Euobserver.com

Ukraine foreign affairs minister Dmytro Kuleba will be in Brussels next week to participate as a special guest in the meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers taking place on Monday (16 May). The sixth package of sanctions against Russia, including the oil embargo, granting Ukraine EU candidate status, and cooperation on war crimes investigations, will be discussed. Kuleba will also meet commission officials to discuss the rebuilding of Ukraine.

Speaking alongside Austria's chancellor and foreign minister in Vienna, UN secretary-general António Guterres said he was "deeply concerned" about worldwide food shortages as the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent global prices for grains, cooking oils, fuel and fertiliser soaring, worsening a food crisis in African countries. He also warned disruption to shipping in the Black Sea risked spreading hunger also becoming "widespread in different parts of the world."

The new draft European Parliament report is an update to the 2018 report which triggered the Article 7 procedure against Hungary, a sanctions probe aiming to rein in member states that break EU rules and values.

The EU aims to diversify supplies and increase imports of renewable hydrogen as part of its efforts to wean the continent off Russian gas — amid a dramatically changed geo-political reality.

The UK Home Office refused to rule out the possibility of deporting Ukrainian refugees to Rwanda, reports the Independent newspaper . When pressed on whether Ukrainians entering from Northern Ireland could end up in Rwanda, where the UK has an agreement to offshore asylum, an official said it depends on individual circumstances. Ukrainian refugees have not been excluded from its policy of who gets sent to Rwanda.

European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde signalled an interest rate increase possibly as early as July, but some experts warn for a repeat of the 2011-2012 debt crisis.

Online child sex abuse continues to increase with EU-based servers hosting some 60 percent of the global content. But a proposal by the EU commission to stop it has riled privacy advocates.

French authorities launched an investigation into Interpol's president Ahmed Nasser al-Raisif, following accusations he was complicit in the arbitrary detention and torture of two Britons in the United Arab Emirates. The alleged victims say al-Raisif was a United Arab Emirates senior interior ministry security official at the time when the allegations took place, reports AFP. Interpol's headquarters are based in Lyon.

The UK rejected proposals by the EU to tweak the protocol governing trade in Northern Ireland, and has threatened to suspend the rules as loyalists lost their majority in the Northern Ireland elections.

MEPs have raised questions about the involvement of the EU — through its funding — in the development of the Israeli NSO Pegasus software, directly or indirectly, which has been used to target activists and journalists in Europe.

Russia was not invited to an international donor conference on Syria in Brussels given its war in Ukraine. Moscow had also recently threatened to veto a humanitarian corridor from Turkey to Syria.

The number of civilians killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the war is "thousands higher" than numbers currently given, Matilda Bogner, head of the UN's human rights monitoring mission in the country, said in a press conference on Tuesday. The official civilian death toll stands at 3,381 but thousands more would be added once the UN gains access to "black holes" like Mariupol, she said.

Finnish MPs have got the ball rolling on a week that's expected to culminate in a tectonic shift in Nordic security — Finland and Sweden's decision to apply for Nato membership.

After the EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen's Budapest trip, Hungary suggested it wants EU funds to offset the extra costs from receiving different oil sources, and the increased energy prices the planned Russian oil embargo entails.

International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva is among those warning that increases in food and energy prices due to the Ukraine war will trigger social unrest. Pakistan and Sri Lanka are proof that this is already happening.

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock on a visit to Bucha Tuesday pledged that the international community would hold to account those responsible for the killing of civilians in Bucha during Russia's invasion, AP reported. Baerbock is the first German government member to visit Ukraine since the invasion, after Berlin and Kyiv set aside a diplomatic spat concerning Ukraine's unwillingness to invite the German president because of his past Russia ties.

Joining Nato is the best option for Finland to guarantee its national security, the defence committee of the country's parliament said on Tuesday, ahead of Helsinki's official decision on whether or not to join the Western defence alliance in the coming days, Reuters reported. The committee said Nato membership would significantly increase the deterrent for becoming a target of Russia's aggression. Finland shares a 1,300km border with Russia.

Ireland's prime minister Micheal Martin warned British prime minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday against unilaterally seeking to overrule any of the post-Brexit arrangements agreed with the EU for how to conduct trade in British-run Northern Ireland. British media reported that British foreign secretary Liz Truss is set to ditch large parts of the Northern Ireland protocol, governing that trade, after talks broke down with the EU.

The EU condemned on Tuesday the Russian cyberattack against Ukraine, which took place just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, facilitating the military attack. This cyberattack caused disruption and communication outages across businesses and public services in Ukraine and several EU member states. It was yet another example of "Russia's continued pattern of irresponsible behaviour in cyberspace" in breach of UN rules, the EU said in a statement.

There is a "fragile situation" in the Russian-occupied plant at Zaporizhzhya in southern Ukraine, since a Russian missile hit a building close to the reactor in early March, Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told MEPs on Tuesday. "We were lucky that the physical integrity of the nuclear reactors was not affected," he said. The IAEA also denied that Ukraine might be developing nuclear weapons.