One week in.
Berlin.
Greetings from my new home in Berlin. I’m a little over one week in, and still struggling a bit with jet lag. But I’m very pleased to be here, albeit a little overwhelmed by my to-do list.
It’s been exactly one year since I began mentally playing with the idea of returning to Europe full-time. This last year has been one of soul-searching and upheaval. It’s been mentally and emotionally exhausting. But I’ve landed now, and I believe, or rather I hope, that the hardest parts are behind me. Now, I just need to tackle the realities of German bureaucracy. That is all. NBD.
Plenty of other people have written about the realities of the coveted anmeldung, or the fight to find a flat in Berlin, but perhaps I will share my own experiences with all of that one day, once it’s all behind me.
For now, I’m delighted to announce that I started a new role as a news editor with Euractiv, a pan-European publication that’s undergoing an exciting revamp. That means I won’t be writing news articles each week like I usually do, so this newsletter will get a bit of a refresh as well.
Please don't hesitate to reach out and let me know what you think of the new format. My email, as always, is c.maza@protonmail.com.
I’ll work on getting into a publishing rhythm for Lazo Magazine once I’ve settled in. We have some interesting stuff coming down the pipeline. In the meantime, you can support our work here or here.
Euractiv stories
The European Commission aims to launch defense projects across all its priority areas by the first half of 2026, beginning with the Eastern Flank Watch and a Drone Wall, according to a draft seen by Euractiv.
The European Commission presented its Defence Readiness Roadmap to outline priorities for achieving war readiness by 2030. But the new plan provided little by way of new financial firepower.
Praised in Brussels as the symbol of ‘Poland’s return to Europe’, Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government has reached the halfway point of its mandate, but faces mounting public dissatisfaction, coalition strains, and accusations of broken promises at home.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he was “proud” after his party was officially expelled from the Party of European Socialists, ending Smer’s 20-year affiliation with Europe’s centre-left political family.
Kosovo’s local election results are complicating Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s political strategies and potentially giving the European Union fresh leverage to push for stalled normalization with Serbia.
Plans to revise Germany’s military service suffered a fresh setback after a press conference to present the provisional agreement, which would allow for a lottery-based model should the army fail to fill its yearly quota, was cancelled.
Europe’s Defense News
• NATO is hunting for ways to plug holes in its vulnerable air defenses in response to growing incursions by swarms of drones and Russian jets brazenly entering its skies, Politico reports.
• Proposals for an EU “drone wall” remain uncertain due to the potential costs, technical difficulties, and disagreements between member states and the EU commission over who should control such a major defense project, Reuters reports.
Russia/Ukraine
• Russia’s Federal Security Service intelligence service announced a broad terrorism investigation into nearly two dozen anti-war Russians, accusing the Russian Antiwar Committee group of plotting to overthrow the government, the New York Times reports.
• U.S. First Lady Melania Trump said that she has had an “open channel of communication regarding the welfare of children” with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the last three months, Politico reports.
• U.S. intelligence shared with Kyiv has enabled Ukraine’s strikes on Russian energy assets, including oil refineries far beyond the frontline, the Financial Times reports.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revoked the Ukrainian citizenship of the Odesa Mayor, Hennady Trukhanov, alleging that Trukhanov was a citizen of Russia, the New York Times reports. The move effectively pushes Trukhanov out of office and marks the most significant escalation yet in a feud between the national authorities in Kyiv and opposition local leaders across Ukraine.
• Trump met with Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, and The Hill has five takeaways from the meeting.
• Trump said that he plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hungary in the next “two weeks or so” to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, the New York Times reports.
Eastern Europe & Eurasia
• A joint investigative report published in the Belgian newspaper De Tijd revealed that the Hungarian intelligence service has for years been using a secret spy network in the European Union institutions in Brussels. DW has the write-up.
• After a week of intense negotiations and backroom deals, the leader of the Czech Republic’s ANO party, Andrej Babiš, is set to govern with the far-right, pro-Russian Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party and the ultra-conservative Motorist movement, Balkan Insight reports.
• New Lines Magazine has an interesting piece on what the dried-up Aral Sea tells us about “what kinds of economies we prioritize, what forms of nature we value, and what we want our future to look like.”
Other International News
• A new report found that violent attacks at sea by the Libyan coastguard, which receives funding from the European Union, are increasing, Politico reports. That accounting comes as Libyan authorities met Frontex officials in Warsaw and European Commission officials in Brussels.
• Egyptian and Qatari mediators told Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya that Trump’s deal was his last chance to end the war, following Al-Hayya’s immediate reaction to refuse the deal, the Wall Street Journal reports. The sources said that Turkey warned him that Turkey and Qatar would remove all diplomatic and political cover if Hamas did not agree to the deal.
• Israel has not included Marwan Barghouti, a popular and potentially unifying Palestinian leader, in the list of around 250 prisoners to be released from Israel, the Associated Press reports.
• Fighting between Hamas Security forces and armed members of the Dughmush family in Gaza City killed at least 27 people, the BBC reports.
• Syria’s interim leader, who ousted former Syrian President Bashar Assad despite years of Moscow’s support, held talks in Russia during his first visit to the country that gave asylum to the deposed autocrat, the Associated Press reports.
• New Lines Magazine has a piece looking at Syria’s First Post-Assad Elections.
• The Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have agreed in principle to merge the SDF into the national army, the Associated Press reports.
• Independent landmine experts, asked by Reuters to evaluate evidence and photographs, said that the PMN-2 landmines that sparked the 5 day war between Thailand and Cambodia in July were freshly laid. The analysts were not able to determine who had placed the weapons.
• Venezuelan government officials offered the Trump administration a significant stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth to end hostilities during months-long negotiations preceding the U.S. strikes, the New York Times reports. Sources stated that Venezuela offered to grant preferential contracts to U.S. businesses and terminate contracts with Chinese, Iranian, and Russian firms. The Trump administration cut off diplomacy with Venezuela, effectively killing the deal.
• President Donald Trump confirmed that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and said he was weighing carrying out land operations in the country, the Associated Press reports.
• Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina said he has fled the country in fear for his life following a military rebellion, but did not announce his resignation in a speech broadcast on social media from an undisclosed location, NPR reports.
You can write to me for any reason: c.maza@protonmail.com.
Welcome to Berlin.
🤔 that first photo.