Following the talks that took place in Islamabad between Iran and the United States, several experts and commentators were quick to declare the negotiations a failure. However, such assessments are rather unfounded and overlook the complexities of multi-layered diplomatic processes. In such situations, a lack of immediate agreements doesn’t necessarily mean failure.

When negotiations fail, the parties typically resort to more aggressive rhetoric indicating their withdrawal from discussions. However, the public statements of both Iran and the US create room for further contacts, and suggest the potential for further negotiations and a willingness to institutionalize dialogue.

Pakistan’s position serves as an additional indicator in this situation; rather than distancing itself from the negotiation process, Pakistan has actively reaffirmed its intention to continue mediation efforts. Announcements regarding preparations for a second round of consultations in the near future highlight Islamabad’s desire to maintain its role as a negotiation venue and prevent the erosion of the emerging diplomatic channel.

Despite the high degree of uncertainty, the situation does not warrant excessive optimism. The conflict may escalate again, and a new cycle of confrontation may begin. At the same time, signs of limited alignment between the parties should not be ignored either. 

Indeed, both Iran and the US continue to present demands, many of which are rigid and sometimes outright unacceptable or absurd. Yet, this negotiating tactic is commonly employed as a bargaining tool, leaving open the possibility of compromise. Certain official statements indicate a readiness for targeted concessions and discussions around specific de-escalation parameters. For example, US Vice President J.D. Vance noted that Tehran may agree on some sensitive issues, while Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi acknowledged the prospect of further consultations and maintaining channels of interaction.

It’s notable that even without evident military parity, the US is interested in a ceasefire. This may be due to the need to take a tactical pause to regroup resources, as well as internal political and economic constraints, including the impact of the protracted conflict on the domestic agenda. Conversely, for Tehran, a ceasefire is a means to solidify the current balance without making long-term commitments.

In this context, the negotiations in Islamabad should be viewed not as a breakthrough toward a comprehensive settlement, but rather as an effort to institutionalize a process of limited de-escalation. The primary aim is to lay the groundwork for a temporary ceasefire rather than achieve sustainable peace, which currently seems unrealistic given the deep ideological and political divides.

As noted earlier, Pakistan plays a crucial role in this process as a mediator. Islamabad is interested in preventing further escalation, since any potential expansion of the conflict would inevitably impact its strategic and economic interests. Consequently, Pakistan’s efforts are aimed at preserving the negotiation platform and ensuring a minimum level of dialogue between the parties. 

For this reason, overly definitive assessments of the outcome of the negotiations in Islamabad are inaccurate. Indeed, the parties did not reach an agreement after the first round of talks, both American and Iranian representatives acknowledge this. However, what is more important is that after 21 hours of negotiations, neither side closed the door on further contacts, and Pakistan is already working to organize a second round of consultations in the coming days. Moreover, Vance characterized the American proposals as “the final and best offer” – this implies that a concrete offer is on the table awaiting Tehran’s response.

In diplomatic practice, rigid or even deliberately inflated demands do not indicate the futility of the negotiation process. On the contrary, in the early stages of complex negotiations, parties often adopt hardline positions intentionally so they can later use them as leverage in exchanging concessions. This is particularly evident in Islamabad. The US insists on strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program, the transfer of highly enriched uranium, and free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Iran is concerned about sanctions, frozen assets, security guarantees, and broader regional de-escalation. In other words, the negotiations are centered around a set of specific demands and counter-demands rather than symbolic gestures, and this signals the beginning of serious bargaining.

In this situation, it’s essential to focus not on the emotional reactions of external observers but rather on the positions of key Iranian figures directly involved in the decision-making process. In this context, Speaker of the Parliament of Iran Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led the Iranian delegation in Islamabad, is particularly notable. The fact that Tehran has sent such a high-level representative to Pakistan, one tasked with tough yet substantive dialogue, is quite telling. Iran’s choice of representative indicates that it is serious about the negotiations and views them as a means to safeguard its interests rather than as a superficial show for the media. 

Washington’s motivations must also be taken into account. Despite its tough rhetoric, the US is also eager to find a way to withdraw from the current crisis. A prolonged conflict in the Persian Gulf, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and instability in the energy markets impose significant strategic and domestic costs on the US. Thus, as far as we can conclude from its public statements, the White House is not just focused on exerting pressure on Iran, but also wants to reach an agreement that can be framed as a diplomatic achievement derived from a position of strength. This explains why, despite stringent demands, Washington has not abandoned the negotiation framework.

The main takeaway is that labeling the negotiations in Islamabad a “failure” is methodologically inaccurate. It would be more precise to say that the first round of talks concluded without reaching a final agreement; however, the negotiation process has entered an important phase – the bargaining phase. The parties are no longer discussing the mere possibility of dialogue; they are negotiating over the costs of the future agreement, the duration of restrictions, mutual guarantees, and political dividends. This indicates that despite its fragility, the diplomatic window remains open. And this is the key outcome of the meeting in Islamabad. 

Certainly, we shouldn’t harbor illusions about the situation. Given Trump’s character, even the current fragile ceasefire could collapse in an instant. However, it would also be a mistake to underestimate the significance of the Islamabad talks. They offer hope that, even if lasting peace cannot be achieved, a long-term truce may be possible. Tehran’s goal is clear: to ‘wait Trump out’ and buy time. The history of the Iranian civilization shows that time has always been on its side. And it’s quite possible that the strategy of waiting things out will prove effective once again. 

US President Donald Trump has said he is “permanently opening” the Strait of Hormuz, presenting the move as benefiting “China and the world” after claiming Beijing agreed “not to send weapons to Iran.” Trump’s remarks come as the US military claims American warships have effectively blocked Iranian trade through the vital waterway.  

Iran’s army has warned it could target marine traffic in the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea if the blockade of its ports continues. Tehran insists it does not want war or instability but will not bow to pressure or surrender. 

The escalation is unfolding amid reports of ongoing indirect contacts over a possible second round of US‑Iran talks, following last weekend’s negotiations in Pakistan that ended without an agreement to halt the war launched by Washington and Israel in late February. 

What is actually happening at sea? 

Traffic through Hormuz, a key global trade route, remains effectively disrupted as the US enforces a blockade of Iranian ports.  

Tehran says it will not return to the pre‑war status of the strait and is drafting new rules for ships from countries that imposed sanctions on Iran or supported the US-Israeli attacks to pay a toll as compensation to transit the waterway.  

Analysts at energy consulting firm Gelber & Associates, cited by Reuters, say tracking data shows “a small but increasing number of tankers moving” through Hormuz, although “overall traffic remains sharply below normal levels.” 

Fars ⁠News Agency reported that two Iranian vessels transited the strait on Wednesday, including a supertanker that entered Iranian waters via the open sea with its transponder on and another ship carrying food supplies bound for Imam Khomeini port.  

How is each side portraying the situation? 

Trump has portrayed the latest moves as a success, declaring on Truth Social that the strait is “permanently opened” and that China is “very happy.” He also claimed Beijing had “agreed not to send weapons to Iran.” China has not publicly responded and has previously denied providing military support to Tehran. US officials say the measures are intended to pressure Iran while keeping international shipping routes open. 

How are markets reacting? 

Oil prices have edged higher as concerns over disruptions in Hormuz – which carries about 20% of global oil and LNG shipments – offset hopes of easing tensions.

Brent crude traded near $95 per barrel on Wednesday, with expectations for renewed talks helping cap gains below $100 even as traders remained focused on supply risks in the Middle East. Gelber & Associates said traders are no longer pricing in a full‑scale outage, but are still maintaining a “residual premium” as flows recover unevenly rather than returning to normal. 

Broader economic worries are also mounting. The International Monetary Fund has warned the conflict could weigh on global growth, while Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee told the Financial Times that higher oil prices risk pushing up US inflation expectations, describing a “double danger” from the Iran stand‑off and existing trade tensions. 

Equity markets, however, have so far taken a more upbeat view, with major Asian indices rising on hopes diplomacy will avert a prolonged disruption to Gulf energy supplies. 

What is Moscow saying? 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned against further escalation, expressing hope that the US “will be realists… and will not continue the unprovoked aggression” against Tehran, which he said risks destabilizing the wider Middle East. 

What will happen next? 

While Trump says the war could end soon, promising an “amazing two days,” diplomatic efforts appear to be gathering pace.   

Officials from Pakistan, Iran, and several Gulf states say negotiating teams from Washington and Tehran could return to Islamabad later this week. A key Pakistani mediator reportedly arrived in Tehran on Wednesday with a message from the US and is expected to discuss preparations for a second round of talks.   

The US and Iran agreed to a two‑week ceasefire last week, raising hopes for a broader settlement, but both sides have since traded accusations over “unacceptable” demands. Washington has not formally committed to extending the truce beyond its current expiry date, a senior US official told CNN.

Police in Northern Ireland have slapped fines on demonstrators who disrupted traffic to protest soaring fuel prices. Similar demonstrations began across the border in the Republic of Ireland last week.

Global fuel prices have soared since the US-Israeli war on Iran disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which around a quarter of the world's seaborne oil trade passed before the conflict.

Northern Ireland police intervened in several slow-moving vehicle demonstrations along a number of major routes on Tuesday. One of the convoys, largely made up of tractors, caused traffic jams at the Sydenham bypass near Belfast City Airport, with numerous passengers seen walking with their luggage at the side of the road.

Calls for more protests across Northern Ireland slated for April 24 are reportedly spreading on social media.

Farmers, businesses, and local people in Northern Ireland came out today and continue to protest to demand government support. They’re being crushed by crippling fuel and energy costs.

Yet you’re here pushing for another Middle Eastern war with Iran that would be enormously… https://t.co/XQPlS6VD6a pic.twitter.com/bpdJTOFMjF

— Nigel Nelson (@nnelsonni) April 14, 2026

The wave of mass protests began across the border in the Republic of Ireland last Tuesday with slow-moving convoys clogging roadways. The country has been hit particularly hard, with gasoline prices up by 15% and diesel currently costing nearly 30% more than in mid-February. Taxes account for nearly 60% of fuel costs in the EU country, and the protesters argue that the government should slash them to ease pressure on farmers, haulers, and commuters.

Speaking to RT on Wednesday, former British MP Andrew Bridgen attributed the dire plight of farmers, haulers and other businesses in Ireland to EU policies.

In keeping with the bloc’s ‘green policies’, consumers in Ireland are having to pay “50% tax, and then a 16% green levy on top,” he explained.

“It’s very difficult to see how businesses can cope with energy costs moving up at this rate,” the former lawmaker added, citing his conversations with business people in Ireland.

Contributing to the general public discontent has been Brussels’s recent decision to suspend subsidies to Irish farmers at a time when fuel and fertilizer prices have shot up.

After 16 years in power, Viktor Orban is stepping down as Hungary’s prime minister. In Europe, the fact that the veteran politician will finally be replaced by a younger, more pragmatic leader is cause for celebration. Peter Magyar, head of the Tisza party that won Sunday’s elections, is set to become Hungary’s new prime minister. His main campaign slogan focused on restoring relations with NATO and the EU.

The liberal press has already labeled Russian President Vladimir Putin the biggest loser in this situation, and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and, by extension, Kiev, as the biggest winners. But is that really true? RT explores how Hungary’s diplomatic relations with key players might change under Magyar’s leadership.

Ukraine: Less toxic, but generally similar relations 

The relationship between Orban and Zelensky (and more broadly, between Budapest and Kiev) has recently become overtly hostile. In addition to the now-familiar exchanges of insults, there have been direct threats. For instance, Zelensky warned that he might give Orban’s address to the Ukrainian military so they could speak with the Hungarian prime minister “in their own language.” Retired General Grigory Omelchenko from the Security Service of Ukraine then said, “Our organization doesn’t need Orban’s address” as the Security Service of Ukraine knows where he lives, sleeps, drinks beer, wine, smokes hookah, and with whom he meets. He added, “Orban should think about his five children and six grandchildren.”

While these dramatic outbursts demonstrate the distinct personalities of Orban and Zelensky, in reality, Orban’s Hungary was not entirely at odds with European and NATO policies regarding Ukraine. A significant portion of civilian and even military supplies – including critical resources like electricity and fuel – flowed through Hungary to Ukraine. 

Until 2024, Hungary, along with several other EU countries, received gas from Russia via the Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhgorod pipeline. This pipeline operated for the first two years of the Ukraine conflict, but shortly after Ukraine’s invasion into Kursk Region, it was shut down. In spring 2025, Russian forces used the pipeline for military operations aimed at liberating Sudzha. Both the pipeline and the compressor station in Sudzha suffered significant damage during battles and are not expected to be operational in the near future. Currently, Russian gas is delivered to Hungary via Türkiye.

Inspired by this, Kiev attempted to cut off another crucial fuel transit route: the Druzhba pipeline, which passes through Ukrainian territory. It had operated intermittently until last August, when supplies were stopped due to Ukrainian missile strikes. Zelensky is determined to put an end to Russian oil and gas transit to Europe. Orban, however, was one of the most steadfast opponents of Zelensky’s policy – and in this, he was silently supported by several Eastern European neighbors which also benefited from cheap energy imports from Russia.

After the provocation involving the Druzhba pipeline, relations between Budapest and Kiev entered a critical phase. This past winter, Hungary threatened to cut off emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine (though it never actually did so). For its part, despite pressure from Brussels, Ukraine sabotaged any attempts to repair the oil pipeline; in retaliation, Hungary detained Ukrainian cash couriers carrying funds of unclear origin. 

Another key issue for Hungary is the rights of the ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia. Historically, this region was part of Austria-Hungary and became part of modern-day Ukraine almost by chance. Ukraine has consistently pursued a policy of forced Ukrainization, and while it primarily targets Russians and Russian speakers, it also affects Rusyns and Ukrainian Hungarians. Throughout Ukraine’s years of independence, the Rusyns have been denied minority status, barred from teaching in their native language, and faced obstacles in maintaining ties with neighboring Slovakia.

For Budapest, the rights of ethnic Hungarians have always been a sensitive topic, and Orban has persistently advocated for their rights.

As for Ukraine’s European aspirations, Magyar was blunt: Ukraine’s NATO membership is off the table, and Ukraine won’t be able to join the EU for at least another decade. He echoed Europe’s current position, which likely wasn’t music to Kiev’s ears.

The EU: removing a thorn from its side

Viktor Orban assumed office 16 years ago with similar promises: he vowed to build pragmatic and equal relationships with the EU and NATO based on Hungary’s national interests.

However, Orban’s assertiveness and confrontational style repeatedly led to deadlocks. Budapest’s domestic political decisions contradicted the directives of the ‘Brussels bureaucrats,’ and in response, the EU blocked funding for Hungary. Then Orban resorted to bargaining, using his veto power on any issue to trade his support for concessions from Brussels.

This dynamic was particularly evident in his dealings with Russia—not because Orban was a staunch supporter of Russia (certainly not), but because unanimous agreement is required for adopting each package of anti-Russia sanctions, and this gave him leverage to negotiate with Brussels.

After the Druzhba pipeline incident, Orban (along with the leaders of the Czech Republic and Slovakia) refused to agree to the EU’s 90 billion euro solidarity loan for Ukraine and then blocked it altogether.

It would be ironic if Hungary’s veto turned out to be nothing more than a convenient excuse for everyone in the EU to throw up their hands and say, ‘Well, you see, we’d love to help, but there’s nothing we can do.’ Now, there’s even more reason to wait with the loan: due to the war in Iran, Europe is bracing for an economic crisis, and the money is needed at home. Plus, voters might not like the idea of allocating funds to Ukraine at such a time. 

The EU will likely still find funding for Ukraine, but the loan may be smaller and come later than promised.

Meanwhile, the European Union is seizing the moment: the day after Magyar’s victory, Brussels presented a list of 27 conditions that Hungary must meet to unlock €35 billion in European subsidies. Aside from nearly resolved issues – like lifting the veto on the aforementioned €90 billion loan and the next sanctions package – Brussels is effectively demanding a review of laws from the Orban era that contradict EU policies, including asylum rules for foreigners. 

It’ll be interesting to see how the new prime minister responds. Essentially, Brussels is asking him to relinquish some of the sovereignty that Orban fought so hard to secure for Hungary, and which the majority of Hungarian citizens support. Magyar and his party represent the same conservative right-wing faction as Orban, and in the eyes of Hungarian voters, he is seen as a younger, untainted version of Orban. If he caves to Brussels, especially on sensitive migration issues, it could severely damage his standing among voters. 

The Trump administration viewed Orban’s Hungary as an exemplary nation in Europe. With the increasing popularity of right-wing parties in Europe, the US expected that with its support, they would rise to power – or, in Orban’s case, remain in power. These right-wing forces, all these local European Trumps, were supposed to weaken and eventually dismantle the power of the decaying left-liberal international coalition. That was the plan. 

But things didn’t go according to plan. Whether due to the catastrophic unpopularity of the Trump administration in Europe or the clumsy interference in the domestic politics of a party claiming to promote sovereignty, US Vice President J.D. Vance’s support for Orban seems to have backfired: it appears that this very endorsement cost Orban’s party several percentage points in the elections, resulting in an almost total defeat.

This raises questions about the Trump administration’s overall approach to the EU. European right-wing parties are likely to distance themselves from Washington now. The ‘divide and conquer’ strategy didn’t work, and no special relations were forged with Europe. In fact, in this scenario, the US emerges as the main loser.

Russia: Same old story, different angle

As for Russia, Orban’s defeat doesn’t make a huge difference. Orban was neither a client nor an agent of Moscow, despite claims to the contrary. It’s true that Orban attempted to position himself as a mediator in the Ukraine conflict, but ultimately, his mediation was unnecessary.

Indeed, Orban’s squabbles with Brussels and Kiev have, in a roundabout way, played into Moscow’s hands. But Hungary is too deeply embedded in European and NATO structures to truly pursue an independent foreign policy. Ultimately, whenever they wanted to, both the EU and NATO pushed through decisions regarding Russia or Ukraine. 

This third factor is the reluctance to get drawn into the EU’s conflict with Russia. Hungarians don’t want to be called up to the front or become fresh cannon fodder; they don’t want their country to become the next battering ram against Russia. Hungary doesn’t want to share Ukraine’s fate. Immediately following his victory, Peter Magyar declared that Hungary would not send weapons to Ukraine, making it clear that this is not Hungary’s war now, and it won’t become such under his leadership. 

In this, he has the full and unanimous support of Hungarian voters. 

***

Former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin is known for many memorable quotes, and this is a fitting place to remember one of them: “Some think that after the elections, something will happen. But after the elections, nothing will happen. And that’s life.”

Most likely, Hungary will slowly fade from the headlines; Magyar won’t attract as much attention as Orban and won’t obstruct the decisions of NATO and the EU with such fervor. However, Hungary’s overall policy will remain conservative, placing national interests front and center.

This means that in a quiet but resolute way, Hungary will continue to resist the attempts of Eurocrats to pull it into a direct conflict with Russia. For Brussels, that’s bad news: such leaders are becoming more common in Europe, and this approach is gradually gaining traction as the new European mainstream.

A 20-year uranium enrichment moratorium on Iran is not long enough, US President Donald Trump has claimed.

Trump was responding to reports that the US delegation at talks with Iran, led by Vice President J.D. Vance, had proposed a 20-year ban on Tehran pursuing its nuclear program.

At the discussions in Islamabad, which finished without any breakthrough, Iran reportedly offered a five-year moratorium. Tehran’s negotiators also rejected Washington’s call to confiscate Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, believed to be about 440 kg (970 pounds).

“I’ve been saying they can’t have nuclear weapons, so I don’t like the 20 years,” Trump said in an interview with the New York Post on Tuesday.

Iran has said repeatedly over the years that it is not looking to obtain a nuclear bomb, but it also insists on its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

The Iranian consul general in Mumbai, Saeid Reza Mosayeb Motlagh, told RT on Tuesday that there is “a deep mistrust” in Tehran towards Washington, but despite this fact, the Islamic Republic “remains ready to negotiate… provided the discussions are realistic.”

Iran’s nuclear program “never deviated toward military purposes,” which was proven by “the most stringent inspections of our nuclear facilities,” he said.

Any decision by Tehran on the issue – whether it pauses enrichment or insists on continuing it – “will be accepted by the Russian side,” he stressed.

Lavrov also expressed hope that the Americans “will be realists” during the negotiating process and “will not continue the unprovoked aggression” against Tehran, which affects the entire Middle East.

The American military depleted its entire stock of untested Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) early in its attack on Iran last month, a US Army official has said.

The short-to-medium ballistic missiles developed by Lockheed Martin are slated to replace the aging Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). The new weapon completed its prototype phase only last year, and ended up being fielded without a full testing cycle. Media reports indicated that the new missiles were involved in at least one mass-casualty incident during the attack on Iran, killing some 21 people at a school and sports hall in the southern Iranian city of Lamerd.

A US Army unit equipped with the new missiles fully exhausted its inventory early in the conflict, Jimmy Arter, an official at Fort Sill, said. The official made the remarks at the Fires Symposium, which is underway at the Oklahoma Fires Innovation Science and Technology Accelerator (FISTA). 

“We shot our entire inventory of PrSM right now during the start of the war, and we’ve already got more coming in,” Arter said, as quoted by Aviation Week. The attack on Iran has proven the new missile’s capabilities and no further testing of PrSM is needed, Arter claimed.

The PrSM missile was likely used in the February 28 Lamerd strike, the New York Times reported early in the hostilities, citing visual evidence examined by weapons experts. The NYT said that, since the missile was new, it was difficult to assess whether the strike was “intentional” or stemmed from a design flaw of untested munition or faulty intelligence. 

The Pentagon denied its involvement, claiming it did not attack any targets in Lamerd on that day. The US Central Command pointed the finger at Tehran, claiming the munition visible in the footage of the attack was “consistent with the dimensions and silhouette of an Iranian Hoveyzeh cruise missile.” The NYT, however, doubled down on its assessment last week, citing experts who said the munition lacked key features attributable to Hoveyzeh and looked like a PrSM.

The war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran may have paused, but it is far from over. Its consequences, however, are already being felt, not just across the Middle East, but globally.

Iran’s desperate confrontation with two nuclear powers which have a vast network of allies and client states represents a move toward the erosion of the remnants of a unipolar international system. Tehran’s resistance is accelerating the relentless, albeit gradual, shift toward multipolarity. 

It’s often said that it is easier to destroy than to build and in that sense, US President Donald Trump has played an unintended but pivotal role. By initiating military action against Iran, he has helped weaken the very system the United States spent decades constructing. The expectation in Washington was different. After perceived successes in Venezuela, and encouraged by regional partners, the White House appeared to assume Iran would collapse quickly under pressure.

The logic, crude but clear, seemed to be this: overwhelming military superiority would guarantee a swift victory. The United States had the aircraft carriers and the air bases, while Iran, by contrast, was seen as isolated and vulnerable.

Well, that assumption proved flawed.

The option of deploying ground forces was briefly considered, but quickly revealed its risks because Iran had spent decades preparing for precisely such a scenario. A land invasion would have been a drawn-out and costly confrontation, with uncertain outcomes. For Tehran, such a scenario may even have been desirable, as an opportunity to inflict long-term strategic damage on its adversaries.

The implications extend far beyond the battlefield.

This conflict is accelerating a transformation in how states behave. The old assumptions are weakening and the norms that once governed international conduct are fading. Increasingly, states act unilaterally, choosing when and where to strike, guided less by shared rules than by immediate interests.

The result is a more volatile world. Military force is no longer a last resort; it is becoming a routine instrument of policy. The notion of restraint, once underpinned by fear of escalation or reputational cost, is eroding. What replaces it is a growing sense of impunity.

Ironically, it’s the United States, long the architect of the post-Cold War order, that’s accelerating its dismantling.

The reaction was swift, as governments scrambled to assess vulnerabilities. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi convened emergency discussions on energy security while European states, already strained, were reminded of their exposure. In this sense, Iran succeeded in broadening the conflict’s impact far beyond its immediate geography.

But the longer-term consequences may be even more serious.

The world is entering a period of intensified militarization. Regions already marked by instability are becoming more dangerous and while the Middle East remains a flashpoint, it’s not alone. South Asia, too, is edging closer to renewed confrontation and even areas long considered peripheral, such as the Caribbean, are showing signs of tension.

The Afghan-Pakistani border offers a clear example. Long a zone of instability, it has seen a noticeable escalation in recent months. Clashes, cross-border strikes, and mutual accusations have become more frequent. Kabul accuses Islamabad of aggression at the same time that Pakistan points to militant groups operating from Afghan territory.

The roots of this conflict run deep. Pakistan once nurtured the Taliban as a strategic asset, but now it finds itself facing a more independent, and less controllable, force. What was once a tool has become a threat and the dynamic resembles a familiar pattern: states confronting the unintended consequences of their own policies.

These tensions are interconnected, and part of a broader pattern, as the weakening of global constraints makes escalation more likely. As states observe the outcome of the Iran conflict, they draw their own conclusions. One of the most dangerous is the belief that force can be used without catastrophic consequences.

That lesson, once internalized, will be difficult to reverse.

The blockade of Hormuz, the resilience of Iran, and the inability of the United States to impose a decisive outcome all point to a changing balance of power. Even a middle-tier state can now challenge a former hegemon and force it into a strategic stalemate, and this reality will shape calculations in capitals around the world.

The trajectory is clear. The international system is moving away from order and toward fragmentation, with multipolarity emerging as a contested, often chaotic environment. Alliances are less reliable and rules are less binding, which means the space for miscalculation is expanding.

The war against Iran may not have ended, not even in its current form; it has already altered the global landscape. It has exposed the limits of power, the fragility of existing structures, and the growing willingness of states to test those limits.

The next conflict is now not a question of if, but where, and in a world increasingly defined by uncertainty, the answer may come sooner than expected.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team 

Bulgarian Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov’s days are numbered, and his caretaker government is rushing to tie his country to Ukraine before a potential populist uprising. It’s about gas, influence, and keeping Sofia marching in lockstep with Brussels.

Gyurov was appointed acting prime minister in February, after Rosen Zhelyazkov resigned in November under the pressure of street protests and persistent allegations of corruption. His mandate is non-existent, and his term in office has lasted fewer than eight weeks. Nevertheless, he’s making frantic deals with Kiev before an election that he and his allies are almost certain to lose – all in an attempt to block his opponent from enacting policies that will upset Brussels.

Borissov is unlikely to upset the apple cart, but Radev is a vocal opponent of the EU’s Ukraine project, and he’s dominating in the polls. With the clock ticking, Gyurov set out for Kiev last month.

Why Gyurov tied Bulgaria to Ukraine

At a ceremony in the Ukrainian capital on March 30, Gyurov and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a ten-year military cooperation agreement. Under its terms, Bulgaria will provide bilateral military aid to Ukraine for the next decade, both countries will jointly produce drones and ammunition, and their armed forces will train together. Furthermore, Sofia and Kiev will align their sanctions policies, while Bulgaria will pay towards Ukraine’s reconstruction and support its bid for NATO and EU membership.

Securing this agreement before the election was crucial for Gyurov. Radev opposes both the deal and Ukraine’s accession to NATO, while even the GERB party under Borissov withdrew its support for the pact in 2024 – with Borissov stating that his party would wait for a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev before signing anything.

Gyurov faced fierce criticism at home for signing such a consequential document without winning an election first: Radev was among the most scathing critics, calling the caretaker prime minister “practically illegitimate.”

Speaking to Politico this week, Gyurov insisted that Bulgaria “cannot wait for the ‘right moment’ when it comes to security.” Bulgaria has been run by multiple caretaker governments since 2021, none of which went through with the deal. In reality, Gyurov seized the “right moment” to ram the agreement through before it could be delayed by Borissov or outright blocked by Radev. 

Of the two candidates, Radev is the more pressing threat to Ukraine and its backers in Sofia and Brussels. Wile Borissov sought to delay the security agreement, GERB still supports military aid to Kiev. Radev, as president, vetoed an agreement to provide Ukraine with armored vehicles in 2022, blamed Ukraine for starting the conflict with Russia, and told Zelensky to his face in 2023 that there was “no military solution” to the conflict, and that “more and more weapons will not solve it.”

Campaigning against the well-documented corruption of Borissov and his circle, Radev’s coalition is leading GERB in the polls by nine points. Gyurov has leaned on Ukraine to close that gap.

Leveraging Ukraine

Gyurov and acting Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nadezhda Neynski toured Ukraine at the beginning of the month, with Neynski agreeing to an “active exchange of experience and good practices” with Ukraine’s cybersecurity agency, the State Special Communications Service. Neynski also met with anti-Kremlin activist Peter Pomerantsev to discuss “initiatives to counter propaganda and hybrid threats.”

The same week, Neynski set up a temporary unit within the Foreign Ministry to “counter disinformation and combat hybrid threats,” which will be “advised” by former Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev. Wanted in Russia over his role in encouraging Russian fighter pilots to defect to Ukraine and accused of working with Britain’s MI6 spy agency, Grozev will “assist the organization with specific information exposing malicious influences,” which will then be dealt with “through mechanisms developed by the European Commission.”

What’s the bigger picture here?

Some more clues as to why Gyurov would expend so much political capital on Ukraine and against Radev can be found where politics and energy intersect.

A section of the agreement signed by Gyurov and Zelensky last month states that Bulgaria and Ukraine will “continue to work actively to ensure alternative gas supplies to Ukraine. They recognize that the Vertical Corridor is a strategic route for the transport of additional natural gas from alternative sources to the region, including liquefied natural gas through existing and future liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.”

Currently under construction, the Vertical Gas Corridor will transport an estimated 10 billion cubic meters of American LNG per year from terminals in Greece to Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine. The US and EU have backed the project, with Brussels pumping more than €240 million into a Greece-Bulgaria section of the line in 2019, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling Gyurov last week to thank the caretaker prime minister for “supporting the Vertical Gas Corridor, which presents opportunities for US LNG exports.”

Russian gas still flows through Bulgaria to Hungary, Serbia, and North Macedonia from the TurkStream and Trans-Balkan pipelines. Sofia plans to stop this transit by 2028, in line with EU policy. Once Russian gas is no longer flowing, the Bulgarian section of the Trans-Balkan pipeline will be switched to reverse flow and integrated into the Vertical Gas Corridor network.

Radev supported the Vertical Gas Corridor project as president, but with the interests of the US, EU, and Ukraine on the line, Gyurov likely isn’t leaving anything to chance. After all, Radev backed the corridor as an alternative to – not a replacement for – Russian gas imports. Bulgaria, he has argued, should not be “bound by ideology” when it comes to choosing energy partners. Additionally, despite Bulgaria planning to halt Russian gas transit through its territory by 2028, Russian energy giant Gazprom has already paid for transit rights until 2039. Radev’s opponents likely fear that he will honor this contract, especially after he vetoed a law in November that would have allowed the government to seize a refinery operated by Russia’s Lukoil.

The bottom line

The Vertical Gas Corridor is just one factor in an election that Washington, Brussels, and Kiev view as critically important. The possibility that Radev could obstruct military aid to Ukraine has already forced Gyurov to visit Kiev to sign a decade-long security pact, while the prospect of recently-defeated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban being replaced by another obstructionist in Sofia has prompted the EU to throttle political speech ahead of the election.

”These people cannot even imagine to what extent they are discrediting Bulgaria in the EU with their behavior,” he told podcaster Martin Karbovski last week.

Germany’s handling of anti-Israel protests was “disproportionate,” and the government’s use of hate-speech laws to counter the demonstrations unfairly restricted freedom of expression, a report by the EU’s human rights commissioner has found.

Compiled by the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Michael O’Flaherty, and published on Wednesday, the report called on the German government to “ensure that the fight against all forms of hatred fully respects the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression for all members of society.”

The report accuses German authorities of misusing claims of anti-Semitism to ban pro-Palestinian slogans and Palestinian flags from some rallies, and to outright ban others. Police have used excessive force against anti-Israel protesters, the report stated, while “freedom of expression has been restricted disproportionately, regarding debates on Palestinian rights or legitimate criticism of the Israeli government.”

Since 2017, the German government has endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. This controversial definition lists “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as examples of anti-Semitic speech.

Despite accusing Germany of failing to protect the speech and assembly rights of anti-Israel protesters, and failing to protect Jews from anti-Semitism, the EU has never criticized Germany for restricting the speech rights of nationalist political figures. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, has labeled the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” organization; an AfD politician has been convicted for sharing the government’s own migrant crime statistics; and members of Germany’s ruling center-right and opposition center-left parties have called for a ban on the organization.

