The three, who were tangled in sexual relationships with one of their handlers or each other, denied being in on the plot and claimed they didn’t know who they were working for. LONDON — Three Bulgarian nationals based in Britain were convicted on Friday by a London jury of spying for Russia on what prosecutors said was “an industrial scale.” The trio was accused of putting lives in danger as they acted on orders on behalf of Russian intelligence to carry out surveillance across Europe between 2020 and 2023. Katrin Ivanova, 33, Vanya Gaberova, 30, and Tihomir Ivanov Ivanchev, 39, were convicted Friday at London’s Central Criminal Court after a trial that began in November. The three, who were tangled in sexual relationships with one of their handlers or each other, denied being in on the plot and claimed they didn’t know who they were working for or were lied to by their superiors. Prosecutors said that they spied on a U.S. air base in Germany where Ukrainian troops were said to be training, and had discussed kidnapping or killing opponents of the Russian state. They also allegedly tried to lure a Bulgarian journalist who uncovered Moscow’s involvement in the 2018 Novichok poisoning of a former Russian spy in Salisbury, England, into a “honeytrap” romance with Gaberova. The ringleaders discussed robbing and killing Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev, or kidnapping him and taking him to Russia, prosecutors said. The spy ring also included two other defendants, ringleader Orlin Roussev and his underling Biser Dzhambazov. They previously pleaded guilty to espionage charges and having false identity documents. Roussev, 47, was directed by alleged Russian agent Jan Marsalek, an Austrian national, who was in touch with Russian intelligence agencies, prosecutors said.

U.S. diplomats around the world were instructed to push their host countries to back the U.S. resolution and oppose a Russian amendment. The United States on Monday opposed a United Nations resolution backed by Ukraine and major European countries that calls for Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, voting instead with Russia, North Korea, Belarus, Sudan and 13 other countries. Leading up to a series of votes Monday, the U.S. had been lobbying countries around the world to oppose the resolution, which was brought forward at the United Nations General Assembly on the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and support a U.S. draft resolution instead. Ultimately, though, the Trump administration was forced to abstain from its own resolution after European countries won support for three amendments to it. The amendments replaced language referring to “the Russian Federation-Ukraine conflict” with “the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation”; added a commitment to Ukraine’s territorial integrity within internationally recognized borders; and expanded wording about a “lasting peace” between Ukraine and Russia to a “just, lasting and comprehensive peace,” “in line with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of sovereign equality and territorial integrity of States.” “These amendments pursue a war of words rather than an end to the war,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dorothy Shea said shortly before the vote. “The attempt to add this language detracts from what we are trying to achieve with this forward-looking resolution, a firm consensus from the members of this body to unite behind a resolution calling for the end to this conflict.” Despite the lack of U.S. support, the U.S. resolution with the new language was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly with 93 votes in favor, eight against and 73 abstentions. Ukraine’s competing resolution co-sponsored by European countries also passed despite active U.S. opposition with 93 votes in favor, 18 against and 65 abstentions. Ukraine’s resolution, which it put forward last week, demands the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces “from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.” The U.S. does not support that demand and Trump administration officials have recently suggested that Ukraine would likely have to give up some territory as part of a peace deal. Ukraine’s resolution also refers to the ongoing hostilities as a “war,” a word that is omitted from the text of the U.S. resolution, and which Russia has stayed away from since it invaded Ukraine in 2022. “President Trump is committed to ending the Russia-Ukraine war and to a resolution that leads to a lasting peace, not just a temporary pause,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Friday. “The United States has proposed a simple, historic resolution in the United Nations that we urge all member states to support in order to chart a path to peace.” An internal memo sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts Saturday had instructed the head of each U.S. mission to “engage host governments at the highest possible levels,” and urge them to support the U.S. resolution and encourage Ukraine to withdraw its own resolution, “which does not advance the United States’ goal of achieving a lasting peace.” The U.S. will once again ask the world to support its resolution Monday afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, where it will be able to veto any amendments to its language brought forward by other members. The memo was first reported by Reuters. U.S. diplomats were also told to ask countries to vote against a proposed Russian amendment to the U.S. resolution, according to the diplomatic note seen by NBC News. The Russian amendment would add language saying that the “root causes” of the conflict should also be addressed.

