Closing summary
This blog will be closing shortly, here is an overview of today’s developments:
Sweden, Estonia, and Finland pledged contributions on Wednesday to increase spending on purchases of US weapons for Ukraine, but countries including Spain, Italy, France, and Britain have faced criticism for holding back. US defence secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday urged allies to ramp up investment in the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) program, which replaced US arms donations to Ukraine and now requires allies to pay for US weapons deliveries.
The EU is pressing to have a new system of anti-drone defences fully up and running by the end of 2027, officials told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Wednesday, as part of a push to ward off Russia. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen first called to create a “drone wall” to counter Moscow last month, hours after Nato jets shot down Russian unmanned aircraft in Poland.
Sergiy Petrovich Lysak has been appointed as the head of the Odesa city military administration, as confirmed by an order on the website for the president of Ukraine on Wednesday. The move comes after Zelenskyy on Tuesday revoked the citizenship of Odesa’s mayor on the grounds that he also had a Russian passport, acting to end the tenure of a divisive figure who has run the Black Sea port city for 11 years.
Russia struck Ukrainian power infrastructure with drones overnight, knocking out electricity supplies in several areas including in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, the Ukrainian Energy Ministry said on Wednesday. Power grid operator Ukrenergo said power supplies were limited in seven regions, most in the east. State-run gas firm Naftogaz said a thermal power plant had been hit, without identifying the plant.
Germany will spend €10bn ($11.6bn) in coming years for all kinds of drones, German defence minister Boris Pistorius said at a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels. He also said that Germany will offer to take the lead in an EU air defence shield and that Germany will increase its contribution to air policing.
Belgium’s defence minister Theo Francken said on Wednesday the Belgian and Dutch governments will sign a missile defence systems agreement. Francken told reporters on Wednesday ahead of a meeting with Nato defence ministers: “We will sign an agreement with the Netherlands to have … (a) missile defence system. It will be the NASAMS system, the Norwegian System. We will buy NASAMS to protect our skies.”
After winning a major concession on pension reform from prime minister Sébastien Lecornu, France’s Socialists on Wednesday set their sights on including a tax on billionaires in the 2026 budget as talks over its passage began in parliament. Lecornu told lawmakers on Wednesday he would propose in November an amendment to the social security financing law in order to suspend a landmark pension reform until after the 2027 election, sacrificing one of president Emmanuel Macron’s legacy achievements to ensure the survival of his minority government.
An Austrian court on Wednesday sentenced fallen property tycoon Rene Benko to two years in prison for insolvency fraud, the first conviction in a wide-ranging investigation into the collapse of his real-estate empire. Benko, once one of Austria’s richest men, founded Signa Holding in 2000, but the debt-laden group crumbled in 2023 in the largest insolvency proceedings in the country’s history.
Riot police scuffled with medical staff at an Athens public hospital on Wednesday during a protest over the state of public health services held during a visit to the facility by prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Police in riot gear fired volleys of pepper spray and used shields and batons to push away doctors at the University general hospital Attikon who were demanding to meet with Mitsotakis, local media reported.
Greece’s parliament on Wednesday debated a controversial reform proposed by the conservative government, which would allow 13-hour workdays under exceptional circumstances, drawing fire from unions and opposition parties.
Unions have staged two general strikes against the reform this month, the latest on Tuesday, with thousands of workers protesting a bill “worthy of the Middle Ages,” according to the left-wing Syriza party, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
The government insists that the 13-hour workday is optional, only affects the private sector, and can only be applied up to 37 days a year.
Labour minister Niki Kerameus argued in parliament:
We are now giving the possibility (to an employee) to perform this extra work for the same employer, without commuting, with increased pay of 40%.
The reform is seen as targeted towards Greece’s services sector, especially during the busy summer tourism season, enabling employers to avoid hiring additional staff.
But opposition parties and unions argue that workers will risk layoffs if they refuse longer hours.
Stefanos Chatziliadis, a senior member of civil service union ADEDY, told AFP during a Tuesday protest in Thessaloniki:
Our health, both mental and physical, and the balance between personal and professional life are goods that cannot be replaced with money.
Making it legal to work from morning till night is not normal and cannot be tolerated by our society. It is truly barbaric. It is inhuman.
