PRISTINA — Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s weekend trip to Serbia triggered reverberations in the Balkans long after the Ukrainian president jetted back to Kyiv.

Zelenskyy visited Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić — who has refused to join the EU’s sanctions regime against Russia and maintains a cozy relationship with the Kremlin — for the first time on Saturday. He then waded into the thorniest regional dispute by declaring Ukraine would continue not to recognize the independence of Kosovo, a former province of Serbia.

Kosovo’s response was swift. A building-sized blue-and-yellow “Free Ukraine” banner that has been up on Pristina’s main thoroughfare since 2022 came down immediately, with Mayor Përparim Rama declaring that while his sympathies remain with “peoples facing war, violence and persecution … respect must be mutual.”

Since Zelenskyy’s visit, Vučić threatened to physically redirect the Iber River that runs from Serbia to Kosovo in retaliation for Kosovo demolishing Serb-owned houses along the reservoir’s shore. Such a move would drain the reservoir supplying much of Kosovo’s water and crucial cooling capacity to its largest power plant.

In addition, Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Djurić and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama exchanged barbs on X, with the latter accusing Serbia of being in “a political bubble” and being in denial over the fact that “Serbia lost Kosova” long ago.

Kosovo was an Albanian-majority southern province of Serbia for most of the 20th century. Its people held broad political rights under socialist Yugoslavia until a decade-long Serb crackdown on dissent led to the armed conflict of 1998-99. A three-month NATO bombing campaign drove Serbian forces out and made the province a U.N. protectorate.

Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and, to date, it is recognized by over 100 nations, including the U.S., U.K. and 22 of the 27 EU member countries. It is also a potential EU candidate country, submitting its application in December 2022.

The country’s status has long been a favorite talking point for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has used it to justify invading Georgia in 2008 and annexing Crimea in 2014. Kosovo’s Foreign Minister Glauk Konjufca said he took note of Zelenskyy’s views “with regret” and that such rhetoric echoes “Russia’s attempts to invoke Kosova as a precedent.”

As for why Ukraine’s leader would wade into the intractable Balkan issue at all, it likely comes down to weaponry.

Serbia still produces considerable quantities of ammunition in the Soviet-standard calibers which would be impossible to acquire from Kyiv’s Western allies, who use the NATO standard instead. Ukraine retains Soviet-era heavy howitzers and tanks that remain key to the fight in the Donbas and beyond. And despite his pro-Russian stance, Vučić is happy to provide them to Kyiv quietly.

“Ukraine is in a position where it cannot care about things beyond the more immediate needs for Ukraine, and Vučić matters to him more,” explained Florian Bieber, who directs the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz.

Vučić’s overtures towards Zelenskyy could be in part an effort to placate criticism from Brussels. EU leaders have condemned the “explosion of violence” during the ongoing anti-government protest movement and the “collapse in democratic standards” in Serbia.

“He’s hoping that he will get less critical remarks in the coming months because of his close, at least symbolically closer, ties with Zelenskyy. Vučić is doing this for leverage with the EU ahead of possible elections in the country,” Bieber continued.

Kosovo’s supporters have long cast its independence as a one-off, not a template. But the circumstances of its journey away from Serbia remains divisive, particularly for EU members like Spain and Cyprus, who have their own separatist headaches and still refuse to recognize Kosovo’s independence.

“Depending on which side of this argument you’re coming down on, you will have a different view over what Kosovo’s independence means for other conflicts and other territorial disputes around the world,” said Bieber.

Germany is being hit by hybrid warfare attacks from foreign powers on a “daily” basis, the country’s interior minister has warned, after a drone packed with explosives was found at Leipzig Airport earlier this week.

Espionage, sabotage, cyber attacks and covert actions “with the aim of destabilizing Germany or directly harming it” are a “constant reality,” German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told BILD in an interview on Sunday.

Dobrindt suggested on Thursday that a drone incident at Leipzig Airport may have been an attack by a state actor. The minister has stopped short of specifying which foreign powers are behind the hybrid attacks.

Leipzig Airport serves as a strategic hub for NATO, including for military transports to Ukraine. The airport is also the international courier service DHL’s largest European air hub and serves as a temporary home for some Ukrainian Antonov aircraft, protecting them from Russian attacks. An armed drone was found just meters away from such a plane, German officials said Wednesday.

A spokesperson for Germany’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Russia is behind daily attempts to “exert influence here in Germany in a manner that seeks to undermine our democracy and erode trust in politics and politicians.”

The Kremlin has been accused of seeking to sway September’s elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, states in the former communist East Germany where pro-Russian sentiment remains strong and where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could take power for the first time at the state level.

