Quebec’s separatist premier says that he will boycott the EU-Canada summit that opens in Montreal on Thursday, warning European leaders that deals struck there without his government’s consent may not be applied in the country’s second-biggest province.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon confirmed his absence late Wednesday in an open letter to the European delegation, which he posted on X. His announcement followed two days of public sparring with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney over Ottawa’s refusal to let him address the summit.
“This dynamic creates uncertainty as to the application of the agreements you could negotiate during the summit,” he wrote in French.
In the letter, St-Pierre Plamondon says Ottawa has “decided to sideline Quebec” from the talks. He says this leaves his government with “neither a chair at the negotiating table nor the opportunity to speak,” even though the summit is on Quebec soil.
Under Canada’s federal system, he argued, the provinces implement international agreements that fall within their powers. Without Quebec’s consent, a deal that runs against its interests “will simply not be implemented,” he wrote. He also accused Ottawa of withholding “critical information” on the negotiations.
He offered to meet European leaders “in the near future, in a more opportune context.” He will send Quebec’s chief diplomat, Pascal Paradis, to the summit in his place.
Carney said Wednesday his office had offered the premier the honor of welcoming the Commission president to Montreal, and a seat at the head table. “I hope he will reconsider,” he said. On Tuesday, the prime minister had accused St-Pierre Plamondon of choosing to “leave an empty chair again.”
The row has soured the upbeat mood around the summit, which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa have billed as a milestone. Leaders will launch an “Alliance for the Future,” a framework for shared prosperity and economic security.
St-Pierre Plamondon’s letter says many of its topics fall under Quebec’s responsibility, including health, education and natural resources.
The premier has also pursued his own contacts with European leaders.
He spoke by phone with French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, and said the two had agreed on a possible meeting in France in the coming weeks.
At working level, ties have held so far, and officials describe the relationship as constructive.
Hélène Drainville, Quebec’s delegate general in Brussels, told POLITICO last week that Quebec was in talks with the European Investment Bank and the Commission, and that “all the signals are green.”
Carney, Costa and von der Leyen are due to hold a joint press conference on Friday.
We live in an era where wars are fought not just on battlefields, but also on our screens, in our minds and through the narratives we are led to believe. Narratives are influencing perception while missiles destroy infrastructure. What happens when the war for truth becomes more dangerous than the actual battle itself? Who’s controlling the narrative?
When wars end, the fighting over what they meant begins: who won, who was to blame and who can be trusted to keep the peace. These questions are settled less on the battlefield than on screens, in feeds and in group chats. For a Middle East emerging from the war that began on February 28, that contest may decide whether any new security order holds.
The region is now asking what comes after deterrence. That question brought policymakers, military leaders and researchers from the United States, Europe, Asia and the Gulf to the TRENDS 6th Annual Conference, held in Abu Dhabi and organized by TRENDS Global, in collaboration with its global offices. The answer cannot be measured only in missiles and alliances. Information resilience should be treated as security infrastructure, planned and funded like air defense, not managed as public relations.
What happens when the war for truth becomes more dangerous than the actual battle itself?
The struggle over perception can now matter as much as events on the ground. That is no longer hyperbole. In any crisis today, governments, media outlets, political movements and non-state groups compete in real time to define what is happening. Disinformation, coordinated propaganda and now content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) mean a false account can reach millions before an official one is drafted.
As former BBC correspondent Karen Allen put it at the conference, “Now in an instant, I’m able to influence millions of people,” and algorithm manipulation is what we are increasingly seeing.
This year’s war showed how real that is. Within days of the first U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, an AI-generated video of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa on fire, with crowds fleeing, was viewed tens of millions of times, according to BBC Verify. Fabricated images of damaged U.S. facilities in the Gulf spread just as fast, some posted by Iranian state-linked outlets. UAE Minister of State Noura Al Kaabi later described the attacks on the country as coming “from the sky and behind our screens.” Her government’s answer was to treat “fake news and misinformation as a security threat.”
A more damaging false story was not a single video. It was the idea that the Gulf was a party to the war. The UAE did not want this war and said so. On March 3, Minister of State Reem Al Hashimy said the UAE did not “seek to expand the circle of confrontation,” that it had “repeatedly confirmed” its territory could not be used for any military operation against Iran, and that “returning to the negotiating table is the only rational way forward.” The attacks continued anyway. Reuters reported, citing UAE defense figures, that 186 ballistic missiles and 812 drones were fired at the country in the first days of the conflict.
Information resilience should be treated as security infrastructure, planned and funded like air defense, not managed as public relations.
Tehran sought to blur that record, framing strikes on Gulf cities as retaliation against American aggression. Its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told NBC News that Iran had “not attacked our neighbors,” only “American bases,” and called the hotels hit in Dubai “collateral damage.” Countering that narrative does not require propaganda of our own. It requires putting the record in front of the world quickly and repeatedly: the UAE’s public calls for restraint before the war, its refusal to let its territory be used against Iran, and the hundreds of missiles and drones fired at it, most of which it shot down. Facts published fast, through verified channels, in Arabic, English and Farsi, are harder to bury than corrections issued too late.
