Euobserver.com

UN nuclear inspectors are hoping to soon visit Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia plant as tensions mount ahead of Independence Day celebrations on Wednesday (24 August).

Once the hostilities eventually end, the affected parties will have to embark on the process of reconciliation. That requires documenting and prosecuting of Russian war crimes — and for that, we need to support Ukrainian civil society organisations.

It would be unwise to stop letting Russians in. Europe's aim is to stop the war in Ukraine and for Russia to withdraw completely from Ukraine. And that can only happen if Russian citizens start resisting the war.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said he is hopeful of a positive US response sometime this week on a proposal to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The EU has been coordinating 16-months of talks between the two sides. "It was transmitted to the United States which has not yet responded formally... I hope the response will put an end to the negotiations," he said, on Monday.

EU defence ministers are set to discuss next week in Prague a proposal to launch a training mission to help the Ukrainian army in its war against Russian occupying forces.

Georgia Meloni, the far-right leader expected to become Italy's next prime minister, was lambasted Monday for posting a video of a Ukrainian woman being raped by a migrant on social media as part of her election campaign. The video showed a 55-year old woman assaulted by a asylum-seeker from Guinea, with Meloni writing "A hug to this woman. I will do everything I can to restore security to our cities."

EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell has spoken out against a visa ban for all Russians travelling to Europe.

Belgium's prime minister has warned Europe is facing a future where the next "five to10 winters will be difficult", due to soaring energy prices from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg reports. Alexander De Croo said on Monday "The development of the situation is very difficult throughout Europe. Some sectors are facing serious difficulties with these high energy prices." European natural gas prices are around 15 times the summer average.

Inflation in the UK may hit 18.6 percent next year, the Financial Times reported, on the back of surging wholesale gas prices from the war in Ukraine. The Citigroup bank's report came as UK next-day delivery prices rose 33 percent. The Bank of England has already predicted inflation will reach 13 percent. Pressure is increasing on the two UK PM candidates to do more to address the cost-of-living crisis.

Germany's Bundesbank warned in a report on Monday that a recession in the eurozone's largest economy is increasingly likely, and inflation will continue to soar, possibly peaking at over 10 percent this autumn, Reuters reports. Germany's heavy industry is highly exposed to Russian gas supplies, with the spike in costs meaning "declining economic output in the winter months has become much more likely," the central bank said.

Serbia's interior minister met Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday in Moscow, AP reports, in a rare visit by a European state official since the Ukrainian war began. Alexsander Vulin said he told Lavrov that "Serbia is the only state in Europe that didn't introduce sanctions and was not part of the anti-Russian hysteria." Serbia is an EU accession country, but its pro-Moscow stance has angered many in Brussels.

Poland has accused the EU of "cheating" and "stealing" it out of billions in EU funds from the bloc's Covid pandemic recovery programme, Bloomberg reports. Justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro told reporters in Konin on Monday "Poland is being robbed, and a leading role in this plundering is played by German politicians led by [EU Commission president Ursula] von der Leyen." The EU made funding conditional on Warsaw addressing rule-of-law issues.

The cause of mass fish deaths this month in the River Oder between Germany and Poland is still unexplained, as governments in Berlin and Warsaw exchanged insults over possible causes. Germany had suggested pesticides might be behind the event, which Poland then rejected as "fake news", before German environment minister Andreas Kübler said he was "surprised and saddened by Warsaw's suggestion that Germany was spreading 'fake news'," Deutsche Welle reported.

Germany's inflation rate could surge over 10 percent this autumn, the highest in 70 years, the country's central bank chief Joachim Nagel told the Rheinische Post on Saturday. His comments came just after Russian state gas giant Gazprom announced an unscheduled three-day shutdown of the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline that sends natural gas to Europe from 31 August to 2 September.

Russian energy giant Gazprom said it will close the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from August 31 to 2 September for maintenance. The pipeline supplies natural gas from Russia to Europe. "It is necessary to carry out maintenance every 1,000 hours" of operation, Gazprom said in a statement on August 19. The closure comes amid record high gas prices in Europe, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The leaders of France, Germany, UK and the US on Sunday discussed a plan to revive the 2015 deal with Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions. A White House statement said "they had they discussed ongoing negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, the need to strengthen support for partners in the Middle East region, and joint efforts to deter and constrain Iran's destabilising regional activities."

The government in Montenegro fell on Saturday, following a no-confidence vote over a row with the country's Serbian Orthodox church, AFP reports. MPs voted 50 to one to oust the government of prime minister Dritan Abazović. It came after he signed a deal regulating the property rights of the church, the largest faith in Montenegro, which split from Serbia in 2006. The nation is divided over the church's dominant role.

Opinion-poll approval for German chancellor Olaf Scholz has dropped to 25 percent, from 46 percent in March, according to figures out Sunday, Reuters reported. Some 62 percent of Germans think Scholz — deputy chancellor under Angela Merkel in the previous ruling coalition — is doing his job badly. Since taking power, his social democrat-led coalition has been hit by the war in Ukraine, soaring energy prices, and a likely recession.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has hailed his country's three-month trial of a national €9 transport pass as a "big success", and announced talks on a follow-up. The ticket allowed unlimited transport on the country's buses, local trains, trams and undergrounds for the months of June, July and August, to offset the cost of living crisis, with only high-speed intercity trains excluded. The FDP warned it cost €14bn in subsidies.

The leaders of the United States, Germany, France and the UK held a conference call on Sunday, where they discussed Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, amid an evacuation of some 1,000 nearby residents.