups that have been particularly active on social media, with calls to change the country’s constitutional order.

The two groups are working against the sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of the nation and towards the incitement of ethnic or religious enmity,” the prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday.

Both the Bulgarian National Movement “Shipka” and the Bulgarian Military Union “Vasil Levski” are registered in Varna, Bulgaria’s largest city on the Black Sea coast, just 300 kilometres from Ukraine.

The Bulgarian media first raised the alarm about the activities of both organisations in their investigations, as did the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee. So far, the prosecutor’s office has ignored calls to intervene and demand the banning of the paramilitary groups, which openly boasted of preparing armed self-defence units and threatened to revise the country’s constitutional structure.

Now, however, investigating authorities have found that the leaders of the two associations had contacts with representatives of groups in Germany known for their far-right views, prosecutors said, without naming the German extremists.

Euractiv Bulgaria requested additional information from the prosecutor’s office about the German links of the Bulgarian paramilitary groups, but no response had been provided by the time of publication.

Pro-Russian organisations registered in Bulgaria have used calls for religious and ethnic hatred in their propaganda, as well as calls for action against foreign citizens and representatives of different ethnicities and religions.

“The investigation has gathered evidence that the associations have organised training sessions for their sympathisers to acquire certain combat skills. It was also found that organised visits were made to the border with Turkey in order to catch illegal migrants,” the prosecutor’s office said.

These groups attracted the attention of some independent Bulgarian media in the spring of 2016, when they announced the launch of Operation Liberation of Bulgaria and presented themselves as the “transitional common Bulgarian people’s government”.

Even then, the organisations’ websites publicly announced that they were discussing the creation of paramilitary structures, including their own “detachments, platoons, companies and battalions”.

Vladimir Rusev led Operation Liberation and introduced himself as Walther Kalashnikov, a combination of the German Walther pistol and the Russian AK-47 (Kalashnikov).

Rusev claimed to be a lieutenant colonel, but he only reached the rank of sergeant major in the Bulgarian army.

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“There are certain sectors and areas where we could do a bit better,” Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre (NKVC), told LRT Radio.

Officials analysed the crisis preparedness of 14 hospitals in Lithuania’s ten largest cities and towns a few months ago. Half of them were rated positively in terms of emergency preparedness, and the other half as satisfactory, according to Vitkauskas.

“There is no negative assessment, and we can be pleased that the minimum requirement to ensure the institution’s operation for up to 30 days is met,” he said.

The NKVC head noted, however, that ideally, hospitals should be ready to operate for up to 90 days in emergency situations, which is where the inspected establishments faced issues.

The official said the problems were related not only to shortages of medication or personal protective equipment but also, for example, to ensuring food supply.

“Certain establishments have decentralised food supply, so there is a very high dependence on food supply chains,” he said.

The inspections revealed inconsistencies in the hospitals’ preparedness for autonomous electricity supply.

“Every hospital I mentioned has generators, but some have only one and some have twelve. So, this difference exists,” Vitkauskas said.

According to him, the Health Ministry has shared the inspection findings with each hospital and plans have been made to remedy the shortcomings.

The EU prides itself on its worldwide norm-setting influence in the fields of data protection and artificial intelligence regulation. Still, it is not always for the best when it comes to digital state surveillance, write Chloé Berthélémy and Viktoria Tomova from European Digital Rights (EDRi), an association of civil and human rights organisations from across Europe.

Privacy is safety, they argue. "As we approach the European elections in June, it’s time to discuss the EU's role in shaping how technologies are developed and used."

In March, highly sensitive military information was leaked on Russian TV. The German Air Force had used poorly secured communication software, which resulted in Russia’s interception of their top-secret conversations.

This was the German Taurus leak — a real-life drama that underscored the importance of encrypted, secure communications for everyone’s safety, including governments.

But here’s the kicker: while we’re still reeling from security fiascoes like this one or the recent Pegasus spyware scandal, police chiefs in the European Union are pushing a policing agenda that puts us all in the cross-hairs.

Privacy is safety. As we approach the European elections in June, it’s time to discuss the EU’s role in shaping how technologies are developed and used.

The EU prides itself on its worldwide norm-setting influence in the fields of data protection and artificial intelligence regulation. Still, it is not always for the best when it comes to digital state surveillance.

Over the past five years, we’ve seen a concerning trend in the EU’s digital policy playground. Some EU bodies have been pushing for tech solutions that enable some very worrying policing practices, like monitoring all private communications or criminalising the use of encryption, as part of a wider objective of increasing prosecution and imprisonment to silence activists and NGOs.

