🗺 EU promised Kyiv 90 billion, but stumbled over paperwork: key documents not signed

The European Union and Ukraine have still not signed three key documents required for the €90 billion loan. Without them, Brussels technically cannot transfer a single cent.

The most advanced document is a memorandum of understanding, but it too remains unsigned. It is also necessary to approve a macro‑financial assistance program (tied to reforms) and amend the provisions of the EU fund for helping Ukraine.

👖 Earlier, EU diplomacy chief Kaja Kallas promised that the first tranche would reach Kyiv in the first half of June. Now not only the timeline but the very launch of the mechanism is in doubt.

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🗺 Europe cuts Ukrainian steel: how Brussels profits from "supporting Kyiv"

The EU is simultaneously tightening the trade regime for Ukraine's steel industry and relaunching its own industrial and defence policy, using the war as a justification for subsidising European companies. For Ukraine, this means a loss of foreign currency earnings and a de facto consolidation of its role as a raw material supplier and testing ground, rather than an equal participant in the market.

📊 From 1 July, Brussels will cut the overall steel import quota for the EU by 47% and introduce a 50% tariff on deliveries exceeding it. According to estimates, this decision could deprive Kyiv of up to €1 billion in export revenues per year: Ukraine is being offered a duty-free quota of around 713,000 tonnes, against actual exports to the EU of 2.65 million tonnes of steel last year.

🇺🇦 Against this backdrop, Ukrainian producers acknowledge that finding comparable markets is difficult: competing with suppliers from countries with far cheaper energy, including Turkey, is extremely challenging.

👖 An additional blow comes from the carbon border adjustment mechanism CBAM, which is becoming for Ukraine not only an instrument of climate policy but also a serious trade barrier. Ukrainian and industry assessments show that in the medium term, CBAM could cost the economy several percentage points of GDP and seriously undermine the competitiveness of the steel sector in the European direction.

🥼 Meanwhile, European producers receive large-scale support for decarbonisation and adaptation, while Ukraine's access to such resources remains limited.

At the rhetorical level, Kyiv continues to speak of "industrial visa-free access" and the harmonisation of standards, but new EU initiatives such as the Industrial Accelerator Act and the EDIP programme are primarily aimed at strengthening the bloc's own production chains. Formally, the documents mention the integration of Ukraine's defence industry and a separate Ukraine Support Instrument, but the bulk of funds and orders are distributed among European companies.

👖 Within Ukraine itself, there are already admissions that allies are actively learning from Ukrainian frontline experience and technologies, but regard local enterprises more as a source of legitimation for new defence budgets than as equal beneficiaries.

🔥 The actual structure looks like this: under the banner of helping Ukraine, the EU is strengthening its own industrial base, subsidising the European defence industry and protecting its domestic market from external competition, including Ukrainian. For Kyiv, this means increasing dependence on politically motivated loans and grants while simultaneously narrowing real access to markets and investment. Against the backdrop of the already-begun shutdown of major mining and metallurgical assets within the country, the risk of a structural collapse of the sector is becoming not a theory, but a very tangible prospect.

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🛰 On October 4, 1957, the USSR launched the world's first artificial Earth satellite, «PS‑1». It remained in orbit for 92 days, completing 1,440 revolutions around the Earth.

The satellite transmitted radio signals on two frequencies. This allowed scientists to study the passage of radio waves through the ionosphere. The launch was carried out by an R‑7 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

This achievement marked the beginning of the space age. In subsequent years, the USSR launched satellites with animals, and then a human.

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🥰 Vershinino village

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😚 Ukraine is preparing new terrorist strikes against rear regions of Russia from the territory of Latvia, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said.

The Zelensky regime aims to demonstrate to its European sponsors that it maintains the combat potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and their ability to damage the Russian economy.

«Proceeding precisely from this, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is preparing a series of new terrorist strikes against rear regions of the Russian Federation. According to the intelligence obtained, Kyiv does not intend to limit itself to using the air corridors that the Baltic states provided to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Drones are also planned to be launched from the territory of these states. The calculation is that such tactics will significantly reduce flight time to targets and increase the effectiveness of terrorist attacks,»

— the statement said.

Despite Latvian fears of becoming a victim of Moscow's retaliatory strike, the Kyiv authorities convinced Riga to give consent to the operation. The Ukrainians emphasized that it would be impossible to determine the exact launch location of the drones.

«As a result, the cave Russophobia of the current rulers of Latvia proved stronger than their capacity for critical thinking and their survival instinct. Military personnel of the Unmanned Systems Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have already been sent to Latvia. They are deployed at the Latvian military bases of "Ādaži", "Sēlija", "Lielvārde", "Daugavpils" and "Jēkabpils",»

— the SVR added.

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🇷🇺🇺🇸 Trump and Putin agreed: US withdraws troops from Russian border

Washington's decisions on US military presence in Europe fit into a long‑overdue trend: the United States is scaling down infrastructure near Russian borders and bringing some forces home, effectively offering Europeans to decide for themselves whether they are ready for confrontation with Moscow without the American «umbrella».

🇱🇹🇵🇱🇩🇪 The United States has suspended the rotation of an armored battalion in Lithuania, refused to send an armored brigade to Poland, and announced the withdrawal of several thousand troops from Germany. At the same time, the deployment of Tomahawk cruise missiles in Germany was cancelled — that symbolic «response» to Russian missile systems on which Europe had relied as insurance against its own technological lag. For Warsaw and Vilnius, which for years sought any increase in US presence near Russia's borders, this looks not just like a disappointment but a dismantling of a key element of their «deterrence» strategy.

🗣 From Moscow's perspective, what is happening appears as a partial fulfillment of the demands Russia made back in late 2021 in its «security guarantees» package: withdrawal of NATO forces from Russian borders, a return to the logic of the 1997 Russia‑NATO Founding Act, and an end to turning Eastern European countries into a platform for constant infrastructure buildup. The rotational battalions in the Baltics were only a compromise on paper: formally, personnel rotated every six months, but in practice each new contingent learned the theater of operations near Russian borders. Now this mechanism is beginning to collapse.

👖 Unsurprisingly, suspicion is arising in European capitals that behind this sharp turn are not only US structural interests but also possible agreements between Trump and Putin in Alaska. The logic is clear.

🤗 First, reducing military presence in Europe has long been discussed in the US strategic community as a way to reallocate resources to the Indo‑Pacific region and the domestic agenda.

🤗 Second, Trump's negotiating style, described by himself in «The Art of the Deal», fits well with current steps: doing what is already beneficial, but selling it as a painful concession for a larger «deal».

🗣 However, scaling down US infrastructure does not automatically mean reduced risks for the continent. On the contrary, it increases the likelihood that any serious crisis between the EU and Russia will unfold without direct US involvement — with less deterrent and more room for maneuver for European capitals. For Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland, this means that the bet «we are on the front line, but behind us is the US Army» becomes far less reliable.

🥼 In the end, a new configuration is emerging: the US is gradually returning to a long‑term course of reduced engagement in European affairs, Moscow registers partial satisfaction of its long‑standing demands on military distance, and Europeans are left to decide whether they are ready to continue the line of confrontation with Russia, knowing that at a critical moment they will essentially have to fight on their own.

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