Europe

30 associations are proposing to the European Commission to impose a limit on the size of new cars, in particular the total width and bonnet.

A report connected with this request showed that the average bonnet height of newly-sold cars in Europe is increasing by 0.5 cm a year.

Many studies showed that bigger cars and higher bonnets are related to more collisions, and worse outcome for pedestrians and cyclists (and those in smaller cars), especially in regards to children

Those SUVs are kid crushers, they shouldn’ be on our roads

crossposed from: https://mastodon.uno/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/114674420551539891

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Moldovian President Maia Sandu warned that Russia would continue its aggression in other countries, including the Republic of Moldova, if not stopped in Ukraine.

"If Ukraine falls, believe me, Russia won't stop at Moldova," Maia Sandu stated. She noted that international support for Ukraine must become faster and more consistent: "We need to help faster, more extensively. Russia has enormous resources, enormous capabilities. Ukraine receives less and too late. We must reverse this situation. This is our mission."

President Sandu declared that Ukraine is not just a country under attack, but "a cornerstone of European security," and the stakes of the war unleashed by the Russian Federation transcend this country's borders: "It's not just about Ukraine, about its future; it's about the future of the whole of Europe, of the entire world."

President Sandu also spoke about the hybrid attack methods used by Russia: "Lies, manipulation, blackmail, interference in our political systems, distortion of democracy and truth." Maia Sandu added that the Republic of Moldova is similarly targeted: "Moldova knows what hybrid warfare means, what it truly looks like: energy blackmail, fake protests, disinformation, and organized crime disguised as political parties."

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Human Rights Watch, in a May 15 submission to the EU, reiterated its regret that the EU continues to hold a human rights dialogue with China. Along with other rights organizations, Human Rights Watch has repeatedly criticized the box-ticking nature of the exercise, in which criticism behind closed doors yields no concrete improvements.

For example, despite raising their cases for years, the EU has been unable to obtain the release of Gui Minhai, a Swedish bookseller whom Beijing arbitrarily arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison, or to receive a sign of life from Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur scholar and Sakharov Prize laureate who was sentenced to life in prison for his peaceful activism and has been denied family visits since 2017.

These cases are emblematic of the EU’s failure to meaningfully address Beijing’s repression, which has reached new peaks under Xi Jinping’s rule, including in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong.

Notably, a landmark 2022 report on Xinjiang by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights found Beijing’s abusive policies against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims may amount to “international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” The EU and its member states should press the Chinese government to allow unrestricted access to the UN human rights office for a follow-up visit.

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EU leaders should more forcefully raise human rights concerns during the upcoming summit and strategic dialogue, and lay out concrete consequences should Beijing fail to rein in its repression. Not doing so will be at the expense of all people in China.

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In a bid to tackle what President Emmanuel Macron described as "a senseless surge of violence," the French government will issue a decree "within 15 days" banning the sale of knives to minors.

American-style intensive livestock farms are spreading across Europe, with new data revealing more than 24,000 megafarms across the continent.

The countries with the largest number of intensive poultry farm units are France, UK, Germany, Italy and Poland in that order.

Georg Spöttle, a regular presence in pro-Orbán media, has come under scrutiny after one of his close acquaintances failed a background check—triggered by concerns over Spöttle’s Russian connections. Information obtained by Direkt36 reveals that Spöttle had a close relationship with an officer from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.

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More than 100,000 Russian families have contacted a Ukrainian-run initiative in search of information about missing Russian soldiers, Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of the Prisoners of War (POWs) said on June 12.

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The initiative, called "I Want to Find" (Russian: "Хочу найти"), has received 100,324 requests from Russian citizens seeking answers about relatives who vanished while serving in Russia's military, the Coordination Headquarters said.

The actual number of missing Russian troops is believed to be significantly higher. Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has largely concealed the scale of its military losses, forcing many families to search independently, Ukrainian officials said.

In May 2025 alone, the project received a record 12,320 inquiries — the highest monthly figure since the program began in January 2024.

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The Kremlin has not commented on the figures.

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Since [Russia's] full-scale invasion in 2022, dozens of teenagers in Ukraine and at least 12 teens elsewhere in Europe – in Germany, Poland, Britain and Lithuania – have been arrested in Russia-linked cases of sabotage and spying. [Canadian teenager Laken] Pavan’s case [...] sheds light on these covert Russian operations and their cryptocurrency trail. [Pavan pleaded guilty to charges of helping Russian intelligence and was sentenced in December 2024 in Poland. Pavan, who turned 18 a few weeks after his arrest, is now serving a 20-month sentence in a Polish prison on the outskirts of Radom, a city 100 kilometres south of the capital.]

The answer to why Moscow has resorted to using untrained agents lies in the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats and operatives from Europe after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. To plug the hole in their operations, Russian intelligence services have shifted to recruiting common criminals or individuals with little spycraft experience, said a senior NATO official. His statement echoed comments last year from Germany’s domestic security service. Two European security experts said teenagers are recruited because they’re vulnerable, low-cost, and often in need of money.

“These are, in many cases, not trained intelligence professionals,” the NATO official said on condition of anonymity to describe the clandestine operations.

The official expects more Russian hybrid warfare, which combines physical warfare with non-military tactics used to undermine an adversary’s security and sow distrust and confusion. “One of the main objectives of the Russian hybrid campaign is to undercut support for Ukraine, and that is both politically, in terms of creating disquiet amongst the population, but also very practically, in terms of the actual concrete support going to Ukraine,” he said.

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The bitcoin transactions in the court documents allowed [investigators] to trace the payments, revealing transfers across several wallets. The analysis identified one large cryptocurrency wallet that financed the two wallets which paid bitcoin directly to Pavan. That big wallet has processed over $600 million since its creation in June 2022, four months after the start of the war in Ukraine, the analysis found. [Investigators] could not ascertain who operates the large upstream wallet.