The intelligence-sharing relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine has bounced back to previous highs, according to long-time Ukraine watchers — a welcome boost during a critical window of opportunity for the Ukrainian war effort.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the intelligence committee’s ranking member and a longtime proponent of more U.S. assistance to Ukraine, told POLITICO he sees evidence of an improved intel-sharing agreement — and believes it’s helped Kyiv gain an advantage in Moscow’s four-year-long war.

“I don’t want to get into any specifics, but it has improved,” he said, adding that Ukraine’s use of long-range drones and missiles has allowed it to strike deep within Russian territory and strengthen its position.

In recent months, Kyiv has carried out more aggressive strikes across Russia, enabling it to take back territory and stabilize the front line. This has afforded the country more leverage as Ukraine looks to parlay battlefield wins to pressure Russia to the negotiating table.

Ukraine’s stronger footing also comes as U.S.-mediated talks to strike a peace deal with Moscow have stalled. Trump’s negotiating team, which includes Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, has been preoccupied with the Iran war, bumping Ukraine down its priority list.

But in that time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears to have risen in President Donald Trump’s estimation as Kyiv has made gains against Russia.

In early July, a barrage of Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure forced Moscow — one of the world’s top fuel exporters — to halt its exports of diesel. The increased frequency of those kinds of targeted attacks has put the Kremlin in a tighter spot, creating what Kyiv has argued is a window of opportunity for Ukraine to leverage its current advantage to end the war.

Republican Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), another member of the intel committee, and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed that intel-sharing between the U.S. and Ukraine has increased at a moment of strategic importance.

“It sure seems like that,” Cornyn said. “Everybody loves a winner and looks like Ukraine has turned the tide.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a Democratic armed services committee member, told POLITICO he’s also seen signs of greater communication between Ukraine and the U.S.

“I was in Ukraine in April 2025 and I was there again in July 2026. 
And I detect more confidence in the communication,” Kaine said.

Cooperation from the U.S. has been key to Ukraine’s positive turn in fortune, said George Barros, the director of innovation and open source tradecraft at the hawkish Institute for the Study of War. Trump reportedly approved intelligence sharing for Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure last year, which have been essential to creating a “proper incentive structure” to push Moscow to the negotiating table, Barros noted.

The strikes, he said, were “supercharged,” and became significantly more effective when imbued with intelligence from the Americans, part of a “larger, more coherent strategy for how to actually create real costs.”

And American early warning systems, Barros added, have been alerting Ukrainians to incoming Russian missile attacks since the early days of the war.

The White House did not provide details on whether its intelligence-sharing relationship with Ukraine has expanded, though it stressed that Trump is focused on facilitating an end to the war.

“The President wants this war settled so the senseless killing ends,” said the White House spokesperson in a statement. “The President and his team remain committed to continuing to play a constructive role in ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, and he remains optimistic that we’ll ultimately get a peace deal done.”

The CIA and ODNI did not respond to a request for comment.

Washington also stands to benefit from Kyiv’s intelligence, said John Herbst, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2003-2006 and still maintains contact with officials in the country.

“There’s no doubt of the following: Ukraine has outstanding intelligence on Russia,” he said.

Zelenskyy has sought to put that intelligence to use. With Washington locked in a five-month war against Iran, the Ukrainian president prefaced his July visit to the Oval Office by claiming Kyiv planned to provide Trump with evidence that Russia was aiding Tehran.

“When you talk to Ukrainian intelligence officials, you hear confident insights into what is going on in Moscow, and not just in the Kremlin,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Insights of a sort that justify a truly cooperative and reciprocal sharing arrangement.”

PARIS — A group affiliated with Russia’s intelligence agency launched a disinformation campaign against center-left MEP and likely presidential candidate in next year’s French election, Raphaël Glucksmann, he claimed in a post on X on Tuesday.

Glucksmann, who is expected to announce whether he will run for president in the coming weeks, said he had been informed by the French Secretariat-General for National Defence and Security of a “Russian operation” that was “directly controlled by the [Russian] GRU.”

Former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, who is a confirmed presidential candidate, was also reportedly targeted by a Russian disinformation campaign last week. And several local candidates from the left-wing France Unbowed movement, known for its pro-Palestinian advocacy, were allegedly targeted by an Israeli firm earlier this year.

The alleged disinformation effort against Glucksmann involved an article posted on a website mimicking well-known left-wing news outlet Blast, as well as a social media clip claiming Glucksmann’s partner Léa Salamé — the host of French public television’s prime-time news program — had tried bribing other journalists to speak about his likely candidacy favorably.

Glucksmann is a prominent critic of the Russian government and took part in the 2013 Maidan uprising in Kyiv.

“Russian agencies have begun operations to destabilize the 2027 presidential election,” he wrote on social media. “This attack is merely a foretaste of what is to come.”

The Russian Embassy in Paris did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As he nears the end of his term, French President Emmanuel Macron has said that safeguarding the 2027 presidential election from foreign interference would be a top priority.