Even after a war ends, the threats do not disappear; they simply take different forms. Ceasefires and reconstruction depend on public trust. If populations come to believe that the peace is a betrayal, or that a neighbor cannot be trusted, no deterrence framework or security pact will survive contact with domestic politics. Spoilers understand this. Their cheapest weapon is a story.
Seen from the Gulf, the lesson of recent years is that speed and credibility beat silence. Crisis communication is not a side function of security. When official channels inform the public quickly, consistently and honestly, rumors have less room to grow. When they hesitate, someone else fills the gap.
None of this is simple. Governments everywhere are still working out where countering disinformation ends and controlling speech begins, and that debate should stay open. But the common ground is wider than it looks: a society cannot be secure if it cannot tell what is true.
The harder test comes now. After a war, influence campaigns shift from shock to slow erosion: relitigating who was to blame, questioning whether Gulf governments can protect their people, and setting neighbors and communities against each other. Young connected audiences are the main target. They are also the best defense.
Protecting our societies from that influence does not mean closing them. It means official channels fast and credible enough that people turn to them first. It means platforms held to clear rules on labeling AI-generated conflict content, as X began to do in March. And it means a generation of young Emiratis and Gulf citizens equipped to verify what they see and able to tell the region’s story themselves rather than leaving it to others.
The harder test comes now. After a war, influence campaigns shift from shock to slow erosion.
This is not only a Gulf problem. The campaigns aimed at audiences in the Gulf also shape how Washington and Brussels understand the region. The UAE and its partners already work closely on defense and intelligence. Detecting and exposing cross-border influence operations belongs on that shared agenda as a joint effort between governments, platforms and researchers.
Diplomacy, investment, and deterrence will rebuild the region’s security. Whether that security holds will depend on something harder to measure: what people across the region believe about each other, and about who protects them. For the UAE, winning that argument with facts is not public relations. It is part of keeping the country safe.
Najla Al Midfa is an Emirati researcher at TRENDS Research & Advisory, a company under TRENDS Group. Her research focuses on geopolitics, international relations, economic diplomacy and regional security, with a particular interest in the UAE’s foreign policy and strategic partnerships. She holds a master’s degree in Global Affairs and Diplomatic Leadership from the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, where her thesis examined the UAE’s economic diplomacy through its Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement strategy.
Sources
As Europe’s energy ministers meet in Brussels this week, they are weighing legitimate concerns around energy security, affordability, and the pressures facing businesses and households.
The European Commission’s proposal to delay selected EU Methane Regulation requirements for fossil-fuel importers is now moving quickly through the legislative process. Ministers have an opportunity to keep any adjustment tightly focused, while preserving the policy stability that companies and investors need to plan, invest and manage risk over the long term.
Investors need a stable framework against which companies can plan, manage risk and allocate capital with confidence.
For investors, the question is not whether implementation should be practical. It should. The question is whether a response to current pressures becomes a wider change to a framework that companies have already begun to implement.
Sixty investors, representing over €9.5 trillion in assets under management, have called for the EU Methane Regulation to be maintained and implemented as adopted. That statement pre-dated the Commission’s proposed one-year delay. Its central concern, however, is more relevant now: investors need a stable framework against which companies can plan, manage risk and allocate capital with confidence.
The regulation was designed with phased implementation. It gave companies, importers and national authorities time to prepare for stronger measurement, reporting and verification of methane emissions. It has helped bring methane from the margins into boardroom discussions, where it belongs.
Why methane matters to investors
For investors, methane performance can offer a useful view of how a company is run. It is an indicator of operational discipline, process safety and the quality of management oversight. By setting requirements for measurement, reporting and verification, the regulation can also improve the availability, consistency and reliability of methane data. That gives investors a stronger basis to compare companies and assess whether they are managing risks that could affect long-term value. Maintaining the regulation’s core provisions and avoiding any further delay would protect the progress already under way.
The EU’s position as a major oil and gas importer gives the Methane Regulation particular weight. Clear import requirements can improve the quality and comparability of emissions information across global supply chains. They can help create a more level playing field for companies supplying the European market, rather than allowing weak data or weaker controls to become a commercial advantage.
The choice is not between competitiveness, affordability and effective methane management. Europe can support all three.
This matters for competitiveness as well as climate-related financial risk. Energy affordability is a legitimate concern, particularly for businesses and households facing continued market volatility. But well-designed, practical rules can reward operational excellence, support informed investment decisions and give companies a clearer basis on which to plan, while implementation can be managed in ways that preserve market flexibility and limit unnecessary costs for consumers.
The choice is not between competitiveness, affordability and effective methane management. Europe can support all three. A three-year postponement, however, would not serve institutional investors, companies or Europe’s competitiveness.
Methane is often treated as a narrow technical issue. It is not. Reducing emissions from oil and gas operations is one of the quickest and most cost-effective ways to limit near-term warming. For companies, stronger measurement and reporting can also identify avoidable losses, improve operational performance and strengthen confidence among lenders and investors.