Furthermore, the EU has also played a leading role in silencing pro-Palestinian voices. Among them is journalist Huseyin Dogru, a German of Turkish descent who was sanctioned by the European Council last year. The council argued that Dogru’s reporting on the Israel-Palestine conflict had sown “ethnic, political and religious discord” in Germany and therefore supported “destabilizing activities by Russia.” German authorities agreed, stripping Dogru and his wife of healthcare coverage and freezing their bank accounts.

US President Donald Trump has said he is “permanently opening” the Strait of Hormuz, claiming he is making the move for China “and the world.” Trump also said Beijing has agreed “not to send weapons to Iran.”

Trump initially announced the blockade of the vital waterway on Sunday after Pakistani-mediated talks failed to produce a peace deal with Iran. On Tuesday, US Central Command reported that American warships had effectively blocked all Iranian trade through the strait. 

On Wednesday, however, Trump stated in a Truth Social post that “China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz.” He added that “I am doing it for them, also – and the World.”

Trump went on to state that Beijing has “agreed not to send weapons to Iran,” and that Chinese President Xi Jinping “will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks.”

“China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them, also - And the World. This situation will never happen again. They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran…” - President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/g2LbmMJS5a

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 15, 2026

Trump is scheduled to pay a state visit to China on May 14, while Xi is expected to visit Washington for a reciprocal visit at a later date.

Beijing had also accused Washington on Tuesday of “dangerous and irresponsible” behavior over its blockade of Iranian vessels.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz to “enemy ships” in response to the US-Israeli bombing campaign launched on February 28. Tehran has since demanded recognition of its “sovereignty” over the waterway and the right to impose tolls.

A gunman has opened fire at a secondary school in the city of Kahramanmaras in south-eastern Türkiye, a local governor has said. It is the second such incident in the country in as many days. An attack on an educational institution in Siverek on Tuesday left 17 wounded.

The second school shooting, which took place in the Onikisubat District of Kahramanmaras, resulted in four people being killed and 20 others being wounded, Governor Mukerrem Unluer said on Wednesday.

The fatalities include a teacher and three students, the governor said. At least four of those injured have been hospitalized in serious condition, he added.

Unluer said that the attacker was an eighth-grade student from the same school. He could have obtained the firearms from his father, who is a former police officer, he said.

The chairman of the provincial branch of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Unal Ates, told Cumhuriyet newspaper that, according to his data, the attacker had mental issues and was known at the school as “a problematic child.”

Ates also claimed that the number of fatalities was higher than the official figures and that at least 35 people were wounded in the incident.

Videos from the scene captured students fleeing the school en mass during the attack, with some jumping out of second floor windows.

Kahramanmaraş Ayser Çalık Ortaokulu’nda yaşanan silahlı saldırıda öğrenciler okul camlarından atlayarak hayatta kalmaya çalıştılar.#kahramanmaraş pic.twitter.com/5SLTcwKQig

— Sol Yumruk (@Sol_Yumrukk) April 15, 2026

Footage also showed at least one dead body being placed in an ambulance.

Kahramanmaraş'ta okulda silah sesleri: Yaralılar var!

Kahramanmaraş Valisi Mükerrem Ünlüer: "Şu an bir saldırı var. Bir okulumuzda üzücü bir olay yaşandı. Yaralılarımızın olduğu bilgisi bize ulaştı. Konuyu derinlemesine araştırıyoruz"https://t.co/PbCqHL1ARC pic.twitter.com/03V82Q8HQk

— BirGün Gazetesi (@BirGun_Gazetesi) April 15, 2026

Slovenia’s newly elected parliament speaker has announced plans to hold a referendum on withdrawing the country from NATO, as the US‑led military bloc reels from its worst internal crisis in decades with Washington threatening to pull out from the organization entirely.

The leader of the Truth Party, Zoran Stevanovic, was elected as the head of the lower house last week. Speaking to public broadcaster RTVSLO, he stated that a vote on leaving the bloc was a campaign promise he intends to keep.

“We promised the people a referendum on the issue of leaving NATO, and we will hold this referendum,” Stevanovic said.

The speaker also signaled a possible visit to Moscow “in the near future,” stating he would like to “build bridges and cooperate well with all countries, regardless of the wall that has been built between the West and the East.”

The push for a NATO exit vote comes as the 32‑member bloc has started to crack over US President Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw support after European members refused to join the US‑Israeli war on Iran. 

Trump has repeatedly lashed out at European partners, calling them “cowards” and the bloc a “paper tiger,” stating that US membership in NATO is “beyond reconsideration.” His continued threats to annex Greenland from fellow member state Denmark have further escalated tensions within the bloc.

Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has stressed that Trump’s threats to withdraw from the bloc need to be taken seriously, adding that it is “not the law of nature that we have NATO forever” or that it will “survive the next ten years.”

In Moscow, Russian Security Council Deputy Chair Dmitry Medvedev has warned that the EU itself quickly morphed into a “full‑fledged military component,” it would be “in some ways worse than NATO,” arguing that Brussels has been inflating Russophobic hysteria to justify a large-scale military buildup in preparation for a possible war with Moscow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also speculated that US threats to withdraw from NATO could be intended to shift the primary responsibility for “containing Russia” to Europe in order to free up Washington’s own hands in the “Chinese direction.”

Moscow has repeatedly denied any intention to attack NATO or EU countries, arguing that such claims are being used to justify massive investments in arms amid faltering economic growth.

The US and Israel could be exploiting talks with Iran to prepare for a ground attack on the country, the Russian Security Council has said.

The first round of negotiations between Washington and Tehran, which took place in Islamabad, Pakistan at the weekend, did not result in a breakthrough. Iranian officials blamed the failure of the talks on “unrealistic demands” by the Americans, but expressed readiness to continue looking for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. US President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that the next round of discussions could take place at the same venue “over the next two days.” 

In a statement on Tuesday, the office of the Russian Security Council warned that “the US and Israel may use peace talks to prepare for a ground operation against Iran.”

This assessment is based on the fact that “the Pentagon continues to build up the US grouping in the region” even as negotiations are underway, the key body, headed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, said.

“If the negotiations fail to achieve the intended goals, the hostilities may resume with greater intensity after two weeks,” the statement said.

Trump earlier signaled he has no intention of prolonging the two-week ceasefire with Tehran, which is set to expire on April 22. The conflict “could end either way, but I think a deal is preferable because then they [Iran] can rebuild,” he told ABC News.

Tehran has said it is seeking a permanent end to the conflict rather than an extension of the truce, with a final agreement that would include guarantees against further attacks, sanctions relief, and ability to continue enriching uranium for peaceful purposes.

According to the Russian Security Council’s assessment, Iran “still possesses a significant stockpile of weapons,” with which it could resist further aggressive moves by Washington and West Jerusalem.

The country’s civilian and military leadership remains stable, with the Iranian society unifying around the government in Tehran since the US-Israeli attack a month-and-a-half ago, it added.

The conflict between the US and Iran is close to being settled, President Donald Trump has claimed, adding that the second round of peace talks between the two sides could take place in the next few days.

The US president gave interviews to several outlets on Tuesday, where he detailed Washington’s stance on the negotiations with Tehran.

Washington’s delegation, led by Vice President J.D. Vance, met with Iranian diplomats in Islamabad, Pakistan over the weekend. The discussions, however, did not result in any breakthroughs.

The US reacted by announcing a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz for Iran-linked vessels. Tehran said the negotiations had failed because of Washington’s “unrealistic demands.”

The conflict, which started with a US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28, is “very close to being over,” Trump told FOX Business anchor Maria Bartiromo.

However, he again threatened Tehran with a resumption of US strikes, saying that “if I pulled up stakes right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild that country. And we’re not finished.”

In a phone call with the New York Post, Trump suggested that another round of talks with Tehran “could be happening over the next two days.”

The venue will likely again be Islamabad, he said. Pakistani Field Marshal General Asim Munir, who helped set up the initial negotiations, “is fantastic, and therefore it’s more likely that we go back there. Why should we go to some country that has nothing to do with it?” the president noted.

In a separate interview with ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, Trump stressed that he has no intention of extending the two-week ceasefire with Iran, which is set to expire on April 22.

The conflict “could end either way, but I think a deal is preferable because then they [Tehran] can rebuild,” he said.

Iranian consul general in Mumbai Saeid Reza Mosayeb Motlagh told RT on Tuesday that there is “a deep mistrust” in Tehran towards Washington, but, despite this fact, the Islamic Republic “remains ready to negotiate… provided the discussions are realistic.”

During his press conference in the Chinese capital on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that both Moscow and Beijing support the continuation of diplomatic contacts between the US and Iran.

Saudi Arabia has pledged $3 billion in financial aid to Pakistan, the South Asian country’s finance minister has said.

Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb announced on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia has committed $3 billion in additional deposits, with disbursement expected in the coming week. He is currently in Washington attending the World Bank–IMF Spring Meetings 2026.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will head to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday for an official visit.

Riyadh’s assistance comes as Islamabad prepares to repay $3.5 billion to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this month.

Saudi Arabia Announces USD 3 Billion Additional Support, Extends USD 5 Billion Deposit: Finance Minister

Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue, Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb, has informed that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has committed USD 3 billion in additional deposits, with… pic.twitter.com/E8dXPg6g9Y

— Ministry of Finance, Government of Pakistan (@Financegovpk) April 15, 2026

Earlier this month, Dawn newspaper reported that Abu Dhabi was seeking the immediate repayment of the loan that was provided to Islamabad as part of the external financing support extended by the UAE in 2019.

That aid was extended through the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development to help Islamabad tide over a balance of payments crisis.

The report said the UAE debt was rolled over multiple times, but the most recent extensions had shorter durations, indicating the Emirates’ unease over the arrangement.

In 2024, Pakistan faced a debt crisis in the aftermath of the Covid lockdown, supply disruptions induced by the Ukraine conflict, and extensive floods that battered a third of the country. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had stepped in to provide a 3-year, $7 billion package.

Under its agreement with the IMF, Pakistan is required to secure around $12.5 billion in rollovers from China, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE to meet external financing needs and maintain its currency reserve levels.

The Dawn report indicated that the UAE will be replaced by Qatar.

Pakistan’s ties with the UAE have been strained over the last year. While Islamabad has signed a mutual defense pact with Riyadh, Abu Dhabi has been moving to build a closer security partnership with New Delhi.

The UAE, which has remained a vital source of foreign remittances for Islamabad, also imposed visa restrictions affecting Pakistani nationals earlier this year.

American warships have effectively blocked Iranian trade through the Strait of Hormuz, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) has said.

“A blockade of Iranian ports has been fully implemented as US forces maintain maritime superiority in the Middle East,” CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper said in a statement on Tuesday evening.

“In less than 36 hours since the blockade was implemented, US forces have completely halted economic trade going into and out of Iran by sea,” Cooper added.

The WSJ also reported that the US has intercepted eight tankers since the start of the blockade on Monday morning.

US President Donald Trump announced the blockade of the vital waterway on Sunday after Pakistani-mediated talks failed to produce a peace deal with Iran. Trump had previously failed to rally European NATO members to help secure Hormuz, which Iran had closed to “enemy ships” in response to the US-Israeli bombing campaign launched on February 28. Iran has since demanded recognition of its “sovereignty” over the waterway and the right to impose tolls.

On April 8, the US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire, raising cautious optimism for an end to the conflict, which has disrupted global trade and driven up energy prices. However, both sides have since accused each other of putting forward unacceptable terms.

Direct US-mediated Israeli-Lebanese talks are unlikely to bring peace unless Washington pressures Israel to end its airstrikes and ground offensive, Naim Joseph Salem, a professor of international affairs and diplomacy at the Lebanese Army Military Academy, has told RT.

Israel and Lebanon held rare negotiations in Washington on Tuesday, which the armed group Hezbollah boycotted as “futile.”

While both sides described the talks as “constructive,” Salem argued that the format would likely lead to drawn-out negotiations “with no end in sight and no conclusive outcome,” as the US has no intention of pressuring Israel to end its military operation in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) renewed airstrikes on Beirut and other cities in early March after Hezbollah began firing rockets and mortars at Israel in support of Iran. More than 1.2 million people have been displaced, as Israel issued sweeping evacuation orders in southern Lebanon in an effort to expand its “security zone.”

“The Israeli policy is to destroy the whole of southern Lebanon in order to force the population of these cities and towns, about 450,000 people, to leave and become refugees,” Salem said, adding that several towns have been “leveled” by Israeli forces.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has announced the suspension of a defense agreement with Israel amid tensions over the war in the Middle East.

Italy, whose right-wing government had been seen as one of Israel’s closest allies in the EU, has become increasingly critical of the ongoing military campaign in Lebanon, where 2,124 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since early March.

Speaking on Tuesday in Verona, Meloni said her government had decided to “suspend the automatic renewal” of the agreement “in light of the current situation.”

“When there are things we don’t agree with, we act accordingly,” Meloni said, according to Reuters.

The agreement, ratified in 2005 and previously renewed every five years, includes cooperation in the defense industry and procurement policy, military equipment imports and exports, technical data exchanges, and personnel training.

On Monday, Tajani condemned the “unacceptable attacks by Israel against the civilian population” in Lebanon, to which the Israeli Foreign Ministry responded by summoning the Italian envoy.

Several European countries have formally recognized Palestinian statehood and imposed full or partial embargoes on weapons sales to Israel since 2023. Last year, Spain canceled a number of contracts with Israeli arms manufacturers reportedly totaling $1.18 billion. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez described the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocide, a claim Israel denied.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that his country is “defending Europe” by waging wars against Iran, Hamas, and the Lebanon-based pro-Palestinian armed group Hezbollah. In a speech on Tuesday, Netanyahu accused European countries of “deep moral weakness” for not supporting Israel.

A far-right politician displayed an Israeli flag bearing a swastika instead of the Star of David on the floor of the Polish parliament on Tuesday, sparking outrage at home and abroad.

Konrad Berkowicz, a member of the Confederation bloc, said he was protesting against Israel’s reported use of white phosphorus munitions in Gaza and Lebanon.

“Israel is the new Third Reich, and its flag should look exactly like Germany’s flag from 1933 to 1945,” the MP wrote on X after the incident. He has previously labeled Israel a “terrorist state” over its wars in the Middle East.

According to TVP, Speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty said he would seek to fine Berkowicz for breaking parliamentary rules and notify legal authorities about suspected crimes, including publicly insulting the flag of a foreign state and promoting Nazism.

Izrael to nowa Trzecia Rzesza i jego flaga powinna wyglądać dokładnie tak. 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/U39xIYrp08

— Konrad Berkowicz (@KonradBerkowicz) April 14, 2026

The Polish Foreign Ministry condemned Berkowicz, saying that criticizing Israel “does not justify such a gesture, which is deeply offensive not only to Jews and Israelis but also to all those for whom the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes constitute an important element of memory and identity.”

There has been an upswing in antisemitic incidents in Europe and elsewhere since 2023, when Israel launched a military operation in Gaza in response to an attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In a speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused European states of “deep moral weakness” for not backing the US and Israel in the war with Iran.

Israel’s war in Lebanon has entered a stage in which claims of supposedly precise strikes on military infrastructure can no longer be taken seriously.

The scale of the operations, the depth of the advance in the south, the destruction of bridges and residential neighborhoods, the massive strikes on Beirut, and the steady expansion of the so-called buffer zone all show that this is not merely a tactical effort to contain Hezbollah. It is an attempt to reshape the military and political reality of southern Lebanon for years to come. Israel describes this as the creation of a security belt up to the Litani River. In the language of the region, however, it reads differently. It is a course toward long term control of territory, the depopulation of the border strip, and the creation of facts on the ground that will be extremely difficult to reverse.

Formally, the new phase of the war began on March 2, when Hezbollah opened fire on Israel following American and Israeli strikes on Iran and the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel responded with a broad air campaign against Lebanon and then expanded its ground operations in the south. At that point, the government of Nawaf Salam tried to distance itself from Hezbollah’s decision and took the unprecedented step of banning the movement’s military activity outside state institutions, demanding that its weapons be handed over to the state. This was an important sign of a shifting balance within Lebanon itself. Hezbollah can no longer act as though its armed autonomy is automatically accepted by the entire state. However, the move also revealed the other side of the crisis. Beirut is exerting political pressure on Hezbollah, but it has neither the resources nor the internal consensus to disarm it quickly without risking a deeper internal fracture.

A land grab by any other name

From a military point of view, Israel rapidly moved far beyond the boundaries of retaliatory strikes. By late March, Defense Minister Israel Katz had openly declared the intention to hold southern Lebanon up to the Litani as a security zone, nearly a tenth of Lebanese territory. This was followed by strikes on bridges, the destruction of homes in border villages, and evacuation orders for residents south of the river. Soon afterward, Israel was already constructing new fortifications and destroying increasingly empty villages, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was openly speaking of expanding the security strip. The Israeli military machine was no longer concealing the long-term nature of the operation. This was no raid. It was a project of territorial transformation under the military pretext of combating Hezbollah.

This is where the central political question emerges. For the Israeli right, southern Lebanon is increasingly becoming an ideologically charged space. The bluntest statement came from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said in late March that Israel’s new border should run along the Litani – the clearest call yet by a senior Israeli official for the seizure of Lebanese territory. True, at the current moment there is no officially approved government program for the construction of Jewish settlements in southern Lebanon in a formal cabinet document. Yet when a senior minister speaks of changing the border, while the army simultaneously burns out the border zone, destroys homes, and prepares for prolonged control of the territory, the analytical conclusion is already clear. This is occupation, from which the idea of future settlement expansion follows almost naturally. For the far right in Israel, that appears to be a desired outcome. The stated pretext is the struggle against Hezbollah. The real content is the consolidation of a new coercive order on the ground.

This is precisely why fears inside Lebanon are so acute. For Lebanese society, talk of a buffer zone is an echo of the long history of invasions and occupation in the south, which lasted until the year 2000. When Israel destroys bridges across the Litani and drives the population from their homes, it is in effect creating the conditions for a new prolonged presence. Even if Israeli rhetoric presents this merely as a security zone, the result for residents looks very much like a classical model of military control. That is why French President Emmanuel Macron has stressed the need to preserve Lebanon’s territorial integrity, while the United Nations has described such rhetoric as deeply alarming.

The bloodiest moment in this campaign came with the strikes of April 8. On that day, Israel carried out the heaviest air assault on Lebanon since the start of the March war. Israeli forces said they had struck more than one hundred Hezbollah targets in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and the south of the country, with a large share of the blows falling on densely populated areas. According to the Lebanese Civil Defense, 254 people were killed and more than 1,100 were wounded. Lebanon’s Health Ministry gave a lower, though still horrific, figure at the time and stressed that the count was not yet complete. Reports described scenes in which people were carrying the wounded away on motorcycles because ambulances were overwhelmed after central Beirut was hit without prior warning. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called it a massacre that undermined any chance of a sustainable ceasefire.

The war did not stop there. On April 10, Israel struck Nabatieh, hitting a government building and killing 13 members of Lebanon’s state security services. This was an especially telling episode. Once not only Hezbollah strongholds but also state institutions and Lebanese security structures come under attack, the line between a war against an armed movement and a war against the Lebanese state itself begins to dissolve. At that point, Lebanese authorities were estimating that at least 1,953 people had been killed since March 2. Another 6,303 had been wounded. More than one million people had been displaced from their homes. Israeli evacuation orders covered roughly 15 percent of Lebanese territory.

Israel continues to justify these actions as necessary to push Hezbollah away from its border, deprive it of the capacity to fire on northern Israel, and create a depth barrier. Military officials and experts alike are speaking about Israel’s new ‘forever war’ doctrine – in which conflict is a semi-permanent condition and buffer zones are created not only in Lebanon but also in Gaza and Syria. This is a crucial – a strategy no longer built around the idea of definitively destroying Israel’s adversaries, but around their permanent weakening, displacement, and containment through the holding of territory.

Why Netanyahu is averse to peace

That is why, for Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition, the war has become not only an instrument of foreign policy but also a condition of domestic political survival. Netanyahu wants to avoid snap elections, which he would likely lose, and the war helps shift public attention away from failures and internal crises toward the language of national mobilization. Polling does not show any major political boost for him, yet the war still gave him something a ceasefire would not. It allowed him to preserve a security-centered agenda, delay opposition pressure, and postpone the moment of direct political reckoning. If the shooting stops, the uncomfortable questions will remain: Why was such vast destruction deemed necessary? Why were the stated goals not achieved? And what is to be done about the political erosion of Netanyahu himself?

Hezbollah under mounting pressure

At the same time, Hezbollah is in a difficult position of its own. On the one hand, it retains the capacity to strike back. Since early March, the group had launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel. In early April, a missile triggered air raid sirens in areas including Tel Aviv, while Hezbollah claimed strikes on Israeli military infrastructure in Haifa. After Israel’s massive assault on April 8, Hezbollah resumed rocket fire, saying it was responding to a violation of the ceasefire. At least four Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon by late March. This means that the Israeli offensive is meeting real resistance. There are confirmed losses among Israeli servicemen. As for losses in equipment, reports of damaged or destroyed Israeli armor and infrastructure often come from Hezbollah or other parties to the conflict and are not always independently verified in full detail. Still, the broader picture is clear. Even with Israel’s overwhelming superiority in the air and in firepower, this war is not a bloodless march. Hezbollah remains capable of inflicting damage and of preventing the south from being fully and safely absorbed by Israel.

On the other hand, pressure on Hezbollah today comes not only from Israel but also from within Lebanon. The government has banned its military activity. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun expressed his readiness for direct talks with Israel even at the start of the war, and by early April it had become known that a meeting between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors was being prepared in Washington under American mediation.

Lebanon’s formal position is that a ceasefire must come first, with broader talks to follow. Yet the very fact that Beirut is entering such a framework reflects an unprecedented level of domestic rejection of Hezbollah’s armed autonomy and a profound exhaustion with war. At the same time, Hezbollah opposes direct negotiations with Israel and prefers a format in which the Lebanese question is treated within the broader framework of American-Iranian dialogue.

Lebanese officials close to Hezbollah appear to support the Pakistani track of US-Iran negotiations, considering it more appropriate than a separate Washington process. This is what makes Hezbollah’s current predicament so serious. It has to resist the Israeli offensive, withstand pressure from the Lebanese state, and prevent its future from being decided without it at external talks.

At this point, the Lebanese front connects directly with the Iranian one. In its negotiations with the US, Iran has insisted that any ceasefire must extend to Lebanon, not only to the direct US-Iran theater of war. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has stated that it is in contact with Lebanon to secure compliance with ceasefire commitments on all fronts. One of Iran’s central demands at the Islamabad talks was a ceasefire in Lebanon, alongside sanctions relief and the question of compensation for the strikes. In other words, Tehran does not view the Lebanese front as peripheral. For Iran, it is part of a single regional bargain involving both allied states and affiliated movements. In the Iranian view, the situation cannot truly be stabilized while Israel remains free to continue its war against Hezbollah and then apply the same model of pressure against other forces aligned with Tehran.

That is why Israel’s position that the ceasefire with Iran does not apply to Lebanon appears not as a technical reservation but as an attempt to preserve an exemption from any broader regional de-escalation. Netanyahu explicitly stated that Lebanon was not covered by the ceasefire with Iran, and on that same day Israel launched the most devastating strikes on Beirut of the entire March war. In effect, Israel is trying to secure the right to participate in negotiations over a new regional architecture while continuing at the same time to reshape neighboring spaces by force. This formula is convenient for Netanyahu’s government, but it almost guarantees a prolonged conflict. For Lebanon, it means negotiations under bombardment. For Hezbollah, it means the threat of gradual expulsion from the south. For Iran, it means that its allies are being methodically weakened at the very moment when it is expected to sit down at the negotiating table.

Against this background, it is especially important not to oversimplify. Yes, Hezbollah is weaker than it was in previous years. Reuters, citing sources familiar with the movement, reported that at least 400 of its fighters had been killed since the war began. Yes, its disarmament is now being discussed inside Lebanon as an element of state policy. Yes, the US is pressuring both Beirut and Israel to create a negotiating framework. But none of this means that Hezbollah has been broken or that the Israeli army has already achieved its goals. On the contrary, the very need to build a buffer zone, raze villages, and destroy bridges shows that Israel cannot obtain lasting security through an ordinary military raid. It wants to alter the geography of resistance itself. Projects of that kind almost always mean a long war, new waves of refugees, further radicalization, and an extremely high price for civilians.

The balance at the current moment looks like this. Israel is waging against Lebanon not simply a campaign of retaliation for Hezbollah fire, but an offensive that bears the clear features of a project for long-term control over southern Lebanon. Israeli right-wing politicians are speaking ever more openly about the territory up to the Litani as a desirable new frontier. For part of that camp, the idea of occupying the south and eventually extending Jewish settlement there no longer looks like a fringe fantasy but like a direction of travel that the war is making more tangible. Hezbollah is indeed under severe strain, because it is being squeezed by the Israeli army, the Lebanese state, and the logic of international negotiations all at once. Yet it continues to strike back and inflict losses on Israel, which means that a quick and clean victory for the IDF still does not appear to be within reach.

Iran, for its part, is trying to make an end to Israeli aggression against Lebanon and against other states and movements allied with Tehran part of the broader framework of its negotiations with Washington. And for Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition, war remains politically necessary, because without it the question of the price of their rule, the failures of their strategy, and their accountability to the electorate would return with full force. That is the most dangerous aspect of the current crisis. The war has long ceased to be only an instrument of security. For a significant part of Israel’s ruling establishment, it has also become a way of prolonging its own political time.

Berlin and Kiev will coordinate efforts to return military-age Ukrainian men residing in Germany to their home country, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced following a meeting with Vladimir Zelensky.

As Ukrainian forces suffer mounting losses in the conflict with Russia and the pool of willing recruits continues to shrink, draft enforcement squads have increasingly turned to violent methods to fill the ranks in recent months. Men are being snatched off the streets, from workplaces and residential areas, as evidenced by hundreds of videos circulating online.

The heavy-handed tactics employed by Ukrainian press gangs have led to a rise in violent confrontations with unwilling recruits, their families, and passersby, with multiple recruits and draft enforcement officers being injured or even killed.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Zelensky in Berlin on Tuesday, Merz reiterated the German government’s “support for Ukraine’s efforts to reduce the number of Ukrainian men of military age leaving [their home] country.” According to the German chancellor, “this is essential to ensuring Ukraine’s defense capabilities, social cohesion, and reconstruction.”

Zelensky concurred that the issue “must be addressed,” adding that “of course, our armed forces would want these people to return to Ukraine.”

In January, Merz similarly called on Ukraine to create conditions that would encourage its young men to remain in the country rather than flee to Western Europe.

Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Germany became the top destination for Ukrainian migrants in the EU, taking in more than a million people, according to the Federal Statistical Office.

Some Ukrainian officials have acknowledged escalating public discontent with the forced mobilization campaign.

According to Vadim Ivchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s national security committee, only around 8-10% of new personnel entering the armed forces are willing recruits.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev’s Western backers of waging a proxy war against Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived in China on Tuesday for a two-day official visit, where he held extended talks with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi.

The foreign ministers were to focus on a “number of high-priority and regional issues,” including the situation in the Middle East and the Ukraine crisis, according to Moscow. The discussions will also focus on joint work within the UN, BRICS, the SCO, the G20, APEC, and “other multilateral mechanisms and forums.” 

West seeking to ‘contain’ Beijing and Moscow  

The very foundation of the international relations system has been “severely tested” lately, the Russian and Chinese top diplomats said ahead of the closed-door part of their meeting. Recent events in “Latin America, Venezuela, and what’s happening now in the Middle East” are a testament to the current challenges, which largely stem from the actions of the West, Lavrov stated.

The eastern part of the Eurasian continent is facing similar “dangerous games” around Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula, the top Russian diplomat suggested. Foreign hostile actors are trying to create “small-geometry, block-like structures in order to contain both the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation,” he stressed. 

Russia and China on the Middle East crisis

Beijing, a top importer of oil from the region, has slammed the US blockade on the shipping exiting the Strait of Hormuz as a “dangerous and irresponsible act” that risks undermining the “already fragile ceasefire situation” in the region.  

Lavrov’s trip also coincides with the visit of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, hosted by President Xi Jinping in Beijing. The Spanish prime minister is one of the few, if not the only Western leader to firmly oppose US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

Xi noted that “despite the changing and turbulent international landscape, China-Spain relations have developed steadily, forging a relationship with strategic resolve,” praising both China and Spain as “countries that value principle and justice,” the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said in a statement.  

Planning a Putin-Xi summit 

The top Russian and Chinese diplomats also signed off on a contacts roadmap between their respective ministries for 2026, perceived as a preparatory step for the potential visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin, expected to take place later this year.  

The Russian foreign minister appeared to hint at the upcoming presidential visit during his opening remarks at the meeting with Wang. 

“I have no doubt that this year we will have further opportunities to communicate and thereby prepare additional solutions for future contacts between our leaders. These contacts are already planned. We will discuss them in detail today,” Lavrov said.

US President Donald Trump is once again at odds with the Vatican, this time hurling personal attacks and wild insults at Pope Leo XIV.

Conflicts between the White House and the Vatican, however, are nothing new. From John Paul II’s open defiance of George W. Bush over the Iraq war to heated exchanges between Pope Francis and Trump over migration, pontiffs have rarely shied away from public clashes with the man in the Oval Office.

With over 60 million adherents in the United States alone, the Roman Catholic Church represents America’s largest single religious denomination, accounting for roughly 20% of the adult population. Pope Leo XIV, the first pontiff to have been born in the US, is viewed favorably by 84% of the nation’s Catholics.

Here’s a look at the most prominent spats over the past decades.

Trump vs Leo XIV: ‘WEAK on crime’ and an AI ‘Jesus’

2026: Pope Leo XIV publicly criticized the US‑Israeli war on Iran, calling Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization “truly unacceptable” and stating that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.”

“I don’t think he’s doing a very good job,” Trump told reporters, adding that he does not “want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States.”

The feud further escalated when Trump posted an AI‑generated image of himself as a Jesus‑like figure, robed in white, healing a sick man while surrounded by fighter jets and US flags. The post provoked accusations of blasphemy, with even some conservative allies condemning it. Former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called it “an Antichrist spirit.” 

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, usually a close Trump ally, issued a rare rebuke, calling Trump’s attack on Pope Leo “unacceptable.” The US Conference of Catholic Bishops also said it was “disheartened” by the president’s “disparaging words about the Holy Father.”

The scandal has also seen critics bring up the fact that Trump did not place his hand on the Bible while taking the oath of office for his second term. The tradition has long been followed by US leaders, including Trump during his first inauguration in 2017.

Trump vs Francis: Walls and migration

2016: Before Leo, Trump also had a public feud with Pope Francis, the soccer-loving Argentinian known for washing the feet of others. During the US presidential campaign, Francis commented on Trump’s pledge to build a wall on the US‑Mexico border by stating that “a person who thinks only about building walls … and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

Trump shot back that it was “disgraceful” for a religious leader to question a person’s faith. The clash continued into Trump’s first presidency, with Francis criticizing the administration’s mass deportation plans.

Obama vs Francis: Contraception and US spying

2009: Barack Obama, a Protestant, had a thorny relationship with the Vatican from the start, particularly over abortion and religious freedom. The Holy See reportedly rejected his choices for ambassador, whom it deemed “insufficiently pro‑life.” 

The 2011 termination of a multi-million-dollar contract with US bishops over contraception referrals further soured ties.

In 2012, the US State Department placed the Vatican on its money‑laundering watchlist for the first time, classifying the Holy See as a “jurisdiction of concern.” Many Catholics saw it as an attack on the Church.

In 2013, a major scandal also erupted when reports emerged that the National Security Agency (NSA) had monitored phone calls made by cardinals and bishops that elected Pope Francis, an Argentinian, leading to allegations that Washington was spying on the Holy See.

Bush vs. John Paul II: Iraq war and God’s will

2003: One of the most serious holy censures involved US President George W. Bush, a Methodist, and the Polish Pope John Paul II, who openly opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The pontiff described the war as “a defeat for humanity” and expressed deep regret that he was unable to stop it. 

In 2003, the Pope sent Cardinal Pio Laghi, a friend of the Bush family, to the White House with a letter urging the president not to invade. According to a source, Bush put the letter aside without opening it and told the cardinal he was “convinced it was God’s will” to go to war. 

