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Maltese tycoon found not guilty of involvement in Daphne Caruana Galizia murder

One of Malta’s richest men has been found not guilty of involvement in the murder of the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The verdict, which is expected to be appealed against by the prosecution, will come as a blow not only to the victim’s family, but to the politicians and campaigners who regard the case as a landmark action in the fight to protect press freedom in Europe. Nearly nine years after Caruana Galizia’s death, aged 53, in a car bombing in October 2017, a jury of six women and three men found Yorgen Fenech, 44, not guilty of both counts with which he had been charged: complicity in the voluntary homicide of Caruana Galizia, and association with the intention of committing a crime. Delivered at 7.30pm, the verdict was decisive. To gasps from the gallery and cheers from Fenech’s relatives, the forewoman announced jurors had voted to dismiss both counts by an eight to one majority. As family listened in shock, with some relatives in tears, the judge Edwina Grima immediately ordered Fenech’s release from custody. If convicted, he would have faced a life sentence. He left court through the front entrance, without responding to requests for comment. “Everybody is much more at risk now, because this signals you can kill journalists with impunity,” Caruana Galizia’s sister Corinne Vella said. “We knew an acquittal was a huge possibility. But it’s like when someone dies, it still shocks you.” In a televised address, the leader of the opposition Natinalist Party called supporters to join him in a demonstration outside parliament, saying: “No verdict can bring Daphne back, but a not guilty verdict cannot erase the questions that brought the country to this point”. Fenech, an influential businessman and property developer whose family owns two Hilton hotels and has a share in a power station in Malta, had been accused by prosecutors of paying €150,000 via a middle man, Melvin Theuma, to have the journalist killed. The murder of Caruana Galizia, who targeted Fenech and leading political figures in her reporting, triggered the most consequential political scandal in Malta’s postwar history, becoming a rallying point for anti-corruption and press freedom activism. The fallout resulted in Joseph Muscat, the then prime minister of the EU’s smallest member state, being forced out of office along with two of his ministers and his chief of staff. The two-month trial laid bare the extent of Fenech’s network of political contacts, and raised questions about attempts to sabotage and interfere with the police investigation. Key witnesses, and the defendant himself, claimed the prime minister’s chief of staff had repeatedly leaked sensitive information to Fenech. Summing up the case against him, the prosecutor Anthony Vella said Fenech believed he could “buy justice”, telling the jury: “You are being asked to decide whether a man who had extensive contacts in politics and among the heads of public entities had enough power to pay for Daphne to be killed.” The defence argued that the chain of command went higher, with suggestions from Fenech and his lawyers that the person who had ordered the killing was Muscat’s former chief of staff Keith Schembri. They said police had not done enough to investigate allegations about his involvement. “All roads lead to Keith, and all bridges to Keith were burned,” the defence lawyer Charles Mercieca said in his summing up. In his testimony, Fenech told the jury: “I never ordered Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, or anyone else’s. I had no role in her murder.” He said he had merely acted as a messenger between Schembri and Theuma, and that the taxi-driver had blackmailed him. Schembri, who gave evidence at the trial, denied all wrongdoing, saying he had no involvement in leaks and no knowledge of the murder. Fenech’s defence lawyer Giannella de Marco said Schembri and others should have been investigated. She said the prosecution’s chief witness had not been believed. “The jurors did not believe Melvin Theuma. It was an 8-1 verdict, which means unanimous … don’t you think jurors saw who the real masterminds were?” she said. Repubblika, a Maltese campaign group, called for a “national reckoning” in which the corruption investigated by Daphne Caruana Galizia is prosecuted. “Those politically responsible for the culture of impunity of the Muscat years must not be rehabilitated into public life. The state must sincerely accept its responsibility and apologise to Daphne’s family,” a spokesperson said. Occupy Justice, meanwhile, described the verdict as “deeply painful and disappointing”, saying Malta remained “without full accountability for the person or people who ordered her murder”. An independent public inquiry, for which the family fought, concluded in 2021 that the state had to shoulder responsibility for the killing because it “created an atmosphere of impunity, generated from the highest levels”. It made a number of recommendations, many of which have yet to be implemented. In a statement, the Daphne Foundation said: “Nine years after Daphne’s brutal assassination, the institutional failures that enabled her murder remain unaddressed and unreformed. Lasting justice means no person should ever face the same risks again. Our country failed to protect Daphne’s life. It owes it to her to prevent other lives being lost.” Tom Gibson, the deputy advocacy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, was in the courtroom for the verdict. In a statement, he said: “This is a heartbreaking verdict for the family after years of waiting for justice. We will continue to stand by them while they seek accountability for all of those involved in the murder.”

