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Is Serbia pivoting towards Ukraine?
In this episode of Europe in :60, Carl Bildt breaks down Serbia’s evolving foreign policy, and political developments in Poland.
After President Vučić’s visit to Ukraine, Bildt notes, “I think he is in the black book of the Kremlin because of that particular visit,” highlighting shifting alliances in the Balkans.
On Poland, following Donald Tusk’s post-election confidence vote, Bildt explains the challenges ahead: “The president can veto legislation, he can block important appointments.”
As Serbia weighs its EU path and Poland navigates internal politics, Bildt offers timely analysis on regional stability and European security affairs.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reacts after a vote of confidence for his center-left coalition government, in Warsaw, Poland, June 11, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Polish PM’s gamble pays off, UK sanctions Israeli government ministers, Taiwan indicts Chinese “spies”, and more
33: Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk survived a no-confidence measure on Wednesday by a margin of 33 votes in the 460 seat legislature. Tusk had called the vote himself in a bid to reinforce his mandate after an ally of his lost the presidential election to a rightwing challenger late last month.
4: Taiwanese prosecutors indicted four former members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party over allegations of spying for China. One of the alleged suspects worked as an assistant to former Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, who is now the secretary-general of Taiwan’s National Security Council.
0.1%: The US’ annual inflation index rose by 0.1 points from 2.3% last month—an early indication that Trump’s tariffs are having only a modest impact on consumer prices so far.
5: Five western countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK – imposed sanctions on two of Israel’s far-right ministers on Tuesday, accusing Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich of “inciting extremist violence” in the West Bank and denying essential aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Saar pledged a response to the “outrageous” move.
40%: US National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharyadefended his agency during a Senate hearing on Tuesday after the Trump administration proposed a 40% budget cut to it. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) slammed the proposed cuts, which would lower the NIH’s total budget to $27.5 billion for the next fiscal year.
1,200: Russia and Ukraine began a major prisoner swap earlier this week, with each side expected to hand over at least 1,200 prisoners. However, prospects for a ceasefire remain distant: Kyiv and Moscow have exchanged ferocious aerial assaults in recent days.
What We’re Watching: Trump and Musk feud, Russia retaliates, Bangladesh sets elections
Will Trump and Musk kiss and make up?
The extraordinary public feud between US President Donald Trump and his former government efficiency czar Elon Musk continues. Despite late night reports that the two alphas were seeking detente, Trump was reportedly unwilling to engage with Musk again on Friday morning. The potential break-up risks fracturing the MAGA coalition and could affect Trump’s efforts to pass his “big beautiful” spending agenda (which Musk has called “an abomination.”) And if things get really ugly, could Musk actually start a third party?
Russia responds “very strongly”
Russia haspounded Ukraine with airstrikes over the past 24 hours, in response to Kyiv’s recent drone attacks which crippled a third of Russia’s strategic bombers. The ferocious exchange comes after Ukraine-Russia talks earlier this month went nowhere: Kyiv wants an unconditional ceasefire, Russia wants only a partial one. Trump, who spoke with Putin this week and warned that Russia would respond “very strongly”, said yesterday the two sides, already at full-scale war since 2022, may “need to fight for a while.”
Bangladesh to hold elections next spring.
Bangladesh, a South Asian country of 173 million people, will hold national elections in April 2026, the country’s de facto prime minister, Muhammad Yunus, announced on Friday. The textile-exporting nation has been without an elected leader since a student uprising last August forced then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee to India. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party had pushed for an election this December, but Yunus said he wanted to ensure a free and fair electoral process before sending voters to the polls.
Ukraine drone strikes deep inside Russia
In this episode of Europe in :60, Carl Bildt provides an update on the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
Bildt highlights Ukraine’s recent drone strikes on Russian bomber bases that was “beyond what you see in James Bond movies.” The bold Ukrainian operation comes amid a shifting geopolitical landscape that may be encouraging Russia to double down. Bildt notes that Russia’s maximalist demands and Trump’s apparent withdrawal of pressure on Putin have emboldened Moscow to continue military operations. Bildt warns, “we are facing further tragic months of war in the East of Europe."
