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Russian threats against Baltics ‘unacceptable’ and danger to ‘our entire union’, EU’s von der Leyen says - Europe live

Three Finnish citizens are suspected of exporting trucks and trailers worth $20 million to neighbouring Russia in violation of sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine, Finnish Customs said Wednesday. A preliminary investigation conducted by the customs agency found that a Finnish company had transported 135 trucks and 29 trailers worth 17.5 million euros ($20.3 million) to Russia during 2022-2023, saying the vehicles were being exported to Kazakhstan or Turkey. However, the customs agency found that the vehicles were customs cleared into Russia by a company importing and reselling trucks in the country. The customs agency has not identified the company by name, but public broadcaster Yle said it was Idan liikennevalitys IL Oy. “For the first time in a criminal investigation involving sanctions violations, Finnish Customs has requested that the value of the goods exported to Russia be confiscated for security,” said Petteri Nevalainen, the agency’s economic crime investigations chief. The company’s owner and two employees are suspected of aggravated regulation offences, and one of them has been held in pretrial detention since the beginning of the investigation in March. Prosecutors are to decide whether to press charges in the coming weeks.

Lithuanian leaders rushed to bunkers as drone violates country’s airspace

Lithuania’s president and prime minister were rushed to underground bunkers and residents of the capital, Vilnius, urged to take shelter during a warning issued after a drone violated the country’s airspace. Air and train traffic in and around the city was suspended after the mobile phone “take shelter” alert, the first issued in an EU and Nato country since the start of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “Air raid alert! Go immediately to a shelter or a safe place, take care of your family members and wait for further instructions,” read the defence ministry’s warning, which was sent at about 10.20am on Wednesday and lasted for about an hour. Schools brought children to designated shelters, people in office and apartment buildings went down to basements, and Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nausėda, and prime minister, Inga Ruginienė, were rushed to bunkers along with cabinet members and MPs. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said after the alert that Russia and Belarus had been directly responsible for a spate of drone incursions into EU and Nato countries’ airspace during recent weeks. Russian electronic jamming has been blamed for the Ukrainian drones crossing into Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which border Russia. A Nato jet shot down a drone over Estonia on Tuesday, while Latvia’s prime minister resigned last week over the incursions. “Russia’s public threats against our Baltic states are completely unacceptable,” von der Leyen said on social media. “Russia and Belarus bear direct responsibility for drones endangering the lives and security of people on our eastern flank.” Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, said on Wednesday that even if drones crash-landing in the Baltic states had been launched by Ukraine, they were “not there because Ukraine wants to send a drone to Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia. They are there because of the reckless, illegal, full-scale attack of Russia.” Some EU and Nato members said a more forceful response might be necessary. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Wednesday: “The Ukrainian-Russian war may soon lead to a situation where we will have to react firmly.” Lithuania’s army said a radar signal “typical of an unmanned aerial vehicle” had been detected in Belarusian airspace. Vilmantas Vitkauskas, the head of the National Crisis Management Centre, said a drone had been spotted in the Vilnius area. “Based on the parameters we saw, it’s most likely either a combat drone or a drone designed to deceive systems and lure targets,” Vitkauskas said. “The electronic countermeasures here can’t tell us whether an explosive device detonated or not.” Lithuania’s defence minister, Robertas Kaunas, said the drone had come from Latvia and that it was not known whether it had crashed or left Lithuania’s airspace. Nato fighter jets had been unable to locate it, authorities said. Russia’s ambassador to the UN caused outrage on Tuesday by claiming Kyiv would soon launch drones at Russia from the Baltic states and telling Latvia that Nato membership would “not protect you from retaliation”. Lithuania’s foreign minister, Kęstutis Budrys, on Tuesday accused Moscow of “deliberately redirecting Ukrainian drones into Baltic airspace while waging smear campaigns” against all three Baltic states. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said on Wednesday that Russia’s military was “closely monitoring the situation” regarding drones flying through the Baltic states’ airspace, and was formulating an appropriate response.

Middle East crisis live: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warn of war ‘beyond the region’ if US resumes attacks

Adding to the growing criticism against Ben-Gvir is Hamas, which said the footage released by Israel’s far-right national security minister was evidence of Israeli leaders’ “moral depravity”. “We, in the Hamas movement affirm that the scenes of torture and humiliation orchestrated by the criminal, fascist Zionist minister, Ben-Gvir, during the arrest of activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla, are an expression of the moral depravity and sadism that govern the mentality of the leaders of the criminal enemy entity,” the group said in a statement, according to AFP.