Bayeux tapestry loan symbolises ‘entente amicale’ between France and UK, says King Charles

The loan of the Bayeux tapestry was “the best possible symbol” of the “entente amicale” between France and the UK, King Charles said, as he visited the famous embroidered masterpiece at the British Museum in London. Though the tapestry recounts a conflict, “here it is today, nearly 1,000 years later, as a precious symbol of trust, at a time when trust seems sadly to be in short supply between nations,” he said. The “70 metres of memory and artistry” were a reminder “that our two nations have been bound together for almost a millennium”, added Charles, speaking at the new exhibition and accompanied by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and UK prime minister, Andy Burnham. In a speech partly delivered in French, he said: “We have defended our values together in times of peril; we continue to do so today across the world.” He continued: “May this tapestry – and the treasures that will travel in return – stand as symbols not only of our shared past, but our shared future: a future woven, as it should be, by Britain and France together.” Macron, also speaking in French and English, said that the return of the tapestry “had required a little patience” , since he first spoke of it in 2018. “Since the first British request dates back to 1931, I choose to regard eight years as something of a speed record,” he said. He added that, with the tapestry in Britain, his hopes were that the two countries could “forge a bond as close as the threads of this thousand-year-old embroidery”. The tapestry – the woven record of the Norman conquest – has returned to the UK for the first time in almost 1,000 years, and is on loan until September 2027 as part of a special trilateral agreement between the UK, France and the museum. Charles’s reference to entente amicale followed his use of the phrase to rebrand the famous “entente cordiale” between the two nations in his banquet speech at Windsor Castle when he hosted the Macrons in July last year. During Wednesday’s visit, he expressed his “deepest appreciation” to Macron and the French people “for the trust you have placed in the United Kingdom by agreeing to this unprecedented loan”. He said: “It once depicted warriors crossing the Channel; yet today it forms part of a cultural exchange that will see some of the British Museum’s own precious artefacts travel to France in return, in a spirit of friendship.” Thanking all those who made the loan possible, he added: “Anyone studying the tapestry’s scenes in detail will notice that, even in the 11th century, historic events rarely happened without extensive discussion, careful planning and a great deal of organisation beforehand.” The party, which also included Queen Camilla, France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, and Burnham’s wife, Marie-France van Heel, stopped at key moments along the 11th-century artwork to hear from curators about historic events such as the coronation of Harold Godwinson and the much-disputed depiction of his death by an arrow to the eye at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. At his first prime minister’s questions earlier on Wednesday, Burnham said: “The loaning of the tapestry is a great example of French-British cooperation, the same cooperation that has helped us reduce summer small boat crossings to a seven-year low.” The Labour leader also said the Bayeux Around Britain programme, which will see the digital exhibition displayed in museums, galleries and castles in all four nations, would “give communities across the UK the opportunity to learn about one of the defining stories of our past”. In exchange, Britain will loan the Sutton Hoo treasures, an assemblage of gold and other historic objects dating from the 7th century AD, and a selection of Lewis ‌chess pieces and other masterpieces, properties of the trustees of the British Museum, to museums in France.