Zelensky and Putin in front of flags and war.
$300 Ukrainian drones vs. $100 million Russian bombers
The combined message from Kyiv could not have been clearer: we may be far smaller and – on paper at least – weaker, but we can strike hard and reach far into Russia. Using drones produced indigenously for less than the cost of an iPhone, Ukraine took out strategic bombers worth upward of $100 million each – many of which are nearly impossible to replace due to sanctions and Russia’s degraded industrial base. At a 300,000-to-one return on investment, this is the kind of asymmetric operation that can upend the rules of modern warfare.
Just as significant as the material damage is what the attacks revealed: that a small but determined and innovative nation can deploy cheap, scalable, and decentralized tech to challenge a much larger, conventionally superior foe – and even degrade elements of a nuclear superpower’s second-strike capacity. The lessons will reverberate globally, from Taipei to Islamabad.
Perhaps the biggest impact of Ukraine’s battlefield coup may be to challenge the core strategic presumption that has guided Vladimir Putin’s thinking for over three years: that time is on his side. Since the invasion began, Putin has bet on outlasting Ukraine – grinding down its defenses, draining Western support, and waiting for the political winds in Washington and Europe to shift. That assumption has underpinned his refusal to negotiate seriously. But the success of Ukraine’s drone and sabotage operations challenges that theory of victory. It shows that Ukraine is not simply holding the line or surviving a war of attrition; it is shifting the battlefield and expanding the costs of continued war for Russia in ways the Kremlin has not anticipated.
That shift matters, especially in the diplomatic context. The timing of the drone campaign – just 24 hours before a direct round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul – was hardly coincidental. Kyiv’s actions were designed to signal that Ukraine is not negotiating from a position of weakness and won’t be coerced into a bad deal. Though the Istanbul meeting itself was predictably fruitless – lasting just over an hour and reinforcing the irreconcilability of the two sides’ positions – the fact that the Kremlin showed up fresh off such a high-profile embarrassment suggests it may be starting to realize that Ukraine has cards to play and continuing the war carries risks for Russia.
This may not be enough to bring Russia to the negotiating table in good faith, but it could make it more open to limited agreements. To be sure, a permanent peace settlement remains as distant as ever. Kyiv continues to push for an unconditional ceasefire that Russia rejects out of hand. In Istanbul, Moscow proposed two equally unacceptable alternatives: either Kyiv retreats from Russian-claimed territories or accepts limits on its ability to rearm, including a halt to Western military aid. But the right kind of pressure from the United States, coordinated with European allies, could now stand a better chance of extracting a first-phase deal – whether that’s a 30-day ceasefire, a humanitarian corridor, or a prisoner swap – that could then potentially turn into something bigger and more durable.
At the same time, Ukraine’s gains increase the tail risks of dangerous escalation. Russia’s deterrent posture has been eroded. Putin’s red lines – on NATO enlargement, Western weapons use, attacks inside Russia – have been crossed repeatedly without serious consequence. That makes him look weak but also increases the risk that he will feel compelled to escalate the conflict more dramatically to restore his credibility at home and abroad.
Russia’s immediate response to the recent attacks will be more of the same: heavier indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. But a darker possibility is that, boxed in and humiliated, Putin might consider a tactical nuclear strike. The threshold for such an extreme step is high – not least because China, Russia’s most important global partner, strongly opposes nuclear use. That scenario remains unlikely, but less so than before June 1. And Putin is emboldened by the belief that the West – particularly Trump – fears direct military confrontation more than anything. If he assesses that Russia’s position in the war is becoming untenable or its conventional deterrence is crumbling, his calculus could change.
Ukraine has just reminded the Kremlin – and the world – that it can shape events, not just react to them. This doesn’t put it on a path to victory or bring the war to an end. But by showing that it has leverage and that Moscow has more to lose than it thought, Ukraine has altered the strategic equation and opened a narrow window for diplomacy – even if the endgame remains as elusive as ever. The alternative is a deeper and more unpredictable conflict that grows more dangerous the longer it drags on.
