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The week Europe realised it stands alone against Russian expansionism

Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, asked her officials this week to dig up the number of times Russia had – in its various guises – invaded other states in the 20th and 21st centuries. The answer that came back was 19 states, on 33 occasions. Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister, was not just indulging in some form of historical mathematics. She was seeking to make a point that lies at the heart of the dispute between the US and Europe over Ukraine’s future, a dispute that has again revealed the chasm across the Atlantic about the true nature of the Russian regime. Kallas reads history books as a leisure activity and – drawing on her own country’s history of Soviet occupation – has long maintained that the Soviet Union fell, but its imperialism never did. “Russia has never truly had to come to terms with its brutal past or bear the consequences of its actions,” she has said, arguing that the nature of the Russian regime means “rewarding aggression will bring more war, not less”: Putin will come back for more. A similar warning was made this week by the German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, who said: “Our intelligence services are telling us urgently: Russia is at least creating the option of a war against Nato by 2029 at the latest.” Putin is recruiting nearly one new division a month, Wadephul said, adding: “Divisions that are undoubtedly also targeting us, at the EU, at Nato.” The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has described Russia “as a constant destabilising power, trying to revise the borders to extend his power”. Putin, he said, is “a predator, an ogre at our gates who constantly needs to eat for his own survival”. In short, “he is a threat to Europeans”. The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, told MPs: “We know that without that deterrence, [Putin] has the ambition to go again, and he will go again – and we must guard against that.” All this is diametrically opposite to the view of US isolationists. Steve Witkoff, the New York property developer currently representing the US on the world stage – but also coaching Russia on how to win over Donald Trump – has admitted he knows little history, telling the Atlantic in May that he had been watching some Netflix documentaries to rectify this. But based on his four visits to Moscow, he largely treats Russia like any other country, and Vladimir Putin like any other world leader. He told Tucker Carlson he was certain that Russia would not want to take further territory in Europe once Putin was given four regions of Ukraine. “I think there’s this sort of notion of: ‘We’ve all got to be like Winston Churchill – the Russians are gonna march across Europe’ – I think that’s preposterous,” he said. Witkoff added: “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war and all the ingredients that led up to it. You know, it’s never just one person, right?” Russia genuinely wants peace, he opines. Trump largely holds the same benign view of Putin. His vice-president, JD Vance, has ridiculed the idea that Putin had expansionist designs. Putin was not Hitler, he explained – setting the bar for acceptability quite low. Putin on Thursday offered to put in writing he would not invade another European country. Depressingly for Europe, that means that no matter how frequently it managed to push the Trump pendulum away from Russia, the pendulum reverts back to a natural position of sympathy for Putin. Every time Europe feels it is on the verge of locking Trump into the belief that Russia is an aggressor that threatens European and, by extension, US security, Trump gives Putin another chance, “another two weeks”, another phone call. Trump’s one fixed belief is that Ukraine cannot win the war, and should cut its losses. But never until the emergence this month of a 28-point US-Russian plan to end the war – and the subsequent revelation that Witkoff had apparently coached Russian officials on how to win Trump round – had European leaders seen precisely how US officials envisioned a new European order in which Russia, in the name of realism, is rewarded and not punished for its unlawful invasion of Ukraine. Once again blind-sided by Trump, European leaders read paragraph after paragraph of the US proposal with a mixture of disbelief and panic. The former French president François Hollande said: “We are living through a moment that is both historic and dramatic. It is historic because this plan not only marks Ukraine’s capitulation, but