Companies and investors have already begun to respond to the direction set by the impending regulation. Investors are looking more closely at the quality of companies’ emissions data and the systems behind it. A predictable regulatory framework supports that work. Repeated changes to the timetable would do the opposite: they would make it harder to judge preparedness, compare performance and distinguish between companies that are acting now and those that are waiting for the rules to move again.
A longer delay would not remove the work needed to implement the regulation. It would postpone it, weaken incentives for companies and suppliers to prepare, and leave investors with less visibility over how methane-related risk will be managed. It could also disadvantage businesses that have already invested in stronger measurement and reporting, while slowing the development of the market for independent verification services needed to support credible implementation. When the requirements eventually return, the adjustment may be sharper and more costly. That uncertainty carries a cost for companies, investors and the wider market.
Practical implementation, not prolonged delay
The practical challenges facing importers are real and should be addressed through consistent implementation. This includes clear guidance from national authorities, practical ways to link relevant methane data to imported fuels, and clear standards for countries outside the EU whose methane rules are recognized as comparable to EU requirements. This approach would preserve market flexibility and help limit unnecessary costs, without weakening the regulation’s purpose.
If a one-year adjustment is judged necessary, ministers should keep it tightly defined, with a clear end date and no reopening of the regulation’s core provisions. They should use the period to provide the guidance that companies, importers and national authorities need to implement the rules consistently.
The choice facing ministers is not whether Europe should address methane emissions, but whether it does so through a stable framework that rewards preparedness and investment. A limited adjustment may be manageable. A prolonged delay risks creating uncertainty, slowing preparation and leaving Europe less competitive.
Stephanie Pfeifer, CEO, Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of all IIGCC members.
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Brussels and Ottawa aim for ambitious upgrade in their relationship while the U.S. president is occupied by the midterms — and before Europe’s political landscape shifts.
By SEBASTIAN STARCEVIC
Illustration by Hèctor Mixed for POLITICO
The EU and Canada are betting they can deepen their partnership while Donald Trump looks inward at the U.S. midterms — and before European elections upend the political calculus.
Their strategy is to push for the broadest possible upgrade and hope Trump is too busy campaigning to respond, four EU officials and two Canadian diplomats familiar with preparations for this week’s summit in Montreal said.
Trump, whose Republican Party is fighting to retain control of Congress in next week’s midterms, has called the EU’s offer of associate membership for Canada “laughable” and threatened “serious tariffs” if the two sides get too close.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa will join Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney for two days of talks on trade, security, energy, education and the Arctic on Thursday.
The summit “is a very strong statement,” said Mark Camilleri, president of the Canada and EU Trade and Investment Association. “I don’t think there’s any feeling that this is going to be some discreet get-together.”
Canada is also looking to move before Europe’s politics shift. Ottawa wants changes to the partnership that will outlast Trump and Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally is polling ahead in France and has criticized the EU-Canada trade pact, CETA, said a Canadian diplomat. All the officials and diplomats in this article were granted anonymity to speak frankly about the summit preparations.
Brussels and Ottawa are pushing to strengthen their relationship, including by cooperating more closely on trade and defense, international engagement and institutional links, according to a draft joint statement obtained by POLITICO.
In her September State of the Union speech, von der Leyen emphasized that the EU-Canada alliance is “not against anyone else.” Yet officials acknowledge that a stronger alliance risks triggering retaliation from Trump.
Von der Leyen, Costa and Carney “are fully aware that the eyes of the world are upon them,” said Camilleri.
The Europeans and Canadians know “the U.S. is watching,” a senior EU official said, adding that the bloc and Canada were nevertheless proceeding with business as usual and pushing for the most expansive possible relationship with Ottawa.
Another possibility is that the summit yields only “nice pictures” and little substance, a third senior official said, making it less likely to “trigger” the president.
European capitals, EU institutions and Canada’s provinces are all waiting to see what von der Leyen and Carney agree on in their meeting, the Canadian diplomat said, adding it was impossible to pre-judge how Trump would react.
For Ottawa, pressure comes from another direction: Europe’s electoral calendar and the rise of the far right.
With Spain, France, Poland and Italy all set to go to the polls in the next year, Canadian officials want to secure concrete gains while EU governments remain receptive to closer cooperation and keep the topic front of mind, before elections across the bloc risk shifting priorities and upsetting the political balance.
When Carney came to Strasbourg to lay out his vision for a closer alliance in September, he was heckled from the gallery by the far-right Alternative for Germany MEP Siegbert Droese, who led chants of “USA!”
But it’s France’s presidential election in April — and the prospect of Le Pen in office — that is causing the most concern, according to a second Canadian diplomat.
“It’s very fortunate we’re doing this summit now and not in six months,” the diplomat said, referring to the French election date.
Canada is pushing for big, bold “structural changes” in its relationship with the EU now that will outlast Trump and Le Pen, the diplomat added. Carney has grasped the moment’s rarity and urgency and will not leave the summit without securing major wins, the first Canadian diplomat said.
Another question is whether Brussels and Ottawa can upgrade their partnership without eventually drawing the U.S. president’s ire. The midterms might buy them some time, but the vote will not keep Trump busy forever.