US doctor who contracted Ebola in the DRC flown to Germany for treatment

An American doctor who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been flown to Germany for treatment, along with his wife and four children, as the World Health Organization warned of the “scale and speed” of the outbreak. Authorities have reported at least 134 suspected deaths and more than 500 cases of the hemorrhagic Bundibugyo virus, which has no approved treatments or vaccines. The outbreak, which has spread into urban areas, has been declared a public health emergency requiring international response. Dr Peter Stafford, a surgeon and leader of the Christian missionary group Serge, has said he unknowingly operated on a patient with Ebola before the outbreak was detected. His wife, Rebekah Stafford, also a doctor, and their children, are being monitored for symptoms of the disease. The infected surgeon was barely able to stand on his own when he departed for Germany, according to two leaders of the Christian missionary group where he worked. Dr Scott Myhre, area director for Serge told NBC News that Stafford “looked really tired and really sick” as he left. “There were people in full – we call it PPE – the personal protective equipment, and they’re completely covered, and he’s hanging on them barely strong enough to walk.” Stafford worked at Nyankunde hospital in the DRC’s Ituri province, where the Africa centers for disease control first confirmed the Ebola outbreak. He had operated on a 33-year-old patient with severe abdominal pain. Doctors at first believed the patient had a gallbladder infection but, according to Myhre, Stafford “did an abdominal procedure and found that the gallbladder was normal and closed him up, but this patient subsequently died the next day”. The patient was buried before he could be tested for Ebola, but Stafford developed symptoms and tested positive on Sunday, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Myhre described Stafford as “a very meticulous professional, and for every surgical case he does, he would be completely gowned in sterile garb and gloves and hats and glasses. But that’s not quite enough to prevent an Ebola exposure.” In an updated advisory Wednesday, the WHO said there are now more than 600 suspected cases and 139 suspected deaths from the virus, mostly in the DRC. But with two cases and one suspected death in neighboring Uganda, the organization said the risk of a global pandemic was very low, but the threat for countries in the region was severe. “We expect those numbers to keep increasing,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director-general, said. “We know that the scale of the epidemic in DRC is much larger”. The director-general also responded to US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s criticism of the organization’s Ebola response. Rubio said Tuesday that the World Health Organization’s response was “a little late”. “The lead is obviously going to be Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, which was a little late to identify this thing unfortunately,” Rubio said. But the WHO chief hit back, saying in Geneva that “maybe what the secretary said ... could be from lack of understanding of how IHR (International Health Regulations) work, and the responsibilities of WHO and other entities.”

Vaccine to tackle Ebola outbreak will take six to nine months, says WHO

Doses of the “most promising” potential vaccine against the Bundibugyo virus that is causing an Ebola outbreak in central Africa will not be available for six to nine months, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, as the number of suspected cases rose to 600. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, told a press briefing on the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, that there had been 139 deaths, with numbers expected to rise. Officials said they believe the disease may have started its spread “a couple of months ago”, aided by a “super-spreader event”, possibly a funeral, in early May. The security situation in Ituri province, where more than 100,000 people have been displaced in recent months because of armed conflict, had complicated detection efforts, Tedros said. Health facilities could not provide care or surveillance for disease outbreaks if health workers were fleeing, he said. Other illnesses endemic to the region, such as malaria and typhoid, have the same early symptoms as Ebola which can also delay diagnosis, he added. Tedros said criticism of the organisation by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, who said the WHO had declared the outbreak “a little late”, was probably based on “a lack of understanding”. “Maybe on what the secretary said, it could be from a lack of understanding of how IHR [international health regulations] works, and the responsibilities of WHO and other entities. We don’t replace the country’s work, we only support them,” said Tedros. The Trump administration withdrew the US from the WHO earlier this year. Dr Vasee Moorthy, who leads the WHO’s research and development blueprint, said the most promising potential vaccine against Bundibugyo uses the same basis as Ebola vaccines that target the Zaire strain. “There are no doses of this which are currently available for clinical trial … The information that we have is this is likely to take six to nine months,” he said. Doses of an alternative, which uses the same platform developed by Oxford University as AstraZeneca’s Covid jabs, could be available for clinical trials in two to three months, he said – but there is “a lot of uncertainty” as data from animal tests of efficacy are not yet available. The outbreak was made public by African health officials on Friday, and the WHO declared it a public health emergency of international concern early on Sunday morning. Tedros said: “WHO assesses the risk of the epidemic as high at the national and regional levels, and low at the global level.” Modelling from Imperial College London suggests there could already be more than 1,000 cases of Ebola in the affected region. Officials told the briefing that access issues, including frequently cancelled flights, were complicating efforts to get tests and other supplies to Ituri province. “Our absolute priority now is to identify all the existing chains of transmission,” said Chikwe Ihekweazu, the WHO emergencies lead. “That will then enable us to really define the scale of the outbreak and be able to provide care.”