When Bush visited the Vatican in 2004, John Paul II used the occasion to reiterate his opposition to the war, prompting the then so-called ‘leader of the free world’ to leave the meeting without the usual photo op of a gift exchange.

Clinton vs John Paul II: Abortion and contraception

1990’s: The administration of then-US President Bill Clinton, a Southern Baptist, repeatedly clashed with John Paul II over abortion and contraception.

At a 1993 meeting in Denver, Colorado, the Pope publicly rebuked Clinton for his support of abortion rights. The debate reached a peak at the 1994 UN population conference in Cairo, where the Vatican lobbied against language that could be interpreted as endorsing abortion.

The Pope’s 1999 visit to St. Louis, where he was welcomed by Bill and Hillary Clinton, was also overshadowed by his eloquent defense of the unborn and his repeated calls for a “culture of life.”

A Republican member of US House of Representatives has called for rapists to be hanged, but insisted he wasn’t talking about fellow Congressmen who resigned over allegations of sexual misconduct.

Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzalez announced on Monday they will step down from Congress following reported accusations by former staffers.

“Rapists should be hung, period. No questions,” Andy Ogles told influencer Benny Johnson when asked about the allegations against Swalwell, insisting, however, that he wasn’t talking about the California Democrat.

“I don’t want the Secret Service to come, I’m not talking about Eric Swalwell, I’m not threatening a member of Congress,” he added.

Last week, media reports detailed accusations of sexual assault by a former aide against Swalwell and cited three women who accused the lawmaker of separate instances of sexual misconduct. Swalwell, first elected to Congress in 2013, denied the allegations, claiming they were part of an effort to derail his campaign.

“They are absolutely false. They did not happen,” Swalwell said in a video on X on Friday, posting later that he was “deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.”

Amid the fallout, former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Monday she believed misconduct in Congress was more widespread than publicly known.

“It’s a lot more prevalent. I think there’s more members of Congress that are guilty of things similar to Congressman Swalwell and Congressman Gonzales, and we just haven’t seen them, basically, get caught,” Greene, who left Congress in January, told CNN.

Greene also suggested the resignations may have followed private discussions between House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat, describing it as a possible “one-for-one” arrangement.

The “global majority” must resist US and EU attempts to use observers to interfere in elections around the world, Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has urged.

Lavrov made the statement in a video address to the participants of the International Research and Practice Conference on Ensuring the Observation and Expert Assessment of Electoral Processes, which took place in Moscow on Tuesday.

The event, organized by the Center for International Interaction and Cooperation, brought together some 150 public figures, MPs, academics and experts from 60 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America to address Western electoral influence.  It was held with the support of the Presidential Grants Foundation and Russia’s cultural exchange agency, Rossotrudnichestvo.

Lavrov said that the West is meddling in the internal affairs of other nations not only through staging so-called ‘Color Revolutions’ or using force directly, but also through what he described as “electoral neocolonialism.”

“Russia cannot and will not support the continuation of such practices… Together with like-minded partners, we advocate for criteria that would allow for an unbiased assessment of electoral processes in the countries of the Global South and East,” the foreign minister said.

The conference in the Russian capital has launched the process of creating the first global independent international non-governmental association in the field of electoral and political monitoring, the organizers of the event said.

The new body aims to organize monitoring missions to objectively assess the openness and legitimacy of voting in various countries, while promoting non-interference approach in the electoral processes, they added.

Israel is using the rare prosecution of a single settler over the 2025 killing of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen as propaganda to project itself as the Middle East’s only democracy, Oscar-winning filmmaker Basel Adra has told RT’s correspondent Charlotte Dubinsky.

Hathaleen, who was killed in his village last July, contributed to Adra’s film No Other Land, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature last year. The incident, captured on video, drew international attention. The suspect, Israeli settler Yinon Levi, was initially detained and then released before being charged in February with reckless homicide. Critics say the delayed prosecution highlights a broader lack of accountability in cases when Israelis are accused of killing Palestinians.

Here’s Charlotte Dubinsky’s report:

The captain of one of the civilian vessels stranded in the Persian Gulf has told RT in an exclusive interview that his crew has been languishing in uncertainty for over a month as the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed to navigation.

Around 25% of the world’s seaborne oil trade passed through the strategically important waterway before the start of the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran in late February, according to the International Energy Agency.

Over the weekend, US President Donald Trump announced that the US Navy would “begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz” following the failed talks with Iranian representatives in Islamabad. The US Department of War later clarified that the measure would apply to all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports, starting from April 13.

The captain, who declined to disclose his ship’s name and exact location due to security concerns, described to RT how his crew has been suffering from anxiety for weeks, “thinking about their family.”

All this time the crew has been awaiting notification from the company that operates the vessel as to “when to move out from here, where to move out,” he explained.

“The uncertainty is really killing all of us,” the captain said, adding that the crew is feeling “helpless.”

Kapoor told RT that the situation is further compounded by the fact that “two different entities [Iran and the US] are blocking” the strait, and “keep changing the statements” as to the extent of the blockade.

“Please listen to our voice - we are just seafarers, we are not soldiers… we keep the world moving,” Kapoor added in an emotional entreaty to all parties to the conflict.

“We pray that… good sense will prevail,” the captain concluded.

The US has tightened its grip on energy exports from the Persian Gulf with a new naval blockade on Iranian supplies, risking fresh shocks to already fragile global markets.

The move appears intended to increase pressure on Tehran following unsuccessful efforts to secure a diplomatic off-ramp after the US-Israeli bombing campaign stalled. However, it has left American allies uncertain and drawn a pointed response from China, which has issued veiled warnings regarding US naval activity.

Why is the US blocking shipping from the Middle East?

US Central Command announced a blockade targeting vessels traveling to and from Iranian ports in both the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, effective Monday. The restrictions, it said, “will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations,” though further operational details remain unclear.

President Donald Trump described the measure as an effort to stop “any and all ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz” — the vital corridor linking the two bodies of water and a cornerstone of global energy trade.

Iran had retaliated to the US-Israeli strikes in late February by effectively restricting transit through the strait, blocking shipments tied to what it considers “unfriendly” nations, imposing tolls on vessels from “neutral” countries, and allowing free passage for “friendly” ones.

While US officials accused Tehran of violating freedom of navigation, Trump suggested Washington could impose its own tolling system. Earlier in the conflict, US sanctions on Iranian oil had been relaxed to cushion global markets. The new blockade reverses that approach, reinforcing economic warfare on Iran while further undercutting supply for import-dependent economies.

What does Iran seek by blocking the Strait of Hormuz?

Tehran’s broader war strategy combines resilience under bombing with escalating economic costs for the US and its allies. In addition to restricting maritime traffic, Iranian forces have targeted American military bases in Arab states and key energy infrastructure, including refineries, gas liquification facilities, and a Saudi pipeline enabling crude exports to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.

You know what!!
Iran will block the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.💥😂 pic.twitter.com/G0CYVBfFvX

— Iran Consulate - Hyderabad (@IraninHyderabad) April 13, 2026

Iran’s payment system is designed to weaken US financial leverage, demanding settlement in yuan or cryptocurrencies. Iran, Russia, and other sanctioned states have been building infrastructure to circumvent Western-controlled financial channels for many years. Tehran views continued control of Hormuz as a way to compensate for damages inflicted on Iran.

As US Vice President J.D. Vance put it: “What we have given here is a ceasefire. We stopped bombing the country. What we expect the Iranians to give up is a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.”

What was the immediate effect on oil trade?

Brent crude rose above $100 per barrel following Trump’s initial announcement of the blockade before dipping back under the psychologically important threshold.

Shipping companies and energy traders are now “scrambling to understand the fine print” of the US measures, according to Bloomberg, with many reportedly pausing operations until enforcement mechanisms become clearer.

Waiting for the EU and China to get in on the blockade action pic.twitter.com/OLaXVJL5Kc

— Marc Owen Jones (@marcowenjones) April 12, 2026

However several tankers previously linked to Iranian oil transport – including at least one owned by a Chinese firm – have continued transiting the Strait of Hormuz, potentially setting up an early test of US resolve as soon as Tuesday. However , no vessels with active transponders have reportedly exited the Gulf of Oman since the blockade took effect.

What was China’s reaction?

Trump has argued that as a major oil exporter the US stands to benefit from additional sales and is not as interested in an open Strait of Hormuz as China. Beijing has blasted the US blockade, signaling its intent to maintain energy cooperation with Iran.

"A ship tracking firm reports 121 empty oil tankers are making their way to the United States... President Trump has urged countries squeezed by Iran's disruption of the Strait of Hormuz to turn to American energy supplies instead." pic.twitter.com/1UBqybljJx

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 13, 2026

”Our ships are moving in and out of the waters of the Strait of Hormuz,” Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun said on Monday. “We have trade and energy agreements with Iran. We will respect and honor them and expect others not to meddle in our affairs. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, and it is open for us.”

Last week, Russia used a military escort to protect its oil exports passing through the English Channel, in what some British media called a humiliation for London. China likewise has the capability to escort tankers if necessary.

“Unless the US wants to start a war with China – when it cannot even handle a war with Iran – that’s a choice for them to make,” popular political commentator Carl Zha told RT. “I don’t think even the Donald Trump administration would be that foolish.”

What are US allies saying?

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has expressed confusion over the blockade, saying: “It’s not entirely clear what is the action by the US.” She added that Brussels seeks a return to pre-conflict conditions without restrictions imposed by either side.

Israel, meanwhile, has endorsed the US move. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Washington and West Jerusalem remain “in constant coordination,” dismissing speculation of any rift with the US.

What is Russia saying?

The Kremlin has declined to offer detailed commentary, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov citing a lack of clarity about how the blockade will be implemented. Moscow assumes that the impact on global markets will be negative.

Previously criticizing the Trump administration’s foreign policy, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Americans “want to take control of all the routes” for global energy trade.

Beijing reportedly worked behind closed doors to push the US and Iran towards the ceasefire. However, Russian analysts question whether the blockade would affect the Chinese approach to the crisis.

Is this just Trump being Trump?

Trump is widely criticized for injecting further instability into international relations through his confrontational approach, particularly toward Iran. His record includes the 2020 killing of General Qasem Soleimani and support for Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure last year.

At the same time, US heavily-armed support for global freedom of navigation has long been viewed as self-serving, not unlike the British Empire’s in the 19th century. London crushed Imperial China by force to secure the Chinese market for opium trade that Beijing sought to prohibit.

Trump’s naval blockades of Venezuela, Cuba, and now Iran are just expanding long-standing policies aimed at denying trading opportunities to nations America seeks to suppress.

There is rarely a day when US President Donald Trump does not command attention on social media, with posts ranging from attacks on public figures to sweeping claims about his own achievements. The same tone has carried into his handling of the war on Iran, where he has repeatedly insisted that US actions have weakened Tehran and decisively shifted the conflict in Washington’s favor.

Those assertions have come under closer scrutiny after Trump announced a US naval blockade of Iranian ports following the collapse of talks on Sunday, warning that any vessel attempting to challenge it would be destroyed.

Yet the reality on the ground appears far less clear: Iran has threatened retaliation, the practicality of enforcing such a blockade remains uncertain, and key allies have shown limited willingness to take part. The contrast underscores a widening gap between Trump’s narrative of progress and a conflict that continues to escalate without a clear resolution.

Watch a report by RT correspondent Marina Kosareva below:

Last week Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most highly decorated war hero, was arrested by federal police and charged with having committed war crimes in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.

Roberts-Smith has been charged with being complicit in the murder of five unarmed Afghan civilians – allegedly killing two himself and ordering soldiers under his command to kill the other three (a practice apparently known in the military as “blooding the rookie”).

The charges have been brought under the war crimes provisions of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, and if found guilty, Roberts-Smith could be sentenced to life imprisonment for each charge.

This is the latest installment in the almost decade-long Roberts-Smith saga, that has forever tarnished the reputation of the Australian military.

Roberts-Smith, the privileged son of a Western Australian judge, had a distinguished military career. He served with Australian forces in Iraq and East Timor before undertaking multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan where his undisputed bravery under fire won him the Victoria Cross, Australia’s highest military award for valor.

The young 6-foot-7 Adonis-like war hero, with an attractive wife and two children, became a celebrity overnight and a poster boy for the Australian armed forces – something that the military top brass no doubt now ruefully regret.

After leaving the army in 2013, he became the manager of a television station for right-wing West Australian billionaire and media mogul Kerry Stokes – who was addicted to collecting military memorabilia and was a board member of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.  The War Memorial, unsurprisingly, created a lavish display celebrating Roberts-Smith’s heroic exploits in Afghanistan.

Roberts-Smith’s spectacular fall from grace commenced in 2018, when Nine Network media published a series of articles alleging that Australian soldiers, including Roberts-Smith, had committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

Had it not been for these articles the war crimes allegedly committed by Australian military forces in Afghanistan would never have been disclosed to the public – although they were widely known within military circles, especially by soldiers who had disapproved of these atrocities.

The articles sued on accused Roberts-Smith of having murdered unarmed Afghan civilians – allegations that he denied. The media defendants raised a plea of truth and led evidence from Afghan witnesses and Australian soldiers who had witnessed the relevant events to support the truth defense.

The trial, interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic concluded in 2023, with the trial judge finding – on the civil ‘balance of probabilities’ onus of proof – that the key allegations made against Roberts-Smith were true. He found that Roberts-Smith had been complicit in the murder of unarmed Afghan civilians.

A subsequent appeal by the war hero failed, as did an application for leave to the High Court.

Kerry Stokes picked up the tab for Roberts-Smith’s and the Nine Network’s legal costs, which amounted to some $40 million – but the war hero’s reputation was destroyed, and with it that of the Australian military. The Australian War Memorial was compelled to append an explanatory note to its prominent Roberts-Smith display.

The trial judge disbelieved Roberts-Smith’s testimony, and the evidence led at trial disclosed that, as well as having killed unarmed civilians, he was also an adulterer and had bullied and threatened his fellow soldiers.

Stokes accepted Roberts-Smith’s resignation, but continued to publicly defend him – as did right-wing Western Australian billionaire, mining magnate and close friend of Donald Trump, Gina Rinehart.

Not since Oscar Wilde’s ill-fated litigation in the 1890s had a libel action ended so disastrously for a plaintiff – and, just like the unfortunate Wilde, Roberts-Smith now finds himself having to defend criminal charges based squarely upon the evidence revealed in the defamation case that he himself had so unwisely initiated. Hubris begat Nemesis – for both Wilde and Roberts-Smith.

It is by no means certain that Roberts-Smith will be found guilty of the criminal charges brought against him this week. The evidence led at his defamation trial is inadmissible, and his guilt or innocence will be decided on the basis of the more onerous ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ criminal onus of proof.

The events in question took place almost twenty years ago in far away Afghanistan, and there is little or no forensic evidence as to what occurred. Not all of the witnesses who testified against Roberts-Smith in his defamation action will be available for his criminal trial, and those soldiers who were complicit in what occurred will be reluctant to testify in criminal proceedings.

Whatever the outcome, it is already apparent that Roberts-Smith’s criminal trial will be a divisive ‘culture wars’ spectacle on a grand scale – as indeed was his defamation case.

Politicians from both ends of the political spectrum have already taken up entrenched public positions in respect of Roberts-Smith and his forthcoming trial.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge welcomed Roberts-Smith being charged saying that “being a decorated soldier was not meant to be legal protection from complicity in war crimes.”

Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and newly appointed mainstream conservative Liberal leader Angus Taylor declined to comment – perhaps because anything they said would have sat oddly with their continuing support for the Benjamin Netanyahu regime’s war in Gaza and Donald Trump’s war in Iran.

Right-wing political figures, however, have predictably condemned the laying of charges and been effusive in their support for Roberts-Smith.

Former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard – who sent Australian troops to Afghanistan at the behest of George W. Bush – said that the war hero’s arrest “will tug at the heart strings of millions of Australians” and described Roberts-Smith as “the modern personification of the great Anzac tradition.” This will surprise most Australians, who were not aware until now that the Anzacs were in the habit of regularly shooting unarmed civilians at Anzac Cove.

Another former Liberal prime minister, Tony Abbott, opined that “it is wrong to judge the actions of men in mortal combat by the standards of ordinary civilian life” – a comment that ignores the fact that Roberts-Smith’s actions were found by the defamation trial judge to have breached the moral and legal rules of military engagement and amounted to war crimes.

Abbott has also urged the Albanese government to immediately send troops to Iran to support Donald Trump’s mission to “destroy the Iranian war machine” because, in his view, that is what the Australian military exists for.

Abbott’s irrational right-wing views (he was memorably deposed as prime minister after 18 months by the moderate wing of his own party) explain why the mainstream conservative Liberal party – still much influenced by Abbott – is no longer a viable political force in Australia.

It was Pauline Hanson, however, the leader of the populist right-wing One Nation party – funded and backed by Gina Rinehart – who was the most strident defender of Roberts-Smith.

Basking in the glow of her party’s recent dramatic surge in popularity – One Nation is now attracting 30% of voters and has displaced the mainstream conservative Liberal/National party coalition as the most popular opposition party to Labor – Hanson described Roberts-Smith’s arrest as “an absolute set up” and declared her unwavering support for him.

Roberts-Smith’s arrest has made it perfectly clear that right-wing politicians and their financial backers in Australia are so deranged that they continue to  support failed Trumpian policies – for which Roberts-Smith has become a potent symbol – that even Trump himself is backing away from as a result of adverse public opinion in America, including elements of his own previously rusted-on MAGA base.

In any event, the fact that Roberts-Smith has been charged with five counts of war crimes comes as no surprise – the charges were virtually inevitable given the damaging findings made against him in his defamation action and his celebrity status as a war hero and right-wing culture warrior. Thus it is no surprise that his case has already become an emotionally charged and politically divisive culture-war free-for-all.

All ‘culture wars’ debates mask underlying issues of importance that they obfuscate and leave utterly unresolved – and the Roberts-Smith saga is no exception.

Roberts-Smith’s personal guilt or innocence in respect of the charges laid against him this week will be determined at his criminal trial. But his conduct in Afghanistan is symptomatic of wider issues that the Australian military and right-wing politicians remain unwilling to face – namely how many war crimes Australian troops committed in Afghanistan and whether these war crimes were condoned, either implicitly or explicitly, by the upper echelon military officers who were ultimately responsible for conducting military operations in Afghanistan.

Since the Nine Network published its articles about the conduct of Australian troops in Afghanistan in 2018, various inquiries have focused exclusively on the actions of ground troops actually engaged in combat, and the conduct of the Australian military commanders has been pointedly excluded from scrutiny.

It is all very well to lay charges against patrol commanders like Roberts-Smith and punish them if they are found guilty – but this should not obscure the need for a comprehensive examination of Australia’s ill-advised military engagement in Afghanistan that scrutinizes the conduct of upper echelon commanders who were ultimately responsible for overseeing that engagement.

Rather than engage in an examination of that kind, however, Australian politicians, of whatever stripe, will no doubt be content to wage ongoing, bitter, and pointless culture wars over Roberts-Smith’s fate, whatever that may ultimately be.

To war-mongering reactionary right wing politicians and their financial backers Roberts-Smith remains a war hero. To the Greens and the radical left he is a murderer of innocent civilians. To the Albanese Labor government and the now politically irrelevant Liberal party he is something of a temporary embarrassment, but nevertheless a useful figure.

Indeed, in contemporary Australia, what better subject for a culture war could there be? If Ben Roberts-Smith did not exist, Australian politicians – from both ends of the political spectrum – would probably have had to invent him.

The US‑Israeli war on Iran and the recently announced ceasefire have exposed a fundamental clash of political interests between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to former acting Israeli President Avraham Burg.

In an exclusive interview with Afshin Rattansi’s show ‘Going Underground’ on RT, Burg explained that Trump had an interest in ending the conflict before it had an impact on the midterm elections in the US. “It should have been a very short exercise,” Burg said. 

Netanyahu, on the other hand, “has to extend it as long as possible because he wants to go into elections in a state of war” according to Burg, who noted that “Israelis, when there is a state of war, usually rally around the flag of the government.” The next legislative election in Israel is set for late October.

Burg also dismissed the idea that the war was an existential necessity for Israel. “Iran was not an existential threat to Israel. It was a real problem that could have been dealt with by diplomacy, by agreements, by different equilibrium and balances.” He also rejected speculation that Netanyahu would use nuclear weapons to stay in power, calling it unthinkable.

On the ceasefire, Burg described Trump’s unilateral move as a “divorce” from Israel, concluding that the only clear winner from the conflict was Iran, which “got hit very strong but survived, and therefore it won.”

Check out the full episode of Going Underground, which airs exclusively on RT.

The US has achieved its objectives in Iran, Vice President J.D. Vance has claimed, adding Washington could begin winding down its military operation against the Islamic Republic.

In a Fox News interview on Monday, after US negotiators left talks in Pakistan without securing an agreement to end the conflict, Vance said Washington had made “a lot of progress” in the negotiations, adding that “the ball is in Iran’s court” on whether to move forward.

“I do think that we’re in a place where we’ve accomplished our objectives. We can start to wind this thing down. I’d much rather wind this thing down with a big successful negotiation,” he said.

According to Vance the talks at the weekend in Islamabad “did make some progress,” particularly on US demands for the removal of nuclear material from Iran and measures to prevent future uranium enrichment. “They moved in our direction,” he claimed.

“Whether we have further conversations, whether we ultimately get to a deal, I really think the ball is in the Iranian court,” Vance said.

He added that if US “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear program are met, “then this can be a very, very good deal for both countries.”

The comments came hours after the US began blocking ships at Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, a move President Donald Trump said was meant to force Tehran back to talks and reopen the vital oil artery, the disruption of which has sent energy prices skyrocketing.

“When they need it, they should accept both the conditions and the prerequisites. If they don’t, we’ll do our work and go our own way. Nothing will change,” he insisted.

Tehran remains deeply skeptical of Washington’s intentions, even after ceasefire-related preconditions were discussed, Azizi said. “We simply do not trust them,” he added, questioning whether a country that “elevates arrogance and colonialism to a guiding principle” can be relied on to honor its commitments.

The time has come for the EU to remove individual member states’ veto power on the bloc’s foreign policy decisions, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has insisted.

Von der Leyen issued the call less than 24 hours after her long-time opponent, former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, lost power in a general election to the pro-EU Tisza party led by Peter Magyar.

Orban, who is a staunch critic of Brussels, used the unanimity requirement to stall numerous EU policies during his time in office. In recent months, Budapest has been vetoing the bloc’s €90 billion ($105 billion) emergency loan for Ukraine, citing Kiev’s reluctance to resume supply of Russian oil to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline.

Von der Leyen insisted on Monday that “moving to qualified majority voting in foreign policy is an important way to avoid systemic blockages, as we have seen in the past.”

The European Commission head has long been trying to force through a series of fundamental changes to EU rules in order to create a two-tier bloc, into which Ukraine could be integrated despite not meeting the usual requirement for member states.

Von der Leyen welcomed Magyar’s victory, saying that Brussels will engage with his government “from day one.”

“There is much work to be done as Hungary returns to the European path,” she cautioned.

According to Von der Leyen, the mindset of the commission regarding Magyar is “let’s double down on him. If they deliver, we deliver.”

Brussels is currently withholding €35 billion in EU funds for Hungary over disagreement with Orban on Ukraine, migration, LGBTQ rights, and other issues.

EU diplomats told the Financial Times that the bloc expects Magyar to unblock the €90 billion loan to Kiev and reverse some of his predecessor’s key policies in order to mend ties between Budapest and Brussels.

The Tisza party leader said on Monday he is not intending to veto funds for Kiev, but added that Budapest will not participate in the EU loan due to financial difficulties.

Magyar also criticized the idea of accelerated Ukrainian accession to the EU, while insisting on continuing energy cooperation with Russia. Hungary “will procure crude oil and gas in the cheapest and safest way possible,” he explained.

A former student has opened fire at a vocational high school in the city of Siverek in south-eastern Türkiye, wounding more than a dozen people before committing suicide, the local governor has said.

At least 16 people were injured in the attack on Tuesday, police said. Among them were ten students, four teachers, a police officer, and a canteen operator, they added.

Footage from Siverek in the country’s Sanliurfa province captured multiple students fleeing the school in panic as the incident unfolded.

VIDEO OF EVENT:

A teenager opened fire at a school in Sanliurfa, Turkey, wounding at least 16 including students and teachers. The shooter killed himself. https://t.co/hvllH47SYz pic.twitter.com/8HLDoGzDxY

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) April 14, 2026

The 18-year-old attacker, who was armed with a shotgun, fired randomly at people in the yard of the school, Sanliurfa province governor Hasan Sildak said.

The man then made his way into the building, where he later killed himself with the same shotgun, according to Sildak.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT 

Şanlıurfa'nın Siverek ilçesinde, av tüfeğiyle liseye giren bir kişinin rastgele açtığı ateşte, aralarında öğrencilerin de olduğu 11 kişi yaralandı. O anlar güvenlik kamerasına yansıdı.#şanlıurfa #silahlısaldrı #siverekahmetkoyunculisesihttps://t.co/nMZgi3PsYJ pic.twitter.com/dNJ7aIzbdO

— Haberton (@haberton_com) April 14, 2026

Media reports claimed that the gunman had also taken several students hostage. He allegedly committed suicide after rejecting offers to surrender from special forces which had surrounded the school.

The attacker’s motives are currently being investigated, police said.

Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzalez have said they will resign from the US House of Representatives following accusations of sexual misconduct.

Swalwell, first elected to Congress in 2013, denied the allegations, claiming they were part of an effort to derail his campaign for governor of his home state of California, where he had been one of the top contenders. He suspended his campaign on Sunday and announced plans to leave Congress the following day.

“I am deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past,” Swalwell said in a statement on X. He criticized calls for a vote to expel him, but added that “it’s also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted from my duties.”

In 2023, Swalwell was removed from the House Intelligence Committee following an Axios report that he had contacts with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative.

Gonzalez, a Republican from Texas, suspended his re-election campaign last month after it was revealed that he had an affair with an aide who died by suicide in 2025. Gonzalez, who was first elected to Congress in 2021, admitted to the affair, describing it as “a lapse in judgment.” On Monday, he said he would formally submit his resignation the next day when Congress returns to session.

Iran has demanded that five Arab states hosting US bases pay reparations for American and Israeli airstrikes on its territory.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday, Iranian envoy Amir Saeid Iravani argued that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Jordan had allowed the US to use their territory to attack Iran and, in some cases, were directly involved in “unlawful armed attacks targeting civilian objects.”

Iravani added that the Arab states “should make full reparation to the Islamic Republic of Iran, including compensation for all material and moral damage sustained as a result of their internationally wrongful acts.”

The US and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28, stating that the goal was to dismantle Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The attacks killed dozens of senior officials, including Iran’s longtime supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, as well as more than 1,300 civilians. In addition to military sites, the US and Israel targeted energy infrastructure, bridges, universities, and schools.

Iran responded by striking US bases in the region and civilian infrastructure in Gulf states, including oil and gas facilities, airports, and seaports. Tehran said the strikes were an exercise of its right to self-defense.

The speechwriter of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen must have fancied himself (genderspeak: themselves) deserving of a handsome bonus when he placed the following words into his principal’s mouth: “Europe’s heart is beating stronger in Hungary tonight.”

Yet his euphoria – and the delirious jubilation of the liberal European elite at the defeat of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban by his rival Peter Magyar in the 2026 parliamentary elections – will prove short-lived.

If anything, Europe’s “heart” is not beating stronger, but faster, driven by a final surge of adrenaline: the reflex of a chronically diseased system under acute stress. What masquerades as renewed vitality, then, is merely the pathological sign of a failing organism – a last, frantic acceleration before terminal failure.

The EU’s demise will not be averted by rhetoric; it is being hastened by it. In the absence of Viktor Orban’s restraining role, five mutually reinforcing forces of erosion across multiple landscapes will accelerate, converging to precipitate the EU’s ignominious end.

1. Eroding political landscape: Loss of a valuable obstructor

From a political perspective, the heart metaphor is ill-conceived. A beating heart presupposes a living, integrated organism – and an immortal soul. Yet the EU, and Europe more broadly, is nothing of the kind.

The EU constitutes an inanimate constellation of distinct polities whose historical experiences, national cultures, and strategic interests diverge more than they converge.

The group’s apparent unity is procedural, not organic, precariously sustained by oppressive and ill-functioning institutions and rules rather than shared purpose or identity. It is a precarious patchwork mechanism, held together by external pressure rather than inner cohesion. A more fitting metaphor for the EU would be that of a jigsaw with incongruous parts, truncated and deformed, then forced into a disharmonious whole.

Unwittingly, the soundbite of Ursula von der Leyen, a gynecologist turned politician, betrays the very dispersion it seeks to deny: A heart cannot beat in different places, as implied by its beating “in Hungary.” That would presuppose multiple, dysrhythmic hearts, an anatomical absurdity, and a profound dysfunction, embodied by the gender-neutral, inclusive, “singular” they.

Even before the election in Hungary, the EU was suffering from institutional overreach, the steady expansion of supranational authority beyond its democratic and functional limits. It manifested itself particularly in pathological bureaucratic hypertrophy, an ever-expanding, excessive, and unhealthy enlargement of the administrative center, detached from democratic constraint.

What began as a pragmatic framework for international cooperation has evolved into an ever-expanding architecture of supranational authority. Competences have steadily migrated from the national to the European level, often without commensurate democratic legitimation. This centripetal drift, far from consolidating unity, has provoked resistance and eroded the consent on which the project ultimately depends.

Among other things, the Hungarian prime minister blocked aid to Ukraine and vetoed sanctions on Russia that harmed Europe more than their intended target.

Even those who reject Hungary’s stance in specific instances should, if they are genuine democrats, affirm the principle of checks and balances. To dismiss them is not principled disagreement, but a quiet surrender to unchecked power.

Orban’s role as a corrective counterweight is also significant in psycho-sociological terms. By obstructing institutionalized irrationality, he performed the valuable function of counteracting groupthink, a classic concept in social psychology denoting the suppression of dissent in favor of illusory consensus.

This proved highly consequential, for cohesive groups are prone to excessive risk-taking, as the pressure to conform and diffusion of responsibility corrode critical judgment.

On this reading, the label “obstructor,” intended as reproach, lends itself to reappropriation as a badge of honor, just as “the Voice” was an accolade rather than a reduction.

Apart from institutional overreach, the EU has long given rise to democratic estrangement and popular disaffection. The distance between elites and the electorates they purport to represent has widened into a structural divide, evident in a growing alienation from the governing structures.

Decisions of far-reaching consequence are increasingly seen as technocratic impositions rather than expressions of popular will, eroding trust in the union’s institutions and their legitimacy.

Again, Orban served as a constraining counterforce. By invoking national sovereignty and contesting supranational decisions, he gave political expression to otherwise marginalized sentiments, acting, however contentiously to some, as a conduit for dissent the EU struggles to accommodate.

Even those who disagree with this enfant terrible should, if they are committed democrats, applaud any closer alignment with citizens and the articulation of their interests.

European hawks complained that Orban secured exemptions, notably permitting Hungary to continue importing Russian oil via pipeline. The insistence that others share in self-inflicted harm betrays a preference for enforced uniformity in the form of symmetrical burden-sharing over rational self-preservation. The EU’s governing maxim is stark: better equal harm than unequal advantage, even at the price of collective suicide.

In reality, Orban responsibly modeled the only defensible course for a democratic statesman: to place his people’s interests first, a stance self-declared democrats ought to commend.

In his absence, the growing disregard for the popular will by EU bureaucrats are bound to strengthen anti-European forces and hasten the union’s demise, as will the trends that follow.

Even before Orban’s demise, profound economic disparities have become entrenched in the EU beneath the veneer of integration. In particular, the EU’s economic model has become increasingly strained by policy rigidities and structural imbalances, stretching solidarity to breaking point.

Persistent divergences in productivity, competitiveness, and fiscal capacity between member states undermine cohesion and mutual trust, while a one-size-fits-all monetary framework constrains national adjustment. High regulatory burdens and sluggish innovation dampen growth, while ageing populations place mounting pressure on public finances.

Fiscal rules, alternately enforced and relaxed, lack credibility, and repeated recourse to joint borrowing risks mutualizing liabilities without securing convergence. Elevated public debt burdens, now set to increase amid renewed commitments to considerably higher defense spending, further constrain fiscal space.