European leaders have been "stunned" by President Donald Trump's swift reversal of American policy toward Russia, as well as on its stance toward Ukraine, one analyst said. In just days, the Trump administration has torn up Washington's script on the war in Ukraine and its relationship with Europe. Now, even as the U.S. and Russia press ahead with peace talks that exclude Kyiv, Ukraine's European neighbors are struggling to unite around a shared response. French President Emmanuel Macron was preparing to host his second set of emergency talks this week in Paris on Wednesday, amid mounting pressure to form a clear and cohesive response to Trump’s decision to negotiate directly — and so far exclusively — with Russia to end the war in Ukraine. “The understanding that Europe is going to be treated in a very different way by this administration is something that’s left European leaders stunned,” John Lough, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Program in London, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. Macron hosted talks on Monday after President Donald Trump excluded European leaders, including members of NATO, from ceasefire talks Tuesday in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh. Talks on Wednesday will include NATO-constituent Canada and Ukraine’s neighbors from Europe's Baltic and Nordic regions, according to a spokesperson from the Élysée Palace. The latest talks take place on the same day that Zelenskyy hit back at comments from Trump on Tuesday in which he blamed Ukraine for starting its war with Russia. The Ukrainian leader accused Trump of being trapped in a "disinformation bubble" and added that his country was not for sale. Trump's swift reversal of American policy toward Russia may have thawed relations with Moscow, which has faced diplomatic and financial isolation since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but it has brought with it a sharp turn away from Kyiv and sparked alarm across Europe. “We are in, I think, a very serious situation here where the assumptions of many decades have simply been blown away — and principally, the assumption that the U.S. will underwrite Europe’s security,” said Lough, who previously served as a NATO representative based in Moscow. The sharp shift in Washington comes at a rare moment for the European Union — the disparate and sprawling 27-nation bloc of more than 500 million people — when the region has few strong leaders. With German Chancellor Olof Scholz's party expected to perform poorly in elections on Sunday and after Macron's party lost its parliamentary majority last summer, the E.U.'s usual power centers are weak. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who won a landslide election last year and heads one of Europe's largest economies, can only advise the E.U. from the outside following the U.K.'s departure from the bloc in 2020. Now, drained of firm leadership and fatigued by Ukraine's long war, “the Europeans have been really slow to recognize” America's shift, said Ed Arnold, a senior research fellow for European security at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. That Europeans “can’t fully rely on the U.S., that’s something that’s just been around for a number of years but it’s now that the Europeans are starting to panic at it because actually it could be worse than they have assumed,” he said. Whether that realization has set in remains unclear. After European leaders consulted Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio following talks in Saudi Arabia with his Russian counterparts, E.U. foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas wrote on X that “Russia will try to divide us. Let’s not walk into their traps.” “By working together with the U.S., we can achieve a just and lasting peace — on Ukraine’s terms,” she said. But so far, European leaders have failed to present a clear and cohesive response to the rapid-fire developments in diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Instead, turmoil over Trump's stance on the war is highlighting divisions and disunity within Europe, Arnold said. "I think that’s what Trump’s trying to do in Europe. He’s trying to circumvent the organization," he said, adding that Trump wants to "almost play them a little bit off each other to almost get what he wants." A key focus in emergency discussions has been determining what potential security guarantees for Ukraine might look like, with French President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders maintaining that any agreement to end the war in Ukraine must come with “strong and credible security guarantees for the Ukrainians.” After leaders discussed the possibility of countries including Britain, France and Poland deploying troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers, the U.K.’s Starmer said he was considering committing British forces but maintained that “a U.S. security guarantee is the only way to effectively deter Russia.” With Starmer and Trump due to meet in Washington next week, Lough said European leaders were having a "panic reaction" as they "try to figure out what they can do to persuade Trump" to jointly safeguard Ukraine's security. So far, Russia has known what it wants. The talks Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov engaged in this week culminated in a plan to restore embassy staffing on both sides and to continue discussions on a path to ending the war in Ukraine. "The constant expulsion of diplomats from Washington and Moscow does not lead to anything good," Putin told reporters in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. He added that, in Tuesday's talks in Riyadh, "on the American side, there were entirely different people who were open to the negotiation process without any bias, without any prejudice to what was done in the past.” Keith Kellogg, Washington’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday for what is likely to be a tense visit. Zelenskyy said earlier this week he hoped to take Kellogg “to the front line” and to meetings with intelligence officials and diplomats so he could “bring more information back to America.”