also Europe’s relegation to the tutelage of a Russian-American condominium. It is dramatic because, for Ukraine, it means the definitive loss of a third of its territory and offers no security guarantees to protect it from further Russian aggression. It is dramatic, too, because this plan is nothing more than Trump adopting Vladimir Putin’s demands, reducing Europe to the role of a besieged bystander”. Josep Borrell, Kallas’s predecessor as head of EU foreign affairs, said: “Trump’s plan to end the war in Ukraine exposes the failure of the EU’s appeasement strategy. Giving in to his demands on military spending, tariffs, digital deregulation, multinational taxation and energy supplies has achieved nothing. With the 28-point plan to end the war in Ukraine, Trump’s United States can no longer be considered an ally of Europe, which is not even consulted on matters affecting its own security. Europe must acknowledge this shift in US policy and respond accordingly.” François Heisbourg, senior adviser for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, compared the plan to the 1940 armistice signed between Nazi Germany and a defeated France. “It is essentially a peace arranged on Russia’s terms,” he said. John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic, was even more scathing. “I’m thinking of all those people over the past year who have been saying: ‘Hey, Trump’s changed his mind, he’s going to support Ukraine.’ I don’t know how many times it will take to prove it. He doesn’t care about Ukraine,” he said. German CDU foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen described the moment as a turning point “because it means the US is siding with Putin and selling out both Ukraine’s sovereignty and the security of Europe. The previous assumption of a transatlantic alliance and a security guarantee from the US is no longer compatible.” Even if the 28-point plan does not come to pass, Röttgen said that “something fundamental has happened. We no longer live in the world as it was.” But if it was legitimate for European politicians outside government to condemn Trump’s betrayal, it was the responsibility of European leaders to minimise the impact – especially before the arbitrary thanksgiving deadline Trump had set for Ukraine. “Our first job, frankly, was to find out what had been going on,” admits one British diplomat. It was reportedly at a Berlin dinner on 18 November that Starmer, Macron and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, first exchanged notes on the scale of what Witkoff had been cooking up. The European magazine had got wind of a new initiative through a briefing Witkoff gave to Ukraine’s national security adviser, Rustem Umerov, at a weekend meeting in Miami. If so, that was a full month after Witkoff, flush with his ceasefire in Gaza, first rang Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign policy aide, to advise him that he wanted to repeat the exercise in Ukraine. He advised that the Russian leader should speak to Trump before the US president met the Ukrainian leader at the White House at a meeting scheduled for 17 October. Witkoff’s tipoff helped ensure the 150-minute call between Putin and Trump on 15 October went well enough for the US president to pull back from giving the Ukrainians Tomahawk missiles that they had been expecting. Instead, Trump said he was planning a second summit with Putin – this time in Bucharest. But at this point, US policy on Ukraine was starting to fracture. After a phone call with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on 21 October, the US secretary of state and acting national security adviser, Marco Rubio, concluded that there was in fact no point in Trump meeting Putin, since Russia had not changed its positions since the inconclusive Alaska summit. The two sides were still too far apart about Ukraine’s sovereignty. On 22 October, US sanctions were imposed on Rosneft Oil and Lukoil, the first on Russia since Trump returned to office. Undaunted, Witkoff met Kirill Dmitriev, a Harvard-educated senior Kremlin adviser, in Miami. Few in the state department knew of these secret contacts, but it was in Florida that the outlines of the 28-point peace plan started to be drafted. Judging by the subsequent phone calls leaked to Bloomberg, Dmitriev sensed Witkoff was amenable to working with a Russian draft that amounted to a compendium of Russian talking points. Nevertheless, Europe is now well-drilled in responding to Trump’s occasional lunges to rehabilitate and reward Putin: first, welcome the fact of Trump’s intervention, before slowly and politely smothering