The compounded result is a union of unequal partners bound together by rules that buckle under asymmetric pressures. It proclaims cohesion yet struggles to generate sustained, broadly shared prosperity. Solidarity, invoked as a guiding principle, is too often experienced as burden, corroding the mutual confidence essential to durable cooperation.

After Orban’s departure, EU bureaucrats will enjoy greater latitude to deepen the economic quagmire. One consequence is imminent.

By all likelihood, European taxpayers will soon be asked to underwrite commitments exceeding €100 billion, as a €90 billion loan to Ukraine for reconstruction and budgetary support proceeds once Hungary lifts its veto, likely in exchange for the release of roughly €19 billion in EU funds previously withheld over rule-of-law disputes and conditional on political change in Hungary.

As a collectively underwritten liability, the Ukraine loan effectively socializes risk across member states, weakening fiscal discipline and entrenching moral hazard. In practice, shared liability dilutes incentives for prudent budgeting, while encouraging riskier behavior by shifting potential costs onto others. It is highly unlikely that Ukraine will ever repay the loan.

A more accommodating Hungarian leadership will likely facilitate additional sanctions on Russia, increasing the burden on European taxpayers and further widening structural economic fault lines within the EU.

In a grim irony, European citizens are compelled to pay more to receive less and suffer more, recalling the Roman practice of forcing convicts to carry the very cross on which they would perish.

3. Eroding security landscape: Provoking conflict with Russia

Commenting on Hungary’s election, Friedrich Merz professed his eagerness to cooperate with Peter Magyar in the well-worn quest for a “strong, secure, and above all united” Europe. That objective will prove illusory.

Apart from the erosion of political cohesion and economic strength, the security environment will deteriorate as well. In particular, once constraints imposed by Hungary are removed, pressures will mount to escalate the conflict with Russia – initially in its proxy form in Ukraine and, in due course, toward direct confrontation.

The choice of a new leader’s first foreign visit is highly revealing. The Hungarian prime minister-elect’s promise to visit Poland first speaks volumes.

Under Orban, Hungary and Poland formed a pragmatic alliance grounded in sovereignty and mutual protection within the EU, until irreconcilable differences over Russia and the war in Ukraine fractured the relationship, as Hungary maintained a more accommodating stance toward Moscow.

Magyar’s early diplomatic signals are telling: His envisaged priority engagement with a NATO eastern flank state underscores a hardening posture against Russia. The result will be a policy increasingly shaped by bias-exploiting threat inflation rather than strategic restraint.

Such a militaristic stance appears to be unwarranted, as Russia shows no intent to initiate hostilities against a country with which it has long maintained close cultural and economic ties. The hostile posture risks normalizing confrontation as the default strategic condition. Once Orban’s has departed, hawks in Germany will encounter fewer countervailing constraints.

What the EU leadership lacks is the capacity to think in terms of peace – anchored in respect, reciprocity, and shared interests, and above all dependent on political empathy.

In particular, peacemakers must be both able and willing to consider the legitimate security interests of the purported adversary, striving for mutually beneficial coexistence and, ideally, harmonious cooperation, all of which remain conspicuous blind spots within the EU.

In fact, the broader posture of the liberal ruling class in the EU reveals a striking inconsistency, betraying double standards: It preaches openness and inclusivity – accompanied by high-profile campaigns against xenophobia and racism in all their forms – while practicing selective exclusion and segregation when politically expedient, most notably vis-à-vis Russia.

A more sustainable course would reverse this logic: not “Russians, go home,” the slogan of exclusionary nationalist movements – heard among Magyar’s supporters during the campaign – but strategic realignment and reengagement.

Under such an approach, European leaders would extend a cordial and unequivocal invitation to Russia to join a newly constituted orchestra of sovereign European states striving for a harmonious performance, thereby ending strategic incoherence in foreign policy.

In this context, it is worth mentioning that Orban served, however controversially in the eyes of some, as a valuable interlocutor and potential mediator with Russia, while key Western European leaders, such as Friedrich Merz and Emmanuel Macron, are not trusted in Moscow.

The departure of the long-serving Hungarian leader removes a critical channel for de-escalation at a moment when rhetoric and posture alike are moving in the opposite direction.

4. Eroding ethnic landscape: The eclipse of collective identity

Europe is not a homogeneous polity but a mosaic of ethnicities shaped by distinct histories, cultures, and traditions – a precious civilizational heritage which its constituent members are keen to preserve.

The contrast with the American “melting pot”, where newcomers were historically expected – and eager – to assimilate into a new common identity, could hardly be sharper. Accordingly, this assimilationist model is ill-suited as a governing paradigm for the EU. Yet policy and practice have increasingly moved in a different direction.

Critics argue that large-scale immigration, combined with differential demographic dynamics, is altering the cultural composition of European societies at an exponential pace, with many citizens experiencing this dissolution of the ethnic substrate as profoundly disorienting.

In several urban centers, demographic change is already strikingly visible in schools, neighborhoods, and public life, while institutional and corporate messaging reflects an increasingly post-racial vision of identity.

For example, in a country such as Germany, there are schools where almost 100% of pupils are foreigners; in this erstwhile ethnically homogeneous country, it has become virtually impossible to encounter advertising devoid of multiracial representation.

Under Orban, Hungary positioned itself as a bulwark against ethnic substitution. The country instituted one of the EU’s most restrictive immigration regimes, sealing its southern borders with fences, sharply limiting access to asylum by requiring applications to be lodged outside its territory, and conducting systematic pushbacks of migrants to neighboring countries. It also established tightly controlled transit zones, curtailed the role of NGOs through legislation, and refused to participate in EU relocation schemes.

Hungary justified these measures as essential to safeguarding national sovereignty and Europe’s external frontier. The contrast between its efforts at preserving national identity and what critics view as liberal democracy’s tendency to crowd out indigenous ethnic groups became most visible during the 2015 refugee crisis, when Hungary sealed its borders even as Germany pressed for onward transit.

Budapest assumed a de facto gatekeeping role within the union, one that is now set to weaken. Orban’s successor, a center-right politician, is likely to be reluctant to reverse course abruptly. Yet the leverage of EU institutions remains considerable.

The conditionality attached to the disbursement of EU funds creates incentives for policy alignment, and migration policy may become an arena in which such pressure is brought to bear. What was once resisted at the national level may gradually be reshaped through supranational inducement. Most pernicious still is the EU’s encroachment upon the realm of intangibles.

5. Eroding moral landscape: The normalization of the abnormal

Conservative critics contend that the EU has moved beyond its economic mandate into the prescriptive realm of moral governance, advancing a pernicious progressive agenda that overrides national ethical norms and democratic preferences. In an inversion of norms, the exceptional becomes ordinary.

This critique is particularly pronounced in relation to the promotion of issues associated with the so-called international LGBTQ movement, designated an extremist organization in Russia.

Critics point to infringement proceedings against member states over education and media laws, the conditioning of funds on compliance with equality standards, and pressure exerted through EU programs as evidence of coercion rather than coordination.

In their view, measures framed as protecting fundamental rights in practice enforce a uniform set of values, marginalize dissenting groups, and erode the principle of subsidiarity. What is cast as the defense of liberal norms appears, from this perspective, as a centralizing project that privileges ideological conformity over cultural pluralism.

Erasmus+ offers an instructive case of moral dislocation. Ostensibly a benign education and exchange program, its selection and funding criteria, far from neutral, prioritize initiatives advancing EU values, thereby incentivizing institutional alignment with these social norms. Organizations seeking to participate must design projects in line with these normative priorities. The pattern effectively amounts to a de facto “align or forgo access” dynamic, albeit without formal coercion.

Among other things, the EU priorities include the adoption of inclusion and diversity plans that promote counternatural erotic habits. By undermining mental health and procreation, such new customs threaten the very survival and prosperity of society – and human civilization – as a whole.

Under Orban’s leadership, Hungary has emerged as a force of resistance against the spread of moral permissiveness.

The country advanced a set of explicitly pro-traditional social policies, most notably the 2021 “child protection” law, which restricts the depiction and discussion of homosexuality and gender transition in schools, media, and advertising accessible to minors.

The government justified these measures as necessary to safeguard children and uphold parental authority over education, while critics saw them as curbing public representation of LGBTQ+ identities and limiting access to related information.

Brussels denounced the legislation as discriminatory and incompatible with the EU’s fundamental rights framework, launching infringement proceedings, referring the case to the European Court of Justice, and linking compliance to the disbursement of EU funds.

The case once again laid bare the EU’s double standards. Hungary’s articulation of an alternative moral model might have been expected to fall under the union’s oft-invoked rubric of “diversity”. Yet, in a sophistic inversion, diversity in Brussels appears to signify the uniformity of EU-sanctioned values fostering what amounts to collectively suicidal perversion.

At a more fundamental level, the dispute mirrors the broader conflict between national conceptions of moral order and the EU’s effort to enforce a common rights-based standard across member states. Efforts at the EU level to impose uniform, counternatural norms on questions of morality have intensified rather than bridged differences across Europe.

EU advocates who want to detract from the uncomfortable truth that the EU advances normative priorities promoting pernicious moral deviance and licentiousness often argue that conservatives deploy LGBTQ+ issues as a red herring, a distracting side issue. Such advocates claim that conservative actors spotlight such issues to fuel anti-EU sentiment despite their relevance only to a small minority in need of protection.

Conservative critics respond that these debates are not marginal but indicative of a broader and highly influential normative agenda. In truth, LGBTQ+ ideology and its cognate doctrines function as a pervasive and insidious poison, their danger lying in part in their elusiveness to the wider public.

The trajectory of the European project: From decay to ruin

The fool exults even as he engineers his own ruin.

When the uniform, ideologically aligned mainstream media celebrate, it is usually an ill omen: a sign that something untoward has occurred. The Hungarian election is no exception.

The European Union resembles a latter-day Titanic: its trajectory fixed, its sinking merely a matter of time.

Orban’s defeat does not strengthen the so-called European house, divided under a common roof; rather, it hastens the erosion of its already fragile pillars. The timeline of decline has been shortened, not extended.

Jubilation by foolish liberals, therefore, will prove fleeting. They succumb to the fallacy of the last move, mistaking the latest move in a dynamic process as the end state. Yet, as dialectical logic suggests, pressure in nature and society alike inevitably summons its own negation: counter-pressure.

The EU professes unity yet produces dissonance. Divergent national interests frustrate coherent policy, while institutional complexity diffuses responsibility. The result is a chronic incapacity to act decisively and uniformly with clarity or resolve at home and abroad. This diminishes Europe’s credibility both internally and on the global stage, where power, not aspiration, determines competitive standing.

What presents itself as a living organism is, in truth, an artificial construct: a coalition of convenience. This patchwork mechanism of moving parts is sustained not by organic cohesion but by coercion, inertia, and denial. The cumulative forces of erosion will reveal the European project for the mirage it is. The end will not arrive as an unexpected rupture, but as the logical consequence of long-unfolding decay.

The stronger national economies stand to benefit from the EU’s eventual unraveling. The United Kingdom has already demonstrated that life beyond the union is not the catastrophe once foretold by anti-Brexit campaigners.

Germany, endowed with markedly stronger fundamentals, will fare better still outside the EU, a framework sustained principally by the country’s charitable largesse.

If Europe possessed a heart, it would not beat more vigorously at Orban’s defeat; it would register, instead, the passing of a patriot animated by faith who, however controversially, might yet have stayed the EU’s all-encompassing decay – and brought it short of its terminus: death.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Europe has forgotten the lessons of the Second World War and the Holocaust, as he criticized European nations for not helping Israel and the US fight Iran.

Many European countries, including the UK, France, and Germany, have rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to help unblock the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran closed to “enemy ships” following the US-Israeli attack on February 28.

Speaking on Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday, Netanyahu described Europeans as ungrateful and argued that by waging war on Iran, the US and Israel were “defending Europe.”

“Europe, which vowed after World War II to defend the good, is infested today with a deep moral weakness. Europe is losing control over its identity, its values, and its commitment to protect civilization from barbarism,” he added.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has outstanding warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed in Gaza. The UK and all of the EU countries except Hungary are signatories of the ICC under the Rome Statute, and if the Israeli prime minister were to visit, they would be obliged to arrest him.

Iran has condemned the war as unprovoked aggression and has vowed to defend its “sovereign right” to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

On Sunday, Trump ordered a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz after Pakistani-mediated US-Iran talks failed to produce a peace deal.

In politics, as in physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Viktor Orban spent 16 years building a ‘Hungarian fortress’ – a state protected from migrants, liberal values, and the dictates of Brussels. However, the irony of history is that the siege did not come from the outside.

The keys to the ‘fortress’ were carried out by a man who had sat at the same table with Orban for years. Hungary did not betray its leader – the name Viktor Orban is inscribed in golden letters in the country’s modern history. However, young Hungarians, just like Orban’s own generation in the late 1980s, are demanding change – change that is no longer always understood by the elite of the former ruling party. How will the emphasis shift, what is Magyar’s ‘liberal conservatism,’ and who will address the problems presented by ethnic minorities?

Watching the video in which the political heavyweight Orban calmly and confidently speaks about the victory of the Tisza party in the recent elections, one gets the impression that the crushing victory of his opponent Peter Magyar came as a shock only to his entourage – but not to him personally. Over 16 years, the Fidesz elite had grown accustomed to electoral impunity, believing that its leader’s charisma would outweigh any political costs.

The ruling class became trapped in its own illusion: they believed they held a monopoly on truth, while the ‘youth’ were busy building careers in transnational corporations and flying visa-free on low-cost airlines. The Fidesz generation, which had endured the difficult transition of the 1990s, viewed 25% inflation as an inevitable but temporary evil that simply had to be endured. It was this elite that missed the moment when another Hungary – one that had grown up within the European Union – began breathing down its neck.

For young Hungarians, the ‘stability’ of recent years has become synonymous with stagnation. Inflation and a 50% increase in grocery prices, compared with Austria, which can be reached from Budapest in an hour, were seen as a sign of incompetent governance rather than resilience. This is what led to the crushing victory of the opposition in the April 12 elections. The Tisza party won 138 seats in parliament and, with such a majority, can amend Hungary’s constitution at its discretion.

The main outcome for Hungarians is the end of an era of permanent tension. Orban kept society on edge by constantly pointing to enemies: George Soros, immigrants, the LGBT community, Brussels, the Ukrainian issue. These are not imaginary threats, but society has grown tired of living on the brink; there is a demand for predictable politics.

This is precisely at the center of Magyar’s agenda: rapprochement with the European Union, reforming Hungary, strengthening independent courts, and developing healthcare and education. The price of this is the return of more than €19 billion from EU funds. Magyar promised to resolve this issue within a month, and much of Hungary’s diplomatic corps will soon be engaged in negotiations to unlock this sum. What counter-demands will be made in exchange for this money, equivalent to nearly 10% of Hungary’s GDP?

Migration pact and guest workers from Asia

Migration was one of the main issues in Orban’s criticism of Western EU countries. Hungary opposed the EU migration pact approved in 2024 which will come into force in June 2026. The agreement establishes unified rules within the EU regarding migration and asylum for third-country nationals, including quotas for accepting migrants and contributions of around €1 million per day to a common fund for those refusing to accept them. Poland opposed the pact, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia raised serious objections. Magyar has also stated he will not sign it. At the same time, only 29 asylum applications were submitted in Hungary in 2024. Migrants usually see Hungary as a transit country to more comfortable destinations. Moreover, the peculiarities of migration legislation and integration are best illustrated by the situation of the Roma population – extremely poor and poorly integrated.

At the same time, around 400,000 residence permits were issued in 2024, mainly to guest workers for factory jobs. Ethnic Hungarians are unwilling to work for low wages and leave for better opportunities in other EU countries. According to the OSCE, about 50,000 people left the country in 2023 during the inflation spike. Meanwhile, Hungary must maintain its industrial capacity. For years, this demand has been met by migrants from Southeast Asia – Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

During the campaign, Magyar skillfully exploited this contradiction. His narrative was simple: “The Fidesz government is betraying the nation – importing cheap labor to depress Hungarian wages and please Chinese corporations.”

What happens next? The fence on the Serbian border will remain: Magyar is not reckless, and Hungarian society will not accept open borders. However, the “Stop Brussels” billboards and corresponding messaging on state television will disappear. Migration policy will become bureaucratic. Guest workers will continue to arrive.

In recent years, Hungarian-Chinese relations have been at their peak. This course was set by Orban in 2010 with the ‘Opening to the East’ strategy aimed at attracting investment for infrastructure development. Major projects include the modernization of the Belgrade-Budapest railway and the construction of battery factories for electric vehicles in Debrecen by Chinese giants CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology) and Eve Power (around €9 billion in investment), as well as a full-cycle BYD electric car plant, with around €5 million worth of investment.

However, since the 2020s, China has been labeled a “systemic rival” by the EU, and European institutions have slowed Chinese projects. The Belgrade-Budapest railway has been particularly affected by EU tender rules.

With Magyar’s government, Budapest–Beijing relations will no longer be on an upward trajectory. Magyar will not shut down factories, although he criticized “battery colonies” during rallies. However, China will lose its ‘political cover’ in the EU – Hungary will stop blocking anti-China initiatives, and preferential treatment will end. The future of the railway project will be uncertain and subject to anti-corruption audits.

Relations with Russia

Hungary has limited room for moves that would significantly affect Russian foreign policy – lifting the veto on a €90 billion loan for Ukraine’s army, nuclear and energy contracts, and supporting new sanctions.

Orban took part in previous EU votes for sanctions which were adopted unanimously, so it will not surprise the Kremlin if Hungary continues to endorse them. The Ukraine loan is geopolitical and depends largely on the EU’s real financial capacity – so Hungary's approval does not automatically mean cash from the EU budget will be handed to Ukraine.

The key asset inherited by Magyar’s team is the package of strategic agreements with Gazprom and Rosatom. Orban built a long-term energy security architecture, rather than just covering immediate needs. Dismantling this system would be extremely costly and difficult within one electoral cycle.

One major project is the Paks II plant, which is expected to allow for nuclear energy to account for 70% of all electricity generation. The cost is €12.5 billion (€10 billion financed by a Russian loan). Freezing construction is technically possible but would entail penalties. Most likely, the project will enter a slow “audit” phase, but construction will not fully stop.

Another key project is TurkStream. A 15-year contract with Gazprom (until 2036) supplies 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas annually via Turkey and Serbia – the only safe route for oil, according to the previous government.

Hungary also continues to receive oil via the Druzhba pipeline under an EU exemption, although operations were recently suspended. Alternatives like Croatia’s JANAF pipeline would be five times more expensive because of that government's transit tariffs. Thus, Magyar’s government will face no cheap options – either expensive maritime oil or ‘toxic’ Russian supplies.

Relations between Budapest and Washington are entering a complicated phase. Orban hosted CPAC, befriended Tucker Carlson, and called US President Donald Trump “the hope of the world.” The White House reciprocated: Vice President J.D. Vance personally supported Orban before the vote. Magyar’s victory represents a failure of Trump’s bet. The US president is in a difficult position; the people he praised for their “wisdom” voted against his chosen candidate.

For Trump, Magyar is a ‘European bureaucrat,’ so instead of maintaining friendship with the US, Magyar will likely bet on NATO. His campaign promise to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 reflects this. Relations will remain pragmatic but without the previous ideological closeness – this is a language Trump understands.

The Vatican's stake

The most dramatic shift will occur in regions outside the country which have ethnic Hungarian populations – Transcarpathia in Ukraine, Transylvania in Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia's Vojvodina province. The Tisza program suggests major changes: criticism of diaspora voting rights, the shifting of minority rights protection to supranational institutions (ECHR), and a revision of funding for foreign communities (which is denounced as “corruption” in Magyar’s program). In practice, this entails Hungary’s financial and spiritual withdrawal from the greater region. This creates conditions for EU humanitarian organizations and the Vatican to become the main actors.

Historically, Hungary has been seen by the Vatican as Antemurale Christianitatis – a bulwark of Christianity. It is a frontier between East (Orthodoxy) and South (Islam). Hungary’s mission was to filter Western values eastward while blocking eastern chaos. This perception persists, but Orban’s Hungary pursued its own ideology, engaging with Russia and China. Magyar’s rise symbolizes a shift in soft power geopolitics: returning the ‘keys to the fortress’ to the Pope.

Moreover, while for the EU Austro-Hungary is ancient, and often murky, history, for the Vatican it remains a meaningful project – the last great Catholic empire. From the Holy See's perspective, it was a perfect state, a large territory where religion was more important than nationality, and unity of faith was growing through borders. Restoring it politically is obviously impossible, but a spiritual revival is achievable. This will involve networks of Catholic schools, universities, and charities across Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, and Transylvania.

In conclusion, Hungary stands on the threshold of a major transformation. Its geography, political dynamics, and foreign policy orientation remain crucial for understanding European processes. Even within a broadly conservative-right framework, shifting priorities bring new actors forward and weaken those whose authority previously  seemed impregnable. In the broader context of global change, such developments should be seen as part of a pattern rather than as accidents.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has become the world’s most unpopular leader, according to US-based opinion research institute Morning Consult.

The approval rating tracker, which covers 24 democracies around the globe, indicates that European nations have taken a solid lead in terms of least-popular leaders. The survey is based on data collected in the first week of April.

Merz has recorded the highest disapproval rate at 76%, with only 19% of respondents satisfied with his performance. The findings correspond with a recent Forsa poll, which yielded similar results, with some 20% approval and 78% expressing dissatisfaction.

The data suggests that Merz is significantly less popular among Germans than his predecessor Olaf Scholz, who had also had extremely poor ratings during his tenure. In mid-2024, for instance, only some 28% of Germans were satisfied with Scholz’s performance.

The German chancellor is effectively tied with French President Emmanuel Macron, who enjoys an approval rate of only 18% and disapproval of 75%, according to the survey. France has been locked in a deep political crisis since at least mid-2024, when Macron dissolved the National Assembly after his party suffered a crushing defeat in the European Parliament elections. The high-stakes political gamble ultimately backfired for the French president, who ended up with a dysfunctional parliament and legislative paralysis on his hands.  

Third place is held by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with some 27% approving of his performance and 65% unsatisfied. Starmer has had the lowest approval rating of any prime minister in history save for Liz Truss, with his tenure marred by governance failures and assorted scandals. All sides of the political spectrum have been taking jabs at the prime minister for his failure to tackle the UK’s cost of living crisis, as well as his disastrous appointment of Epstein-linked Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US.

The US has fallen behind Russia and China in the development of AI-powered drones, the New York Times has reported, citing unnamed US defense and intelligence officials.

The next-generation unmanned military aircraft are capable of identifying and striking targets, as well as coordinating attacks without human input.

A military parade in Beijing last September showcasing a number of autonomous drones led Pentagon officials to believe that “America’s program for unmanned combat drones was lagging China’s,” the NYT reports.

The newspaper quoted US defense sources as saying that Russia is also “thought to be ahead in building facilities that could produce advanced drones,” and is using the Ukraine battlefield to “test and refine them.”

Beijing has pursued a “civil-military fusion,” involving commercial tech companies and start-ups in “military procurement, joint research and other work with defense institutions,” the media outlet reported.

China’s “manufacturing dominance means it can produce autonomous weapons at a scale the Pentagon cannot match,” according to the NYT.

Russia has likewise made headway fitting its Lancet loitering munition with autonomous targeting features, the NYT noted.

While the US government has poured billions of dollars into catching up with the rivals, “the Pentagon’s procurement system, built around legacy contractors and long timelines” previously proved inefficient, according to the publication.

Last September, CNN, citing Maj. Gen. Curt Taylor, commander of the US Army’s 1st Armored Division, similarly reported that Washington was playing catch-up on military drone production. According to the media outlet, US defense contractors have been unable to manufacture small and inexpensive drones, as the industry has for years focused on large, expensive systems such as jets and tanks.

The defeat of Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party in Hungary’s parliamentary election shouldn’t be seen as a shock. Opinion polls had long pointed in this direction. Nor should the outcome be divorced from a simple political reality: sixteen consecutive years in power, twenty in total, is an exceptionally long tenure by the standards of Central and Eastern Europe. Fatigue with familiar faces is inevitable, and psychologically understandable.

Yet the result contains a paradox. Orban’s defeat appears, in some ways, to confirm the very trend he has come to embody: the primacy of the national agenda, “my country first.” In recent years, particularly since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, Hungary’s sovereignist approach has become deeply entangled with external issues. Opposition to the European Commission’s line on Ukraine, justified in Budapest as a defense of Hungarian interests, led to sustained confrontation with both Brussels and Kiev. What began as a domestic political stance increasingly played out on the international stage.

This dynamic shaped the election campaign. Orban’s camp leaned heavily on external themes, portraying Ukraine and its leadership, especially Vladimir Zelensky, as central antagonists. His opponents took the opposite approach. They focused on domestic concerns: living standards, and the promise of restoring smoother relations with the EU as a pathway to improving everyday life. Whether that promise proves justified is another matter, but it resonated with voters. The message was entirely consistent with the logic of sovereignty, only turned inward rather than outward.

It’s also notable what didn’t matter. The visit to Budapest by US Vice President J.D. Vance, along with repeated expressions of support from Donald Trump and his circle, appears to have had no measurable impact. This, too, fits the pattern: overt external endorsement rarely helps in national elections. Indeed, Trump’s team has so far failed to influence outcomes in any European country where it has attempted to intervene, including Romania and Germany. External pressure, regardless of its source, cannot substitute for domestic political conditions.

There were, however, surprises in the details. Fidesz had anticipated potential losses in the proportional vote but expected to retain strength in single-member districts. The opposite occurred. The party’s relative resilience in the lists contrasted with a collapse at the constituency level. This suggests that, at a local level, voters viewed opposition candidates as more attuned to their immediate concerns, and less associated with a government perceived as preoccupied with broader geopolitical battles.

In Brussels and other Western European capitals, the mood is celebratory. Orban had become a persistent irritant, an obstacle to consensus and, at times, to policy itself. His departure will be framed symbolically as a triumph of liberal integration over a disruptive and illiberal figure, often portrayed as aligned with Moscow and Washington’s more nationalist wing. The incoming government will be expected to demonstrate its credentials quickly. Chief among these expectations is the unblocking of the €90 billion package for Ukraine, something that will likely happen without delay.

From Moscow’s perspective, this isn't welcome news. Yet it would be naïve to assume that the European Commission would have been unable to advance its agenda had Orban remained. Mechanisms to bypass obstruction were already under discussion.

More importantly, the structural realities facing Hungary haven’t changed. Geography and the broader geopolitical environment impose constraints that cannot be wished away. Magyar has already acknowledged the need for dialogue with Russia, a recognition that reflects practical necessity rather than ideological alignment. Whether this pragmatism can coexist with expectations from Brussels and Kiev remains to be seen.

Orban’s defeat is therefore symbolically significant, but its practical implications are far less certain. Hungary’s new leadership will have to navigate the same complex and often unfavorable conditions as its predecessor. The difference may lie less in the direction of policy than in the manner in which it’s presented.

In that sense, the election may mark not a fundamental shift, but a recalibration. The slogan may change. The constraints will not.

This article was first published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and was translated and edited by the RT team 

The US-Israeli war against Iran could push up to 32 million people into poverty worldwide, despite the current tentative ceasefire, as global economic shocks ripple far beyond the conflict zone, according to a new UN report.

In a report released on Monday, the UN Development Program said the impact could span 162 countries, with the heaviest burden falling on low-income and import-dependent economies. It also warned of “significant longer-term harm to poorer countries far removed from the fighting.”

UN Under-Secretary-General Alexander De Croo said the war, which is in its sixth week, “is development in reverse.”

“Conflict can undo in weeks what countries have built over years,” he explained. “The shock of the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East is not limited to the countries directly affected, but falls disproportionately on those with the least fiscal room to absorb higher energy and food prices.”

The UN Development Program said rising fuel and food prices are forcing governments into difficult trade-offs between stabilizing economies and maintaining spending on health, education, and social protection. It also called for targeted cash transfers to shield the most vulnerable, estimating that up to $6 billion could be needed to offset the worst impacts – while warning against broad subsidies, which it said are less effective and fiscally unsustainable.

At the center of the global economic shock is the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime chokepoint through which around 20% of global oil supply passes. Disruptions and blockades have pushed oil prices above $100 per barrel. The strait is also a key artery for fertilizer and natural gas shipments, and the de-facto closure threatens global agriculture.

The war has already caused thousands of deaths across the Middle East, including Lebanon, where Israel has continued its strikes despite the US-Iran ceasefire. It has also led to the displacement of an estimated 3.2 million people in Iran and more than a million in Lebanon.

Compulsory military service could be reinstated in the EU, Andre Denk, the head of the European Defense Agency (EDA), has said, citing a lack of volunteers.

Several EU countries have reintroduced the draft since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, citing the perceived ‘Russian threat’.

President Vladimir Putin has dismissed claims that Russia harbors aggressive intentions against its Western neighbors.

In an interview with Spain’s El Pais published on Monday, Denk said, “we have a human resources problem, and one of the ways to solve it will be through mandatory military service” – adding that his home country of Germany will likely go down this path eventually.

Denk also urged EU nations to invest more in domestic arms production, with a particular focus on drones and anti-drone systems.

Last year, Finland announced plans to raise the upper age limit for rank-and-file military reservists by 15 years, from 50 to 65, starting in 2026.

Around the same time, Lithuania unveiled an expanded conscription plan that would run year-round from 2026 on. It reinstated compulsory military service in 2015 after a seven-year suspension.

In neighboring Latvia, Defense Minister Andris Spruds stated last September that his party, the Progressives, would seek mandatory military service not only for men, but also for women, starting from 2028.

Several months earlier, Denmark announced that it would begin drafting women this year.

In Germany, a new law that took effect on January 1 and introduces a voluntary model has sparked protests, with critics warning that it could open the door to reinstating conscription, which was suspended in 2011.

European liberal elites are rejoicing: Viktor Orban’s conservative government has fallen. Peter Magyar, viewed as a ‘pro-Brussels’ candidate, won the election in Hungary. I hesitate to call Magyar ‘pro-European’, since I believe that it was Orban who advocated for a strong, sovereign Europe. It’s no wonder that he was despised by Brussels, the bureaucratic apparatus of the European Union. Thus, we may conclude that in Hungary, Europe lost and the European Commission won. 

A few words on why Orban and his political party, Fidesz, lost the election. Preliminary voting results indicate that Tisza won 53% of the vote, while Fidesz received 38%. However, due to Hungary’s majoritarian system, Magyar’s party, Tisza, has gained a substantial advantage, securing 138 out of 199 parliamentary seats. This is far from a record; at the peak of its popularity, Orban’s party held 227 seats (the parliament had 386 seats). But at that time, Magyar himself was a loyal supporter of Orban. 

The results show that it’s not so much Orban who lost the election, but rather his party. After many years in power, Fidesz has become detached from reality and encumbered by a rigid bureaucratic structure. 

While many Western media outlets are celebrating the victory of the liberals, Elon Musk responded to Alexander Soros’ claim that “the people of Hungary have taken back their country” by posting “Soros Organization has taken over Hungary.” 

Another reason for Orban’s defeat is undoubtedly US President Donald Trump. His reckless war in Iran negatively impacted the ratings of all European political parties aligned with MAGA, inevitably affecting Fidesz. American political strategists associated with MAGA worked actively with Orban’s party but failed to deliver the results expected in Budapest. After all, Americans have never quite understood Europeans.

However, what kind of prime minister Magyar will be remains uncertain. He ran a populist campaign, merely adapting to the momentary agenda without adopting a clear ideological line. He even mildly reprimanded Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky when the latter threatened Orban directly. Certainly, Magyar’s initial steps will focus on restoring vassal-like relations with Brussels. He will likely hasten to unblock the €90 billion intended for Ukraine. However, I’m not sure the EU will welcome Budapest’s move given the current energy and financial crisis. He may even be unofficially urged to wait. 

Furthermore, the ‘Maidan-style’ tactics prepared by Magyar and Soros-affiliated political strategists may come in handy later. Magyar has already called for Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok to resign, even though his constitutional term doesn’t expire for another three years. Since the president is elected by the parliament, Magyar’s party will likely use its solid majority to push this initiative through. 