Trump might be even more dangerous and more likely to take out his anger on the EU and Canada after the election, given that he will retain many of his tariff and foreign policy powers even if the Republicans lose Congress, the second Canadian diplomat warned.
“At the end of the day, his reaction could be anything,” Camilleri said. “We can only control what we can control.”
Mathieu Pollet contributed reporting.
Canada’s prime minister used to be an eco-warrior. Now, not so much.
By BEN MAKUCH
and MIKE BLANCHFIELD
in Brussels
Photo-illustration by Anthony Gerace for POLITICO
Ask European Union leaders what they think of Mark Carney’s climate credentials, and you’ll get a gushing response.
“We see the world with the same eyes: from AI to climate change,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her State of the Union speech last month, where the Canadian prime minister was the guest of honor.
“Canada and the EU are very, very like-minded,” the bloc’s climate chief, Wopke Hoekstra, told POLITICO in an interview when asked about his hopes for climate collaboration between the two powers ahead of this week’s EU-Canada summit in Montreal.
But this rosy view sidesteps a less comfortable reality: Canada is a major fossil fuel producer whose climate ambitions fall far short of Europe’s.
And under Carney, those ambitions are weakening.
Last year, Canada produced more crude oil than any other country outside the big three producers, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Oil and gas are Canada’s biggest exports by far, and the industry lobby is an influential force in Ottawa.
In his previous life as a central banker, Carney was considered a climate champion. POLITICO even dubbed him an “eco warrior” in 2018. But since taking over as prime minister last year, he has weakened Canada’s climate policies at a rate few predicted, scrapping a national carbon tax and electric vehicle mandate and opening new oil and gas projects.
The list of climate laws Carney has watered down, repealed and canceled makes the EU’s own recent backtracking on green laws look minor. Some environmentalists argue it is comparable to U.S. President Donald Trump’s wholesale dismantling of environmental protections.
“The track the Carney government has taken on climate and environmental regulation has been a decisive move in the direction of the U.S.,” said Tim Gray, executive director of environmental non-profit Environment Defence. Carney, he said, “seems to be all in on fossil fuels.”
Keean Nembhard, a spokesperson for Canada’s Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin, told POLITICO the Carney government is “committed to fighting climate change and reaching net-zero by 2050 by taking a pragmatic and durable approach.”
“This includes building major clean energy projects across the country, driving mass electrification, and making significant investment in the low-carbon economy,” he said.
But Gray argued that Carney’s support for fossil fuels and weakening of environmental standards may complicate Canada’s attempts to forge closer ties with Europe, which has some of the world’s most stringent green laws.
Still, in Europe, Carney’s green image persists.
Last week, Belgian member of the European Parliament Saskia Bricmont gave expression to this faith in Carney’s commitment to climate issues when she called on him to lead a global push to put climate back on the agenda ahead of next month’s U.N. climate summit.
“Mr Carney … relaunch the fight against climate deregulation and for the restoration of biodiversity, and re-mobilize the international community around concrete, coordinated measures,” she said.
Carney’s reputation as a climate champion is well earned. As governor of the Bank of England, he led a push among central bankers to take the economic risks of climate change seriously — memorably captured in his 2015 ‘Tragedy of the Horizon’ speech, in which he warned: “The catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors.”
In 2021, after he’d left the Bank of England, he became a United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance and launched a net-zero financial alliance with some of the world’s biggest banks.
But things changed dramatically when Donald Trump took back the White House, and Carney replaced fellow Liberal Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister in 2025. At the time, Trudeau and his Liberals had been way behind in the polls, battered by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s attacks on his climate policies — in particular an unpopular consumer carbon tax.
Carney’s first act as prime minister was to scrap that tax.
Following his surprise victory in the elections that April, Carney set about promoting Canada as an “energy superpower.” To the dismay of environmental groups, he supported the “Pacific Link,” an oil pipeline costing tens of billions of dollars, designed to carry Alberta crude to Canada’s Pacific coast for export to Asia.
He then pushed for thawing relations with Beijing in January, a not-so-subtle pitch to find a new crude oil client that isn’t the U.S. Germany, rushing to replace its dependence on Russian energy, signed a long-term agreement in July to buy Canadian liquefied natural gas from a proposed port in British Columbia, despite backlash from environmental and indigenous groups.
He also scrapped laws on electric vehicle adoption, dropped plans for an emissions cap on oil and gas companies, watered down an existing industrial carbon price and introduced legislation to weaken environmental permitting rules for big infrastructure projects, which critics dubbed the “bulldoze nature bill.”
A landmark moment, according to Gray, came in November 2025, when Carney signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Alberta, Canada’s biggest oil-producing province. That document, which promised to turn Canada into a “global energy superpower,” contained a string of promises to promote oil and gas and water down federal climate laws.
So why the dramatic shift?
Carney, who has repeatedly positioned energy sovereignty as a bulwark against Trump’s economic aggression, offered his realpolitik response at an event in the heart of Alberta’s oil patch earlier this month.
“There’s a structural challenge of energy security and the existential challenge of climate change, and these challenges are forcing countries to think differently about where their energy comes from and on who they can rely on to supply it,” Carney said in Fort McMurray, Alberta on Oct. 1.