For example, on 21 April, 32 European police chiefs issued a statement under the aegis of Europol (the EU’s police agency), calling upon the technology industry to stop rolling out end-to-end encryption and to build backdoors in their systems so that companies and law enforcement can gain access to data and monitor communications.

This technosolutionist trend is like a bad dance partner, stepping on the toes of people’s fundamental rights. But these are not the only dodgy dance moves we have seen.

The EU has implemented this tech-powered security agenda in ways that limit civil society participation, favour the surveillance industry and jeopardise digital safety.

DG HOME’s very selective listening

One of the main characters in this story is the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs, or DG HOME.

DG HOME has a worrying track record of pushing an agenda that suggests the only way to achieve security is through surveillance and control. In their quest to tackle the big bad wolves of cybercrime, cross-border crime, and terrorism, DG HOME has thrown caution to the wind. Transparency, accountability, and democratic participation? Sacrificed for a facade of security. The proof is in the pudding, as shown by their handling of the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR).

Our hands-on experience on the chat control proposal has revealed evidence of how DG HOME has wrongly framed tech policing as the ultimate solution to complex societal issues such as children’s safety.

In attempting to legalise mass surveillance and expand policing powers in the EU, DG HOME trampled many of the EU’s primary democratic standards. As the directorate general tasked with the CSAR proposal, DG HOME was responsible for conducting a transparent and inclusive consultation process to ensure all stakeholders’ views and concerns were heard.

Evidence shows that DG HOME prioritised meetings with Big Tech companies instead, notably Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, Meta/WhatsApp, TikTok, and Snap.

And tech surveillance industry actors like Thorn, a US company specialising in AI tools for online child sexual abuse image detection. This close collaboration continued for months after the CSAR proposal’s publication. For example, DG HOME repeatedly facilitated Thorn’s access to crucial decision-making venues attended by ministers of EU member states.

Ill-suited proposals and a lack of real solutions

While making space for the industry, not once in this period did DG HOME respond to calls from digital rights organisations located meters away from their offices in Brussels, asking to explore social and human interventions as part of a holistic rather than tech-centric approach to the issue of child sexual abuse online.

DG HOME and the European Commissioner in charge of home affairs and leading on the chat control proposal, Ylva Johansson, not only refused to meet with data protection organisations but also openly misled the public about having consulted these groups in an attempt to legitimise their actions.

This is alarming, as DG HOME’s actions have skewed the debate around the CSAR into a one-sided discussion, sidelining organisations critical of the proposal. By excluding dissent from the political space, DG HOME disregards essential human rights like privacy. It fails to account for the complex societal nature of child sexual abuse, resulting in an ill-suited and likely unlawful proposal that does not offer a real solution.

An accompanying journalistic investigation revealed that Europol sought unrestricted access to data from the CSAR’s mass scanning system, with no objections or privacy concerns raised by DG HOME. The EU Ombudsman is now investigating this clear conflict of interest, which involves former Europol officials lobbying for Thorn and its potential risk to civil rights.

Why is the door repeatedly slammed in our faces?

DG HOME’s choice to exclude civil society voices advocating for sustainable measures over blanket surveillance of children and adults alike and to prioritise the interests of the surveillance tech industry and law enforcement is a telling indicator of the directorate’s policing-driven agenda.

Considering that digitalisation and tech innovation are on the high priority list for the June 2024 EU elections agenda, policymakers must engage in a transparent and democratically-run debate on what security means, for whom, and how it can be achieved.

We need stricter rules on corporate lobbying, particularly for groups like Thorn, who abuse the NGO arm of their organisation to obfuscate their for-profit work. We also need a fair and transparent participation process in the legislative cycle on digital policy that ensures a formal seat for civil society groups at the table.

EU countries’ governments must also ensure that the next European Commissioner for Home Affairs has an understanding of human rights and the rule of law. When proposing technological solutions, the European Commission must ensure that the lead staff has expertise in data protection, privacy, technology and internet regulation.

The EU must end its shadowy games with the industry, engage in meaningful transparency and respect our fundamental rights.

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The European Uyghur Institute (IODE) said that acts of intimidation stepped up during the visit to France earlier this month of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Beijing is behind “acts of intimidation, harassment and repeated threats towards members of the Uyghur diaspora in France, as well as towards people backing the Uyghurs’ cause,” it said in a statement.

Such acts are “multiplying and growing more systematic at a worrying speed,” it added.

The IODE said that “international repression intensified at the time of President Xi Jinping’s official visit to France” in early May.

Xi’s trip to celebrate 60 years of diplomatic relations with Paris saw him welcomed by President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée Palace and treated to a traditional meal in the Pyrennées mountains.