What happens next, after the new prime minister fulfills Brussels’ and Kiev’s demands and sours relations with the Trump administration, remains uncertain. By the way, what will be the fate of Orban’s deal with [US Vice President JD] Vance regarding American oil shipments? Will Magyar withdraw from the agreement? And if so, where will he get the oil? Sure, we may guess that the Druzhba pipeline will miraculously ‘fix itself’ once Magyar assumes office. But that means Hungary will again rely on cheap Russian energy, something that Magyar vehemently campaigned against. So what will he do then? Where will he find energy resources?

I predict that once the euphoria over ‘liberal’ Magyar’s victory fades, Europeans will start accusing him of being too “pro-Russian” – after all, one’s position often determines one’s policy. So for Soros, it may be too early to celebrate… 

German Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer was roundly heckled by protesters and victims’ relatives during a commemorative event at the Buchenwald concentration camp on Sunday.

Media magnate Weimar, whose company is at the center of a pay-for-influence networking event controversy, has also imposed an anti-Palestinian censorship regime over the Berlin Film Festival and labeled left-wing bookshops “extremist.” He defied repeated demands/requests from left-wing groups and survivor organizations to steer clear of Sunday’s event over his hardline conservative views, which they described as “far-right.” 

His 12-minute speech was repeatedly interrupted by shouts of “Alerta antifascista” and “fascist” from the crowd. The protesters also sang the Buchenwaldlied, a 1938 song created by prisoners of the camp. The minister attempted to reason with the protesters, urging them to respect the “dignity of the place” and lamenting the “intolerable developments.”

Weeks ahead of the anniversary, the Buchenwald-Dora Camp Working Group and the Buchenwald Camp Community published an open letter to the minister, demanding that he refrain from appearing at the commemoration. The organizations accused Weimer of failing to understand the legacy of the concentration camp survivors and pointed out the minister’s repeated misuse of a quote by Heinrich Heine.

After assuming his ministerial post last May, Weimer has managed to get embroiled in multiple controversies. He has faced accusations of enforcing politically motivated censorship when, earlier this year, he reportedly excluded three left-wing bookstores from the Bookshop Prize, citing findings from the domestic intelligence service regarding alleged extremism. The minister ultimately scrapped the awards ceremony, claiming the controversy had “increasingly shifted focus away from the event’s main objective.” Weimer has also reportedly pressed the Berlin Film Festival into ousting its director, Tricia Tuttle, over her support for Palestine – a stance that is not in contravention of any German laws.

Iran will levy tolls on ships from ‘hostile’ countries crossing the Strait of Hormuz as compensation for damage caused by sanctions and US-Israeli strikes, Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, has said.

Speaking to RT on Sunday following US-Iran talks in Islamabad that ended in an impasse, Azizi said Washington should accept Tehran’s terms because it needs a deal “more than we do,” and that many Iranians are unhappy that Tehran even entered into negotiations. 

“When they need it, they should accept both the conditions and the prerequisites. If they don’t, we’ll do our work and go our own way. Nothing will change,” he added.

US President Donald Trump has refused to rule out resuming “limited” strikes against Iran after ordering a naval blockade and threatening to deny safe passage to any ships that have complied with Tehran’s fees and rules for transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

According to Azizi, a draft bill being drawn up in the Iranian parliament would stipulate that “those who have caused us damage, those who are in fact liable to pay compensation, may only cross the Strait of Hormuz if they pay their damages and compensation.”

Referring to countries that have frozen Iranian assets “on the orders of America,” he said: “You made a great mistake by blocking them. Now you also want to cross this waterway? That era is over.”

Once approved, the law will require the government to establish a new “management and control system” for the strait and the Persian Gulf, based on environmental safety, security, and services, Azizi said. Any vessel wishing to enter would then have to pay tolls “based on the national interests of Iran,” with specific fees and procedures to be set later by the cabinet rather than by parliament.

A multimillion-dollar Australian government advertising campaign urging motorists to inflate tyres and remove roof racks to reduce fuel consumption has drawn political backlash, with critics describing it as “ridiculous.”

Titled ‘Every Little Bit Helps’, the campaign cost AU$20 million (US$14 million) and rolled out on Monday across television, radio, online platforms, billboards, and posters. The ads promote steps such as “driving smoothly” and “unloading excess weight,” while urging motorists to cut car use by walking or cycling where possible and maintaining tire pressure, as Australia faces fuel supply crunch linked to Middle East tensions. Australia imports about 90% of its fuel, relying heavily on Asian supply chains tied to crude oil from the region.

The crisis began with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical route for roughly 20% of global oil, amid the US-Israel war on Iran that started in late February. Iran’s blockade has severely disrupted crude supplies to Asian refineries in South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and China – sources for over 80% of Australia’s fuel. In late March, six fuel tankers scheduled for Australia were canceled, prompting the government to declare a national fuel crisis due to its long and vulnerable supply chain.

Nat Barr, host of Sunrise, a popular national morning show, on Monday clashed with Employment Minister Tanya Plibersek over the campaign’s cost, pressing her on whether she believed the ads were a good investment.

Plibersek defended the initiative, saying it was needed to counter misinformation about Australia’s fuel security. “It’s a pretty small investment to give people believable, credible, detailed information about our national fuel security plan,” she said, comparing it to $340 million spent by a previous government on industrial relations ads.

Deputy Liberal Leader Jane Hume said the money could have filled around 100,000 cars with petrol instead.

The initiative stems from Australia’s National Fuel Security Plan, endorsed by National Cabinet in late March to manage supply pressures. The four-stage plan includes public awareness measures at its current Level 2 phase, described as ‘Keep Australia moving’.

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce, a former deputy prime minister, mocked the campaign as “ridiculous.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rejected claims the ads were wasteful, saying they would prevent panic buying and maintain confidence. The government says Australia has secured fuel supply until late May.

German defense giant Rheinmetall is reportedly falling behind smaller competitors in the race to develop a new kamikaze drone, which in its current state is “not dangerous even to inflatable tanks,” according to the Berliner Zeitung.

The newspaper cited classified documents and insider accounts as saying that the arms maker is being given preferential treatment from the government, even as its FV-014 drone has encountered multiple issues during testing. Rheinmetall is competing with startups Helsing and Stark Defence as Berlin pours billions of euros into a military buildup purportedly designed to deter Russia.

Last week the outlet reported that a framework agreement gave Rheinmetall an advantage over its rivals. Follow-up reporting on Monday suggests that the FV-104 has not performed as successfully in recent trials. Officials in the Defense Ministry are allegedly referring to the drone internally as a “PowerPoint project,” as lawmakers consider approving the €2.5 billion ($2.9 billion) contract.

Rheinmetall calls its drone a “state-of-the-art” system “designed for dynamic combat deployment at ranges of up to 100 kilometres.”

Additional concerns reportedly included battery performance, integration with the Bundeswehr’s drone systems, and the fact that tests were conducted by company personnel rather than military operators.

Questions about the procurement process emerged last November, when media reports revealed that Helsing and Stark Defence had failed initial tests, while Rheinmetall did not participate. Despite this, the government proceeded with funding all three projects.

The US is losing the information war against Iran, as social media platforms allow the “raw, unfiltered truth” about the conflict to instantly reach millions, undermining Washington’s narrative, an Iranian-American Lego cartoonist has told RT. 

Mahdi Hemmat, some of whose Lego rap videos have gone viral during the US‑Israeli war on Iran, said that Washington’s “old ‘believe what we say’ approach no longer works,” because “reality is streaming live, and whether anyone likes it or not, the president can’t control it anymore.” 

Hemmat is one of several artists that have been creating Lego‑style videos, the most well-known of which is the Explosive Media Group, following the outbreak of the US‑Israeli war on Iran.

The clips, generated with the help of AI and part of Iran’s information warfare campaign, have garnered millions of views on social media, depicting various incidents and details of the war, often set to rap music. Some have described the phenomenon as “defensive memetic warfare” and “internet diplomacy.” 

“Iran’s strategy is brilliant,” Hemmat said, describing the country’s overall approach to countering US-Israeli aggression. He explained that Tehran uses the same asymmetric principle online as on the battlefield, noting that “low cost, high impact content forces billion‑dollar media empires to play defense. Iran controls the terms of engagement online, just like it does on the ground.”  

Check out the full interview with Hemmat below.

The United Kingdom has halted a plan to hand over the Chagos Islands, an Indian Ocean archipelago, to Mauritius.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed an agreement last year transferring sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius. However, the deal allowed Washington and London to retain control of the joint military base on Diego Garcia Island for an initial period of 99 years.

US President Donald Trump said in February that the plan to hand over the archipelago to Mauritius, while retaining control of the joint US-UK military base of Diego Garcia through a lease, was a “big mistake.” 

On Sunday, the UK said it continued to believe the agreement is the best way to protect the long-term future of the base, but added the condition of US support.

“Diego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the UK and the US,” a UK government spokesperson said. 

“We have always said we would only proceed with the deal if it has US support. We are continuing to engage with the US and Mauritius,” the spokesperson added.

The development also comes amid opposition to the planned move in the UK from the Conservatives and Reform Party.

Mauritius has said it will hold talks with UK officials on April 22 to discuss the issue, Bloomberg reported.

In 1965, the UK promised to withdraw from Mauritius, but it removed the Chagos Archipelago from the jurisdiction of Mauritius, paying the latter £3 million in compensation.

In 1966, despite the UN’s objections to British control over the archipelago, the UK leased Diego Garcia to the US for 50 years in exchange for a $14 million discount on the purchase of Polaris ballistic missile submarines. 

The joint US-UK military base, equipped with a runway, is used for positioning navy ships and long-range bombers. 

In March, the Maldives told the UK that it does not recognize the deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. It has now welcomed the decision to pause the handover of the Chagos Archipelago.

The Maldives says it has historical claims to the archipelago.

US President Donald Trump has shared an AI-generated image of himself as a robed, Christ-like figure healing a bedridden man, flanked by eagles, fighter jets, and US service members, with the Statue of Liberty and the US flag in the background. The post triggered backlash, with some users suggesting the figure being healed resembled the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The image was posted on Truth Social on Sunday after Trump’s broadside at Pope Leo XIV, calling the Chicago-born pontiff “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”

In the picture, Trump – while lacking a halo – is seen wearing red and white drapes, colors symbolizing bloodshed and Christ’s sacrifice for humanity, as well as his absolute purity.

Trump deleted the post on Monday after it sparked widespread public backlash. Speaking to reporters outside the White House, the president admitted he personally posted the image on his feed, but blamed its divine interpretation on the “fake news” media. 

“I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor. And it had to do with the Red Cross, and a Red Cross worker there, which we support. Only the fake news could come up with that one,” Trump claimed.

The Pope previously criticized the US-Israeli attack against Iran and described Trump’s threats to destroy Iranian civilization as “truly unacceptable,” saying it amounts to “a threat against the entire people.”

The US president – who has described himself as a nondenominational Christian – also noted that “we don’t like a pope that’s going to say that it’s OK to have a nuclear weapon,” adding that he is “not a fan of Pope Leo.”

pic.twitter.com/GflRnfJESS

— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) April 13, 2026

Democratic Senator Mark Kelly was quick to condemn the remarks. “As a Catholic, I find it abhorrent that the President of the United States would publicly attack the Successor of St. Peter”, Kelly wrote on X. “Donald Trump is flailing. His war in Iran has led to the death and injury of American servicemembers and the death of Iranian children.”

The public backlash to Christ-like imagery proved to be even sharper. Former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and former Trump ally said the president’s post was “more than blasphemy,” calling it “an Antichrist spirit.”

Pakistan has sent troops and fighter jets to Saudi Arabia to boost security, the Gulf nation has said.

Pakistani military personnel and fighter jets arrived at King Abdulaziz Air Base on Saturday, the Saudi Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The deployment is aimed at boosting military coordination, improving operational readiness, and supporting security and stability on the regional and international levels, the ministry added.

The move comes as part of a defense cooperation agreement signed between the two nations last September.

As per the pact between the two nations, any attack on one country would be considered an attack on the other.

The aircraft were sent after Iranian strikes hit energy infrastructure and killed a Saudi national, according to a Reuters report.

Iran welcomed the defense agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan last year.

Pakistan condemned the Iranian missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia’s energy facilities last week and described the attacks as “a dangerous escalation” that undermines regional peace and stability.

Islamabad is expected to receive around $5 billion in financial aid from Riyadh and Doha ahead of major debt repayment commitments, according to reports.

Pakistan is preparing to clear a $3.5 billion repayment to the United Arab Emirates by April 23.

Islamabad has sought assistance from Riyadh, including expansion of existing cash deposits and an extension of an oil financing facility set to expire later this month, reports said.

An Israeli general linked to a controversy over the use of a teenager in an online influence campaign has been appointed as the next director of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday that Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman, currently serving as his military secretary, will take over as the country’s top spy chief. Netanyahu described Gofman as a “bold and creative” commander capable of unconventional thinking.

Gofman, a career officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), is widely seen as a close ally of Netanyahu. However, his nomination drew criticism in Israeli media, with some questioning his qualification for the role. First proposed in December, his candidacy underwent a lengthy review by the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee following concerns about his conduct.

The committee ultimately gave its approval last week, with three junior members outvoting the chairman, former Supreme Court president Asher Gruni, who opposed the decision.

Elmakayes criticized the committee’s findings, calling them “ridiculous” and arguing that a key witness was not interviewed. Writing on X, he warned that “whoever abandoned a 17-year-old boy – will abandon Mossad agents too.”

The committee concluded that Gofman was unaware of Elmakayes’ age at the time and did not know about his arrest until it became public. Gruni disputed those conclusions, expressing doubt and arguing that even if true, they pointed to failures in leadership.

The committee also noted that some documents related to the case were heavily redacted. Gruni added that his actual dissenting opinion could not be made public due to security restrictions, with only brief remarks included in the report.

Last month, the New York Times reported that Barnea had presented plans to US and Israeli leadership aimed at inciting a public uprising in Iran to coincide with the two nations’ ongoing bombing campaign, but Mossad did not ultimately succeed.

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has accused WhatsApp of misleading users about privacy, arguing that Telegram offers stronger protection for sensitive content.

The Russian tech entrepreneur has repeatedly criticized Meta-owned WhatsApp’s security model, dismissing claims that the app cannot access user communications.

In a series of posts on Sunday, Durov described WhatsApp’s claim of “end-to-end encryption by default” as “a giant consumer fraud,” alleging that most private messages ultimately end up stored in plain-text cloud backups on Apple and Google servers.

”Add the fact that WhatsApp stores and discloses who you chat with, and the picture is dire,” he wrote, further claiming that Apple and Google provide backed-up data from the service to third parties “thousands of times per year.”

In response to a user who said he only shares intimate images via Telegram, Durov replied: “Thanks for the trust – your nudes are safe with us.”

Telegram, however, does not use end-to-end encryption by default. According to the company’s own documentation, only its ‘Secret Chats’ feature offers full end-to-end protection, while regular messages are stored in its cloud. Critics have identified cloud backups as a weak point in messaging privacy, as data stored outside encrypted channels may be accessible under legal requests or breaches.

Meta has long maintained that messages are protected with end-to-end encryption and cannot be accessed by the company. It also offers optional end-to-end encrypted backups for users who enable the feature.

In January, a major class-action lawsuit filed against Meta Platforms in a US district court by an international group of plaintiffs from several countries accused the company of making false claims about the privacy of its WhatsApp service.

Durov has long criticized the platform as a “tool of surveillance,” urging users to avoid it entirely, particularly after its 2014 acquisition by Meta, then known as Facebook. In 2022, he warned that vulnerabilities regularly discovered in the app were not accidental but likely backdoors.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone rejected the allegations, saying any claim that WhatsApp messages are not encrypted is “categorically false and absurd,” and described the lawsuit as “a frivolous work of fiction.”

The pro-EU Tisza party’s victory over Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the Hungarian election means that the country has essentially been taken over by the Soros network, Elon Musk has said.

In a post on X on Monday, Musk lashed out at Alexander Soros – the son of Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros and chair of the Board of Directors of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) – who celebrated Orban’s fall as “a resounding rejection of entrenched corruption and foreign interference.”

“Soros Organization has taken over Hungary,” the SpaceX and Tesla owner said. In a separate post, Musk responded to a post by an X user who listed figures who cheered the result – among them, former US President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, and various EU officials – and wrote: “This should tell you everything.” Musk replied with a “100%” emoji.

Though conservative in profile, Tisza has pledged to dismantle core pillars of Orban’s policies – drawing once again closer to the EU and NATO.

Orban – who will see his 16-year tenure as prime minister come to an end – has long clashed with Budapest-born Soros, accusing him of fomenting ‘woke’ ideologies, “liberal internationalism,” and an intention to turn native Europeans into a minority through an “invasion of immigrants.”

Hungary received nearly double the OSF’s average of $19 million per country across Europe and the post-Soviet region, with at least 153 organizations benefiting from Soros’s financial support, according to the report.

The OSF was essentially forced to leave Hungary in 2018 after Orban passed the so-called ‘Stop Soros’ anti-migration legislation. Critics have argued that despite the move, the OSF continues to influence Hungary’s domestic political scene through alternative routes.

US President Donald Trump has hit back at Pope Leo XIV, calling him “weak” and suggesting he should be “grateful” for becoming head of the Catholic Church, after the pontiff publicly criticised his policies.

The clash comes as Pope Leo has emerged as a vocal critic of the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, launched in late February. He described Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization as “truly unacceptable,” warning it amounted to “a threat against an entire people.”

The pontiff has also broadened his criticism to domestic US policy, calling for “deep reflection” on the treatment of migrants.

Trump responded in a post on Truth Social on Sunday night, accusing the Pope of being “WEAK on CRIME, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” and saying he would prefer his “all MAGA” brother Louis Prevost, who is US-based and known for his pro-Trump views.

“Don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History,” Trump wrote.

Later on Sunday, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump repeated his criticism, calling the Pope “a liberal person” who does not believe in “stopping crime,” adding: “I don’t think he’s doing a very good job... I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo.”

The Pope has intensified his calls for peace and a return to diplomacy. He pushed back against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who urged Americans to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ,” saying God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.”

On Friday, Leo wrote on X that “God does not bless any conflict” and that “no cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood.” He repeated the appeal a day later at a Vatican vigil, calling for prayers to “break the demonic cycle of evil.”

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar has pulled off a stunning victory in the country’s parliamentary election, with his Tisza party beating Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz by more than 16 points. The result is set to dramatically change Hungary’s relations with the EU, Russia, and Ukraine.

Just over an hour after polls closed on Sunday, Orban called Magyar to congratulate him on his win.

With 92% of the ballots counted on Sunday night, Tisza was leading with 53.72% of the vote, ahead of Fidesz with 37.67% – a result in line with opposition-friendly pre-election polls.

Magyar campaigned on ending corruption, funding public services, and restoring ties with the EU. Orban promised to continue his program of tax breaks for citizens and levies on corporations, all while pledging to keep Hungary out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. His campaign cast Magyar as a tool of the EU, who would cut off Hungary’s access to cheap Russian energy and back Brussels’ escalatory policies toward Moscow.

“What the result means for the fate of our country and the nation, and what its deeper or higher meaning is, we do not know now, time will decide,” Orban told supporters in Budapest. “No matter how it turns out, we, as opposition, will serve our country and the Hungarian nation.”

Will Hungary maintain close relations with Russia?

This is highly unlikely. Magyar’s allies in the opposition media collaborated with EU spies to run stories of supposed Russian interference in the election, and Magyar led crowds in chants of “Russians, go home!” But he also said he will have to interact with Moscow, because “the geographical position of neither Russia nor Hungary will change.”

Rhetoric aside, Magyar is unlikely to embrace a policy of open hostility toward Moscow, but his desire to mend ties with the EU will in all likelihood result in Budapest dropping its opposition to the bloc’s €90 billion ($105 billion) loan package for Ukraine – a decision that will be poorly received in Russia.

Will Hungary get the cold shoulder from the US?

Viktor Orban is a close ideological ally of US President Donald Trump, who dispatched Vice President J.D. Vance to Budapest to campaign for his reelection, and promised to use the “full economic might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s economy” if Orban won. 

Will Magyar open Hungary to more immigrants?

Highly unlikely. Orban’s hardline immigration policies are exceedingly popular in Hungary, and Magyar has attacked the prime minister on immigration from the right, criticizing his decision to allow 35,000 guest workers into Hungary from outside the EU. It remains to be seen whether Brussels will pressure Magyar into accepting asylum seekers, and whether the liberal Western media criticizes him as intensely on the issue as it did to Orban.

How quickly can the EU release billions of euros it withheld from Hungary?

The EU is currently withholding around €20 billion in funding from Hungary, citing concerns over judicial independence, corruption, and Orban’s ban on LGBTQ propaganda.

Magyar is on track to win the two-thirds majority necessary to modify Hungary’s constitution and implement the judicial reforms demanded by Brussels, but the EU will ultimately decide if and when to release the money. Additionally, Magyar has stayed quiet on LGBTQ issues, and any attempts to liberalize Hungary to meet the EU’s demands may prove unpopular with Hungarians.

For Magyar, accessing this money is crucial. His program of spending on healthcare, education, and other public services depends entirely on the release of the funds.

Will Hungary be able to cancel its contracts for Russian oil?

Russia supplies almost 90% of Hungary’s oil and slightly more of its gas, and provides nuclear fuel for the Paks Nuclear Power Plant. The EU has mandated that its member states completely cut themselves off from Russian energy by the end of next year, but Hungary’s contracts with Russia extend to 2035.

Will the EU now be able to steal Russia’s frozen assets?

No. Despite Orban being portrayed in the media as the sole obstacle between the EU and its plans for Ukraine, the decision on whether to steal the roughly €210 billion in Russian assets frozen in the EU is an unpopular one. Leaders including Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, and the Czech Republic’s Andrej Babis all oppose the measure, as does Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, whose country the assets are impounded in.

As such, the EU is banking on its €90 billion debt-financed loan to keep Ukraine afloat. With Orban out of the picture, Brussels will likely be able to secure unanimous support for the loan, unless Fico or Babis object.

The US naval blockade of Iranian ports has come into force, heightening fears over security and trade routes in the region and adding to market jitters after US‑Iran talks in Pakistan on Saturday ended without a deal. US Central Command has said that the measures apply to vessels calling at Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

US President Donald Trump has launched a verbal attack on Pope Leo XIV, an outspoken critic of the war on Iran, calling the American-born pontiff “weak.”

In a Truth Social post, Trump – who initially hailed Leo’s election as a “great honor” – said the Pope is “terrible for Foreign Policy,” with the US leader adding that he does not “want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States.” Speaking later aboard Air Force One, Trump doubled down, calling Leo “a liberal person” and saying: “I don’t think he’s doing a very good job... I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo.”

The remarks came after the pontiff intensified calls for peace and diplomacy in the Middle East. On Friday, Leo wrote that “God does not bless any conflict” and “no cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood.”

On Monday, the Pope reiterated his stance, saying he “will continue to speak out loudly against war.”

The clash comes as Trump refused to rule out resuming “limited” strikes on Iran after ordering a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The move followed the collapse of 21-hour US-Iran talks in Pakistan at the weekend, which Tehran said broke down over “excessive” and “unreasonable” US demands. The US Department of War said enforcement of the blockade on all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports will begin at 10:00 AM ET (14:00 GMT) on April 13.

The announcement sent global oil prices back above $100 and prompted Iran to warn any hostile activity in the strait would be met with force, declaring no port in the Persian Gulf or the Sea of Oman would remain secure if its own ports are targeted.

• Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said Trump’s planned Hormuz blockade “makes no sense,” calling it part of a “downward spiral.”

• China warned the blockade threatens global trade, stressing the strait must remain “safe, stable, and unimpeded.”

• The UK said it will not join the blockade, adding Hormuz “must not be subject to tolling.”

• Iran said it is weighing tolls on all vessels transiting Hormuz, not just oil shipments.

• More than 32 million people could be pushed into poverty by the war’s fallout, the UN Development Program warned.

Follow our live coverage below for continuous updates. You can also read our previous updates here.

Israel has condemned Spain after a fireworks-filled effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blown up during an Easter festival in the southern town of El Burgo.

The long-strained ties between Madrid and West Jerusalem have deteriorated even further in light of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, with Spain emerging as one of the most vocal Western critics of the aggression.

Last month, Spain permanently withdrew its ambassador from Israel, formally downgrading the level of diplomatic relations with the country.

This week, West Jerusalem kicked Madrid out of a US-backed coordination center in Kiryat Gat that oversees the Gaza ceasefire, calling it retaliation for opposing Israel and “defaming” its military.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry called out Spain over the El Burgo festival on Saturday, branding the display an “appalling anti-Semitic hatred” and accusing Madrid of “systemic incitement.” The Spanish chargé d’affaires was summoned over the incident, it added.

Footage from El Burgo, taken during Easter Sunday festivities, shows the massive effigy of the Israeli prime minister going up in flames. The seven-meter (23-foot) figure was packed with 14 kilograms (31 lb) of fireworks that exploded to cheers from a crowd of onlookers.

The appalling antisemitic hatred on display here is a direct result of @sanchezcastejon government’s systemic incitement.
And even now, the Spanish government remains silent.
The Spanish chargé d’affaires was summoned for a reprimand. pic.twitter.com/2Bguhs7Ce8

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) April 11, 2026

El Burgo’s mayor, Maria Dolores Narvaez, defended the act, pointing out that it was a part of a decades-old local “Burning of Judas” tradition that previously never caused any issues. Speaking to a local television station, she said that foreign leaders’ effigies had on numerous occasions been featured during the festivities.  

China has unveiled a set of new economic incentive measures for Taiwan, offering to resume some ties with the island. The announcement comes after a visit by the head of Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), to Beijing.

Taiwan has been a de-facto self-governing territory since 1949, when Chinese nationalist forces fled there after losing the civil war. Beijing regards the island as an integral part of its territory under the One China policy, which is backed by the overwhelming majority of the UN member states.

Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office unveiled the ten-point economic incentive package to the island on Sunday, which includes fast-tracking a full resumption of regular direct flights across the Taiwan Strait and facilitating access for Taiwanese food products to the Chinese market. The plan also envisions sharing energy and water supply with Matsu and Kinmen, Taiwanese-governed islands that are geographically closer to the mainland, as well as working on constructing a bridge to them.

Cheng said she was “very thankful” to China’s leadership for the proposed preferential measures. “As I said during the Cheng-Xi meeting, things must be done one by one,” she stated.

Taiwan’s authorities, however, openly signaled their mistrust towards Beijing and expressed displeasure at getting sidelined by the KMT. Presidential Office spokesperson Karen Kuo said that “any exchanges should not be subject to political preconditions, nor should they be used as tools for political maneuvering or deals by specific parties.” 

The MAC urged caution over Beijing’s latest announcement, stating that similar measures had been repeatedly rolled out and suspended by China in the past. “The same pattern is now being repeated, without any institutional safeguards for Taiwan’s industries, farmers, fishers or the rights and interests of the public, making the measures highly risky,” it said in a statement.

The US-Iran talks in Islamabad ended exactly as they were bound to end under the current balance of power – without a deal, without a handshake, without even the faintest sense that the two sides have moved closer to a durable peace.

Nearly 21 hours of talks, an unprecedented level of representation, extraordinary security measures in the Pakistani capital, the high hopes of mediators, and the jitters of global markets changed none of the essentials. What now lies between Washington and Tehran is no longer mere political distrust, but an entire layer of military memory, and that layer proved stronger than diplomatic protocol. It would have been a surprise if the talks turned out any different.

Talks about the past, not the future

From the outside, the talks looked historic. They marked the highest-level direct US-Iran contact in decades. The American delegation was led by Vice President J.D. Vance and included Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Iran was represented by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Pakistan, for all practical purposes, turned Islamabad into a sealed security zone, while the Serena Hotel became a fortified diplomatic venue. Yet it was precisely this contrast between the historic form and the emptiness of the results that revealed the true essence of the moment. Formally, the two sides were talking about the future. In substance, they were arguing about the past and about the right to dictate the terms of the present. The US demanded Iranian concessions on non-proliferation, the nuclear program, and freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran responded with demands for reparations, the unfreezing of assets, recognition of its regional interests, and a broader de-escalation that would also extend to Lebanon. That alone showed that the parties had not come to Pakistan in search of compromise, but to stake out their outer limits.

The central reason for the breakdown lies in a word that appeared almost routinely in official statements, yet in reality explains everything: Trust. Iran spoke openly of its absence, while the American side effectively confirmed that absence through the rhetoric of ultimatum. When Vance declared after the talks that the US had presented Tehran with its “best and final offer,” it sounded less like an invitation to peace than an attempt to dress up the failure of diplomacy in the language of American superiority. For Tehran, this tone was unacceptable from the outset. Iran entered these negotiations convinced that Washington had repeatedly shown its willingness to combine diplomacy with coercion, and to use pauses to regroup. This is why the Iranians approached Islamabad with extreme caution. Under these conditions, the talks were not an instrument of reconciliation, but merely a way of testing whether the other side was capable of stopping, even temporarily. Tehran’s conclusion, judging by the outcome, was negative.

From this follows a second, deeper reason for the failure – the US entered these negotiations from a position of strategic urgency. US President Donald Trump needed a pause far more than the White House cared to admit. This was evident both in the substance of Pakistan’s mediation efforts and in how quickly Washington agreed to a two-week suspension of bombing. Formally, Trump insisted that no deal was necessary and that the US retained the upper hand regardless. But political logic suggested the opposite. The war, which began on February 28, 2026, did not bring a quick or unambiguous resolution. It hit energy markets, logistics, insurance, fertilizers, helium supplies, and inflation expectations. The economic shock is already forcing the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to prepare more pessimistic forecasts on growth and inflation. The longer the confrontation drags on, the less room for maneuver the White House retains, both at home and abroad.

The legal dimension only deepens this trap. Under the US War Powers framework, the president must notify Congress within 48 hours, and in general, the unauthorized use of armed forces in hostilities is limited to 60 days, after which specific congressional approval is required unless a separate authorization exists. This does not mean that every military operation stops automatically on the dot, but it does mean that the political corridor for a prolonged war without congressional backing narrows sharply. For Trump, this is especially sensitive because there is nothing close to a consensus on Iran within the American political class. More than this, the issue has already generated new tensions over presidential authority and the role of Congress. The Iranians, of course, see this vulnerability no worse than American lawyers do. When one side understands that the other is not merely fighting against military constraints, but against domestic political time as well, the incentive to make concessions falls sharply.

The US has also found itself in a political deadlock because it failed to turn its campaign against Iran into a broad international coalition. Even among NATO allies and close partners, support proved limited, and to a significant extent, non-military. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte himself acknowledged that some European allies had “failed the test” in the Iran war, while the British leadership separately emphasized that it had not taken part in the strikes, even while offering other forms of support. These signals mean that Washington failed to present its line as unquestionably legitimate and broadly Western. American power works best when it appears not merely as the power of the US, but as the institutional power of an entire bloc. In the case of Iran, this did not happen. And when allies hesitate, the adversary gains an additional sense of time and space.

Inside the US, the situation is no less difficult. The longer the war affects oil prices, gasoline prices, shipping costs, and inflation expectations, the weaker the argument becomes that coercion can deliver peace and stability quickly. Markets are already reacting to the collapse of the talks as a warning of a potentially prolonged energy shock. Reuters reports new nervousness on Gulf stock exchanges and notes that the conflict has already dealt a serious blow to the global economy and pushed oil prices higher. For Trump, this is particularly dangerous for political reasons. His electoral logic has always rested on the image of a leader who lowers costs for the ordinary American, not one who drags the country into an expensive foreign adventure with unpredictable prices at the pump and a new wave of inflation. That is why even the threats to resume strikes now sound more like those of a leader trying to preserve an image of toughness while the material consequences of that toughness are hitting his own political base.

Iran sets the price of de-escalation

Against this backdrop, it is especially important to understand why Iran entered Islamabad with a stronger negotiating position than many had expected at the start of the war. On paper, the US and Israel should have possessed a decisive military advantage. But the political reality of war is often determined by who succeeds in imposing an unfavorable form of conflict on the other side. By closing and effectively controlling the passage through the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran transformed itself from an object of pressure into an actor capable of influencing the global economy almost in real time. Hormuz and the conditions of navigation became one of the central knots in the negotiating deadlock. While the US speaks of freedom of navigation, Iran speaks of control, coordination of passage, and the right to levy charges. This is a dispute over who, after six weeks of war, has the right to define the price of de-escalation. And it is precisely here that Iran has shown that the price for the US is exceedingly high.

