Andrew Rettman

I'm not surprised that Iceland voted No to resuming EU accession talks, but the romance of the old man of the sea is a luxury that may soon pass its sell-by date.

Russian airstrikes killed a total of 400 Ukrainian civilians in July because Kyiv did not have enough interceptor missiles, but Greece and Spain declined to open their stockpiles at an EU defence ministers' meeting in the Druids Glen golf club.

Russia has quietly complied with an EU demand to eject some 20 diplomats from Brussels, amid a noisy dispute with Berlin on diplomat expulsions and the Leipzig airport sabotage plot.

"We should make it more difficult for Russian diplomats and spies to operate around Europe ... reducing the numbers of Russian diplomats, many of whom are serving agents, and just gearing up for a time of crisis," Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski said.

Litigious Russians filed some 84 out of the 125 new sanctions cases before the EU's General Court in 2025, amid member states' plans to massively expand the Russia blacklist.

I made friends with two Israeli couples while on holiday in Greece this summer and when the conversation inevitably turned to Palestine, I was struck by how misinformed, scared, and ashamed they were.

Serbia's outpouring of grief for the man behind the 1995 Srebrenica genocide exposed a grotesque, regressive nationalism lurking below the surface in politics and society.

If the EU wanted some red meat in its next sanctions, there were plenty of billionaires left to bite who, like Abramovich, "generate significant revenues for the Russian government".

Belgium's immigration minister has gone on the warpath against evacuating 13 students from Gaza, but they might still be flying out despite her anti-Arab and pro-Israel dog-whistling.

"Faced with this situation, where issues were being held hostage at the expense of people's suffering, I chose to withdraw my proposal. Dignity is not for sale," said Belgium's normally mild-mannered foreign minister.