Euobserver.com

The Russian embassy in Iceland has singled out an EU Commission spokesman for criticism, saying Friday that "Peter Stano cynically declares the European commitment to a diplomatic settlement of the situation and claims that more weapons [to Ukraine] do not mean more war". It said Iceland should expect "negative consequences" for allowing 13 cargo flights of Western arms shipments to Ukraine and said cargo entering Ukraine was a "legitimate target".

EU companies may be able to comply with Russia's proposed system to pay for gas in roubles without braking the bloc's sanctions against Moscow, the EU Commission said Friday, but it is not yet clear how that procedure would work. Moscow proposed that energy buyers open accounts at Gazprombank, where payments in euros or dollars would be converted to roubles, which might comply with the EU's sanctions regime, Reuters reported.

Five European lawmakers from the Greens lodged a lawsuit against the European Commission for not fully disclosing its Covid vaccine contracts with the pharmaceutical industry. The commission says it is in "the business of respecting contracts."

Le Pen has switched from talk of Frexit to talk of primacy of French law — but her softer language masks just as hard an attack on the EU project as ever.

There are just two candidates left to choose from in French elections Sunday: Macron and Le Pen. But a third figure, Russia's Putin, also hangs in the air.

Details of how 'Bloody January' unfolded in Kazakhstan indicate Russia planned its intervention well in advance — and that puts Almaty in Putin's debt.

The sombre moment of Russia's invasion of Ukraine requires that China and the EU put aside their differences and strengthen their cooperation on the green transition — even if doing so is difficult.

Washington has signalled that any firms worldwide doing business with Russia could in future be cut off from US trade — the same way they were over Iran in the past.

The European Commission continues to claim its actions supporting the Libyan coast guard are designed to save lives at sea. But those intercepted are often sent to detention centres where they face torture, rape and murder.

Slovenia's prime minister Janez Janša is pinning hopes on his pro-Ukrainian stance in a tight election race this Sunday — a watershed moment for the country's democracy.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the biggest blow to European security since the end of the Cold War. The EU's response must be commensurate with this challenge.

Ukraine is actually winning the war against Russia, and it's winning for the same reasons Azerbaijan won the Second Karabakh War with Armenia three years ago.

A Russian tanker Pegas, with 19 Russian crew members on board, impounded by Greece earlier this week and reportedly carrying Iranian oil will be released amid confusion about sanctions on its owners. Following checks, a Greek source told Reuters, that there were no legal grounds to continue impounding the Pegas as the ship had recently changed ownership and its new owner was not on an EU sanctions list.

Denmark's prime minister Mette Frederiksen on Thursday promised to send more weapons to Ukraine during a trip to Kyiv, where she and her Spanish counterpart Pedro Sanchez were meeting president Volodymyr Zelensky in a show of support, Reuters reported. "We intend to deliver more weapons to Ukraine because that is what is most needed," Frederiksen told the Danish channel TV2.

One in six of Ukrainians — 7.7 million people — have been forced to flee their homes since Russia's aggression began, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a UN offshoot, reported Thursday. More than 60 percent of them are women and more than half reported difficulty in access to food. "A humanitarian ceasefire is crucial to allow for aid delivery and access to hard-to-reach communities," IOM director António Vitorino said.

Germany's foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday that "there are no taboos for us with regard to armoured vehicles and other weaponry that Ukraine needs" after allies criticised her country for Berlin's apparent reluctance to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine. Baerbock said on a visit to Estonia that the priority was to ensure Ukraine quickly got older Soviet-designed kit that its military could use without extra training, Reuters reported.

What some Africans now are bracing for is a carbon "shock", where EU tariffs would end up "suffocating some African economies," a senior advisor at the African Climate Foundation warns.

Polish kings used to protect the Białowieża Forest in north-east Poland from locals, but now it is the EU's turn to play that role amid plans to build an anti-migrant wall.

The way the EU has helped Ukrainian refugees should be a gold standard for how Europe responds to all people in need — regardless of the colour of their skin.

In response to the EU probe, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán's government called for a referendum on the anti-LGBTI legislation, but it failed to to muster enough votes earlier this month to be valid.