Israel ‘seeking Trump’s support for plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza’

Israel’s defence minister has said his country is seeking Donald Trump’s support to approve plans to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in what has widely been condemned as a potential war crime. Israel Katz said there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration” during a conference hosted by the Israeli news site Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. He said the Israeli government was “organised and prepared to get them out by sea, by air, by every way possible”. Trump discussed a US takeover of the Gaza Strip in early 2025 that would have involved removing Palestinians from the territory, but has since pulled back from the idea. A 20-point peace plan the White House drew up last year did not call for Palestinians’ deportation, an act that would be widely seen as ethnic cleansing. Katz, however, said on Wednesday that he believed US support could tip regional opinion in favour of the forced resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza. He said Trump’s approval was crucial to convince neighbouring countries to accept Palestinian refugees. “Every country that is willing to take them in wants American backing,” he said. “Trump has not cancelled this at the moment. He has frozen it.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request from the Guardian for comment on whether Trump was continuing to hold discussions on Israel’s proposals to forcibly depopulate the Gaza Strip. Katz pointed in particular to Egypt, which he said had lobbied Washington to oppose the forced removal of the Palestinian population. “It has not been cancelled,” he said. “It is being discussed all the time, including now, and I think there is no other solution in the end that is in everyone’s interest.” The remarks come during a competitive election season in Israel in which the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his rightwing allies have appealed to voters by calling for more aggressive measures against Palestinians. Some have been openly inflammatory and cruel. The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, posted footage on X from a women’s prison where he said he was responsible for the dire conditions in the facility. When one prisoner told him they were not receiving medical care, showering or receiving clean clothing, Ben-Gvir said: “The good conditions in the prisons are over. This is the current situation, and I am directly responsible for everything. I am pleased with these conditions.” Netanyahu visited an Israeli military post close to the yellow line in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Israel has said it would not pull back from that line until Hamas disarmed, despite calls for a phased withdrawal to facilitate a recent ceasefire with the group. “We control the territory and are staying on this line,” Netanyahu said. “We are doing everything to achieve our goal – disarming Hamas and demilitarising Gaza. Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.”