No less important is the internal dimension of Iran’s position. AP reports that in Tehran, the collapse of the talks produced a mixture of disappointment and demonstrative resolve, while some public reactions boiled down to the view that Iran should not squander at the negotiating table the gains it has secured on the battlefield. This is a crucial psychological shift. A campaign that, in the design of the US and Israel, was supposed to weaken Iran and perhaps fracture it internally has thus far produced the opposite effect – the consolidation of a significant share of Iranian society around the state and the idea of resisting external pressure. For the authorities in Tehran, this means greater room for a hard line. Iran emerged from this phase of escalation unbroken. And in Middle Eastern politics, that is already half the victory.

The Israeli factor also deserves particular attention. Even setting aside every conspiratorial exaggeration, the open evidence of recent days shows that the Israeli leadership has displayed no real interest in swiftly closing the conflict on terms that would allow Washington and Tehran to move toward a stable compromise. On the contrary, Israel’s line remains maximally hard. Parallel to the Islamabad talks, Israeli strikes in Lebanon continued, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly stressed that the campaign is not over. For Iran, this is a direct signal – even if the Americans are ready to discuss a pause, their closest regional ally and effective co-author of the pressure campaign remains interested in a continued military scenario and does not want Tehran and Washington to stabilize relations. Here the US problem is twofold. First, Tehran does not believe Washington is truly capable of restraining Israeli escalation. Second, even if part of the American establishment would like to stop, it cannot do so without costs in its relationship with Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition. Iran therefore logically proceeds from the worst-case scenario and feels no urgency to yield.

A dead end

In this sense, Islamabad became not a venue for peace, but a mirror reflecting the full contradiction of the American line. On the one hand, the White House threatens new strikes and a naval blockade, and gives ‘final offers’. On the other, the very fact of the two-week ceasefire, Pakistan’s intensive mediation, and the rush to diplomacy show that the US has neither free hands nor a clear exit strategy. After the failure of the talks, AP and Axios reported further hard-line statements from Trump and new American moves around Hormuz. Yet every statement now works in two directions. It may intimidate Iran, but it also reminds everyone that Washington has not achieved the essential goal – it has not broken the will of its adversary, has not reopened the strait on its own terms, has not assembled a full coalition, and has not secured a sustainable diplomatic outcome. In this situation, the threat of force ceases to be an instrument for solving the problem and becomes instead a symptom that fewer and fewer instruments remain.

This is why saying the US is now trapped in a political deadlock is a fairly precise description of the present reality. Continuing the war is dangerous because of law, economics, allies, and internal division. Ending the war on acceptable terms is difficult because Iran does not see itself as the defeated party and is demanding not mercy, but a price. A return to old formulas is impossible because the war has changed the very structure of bargaining. The Trump administration wants to speak at once in the language of coercion and in the language of dealmaking, but after February 28, 2026, these two languages no longer fit together. To Tehran, the American promise of peace appears too reversible, too dependent on domestic political calculation, and too vulnerable to Israeli pressure. This is why the Iranians are demanding more and speaking more harshly. They believe they have paid far too high a price for their current position to exchange it now for yet another set of guarantees that may evaporate at the first new crisis.

What comes next is perhaps the bleakest question of all. Formally, the diplomatic channel has not yet been completely destroyed. Pakistan will clearly try to preserve at least the remnants of a negotiating infrastructure, because it has invested enormous political capital in the present pause. But there is so far no structural basis for a rapid breakthrough. If Trump truly demands that Iran halt its nuclear program, hand over enriched uranium to the American side, and fully reopen Hormuz without substantial reciprocal political guarantees, then that will not be a roadmap to peace, but merely a repetition, in updated language, of the same ultimatum logic that already led to the collapse in Islamabad. Iran, by all appearances, will not accept these terms – which means the risk of the war returning to a hot phase is indeed very high.

Ultimately, this is the principal lesson of Islamabad. The negotiations did not fail because of a single disputed clause, a single harsh remark, or even one sleepless night at the Serena Hotel. They failed because an entire American way of conducting Middle Eastern policy has reached its limit – first apply pressure, then offer compromise from a position of strength, and then wonder why the other side does not believe in the sincerity of the offer. Whatever one thinks of Iranian policy, Iran no longer feels that it is the side obliged to hurry. The US, for all its military power, for the first time in a very long time, looks like the side that is in a hurry. The Islamabad talks were the collapse of the American illusion that it still holds a monopoly over the terms on which wars in the region can be brought to an end.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called opposition leader Peter Magyar and congratulated his Tisza party on its election victory. At the time of the call, Tisza was leading Orban’s Fidesz party by 52% to 39% of the vote.

Magyar dominated pre-election polling, after campaigning on corruption, public services, and restoring ties with the EU. His victory determines not only who governs Hungary, but also how far Budapest resists policy proposals coming from Brussels.

Orban has spent years frustrating the EU with his stance on Russia, sanctions, and military support for Ukraine, making this election a closely watched test for Brussels as well as for Orban’s allies on the international right. Ukraine is also watching – and allegedly interfered in – the vote, as Orban is currently vetoing the EU’s planned €90 billion loan package for Kiev.

Independent polling summarized by AP suggests Tisza entered election day with momentum, though the race was still expected to be tight because of Fidesz’s entrenched rural support and the advantages Orban enjoys from incumbency and Hungary’s electoral system.

Earlier, Magyar wrote off reports that he was planning to instigate post-election riots as “scare stories and lies," after a former Tisza party adviser released a document alleging that Magyar’s EU backers were urging him to declare victory prematurely, and start street-level violence modeled on the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine if the result doesn’t go his way.

LIVE UPDATES HAVE ENDED

The Holy Fire was delivered from Jerusalem to Moscow on Saturday and received at Vnukovo Airport before being used in Orthodox Easter services.

The flame is lit each year on the eve of the holiday inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, at the site associated with the burial of Jesus Christ. The ritual takes place in the Kuvuklia, a chapel built over the tomb, where the Patriarch of Jerusalem enters after prayers and distributes the fire to clergy and pilgrims waiting in the darkened church.

A delegation from the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation transported it to the Russian capital aboard a Roscosmos aircraft after receiving the flame earlier in the day at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The group, led by foundation board chairman Vladimir Yakunin and Metropolitan Feognost, a vicar of Patriarch Kirill, arrived in Israel on April 10 and departed from Ben Gurion Airport following the ceremony, during which Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem prayed alongside clergy and pilgrims.

At Vnukovo Airport, the fire was received by representatives of multiple dioceses before being taken to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

It was used during the Patriarchal night service and later distributed to several dioceses and churches across the capital, including Epiphany Cathedral in Yelokhovo and Znamensky Cathedral on Varvarka Street. The flame will be delivered to regions across the country, allowing worshipers to light candles from it throughout Easter week.

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakanov said the delivery went ahead despite tensions in the Middle East.

“The situation in the Middle East is not simple, but it was important for us to fulfill the mission of delivering the fire, which millions of Orthodox Christians in our country await for the Bright Easter holiday,” he said.

In 2026, concerns were raised that the fire might not appear due to restrictions on access to Jerusalem’s Old City and a more limited format for the ceremony. The failure of the ritual is traditionally viewed by some as a sign of future misfortune.

This year, Easter coincided with Cosmonautics Day on April 12 to commemorate Yuri Gagarin’s first human spaceflight. Patriarch Kirill exchanged greetings with the Russian crew aboard the International Space Station. Roscosmos cosmonauts sent holiday messages from space.

“Our goal is to ignite in the hearts of millions of Russian boys and girls a love for space,” cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev said.

A man has been arrested after breaching security at Ireland’s Shannon Airport and damaging a US military aircraft, in an incident that briefly shut down operations and reignited scrutiny of America’s long-running use of the facility.

Footage circulating online appears to show the intruder climbing onto a US Air Force C-130 Hercules parked on a remote taxiway at the County Clare airport. Some reports said he was wielding an axe, hatchet, or hammer as he struck the aircraft, though police have so far only confirmed an arrest for alleged criminal damage.

According to the Gardai, the suspect, a man in his 40s, entered an unauthorized area of the airport on Saturday morning and was arrested shortly before 11:00 AM under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act. The response involved airport police, Shannon Airport’s fire and rescue service, and Irish defense forces stationed on site.

𝗩𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗢 | A protester breached the airside perimeter at Shannon Airport in Ireland, climbed onto the wing of a parked US Air Force C-130 Hercules and damaged the aircraft with what is believed to be a hammer, temporarily taking it out of service and forcing a brief airport… pic.twitter.com/PD9M9ftkry

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) April 11, 2026

The breach forced Shannon to suspend operations, with two departing flights delayed and an incoming aircraft from Lourdes, France placed in a holding pattern before the airport resumed normal operations at 10:15 AM.

It remains unclear whether the attack was motivated by the US campaign against Iran, but Shannon Airport has seen repeated incursions linked to opposition to the airport’s role as a refueling and transit point for US military traffic.

In a more recent incident in November 2025, three activists reportedly drove a van into a restricted area, approached a parked US military plane, and spray-painted a US Navy Reserve Boeing 737-700, forcing another shutdown. Months earlier, three women were arrested after breaching the perimeter and throwing red paint over a US-linked aircraft.

What will be the consequences for the United States of refraining from taking extreme measures against Iran?

It is too early to say what kind of lasting order, if any, will emerge in the Middle East after the failure of the US and Israel’s campaign against Tehran. Yet the decision to avoid escalation, and ultimately the destruction of an entire civilization, already allows for several conclusions, not only about the region but about the wider trajectory of global politics.

First, the episode once again demonstrates the limits of superpower capabilities when vital interests are not directly at stake. Second, international politics continues to drift in a dangerous direction, where the possibility of a general military catastrophe remains ever present. That drift, moreover, shows no immediate sign of slowing.

Once it became clear that Washington couldn’t break Iran’s resistance or force it to reopen the Strait of Hormuz using conventional means, the US faced a stark choice: retreat or escalate to the nuclear level. The latter was never seriously contemplated, despite the rhetorical threats. The US leadership understood that the stakes simply did not justify such a move.

As a result, the conflict has effectively been brought to a halt on terms favorable to Tehran. For many observers, this amounts to a fiasco for the United States: a failure to defeat a significantly weaker opponent and an inability to shield its Gulf allies, who have suffered from Iranian counterstrikes.

For Washington, in other words, the game was not worth the candle.

This restraint, however, carries consequences. It has become increasingly clear that American “security guarantees” are conditional and limited. The US will not go to any lengths to defend its partners, even those who rely on it most heavily.

This reality extends beyond the Middle East. In Europe, particularly among states along Russia’s western periphery, confidence in unconditional American protection has long been taken for granted. That confidence can no longer be absolute. Countries such as Finland and the Baltic nations have operated under the assumption that the US would always intervene decisively. Recent events suggest otherwise.

There is also a broader political dimension. The current US leadership, under Donald Trump, reflects a mindset in which material interests outweigh abstract considerations of prestige or power. Trump and his circle approach international affairs less as statesmen and more as businessmen.

The potential destruction of Iran would have had far-reaching consequences for the Middle East and the global energy system. Washington is neither prepared for nor interested in such an outcome. Other major powers are drawing their own conclusions from this. China, in particular, has already adapted its approach, and Russia is doing the same, placing emphasis on pragmatic cooperation and mutual benefit in its dealings with the United States.

Looking ahead, this pattern is unlikely to change quickly. Should Trump be succeeded by figures such as J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio, the underlying logic will probably remain intact. These are politicians who are similarly disinclined to sacrifice tangible gains for abstract political objectives.

This trajectory will persist until the US either accepts a diminished global role or finds itself in a far weaker, potentially unstable position. It is precisely at that point, when the costs of inaction begin to outweigh the risks of escalation, that the calculation may change. Only then might the game truly become worth the candle.

And when that moment arrives, the consequences are unlikely to be contained.

This article was first published by the magazine Profile and was translated and edited by the RT team.

A UK jury has found former BBC producer Dylan Dawes guilty of downloading more than 6,000 child porn images.

The verdict was delivered at Cardiff Crown Court on Friday, following a four-day trial. Dawes, who started working for the British public broadcaster in 2001, had pleaded not guilty to the three counts of possessing indecent images and three counts of making indecent images.

Dawes was arrested in 2022 after police officers raided his home and seized computers and storage devices, where they discovered the incriminating material, according to the Daily Express.

“During a period of time of about 16 years between December 31, 2006, and March 1, 2022, the defendant has been downloading child pornography” on four different devices, prosecutor Harry Baker reportedly told the court, adding that 192 of the images were category A – the most egregious kind.

Judge Eugene Egan said the jury found Dawes “guilty on what they found to be absolutely overwhelming evidence,” according to Wales Online.

The former BBC producer will be sentenced on May 14, and must now register as a sex offender.

The British state broadcaster has a growing record of employing and harboring pedophiles in its ranks.

Infamously, the BBC allegedly suppressed complaints about sexual abuse perpetrated by Jimmy Savile, who is believed to have had as many as 450 victims. His crimes came to light after his 2011 death, and while he was never officially prosecuted, the revelations prompted an unprecedented investigation into how the BBC handles internal abuse reports.

“You can pursue a sensible policy… as an EU member only if you are sovereign [as a nation],” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said during his first meeting with journalists from international media outlets this year.

That meeting was quite significant, since Orban laid out his team’s approach to both foreign and domestic policies – an approach that has drawn sharp criticism from the European Commission.

When asked about Hungary’s potential exit from the EU, he said that “EU membership is an important option,” dispelling any notions that he wants the bloc to be dismantled. However, regarding migration, he declared, “Hungary will not accept Brussels deciding who we should live with.”

His reaction to the January 2026 kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by American forces was also noteworthy. Orban called it “a new language... that the world will speak in the future.” Essentially, he acknowledged the erosion of the ‘rules-based order’ – a concept the EU defends to maintain itself as a prominent center for moral and political judgment on global events.

Orban also said, “It makes sense to have optimal relations with other blocs [besides the EU], including America, Russia, China, the Arab and Turkish worlds.”

Naturally, such dictates from Brussels were supposed to be followed by all EU members. Rebellious European politicians were instantly branded ‘pro-Russian’. Orban too fell under this category because of his calls to establish dialogue with Russia.

However, before labeling Orban ‘pro-Russian’, we should delve deeper into Hungary’s political psychology.

Hungary’s three grievances 

The struggle for self-determination is deeply rooted in the mindset of the Hungarian political class. Following the collapse of the socialist bloc, for the first time in centuries Budapest had a real opportunity to pursue an independent policy. 

Hungary’s historical worldview stems from the fact that in the 20th century, its fate was determined by external powers in three instances. This has significantly shaped the psychology of today’s politicians: They understand that, in decisive moments, Hungary might not have any allies. 

The first example occurred in 1920, when the Treaty of Trianon was signed at the end of the First World War. The victorious countries – Britain, Italy, France, and the United States – effectively dismembered Hungary, stripping away about two-thirds of its territory in favor of neighbors like Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Austria. A portion of Hungary’s historical lands later became part of Ukraine.

The second time, the fate of Hungary was shaped by the USSR, the US, and the UK at the Yalta Conference following the Second World War. Budapest then became part of the socialist bloc. 

In 1956, Hungary attempted to assert its own path through an uprising, which was crushed by Soviet forces. The memory of this event remains significant in the context of modern relations between Russia and Hungary.

Orban is well aware of these historical events and understands that during times of great upheaval, more powerful neighbors can easily disregard the will of Hungarians – a reality Hungary has faced repeatedly. He knows all too well what can happen to smaller countries when military tensions arise in Europe.

This is why Orban pushes for a resolution of the conflict in Ukraine. His primary aim is to douse the flames of conflict, even if extinguishing them at their source is no longer possible. If engaging in dialogue with Russia is necessary for this, then that’s what he intends to do. This pragmatic approach, rather than any ‘pro-Russian’ sentiment, likely underpins his foreign policy. 

In 2023, Orban noted that Hungary had not forgotten the lessons of 1956. “[Hungary] looks beyond its borders with only one thought: the most important thing is that Hungary should not share a border with Russia… Hungary’s interest is that there should always be a territory controlled by another state between it and Russia,” Orban said, commenting on how he envisions Ukraine’s future borders after the conflict.

Hungary’s reluctance to form allied relations with Russia is evident. Since opting for a European path after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Hungary has never questioned this choice. Orban openly declares that being part of the EU provides certain benefits, despite the fact that Brussels freezes some funds intended for Budapest due to the latter’s stance on various national security issues, such as migrants and the activities of foreign media and NGOs.

The Hungarian government approaches its relationship with Moscow largely through the lens of benefits and practicality. Budapest has consistently maintained that sanctions are detrimental to the European economy (though it also voted for them), opposed stringent EU measures against Russia (while condemning its military operation), and criticized European foreign policy (without actively countering it, at least until oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline were halted).

Hungary also finds value in its energy ties with Russia (e.g. Russian energy resources and the Paks II nuclear power plant project involving Russian specialists). This prompts Budapest to advocate for exemptions from sanctions, so it can continue accessing affordable Russian resources.

This somewhat resembles Russia’s approach. Russia also sold gas to Europe not out of altruism, but because this benefited Moscow. However, this does not make Russia’s policy pro-European or Hungary’s position pro-Russian.

Profit, however, turns countries into partners rather than allies, and it’s essential to understand this distinction clearly. This also aligns with Russia’s strategy. While Moscow had once aspired to forge allied relations with Europe, these attempts have not succeeded. Nevertheless, for a long time, Russia was willing to maintain partnerships that could facilitate strong foreign policy ties on various issues, including security concerns.

Hungary, like Slovakia, has opted for a path of partnership with Moscow, but its ability to fully implement this policy is hampered by Brussels’ anti-Russia rhetoric. The European Commission labels this pragmatic and measured approach as ‘pro-Russian’; however, it would be more accurately described as friendly and rational.

On April 12, Hungary will hold parliamentary elections that will put this rationality to the test. Orban faces a challenging campaign, as the entire European bureaucratic machine appears to be working against him. In fact, Hungarian voters will decide not only the direction of Hungary’s domestic policy but will also determine whether Budapest remains a dialogue partner for Moscow. This election will be significant for both Budapest and Brussels. Meanwhile, observers in Moscow can only watch the developments in Hungary, hoping that regardless of the government that comes to power, Budapest will remain focused on swiftly resolving the Ukraine conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lashed out at Spain over what he described as repeated opposition to Israel and the “defaming” of the military after Madrid slammed the IDF over the recent strikes in Lebanon.

In a video address on Friday, Netanyahu said he ordered Spain’s expulsion from the US-backed coordination center in Kiryat Gat that oversees the Gaza ceasefire, calling it punishment for opposing Israel.

“Israel will not remain silent in the face of those who attack us. Spain has defamed our heroes, IDF soldiers – the soldiers of the most moral army in the world,” Netanyahu said. “Spain has chosen repeatedly to stand against Israel… I do not intend to allow any country to wage a diplomatic war against us without paying an immediate price.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

“Israel will not remain silent in the face of those who attack us.

Spain has defamed our heroes, the soldiers of the IDF, the soldiers of the most moral army in the world.

1/4 pic.twitter.com/c95fTDNXkW

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) April 10, 2026

Spanish officials, including Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, have been among the most vocal critics of the US-Israeli war against Iran, warning that further escalation would bring severe humanitarian and economic consequences. Last month, Spain closed its airspace to US aircraft linked to the war and permanently withdrew its ambassador from Israel, downgrading ties.

The strikes – called ‘Operation Eternal Darkness’ – lasted ten minutes, but are considered the most intense aerial assault since the broader US-Israel war against Iran began on February 28. The IDF said it hit around 100 Hezbollah targets and killed over 180 militants. The Lebanese authorities said at least 357 people, mostly civilians, were killed and more than 1,223 were wounded.

Following the strikes, Sanchez slammed Netanyahu’s “contempt for life and international law,” calling it “intolerable” and urging Brussels to suspend the EU association agreement with Israel. Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares echoed the criticism, calling the strikes a “shame for the conscience of humanity” and accusing the IDF of “indiscriminate bombings” targeting civilians under the guise of fighting Hezbollah.

Senior Iranian and US negotiators are in Islamabad for what Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called a “make-or-break moment” to turn the fragile ceasefire into a broader deal.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, leading Tehran’s delegation, said he arrived with goodwill tempered by deep mistrust, noting that the US attacked Iran “twice within less than a year” during negotiations. US Vice President J.D. Vance, leading the American team, said he expects productive talks but warned Iran not to “play” the US.

Washington has agreed to release frozen Iranian assets held in Qatar and other foreign jurisdictions, a move seen as a sign of “seriousness” in reaching a deal between the US and the Islamic Republic, Reuters reported on Saturday, citing a senior Iranian source. Negotiators from both countries have arrived in Pakistan for talks.

High-level Iranian and US delegations arrived in Islamabad on Saturday to continue negotiations on a proposed peace framework. Some elements of the plan have been circulated in media reports, although no official details have been released by either side.

Unfreezing the assets is “directly linked to ensuring safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz”, a key issue in the talks, an unnamed official told the news agency. The source did not disclose the amount, while a second Iranian official said the US was ready to release $6 billion held in Qatar.

However, CBS News reported, citing a senior US official, that the White House hasn’t agreed to authorize release of the funds.

The exact value of Iran’s frozen assets remains unclear, though by some estimates the figure exceeds $100 billion. It includes funds immobilized directly in the US, assets restricted abroad, oil revenues in escrow, and central bank reserves blocked due to US secondary sanctions.

However, following the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Iranian ally Hamas, the administration of then-President Joe Biden re-froze the funds, stating that Iran wouldn’t be able to access the money for the foreseeable future and that Washington retained the right to fully block the account.

The funds, originally frozen in 2018, stem from Iranian oil sales to South Korea and had been held in South Korean banks after President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions on Iran and withdrew from the nuclear deal during his first term in office.

“My daughter is sleeping in the ICU of a hospital in Mohakhali, Dhaka and I have been in the queue at the Trust filling station since 1:30 AM. It is now a quarter to three... If I cannot get fuel, I will leave the bike on the road and just walk away. I do not have the strength left in my body to push this bike all the way to the hospital.”

A Bangladeshi journalist posted this on social media – one more voice in the flood of similar posts over the past few weeks as the energy crisis triggered by the Iran war has swept across the nation of 177 million people. The post was later updated to say that the man finally received 5 liters of fuel at 6:50 AM.

Social media is now full of images of long lines at gas pumps across Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and the situation is reportedly even more acute in other parts of the South Asian nation hit by severe energy crisis triggered by the conflict in the Middle East.

Thousands of fishermen across Barishal, the country’s southernmost division, have been passing idle days and suffering financial losses as most fishing trawlers remain tied up at the docks amid the ongoing fuel shortage. More than 1,000 seagoing trawlers are stranded in Alipur and Mohipur in Barishal, leaving over 100,000 fishermen and workers out of work.

Pritam Das, the owner of two trawlers that have been docked at Mohipur river port since Eid-ul-Fitr, a major religious festival in the Muslim-majority nation, said each vessel needs around 14 barrels of fuel per trip, but they have not been able to collect any fuel from dealers. The crisis has also significantly disrupted the supply of fish in local markets.

Although a fuel crisis is visible at gas pumps across the country, including in the capital, Dhaka, amid the Iran war, the government maintains that there is no fuel shortage.

While early March shortages were aggravated by the Eid holiday banking shutdown, which disrupted supply chains and delayed payments and deliveries, fuel distribution remains irregular even after the holiday: Stocks are limited, sales are capped, lines are long, and pressure on filling stations continues as demand still exceeds supply in Bangladesh.

New government, mounting challenge

Since the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) assumed power in Bangladesh last February, it has been grappling with a mounting fuel crisis that continues to pose a serious challenge for the new government. 

Despite assurances and policy efforts, supply disruptions, panic buying, and market irregularities have made the situation difficult to control, highlighting the government’s struggle to stabilize the energy sector and restore public confidence. 

In response to the ongoing fuel challenges, the new government has introduced a series of measures aimed at stabilizing supply while minimizing economic disruption.

The authorities have decided that shopping malls are to remain open until 7:00 PM – as a number of power plants in Bangladesh run on fuel. At the same time, officials have assured the public that the country is working to build sufficient fuel reserves, with plans to maintain a buffer stock for up to three months to ensure supply stability and meet rising demand, particularly during the peak agricultural season. 

“If we can reduce traffic on the roads and introduce a rationing system for fuel, it will help conserve fuel. That is why we are thinking of bringing schools in metropolitan cities – where traffic pressure is high – under an online-offline system,” Education Minister ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milon said.

Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Iqbal Hassan Mahmood Tuku said this week that the country has adequate supplies of fuel, while stating that he would continue the nationwide drive against illegal fuel hoarders.

“The country so far has no fuel shortage and has enough stock of all sorts of fuel including petrol, octane and diesel while a geopolitical instability is prevailing in the Middle East,” he stated.

Zahed Ur Rahman, an adviser to the prime minister, admitted that there is a slight shortage in fuel supplies, though he reiterated that the situation remains under control as the government works to ease pressure. “Operations have been intensified to prevent illegal hoarding and smuggling of fuel,” he said.

Local experts maintain that the ongoing fuel strain is unlikely to ease anytime soon, as global supply uncertainty and mounting domestic demand continue to put pressure on the country’s energy supply chain.

With no clear end to the Middle East conflict – despite the announced ceasefire and ongoing talks in Islamabad – concerns are growing over shipment delays, particularly for April, when only a limited number of planned consignments have been confirmed so far. In the coming weeks, supply is likely to remain manageable if imports arrive on schedule and demand does not spike further.

Supply vs stock: The real constraint

As of April 7, the total stock of octane and gasoline stood at 10,500 tons and 16,000 tones respectively, enough to meet demand for 9-11 days, according to the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC). For April, around 110,000 tons of diesel imports have been confirmed and another 60,000 tons is in the pipeline, according to BPC data. In addition, existing depot stock stands at around 130,000 tons.

This suggests a total available supply of around 300,000 tons, or 86% of typical monthly demand.

In Bangladesh, the government has begun rationing fuel to avoid a shortage, as the country meets 95% of its oil and 30% of its gas requirements through imports.

Energy-sector analysts predict that electricity supply in the country could be affected in the coming summer season, as many power plants are likely to remain underutilized due to shortages of gas, coal, and furnace oil. Around 40% of overall capacity is expected to remain idle during peak demand from 7:00 to 9:00 PM. 

Out of the total 12,204 megawatts (MW) of gas‑fired capacity, the Bangladesh Power Development Board – the state‑owned agency responsible for planning and developing the nation’s power infrastructure – will be able to use at best about 5,200 MW, leaving nearly 7,000 MW offline.

Gas shortages have already forced five of the country’s six fertilizer factories to remain shut since March.

The country will have to rely heavily on coal‑fired power plants and furnace oil for electricity generation, as it has installed only 1,059 MW of renewable capacity – just 3.7% of total demand – with 757 MW from solar, 230 MW from hydro, and 62 MW from wind.

Hunting for fuel worldwide

As geopolitical tensions escalate, the government of Bangladesh is moving to diversify fuel imports as traditional shipping routes face disruption. Dhaka has requested a sanctions waiver from the US so that the country can purchase refined fuel from Russia without repercussions. At the same time, officials are negotiating with a range of countries across Asia, Africa, and beyond to diversify fuel sources.

According to the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, Dhaka wrote to Washington in March, requesting permission to import up to 6,00,000 tonnes of refined fuel from Russia, or alternatively, to obtain a waiver for at least two months. Officials did not provide details on the procurement mechanism, including whether shipments would come directly from Russia or a third country.

Dhaka has also been trying to secure additional supplies from regional partners. Officials said India earlier committed to supplying around 60,000 tons of diesel from January to June under an existing arrangement. So far, Bangladesh has received three consignments of 5,000 tons each through the India-Bangladesh pipeline and another shipment of 7,000 tons via the sea route, bringing the total diesel imports from India to roughly 22,000 tons.

The authorities have also reached out to Iran to explore possible shipment arrangements, though logistical and security complications remain.

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has yet to recover in any meaningful way despite the US-Iran ceasefire. Iran previously listed Bangladesh as a ‘friendly nation’, and indicated that Bangladeshi vessels may be allowed safe passage through the strait. In reality, however, vessel movements still hinge on how the talks in Islamabad proceed.

Officials said they have examined several alternatives, but many have proven economically unviable, noting that “all procurement decisions must ultimately be economically viable.” The search for new suppliers has also become harder, as some traditional exporters are adding surcharges on top of already surging oil prices. For now, the government can secure supplies for the immediate future, the ministry spokesperson said, urging people not to panic, but officials cautioned that it is too early to predict supply conditions for May and June, even though plans are in place to build a three-month fuel reserve.

A man accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the home of Open AI CEO Sam Altman allegedly plotted to kill him and other AI executives, believing the technology poses a threat to humanity, prosecutors have said. 

Daniel Moreno-Gama, 20, faces state charges in California including two counts of attempted murder of Altman and his security guard, according to San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. 

He also faces federal charges of attempted destruction of property using explosives, and possession of an unregistered firearm, according to a press release issued on Tuesday by the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California.  

Prosecutors allege Morena-Gama traveled from Texas to San Francisco “in order to kill the CEO of a major Artificial Intelligence company.” 

The attack took place early on Friday, when the suspect allegedly threw an incendiary device at Altman’s residence, setting fire to an exterior gate before fleeing. Less than an hour later, he reportedly went to OpenAI’s headquarters and attempted to break in, threatening to burn the building and “kill anyone inside,” according to the federal complaint. 

Surveillance images allegedly show Moreno-Gama throwing the Molotov cocktail and later being approached by security while carrying a container of kerosene. 

Police arrested him at the scene, recovering additional incendiary devices, a jug of kerosene, and a written document. The text, titled ‘Your Last Warning’, advocated violence against AI executives and listed names and addresses of industry figures, prosecutors said. It also allegedly included an admission that he had attempted to kill the Altman and called on others to follow suit. 

I wrote this early this morning and I wasn't sure if I would actually publish it, but here it is:https://t.co/7Dw9UFpeep

— Sam Altman (@sama) April 10, 2026

Federal officials said the investigation is ongoing and warned the case could be treated as domestic terrorism if evidence shows the suspect sought to influence public policy through violence. 

Separate state charges of attempted murder and attempted arson could carry a sentence ranging from 19 years to life in prison, according to prosecutors. 

The attack comes amid mounting scrutiny of OpenAI over its government contracts and broader concerns about the impact of AI.

Altman addressed the situation in a blog post, sharing a photo of his family and expressing hope that “images have power” and might help deter similar attacks.

He added that he “underestimated the power of words and narratives,” noting that the incident came days after “an incendiary article” about him and his company, likely referring to a New Yorker investigation detailing allegations of deception and safety failings at OpenAI, as well as scrutiny over its recent $50 billion Pentagon deal.

Altman said he initially brushed aside the concerns, but the attack prompted him to rethink his views. He outlined broader reflections on AI and regulation, calling for “the rhetoric and tactics” to be de-escalated. He described fears regarding AI as “justified” and stressed the need to “get safety right,” while arguing that it must be “democratized.”

In a case set to go to trial later this month, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and Altman, alleging that the CEO “manipulated” him into donating $38 million on promises that the company would remain a nonprofit. Musk, a co-founder who left in 2018, is seeking Altman’s removal.

OpenAI’s headquarters has been targeted before by protesters. Last month, activists opposing the Pentagon deal wrote messages in chalk outside the building, including: “Technology in service of humanity, not war,” “No AI surveillance state,” and “Is it time to quit?” Last February, police arrested five demonstrators who blocked the entrance as part of a protest by the group Stop AI.

Iran and the US could still reach a peace agreement as long as the “American government abandons its totalitarianism,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has stated.

His remark on X came hours after US President Donald Trump declared that the US Navy would immediately begin a “blockade” of the Strait of Hormuz, following talks in Islamabad that ended in an impasse. He accused Tehran of extortion, referring to the fees charged to vessels seeking to traverse the strategically vital waterway.

“I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran,” the US president stated on Truth Social, threatening not to deny “safe passage” to ships that have complied with Iranian requirements.

According to Trump, the US Navy will also begin a minesweeping operation in the strategically important waterway, threatening to destroy vessels obstructing the effort. Tehran, for its part, has insisted that any attempts by enemy warships to operate in the strait will be met with force.

US Vice President J.D. Vance, who led the US delegation during the failed Islamabad negotiations, said on Sunday that Iran had “chosen not to accept our terms.” 