it. So, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, went through the formulaic mark of respect for the US president’s efforts, but could not hide the gravity of what he called “one of the most difficult moments in our history”. “Ukraine could face a very difficult choice: the loss of dignity or the risk of losing a key partner, the United States,” he said in a video address to the nation. Agreeing to the US proposals would mean “a life without freedom, without dignity, without justice”, he said. Three factors helped the European rescue operation. First, the draft was so lopsided and so prescriptive about Europe’s security as to be indefensible. Rather than substitute an alternative, the Europeans chose instead to gut the Witkoff project. Making Trump’s plan the starting point was intended to avoid antagonising the Americans: it acknowledged Trump’s efforts as legitimate. Secondly, the disputes within the US administration could no longer be concealed – principally the feud between Vance and Rubio. This helped the Atlanticist wing in the Senate, already worried about the president’s plunging poll ratings, to rediscover its backbone and voice. That, in turn, led Vance to make some ill-tempered assaults on Congress. “There is an illusion that simply giving more money, more weapons, or imposing more sanctions will bring victory within reach. Peace will not be achieved by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy world. It could be achieved by intelligent people living in the real world,” he said. It left Rubio walking a tightrope, remaining loyal to an unpredictable president but clearly telling US senators that this was not a US plan. Finally, Europe maintained its unity, despite petty rivalries about the roles of France, Germany and Britain. After a succession of meetings at the G20 in Johannesburg, an EU-Africa summit in Luanda, a nine-hour negotiation in Geneva, a further meeting in Abu Dhabi, and finally a video call of the 35-nation “coalition of the willing”, the Europeans held together. Of the original 28 points, only 19 remained by Monday evening, with those that affected European security or the future of Nato removed. Some paragraphs were simply deleted, such as the proposal to readmit Russia into the G7 or to allow the US to seize frozen Russian central bank assets, mostly held in European countries, to fund reconstruction efforts. The idea that the US would also drop all sanctions imposed on Russia was excised, and a ambiguous reference to Eurofighters and Poland disappeared. With its overarching view that Russia under its current leadership would always represent a threat, the key European focus has been to ensure any agreement prevents Russia from further military aggression. “The absolute condition for a good peace is a series of very robust security guarantees, and not guarantees only on paper,” said Macron. Some of those guarantees could be provided by a deployment of the so-called coalition of the willing. Starmer insists that plans are in place covering capability, coordination and command structure, but it is unclear whether the US will provide any additional guarantees. Rubio has agreed to set up a working party to explore how a US guarantee could be more than Trump deciding how he will react if and when Russia invades western Ukraine. Three Ukrainian red lines have been reserved for further talks: conceding key parts of Donbas currently under Ukrainian control, accepting restrictions on its army, and Nato forever barring Ukraine from membership. But regardless of what emerges from this latest fiasco – and the fierce negotiations may only be starting – the damage to the transatlantic alliance piles up. Europe now has to realise it must confront the Russian question alone. Unlike in Alaska, this time the US was lured into signing up to Russia’s plans to remake Europe in Russia’s interests. In so doing, according to French historian Françoise Thom, the US made itself complicit in the dismantlement of international law. Trump could yet block arms and intelligence to force through his peace, but it is equally possible this initiative will fizzle out, as Putin rejects the revised terms next week and the war grinds on, after distracting and weakening Ukrainian morale that is already strained by allegations of corruption. Some figures, such as Kallas, insist that Russia can be brought to breaking point as it runs out of money, especially if Europe finds a lawful way to give Ukraine a reparations loan drawing on frozen Russian central bank assets worth €210bn. But Europe has vowed to get its act together so often. Inertia, not Russia, may have become its own worst enemy.