Leipzig airport attack fallout exposes Germany’s deepening divide over Russia

Even before the German government laid the blame this week on Russia for an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport, the topic of German ties to Moscow was high on the political agenda. But the timing of the unsurprising yet explosive Leipzig announcement – days before a key regional vote – has exposed the extent to which German politics is polarised on the issue. Leading the polls nationally and in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which votes this weekend, is the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The party has repeatedly called for a closer bond with the Kremlin, and crucially, for its cheap oil and gas to flow to Germany once again, despite Moscow’s unrelenting onslaught on Ukraine. Germany is already on tenterhooks. The interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, had warned that Berlin faced a growing threat of hybrid warfare, and on Wednesday morning, the day after the Leipzig announcement, police were investigating a second sabotage assault on the electricity grid within just 24 hours. An explosion at Augsburg railway station in the early hours of Wednesday morning also initially looked like it might fall into the same category, illustrating the extent to which the country remains nervous and on high ‌alert for attacks on its vital infrastructure. Investigations into all these incidents and others from the near past, many of which are said to be linked, are ongoing, even as authorities warned against drawing premature conclusions. Moscow has denied involvement, and accused Berlin of trying to divert attention from its own domestic problems, including the rise of the far right, and the state’s failure to protect its own infrastructure. The resulting uncertainty, chaos and angst appear to be nothing less than grist to the mill of the AfD. Its foreign policy spokesperson, Markus Frohnmaier, accused the government of sorting acts of sabotage “according to political expediency”. While it had “escalated the situation against Russia within days”, he said, the 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipeline, for which Ukrainian operatives are suspected of being responsible for sabotaging a key route for Russian gas to Germany, had so far remained without consequence. (Two Ukrainian nationals named by Germany as suspects have been arrested over the attack, with one last year extradited from Italy and the other currently in Croatia.) “This is not a consistent security policy, but rather a double standard in foreign policy,” Frohnmaier claimed, adding he was convinced the government would use the Leipzig incident “as justification for even more support for Ukraine and an even deeper involvement of Germany in this war”. The AfD, which has called for talks with Moscow, ending sanctions against Russia, and slashing support for Ukraine, has urged the government to lay bare its proof of Russia’s involvement, saying so far the evidence is lacking. Wary of escalating a conflict with Moscow, the government of Friedrich Merz waited days before making its painstakingly worded declaration. In a more frank admission than the German government has ever made, foreign minister Johann Wadephul stated: “We are not at war, but we are a daily target of hybrid warfare.” The details released on Wednesday of two Russian suspects identified as having been involved in the Leipzig incident are unlikely to assuage the AfD’s complaints or, it would seem, the far-left party Die Linke. Its leading MP, Dietmar Bartsch, said on Wednesday that the suspicions of Russian involvement did not justify the government’s decision to shut down the Russian consulate in Bonn as well as a sprawling Russian cultural centre in Berlin and would not make Germany safer. On the contrary, they increased the risk of a “major war” drawing closer, he said. With the AfD on around 42% in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and possibly poised to form the first far-right-led administration since the second world war, Merz’s Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU), on around 22%, is under intense pressure. Within Merz’s own party, there have been growing calls for him to toughen his stance against Moscow and pure frustration that it has taken so long. For years, members of his Christian Democrats and his current coalition partner, the Social Democrats, along with generations of diplomats, have remained caught up in, and seduced by, the long-standing romantic notion that Russia could be tamed by trade and energy pipelines, according to the CDU’s Roderich Kiesewetter. The former soldier and the party’s respected foreign policy expert told broadcaster InfoRadio that Germany “must give up its caution with regard to Russian state terrorism on German soil, as well as this romantic notion of Russia as a great cultural nation. Russia cares not a damn about this caution, but rather sees it as an invitation to keep escalating.” He criticised Merz’s recent public reference to Russia as a great cultural nation, “because great cultural nations do not subject their neighbouring states to war, violence and child abductions”. He said it was time for Merz to name the current Russian regime for what it was. Konstantin von Notz, foreign policy expert for the Greens, praised the government’s “significantly clear language” over Moscow’s behaviour, even as he described it as “long overdue”. The extent to which voters in Saxony-Anhalt fear how a further deterioration of relations with Moscow could affect them may yet be felt at the ballot box.

After the flood: human suffering on an unfathomable scale in Nepal’s worst-hit districts

