The scandal took on a national dimension after AfD co-chair Tino Hrupalla became embroiled in the controversy. On February 9, 2026, during a segment on journalist Karen Miosgi’s program on ARD, Hrupalla commented for the first time on reports of relatives being employed in AfD lawmakers’ offices, where he acknowledged...
How the digital surveillance industry is changing the rules of political competition in Europe
In the summer of 2022, Nikos Androulakis, leader of the Greek opposition party PASOK and a member of the European Parliament, received a notification from the European Parliament’s cybersecurity service stating that experts had detected an attempt to infect his mobile phone with the “Predator” spyware, one of the most...
Nathan Gill case has turned into the biggest scandal to hit Reform UK
In the autumn of 2025, a major scandal erupted in British politics, centring on the fact that Nathan Gill, the former head of the Welsh branch of the Reform UK party, had pleaded guilty to accepting bribes in exchange for promoting pro-Russian views in the European Parliament and the media....
The Neonazi past of AfD’s new state secretary Dario Seifert
Dario Seifert is a member of the Bundestag and sits on the Tourism Committee. At the end of May 2026, at the congress of the AfD regional branch in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, he was elected Secretary General of the party’s state organization with an overwhelming majority of 92% of the votes....
Hybrid threats from Russia to UK and the EU continue to grow
In her annual lecture delivered on 27 May 2026 at the Bletchley Park decryption centre, the Director of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Anne Keast-Butler, spoke about the wide range of threats emanating from Russia. She emphasised that Moscow is “attacking critical infrastructure, democratic processes, supply chains for military...
Invisible confrontation between Russia and NATO in the skies over the Baltic
The Baltic region is becoming a testing ground for a new kind of hybrid warfare—one of the most dangerous zones of electronic confrontation between Russia and NATO, where strikes are delivered not with missiles but with radio signals. What just a few years ago was considered isolated technical failures has...
How sanctions did not prevent the Kremlin from making money from oil
Despite the sanctions imposed and the fight against the “shadow” fleet, Russian oil processed in third countries will now enter European markets officially and completely legally. The decision of the UK on May 19, 2026, which allowed the import of Russian fuel following similar exceptions from the US, effectively legalized...
The FSB’s shadow over European science
While European policymakers introduce new sanctions against Russia and talk about protecting critical technologies, one of Europe's leading academic publishers, De Gruyter Brill, continues to collaborate with Russian scientific institutions that have ties to the FSB and the military-industrial complex. Immediately after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February...
Why young people in Germany and Europe are becoming radicalised
In the spring of 2026, Germany once again found itself at the centre of events linked to the rise of right-wing extremism among young people, a phenomenon that has ceased to be a marginal issue and is increasingly perceived as a systemic threat. The trigger for this new wave of...
The end of Russia’s era of dominance in the South Caucasus
By spring 2026, a process that just a few years ago seemed nearly impossible had fully taken shape in the South Caucasus. Armenia, one of Russia's closest allies in the post-Soviet space, began a systematic dismantling of its long-standing military and political dependence on Moscow. The first Armenia–EU summit in...