“Even under any plausible net zero scenario, the IEA [International Energy Agency] forecasts the world will still need tens of millions of barrels of crude a day. So the question is: who will emerge as the world’s trusted suppliers? It should be us. It must be Canada.”
Carney, to be sure, is no Trump. Unlike the U.S. president, he has retained his pro-climate rhetoric and promised to develop the country’s mining of critical minerals essential for the clean energy transition.
In May, he unveiled a national electricity strategy which aims to double Canada’s largely clean electricity grid by 2050 to meet soaring demand. “The path to net zero is electrification,” Carney said then.
In August, he announced C$10 billion in federal support for the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project in Newfoundland and Labrador, saying it will be the largest clean energy project in North America, capable of generating enough electricity to light up the equivalent of Canada’s three largest cities.
Nembhard, Environment Minster Dabrusin’s spokesperson, also pointed to new electricity transmission lines, electric vehicle subsidies and a C$2 billion plan to retrofit homes with heat pumps.
Canadian climate activist Alex Cool-Fergus said she does not think Carney “believes that oil and gas is the future,” but is simply being pragmatic about Canada’s economic reality.
“The electricity strategy that came out in May was incredibly important, and actually gives us a better idea of what his thinking is for the future,” she said.
Trudeau’s approach to climate change was “very much values-based, and it was about doing the right thing,” said Cool-Fergus. “I think that’s hit its limits. Carney’s approach makes more sense for the world of 2025-2026.”
Hoekstra, the EU’s commissioner for climate, said he wants to deepen ties with Canada. “Given all the complications the world is facing, it is imperative to team up more closely with your closest partners,” he said. But he’s realistic about how far that relationship can go.
Hoekstra has ambitions of cementing the EU into a global network of economies with carbon pricing regimes. While he conceded nothing is “off the table,” he acknowledged linking the EU’s Emissions Trading System with Canada’s “quite different” version, which varies from province to province: “You’re talking about a completely different horizon, and that is not something we would attempt in the very short run.”
There are, however, other ways Hoekstra believes the EU and Canada can closely link on environmental issues.
“Doubling down, tripling down on electrification, on solar, on wind, on nuclear, on batteries,” he said, adding “that is one area that I think is potentially very fruitful for my portfolio.”
Another is critical raw materials, a key focus of this week’s summit.
Brussels is exploring ways for the European Investment Bank, the EU’s lending arm, to help finance the mining of Canadian mineral deposits that could supply the bloc with an alternative to Chinese-produced metals, with a framework agreement expected to be signed during the summit. Lithium, copper, nickel, and other key ingredients for electric vehicle batteries and clean energy technologies essential for decarbonizing Europe are abundant but often undeveloped all over Canada.
This week’s summit will also explore investing in infrastructure on Canada’s east coast to liquefy and ship Canadian gas to Europe, a move that could help the EU diversify its supply away from the U.S., which, along with Norway, has become Europe’s dominant supplier since it cut off Russian gas imports following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Many EU member countries will welcome success on these goals. But Gray warns that closer ties with Canada could lead to deeper penetration by the country’s powerful fossil fuel lobby, which he described as a “major, major force.”
“They’ll be spending time trying to make sure the alignment with the EU is in a direction that favors them,” he said.
The EU’s lack of oil and gas resources — and, by extension, the absence of a powerful fossil fuel lobby — has kept climate policy relatively bipartisan in the EU. Could inviting a fossil fuel “superpower” into the fold as an “associate member” change that?
“That would depend very much on what is an ‘associate member,’” Dutch Climate Minister Stientje van Veldhoven-van der Meer said.
KYIV — With another bitter winter of fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war ahead, diplomatic activity is ramping back up in a fresh attempt to close in on a ceasefire and eventually a final peace accord.
Under renewed pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, Kyiv and Moscow are preparing to send negotiating teams to Abu Dhabi for a three-way meeting with American officials to explore the potential for agreement. The meeting is penciled in for Nov. 10.
But many questions about the process remain, including whether Europe will have a seat at the table when key decisions are taken — and who should fill it. Based on remarks from key leaders, and conversations with European officials granted anonymity because the talks are sensitive, POLITICO breaks down what’s under discussion for an agreement and what could get in the way.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the agenda for Abu Dhabi should first include initial steps toward de-escalation, such as prisoner swaps and ceasefires on energy infrastructure and for the Black Sea. There should also be a discussion among the technical negotiating teams of what format a future three-way meeting between leaders — Trump, Zelenskyy and Russia’s Vladimir Putin — should take, he told reporters this week.
When it comes to a final deal, one overriding question for Ukraine is what form of security guarantees it will get from Europe and the U.S., or potentially NATO. Zelenskyy won’t want to accept anything he believes could leave Ukraine vulnerable to a future attack from Russia.
Putin is also likely to raise the need for security guarantees — for Russia — including limiting or potentially reversing NATO’s presence in the neighborhood.