Searching for the body of his wife in the mud, Dil Bahadur Shrestha lamented that he did not even have a shovel left. For now, he has been using his hands to try to find her as he picks through the ruins of his house. On Wednesday morning last week, Jamuna Shrestha, his wife of 50 years, had been at home in Betrawati on the banks of Nepal’s Trishuli River, feeding her beloved chickens and goats. As deadly flash floods coursed down the river valley, Jamuna was last seen going back into her house, trying to usher her chickens to safety, while others fled uphill. Now that house stands like a muddy carcass, everything inside it destroyed or washed away by the violent force of the water and debris that killed more than 1,200 people in Nepal and Tibet. Dil Bahadur Shrestha, 70, had been tending to his rice fields and feeding his cows on the opposite bank when he felt the ground tremble and saw a black wave, hundreds of metres high, coming down the valley. He ran to safety in the forest, but not before watching two bridges get swept away behind him. “When it hit, everything was destroyed within two minutes,” he said. Dil Bahadur Shrestha, who is searching for his wife of 50 years, Jamuna. He knows in his heart that his wife is gone, but like thousands caught up in the disaster, her body has yet to be found and she is counted among the missing. More than 5,000 people are reported missing in Nepal and a further 546 in the Tibet region of China. Rescue workers have still not reached Dil Bahadur Shrestha’s home, so he returned to try to retrieve her body himself. “Maybe she thought the flood wouldn’t reach inside the house,” he said, wiping away tears. The couple had already rebuilt their home once after an earthquake in 2015 that killed about 9,000 people. As he spoke, his frail body collapsed to the barren, muddy ground where his neighbour’s house once stood. “Even now, I cannot believe that she is gone,” he said. “I cannot forget her. That’s why I keep walking around looking for her. I still feel as if she might be walking around somewhere here. I keep getting this feeling that she might still be here, looking after the chickens and the goats.” A Rasuwa district sign in the flood debris in Betrawati. The scale of the tragedy in Betrawati is unfathomable. It was 8.37am when a melting glacier high up in the Himalayas on the border between Nepal and Tibet crashed into the valley below, setting off deadly flash floods down Nepal’s Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers. By 8.50am, with only a few minutes’ warning, the settlement of Betrawati was engulfed. This once-thriving market town was submerged in mud so thick that only the top two floors of a six-storey building are visible. Most houses were washed away entirely or flipped on their sides by the sheer force of the floods. School buses lie overturned. A grocery shop was swept 200 metres from its original location and lies in ruins. The river itself has diverted to a new path that cuts through where the highway once was. An overturned school bus hit by the flood water. Fragments of the lives of the thousands who lived here lie scattered in the debris: kettles, teddy bears, a record-keeping book, saucepans, medicine packets, a pair of glasses. At least 250 people are missing, Dil Bahadur Shrestha’s brother and sister-in-law among them. As Dil Bahadur Shrestha surveyed the ruins of his life, search and rescue teams stood on the opposite bank, looking for the dead. By the end of the day, they had pulled 24 bodies from a single house. A helicopter thundered overhead, white body bags swinging underneath. “I feel there could still be hundreds of bodies here,” said Dil Bahadur Shrestha. “So many people were swept away all at once, carried off by the raging water.” His voice broke: “Now I’m alone. I am completely alone.” Santamaya Lawat tries to retrieve some of her belongings. A few metres away, Santamaya Lawat, 57, stood shaking a thick cake of dirt from the few clothes and blankets she had been able to retrieve from her brother’s home, now only partly standing, with a gaping hole in the side. Her own house, built just 10 months ago with her life’s savings, was still so filled with mud she had not yet been able to get inside. Five members of her family are gone. Santamaya Lawat has lost five members of her