European leaders, who meet for a summit on Ukraine next week, now have no doubt about where they stand with the Trump administration after Vance’s bracing speech. The past week has left America’s European allies reeling and searching for alternatives after the Trump administration seemingly set itself in opposition to a rules-based system that the U.S. and its trans-Atlantic friends have spent decades building together. Not only did Vice President JD Vance wade into European politics, lambasting its leadership and interfering in Germany’s upcoming election on behalf of its far right, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth all but nullified American military support for Ukraine, and President Donald Trump flirted with unilateral peace talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. While the U.S., as the West’s superpower, and most of Europe — the European Union is an economic market of 500 million people — have spent the period since the end of World War II in political, military and commercial sync, the continent stands at the precipice of a generational change. Europe’s leaders “cannot accept the fact that what was the U.S. is not the U.S. anymore,” and that the continent could no longer call it an ally, former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said in a briefing with reporters. “In the weeks and months, you will see the people of Europe waving their hand and asking from their government a very strong government,” said de Villepin, who served under French President Jacques Chirac in the 2000s. With a blistering attack on Europe’s culture, commitment to democracy, migration policies and the “danger from within,” Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference — which was supposed to focus on the war in Ukraine — tore up Washington’s decadeslong alliances. Vance’s silence on the almost three-year war also sent a clear message to Kyiv, according to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending,” he told the conference in Munich. “From now on, things will be different, and Europe needs to adjust to that.” Vance’s dismissal of Ukraine spoke to the broader view that the U.S. no longer considers European involvement in negotiations with Russia as vital to peace talks. The Kremlin framed a recent phone call between Putin and Trump as a shift toward peace talks between Russia and the United States. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to travel to Saudi Arabia to initiate peace negotiations, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. Zelenskyy, still excluded from discussions in Saudi Arabia as of late Saturday, has been left sidelined, and European leaders shared the Ukrainian president’s unease. After years of disunity and dithering, the leaders of the E.U. and the U.K. are worried they no longer have a seat at the table in negotiations that may reshape their ally’s borders, and are set to gather in Paris this week for a summit on the war, in response to concerns the U.S. is moving ahead without them. “Europe urgently needs its own plan of action concerning Ukraine, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Saturday. “Or else other global players will decide about our future. Not necessarily in line with our own interests.” Still, Ukraine is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the faltering rapport between Europe and the U.S. over policy and ideology. At the heart of Vance’s speech was a direct attack on European democracy and culture. The vice president told the conference that he was worried less about the threats of Russia or China and more about “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard took a different approach, somewhat muddying the waters in Munich by saying challenges from “Russia, China, Iran and North Korea demand a united front.” But analysts say Trumpist foreign policy — involving stopping almost all funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development and seeking to shake off Kyiv — may create an opportunity for America’s rivals. China’s foreign ministry responded on Saturday to events in Munich, saying it wants to “strengthen solidarity” and “practice multilateralism” with Germany and the European Union in what can only be read as thinly veiled comment on the Trump administration’s capriciousness. Europe’s leaders can expect more of the same, said Keir Giles, a senior fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank. “It would be astonishing if not just China, but other adversaries of Europe were not to take advantage of the split and the gaps this presents,” Giles told NBC News. Meanwhile, Vance’s criticism of European leaders for shunning far-right parties was taken as an endorsement of those parties, which are on the rise in Europe, especially in the context of his later meeting with Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The AfD is poised to play kingmaker in any coalition emerging from elections in Germany next week. There has long been a taboo against allying with the party, which has won the support of key Trump adviser Elon Musk. The normally mild-mannered German Chancellor Olaf Scholz accused Vance of interfering in Germany’s elections. “That is not appropriate, especially not among friends and allies. We firmly reject that,” he told the conference. Perhaps even more striking, Germany’s conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz felt the need to publicly state that he expected the U.S. to respect the results of the upcoming elections. Even so, Europe’s leaders had few reasons to be surprised despite Vance’s