Trump’s call with Putin fails to deliver Ukraine ceasefire
Ian's takeaways:
On Trump’s Ukraine policy: “Absent a ceasefire, there is no breakthrough deal between Trump and Putin. None of that’s going to happen.”
On Western backlash over Gaza: “At the end of the day, unless Trump is going to squeeze Israel hard and say, 'Suspend intelligence and aid,' the way he did with the Ukrainians, I have a hard time seeing the Israelis in any way backing down from what is at this point an completely unconscionable military intervention and ethnic cleansing across the board in Gaza."
On tech power vs. government: “In the US digital space, it’s the tech CEOs who hold the power and the government isn’t ready for what’s coming.”
Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney leaves his office on Parliament Hill after his second day in office, on April 30, 202.
What we’re watching: G7 tries to find common ground, Putin and Trump differ on Ukraine call, Milei gets capital boost in Argentina
G7 Finance Ministers meet in Canada
Finance ministers from the G7 group of advanced democracies meet on Tuesday, with Trump’s huge “Liberation Day” tariffs still looming large. Can they really reach a common position on key issues such as commerce, climate, AI, and Ukraine? It’ll be a good bellwether for the upcoming G7 leaders summit next month.
No big breakthrough in Trump-Putin Ukraine phone call.
After the two leaders spoke Monday, Trump said bilateral ceasefire negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, apparently without US involvement, would begin “immediately.” But Putin said only that he’s ready to begin to draw up a memorandum that could lay the groundwork for a “possible” agreement. Is the US losing interest in brokering an end to the war?
Milei gets a boost in Buenos Aires election
Argentina’s radical, cost-cutting president Javier Milei got a boost after his party won the most legislative seats in the national capital. Later this year, Argentina heads into midterm elections, the first nationwide referendum on Milei’s approach since he won the presidency in 2023.President Joe Biden at an event with Kamala Harris on lowering drug costs for America.
HARD NUMBERS: Biden diagnosed with cancer, Russian drones hammer Ukraine, Israeli forces enter Gaza, Pope Leo gets political, UK and EU are friends again, Austria wins Eurovision
9: Former US President Joe Biden, 82, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone. Biden’s cancer has a “Gleason score” of 9 out of 10, which means it is highly aggressive, but since it requires hormones to grow, may respond to treatment that deprives the tumors of hormones. Both US President Donald Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris expressed their sorrow on social media and wished the former president a successful recovery as he and his family review treatment options.
273: Russia launched 273 drones in the Kyiv region of Ukraine Sunday, killing one woman and causing widespread damage in its biggest drone attack of the war. Ukraine accused Russia of also intending to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, but Moscow did not comment. The escalation comes ahead of US President Donald Trump’s calls with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine on Monday, to broker a ceasefire deal.
140: Palestinian health officials say Israeli air strikes killed over 140 people in Gaza Sunday, raising accusations of ethnic cleansing by the UN. Israel subsequently began a ground offensive in the territory after peace talks stalled in Qatar, with officials saying that the strikes were part of its plans to “achieve all of the war goals in Gaza” and establish “operational control” of parts of the territory.
200,000: An estimated 200,000 well-wishers, including a slew of world leaders, packed St. Peter’s Square in Rome for the first sermon of Pope Leo XIV - and the pontiff didn’t leave out the politics. Leo stated that his role is to serve without “yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat,” remarked on Ukraine being “martyred,” and deplored the people of Gaza being “reduced to starvation.”
12: The United Kingdom and the European Union have decided that there are plenty of fish in the sea for them to share: London granted EU boats access to UK waters for the next 12 years in return for fewer checks on British food exports to the 27-country bloc. The deal also includes a significant security pact. It’s a significant moment for UK-EU relations, just nine years after their infamous divorce.
160 million: Austria took top prize in the 69th Eurovision song contest Saturday, with classically trained countertenor JJ wowing an estimated 160 million viewers with his soaring pop-opera ballad, Wasted Love. Second place went to Yuval Raphael of Israel with a moving trilingual performance of New Day Will Rise, while Tommy Cash of Estonia came in third with his frothy fast-dancing confection, Espresso Macchiato.