EU Foreign Affairs Council Approves Ukraine Assistance Fund (UAF): €5 Billion for Military Aid

The European Peace Facility (EPF) has emerged as a critical financial instrument for delivering EU military assistance to Ukraine following the unprovoked Russian aggression against the country (Bilquin, 2023).Conceived as part of the 2016 EU Global Strategy, the EPF was established by the Council on 22 March 2021 through Council Decision CFSP 2021/509. It substitutes and expands upon former financial instruments and it is tailored to provide quick responses to security crises (Council of European Union, 2021), funding both lethal and non-lethal military equipment and supplies (Council of the European Union, 2024).

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Leaving the (Space) Door Open: ISS Missions as a Platform for International Cooperation

On 3 March, three American and one Russian astronauts took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the Falcon-9 rocket, owned by Elon Musk's company SpaceX, to reachthe International Space Station (ISS) (Le Monde, 2024). A US-Russian partnership, sustained by a private actor, might seem quite surprising amidst renewed geopolitical tension. However, neither the space cooperation between the US and Russia nor the active involvement of private companies in public-funded space operations is new in the space field. The growing impact of these trends on the space activities of other actors, such as the EU, will be significant (Jones, 2023).

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Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s Visit to France and Italy to Boost Cooperation with the Two

On 9 October 2023, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh embarked on a diplomatic visit to France and Italy that will last until the 12th of the same month. Singh is set to meet with his Italian and French counterparts, Guido Crisetto and Sebastien Lecornu, to bolster the Indian strategic defence partnership with these nations and explore opportunities for military industry cooperation.

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The Su-25 and the Russia-Belarus Military Cooperation

This Info Flash outlines the necessity to take a closer look at Russian-Belarusian military cooperation. While increased military cooperation between Russia and Belarus can be expected in an ongoing war, this depends on many more factors, and it is rather difficult to estimate its exact form. For the European Union, however, this cooperation poses a significant risk, and even though the involvement of the Belarusian army in the war seems unlikely, many factors at play can change this. The previously reached factors and many more factors are further discussed in this work, with the main research questions focusing on how close is the Belarus-Russian military cooperation and why it poses a threat to the European Union.

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Lebanon’s Crippling Crisis: Prospects for a Further EU Involvement in the Country’s Stability

The Mediterranean region and the European continent are inextricably linked from a geographical, historical, and strategic point of view. For this simple reason, it is impossible for the countries that lie on the two shores of this almost-closed sea to ignore each other for a long time. Consequently, international cooperation between them has always been intense, being reinforced by strong cultural and economic ties. Nevertheless, due to the high degree of instability that traditionally affects this area, the EU’s foreign policy towards many of its southern neighbours has usually been dominated by the theme of the security–development nexus. Lebanon is no exception. Having its modern history characterized by recurring social unrest, economic crises and civil wars, this small country has often drawn the attention of European policymakers. In 2019 the nation that was once called “the Switzerland of Middle East” has fallen again into a severe political paralysis and started to experience a deep economic downturn, which undermines inter alia the normal implementation of cooperation programmes with the EU (World Bank, 2021) The general election held in May 2022 was intended to put an end to this situation, but it didn’t. For as long as the crisis perseveres, risk Lebanon risks falling into another devastating civil war is becoming feasible. Therefore, stronger European engagement to maintain the country’s stability seems to be a matter of necessity, and it could be one of the last opportunities to save Lebanon from sinking.

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