ferocious attack, according to Chatham House’s Giles. Giles told NBC News that Europe has ignored decades of signals that U.S. patience has been “wearing thin” with Europe’s reliance on American defense and that Vance’s rhetoric on immigration and his outreach to the far right would resonate with European voters. Both Vance and Hegseth this week echoed Trump’s long-standing view that Europe should contribute more toward its own defense. In the latest consequence of that policy, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was preparing to raise his country’s defense spending ahead of a visit to meet Trump, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported. Starmer will hope to win favor in Washington with the funding boost when he visits at a crucial time for both the Ukraine talks and the political balance of its E.U. neighbors. Next week, Germany goes to the polls in an election in which the AfD is expected to perform well. It may be the first test for the shifts that Vance described in Munich. The schism “is not invented out of thin air,” Giles said. “There’s a reason populist parties across the continent tap into a deep vein of frustration with Europe’s elites.”

“The United States of America is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way,” Vance told an international summit in Paris. PARIS — Vice President JD Vance warned European allies Tuesday that the White House would not accept international regulations on artificial intelligence if they held back U.S. ambitions to be the world’s dominant power in the revolutionary new technology. “The United States of America is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way,” Vance told an international AI summit in Paris. “We need international regulatory regimes that fosters the creation of AI technology rather than strangles it.” In his first international speech since taking office, Vance said the U.S. was open to cooperating with other countries to harness AI. But he rejected the kind of tighter technology regulations seen in the European Union. “The Trump administration is troubled by reports that some foreign governments are considering tightening the screws on U.S. tech companies with international footprints. Now America cannot and will not accept that.” The Trump administration has made dominance in the field a priority, with the president on Jan. 21 announcing a joint venture to invest billions of dollars in AI infrastructure in the U.S. dubbed Stargate. Vance also said that AI must remain free from what he called “ideological bias” and criticized E.U. efforts to create rules blocking harmful or misleading online content. “We want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet, and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation,” he said. Signs of the tensions between the U.S. and Europe on how to approach AI regulation emerged hours after Vance’s speech. The U.S. refused to join around 60 other countries in signing on to a French-led joint statement calling for an “inclusive and sustainable” approach to AI. The White House did not offer an immediate explanation for why it declined to sign on. The global summit in Paris was attended by Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing and came weeks after the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek rattled markets by announcing it had created a sophisticated model at a fraction of the cost of those made in Silicon Valley. Vance did not explicitly refer to China in his speech but said “authoritarian regimes have stolen and used AI to strengthen their military intelligence and surveillance capabilities.” He also warned European states not to partner with authoritarian states on AI development. “Partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure,” he said. In addition to the former Biden administration, the Trump administration has also pressured European countries to limit their exposure to Huawei, a Chinese telecom firm. Speaking at the summit Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country would simplify its technology rules but added that Europe would need to cooperate with both the U.S. and China. Macron also said France’s nuclear power infrastructure made it a desirable location for AI development, because it could power energy-intensive data centers without relying on fossil fuels. “I have a good friend on the other side of the ocean saying ‘Drill, baby, drill,’” Macron said, referring to President Donald Trump. “Here, there is no need to drill. It’s ‘Plug, baby, plug.' Electricity is available.” Anne Bouverot, Macron’s special envoy to the AI summit, told NBC News that the goal of the global gathering was not to begin work on an international framework for regulating AI. “The summit is not to talk about rules and regulations. The summit is to find where are the areas, where there are coalitions of the willing to develop things, for example, common principles or goals for AI,” she said. A number of U.S. technology executives attended the conference, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Open AI’s Sam Altman. Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, told NBC News that the U.S. should work closely with allies to make sure that democracies remained ahead of authoritarian nations in the development of AI. “I think it’s very important that the Western democracies lead in this … so partnering with the Europeans, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, the Western democracy approach, I think, is very important. And I think that’s an important part of the global order.”