Tell us: have you emigrated because of rising anti-migrant sentiment?

The Unite the Kingdom march attracted tens of thousands of people to the capital on Saturday. While some insist it was a display of national pride, others see the Tommy Robinson rally as a hostile display of anti-migrant sentiment. US vice president JD Vance appeared to align himself with those who attended the march at a White House press briefing on Tuesday. We would like to hear from people who have emigrated - or are considering doing so - because of anti-migration sentiment or government policy. Since the UK is just one country where anti-migration sentiment has flared, we’re keen to hear from people globally who have made life decisions because of the current climate. If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

EU agrees to implement US trade deal struck last summer

The EU has finally agreed to implement its trade deal with the US after five hours of talks between members of the European parliament and member states in the hope of averting more tariffs threatened by Donald Trump. It means the agreement struck last July at the US president’s Scottish golf course can now enter into force, removing import duties on most US goods entering the EU. “This means we will soon deliver on our part,” said the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, welcoming the pact. “Together, we can ensure stable, predictable, balanced and mutually beneficial transatlantic trade.” The agreement puts the bloc on track to meet Trump’s 4 July deadline for ratification of the deal, which has already been implemented in the US. The trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, said of the talks that ended at about 2am in Brussels: “Collective effort. Strong result. Meaningful work. After more than five hours of intensive negotiations … the EU has shown that we are a reliable trading partner, while standing firm in defending the interests of European stakeholders.” MEPs had twice frozen the process to ratify the deal in protest at Trump’s threat of higher tariffs in January and then his threat to take control of Greenland. In a significant victory, MEPs forced the insertion of a clause warning that the EU could reinstall tariffs on American products such as motorbikes if the US did not drop tariffs on steel derivatives – products involving an element of steel – by the end of the year. Bernd Lange, the chair of the parliamentary trade committee, said this had been a “tricky” part of the negotiations that extended talks with the commission from midnight to 2am. He said the commission was “a little bit nervous about this issue”, an apparent reference to the fear of retaliation by Trump. Bar any further hiccups, the European parliament will vote on the deal on 16 or 17 June, Lange said. Although the US supreme court has already ruled that Trump’s imposition of 15% tariffs on most EU exports was illegal, EU chiefs took the decision to honour the deal in an effort to stabilise the trading environment for businesses, including in the car industry, which had been hit with 27.5% tariffs. MEPs had demanded a sunset clause allowing the EU to end the deal on 31 March 2028 and a suspension clause if Trump broke his word and increased the 15% tariff rate. The transatlantic relationship is the EU’s most significant, worth more than €1.8tn in 2025. The final text empowers the commission to trigger the suspension mechanism if the US fails to meet its commitments or disrupts trade and investment with the EU, including by “discriminating against or targeting EU economic operators”. Lange said the final sunset clause was a year later than hoped for, but the end of the deal in May 2029 would coincide with a new presidential administration. He said the parliament would not hesitate to trigger the suspension clause if Trump breached his side of the deal before this date. He said the sunset clause was important addition to the deal that would help small and medium-sized businesses as there had been no impact assessment before the deal in Scotland. It gives the EU means to address spikes in US imports “that cause or threaten to cause serious injury to domestic producers”, with suspension again a possible outcome. The parliament agreed to scale back some demands, and the final text notably gives the US until the end of the year to reduce its 50% tariff on steel to 15% rather than insisting on it as a precondition. Lange played down the concessions extracted from lawmakers, declaring: “Parliament has prevailed with its demands for a comprehensive safety net.” Anna Cavazzini, of the EU’s Greens, said the deal “puts the EU at a disadvantage” while conceding “it can secure a certain degree of economic stability”. She said: “One can only hope that the agreement on the tariff deal will now calm the situation, so that other major issues in the EU-US relationship can be addressed.”