Then there’s the question of territory. Zelenskyy’s view is that marking out any boundaries, temporarily or permanently, is something that can only be discussed at leader level. “No one else has the authority to do so,” he said Tuesday.
Zelenskyy said during previous sets of negotiations over the past year, “as a compromise,” that Ukraine had been prepared to discuss the idea of a demilitarized “buffer zone” on both sides of the contact line in the Donbas region.
Similar ideas were proposed for other parts of Ukraine. Zelenskyy said his negotiators discussed these questions again with the Americans in recent weeks. “We are ready to discuss the issue of territories because the Russians keep wanting to discuss it and make it part of the agenda,” he said. But this would need to be at a leader-level meeting.
European leaders are adamant that they must be included in final negotiations, not least because it is they who are are now providing the vast bulk of financial and military support to Ukraine. Trump ended American aid in 2025.
Zelenskyy and U.S. officials accept that European governments will likely need to be involved in discussions about security guarantees — mainly because any peacekeeping forces deployed to Ukraine would be dominated by European troops.
The Coalition of the Willing, a loose alliance of more than 30 countries led by France, the U.K. and Germany, put together detailed proposals in coordination with the U.S. almost a year ago. Ukraine is also interested in exploring bilateral security guarantees with the U.S., a discussion that would not need to involve European officials.
Plans for rebuilding Ukraine and nurturing its economic revival would also have to involve Europe, Zelenskyy said. “We cannot envision such a, so to speak, ‘Marshall Plan’ without Europe.”
Trump’s renewed interest in Ukraine also resurfaced some sore questions for European governments: Who should represent them when it comes to decision time? And should they even be talking to Putin at all?
With no clarity emerging from Brussels, some leaders have taken matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre held a 90-minute call with Putin, urging him to end the war. It went down badly with several European governments, including Denmark, Italy, Sweden and Lithuania. One frustrated diplomat said: “There are too many middle-aged men who want to end up in the history books having solved this war.”
Russia has said the Stubb-Støre call achieved nothing of substance and the war will likely “escalate.” By some accounts, Putin used much of the time on the phone lecturing the Nordic leaders on regional history.
One problem in identifying a lead negotiator is that the European countries with a stake in the talks are not only in the EU — the U.K. and Norway, for example, are both outside the bloc. Without clarity of leadership, European interests risk being sidelined when the talking gets serious.
One critical unknown factor in the mix is how long Trump’s attention will stay on Ukraine.
After the U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran in the spring, progress on Ukraine stalled for months, only to return this fall as Trump sought to mitigate the impact of the Middle East conflict. A new escalation in the Iran war risks sidelining the negotiations all over again.
The U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Zelenskyy, Stubb and Støre in Oslo on Oct. 20. Witkoff then went to St. Petersburg to meet Putin the next day. There was supposed to be a follow-up meeting in Brussels this week in preparation for negotiations in Abu Dhabi — but the Americans postponed the talks, apparently due to developments in the Middle East.
“The meeting in Abu Dhabi now depends on the American side,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday. At a press conference Wednesday, he added: “We very much hope that the escalatory processes in the Middle East — which are currently the subject of so much discussion — will not interfere.”
After their Kremlin call, Stubb and Støre apparently told Zelenskyy they felt Putin was serious about the Abu Dhabi opportunity. But in public and private, diplomats and political leaders in Europe are deeply skeptical that Putin is at all serious about an imminent path to peace.
Despite the Kremlin insisting he is on board, European diplomats believe the Russian leader is just playing for time in the hope that Ukraine weakens over a winter of attacks on its energy system, and Europe — perhaps with the far-right Marine Le Pen in charge of France — gets tired of paying for the war and gives up next year.
That’s why EU officials know they cannot pin their hopes on peace and need to redouble their financial support and military aid for Ukraine, while tightening sanctions on Russia. EU leaders will discuss the issue of securing funds for Ukraine’s war effort at their summit in Brussels scheduled for November 26.
Nicholas Vinocur in Brussels contributed to this report.
A hacker stole a trove of personal information from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The breach exposes the names, job titles, phone numbers, email addresses, and office locations of more than 41,000 employees, including those in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to TechCrunch and Wired. The data also linked the agencies to specific surveillance tools.
As reported by TechCrunch, a hacker known as "Department of Peace" gained access to the data through Okta, an identity and access management service used by the DHS. Around 21,000 records pertain to CBP employees, and ne …
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has defended the leaders of Finland and Norway for reaching out to Russian leader Vladimir Putin as part of efforts to reach a peace deal.
In a 90-minute call on Tuesday, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre urged Putin to end his war on Ukraine.
But some European leaders felt the call was a mistake, criticizing Stubb and Støre for undermining Europe’s unity in dealing with Russia’s president, who has been largely frozen out after launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Zelenskyy praised the two Nordic leaders for their help, saying he had a “positive” view of them. “We really have very good relations with these countries. They truly help,” Zelenskyy said.
The Ukrainian leader said Putin had been taken out of diplomatic isolation last year when U.S. President Donald Trump met him in Alaska. “Since Alaska, Europeans have also been in contact with Russia,” Zelenskyy said. “They just haven’t done so as openly as the leaders of Norway and Finland.”