family as well as her home and her brother’s home next door. “My heart broke when I came back,” she said. “This was supposed to be the house I lived in for the rest of my life, but everything is gone. It was like heaven here and now it has been turned into hell.” *** Further up the river, in the district of Rasuwa, on the border with Tibet, the scale of destruction only gets worse. Many of the villages here were swept away entirely and are only accessibly by army helicopter. Some are still so cut-off and the ground conditions so precarious that the fate of hundreds of people remains unknown. On Tuesday, police search and rescue teams confirmed they had finally been able to begin ground operations in the border village of Timure, recovering 90 bodies so far. A week after the disaster, survivors who fled up mountainsides were still being collected by army helicopters and evacuated to the army base in Dhunche, Rasuwa district’s administrative headquarters. The mountain village of Syabru Besi was among those wiped clean away, with even the road to the village gone. According to local government officials, at least 500 people there are missing, a quarter of the population. The village resembles nothing more than a muddy riverbed, just one building left standing. Chhiring Dorje, a 50-year-old farmer, was among those who managed to escape Syabru Besi, but five of his family are missing. “There were 15 or 16 of us from the village who made it safely to the forest,” said Dorje. “We stayed there for two days before the army came in a helicopter. We had nothing to eat. We survived by drinking water from the forest.” He stood tightly holding the hand of his nine-year-old granddaughter, Ritu Tamang, who wore a big pink rucksack as they waited at Dhunche army base for a ride down to Kathmandu. Rescue helicopters thundered in and out every few minutes. She said quietly that there was “nothing left where our house used to be. I used to go to school and was in Grade 1. Now the school is gone. There are no teachers either.” Chhiring Dorje, a 50-year-old farmer, was among those who managed to escape Syabru Besi, but five of his family are missing. Chhiring Doreje’s granddaughter Ritu Tamang – waiting to be taken to Kathmandu. With the highways washed away, the only road from Kathmandu to Rasuwa is a perilous unpaved track of mud and stones, weaving through tiny mountain villages. The journey often takes more than 12 hours. The treacherous conditions have made it difficult for aid to reach the worst-hit areas and hindered the rescue and relief operations. Many aid trucks are now stuck in Dhunche, unable to drive further north. At a small relief camp on the road between Betrawati and Dhunche set up by Nepal’s Dhulikhel hospital, people collected medicine and food supplies. Doctors said dozens of the children here had lost their parents in the floods. More than 200 children from the local Nilakantha school, most aged between five and 11, are also missing, believed to have been washed away as they walked to morning classes. Prakash Nepal, a teacher. Prakash Nepal, a teacher, said the school had received a warning just 10 minutes before the flood waters hit, when the school bus was already picking up students. “Luckily, we immediately contacted the bus driver and the vehicle stopped midway so the students were able to survive,” he said. “The surge of water did reach the vehicle, but thankfully it did not cause much damage.” However, many of the local families had been displaced by the 2015 earthquake and still lived in informal settlements along the riverbank. Most of those children had been walking to school when the flood struck. Prakash Nepal’s eyes welled with tears: “We could not save the students who were still on the road.” Amid the tragedy, there were also small stories of hope. Sitting on the porch of their village home in Lachyang, Ram Krishna Neupane, 69, and his wife, Muiya Neupane, 66, said their only son had been working as a vet in Syabru Besi when the village was hit. For two days afterwards they heard nothing and feared he was dead. Then they received a phone call. “He called up from a hospital in Kathmandu; he had been rescued by the army,” said Ram Krishna Neupane. “He could not speak, he was crying so much and we were crying.” It was, added his wife, “a miracle”.