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Ukraine war briefing: one killed and seven wounded as Russia launches another overnight attack on Kyiv

A Russian drone and missile attack targeted Kyiv in the early hours of Saturday, killing one person and wounding seven, authorities in the Ukrainian capital said. “Enemy drones are over the city, with air defence responding,” Tymur Tkachenko, Kyiv military administration’s head, said on Telegram. “There are multiple targets on the capital’s outskirts.” The fatality was a man and a child was among the injured, he posted later. Loud explosions were heard in the city around midnight. Mayor Vitaly Klitschko warned people to remain in shelters during the attack. Residential buildings in several districts and cars were damaged, he said. Four of the injured had been hospitalised, Klitschko said on Telegram. “The enemy is heavily attacking Kyiv region with missiles and drones,” said Kyiv region’s governor, Mykola Kalashnyk, “Residential areas and people’s homes are under attack.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff and closest ally, Andriy Yermak, has resigned after Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies conducted searches at his apartment on Friday, reports Dan Sabbagh. The abrupt departure of the aide, who had been leading the latest round of delicate peace negotiations with the US, was announced by the Ukrainian president in a late-afternoon social media video. Zelenskyy praised Yermak but made clear that “there should be no reason to be distracted by anything other than the defence of Ukraine” at a time when Kyiv was dependent on retaining US support in the face of Russian territorial demands. Yermak had submitted his resignation, the president said. The search for a successor would begin on Saturday and the powerful office of the president of Ukraine, which Yermak led, would be “reorganised” as part of the process. Ukrainian negotiators will visit the US this weekend for talks on Washington’s plan to end the Ukraine war, a senior official said. The talks may take place in Florida, the source said, speaking anonymously, adding that Yermak was meant to take part in the talks before his dismissal. Ukrainian forces are defending their positions and hunting down sabotage groups in the north-eastern city of Kupiansk despite Moscow’s statements that its troops are fully in control of it, Ukraine’s top commander said. “Our soldiers continue to conduct both defensive and search and strike actions,” Oleksandr Syrskyi wrote on Telegram on Friday after visiting the area in Kharkiv region. “These actions take place daily as part of comprehensive measures to stabilise the situation in Kupiansk.” Syrskyi said Ukrainian forces were “holding designated lines and intensifying fire pressure to block the enemy’s supply routes”. A daughter of the former South African president Jacob Zuma has resigned as an MP after being accused of tricking 17 South African men into fighting for Russia in Ukraine by telling them they were travelling to Russia to train as bodyguards for the Zumas’ uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party. Rachel Savage reports that Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, 43, volunteered to resign and step back from public roles while cooperating with a police investigation and working to bring the men home, the MK chair said at a press conference in Durban. Human Rights Watch will not stop investigating Russia or the actions of its military in Ukraine, despite Moscow declaring it an “undesirable” organisation earlier on Friday, the New York-based group said. It told Agence France-Presse it was “not surprised” by the designation – which effectively criminalises it in Russia and anyone who works with them – and vowed to continue its work remotely. Human Rights Watch has not had a physical presence in Russia since authorities closed its Moscow offices in 2022. Blasts rocked two tankers from Russia’s shadow fleet in the Black Sea near Turkey’s Bosphorus strait on Friday, causing fires on the vessels, and rescue operations were launched for those onboard, Turkish authorities and sources said. The Kairos suffered an explosion and caught fire while en route from Egypt to Russia, Turkey’s transport ministry said, while the country’s Maritime Affairs Directorate said the Virat was reportedly struck about 35 nautical miles offshore. Both tankers are on a list of ships subject to sanctions on Russia over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, according to LSEG data.

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After landmark climate win, lawyer hopes for a ‘new legal order’ to protect Indigenous rights

Six years ago, human rights lawyer Julian Aguon received a call from Vanuatu’s foreign affairs minister. The minister had an unusual request – he wanted Aguon to help develop a legal case on behalf of dozens of law students who were seeking climate justice from the world’s highest court. Aguon, a Chamorro lawyer based in Guam, was excited by the opportunity and believed they could clear up legal ambiguities he says had “long hobbled the ability of the international community to respond effectively to the climate crisis.” Over years, Aguon and his team gathered testimonies from all across the Pacific about losses inflicted by climate change. They heard from people in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and other places who broke with cultural protocol to share sacred knowledge of their environment and culture – hoping that telling their stories might lead to a better future. In 2025, Aguon argued the case before the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague and months later, the court issued a landmark ruling which determined nations have a legal obligation to prevent climate harm. Aguon says the ICJ ruling requires countries to “finally and decisively address the climate crisis” and marks a new era of climate accountability. On 2 December, Aguon and the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) will be honoured with a Right Livelihood award – an international prize sometimes dubbed the alternative Nobel – for their work. A Myanmar activist group, a grassroots aid response group in Sudan and Taiwanese civic hacker and technologist Audrey Tang will also be honoured. The Right Livelihood awards began in 1980 after the Nobel foundation rejected a proposal for two new prizes for work on the environment and within developing countries. Previous winners include Edward Snowden, Wangari Maathai and Greta Thunberg. Vishal Prasad, director of PISFCC, says the award is a testament to the determination of unified Pacific Islanders working together to save their home. He says the recognition belongs to “everyone in the region”. Aguon believes it will help support a wave of rights-based climate litigation, and lead to reparations claims and compensation for ecosystem restoration. The 43-year-old founded the firm Blue Ocean Law in 2014, with a central belief that Indigenous people can provide solutions to the world’s problems. The firm pursues cases that prioritise Indigenous rights and culture to advance what Aguon called a “new legal order rooted in respect, reciprocity, and responsibility to future generations.” Ralph Regenvanu was the minister in Vanuatu who approached Aguon about the ICJ case years earlier. He said they chose Blue Ocean Law because they felt the firm could “represent what this means legally but also culturally.” Lookin ahead, the Guam-based firm is developing legal challenges to deep sea mining in the Pacific based on Indigenous guardianship, which Aguon says seeks to defend the ocean as “kin rather than commodity” to protect marine ecosystems and ensure cultural survival. It is also looking at ways to fight contamination of land and water to protect rights to access and gather medicinal plants needed for cultural reasons. Aguon said his work seeks to protect “Indigenous rights in exceedingly practical, concrete ways.” “It behooves us to try to find every possible way to protect them and their ability to thrive in their ancestral spaces,” he adds.