Macron and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen sought to talk Xi down from his close partnership with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, knitted tighter since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The IODE cited specific allegations of Chinese harassment, including disruption of a theatre performance it staged on 5 May as Xi was in Paris.

“Organisers were intimidated by different groups suspected of being orchestrated by Chinese security services,” it said.

It added that on 8 May, Gulbahar Jalilova, a “refugee in Paris since October 2020” was targeted for intimidation or even kidnapping “by Chinese agents” outside her apartment building.

The IODE included photographs of the incident involving Jalilova, a former inmate of a Chinese detention camp.

There are “enormous impacts of these practices on the physical and mental health of members of the Uyghur community in France,” it said.

Newspaper Le Monde reported this week that France’s DGSI internal security service and the Paris police had identified “Chinese state agents belonging to the security services in… a failed ‘intimidation action’ on 8 May against a political refugee of Uyghur background”.

China’s Paris embassy on Wednesday blasted the report as “fake news”, “riddled with errors” and “obvious falsifications” in a post on its website.

The largely Sunni Muslim Uyghurs make up the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang province in northwest China.

Bloody attacks blamed on Islamists and separatists have long plagued the region.

Since 2017, more than one million Uyghurs and members of other mostly Muslim ethnic groups have been held in “reeducation camps” inflicting widespread human rights violations, according to investigations and Western aid groups.

China describes some of the camps as “vocational training centres”.

Europe supports, finances and is directly involved in these clandestine operations in North African countries to dump tens of thousands of Black people in the desert or remote areas each year to prevent them from coming to the EU.

An investigation reveals that in Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia, refugees and migrant workers, some of whom were on their way towards Europe, as well as people who had legal status and established livelihoods in these countries, are apprehended based on the colour of their skin, loaded onto buses and driven to the middle of nowhere, often arid desert areas.

There, they are left without any assistance, water or food, leaving them at risk of kidnapping, extortion, torture, sexual violence, and, in the worst instances, death. Others are taken to border areas where they are reportedly sold by the authorities to human traffickers and gangs who torture them for ransom.

Funds for these desert dumps have been paid under the guise of “migration management” with the EU claiming that the money doesn’t support human rights abuses against sub-Saharan African communities in North Africa. Brussels claims publicly that it closely monitors how this money is spent. But the reality is different.

In a year-long investigation with the Washington Post, Enass, Der Spiegel, El Pais, IrpiMedia, ARD, Inkyfada and Le Monde, we reveal that Europe knowingly funds, and in some instances is directly involved in systematic racial profiling detention and expulsion of Black communities across at least three North African countries.

Our findings show that in Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia, refugees and migrant workers, some of whom were on their way towards Europe, as well as people who had legal status and established livelihoods in these countries, are apprehended based on the colour of their skin, loaded onto buses and driven to the middle of nowhere, often arid desert areas.

There, they are left without any assistance, water or food, leaving them at risk of kidnapping, extortion, torture, sexual violence, and, in the worst instances, death. Others are taken to border areas where they are reportedly sold by the authorities to human traffickers and gangs who torture them for ransom.

This investigation amounts to the most comprehensive attempt yet to document European knowledge and involvement with anti-migrant, racially motivated operations in North Africa. It exposes how not only has this system of mass displacement and abuse been known about in Brussels for years, but that it is run thanks to money, vehicles, equipment, intelligence and security forces provided by the EU and European countries.

Methods

The team interviewed more than 50 survivors of these expulsions across Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia – all of whom were from Sub-Saharan or West African countries – which helped us to recognise the systematic and racially-motivated nature of the practices. Some survivors supplied visual material and/or location data from their journey, which we were able to geolocate to support their accounts and map out what happened.

The team interviewed more than 50 survivors of these expulsions across Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia – all of whom were from Sub-Saharan or West African countries – which helped us to recognise the systematic and racially-motivated nature of the practices. Some survivors supplied visual material and/or location data from their journey, which we were able to geolocate to support their accounts and map out what happened.

As well as visual material supplied by survivors, we used open source methods to find videos posted on social media purporting to show dumps taking place. We sought to geolocate and verify these cases. In the case of Tunisia, we were able to verify 13 incidents that occurred between July 2023 and May 2024 in which groups of Black people were rounded up in cities or at ports and driven many miles away, usually close to the Libyan or Algerian borders, and dumped, as well as one incident of a group being handed over to Libyan security forces and then incarcerated in a detention centre.