Some European governments are afraid that Vladimir Putin may turn his armies their way after Ukraine. An isolationist White House may not help if he does. LONDON — All over Europe, there are signs of a continent steeling itself for the unthinkable. Lithuania plans to lay mines on its bridges to Russia, ready to detonate should Kremlin tanks try to cross. In the nearby Baltic Sea, NATO ships are hunting Russia’s so-called “Shadow Fleet” accused of cutting undersea communications cables. And in Europe’s skies there are plans to construct a vast missile defense system, similar to Israel’s “Iron Dome” but with the explicit purpose of shooting down rockets launched by Moscow. European governments and citizens worry that an emboldened Kremlin may turn his armies their way after Ukraine. There is also widespread nervousness that the new U.S. president — an isolationist — has suggested he may not defend America’s historical NATO allies if they are attacked by Russia. While President Donald Trump this week criticized Vladimir Putin, Trump has showed few signs of a meaningful shift from that position. On Thursday, he said in an interview with Fox News that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “was fighting a much bigger entity,” and that “he shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal.” He said little new about NATO or Europe, only reiterating his latest demand for European allies to pay 5% of their GDP toward defense — more than twice the NATO recommendation — and lamenting how much more Washington has spent than Brussels toward supporting Ukraine’s defense. “NATO has to pay more,” Trump said. “It’s ridiculous because it affects them a lot more. We have an ocean in between.” The stakes couldn’t be higher. European officials have repeatedly stated that Putin is preparing for a war with the West. For many, this is already happening, with think tank analysts, governments and NATO itself accusing Moscow of “hybrid warfare” attacks — from election interference to trying to crash airliners with firebombs. “The Europeans are taking this very seriously,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe between 2014 and late 2017. In particular, countries in Eastern Europe nearer the Russian border “know that this is for real, because they live there,” Hodges added. “It’s only those people who live in Western Europe or the U.S., far away from the Bear, who say: ‘Come on, this is not going to happen.’” The core tenet of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is that allies will defend any fellow member under attack. The only time this “Article 5” promise has been triggered was after 9/11, when Europe helped the United States patrol its skies in an act of solidarity. The main message of that stipulation is that if a country attacks Europe, it will also be at war with Washington, and its intended audience is Russia. But Trump has repeatedly suggested he would ignore Europe’s distress call. Plenty of those in Europe’s corridors of power agree that a complacent continent has for too long relied on Washington’s protection. French President Emmanuel Macron, a longtime proponent of European self-reliance, said Monday that Trump’s second term should serve as a “wake-up call” for the continent. In comments made at a defense conference on Wednesday, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, agreed with Trump’s assessment of European spending, saying that “Russia poses an existential threat to our security today, tomorrow and for as long as we underinvest in our defense.” Many of these critics remain nonetheless alarmed. “While every president has complained that European countries don’t do enough, there never was a question about American commitment,” said Hodges. “This causes a lot of anxiety.” In the short term, Trump and key members of his incoming administration have vowed to quickly end Russia’s war in Ukraine, likely impossible without huge territorial concessions from Kyiv. Effectively giving Russia a win would be a signal to the Kremlin that aggression is rewarded and the West has no appetite to intervene, critics say. “Russia is preparing for a war with the West,” German foreign intelligence chief Bruno Kahl said in a November speech. For years, experts and government officials have accused Moscow of spreading disinformation, launching cyberattacks and using any other means necessary to meddle in the elections of democratic countries. Though Moscow denies it. Western officials and experts are near united in agreeing that this campaign only seems to be expanding. Last month, Finnish authorities seized an oil tanker they suspected of having severed undersea power and internet cables. That was among a spate of incidents that prompted NATO to launch operation “Baltic Sentry,” stepping up maritime patrols. Meanwhile, Western officials said Russia was responsible for sending two incendiary devices to DHL logistics hubs in Germany and the United Kingdom in July as part of a wider sabotage campaign to possibly start fires aboard North America-bound aircraft. In response, Europe has reversed decades of military underfunding, with most of its big powers now hitting the NATO guideline of 2% of GDP spent on defense. Spending started to increase in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea, although Trump is widely credited for accelerating it. On Wednesday, the European Union’s defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, announced that Lithuania intends to spend between 5% and 6% of its GDP on defense in the coming years. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has focused minds further. In March, the European Union allocated 500 million euros (around $515 million) to double shell ammunition production to 2 million units per year. And 22 countries have now joined the European Sky Shield Initiative, a continentwide missile defense system designed to protect against Russian attacks. “Europe must be prepared for the most extreme military contingencies,” a spokesperson for the bloc told NBC News in an email when asked whether the continent was preparing for a worst-case scenario of war with Russia. “Put simply: to prevent war we need to spend more. If we wait more, it’ll cost us more.” Asked if that change was prompted by Trump’s suggestion he may not defend Europe as well as Putin, the spokesperson referred only to the Russian president, whose war in Ukraine they said “challenges the international rules-based order itself.” For its part, Ukraine’s reaction to the re-election and inauguration of Trump has been assiduously diplomatic. On Inauguration Day, Zelenskyy said in a post on X that Trump “is always decisive” and that his second term was an opportunity to “achieve a long-term and just peace.” Whatever the impetus, “the mindset has changed big time,” said Vytis Jurkonis, who leads the Lithuanian office of Freedom House, an international pro-democracy group. “We need to make it very clear to the Kremlin that any attack against a NATO member is going to cost and have consequences,” said Jurkonis, who also teaches politics at Lithuania’s Vilnius University. The Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are particularly vulnerable, perched on the Baltic Sea between mainland Russia and the heavily militarized Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. For decades occupied by the Soviet Union, these now-Westernized states are only now constructing “the Baltic Defense Line,” a frontier hundreds of miles long dotted with anti-tank trenches and pillboxes. Lithuania has already purchased warehouses full of “dragon’s teeth” — concrete pyramids designed to stop tanks — and plans to mine its bridges to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, its defense ministry told NBC News. Lithuania recently said it would raise defense spending to 5% of GDP, the highest in NATO and far more, proportionally, than Washington’s 3.4%. That’s still lower than Russia, with the Kremlin effectively reordering its economy along a war footing and committing at least 6.2% of its inflation-hit finances to its military. In western Scandinavia, meanwhile, Norway has updated its emergency preparedness booklet that it hands out to all citizens, telling them how much water, food and other supplies to stockpile in case of “acts of war.” The 20-page document has historically focused on extreme weather and accidents, but its most recent version notes that “we live in an increasingly turbulent world” and warns that “in the event of an act of war, you may be notified that you should seek shelter.” Meanwhile, Swedish church authorities — on guidance from Sweden’s armed forces — have begun looking for extra cemetery space should such a conflict reach their shores. And Germany committed around 100 million euros to reinstate public sirens that were removed when the Iron Curtain fell. And yet there are plenty of observers who believe that Europe is not doing nearly enough. Western European countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom have only committed “small percentage uplifts to defense budgets, which is nothing like the transformative investment” in Eastern Europe, said Keir Giles, a leading defense analyst at London’s Chatham House think tank. For Giles, author of “Who Will Defend Europe? An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent,” the problem is that “countries further away are still pretending that war is something that happens to other people.” What’s more, efforts are further complicated by the political situation. Europe’s mainstream parties are being challenged by populists, who often mix their vehement opposition to immigration with a softer — and sometimes even friendly — stance toward Russia. That’s a problem for those who argue Russia’s war on Europe has already begun. “Anybody who isn’t worried hasn’t been paying attention,” said Giles.