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Zelenskyy’s top aide quits after anti-corruption searches of his home

Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff and closest ally, Andriy Yermak, has resigned after Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies conducted searches at his apartment earlier today. The abrupt departure of the aide, who had been leading the latest round of the delicate peace negotiations with the US, was announced by the Ukrainian president in a late-afternoon social media video on Friday. Zelenskyy praised Yermak, but made clear that “there should be no reason to be distracted by anything other than the defence of Ukraine” at a time when Kyiv was dependent on retaining US support in the face of Russian territorial demands. Yermak had submitted his resignation, the president said. The search for a successor would begin on Saturday and the powerful office of the president of Ukraine, which Yermak led, would be “reorganised” as part of the process. “I am grateful to Andriy for always representing Ukraine’s position in the negotiation track exactly as it should be. It has always been a patriotic position. But I want there to be no rumours or speculation,” Zelenskyy said. Journalists had filmed about 10 investigators entering Kyiv’s government quarter early in the morning, in a widening of the investigation into a nuclear energy kickback scandal allegedly run by an associate of the Ukrainian president who has fled the country. Nabu, the national anti-corruption bureau, said it and the specialised anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, Sapo, were “conducting investigative actions at the head of the office of the president of Ukraine”. A seemingly indispensable aide until today, Yermak was a former intellectual property lawyer and film producer who knew Zelenskyy in his days as an actor and comedian before helping him be elected as president. Yermak became a foreign policy adviser, then the president’s chief of staff in February 2020. Rapidly he assumed a central position as Zelenskyy’s gatekeeper in the charge of the president’s office. He was routinely consulted on foreign policy, domestic affairs and appointments. Never far from Zelenskyy’s side, the two were particularly close during the early days of the invasion, when Kyiv was under threat. Earlier, in a short statement, Yermak confirmed that searches were continuing at his home. “The investigators have no obstacles,” he added in a social media statement. “They were given full access to the apartment, my lawyers are on site, interacting with law enforcement officers. From my side, I have full cooperation.” The energy corruption scandal first emerged earlier in November, but after days of damaging revelations it dropped down the news agenda when Donald Trump unexpectedly released a pro-Russian 28-point peace plan, in which the Kremlin demanded control of all the Donbas region before any ceasefire. But Friday’s developments thrust the scandal back into the spotlight just as Ukraine had been carefully wooing the White House on a 19-point counterproposal, with Yermak fronting talks in Geneva with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio. Earlier in November, investigators from Nabu said they had uncovered a high-level criminal scheme at the heart of government. Insiders allegedly received kickbacks of 10%-15% from commercial partners of Energoatom, the state-owned nuclear power generator and Ukraine’s most important energy supplier. Timur Mindich, an old friend and business partner of the Ukrainian president in the Kvartal 95 TV production company, set up by Zelenskyy before he went into politics, was accused of being the organiser. Mindich fled abroad, leaving his apartment in Kyiv’s government district hours before investigators came to arrest him. Zelenskyy himself has denounced the scheme. However, questions swirled in the days that followed about how much the most senior figures in government knew about what was happening, given how many others in or close to the administration have been accused of involvement. Zelenskyy fired two ministers this month and the allegations have prompted widespread public outrage at a time when most Ukrainians are having to endure hours of daily electricity blackouts because of Russian bombing of energy infrastructure. Another high-profile suspect is Oleksiy Chernyshov, a former deputy prime minister who was charged by Nabu for allegedly receiving $1.2bn (£900m) from participants in the anti-corruption scheme. Chernyshov allegedly spent some of the illicit cash building four luxury mansions in a new-build riverside plot south of Kyiv. The anti-corruption investigation has been based on more than 1,000 hours of conversations recorded secretly by Nabu, details of which have been released to the media. In one, a suspect said it was a “pity” to build structures to defend power stations from Russian attacks since the money could be stolen instead. The European Commission said the investigations showed that Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies were functioning. “We understand that investigations are ongoing, and we very much respect these investigations, which show that anti-corruption authorities in Ukraine are doing their job,” a spokesperson said.