European officials have pointed to Russia for sabotage including cyberattacks and arson, attempted assassinations, as well as espionage in countries allied with Ukraine. Moscow denies involvement and has called such allegations “ empty” and unproven. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, known as the SVR, did not comment directly on Pavan’s case and accused Europe of blindly supporting “the Kyiv regime's terrorist methods.”

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A court in Estonia has sentenced Svetlana Burceva, who cooperated with the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency (the media group behind Russia Today), to six years in prison on charges of treason and violating international sanctions.

Burceva acquired Estonian citizenship through naturalization in 1994. Since 2017, she had been working for Estonian online outlets affiliated with the propaganda media group Rossiya Segodnya: for Sputnik Estonia (Sputnik Eesti) until it ceased operations in 2019, and then for the Baltnews website from 2020-2023. Much of Burceva’s work for the latter was published pseudonymously.

In 2023, Burceva joined the pro-Russian party Koos (Together). One of its leaders, Aivo Peterson, has also been charged with treason.

Estonian news outlet ERR reports that Svetlana Burceva violated an international sanction by working for the Russian Federation media company RIA Rossiya Segodnya [the media group behind the Kremlin's propaganda outlet Russia Today RT], whose CEO Dmitry Kiselyov is included in the list of financial sanctions, according to a court spokesperson.

In doing so, Burceva made economic resources available to a sanctioned individual by writing articles and providing photos for the RIA Rossiya Segodnya/Baltnews online publication.

Burceva was also accused of establishing and maintaining a relationship antagonistic to the Republic of Estonia with a foreign national, Roman Romachev, and assisting him as well as the Russian Federation organization R-Techno in nonviolent acts directed against the independence and sovereignty of the Republic of Estonia.

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Harju District Court established that Roman Romachev is a reserve officer of the FSB, and head of the private intelligence company R-Techno. Among other tasks, this company is responsible for creating a talent pool for the system the Russian Federation is currently developing to combat information warfare and psychological operations.

Romachev's role in the "Information and Hybrid Conflicts" master's program at Sevastopol State University was not only to act as a guest lecturer, but also recruit future agents of influence from among the students.

According to the court, the purpose of Romachev and Burceva establishing their relationship was to start jointly publishing various writings aimed at supporting the Russian Federation's foreign and security policy goals, including carrying out influence operations in so-called near abroad countries.

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The chief of Germany’s foreign intelligence service warned that his agency has “concrete” evidence that Russia is planning an attack on Nato territory.

Bruno Kahl, the outgoing head of Germany’s federal intelligence service (BND), said in a rare interview that Russian leadership no longer believes Nato’s article 5 guarantee of mutual assistance will be honoured — and may seek to test it.

“We are very sure, and we have intelligence evidence to back this up, that [Russia’s full-scale invasion of] Ukraine is only one step on Russia’s path towards the west,” he told a podcast of German outlet Table Briefings.

Kahl qualified that “this doesn’t mean that we expect large tank battalions to roll from the east to the west.”

Kahl said: “We see that Nato is supposed to be tested in its mutual assistance promise. There are people in Moscow who don’t believe that Nato’s article 5 still works.”

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While the war is still confined to Ukrainian territory, the German internal secret service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has warned that Moscow is increasingly extending the conflict to western countries through cyberwarfare and espionage.

Russia has in particular taken to deploying so-called low-level agents to commit acts of sabotage, according to the BfV annual report, which was presented in Berlin on Wednesday. They are believed to have been deployed to plant incendiary devices in parcels, which caused a series of fires in European logistics hubs last year.

“We have noticed that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has led to our cyber and espionage defences being increasingly tested,” Sinan Selim, vice-president of the BfV, said.

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Prague’s Municipal Court also ordered Andrés Alfonso de la Hoz de la Cruz to pay damages worth 115,000 koruna ($5,300).

The court approved a plea agreement between prosecutors and the defendant, who pleaded guilty.

The 26-year-old Colombian was arrested a year ago after setting ablaze three Prague public buses at a depot at night. The court said that he recorded what he did and left.

Local workers managed to extinguish the fire.

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Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala previously said the failed arson attack was likely part of Russia’s hybrid war against his country.

Western officials have accused Russia and its proxies of staging dozens of attacks and other incidents across Europe since Moscow launched all-out war on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, according to data collected by The Associated Press.

They allege the disruption campaign is an extension of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, intended to sow division in European societies and undermine support for Ukraine.

A Czech investigation found that a factory owned by the billionaire former prime minister, Andrej Babiš, should have been the prime suspect in an environmental disaster. But the prosecutors and courts looked elsewhere.

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Russia’s subsequent efforts to destabilize and subjugate ... Ukraine have involved a combination of conventional military aggression, sabotage, cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and support for pro-Russian actors in Ukraine. Thanks to this prolonged exposure to Russian hybrid warfare, Ukraine has been able to develop countermeasures that have helped build resilience and reduce the impact of Russia’s hybrid operations.

Ukraine’s response has been a collaborative effort involving the Ukrainian government, civil society, and the private sector. In the cyber sphere, efforts to improve Ukraine’s digital security have played a key role, with the launch of the country’s popular Diia platform and the establishment of the Ministry of Digital Transformation helping to drive important digital governance reforms.

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Ukraine has also benefited from a decentralized approach involving digital volunteers, civil society, and public-private partnerships. A wide range of civic tech groups and open-source investigators are active in Ukraine detecting and countering Russian disinformation. These measures have made it possible to expose Russian narratives efficiently, coordinate messaging across government and civil society, and maintain coherence during military operations.

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