With many of his political opponents either jailed or exiled abroad, the 70-year-old Alexander Lukashenko is back on the ballot, all but certain to add a seventh presidential term. The last time Belarus staged a presidential election in 2020, authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner with 80% of the vote. That triggered cries of fraud, months of protests and a harsh crackdown with thousands of arrests. Not wanting to risk such unrest again by those opposing his three decades of iron-fisted rule, Lukashenko advanced the timing of the 2025 election — from the warmth of August to frigid January, when demonstrators are less likely to fill the streets. With many of his political opponents either jailed or exiled abroad, the 70-year-old Lukashenko is back on the ballot, and when the election concludes on Sunday, he is all but certain to add a seventh term as the only leader most people in post-Soviet Belarus have ever known. Here’s what to know about Belarus, its election and its relationship with Russia: ‘Europe’s last dictator’ and his reliance on Russia Belarus was part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. The Slavic nation of 9 million people is sandwiched between Russia and Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, the latter three all NATO members. It was overrun by Nazi Germany in World War II. It’s been closely allied with Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin — himself in power for a quarter century. Lukashenko, a former state farm director, was first elected in 1994, riding public anger over a catastrophic plunge in living standards after chaotic and painful free-market reforms. He promised to combat corruption. Throughout his rule, he’s relied on subsidies and political support from Russia, allowing it to use Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine in 2022 and later agreeing to host some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons. Lukashenko was dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” early in his tenure, and he has lived up to that nickname, harshly silencing dissent and extending his rule through elections that the West has called neither free nor fair. An open admirer of the Soviet Union, he has restored Soviet-style controls on the economy, discouraged use of the Belarusian language in favor of Russian, and pushed for abandoning the country’s red-and-white national flag in favor of one similar to what it used as a Soviet republic. Belarus’ top security agency kept its fearsome Soviet-era name of the KGB, and it’s the only country in Europe to keep the death penalty, with executions carried out with a gunshot to the back of the head. Flirtation with the West, repression at home As he bargained with the Kremlin over the years for more subsidies, Lukashenko periodically tried to appease the West by easing repressions. Such flirtations ended after he unleashed a violent suppression of dissent after the 2020 election. That election to his sixth term was widely seen at home and abroad as rigged, and it sparked months of massive protests, the largest ever seen in Belarus. Authorities responded with a sweeping crackdown in which over 65,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten by police and hundreds of independent media outlets and nongovernmental organizations were closed and outlawed, drawing Western sanctions. Leading opposition figures have either been imprisoned or fled the country. Human rights activists say Belarus holds about 1,300 political prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, the founder of the country’s top rights group, Viasna. Lukashenko’s maneuvers before the election Although Lukashenko’s current term doesn’t expire until summer, the election was moved up in what officials said would allow him “to exercise his powers at the initial stage of strategic planning.” Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich gave a different reason, saying “There won’t be mass protests in freezing January,” he said. In other maneuvering, Lukashenko has pardoned 250 people described as political prisoners by rights activists. The pardons, however, come amid heightened repressions aimed at uprooting any remaining signs of dissent. Hundreds have been arrested in raids that targeted relatives and friends of political prisoners. Other arrests include participants in online chats organized by residents of apartment buildings in various cities. Unlike the 2020 election, Lukashenko faces only token challengers, with other opposition candidates rejected for the ballot by the Central Election Commission. The election began with early voting Tuesday and concludes Sunday. “The politicians who once dared to challenge Lukashenko are now literally rotting in prison in torture conditions, there has been no contact with them for over a year, and some of them are in very poor health,” said Viasna representative Pavel Sapelka. Opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who challenged Lukashenko in the 2020 election and was forced to flee the country afterward, says the latest vote is a farce and urged Belarusians to vote against every candidate. Her husband, activist Siarhei Tsikhanouski, tried to run four years ago but was jailed and remains imprisoned. Under Russia’s nuclear umbrella In December 2024, Lukashenko and Putin signed a treaty that gave security guarantees to Belarus that included the possible use of Russian nuclear weapons. The pact followed Moscow’s revision of its nuclear doctrine, which for the first time placed Belarus under the Russian nuclear umbrella amid tensions with the West over the war in Ukraine. Lukashenko says Belarus is hosting dozens of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Their deployment extends Russia’s capability to target Ukraine and NATO allies in Europe. He also said Belarus will prepare to host Russia’s Oreshnik hypersonic missile that was used in Ukraine for the first time in November. Putin said the missiles could be deployed to Belarus in the second half of 2025, remaining under Moscow’s control while Minsk will select the targets.