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Zelenskyy chief of staff resigns after property raid by Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies – Europe live

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has resigned after Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies conducted searches at his apartment. Zelenskyy announced the departure of Yermak, who had been leading the country’s peace negotiations with the US, in a late-afternoon social media video on Friday. The president praised Yermak but made clear that “there should be no reason to be distracted by anything other than the defence of Ukraine”. Yermak had submitted his resignation, the president said. The search for a successor would begin on Saturday and the office of the president of Ukraine, which Yermak led, would be “reorganised” as part of the process. A daughter of the former South African president Jacob Zuma has resigned as an MP, after being accused of tricking 17 South African men into fighting for Russia in Ukraine by telling them they were travelling to Russia to train as bodyguards for the Zumas’ uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party. Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, 43, the most visible and active in politics of her siblings, volunteered to resign and step back from public roles while cooperating with a police investigation and working to bring the men home, the MK chair, Nkosinathi Nhleko, said at a press conference in Durban. Belgium has hit back against an EU plan to use Russia’s frozen assets to aid Ukraine, describing the scheme as “fundamentally wrong” and throwing into doubt how Europe will fund Kyiv. In a sharply worded letter, Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, said the proposal violated international law and would instigate uncertainty and fear in financial markets, damaging the euro. A spokesman for the European Commission, Guillaume Mercier, told Ukrainian local news station Radio Svoboda on Friday that they were following the corruption investigation closely and the searches showed that Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies were working. He added that fighting corruption was central to the country’s European Union accession. Polish authorities have charged five people alleging they acted for foreign intelligence services of an unspecified country and threatened Poland’s security by taking photographs of critical infrastructure and putting up posters and graffiti, the public prosecutor’s office said. The group consists of two Ukrainians (including an teenage girl) and three Belarusians. Four of them have been detained pending trial, with the fifth one only placed under travel restrictions due to his ill health. German authorities have placed a Ukrainian man in custody who is suspected of damaging the Nord Stream pipelines over three years ago, AP reported. A judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe issued an arrest warrant on Friday for 49-year-old Ukrainian Serhii K. and ordered he be held in custody, federal prosecutors said. Hungary’s Orbán has met with Russia’s Putin in Moscow in another show of close relations between the two leaders and countries and much to the frustration of the EU. Welcoming him to the Kremlin, Putin praised Orbán’s “balanced” position on Ukraine, after Hungary repeatedly tried to block further sanctions on Russia. Keir Starmer’s attempt to reset relations with the EU have suffered a major blow, after negotiations for the UK to join the EU’s flagship €150bn (£131bn) defence fund collapsed. The UK had been pushing to join the EU’s Security Action for Europe (Safe) fund, a low-interest loan scheme that is part of the EU’s drive to boost defence spending by €800bn and rearm the continent, in response to the growing threat from Russia and cooling relations between Donald Trump’s US and the EU. Strikes and protests in Italy on Friday against Giorgia Meloni’s government caused the cancellation of dozens of flights and disrupted train services around the country. The hardline USB union and smaller worker organisations called the one-day action against the government’s plans to raise military spending and its support for Israel.