Russian airspace becoming unsafe for commercial airlines, Zelenskyy says

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has declared that Russia’s airspace is becoming unsafe for commercial airlines, as Vladimir Putin promised to increase strikes against Ukraine’s energy facilities in the run-up to winter. The Ukrainian president said there was no intention to directly threaten civilian flights, but the growing number of attack drones being flown into Russia by Ukraine would have to be “taken into account” by the aviation industry. “We want to warn every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer, and everyone who still uses Russia’s key airports: Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe,” Zelenskyy said in a statement. Ukraine’s foreign secretary, Andrii Sybiha, said Kyiv had notified the International Civil Aviation Organization that “Russian airspace is not safe for civilian aviation” because of increased military activity. A rapid escalation of Ukrainian military capability in the past few months has allowed Ukraine’s forces to strike at targets around Moscow, St Petersburg and other locations deep inside Russia. Reliable figures for the number of drone flights are hard to obtain but Ukraine is already capable of launching a few hundred a day, and military sources say the country is chasing a target of 1,000 drones in an effort to hurt Russia’s economy. Justin Bronk, an aviation analyst at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said he believed Ukraine could force “periodic closures of Russian airports on a semi-regular basis” by relying on an element of surprise. It could do so by flying small waves of drones at short notice, though trying to close an airport permanently would be difficult, he said, because a sustained attack would become predictable and easier for air-defence systems to halt. Ukraine’s commercial airspace has been closed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 because Russia has been able to strike targets throughout the country, making airports unsafe for civilians. This year, Ukraine began bombing oil refineries and warehouses near Moscow and St Petersburg, as well as hitting military and industrial sites at ranges in excess of 2,000km (1,250 miles) from its border. Concerns linger about the safety of civilian aviation in the war zone. A Malaysian Airlines plane flying over eastern Ukraine in July 2014 was shot down by Russian separatists operating a surface-to-air missile launcher. All 298 people onboard were killed. Putin described Zelenskyy’s remarks as “state terrorism”, saying: “Negotiations are not conducted with terrorists.” Giving one of his most detailed updates on the war, the Russian leader told a news conference that Moscow was preparing to increase its bombing of Ukrainian energy facilities this winter, aiming to knock out heating and electricity supplies. “The Russian armed forces have been ordered to prepare and carry out mass strikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities. They are striking us, and they will get a response,” Putin told reporters after a two-day summit in Kyrgyzstan. “I’m not saying we’ll collapse the economy there, but it’s a serious challenge for them.” Asked whether Russia would strike British military facilities in the UK that produced weapons for Ukraine, Putin sidestepped the question, saying: “That’s a military secret.” Russia earlier accused the UK of “escalation” and threatened “consequences” after reports that British-made drones were used by Ukraine in long-range strikes deep inside its territory. Putin sought to stress that Russian forces retained the initiative on the battlefield in Ukraine, despite Moscow’s slowing progress. He appeared to push back against western intelligence reports suggesting he was being given an overly optimistic picture of the war, saying he relied on numerous sources of information that together provided him with an “objective assessment” of the battlefield. Russia’s sluggish advance on the battlefield has fuelled speculation that the Kremlin could resort to another round of mobilisation, the first since Putin called up about 300,000 reservists in September 2022. Zelenskyy and western officials have said Moscow could be preparing such a move, though its diplomats do not consider it a certainty. Putin dismissed the prospect as “nonsense”. Also on Wednesday, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said a drone attack on Leipzig airport marked a new escalation by Russia, and that itfitted a broader pattern of “repeated incursions in our airspace, drones that paralyse our airports, interference with our critical infrastructure”. The German government said on Tuesday that Russia was responsible for a drone laden with explosives which was discovered at Leipzig airport last month near a Ukrainian plane used to transport weapons. Von der Leyen said: “Europeans are faced with the hard truth that this is the new normal. We have to step up, and that means being ready to respond to Russia’s recklessness faster and better.” The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, told reporters Russia had grown “increasingly reckless” and there had been an increase “in malign activities targeting our territory directly”. The EU is drawing up further sanctions against Russia targeting about 1,600 companies and individuals. Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, said the bloc should pass these sanctions in response to the Leipzig attack and others. “Hybrid war is not just nuisance on the internet,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting with his European counterparts. “Hybrid war means assassination squads, it means arsonists, it means blowing up moving trains, like in Poland, it means breaches of airspace with drones and cruise missiles. We need to convince Putin that such actions are not for free.” The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the Leipzig attacks had the “hallmarks of state-sponsored terrorism”, adding that Brussels had summoned Russia’s ambassador to the bloc.

Russian ‘attempts to intimidate Europe will fail’, says EU’s Kallas as Germany blames Moscow for Leipzig drone incident – as it happened

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the attempted Leipzig drone attack, attributed by Germany to Russia, “marks a new escalation on EU soil” (12:52). She said it fitted “a broader pattern of increasingly dangerous incidents” involving Russia, leaving Europeans no choice but to realise “the hard truth that this is the new normal” (12:53). Speaking alongside Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte, von der Leyen insisted the EU “will not just maintain pressure on Russia; we will increase it.” Nato’s Rutte warned that “Russia has grown increasingly reckless” in recent years as he stressed that the alliance’s unity is “unshaken” (12:59). EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said EU foreign ministers held talks on tightening the bloc’s sanctions against Russia and visa rules for Russians seeking to enter the union’s territory, including a ban for ex-combatants (16:39, 16:40, 16:58). But there is still no agreement on revisiting the use of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, as countries such as Belgium remain opposed to existing proposals (17:25), even as others – like Italy, Poland and Spain – are in favour (10:55). For what it’s worth, Russia has dismissed Germany’s move to attribute the attack to Moscow, with Vladimir Putin calling it “a grave mistake” and questioning the evidence behind it (11:26). Separately, German police have stepped up its investigation into yesterday’s attempt to disrupt the operation of a power substation near Brandenburg, opening a probe looking at alleged terrorism element (11:44). Ukraine faced another night of Russian attacks, including on its capital Kyiv, as it notified the International Civil Aviation Organisation that it no longer deemed Russia’s airspace safe for civilian aviation, suggesting a potential escalation. If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.