Where visual evidence of the operations wasn’t available online, we documented it through ground reporting. In Morocco we followed the paramilitaries of the Auxiliary Forces and filmed them picking up Black people from the streets three times over three days in the capital, Rabat. We also filmed people being detained in local government buildings before being loaded onto unmarked buses and taken to remote areas.

In Mauritania we used similar techniques by observing a detention centre in the capital Nouakchott. We witnessed and filmed refugees and migrants being brought to the centre in a large truck and Spanish police officers entering the detention centre on a regular basis. We filmed a white bus with migrants in it leaving the detention centre towards the border with Mali, an active warzone.

By speaking with current and former EU staff members, as well as sources within national police forces and international organisations with a presence in the countries where the dumps are taking place, we established that the EU is well aware of the dump operations and sometimes directly involved.

European officials have expressed concern over escalating operations in the region against sub-Saharan African migrants, and consistently denied that funds are being used to violate basic rights. But two senior EU sources said it was “impossible” to fully account for the way in which European funding was ultimately used.

One consultant who worked on projects funded by the EU Trust Fund, under which the EU has given Tunisia, Mauritania and Morocco more than €400m for migration management in recent years, said of the aims of the fund: “You have to make migrants’ lives difficult. Complicate their lives. If you leave a migrant from Guinea in the Sahara [in Morocco] twice, the third time he will ask you to voluntarily bring him back home.”

Using freedom of information laws, we were able to obtain a number of internal documents, including one from the EU’s border agency Frontex from earlier this year stating that Morocco was racially profiling and forcibly relocating mainly Black migrants. We also unearthed hard-to-find publicly available documents showing that EU officials have held internal discussions on some of the abusive practices since at least 2019. They also revealed that the EU is directly funding the Moroccan paramilitary auxiliary forces, who we filmed rounding up people with black skin in the capital.

Crucially, we were able to match vehicles used during the round-up and expulsions to vehicles provided by European countries by identifying tenders and carrying out visual analyses. For example in Tunisia, the Nissan vehicles we observed being used by the National Police in raids to arrest migrants before they are driven to desert areas match in make and model with those donated to Tunisia by Italy and Germany.

We also spoke with analysts and academics who told us the European funding links make the EU accountable for these abuses. “The fact is that European countries do not want to get their hands dirty,” said Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche, a law professor at the University of Lyon and a specialist in human rights and migration. “They don’t want to be held responsible for human rights violations and outsource them to others. I believe that, under international law, they are indeed responsible.”

Storylines

Timothy Hucks, a 33-year-old US citizen, was arrested by plainclothes officers a few metres from his home in Rabat in 2019. He recalls how he showed his American driver’s licence and offered to get his passport from his flat, but the officer handcuffed him and shoved him into the back of a white van.

Hucks, who now lives in Spain, recalls being taken to a police station where around 40 Black men were crammed together in a dirty room with broken toilets. The security forces took his fingerprints and a photo of him. They asked questions that sounded like accusations: was he a terrorist? A member of Boko Haram? “It’s difficult to describe how angry I was at that moment,” says Hucks. He was then transported along with the other men to a town about 200km south of Rabat, and abandoned. Eventually, he found a bus to take him back to Rabat.

In another case, Idiatou, a Guinea woman in her twenties, told how she was intercepted at sea while trying to reach the Canary Islands from Mauritania. She was taken to a detention centre in the capital Nouakchott, where Spanish police officers took her photograph before she was forced in a white bus towards the border with Mali. There, in the middle of nowhere, she and 29 other people were sent away. “The Mauritanians chased us like animals,” she recalls. “I was afraid that someone would rape me.” After four days of walking she managed to reach a village and found a driver who took her to a relative in Senegal.

Further east in Tunisia, François, a 38-year-old Cameroonian national, describes how he was intercepted at sea by the Tunisian National Maritime Guard while trying to reach Italy on an overcrowded boat. He was then boarded onto buses with dozens of other sub-Saharan Africans and taken to the desert area near the Algerian border. He was able to hide his phone so it wasn’t confiscated by the police, and he provided us with GPS data and photographs from the journey, enabling us to verify his account.

At the Algerian border, François and the group of around 30 people were abandoned by the Tunisian security forces and ordered to walk towards Algeria. Facing warning shots from the Algerian side, they decided to head back to Tunisia. “There were two pregnant women in the group and a child with a heel infection […] We were thirsty. We began to suffer hallucinations,” he recalls. They walked for nine days, more than 40 kilometres, before finally finding transport to take them back to the Tunisian city of Sfax.

It didn't take Russia's misinformation machine long to settle on who was to blame for the first assassination attempt on a European national leader in more than two decades.

When Slovakia's prime minister was shot five times on May 15, pro-Kremlin propaganda blamed Ukraine even before the authorities released any details about the gunman.