Everyone understands that there have been contacts “at the national security adviser level and between intelligence agencies,” as well as talks that only emerged after they had happened, he said.
“Here, though, everything is completely out in the open: discussions in advance, a full briefing, and transparent objectives. Finland and Norway are showing that they want to open another channel of communication, so that Europe can receive information not only through the United States and Russia can hear certain things directly,” Zelenskyy added.
The question of whether — and how — Europe should talk to Putin is a sore subject for officials and diplomats among Ukraine’s allies in the EU and beyond.
On Tuesday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was “very skeptical” about the Finnish-Norwegian joint call and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said peace must come through “strength” rather than “appeasement” of Russia.
One official from a national capital, granted anonymity like others to speak candidly about sensitive issues, said formats like the E3 (Germany, France and the U.K.) worked well. Fracturing the unified European voice by letting each country start its own talks with Moscow would be a bad thing, the official added.
The Italian government was irked by Stubb and Støre’s call with Putin, with officials saying it exposed Europe’s failure to agree who should represent the region in peace talks.
A government official from Rome warned that separate national initiatives and constantly shifting diplomatic formats risk further eroding influence, saying Europe “cannot continue to act randomly and in formats that change from week to week.” Rome wants the urgent appointment of representatives with a shared European mandate to defend the continent’s interests and security. “The negotiations will not wait,” the official said.
The reaction from the Brussels institutions to the Norway-Finland initiative has been muted so far, while hinting at the sensitivity of the subject.
“We take note of the call, which took place solely on a bilateral basis,” said Paula Pinho, spokesperson for the European Commission. “These negotiations are happening in different formats, different places and different levels involving heads of states and government, ministers, senior diplomats and officials. The EU is involved.”
BERLIN — German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius will host his British counterpart Wes Streeting in Berlin on Monday, Nov. 2, for talks on NATO, Ukraine and bilateral defense cooperation, Germany’s defense ministry announced Wednesday.
Streeting, who took over as Britain’s defense secretary in July, will make his inaugural visit to Berlin in his new role as part of the German-British Defence Ministerial Council.
The two ministers will meet at the defense ministry’s headquarters, where Streeting will be received with military honors before laying a wreath at the Bundeswehr memorial.
According to the ministry, discussions will focus on the international security situation, the two countries’ contributions to NATO, military support for Ukraine and closer defense-industrial cooperation.
The visit comes as Berlin and London seek to deepen their defense partnership under the landmark Trinity House Agreement signed in October 2024 and the broader Kensington Treaty concluded in 2025.
The meeting follows an E5 gathering of Europe’s five major defense powers — Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Poland — in Paris on Monday, where ministers pledged to assume greater responsibility for European security while maintaining close cooperation with Washington.
LONDON — John Healey wants to keep his debut budget low-key — but he’s also got to show the British public his boss really does feel their pain.
The chancellor delivers the first financial statement of the Andy Burnham era Wednesday. The pitch? “Breathing space for today” mixed with some “fresh hope for the future.”
But with war in Iran driving up costs worldwide, government borrowing at its highest level in a year, and businesses warning they’re taxed to the max, Healey is up against it.
Here’s how POLITICO’s team of reporters will be poring over the big fiscal moment, unveiled at 12.30 p.m. U.K. time Wednesday.
I’ll flip straight to the big table two-thirds of the way through the ‘red book,’ where Treasury officials list the total tax rises and spending cuts, and then the “headroom” against Healey’s fiscal rules in the executive summary.
The briefing suggests these numbers will be smaller than the £26 billion in tax rises and £23.6 billion in headroom former Chancellor Rachel Reeves notched up in March this year.
The Treasury has turned this into its comms strategy, pointing to “everyday fixes” and non-tax measures like scrapping business red tape. But these numbers will also show how Donald Trump’s war in Iran has reined in Burnham’s ambitions.
And they are indicative of something else — the budget just isn’t the main event this time. In the next seven weeks or so we’re expecting [former minister] Alan Milburn’s review of the benefit system, a U.K.-EU summit, a “10-year plan” and a white paper on “rewiring the state.”
Then next year is the spending review. That’s when the really hard choices will come — and the budget will give us a sign of how hard, since it will map out a path for departmental spending over the next few years.
Andy Burnham’s team has been speaking a lot about “everyday fixes” — cheapo policies that can rectify real-life niggles.
Headphone dodgers? You’re fined. Being ripped off by parking fines? We’ve got your backs. Balking at the cost of the supermarket shop? Gone are the tariffs on your gherkins.
That will buy the government a fair amount of goodwill, building a sense that the government isn’t entirely a useless beast being buffeted by global horror shows. But it’ll only go so far.
Healey is under pressure to show bold action on what really matters too — actual interventions that bring down the cost of living. We know already there will be support for household energy bills, a fuel duty freeze, support for pensioners and a hike to the minimum wage. All eyes will be on whether Healey has any more surprises on this front.
As costly as any support is for the exchequer, will it all pale in comparison to the effects of the Strait of Hormuz-sealing war with Iran? This is a self-declared “cost of living government” after all.