A source close to the Iranian delegation told Fars that Washington was “looking for an excuse” to walk away, adding that Tehran refused the US conditions on the Strait of Hormuz, peaceful nuclear energy, and other core issues, and added that Iran has no plans for further talks.

Commenting on the failed talks in Islamabad, Trump claimed that the Iranian negotiators “were very unyielding” on uranium enrichment, the “single most important issue” to the US.

Key developments:

• US Vice President J.D. Vance, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and the rest of the US negotiating team have left Pakistan, according to media reports. 

• The IDF has been instructed to assume a “heightened state of readiness” in anticipation of a resumption of the hostilities, Israeli media reports. 

• Trump has said he ordered the US Navy to remove Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM earlier announced that the US Navy destroyers USS Frank E. Petersen and USS Michael Murphy crossed the waterway and operated in the Arabian Gulf as part of the mission.
  
  

• Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari has denied US claims of a minesweeping operation in Hormuz, insisting that any vessel seeking to pass through the key waterway requires permission from the Iranian armed forces.

Follow our live coverage below for continuous updates. You can also read our previous updates here.

NASA’s Artemis II astronauts have safely returned to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California and closing out the first crewed journey around the Moon in more than half a century.

The mission marks NASA’s first crewed Artemis flight and the first time people have traveled beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Aboard the Orion spacecraft were Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

Launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1, the four-person crew spent around ten days testing the spacecraft and its systems on a lunar flyby designed to help pave the way for future missions.

During the mission, Artemis II set a new distance record for human spaceflight, with NASA saying the crew surpassed the mark set by Apollo 13.

Orion's main parachute has deployed. The spacecraft has a system of 11 chutes that will slow it down from around 300 mph to 20 mph for splashdown.

Get more updates on the Artemis II blog: https://t.co/7gicm7DWBt pic.twitter.com/ReXHTfkFld

— NASA (@NASA) April 11, 2026

The astronauts also conducted a high-profile flyby of the Moon’s far side and captured dramatic images of the Moon and Earth during the return leg.

Artemis II may have splashed down, but our photos and videos from the mission are still rolling in! Keep an eye on the latest: https://t.co/rzM1P0QbOl pic.twitter.com/HahXb0gCYC

— NASA (@NASA) April 11, 2026

The final descent was among the most critical phases of the flight. Orion hit Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speed, endured extreme heating during reentry, then slowed under parachutes before splashing down.

The crew module on Orion has separated from its service module. After traveling around the Moon, seeing its far side, and experiencing a solar eclipse, the Artemis II astronauts are on the last leg of their trip home. pic.twitter.com/j9u5j1Noi9

— NASA (@NASA) April 10, 2026

NASA and US Navy recovery teams were positioned to retrieve the spacecraft and crew after landing.

After a journey of more than 690,000 miles, the crew is nearly home.

The Artemis II crew will splash down off the coast of San Diego later today and, though it won’t be visible from land, you can still wave in their general direction to welcome them back to Earth! 👋 pic.twitter.com/ZZX23QCTpb

— NASA (@NASA) April 10, 2026

Artemis II did not land on the Moon, but NASA described it as a crucial test of the systems needed to send astronauts farther into deep space and eventually back to the Moon.

The mission’s results are expected to shape the next steps in the Artemis campaign, including future crewed lunar operations.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with the head of Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), on Friday and stressed that no global changes would stop “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” including its people across the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan became a de facto self-governed territory after Chinese nationalist forces lost in the civil war against the communists and fled to the island in 1949. Beijing considers Taiwan an inalienable part of its territory under the One China principle, which the overwhelming majority of UN member states adhere to.

The opposition leader arrived on the mainland on Tuesday at Xi’s invitation. Taiwan’s ruling DPP condemned the visit, but Cheng Li-wun described it as a peace-building mission – the first event of the kind in a decade.

“We welcome any proposals conducive to the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and will spare no effort to advance any endeavors that promote such development,” Xi said in a speech at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, adding that forces promoting “Taiwan independence” are the primary instigators of tensions in the region.

“No matter how the international landscape and the situation across the Taiwan Strait may evolve, the overarching trend toward the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will not change,” Xi said.

Cheng’s rapprochement visit comes ahead of an expected summit between Xi and US President Donald Trump, which was earlier postponed due to the Iran war.

They may appear to be innocuous – even elegant – on the landscape as they collect power from the currents, but wind turbines have their own set of problems that environmentalists wish to ignore due to their eco-virtue-signaling.

As environmentalists look at a sprawling field of wind turbines as ‘good for the environment’ – unlike giant smokestacks on the horizon emitting noxious greenhouse gases into the air – the dangers inherent to wind energy are mostly invisible from a distance. Take a closer look, however, and it becomes quickly apparent that wind farms come with their own high cost to the environment and our health.

In a new report, it has been estimated that close to a million balsa hardwood trees are being illegally logged in the Amazon rainforest every year to support the hefty demand for wind turbines around the world. Balsa is a lightweight but durable wood that is regularly used in the production of the massive turbine blades. Each set of three blades requires up to 40 trees to produce.

Balsa is a relatively rapid-growing tropical wood and until the mounting demand from turbines began, it was safely harvested in sustainable plantations. But since a few short decades ago, the harvest could no longer keep up with demand as the clear-cutting of this precious commodity surges. In a critical survey, the Environment Investigation Agency (EIA) found that exports were increased by up to 50% following illegal logging in virgin rainforests.

In 2020, it was reported that over 20,000 balsa trees were illegally cut down from March to September in the Achuar indigenous territory along Ecuador’s Copataza River. Ecuador produces over 90% of the balsa in the world, with annual exports averaging 56,000 tons from 2013 to 2022. Other studies point to excessive illegal logging, with some estimates noting the removal of 75% of the trees in some areas.

“These inefficient, unreliable, unsightly monsters require a large footprint on land and sea, kill millions of bats, decimate raptor populations, sweep the air of quadrillions of insects and alter local ecology on both land and sea,” Chris Morrison of The Daily Sceptic writes. “Nobody would install one in a free market, so they require vast financial subsidies to produce expensive electricity.”

Another problem arises from the waste derived from these monstrosities. Wind turbines have a life expectancy of just 20 to 30 years, at which point they must be disassembled and hauled away (compare that to the lengthy life span of a coal-burning plant). When they are put out of commission, the towers and nacelles contain recyclable metals like steel, zinc, and copper. For the massive blades, which are about the size of a Boeing 747 wing, it’s a different story. Most are constructed from fiberglass-reinforced composites that are difficult and expensive to recycle, and many end up in garbage dumps.

Others point to the disruption of scenic landscapes – “industrialization of the countryside” as it has been called – that comes with sprawling wind farms. Some wind farms are opposed for potentially spoiling protected scenic areas, archaeological landscapes, and heritage sites. A 2017 report by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland concluded that wind farms harmed tourism in areas known for natural landscapes and panoramic views.

As the author pointed out, “our hills and wild places are small and finite. They deserve better than yet another short-term wave of degradation and exploitation... to produce profit for often-distant companies and shareholders.”

That sounds like an appropriate epitaph for this questionable energy source that falls far short of its myriad promises.

American journalist Tucker Carlson has said an Israeli strike targeting RT correspondent Steve Sweeney in Lebanon was an “attempted assassination,” as he spoke with the reporter about the attack and his work in conflict zones.

Sweeney and cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity were injured last month when an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at their filming position near the Al-Qasmiya Bridge in southern Lebanon, close to a local army base. The crew, who were wearing clearly marked press gear, said the jet “deliberately attacked” them, with Rida’s camera capturing the moment the blast struck less than 10 meters behind Sweeney as he ducked for cover.

In the interview, released by Carlson on Friday, he told viewers that the strike was “an attempted assassination.” Sweeney said they “were incredibly lucky to come out of that situation alive.”

Sweeney said the munition, which he identified as a GBU-38 bomb fired from an F-16 fighter jet, passed through a hole in the bridge which was already destroyed, arguing that there was “no military objective” in striking it again. He described the attack as “an assassination attempt by Israel to silence the voices on the ground, to silence the truth.”

“I have complete freedom to report exactly what I want, and nobody tells me what to say,” Sweeney said regarding his work at RT. He noted that RT is banned in the US and EU, while Western broadcasters are still allowed to operate and question officials inside Russia.

Sweeney told Carlson that despite the near-fatal strike in Lebanon, he has “no intention of leaving” the country or stopping his work.

There is a time for goodbye – and a time for reunion.

When foreign companies beat a hasty retreat from Russia in 2022 amid the Ukraine conflict, they framed their departures as a moral necessity.

In truth, for many, it was a costly act of panic: Abrupt, politically driven, and strategically short-sighted.

Now, as the global business climate is tempered by a more sober reality, the moment has come for foreign multinationals to reconsider – true to the old wisdom that illness is best treated early, before it turns chronic.

Returning to Russia is not merely an opportunity for commercial redemption; it is a strategic imperative for those seeking long-term relevance in one of the world’s most critical markets – and an exceptional opportunity for first-time entrants far-sighted and bold enough to seize it.

The Great Exodus: Wandering into the commercial desert

In the aftermath of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine, hundreds of multinational corporations suspended or terminated their operations in Russia, while the smarter ones chose to stay.

Household names in consumer goods, automotive, retail, and food service exited with dramatic announcements, citing reputational concerns, stakeholder pressure, or political uncertainty.

Yet the consequences were severe.

For a host of companies, departure meant surrendering years – sometimes decades – of investment in market development, infrastructure, local partnerships, and customer loyalty.

Businesses sold assets at steep discounts, abandoned supply chains and sales networks painstakingly built over extended periods, and ceded market share to domestic competitors or foreign rivals eager to fill the vacuum. In doing so, they consigned themselves to navigating a diminished global business landscape of their own making. McDonald’s offers a vivid example.

In 1990, the iconic burger chain became the first US fast-food chain to establish a presence in the Soviet Union. It soon grew into one of Russia’s most prestigious employers, while its restaurants became landmark venues for family celebrations and even wedding feasts.

When McDonald’s precipitously concluded that operating in Russia no longer aligned with its values, it left behind 850 restaurants and 62,000 jobs across the country. The withdrawal meant abandoning a market that, together with Ukraine, had generated around 9% of its global revenues and cost McDonald’s an estimated $1.2-$1.4 billion in earnings charges. Yet the greater loss was strategic.

Business systems cannot simply be reassembled by flipping a switch. Once forfeited, rebuilding market position is path-dependent: With capabilities dismantled, local replacements rooted, and habits transformed, the business must be reconstituted from scratch.

Russia also had to absorb costs. Consumers were deprived of familiar brands, workers lost jobs, and sectors dependent on foreign expertise faced disruption. But the market void proved short-lived.

Russian companies swiftly adapted and claimed the ground multinationals abandoned, giving rise to a new generation of domestic businesses – stronger, more confident, and politically ascendant.

McDonald’s former Russian business now operates successfully under the domestic brand Vkusno i Tochka, created by Aleksandr Govor, a Siberian entrepreneur who took over its assets in 2022. He stands as a powerful new incumbent with whom McDonald’s must first come to terms before returning to Russia.

The Great Return: Reentering the land of commercial promise

For multinational corporations, the strategic rationale for return is compelling.

Companies owe their duties not to political fashion, but to their stakeholders at home and abroad: Shareholders seeking profit, employees seeking security, customers seeking choice, and host countries that enabled their growth.

Russia remains a major, geoeconomically pivotal economy with vast natural resources, abundant human capital, solid industrial capacity, and substantial consumer demand.

Those who return now can still gain an early mover advantage.

The first wave of returners will enjoy the best chance to reclaim valuable lost ground before markets become permanently reorganized and definitively occupied by domestic and foreign rivals alike. Delay carries a heavy price: Every quarter spent waiting strengthens competitors and weakens the returning company’s negotiating leverage.

Business history offers countless examples of late returners paying more for re-entry than they saved by leaving. In commerce, as in life, reconciliation is easiest before distance hardens into permanence.

The rallying cry, then, is unmistakenly clear: Better late than never, but earlier is always better – for in medicine no less than in business, the sooner the diagnosis and intervention, the surer the cure.

After apartheid ended, South Africa chose reconciliation over retribution through its Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established in 1995 under the leadership of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and backed by prisoner-turned-President Nelson Mandela.

Rather than pursuing blanket punishment, the TRC created a structured process through which perpetrators of politically motivated abuses could receive amnesty if they fully disclosed their actions and accepted responsibility.

Its success rested on several factors: Differentiation between degrees of responsibility, public acknowledgment of harm, conditional forgiveness, and a forward-looking commitment to national rebuilding.

The benefits proved significant: The strife-torn country created a moral basis for coexistence, enabled peaceful reintegration, and avoided cycles of revenge. Inevitably, however, the undertaking also had drawbacks, including perceptions that some offenders escaped full justice and that material reparations were uneven.

Russia, which can prosper without foreign companies yet stands to gain from their presence, can draw on South Africa’s example by pioneering a Commercial Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CTRC).

Rules for Russia: Reconciliation, not retribution

Russia should manage the return of foreign companies with pragmatism, not resentment, applying in business what South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation model achieved in politics: Distinguish degrees of responsibility, document harm honestly, and favor constructive reintegration over vengeance.

First, Russia should craft and institute an innovative, differentiated integration approach.

Not all departing companies acted alike. Some, administered by technocrats, withdrew reluctantly under pressure from governments, media, financiers, or activist shareholders. Others, driven by ideologues, embraced overt, dogmatic hostility toward Russia. They harmed Russian stakeholders by failing to honor financial obligations, such as employee payments, and product commitments, such as spare-parts supply. These cases should not be treated identically.

Companies that exited without inflammatory rhetoric and preserved respectful relations with Russian partners – the ‘benign penitents’ – should qualify for fast-track reintegration: Broad amnesty, formal ‘homecomer’ status (a symbolic recognition for constructive re-engagement) and expedited approvals. A dedicated one-stop ‘Corporate Welcome Center’ (CWC) could seamlessly oversee and streamline the entire reintegration process.

For more hostile, Russia-phobic actors, forgiveness should still prevail – but clemency must be conditional upon acceptance of responsibility. Companies that inflicted deliberate political and economic damage should remain eligible for rehabilitation and return under the auspices of the CWC.

Reentry, however, should only be permitted after documented review of the harm occasioned and appropriate compensation or restitution whenever warranted. As in South Africa, the goal should be not punishment for its own sake, but the careful balancing of accountability with pragmatic reintegration under a stable framework.

Second, Russia must also involve domestic buyers who acquired foreign assets. These companies helped stabilize the economy during disruption and deserve a decisive role in shaping future win-win arrangements, whether through licensing deals, reciprocal market-access agreements, or joint ventures.

Third, Russia should consolidate and deepen the economic and technological gains achieved since 2022. In particular, efforts aimed at building critical domestic capacity to bolster strategic resilience must continue. Reentry should strengthen the system, not recreate past dependencies, especially in vital sectors such as pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and aviation.

The leaders of returning companies, for their part, must recognize that reentry requires a fundamentally different bearing. They must embrace a novel business philosophy and radically rethink how they engage with Russia. Early intervention yields the best outcomes.

First: Discard ideology. Markets are built on commercial logic, not political hysteria. Russia is too important to be treated as a temporary moral theater.

Second: Return with humility. Companies that departed – especially abruptly, and in a time of crisis – have damaged trust. Rebuilding credibility requires genuine contrition, candid acknowledgment of fault, patient long-term commitment, and sincere respect toward Russian workers, consumers, and institutions.

Third: Create mutual benefit. The homecoming should neither be motivated by self-centered, profit-driven opportunism nor be cloaked in self-congratulatory gestures of corporate charity, but embody an authentic partnership centered on reciprocal gain.

Foreign companies that invest in technology transfer, local production, workforce training, and export collaboration will garner a warmer reception than those seeking only quick profits.

Truth and Reconciliation 2.0: Reunion, not reversal

The Romans put it plainly: A certain friend is discerned in uncertain times.

After the initial rupture of friendship, the story of foreign business in Russia is no longer one of departure. It is now a test of whether companies from abroad possess the strategic maturity to recognize their mistakes and appreciate the new realities – at a moment when truth and reconciliation are wiser than self-deluding, ruinously stubborn absence and estrangement.

The way back to Russia’s commercial promised land is invitingly open, and those who enter first will reap the richest harvest. By contrast, as every physician knows, delay is rarely the ally of recovery and only narrows the path to cure.

There is a time for goodbye. And there is a time for reunion.

For foreign multinationals seeking moral redemption and corporate rebirth, that time is now.

Dobro pozhalovat to the pascal land of milk, honey – and market share.

A recently analyzed 250 million-year-old fossil has shown that early mammals laid eggs, according to a paper published in the PLOS One journal on Thursday.

While some examples of egg-laying mammals exist today, such as the platypus and the echidnas, scientists have spent decades looking for proof of this in earlier ancestors.

According to South African Professor Jennifer Botha, one of the scientists behind the breakthrough research, the fossil was discovered in 2008, but could not be analyzed for years without cutting-edge and delicate scanning methods.

“It became clear that it was a perfectly curled-up Lystrosaurus hatchling. I suspected even then that it had died within the egg, but at the time, we simply didn’t have the technology to confirm it,” she said in a statement cited by phys.org.

With the use of advanced synchrotron X-ray CT scanning, which uses a particle accelerator to create extremely high-resolution non-destructive 3D images, the delicate fossil could be studied in depth.

Lystrosaurus was a herbivorous mammal ancestor which survived and then thrived in the tumultuous period after the End-Permian Mass Extinction around 252 million years ago, which is believed to have wiped out up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of land vertebrates on Earth. The catastrophe is theorized to have been caused by massive volcanic eruptions and resulting coal burning, which caused rapid global warming, and left a world of extreme heat and environmental instability.

Judging by the development and properties of the hatchling, the Lystrosaurus likely did not produce milk but laid large eggs, which are more resistant to drying out in a hot, arid environment, according to Botha’s Witwatersrand University.

Its young likely hatched at an advanced stage of development, ready to feed themselves and thrive in the hostile world following the worst extinction event in history.

Viktor Orban will most likely win the upcoming parliamentary elections in Hungary on April 12; however, for the ruling party, this will be an extremely difficult and hard-fought victory.

The issue is not the loss of charisma by the bright and skillful long-standing leader of Fidesz, nor even the 25% inflation the country experienced in 2023, but rather a shift in the focus of Hungarians’ historical memory. A new generation has grown up within a different historical paradigm and wants a change in political reality, even if this entails foreign-policy and reputational risks for the country.

Walking through the streets of Budapest these days, one gets the sense of two political realities coexisting. In one, there are blue billboards of the ruling Fidesz party with slogans like “Stop war!”, featuring the faces of opponents and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky labeled as a “danger.” In the other, there are rallies of the Tisza party, without party bureaucratic elites but featuring young people in Hungarian national dress carrying EU flags, with photos of the party’s young leader displayed on the hills of Buda. Budapest, like other Hungarian cities, is preparing for the parliamentary elections this Sunday, drawing the attention of political elites from around the world.

Peter Magyar: Not just a boy

The main intrigue and driving force of the current political campaign is the young energy of the Tisza party, particularly its leader with the resonant name Peter Magyar (literally “Peter Hungarian”). Notably, Magyar, who presents himself as a conservative liberal, comes from the very heart of the Fidesz system and Hungary’s highly closed elite. He is the former husband of Judit Varga, who served as the country’s minister of justice in 2019-2023, a great-nephew of Ferenc Madl, Hungary’s president from 2000 to 2005, and the grandson of a former Supreme Court member; his parents also held high-ranking positions in national legal institutions. He speaks the language of Fidesz about national interests, family, a “new homeland,” and a “modern European country” where one can live well and raise children. At the same time, his main criticism of the current ruling system focuses on corruption within the governing party and the need to overcome the entrenched division between right and left that has existed since the early 2000s.

Elections 2026

It can be stated that the real gap between the parties is around 2–3%. Orban draws support from villages and rural areas, while Magyar holds the more progressive Budapest (both halves: the elite Buda and the more relaxed Pest) and other large Hungarian cities where younger populations live and work. Polling data varies depending on the research institute. According to the Hungarian pollster Median, which predicted Orban’s victory in 2022, Tisza leads with 58% against Fidesz’s 35%. The opposition Research Center 21 shows 56% for Tisza and 37% for Fidesz, while the pro-government Nezopont Institute suggests 46% for Fidesz versus 40% for Tisza.

The intensity of the race is also influenced by Hungary’s complex electoral system, where districts are drawn to include both a liberal urban area and several conservative villages. The voting system is mixed, but under its rules, a candidate can win a mandate even with a one-vote advantage, and there is also a ‘winner compensation’ mechanism, where surplus votes for the winner are added to the party list. While this system has previously helped Orbán and Fidesz secure victories, in the current tight race it could work against them. Thus, the question of who will win remains open until the final vote count.

Economy

At first glance, Hungary’s main problems lie in the economic sphere. In 2023, the country experienced the highest inflation in the EU, peaking at 25%, with food prices rising by about 50% in what is de facto a wealthy agricultural country. The situation is worsened by Orban’s conflict with the European Commission, which has frozen more than €19 billion in EU funds owed to Hungary – which amounts to nearly 10% of the country’s GDP.

Magyar claims he could unlock the frozen funds within a month, which would help stabilize the economy and ease social tensions.

Trianon and ‘Deep Hungary’

It is important to understand that Hungarian society is entering a new phase of development. Throughout the 20th century, it was shaped by a sense of deep historical injustice stemming from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the humiliating Treaty of Trianon (1920), which stripped Hungary of two-thirds of its territory.

Even being in the Soviet orbit was not as painful for this formerly imperial society as the loss of territories inhabited by ethnic Hungarians to neighboring states. This does not mean Hungarians have forgotten the suppressed 1956 uprising, but the trauma of Trianon still evokes sentiment and, among some – primarily older rural populations – a desire to ‘take back’ regions like Transcarpathia or parts of Transylvania, which they believe belonged to Hungary for a thousand years.

The euphoria of “returning to Europe” and joining the EU in 2004 has been tempered by difficult and unfavorable economic and agricultural conditions within the EU, as well as challenges integrating into negotiation structures that often disadvantage newer member states. This has fueled feelings of injustice and disappointment, tied to the perception that major political decisions are now made not in Budapest, but in Berlin, Paris, and Brussels. Big politics is inaccessible to small states.

However, historical memory has its limits. A new generation of Hungarians, raised during the country’s integration into the EU and accustomed to free movement across Europe and the world, seeks a more pragmatic and comfortable approach to life and development. They are more cynical about life and family and do not relate to the ‘phantom pains’ of Trianon. Young Hungary increasingly operates with the mindset of a small country navigating within the orbit of major global powers.

This is the core drama of the current elections: two competing visions of how to live in the modern world and within an emerging global order. Which path conservative Hungary will choose will soon become clear. In conclusion, the current difficulties faced by Fidesz signal to Hungary’s ruling elites the impossibility of rewriting history or reversing the course of events already set in motion.

Hunter Biden, son of former US President Joe Biden, has challenged President Donald Trump’s two eldest sons to a “cage match,” in an Instagram video published by content creator Andrew Callahan.

Biden, 56, called out Donald Trump Jr., 48, and Eric Trump, 42, with the president’s sons yet to publicly respond.

“I just got a call from Andrew Callahan… He’s trying to organize a cage match, me versus Eric and Don Jr. I told him I’d do it, 100% in,” Biden said in the video.

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The popular YouTuber told USA Today that the ex-president’s son had likely made the suggestion “in jest.” However, he is willing to facilitate the fight if Trump’s two eldest sons are “willing to engage Hunter in mutual combat.”

Last year, Melania Trump threatened to sue Hunter over his claim that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein introduced her to her husband.

The cover-up of a major scandal involving Hunter Biden’s laptop, which he forgot in a Delaware repair shop in 2019, contributed to his father winning in the 2020 election, according to President Trump. The leaked contents of the laptop potentially implicated the Biden family in several foreign corruption schemes.

As one of his last and more controversial decisions as president, Joe Biden granted a sweeping pardon to Hunter, who was convicted in 2024 of breaching federal gun and tax laws.

The pardon covered any offenses Hunter “has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.” It covers the time period of Hunter’s crimes and his tenure on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, when his father was in charge of US policy in Kiev during the Obama administration.

Germany has rejected 95% of all new asylum applications from Syrian migrants following a policy reassessment of the Middle Eastern country, according to media reports, citing an official document.

The change represents a stark reversal from the peak of the influx in 2014-2015, when recognition rates for Syrians frequently exceeded 90%. Germany emerged as a primary destination for Syrians fleeing war, driven by the open-door policy of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The country has since become home to one of the largest Syrian diasporas in Europe, with estimates putting the population at close to 1 million.

The figures come from a German government reply to a parliamentary inquiry by Left party lawmaker Clara Bunger, reported by multiple media outlets on Thursday.

According to the document, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) is now applying stricter case-by-case assessments. In October 2025, the BAMF ruled on 3,134 Syrian asylum applications, granting protection to just 26 applicants across all categories. Recognition rates reportedly remain higher for some minorities, including Yazidis, Christians, and Alawites.

After meeting al-Sharaa in Berlin in late March, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said up to 80% of Syrians living in Germany could return home over the next three years, describing it as part of a joint effort to support reconstruction.

Merz later backtracked, saying the figure was proposed by the Syrian side – a claim that al-Sharaa said was exaggerated and did not reflect his position.

The government’s shift in migration policy comes amid pressure from right-wing parties, including the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which portrays migrants, particularly from outside Europe, as a burden on public services and a driver of crime and social strife.

It also follows a series of violent crimes involving asylum seekers, including a 2024 knife attack in Solingen in which a Syrian national fatally stabbed three people and injured eight others.

Israel has carried out multiple strikes across Lebanon over the past 24 hours, fueling fears that the escalating violence could unravel a fragile two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran.

The expanded offensive in Lebanon since March 2 has killed 1,888 people and wounded 6,092 others, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. It says the April 8 bombardment alone involved “over 100 strikes within minutes,” leaving more than 300 dead and in excess of 1,100 injured.

RT’s Steve Sweeney, who, along with his cameraman Ali Rida, was caught up in this week’s Israeli strikes on central Beirut, reports from the Lebanese capital on the aftermath, where shattered residential buildings, children’s school bags and household belongings lie scattered in the rubble, and the seafront is filled with displaced families sheltering in makeshift tents. 

Residents live with an “overwhelming sense of anxiety,” fearing that “every sound” could signal another strike, he says.

The EU has sharply increased its purchases of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the first quarter of 2026 even as it insists it will phase out Russian energy by the end of next year, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

According to Kpler data cited by the outlet, the EU’s imports from Russia’s Yamal LNG project in Siberia rose 17% year-on-year to 5 million tons in Q1, with the bloc spending an estimated €2.9 billion ($3.1 billion). The EU took 69 of 71 shipments – or 97% – including 25 in March alone, compared to 59 of 68 shipments (87%) in the same period of 2025.

The surge shows there is “no appetite from European buyers to stop buying Russian LNG,” Sebastian Roetters of environmental NGO Urgewald told FT.

The conflict has severely disrupted flows through the Strait of Hormuz – a key chokepoint handling about 20% of global seaborne oil and LNG – and hit Gulf energy infrastructure, driving a surge in LNG prices. Asian spot rates and European TTF nearly doubled before easing after the April 8 ceasefire, but both remain well above pre-conflict levels.

Moscow has echoed the warnings. According to Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, “Europe and Britain will beg for Russian energy” as the crisis deepens, arguing that the bloc is unprepared for a “long-lasting energy shock” due to its failure to diversify supplies – a shortfall he blamed on “Russophobic, Green, and woke ideology.” Reacting to an FT report on X, he added: “As predicted, Europe needs Russia to survive.”

As predicted, Europe needs Russia to survive. https://t.co/v0z7HuPIh0

— Kirill Dmitriev (@kadmitriev) April 10, 2026

Iran should not repeat the mistakes of Libya, which paid a heavy price for trusting the West, the North African country’s former information minister, Moussa Ibrahim, has warned ahead of the talks between delegations from Washington and Tehran.

The first direct meeting between the sides since the US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28 is expected to take place in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Saturday, according to the White House.

The American team will be headed by Vice President J.D. Vance, and will also include special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Tehran hasn’t announced the lineup of its delegation yet, but reports claim that it could be led by parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

In an interview with RT on Friday, Ibrahim – a former cabinet member under longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was deposed and murdered in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 – said that “both parties come to these negotiations with different ideas about peace and conflict.”

For Washington, it is “actually very beneficial to continue to wreak havoc in the region to make sure that any rising regional powers are under control... that the region is never united,” the ex-minister, who now serves as executive secretary of the African Legacy Foundation, insisted.

”The Americans come to these negotiations hoping to find a way to keep the conflict going, but not as escalated as it was in the last few weeks, so they would keep their face and find other ways – economic, political, diplomatic – to punish the Iranians and their friends in the region,” he added.

Ibrahim advised the authorities in Tehran “to be very careful, not to believe the American plans for peace and never to give up sovereignty and deterrence” during the talks.

The European Commission could suspend up to €1.5 billion ($1.78 billion) in funding earmarked for EU candidate Serbia, Politico reported on Friday.

Serbia received €586 million ($685 million) in grants from 2021 to 2024 as part of financial assistance tied to its EU accession process, while a further €1.5 billion made available conditional on reforms could be pulled, Politico said, citing four Brussels-based sources.

The Eurobureaucrats have cited concerns over perceived democratic backsliding in Serbia as the main reason for the potential move. The EU has also long pressured Belgrade to align its foreign policy with the bloc, including adopting sanctions on Russia, a longstanding Serbian partner.

The EU’s enlargement policy has increasingly taken on geopolitical significance, with critics arguing that progress toward membership can depend as much on alignment with Brussels’ strategic priorities as on institutional reforms.

Expansion shaped by opposing Russia

Serbia is among several Western Balkan countries granted EU candidate status in the early 2010s, around the time Croatia joined the bloc.

In 2023, Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia were also granted candidate status. The move was widely seen as a signal of the EU’s intent to counter Russian influence, rather than purely a reflection of the readiness of these countries to meet accession standards.

Ukraine has argued that fighting a war with Russia on the West’s behalf strengthens its bid for membership, a position broadly supported by EU leadership, although no clear accession timeline has been set.

Even Poland, a staunch supporter of Kiev, opposes swift accession for Ukraine, citing various concerns, such as the disruption of common EU agricultural markets if Ukrainian farmers gain full access.

‘Nice’ and ‘naughty’ candidates

The EU’s reactions to political developments in candidate countries appear to depend on their governments’ foreign policies. In Georgia and Moldova – which held parliamentary elections in October 2024 and September 2024 respectively – opposition groups alleged irregularities, including the silencing of critical media and misuse of state powers for electoral gain.

Brussels treated the claims in Georgia as credible and indicative of democratic decline. Before the election, Georgia was accused of becoming ‘more like Russia’ by passing laws promoting social conservatism and forcing transparency of foreign political funding. Like Belgrade, Tbilisi declared neutrality in the Ukraine conflict. Georgia’s EU accession process is now effectively frozen.

In contrast, similar accusations in Moldova were largely dismissed by EU officials, who suggested they were part of Russian efforts to undermine the country’s pro-EU leadership. Some Moldovan officials support absorption of their nation by EU member Romania as a path to joining the bloc.

EU ‘worse threat’ than NATO

Russia has traditionally viewed the EU as a mostly economic project posing no military threat, unlike NATO. Russian officials have stated that Moscow does not oppose Ukraine’s EU candidacy, as long as the country remains militarily neutral.

“The EU is no longer just an economic union. It can transform, and rather quickly, into a full-blown military alliance, one overtly hostile to Russia, and in some ways worse than NATO,” Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, warned last week.

Uncertain outlook for enlargement

EU leaders are also considering changes to the enlargement rules, potentially simplifying accession in various ways. There were even discussions of a “reverse” expansion, allowing Ukraine and others to become partial members with limited rights before meeting all requirements.

In February, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama advocated in an op-ed a two-tier integration model, which would give Balkan non-members access to the EU’s market and free trade arrangement. Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos rebuffed the idea.

Given the EU’s challenging economic situation, near-certainty of long-term tensions with Russia, and increasingly heavy-handed suppression of internal descent, the benefits of accession may not be as attractive as Brussels imagines.

The Middle East ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz are based on extremely shaky ground, Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi has said, adding that Israel will do everything it can to reignite war in the region.