The planned move ends an era when many European countries kept warm using gas pumped by the Kremlin. A major natural gas pipeline supplying Russian energy to Europe ran dry Wednesday after Ukraine stopped Moscow’s six-decade supply in hope of hurting its invader financially. The planned move ends an era when many European countries kept warm using gas pumped by Russia — which was in turn accused of using that dependency to blackmail its Western neighbors after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which it denies. Gazprom confirmed in a statement that the pipeline agreement had lapsed following Ukraine’s “repeated and explicit refusal to extend these agreements.” Just as the pipeline agreement expired, Russia launched its latest salvo of drone attacks on Ukraine as Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to build on his battlefield momentum by targeting Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure during its bitter winter. Most of Russia’s 111 drones were repelled by Ukraine’s Western-backed missile defense systems, aircraft and electronic warfare technology, officials said, although at least six people were injured and two were killed in the capital, Kyiv. “Even on New Year’s Eve, Russia was only worried about how to hurt Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said early Wednesday. Ukraine is embattled militarily, with Russian forces making front-line gains in recent months, as well as shrouded by geopolitical uncertainty. President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to enter office this month, has unnerved many in Europe by refusing to commit to the same multibillion-dollar support for Ukraine provided by the Biden administration. As well as launching attacks into Russian territory, Ukraine is trying to hurt Moscow in other ways. Part of that is not renewing the pipeline agreement, which expired after having supplied Europe with Russian gas via Ukraine for six decades. “We stopped the transit of Russian gas. This is a historic event,” Ukraine Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko said in a statement. “Russia is losing markets, it will suffer financial losses.” Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said on X that the development was apt comeuppance for Putin, whom he accused of trying to "blackmail Eastern Europe with the threat of cutting off gas supplies." The move was no surprise; Ukraine repeatedly said it would not renew the deal, which Zelenskyy said last month gave Russia “the opportunity to earn additional billions on our blood.” But it will not be painless, with Ukraine losing up to $1 billion a year in transit fees it charged Russia to use its pipeline, Reuters reported. That’s less than the $5 billion Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy giant, is set to lose annually, according to the news agency. Gazprom confirmed in a statement Wednesday that the pipeline agreement had lapsed following "repeated and explicit refusal to extend these agreements" by Ukraine. Most European countries no longer depend on Russian gas, having diversified their supplies — to the United States, Qatar and others — after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Nevertheless, halting the pipeline sent European Union natural gas prices rising to 50 euros ($52), their highest since the 330-euro spike in 2022 after the invasion. Turning off the taps may also affect Austria, Slovakia and particularly Moldova — which is not part of the E.U. — all of whom rely on Russian gas more than most in Europe. Already in the Moldovan breakaway region of Transdniestria, home to 450,00 people and 1,500 Russian troops, the local energy company cut off domestic hot water and heating supplies Wednesday, Reuters said. Not only is Russia's Ukrainian natural gas artery down, but the Nord Stream gas pipelines also remain damaged by as-yet unexplained explosions in September 2022. That leaves only the TurkStream pipeline linking Russia with Turkey, Hungary and Serbia. CORRECTION (Jan. 2, 2025, 7 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the pipeline deal gave Russia “the opportunity to earn additional billions on our blood.” It was last month, not earlier this month.