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Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands Berendsen with Foreign Minister Sybiha in Kyiv, Ukraine on Feb. 28, 2026.
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No shortcuts for Ukraine's EU accession, Dutch FM says. Reforms key to progress

by Oleksiy Sorokin

Two points remain high on Ukraine's agenda: surviving the Russian onslaught and joining the European Union. President Volodymyr Zelensky believes the two should be tied together, with his office proposing to engrave a set date for Ukraine's EU membership in a potential peace deal with Russia. Tom Berendsen, the new Dutch foreign minister, disagrees with this approach. "If you set a date, you need to make sure that you get (everything done before) the date. It needs to be a realistic date," Be

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After Khamenei and Maduro, Putin knows he could be next

On Jan. 3, 2026, Nicolas Maduro was captured by U.S. forces in a dramatic military operation. Just 56 days later, a joint U.S.-Israeli airstrike killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran. For Vladimir Putin, watching from Moscow, these events were a pattern. A warning. Perhaps a prophecy. Authoritarian leaders are, above all else, students of each other's deaths. When a peer regime collapses, the lesson travels fast. This matters to Ukraine significantly because, for Putin,

What Putin's latest decree expanding Russia's army actually means

Russian President Vladimir Putin has increased the potential size of the country's armed forces, a move analysts say is tied to long-term military reforms aimed at strengthening Moscow's capabilities against NATO. According to a decree signed on March 4, the maximum number of Russian service members could reach 2,391,770 personnel. Of these, 1,502,640 will serve as active-duty troops — 2,640 more than before. But while the overall numbers are large, experts say they don't necessarily translate

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