Speaking to RT India on Thursday, Marandi, a political analyst and professor at the University of Tehran, said US President Donald Trump has been forced to accept Iran’s framework for negotiations. 

“But right now there is a spoiler, and that is [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” he added. Pointing to the pounding of Lebanon by Israeli forces, Marandi said that “this means the commitments given by the United States are not being fulfilled. And that means that we could have a continuation of the crisis.”

Marandi accused Netanyahu and his allies of wanting the global economic crisis to continue.

On the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, he said Iran would like energy flows to be back to normal.

“That is what we want. We did not start this. We were doing business as usual until this imposed war by the Trump and Netanyahu regimes took place,” Marandi added. “But we’ll have to see, because Netanyahu is violating the ceasefire agreement.”

Marandi said Iran will also watch the American stance at the negotiating table, and see if “Netanyahu and the Zionist regime are able to wreck” the ceasefire. “I have no doubt that the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime will do whatever they can to make sure this war reignites,” he said.

Marandi said the only thing Trump and Netanyahu have achieved from their war on Iran is to create global hardship.

“We are sanctioned by the United States,” he said. “They don’t want us to use their dollar. So we would prefer ourselves to use other currencies.”

The use of the Indian, Russian, or Chinese currencies is “open for discussion,” Marandi added.

The countries in the Persian Gulf that hosted US bases and facilitated attacks on Iran “have Iranian blood on their hands… They are complicit in this war. And they betrayed their own people,” Marandi stated.

The UK’s proposed digital ID scheme has drawn criticism for not recording whether a person is male or female – traditionally a core identifier alongside name and age – after the government deemed it “not necessary” for identification.

The scheme, unveiled by Prime Minister Keir Starmer last year, has been pitched as a secure, free digital credential stored on smartphones to replace physical documents for identity checks. Initially planned as mandatory, it was made optional amid backlash and a petition with nearly 3 million signatures. A full rollout is planned by 2029, with draft documents stating the IDs will include name, date of birth, nationality or residency status, and a biometric photo – but not sex or gender.

“Information about sex and gender is not necessary for the intended purpose of the digital ID,” the documents state, arguing such data does not improve verification, which will rely on “programmatic” checks and “biometric authentication.”

“Having struggled for so long to define what a woman is, Labour have now decided it’s easier just to abolish the concept entirely,” Shadow Equalities Minister Claire Coutinho told GB News on Thursday. “There can be no excuse for failing to accurately record a person’s biological sex.”

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry… This is ludicrous,” former Labour MP Rosie Duffield added. “The idea that one of the most fundamental identifiers… would not even be recorded… makes a farce of the whole idea.”

Social media users echoed the criticism, accusing the government of acting out of “fear of the woke mob” and branding the initiative “a joke.”

🚨🇬🇧 Meanwhile in bat shit crazy UK - New Government Digital ID won’t state gender.

“When you told me about this, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry”

The British government tyrannical digital ID scheme, which is the steppingstone to total Government control - won’t even… pic.twitter.com/AyJJkTGCvC

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) April 9, 2026

LOL the useless government is so woke its digital ID card won’t say if you are male or female.

Because they can’t ask the question without pissing off their supporters, they’ve decided not to bother 🤣

It’s actually funny. In fact the whole thing is a joke. pic.twitter.com/brHMro3lKH

— Bernie (@Artemisfornow) April 9, 2026

The proposed scheme had already proven controversial. While supporters say it could streamline services and boost security, critics warn it risks turning the UK into a “police state.” Concerns include mass surveillance, centralized data vulnerabilities, and a potential “honeypot” for hackers. A February Ipsos poll found 40% of Britons oppose the scheme, with just 32% in favor – a sharp reversal from July 2025, when 57% supported it and 19% opposed.

The Hungarian government has accused Facebook of interfering in the upcoming parliamentary election scheduled for Sunday by restricting the reach of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s posts while boosting the visibility of his main rival, opposition leader Peter Magyar.

Speaking to Politico, government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs claimed that Facebook’s algorithm is “basically working against the government parties.” 

He argued that Orban’s official government page is subject to stricter advertising limits and reduced organic reach, while Magyar is allowed to operate a personal ‘public figure’ profile that enjoys greater algorithmic freedom. 

A report by the think tank MCC Brussels found that despite similar video views, Magyar’s posts have generated nearly three times the engagement of Orban’s. It also noted a trend of “disappearing comments” on content in support of the prime minister’s Fidesz party, while no similar behavior has been observed on opposition pages.

A Magyar aide has attributed the success to the opposition leader’s ability to “speak the language of the algorithm” and keep up with the speed of the news cycle.

Budapest’s latest allegations follow an incident in late February in which Facebook temporarily blocked three pro-government news outlets. The Hungarian National Media Association condemned the move as an attack on freedom of press, suggesting that the tech giant could be “punishing right-wing news portals.”

Last month, after several Fidesz members claimed that Meta started restricting the reach of their Facebook posts, commentators Joey Mannarino and Philip Pilkington identified Oskar Braszczynski as the employee likely responsible. Braszczynski, who works as Meta’s ‘Government and Social Impact Partner for Central and Eastern Europe’, has shared pro-Ukraine, anti-Orban, and pro-LGBT content on his personal social media accounts.

Orban has also accused Ukraine of cutting off oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline for political reasons, and blocked a €90 billion EU loan for Kiev in retaliation.

On Tuesday, US Vice President J.D. Vance visited Budapest in a show of support for Orban, accusing EU bureaucrats of “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference” he has ever seen. Vance claimed that Brussels has “tried to destroy the economy of Hungary” because they dislike Orban.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is facing the most serious threat to his power in decades, in an election that’s drawn in the EU, US, and Ukraine. RT explores the players, the stakes, and the dirty tricks shaping the Hungarian election.

We’ve delved into the election in our ‘Battle for Hungary’ series, but if you’ve just joined us, here’s what you need to know:

Hungarians go to the polls on Sunday, April 12, to elect all 199 members of the National Assembly. Elections are held every four years in Hungary, and take place over a single round on a single day. Results are typically known within hours of polls closing.

How many people will vote?

There are roughly 8.2 million registered voters in Hungary, and between 2006 and 2022, voter turnout typically ranged between 61% and 69.59%, according to data from the country’s National Election Office. The last election, in 2022, saw a record turnout of 69.59%.

Around 91,000 Hungarian citizens have registered to vote from abroad, with a significant number living in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region.

Who’s running for election in Hungary?

More than a dozen parties have put candidates forward, but the election is essentially a showdown between two: Orban’s Fidesz, and Peter Magyar’s Tisza.

Orban has been in power since 2010, and is seeking a fifth consecutive term in office. His Fidesz party and its Christian Democrat partners currently hold 135 out of 199 seats in the National Assembly.

Orban is known for his conservatism, drawing the ire of the EU for refusing to accept non-European asylum seekers and banning LGBTQ propaganda. He’s also known for his program of economic nationalism – known as ‘Orbanomics’ – and for his criticism of the EU’s financial and military support for Ukraine. Orban has blocked multiple rounds of sanctions on Russia, relenting only after securing exemptions that have allowed Hungary to continue purchasing Russian energy, and is currently vetoing a €90 billion ($105 billion) debt-financed EU loan package for Kiev.

A former member of Fidesz, Magyar resigned from the party in 2024 and joined the ranks of Tisza, a party that had languished in obscurity since its founding four years beforehand. While embroiled in two legal cases – one in which he testified about alleged corruption in Orban’s government, and another in which he was accused of domestic abuse by his ex-wife, former Justice Minister Judit Varga – Magyar was elected to the European Parliament that year, along with six other Tisza MEPs.

Magyar describes himself as center-right, and hopes to mend Budapest’s ties with Brussels should he win. Repairing relations with the EU is critical to Magyar’s economic platform – an ambitious program of public spending that entirely depends on Brussels unlocking nearly €20 billion in frozen funds. Magyar has not publicly supported or opposed the EU’s Ukraine loan, and his positions on immigration and social issues remain ambiguous.

What do the polls say?

Magyar’s Tisza is currently leading Fidesz by 49 points to 39, according to an aggregate compiled by Politico. However, individual opinion polls vary wildly, depending on the political alignment and funding of the pollsters.

For example, a poll by the 21 Research Center, which is financed by the European Commission, shows Tisza leading Fidesz by 19 points. Another by the opposition-linked Median shows Magyar’s party 23 points ahead of Orban’s. Conversely, a poll by the Center for Fundamental Rights – a conservative think tank – places Fidesz eight points ahead of Tisza.

Politico has reported that “many” EU leaders secretly believe an Orban victory is “likely.” Hungarian EU Affairs Minister Janos Boka thinks that the disparity between public surveys and private sentiment is no accident, and that by skewing polls, Magyar and his supporters in Brussels are “building the narrative that if they lose the election, then this is an illegitimate result.”

Who is interfering in the Hungarian election?

Panyi became embroiled in an election meddling scandal of his own when it emerged that he had collaborated with EU intelligence agents – possibly the same sources who fed him the ‘Russian interference’ story – to wiretap Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto. The wiretap revealed conversations between Szijjarto and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Szijjarto insisted that having these conversations is part of his job as the EU’s longest-serving foreign minister, and that the positions expressed in these calls – opposition to sanctions on Russia and disdain for Brussels bureaucrats – are already well known.

Ukraine has stuck its thumb on the scales too. Kiev has refused to restart the flow of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline, which carries Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia via Ukraine, claiming that the pipeline was damaged in a Russian air raid in January. Orban maintains that Druzhba is operational, and that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is keeping it closed in order to drive up energy costs in Hungary and hamper his reelection campaign. Kiev has also trained spies working within Magyar’s party, according to Hungarian security authorities.

Why is the Hungarian election so important to the EU and Ukraine?

Why was J.D. Vance in Budapest?

US President Donald Trump is an ideological ally of Orban, and dispatched Vice President J.D. Vance to Hungary on April 7 in a show of support for the Hungarian prime minister. Over multiple public appearances with Orban, Vance railed against EU and Ukrainian interference in the election, calling their combined efforts “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I have ever seen.”

Vance also saved his most scathing criticism for Zelensky, hammering the Ukrainian leader’s “preposterous” threat to send soldiers to Orban’s house over Hungary’s vetoing of the EU loan package.

However, Vance was accused of election interference by Tisza and EU officials. After the US VP described Orban as “the single profound leader in Europe on the question of energy security and independence” and said that he would “help as much as I can possibly help” to get him reelected, the European Commission announced that it would “convey our concerns” about the visit to Washington.

“I would like to point out, since Vance is complaining about the EU’s alleged interference in the election, that the US vice president was in Hungary just a few days before the election. This fact alone speaks for itself as to who is interfering,” German government spokesman Sebastian Hille told reporters on April 8.

Speaking to RT, former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl described the election as a “proxy war” between Washington and Brussels, with the EU willing to “paralyze” Hungary (by refusing to pressure Zelensky to reopen the Druzhba pipeline) in order to oust Orban, and the US “cultivating resistance” against the bloc by supporting him.

US President Donald Trump unleashed a “tirade of insults” at NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte during their meeting at the White House on Wednesday, Politico has reported, citing European officials.

Rutte’s trip to Washington followed weeks of Trump’s criticism of NATO over its reluctance to join the US-Israeli war against Iran and warnings about possible American withdrawal from the bloc.

The US president used the talks, which happened behind closed doors, to vent his frustration with European NATO members, Politico said in an article on Thursday.

“It went sh*t,” one European official told the outlet, adding that Trump had badmouthed Rutte and “apparently threatened to do just about anything.”

The official and another informed person claimed that the US president signaled that he was considering options for reprisals against the European nations, but didn’t provide any details.

Bloomberg earlier reported that the US president had issued an ultimatum to the Europeans during his meeting with Rutte, demanding a commitment to help secure the waterway, which accounts for around a quarter of global seaborne oil trade, “within days.”

A White House official approached by Politico for comment denied those claims, saying that Trump “has zero expectations for NATO at this point and did not ask them for anything, even though it’s a fact they benefit from the Strait of Hormuz far more than the US.”

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Rutte described his talks with Trump as a “very frank, very open” discussion between “two good friends,” but acknowledged that the US president was “clearly disappointed” with Europe. The NATO chief avoided a direct answer when asked if Trump had spoken about Washington leaving the bloc.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Thursday that “none of these people, including our own, very disappointing, NATO, understood anything unless they have pressure placed upon them.”

US President Donald Trump has thrown his weight behind Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, urging voters to “get out and vote” for his reelection ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary election.

In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump described Orban – his “true friend, fighter, and winner” – as a “strong and powerful leader” with a “proven track record of delivering phenomenal results.”

“[Orban] fights tirelessly for, and loves, his great country and people, just like I do for the United States of America,” Trump wrote. “Viktor works hard to protect Hungary, grow the economy, create jobs, promote trade, stop illegal immigration, and ensure law and order!”

Trump also credited Orban with driving “new heights of cooperation” between the US and Hungary and said he looks “forward to continuing working” with him.

Trump on Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán:

I was proud to ENDORSE Viktor for Re-Election in 2022, and am honored to do so again. Viktor Orbán is a true friend, fighter, and WINNER, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Hungary — HE WILL NEVER… pic.twitter.com/uOWFCP7nRt

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) February 5, 2026

“Hungary: GET OUT AND VOTE FOR VIKTOR ORBAN,” he urged, stressing Orban has his “complete and total endorsement” for re-election.

Trump has repeatedly backed his longtime ally ahead of the vote. Earlier this week, he even called into a rally in Budapest via Vice President J.D. Vance’s phone, telling supporters, “I am with [Orban] until the very end.”

President Trump calls in during @VP's speech in Hungary to show support for Viktor Orban:

"I love Hungary, and I love Viktor. He's a fantastic man ... Remember this: He didn't allow people to storm your country and invade your country like other people have." pic.twitter.com/zPUhBAJDwp

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) April 7, 2026

Vance, who visited Budapest to boost Orban’s campaign, described Hungary as a “laboratory” for sovereign, conservative politics and accused the EU of “interfering” in the vote.

Hungary has opposed Ukraine’s EU ambitions, refused to supply arms to Kiev, and is currently blocking a €90 billion EU loan package – after accusing Vladimir Zelensky of cutting Russian oil flows via the Druzhba pipeline. Orban has also claimed Kiev is waging a “quiet war” against his government, alleging Ukrainian intelligence is operating inside Hungary to sway the vote toward the Tisza Party.

Orban has repeatedly accused the EU of trying to engineer a change in government and install a “puppet regime” in Budapest, alleging Brussels has already “picked” Magyar as a compliant successor. He has also argued that freezing billions in funding is a deliberate attempt to sway voters against him.

The Gulf states have emerged much weaker than Iran from the Middle East conflict, leading US academic Jeffrey Sachs has said.

Countries in the region made a huge mistake by seeking protection from the US and Israel, Sachs told RT India in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

“This has been a disaster for them,” he said, adding that the “clever idea” of the United Arab Emirates as a financial haven and tourism hub “all… fell under bombing right now.”

“[The US] did nothing to help it. I think the Emirates made a terrible mistake in signing on with Israel and the United States saying, ‘This is our side. This is our protection,’” he said.

Sachs said he was baffled when Gulf countries pledged billions of dollars to the US when Donald Trump began his second term as president.

The US is not where the high-return investments in the world are right now, Sachs noted.

“But these countries believed that the US is their protector and that the US is their source of NVIDIA chips and data centers and cutting-edge technology. They’re not looking clearly at how the multipolar world is taking shape,” he said.

“They’ve come out way, way behind in all of this. It’s been clear that Iran can devastate them,” he added. “The desalination plants, the bombing of the oil and gas infrastructure, the vulnerability of these countries more generally. It’s been awful.”

Sachs said the Gulf countries “don’t have their own geopolitics… They have been under the US line. But basically, this is a debacle for them.” These nations need to rethink their politics, he added.

“The truth is Iran and the Gulf should be partners. They should be co-investors. They should be at peace.”

India knows from its time under British rule that divide-and-conquer is the essence of imperial strategy, Sachs said.

“The US has loved to pit Iran against the Gulf, and the Gulf fell for it. Big mistake that needs to be reconsidered,” he said.

The US is perceived as a threat by a significant portion of people in six leading European nations, a new opinion poll suggests. In Spain, a majority holds this view, it says.

Politico, which commissioned the survey, said on Wednesday that these perceptions are linked to the policies of US President Donald Trump.

Since taking office just over a year ago, Trump has imposed tariffs on European allies, pushed for the annexation of Greenland from Denmark, and started a war with Iran, jeopardizing global energy stability.

The European Pulse poll was conducted from March 13 to 21 in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain, with at least 1,000 adults surveyed in each country. In Spain, 51% of respondents described the US as a threat, while only 17% considered it a close ally.

Six major EU countries now view the U.S. under Trump as a bigger threat than China, per a new POLITICO Pulse survey—a significant shift in European threat perception.pic.twitter.com/Bz7YtheU1b

— The Dive Feed (@TheDeepDiveFeed) April 9, 2026

Poland presented a contrasting picture, where the US is largely seen as a partner or ally. Only 13% of Polish respondents viewed America as a threat, with an equal share labeling it a competitor. However, a significant 16% said they are unsure how to assess the US.

The survey took place amid escalating hostilities in the Middle East, as the US and Israel attempt to topple Iran’s government through a bombing campaign. No European NATO members directly joined the campaign, but Spain was notably vocal in opposing it, calling the operation illegal under international law and refusing the US access to its airspace for strikes.

Earlier this week, Trump signaled openness to negotiations based on a ten-point proposal from Iran, which led to the announcement of a two-week ceasefire. However, the fragile truce has been strained by increased Israeli attacks against Lebanon. Washington claims these actions fall outside the scope of the ceasefire, but skeptics argue that Israel is deliberately acting against US goals to derail peace efforts.

The Trump administration has been accused of using bad faith negotiations as a diversion before surprise military actions against Iran.

North Korea has conducted a series of high-tech weapons tests as it seeks to expand its arsenal with electromagnetic weapons, carbon fiber bombs, and new mobile air defense systems, KCNA state news agency reports.

The tests were conducted over the course of three days. Kim Jong-sik, a general who oversaw the tests, described the electromagnetic system and carbon fiber bombs as “special assets” in the country’s arsenal, but provided few details about the nature of the new weapons.

The South Korean military said it detected several missile launches from North Korean territory. The projectiles flew 240 to 700 km, according to Reuters.

The tests came amid rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula. First Deputy Foreign Minister Jang Kum-chol described South Korea as the “most hostile enemy state” in a statement on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, Seoul apologized to Pyongyang over drone incursions, denying any official involvement and claiming that the launches were a private initiative. Three people – including an employee of the National Intelligence Service, a South Korean military officer, and a graduate student – are facing charges.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un stated last month that a nuclear arsenal capable of posing a credible threat to the US is the only leverage against American “terrorism and aggression.” He also said North Korea would not give up its nuclear weapons and would oppose any efforts to challenge its status.

US First Lady Melania Trump has made a surprise public statement about Jeffrey Epstein, denying that she had any meaningful relationship with the late financier and convicted sex offender, and insisting that he did not introduce her to Donald Trump.

In remarks released by the White House on April 9, Melania said she had “never been friends with Epstein,” described her contact with his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, as nothing more than “casual correspondence,” and urged Congress to hold public hearings centered on Epstein’s victims.

“The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today,” the first lady said, accusing unnamed critics of trying to “defame” her reputation. She stated that she and Donald Trump had only occasionally attended the same social events as Epstein due to overlapping social circles in New York City and Palm Beach, and said she first crossed paths with him in 2000 at an event she attended with Trump.

First Lady Melania Trump’s Statement pic.twitter.com/fSEz24NEyg

— First Lady Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) April 9, 2026

Melania also denied ever being on Epstein’s plane or visiting his private island, and specifically pushed back against claims that Epstein played a role in her relationship with the future president. She further insisted that her name has never appeared in court documents, depositions, victim statements, or FBI interviews tied to the Epstein case.

The Trump administration has faced growing backlash over its handling of the Epstein files. One day earlier, several media outlets reported that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee, which has already heard testimony from former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The controversy has simmered for over a year. In February 2025, Bondi said Epstein’s supposed client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” fueling expectations of major disclosures. But by July, the DOJ said no such list exists, and that it did not plan to release additional records – a reversal that triggered ridicule from both Democrats and Republicans and intensified accusations of a cover-up.

US President Donald Trump has posted a horrific video of a woman being beaten to death at a Florida gas station earlier this month, using the killing to launch a blistering attack on former President Joe Biden and his immigration record.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the suspect is Rolbert Joachin, a Haitian national accused of fatally attacking a woman in Fort Myers on April 3. DHS said Joachin first entered the US illegally in August 2022 and was released into the country under Temporary Protected Status.

The suspect was tracked down and arrested with ICE assistance, and appeared in court on Wednesday, where he revealed that he went to the gas station specifically to kill the victim.

In a furious Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump said he felt “obligated” to publish uncensored footage of the murder, previously shown in court, so Americans could “see what Democrats are protecting,” while warning viewers that the tape is “not for children.”

Trump branded the suspect an “animal” and blamed Biden and congressional Democrats for allowing him to remain in the country, arguing that the case was a brutal example of what he sees as the human cost of lax immigration enforcement.

Trump ended his post by offering prayers for the victim’s family and vowing that “quick and severe JUSTICE” would be served. DHS said ICE had lodged a detainer against Joachin and that he would face deportation regardless of how the criminal case unfolds.

Donald Trump has declared the start of a new “golden age” in the Middle East after announcing a ceasefire with Iran. The war, at least for now, has been paused. And while predictions are always risky with this White House, there is at least a chance that the fighting will not immediately resume.

That alone matters. A prolonged war would raise risks for everyone, but above all for Washington. For all the bombast coming from the US administration, America has always been deeply uncomfortable with prolonged uncertainty and strategic risk. It is one thing to threaten. It is another to endure the consequences when threats fail.

The precise terms of the ceasefire remain unclear and may not yet be fully agreed. But the central political fact is already visible: Faced with determined resistance, the US stepped back.

None of the sweeping demands set out at the start of the operation were met. Trump’s all-caps demand for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” now looks more like political theater than strategic doctrine. Yet behind the social media drama, something more rational prevailed in Washington: When pressure fails, it is better to retreat than to escalate into a situation you may no longer control.

The feverish rhetoric before the truce served a purpose. It allowed Washington to claim that Tehran had blinked, while creating such a sense of looming catastrophe that any pause in fighting could be sold as relief. The White House will now try to present restraint as victory.

This conflict is undoubtedly a milestone in the wider transformation of the international system. But it is not the end of that process. Nor is it the final chapter in the struggle for the Middle East.

Tehran’s response was not spectacular in the conventional military sense, but it was effective. Iran widened the theater of tension and signaled that the costs of escalation would not be confined to military targets. It forced its opponents to reckon not only with Iranian retaliation, but with the fragility of the wider regional system.

This matters because the endurance of the US and its regional partners is limited. Iran’s, by contrast, has historically been much greater.

The so-called Axis of Resistance also proved more durable than many had assumed. Despite the serious damage inflicted by Israel over the past two years, pro-Iranian forces in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq remain a strategic factor. Even where they did not intervene directly, they raised the temperature and forced the attackers to remain on edge.

The broader effort to neutralize Iranian influence has therefore backfired. Iran has emerged bloodied but still standing. Even if Tehran’s claims that any settlement must happen on its terms are partly negotiating tactics, one thing is already clear: Iran’s regional weight has not diminished in the way Washington and West Jerusalem intended.

Negotiations with Tehran are now unavoidable. The real question is what Iran itself wants.

For the wider region, the implications are profound.

The Gulf monarchies have had a sobering experience. There will be no return to the comfortable old formula in which security could simply be outsourced to Washington in exchange for money and loyalty. That arrangement, which underpinned the region since the Cold War, has been badly shaken.

Publicly, the Gulf states are unlikely to make dramatic gestures. But privately, their search for new hedges and new partners will intensify. China, South Asia, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe will all become more important in their calculations.

That doesn’t mean the Gulf will accept Iranian dominance. The monarchies will not tolerate Tehran having unchecked influence over the Persian Gulf or the ability to dictate terms in the Strait of Hormuz. Their policy is likely to become more complex: containing Iran where possible while engaging with it where necessary.

The domestic consequences for the US are harder to judge. Trump’s self-congratulation already rings hollow, but much will depend on economics. If oil markets stabilize, the White House will try to move on quickly and insist disaster was averted thanks to Trump’s leadership. Whether that helps Republicans in the November midterms is unclear.

Still, Trump has always had one instinct his critics often underestimate: He knows how to survive setbacks and reframe them.

The larger conclusion, however, goes beyond Trump. The US remains immensely powerful. Its military reach, financial leverage and ability to shape events are still formidable. But they are not limitless. America can still influence outcomes but can no longer simply impose its will at any cost.

That lesson has now been absorbed far beyond Tehran. Allies and adversaries alike will draw their own conclusions. Iran may be a special case, but a precedent has been set.

This is another step toward a different world, one in which coercion is less decisive and the old assumptions about American omnipotence increasingly obsolete. Trump may wish to replace a liberal American-led order with an illiberal one under US dominance. But the events of recent weeks suggest something else: a world moving beyond any order Washington can fully control.

This article was first published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and was translated and edited by the RT team 

The homeless man accused of fatally stabbing 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska could see charges against him dropped after he was deemed unfit to stand trial, several US media outlets report, citing a motion filed by his attorney. He was previously indicted by a federal grand jury in the case, which could lead to the death penalty.

Zarutska was killed on a train last August in Charlotte, North Carolina. Surveillance footage shows Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, stabbing her three times in the neck in what appeared to be an unprovoked assault. The man was arrested shortly afterward and charged with first-degree murder.

According to a motion filed on Tuesday, Brown was evaluated at the Central Regional Hospital in late December and found to be not competent to stand trial. Under North Carolina law, a defendant must be deemed capable of understanding the nature of the proceedings, comprehend their situation, and assist in their defense in a rational manner.

If a judge agrees with the psychiatric evaluation, charges against Brown will be dismissed. A court ruling could still allow for the charges to be refiled if he ever regains the capacity to be tried.

Brown was also ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation as part of a separate federal court case, but it was not completed as of early March according to the court filings.

The man’s mother claims he is schizophrenic. Brown has a lengthy criminal record that includes robbery with a dangerous weapon.

Zarutska’s killing caused a public outcry and led to calls for capital punishment for the suspect. US President Donald Trump described Brown as an “animal” and urged that the death penalty be applied.

There are moments in history when reality breaks through ideology with brutal clarity. Western Europe is living through one of those moments now.

The Iran war has sent shockwaves through global energy markets – but in Europe, the tremors feel like an earthquake. What was once dismissed as pessimism or “populist scaremongering” is now openly acknowledged at the highest levels of power.

With the Strait of Hormuz blocked, the EU faced a supply shock that promised to cripple manufacturing, ground airlines, hike up the price of food, spike borrowing costs, and send inflation spiraling back to crisis levels.

The crisis nobody can deny anymore

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has compared the looming burden to the darkest days of recent memory, warning it could be “as heavy as we recently experienced during the Covid pandemic or at the start of the Ukraine war.” Head of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde has admitted that the long-term effects are “probably beyond what we can imagine at the moment.”

Beyond imagination. That is where Western Europe now stands. And yet for millions of ordinary Europeans, the consequences are already painfully real: higher bills, shrinking savings, and a growing sense that something has gone profoundly wrong.

This is not just another cyclical downturn. It is something deeper – more systemic, more dangerous.

The greatest energy shock in modern history

Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, did not mince words: “At this moment, we are losing 11 million barrels per day, which is more than the two major oil crises combined… the greatest threat to global energy security in history.” Unlike past crises, this one spared nothing. Oil, gas, diesel, jet fuel – everything was under pressure at once.

The illusion that Europe could insulate itself has collapsed.

For years, Brussels reassured Europeans that the continent’s limited reliance on Persian Gulf crude would protect it. But reality has a way of exposing half-truths. Europe depends on the Gulf for more than 40% of its refined products – diesel that fuels trucks, and jet fuel that keeps planes in the air.

Now those lifelines are tightening. Asian economies, far more dependent on the region, are bidding assertively, pulling supplies away from Europe. Tankers are changing course. Contracts are being rewritten. Prices are surging. And the EU – self-constrained, self-limited – has found itself last in line.

The consequences are immediate, tangible, and deeply personal. In some countries, diesel prices have nearly doubled since the start of the Iran war. Airlines are bracing for impact; Lufthansa is already discussing grounding up to 40 aircraft because of jet fuel shortages. The EU’s fossil fuel import bill jumped by €14 billion in mere weeks.

Behind these numbers are real lives. Farmers paying more to harvest their crops. Truck drivers watching margins evaporate. Families forced to choose between heating and other essentials. Businesses – already weakened – now pushed to the brink.

Higher costs in agriculture, transport, and manufacturing cascade through the economy. Prices rise everywhere. Growth stalls. Inflation returns with a vengeance.

Europe is staring into the abyss of stagflation – stagnant economies paired with relentless price increases, quietly eroding the savings and dignity of millions.

This is not just an economic crisis. It is a social wound. A psychological burden. Another chapter in a long decade of instability that has left many Europeans exhausted, anxious, and increasingly distrustful of those in power.

Leadership without answers

In times like these, people look to their leaders for clarity, for courage, for solutions equal to the scale of the problem. What they receive instead feels painfully inadequate.

Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen has advised people to work from home, drive slower, and share cars. These are not solutions; they are coping mechanisms. They shift responsibility onto individuals while the structural failures remain untouched.

Even as shortages loom, Brussels insists on staying the course: a complete ban on Russian energy imports, no change to the plan to end Russian LNG imports by 2026, and pipeline gas by 2027. At the very moment when flexibility is needed, rigidity prevails.

Warnings are coming from all sides. Shell CEO Wael Sawan has said shortages could hit as early as April. Germany’s Economy Minister Katherina Reiche has cautioned that supply scarcity may emerge within weeks. Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto confessed, “I’m forced to know things that don’t let me sleep.”

And still, the policy does not change. Even from across the Atlantic comes a blunt message. Donald Trump remarked: “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!”

Harsh, perhaps – but not entirely wrong. The EU has boxed itself in.

Yet across the continent, a different kind of leadership is beginning to emerge – one that dares to say what many already know.

In Germany, Alice Weidel of the AfD has articulated a position rooted in economic reality rather than political fashion: “Germany must return to an affordable and reliable energy supply to be internationally competitive… we must purchase energy resources… where it is cheapest, which is Russia.”

More and more Germans understand this. It is no coincidence that the AfD has risen to become the second most popular party. People are not embracing extremism – they are searching for common sense.

Central Europe’s warning – and its resolve

Further east, the message is even clearer, shaped by geography and experience.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called for immediate action, urging Europe to lift sanctions on Russian energy to avoid “one of the most severe economic crises in its history.” Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has echoed this urgency, calling for restored pipeline flows and renewed dialogue with Moscow.

His words cut through the diplomatic fog. The EU must “ensure the supply of these strategic raw materials from all possible sources and directions, including Russia.” Otherwise, he warned, the current path resembles a “suicide ship.”

These leaders are often dismissed in Brussels. Yet they are the ones confronting reality head-on. They understand that geography cannot be negotiated away. That energy cannot be replaced overnight. That ideology does not heat homes or power factories.

The return of reality – and of Russia

The Iran war has accelerated a reckoning that was already underway. It has shown, with unforgiving clarity, that the EU cannot secure its energy future by excluding its most logical supplier. Russia is not a distant option; it is a structural pillar of the European energy system – one that has been deliberately removed without a viable replacement.

The result is what we see today: scarcity, volatility, vulnerability. Restoring relations with Moscow is no longer a theoretical debate. It is becoming an economic necessity.

And the momentum is shifting. Across Germany and Central Europe – Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Czechia – voices are growing louder, more confident, more aligned in their insistence on pragmatism over ideology.

A turning point for Europe

Europe now stands at a decisive turning point. One path leads further into crisis: continued shortages, declining industry, rising social tensions, and a widening gap between elites and ordinary people. The other path is more difficult politically – but far more sustainable economically. It requires acknowledging mistakes. Reopening dialogue. Rebuilding ties where they make sense.

Above all, it requires listening – to the citizens who are paying the price, and to the leaders who have the courage to speak uncomfortable truths. Change is coming. The Iran war may well accelerate it. Because in the end, reality is undefeated. And Europe, whether it admits it or not, is already on the road back to it.