First, I’ll scour watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts to see where the semi-official number crunchers reckon real household disposable income is headed. Then the analysts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation will provide more insight.
After that, the voices that really matter will be those sitting down to ever-costlier dinner, nursing pricy pints and rolling their eyes at the petrol pumps. Will this budget give Brits enough reason to believe Burnham’s new government is a force for good, trying to ease the pain? Or will they deem the new-look administration just the same old ineffective bureaucrats who need sweeping away in favor of a more radical response?
The number one thing we’ll be looking out for in today’s budget is how exactly Healey — who quit as defense secretary in the dying days of Keir Starmer’s government over exactly this issue — tries to demonstrate he is raising defense spending against a tough backdrop.
The chancellor has tried to manage expectations for the Ministry of Defence at the budget pretty closely, initially stating that he would only seek to cover a £4.7 billion pound shortfall in its already-unveiled Defence Investment Plan.
In recent weeks, however, the Treasury has suggested he could do more to show the U.K. is moving towards spending 3% of GDP on defense, something Healey sees as an important marker on the way to meeting the NATO target of 3.5%.
Media reports leading up to Wednesday suggest an increase will come from money funneled into the British Business Bank and National Wealth Fund.
But could he have something else in his back pocket? Healey is well aware of the potential for awkward questions about his commitment to follow through on the promises he made just four months ago that he said were crucial to U.K. security, now that he’s in charge of the money.
A hike in bank taxes is all but inevitable in today’s budget – but the City of London will be nervously watching how high the increase goes. Along with the lenders, I’ll be looking out for how much taxes are raised, whether any changes are temporary, and whether the City — Britain’s financial powerhouse — gets anything in return.
The easiest move for Healey is to increase the surcharge banks pay on top of corporation tax. That currently stands at 3%, after Conservative Chancellor Jeremy Hunt reduced it from 8% in 2023 to account for higher corporation taxes. Healey could simply reverse the surcharge to 8%, which would be unpopular with the banks and might not even go far enough for campaigners: the Trades Union Congress has called for an increase to 16%.
I’ll also be closely watching for how the bond markets react to the first budget under Burnham. Despite the prime minister describing Britain as “in hock” to the bond markets before he took office, odds are on for a “boring” budget, without any huge spending commitments that might spike borrowing costs.
But any cautious policy changes designed to placate the bond market will have to be tempered alongside demands from the Labour Party. It’s a tricky balance, and Labour MPs showed under Keir Starmer that they were willing to rebel when it mattered.
A sharp, painful spike in energy bills is coming for Britain; at this budget we’ll find out how much power Healey and Burnham have to help.
The latest energy price cap forecasts are brutal. Energy firms expect average, annual household bills to rise by more than £450 in January. They could go even higher in April. Why? Mainly because of gas. The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has sent wholesale prices soaring to levels not seen since December 2022.
Healey knows how bleak things look, but he may not have the fiscal firepower to offer much help. Burnham has hinted at removing gas standing charges from bills, which could save an average household a modest £27, according to one estimate. Meanwhile, payments to around 6 million low-income households — the Warm Homes Discount — are likely to get a top-up of between £100 and £150.
Businesses, meanwhile, could get details of a 10-year plan to bring their energy costs into line with European competitors, according to two people familiar with budget preparations.
But with the cost of living and cost of doing business set to rise so high, will that be it?
There’s “strong awareness” inside government “of how bad it will get,” said one senior government official. Unfortunately, they added, there are “not the pockets deep enough to do all the things we might like to do.”
Elsewhere, we’ll be watching closely to see whether net zero schemes — like the rollout of electric heat pumps — could face cuts to cover shortfalls in defense spending.
Healey put AI and innovation at the heart of his growth plan in a pre-budget speech back in September.
In that vein, the government has trailed a £600 million spending package to protect the U.K. from AI risks while growing its own share of the sector, calling it a “distinctively British” approach to mitigating risks from the technology while capturing the benefits.
The question now is whether more measures to support the U.K.’s tech and AI sector will come on Wednesday, with trade groups calling for bold moves to lower energy costs, tackle energy and planning delays, and help firms invest in AI and upskill workers.
Startups are also hoping for tax relief and further reforms to regulation and procurement rules. A relief for founders who re-invest their earnings in the U.K. has been a particular demand from the startup community, which has already bagged a win after Healey ruled out raising capital gains tax.
AI is also likely to play a significant role in the government’s plans to make Whitehall more efficient, as it did under Reeves.
The sector is also closely watching how the chancellor plans to meet his defense spending targets, in the hopes that drone makers and military tech firms might benefit from the uplift.
I’m looking out for the chancellor’s VAT crackdown on foreign sellers, who register as U.K. based companies to avoid paying the tax. Healey is expected to make online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Temu responsible for collecting tax owed by all retailers.
We’re also waiting to see whether the government has more information on its de minimis crackdown, including whether it will introduce a handling fee for small packages below £135. The EU already has one in place.
Finally, we’ll be looking out for any more detail on the government’s suspension of tariffs on more than 100 food, drink, fuel and fertilizer products.
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