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Quebec to ban public prayer in sweeping new secularism law

Quebec says it will intensify its crackdown on public displays of religion in a sweeping new law that critics say pushes Canadian provinces into private spaces and disproportionately affects Muslims. Bill 9, introduced by the governing Coalition Avenir Québec on Thursday, bans prayer in public institutions, including in colleges and universities. It also bans communal prayer on public roads and in parks, with the threat of fines of C$1,125 for groups in contravention of the prohibition. Short public events with prior approval are exempt. CAQ has made secularism a key legislative priority, passing the controversial Bill 21 – which bans some public sector employees from wearing religious symbol – in 2019. It plans to extend that prohibition to anyone working in daycares, colleges, universities and private schools. Full face coverings would be banned for anyone in those institutions, including students. Quebec’s secularism minister, Jean-François Roberge, said the controversial new provisions were the latest steps in a province working towards full secularization. He criticized previous accommodations by post-secondary institutions, including prayer rooms, telling reporters the schools “are not temples or churches or those kinds of places”. The ban on public prayer comes after the group Montreal4Palestine organized Sunday protests outside the city’s Notre-Dame Basilica that included prayers. “It’s shocking to see people blocking traffic, taking possession of the public space without a permit, without warning, and then turning our streets, our parks, our public squares into places of worship,” said Roberge. The province will also limit the offering of kosher and halal meals in public institutions. “We think that when the state is neutral, Quebecers are free,” said Roberge, rejecting allegations the law disproportionately affects minorities. “We have the same rules applying to everyone,” he said. But for Muslim students, the new rules “fee[l] like a personal attack against our community,” Ines Rarrbo, a first-year mechanical engineering student, told the Canadian Press. “It’s as if we’re not welcome here.” Stephen Brown, president of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said the move amounts to “political opportunism” and reflects a “doubling down on identity politics and division in a desperate attempt to regain the public’s trust”. In a statement, the Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops said the proposed bill would be a “radical infringement on the rights and freedoms of the Quebec population” and that “the government has not demonstrated the need for such legislation”. Bill 21 bars judges, police officers, prison guards and teachers from wearing religious symbols while at work. Other public workers such as bus drivers, doctors and social workers must only keep their faces uncovered. The legislation runs afoul of both Quebec’s charter of human rights and freedoms and Canada’s charter of rights and freedoms but in 2021, Quebec’s superior court upheld the statute despite a finding that the law violates the freedom of expression and religion of religious minorities. Governments in Canada can pass laws that breaches certain fundamental rights if they use a legal mechanism known as a the “notwithstanding clause”. Like Bill 21, the new legislation also invokes the clause pre-emptively, shielding it from challenges under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Canada’s supreme court is expected to hear a legal challenge to the use of the notwithstanding clause in the coming months.

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Rebel nuns who busted out of Austrian care home win reprieve – if they stay off social media

Three octogenarian nuns who gained a global following after breaking out of their care home and moving back to their abandoned convent near Salzburg have been given leave to stay in the nunnery “until further notice” – on condition they stay off social media, church officials have said. The rebel sisters – Bernadette, 88, Regina, 86, and Rita, 82, all former teachers at the school adjacent to their convent – broke back into their old home of Goldenstein Castle in Elsbethen in September in defiance of their spiritual superiors. The story prompted headlines around the world. It also fostered a huge affection for the trio, who have built up a loyal following on social media, where they post regular reports about their tumultuous experience and joy at their return. They have been helped by local supporters and former pupils, who have provided them with food, clothing, medical care and security and installed a chairlift to enable the three to reach their third-floor cells. The nuns’ religious superior, Provost Markus Grasl from Reichersberg Abbey, had argued that the sisters had to be placed in a Catholic care home as they were unable to safely live in the old stone convent. He repeatedly accused them of breaking their vows of obedience, a claim the nuns denied. On Friday, however, church officials said the women could stay at Goldenstein “until further notice” after a proposal put forward by Grasl aimed at resolving the dispute. The nuns are yet to agree to the deal. Church officials have reportedly said the nuns will be provided with adequate medical care and nursing help, and a priest would be at their disposal to serve regular mass. Over the past months, priests have had to be more or less smuggled into the convent’s chapel to say mass, against the will of church authorities. Among the conditions for them to remain include the cessation of all social media activity, a ban on outside visitors to the convent and the settling of a legal dispute. Should the health conditions of the women deteriorate, they would be registered at the Elsbethen nursing home and placed on the waiting list there. “Now it’s up to the sisters,” Harald Schiffl, a spokesperson for Grasl, told the Austrian news agency APA. In a statement late on Friday, the three nuns, referring to themselves in the third person, denied that either they or their allies had been consulted over the proposal, dismissing it as vague, one-sided and “failing to contain any legally binding commitments”. “In particular the promise as reported in the media, that the sisters would be allowed to remain in the convent, lacks any legal force... due to the inclusion of the clause: ‘until further notice’ and is therefore legally worthless,” the statement, issued by their supporters, said. They added that they resented the fact that the conditions according to which they could stay had “the character of a restrictive contract” equivalent to a restraining order, which would ban them from seeking outside legal help, or using social media. There was “no legal basis whatsoever” for the conditions, which would have the effect of “depriving them of their only remaining protection from the interested public,” they stated. For an agreement to be reached with the Archdiocese of Salzburg, they added, the church officials would have to “finally engage in dialogue with those affected, take their legitimate claims and needs seriously and declare their willingness to agree to a solution that is both just and legally compliant.”