At first glance the attack seemed to be a setback for the Kremlin. Robert Fico, who remains hospitalized, is one of a handful of pro-Russian European Union leaders, and he opposed military aid to Ukraine.

But in the through-the-looking-glass world of disinformation, no news is bad news. That’s why pro-Russian social media channels, influencers and state media have seized on the shooting, suggesting that Fico was a victim because of his sympathies toward the Kremlin.

The Cyber Army of Russia Reborn, a hacking and disinformation group that frequently pushes Kremlin narratives, has circulated messages on the Telegram social media app suggesting that the 71-year-old suspect was a member of Progressive Slovakia, a pro-EU party that supports Ukraine. Local authorities have debunked the allegation.

Even so, the misinformation quickly spread on posts on X and Reddit, where anonymous accounts flooded Fico-themed discussions with speculation that the shooter was somehow affiliated with pro-Ukrainian forces. There’s no evidence of a such a link. Slovakian officials have called the shooting politically motivated and are investigating whether the attacker was part of a larger group.

One Telegram post compared the failed assassination to the 1914 killing of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand that sparked World War I, the kind of veiled rhetoric that alludes to an imminent global conflict.

“Their main objective is to weaken support by creating so many domestic problems that we divide ourselves,” says Bilyana Lilly, cyber chair at the Warsaw Security Forum and the author of the book Russian Information Warfare. “We’ve removed all the levers to stop them from doing this in any way.”

The Cyber Army of Russia Reborn, which has more than 49,000 followers on Telegram, tries to boost its believability by circulating articles from websites that impersonate legitimate news outlets. It took credit for targeting water facilities in the US this year and may have ties to Russian military intelligence, Madiant Intelligence said in April.

The Cyber Army of Russia Reborn couldn’t be reached for comment.

In one example, it linked to a site that mimicked Britain's Telegraph, using a URL only slightly different from the newspaper’s website. Masquerading as local news websites fits within a history of propagandists trying to capitalize on the credibility of legitimate media organizations. Earlier this year, Russian media promoted a deepfake in which a journalist from France 24 seemed to announce that Emmanuel Macron postponed a trip to Ukraine because of an assassination attempt.

The Cyber Army of Russia Reborn also publicized posts from a pro-Russian hacking group, NoName, that called for cyberattacks against Slovakia’s pro-European parties.

Russian state media, meanwhile, have taken a complementary approach. A Sputnik Media article billed as an investigation said Western media, foreign non-governmental organizations and the US Agency for International Development were responsible for “turning up the political temperature” in Slovakia prior to the shooting.

That rhetoric matches that of some of Fico’s political allies, who have blamed the opposition and liberal media. Andrej Danko, the leader of the Slovak National Party that governs in coalition with Fico, last week vowed “to start a political war.”

As with any misinformation or political propaganda, the material effects of Russia’s Fico rhetoric are impossible to measure. Instead, the messaging points to the Kremlin’s commitment to creating even small cracks in international public opinion in a way that could weaken resolve to support Ukraine as a new offensive by President Vladimir Putin’s troops is gaining ground.

Kevin Mandia, founder of the threat intelligence firm Mandiant, announced that he’s stepping down as chief executive officer of the company nearly two years after it was acquired by Google.

Mandia, a former member of the US Air Force, built Mandiant into a leading cyber firm that’s helped clean up breaches at companies including Sony Pictures after North Korea hacked it in 2014. Mandiant researchers also have led the effort among security vendors to report on foreign nation-state cyber-espionage that target US firms. In its latest installment, the company published new details on Wednesday about pro-Chinese hacking.

Mandia has also been active in the cybersecurity venture capital market as the co-founder of Ballistic Ventures. He’ll transition to an advisory role at Google in the coming weeks, he said in an internal memo.

British defence minister Grant Shapps accused China on Wednesday of providing or preparing to provide Russia with lethal aid for use by Moscow in its war against Ukraine.

Shapps told a conference in London that U.S. and British defence intelligence had evidence that "lethal aid is now, or will be, flowing from China to Russia and into Ukraine, I think it is a significant development".

Shapps did not provide evidence to support his assertion.

"We should be concerned about that because in the earlier days of this war China would like to present itself as a moderating influence on Russian President Vladimir Putin", he added.

The Chinese Embassy in the U.S. said last month it had not provided weaponry, adding that it is "not a producer of or party involved in the Ukraine crisis." The Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Germany's AfD party on Wednesday banned its leading candidate from appearing at EU election campaign events, after France's main far-right party announced a split with the Germans over a slew of scandals involving the politician.