Russia's pressure on Europe and the shakiness of new-generation alliances defined the day.

Russia's pressure on NATO's eastern flank

  • NATO fighter jets shot down a drone over Lithuania, the alliance's first-ever destruction of an aircraft over member territory, the latest in a series of Baltic airspace incursions NATO states blame on Russia — more.
  • A joint investigation by Deutsche Welle and three other European broadcasters found the Colombian man who set fire to Prague buses in June 2024 was recruited online by a Cuban working for Russian intelligence, part of a wider network of cells the same recruiter reportedly built across Europe — more.
  • German investigators separately attribute August's Leipzig airport drone plot against a Ukrainian cargo plane to a GRU-linked Russian and a Belarusian operative — no confirmed link ties the two recruitment chains together, but both show Moscow leaning on expendable, informally recruited foreign nationals rather than trained officers — more.

Alliances without a center

  • The new Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani Mecca Joint Defence Agreement has three members who each see themselves as the senior partner, but none holds the leverage to make that stick — more.
  • The EU's digital-sovereignty push for its 2028–2034 budget lacks a funded, independent body to hold its tech investments accountable, a separate case of coalitions built to project leverage rather than to be governed — more.