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Talks for UK to join EU defence fund collapse in blow to Starmer’s bid to reset relations

Keir Starmer’s attempt to reset relations with the EU have suffered a major blow, after negotiations for the UK to join the EU’s flagship €150bn (£131bn) defence fund collapsed. The UK had been pushing to join the EU’s Security Action for Europe (Safe) fund, a low-interest loan scheme that is part of the EU’s drive to boost defence spending by €800bn and rearm the continent, in response to the growing threat from Russia and cooling relations between Donald Trump’s US and the EU. Entrance to the scheme would have enabled the British government to secure a bigger role for its defence firms. In September, France proposed a ceiling on the value of UK-produced military components in the fund. The UK and EU had been expected to sign a technical agreement on Safe after establishing an administrative fee from London. But after months of wrangling, and only days before the 30 November deadline for an agreement, sources said the two sides remained “far apart” on the financial contribution Britain would make, Bloomberg reported. EU officials have suggested an entry fee of up to €6bn, far higher than the administrative fee the government had envisaged paying. Peter Ricketts, the veteran former diplomat who chairs the European affairs committee in the House of Lords, described a rumoured €6.5bn fee as “so off the scale that it suggests some EU members don’t want the UK in the scheme”. The minister for EU relations, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said it was “disappointing” that talks had fallen through but insisted that the UK defence industry would still be able to participate in projects through Safe on third-country terms. “While it is disappointing that we have not been able to conclude discussions on UK participation in the first round of Safe, the UK defence industry will still be able to participate in projects through Safe on third-country terms. “Negotiations were carried out in good faith, but our position was always clear: we will only sign agreements that are in the national interest and provide value for money.” The door to greater UK participation appeared to have been pushed open in May when Starmer and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, signed an EU-UK security and defence partnership. Without this pact, the UK could never supply more than 35% of the value of components of any Safe-funded project. As recently as last week, the prime minister had expressed a belief that quiet diplomacy would result in agreement, telling reporters travelling with him to the G20 summit in South Africa: “Negotiations are going on in the usual way and they will continue.” He added: “I hope we can find an acceptable solution, but my strong view is that these things are better done quietly through diplomacy than exchanging views through the media.” But soon after, the talks appeared to be on rocky ground after the defence secretary, John Healey, said the UK was willing to quit, telling the i newspaper the UK was not willing to sign up for “any price”. Thomas-Symonds sought to downplay the significance of the collapse of negotiations on Friday, stating: “From leading the Coalition of the Willing for Ukraine to strengthening our relationships with allies, the UK is stepping up on European security in the face of rising threats and remains committed to collaborating with our allies and partners. In the last year alone, we have struck defence agreements across Europe and we will continue this close cooperation.” He added that the UK and EU were continuing to “make strong progress on the historic UK-EU May agreement that supports jobs, bills and borders”.