Polish FM Sikorski: Our response to Ukraine naming a unit after UPA heroes was disproportionate.
It personally humiliated Ukraine's president. If President Nawrocki had asked me, I'd have advised differently, Tvn24. 1/
Sikorski: Nawrocki essentially deprived himself of the ability to talk with the president of a country at war.
When Zelenskyy got the soldiers' request, the response should've been: fine, UPA fought the Soviets, but it also killed Poles — pick a better name. TVN24.
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Sikorski: An equivalent move would have been naming Jasionka airport "Airport of UPA Victims." That would have settled the score. 3/
Russia may be preparing a provocation in the Baltic states or Poland to test NATO, The Guardian.
Putin wants to see whether the US would defend Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Ukraine's strikes reach Moscow and St Petersburg, and Russia wants to hit back somewhere it can. 1/
Latvian intelligence: We see indications that Russia prepares military provocations against the Baltic states or Poland.
Russia cannot open a second front. It may use hybrid actions — missiles, drones — to signal: stop supporting Ukraine, or face your own problems. 2/
Putin may test US support for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in a desperate effort to throw the dice as Russia struggles in Ukraine.
Keir Giles, a Russia expert with the Chatham House: Moscow will seek horizontal escalation or do something elsewhere. We should not expect Russia to passively lose. 3/
Germany’s army chief Freuding: We used to lack information. Now sensors are everywhere — air, ground, space — and the problem is handling the data mass.
That's no longer a human task, too slow. We need a digital backbone to assemble that data and exploit it with AI.
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Freuding: Five priorities for the German army: deep strike up to 1,000 km, counter-UAS air defense, electromagnetic warfare, unmanned systems integration, and AI-enabled command and control.
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Freuding: The tank must become a command center, a mother ship for ground robots and unmanned systems.
But you still need direct-fire capability for close combat. The modern battlefield will have AI-supported drones and it will still have a soldier with a rifle and bayonet.
Germany no longer trusts that the US will share intelligence. So Berlin is unshackling its spy agency to stand on its own, after Trump briefly cut Ukraine off.
A new law hands the BND its broadest powers in 70 years, putting the service on a war footing against Russia — FT. 1/
Merz raised the BND budget 25 percent to €1.51 billion and will send parliament a law granting powers it has never held.
Signals intelligence, AI, the right to hack back, and lighter oversight. Chief Martin Jäger calls the BND Germany's first line of defence. 2/
Trump's administration briefly paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine in March 2025, and the move focused minds across Europe.
Germany realised it can no longer lean on the CIA, the benefactor that long fed the BND its most important information. 3/