标签： Europe

WASHINGTON — A cross-party coalition of U.S. senators is escalating pushback against the Department of Defense over unfulfilled congressional mandates to disburse $600 million in approved security assistance to Ukraine and three Baltic allies, delivering a formal demand letter Friday to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calling for the immediate release of the allocated funding. The standoff marks a deepening rift between Capitol Hill and the Trump administration, as lawmakers from both major political parties are demanding transparency and action on funding that was formally appropriated by Congress in the previous year: $400 million earmarked explicitly for Ukrainian defense capabilities, and an additional $200 million for regional defense programming in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Notably, even members of President Donald Trump’s own party have openly expressed frustration with the administration’s growing strategic disengagement from Ukraine and other Eastern European partner nations.

In the joint letter led by top Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and senior Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, the lawmakers laid out the urgent case for unblocking the assistance: “Ukraine has persistently and bravely repelled a four-year Russian onslaught, but its military needs and deserves continued American support.” Four additional lawmakers — Republican Sens. Kevin Cramer and Thom Tillis, along with Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and Catherine Cortez Masto — added their signatures to the bipartisan appeal.

Weeks ago during a public congressional hearing, Hegseth informed lawmakers that the Ukraine funding had already been “released” and that a full spending outline would be delivered to Congress by mid-May. However, the senators confirm the Pentagon has missed its self-imposed May 15 deadline to share the mandated spending plan, prompting the formal protest.

The coalition warned that further holdups carry severe strategic consequences, particularly amid reported plans for additional U.S. troop drawdowns in the region: “Any further delays — particularly as the Department reportedly plans troubling U.S. troops withdrawals from the region — risks our ability to adequately deter Russia.”

This letter is the most recent public display of growing Republican discontent with the Trump administration within the Senate, coming on the heels of a week that saw the president endorse a primary challenger against incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a move that alienated dozens of sitting GOP lawmakers. In a public social media exchange with President Trump on Friday, Tillis pointed to the administration’s approach to Ukraine as one of several policies harming the Republican Party politically, specifically criticizing the White House for “Firing our very best generals and not holding Putin accountable for his systematic kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder of Ukrainian civilians.”

Multiple Senate Republicans have also broken with Hegseth over his firing last month of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, a senior officer who had led efforts to update the Army’s battlefield doctrine to integrate modern drone warfare and had collaborated closely with Ukrainian military forces to incorporate battlefield lessons from the ongoing war.

On the House side of Congress, a Democratic-led proposal that would impose sweeping new sanctions on Russia and authorize an additional $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine has been gaining traction among cross-party lawmakers. While the full House package is considered unlikely to pass into law in the current legislative session, it has amplified the growing pressure from Capitol Hill for sustained U.S. backing for Ukraine’s defense effort.

Though the $400 million in blocked aid to Ukraine makes up a small share of the multi-billion dollar assistance packages Congress authorized in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the standoff over the funding has taken on outsized symbolic importance for lawmakers as a public test of ongoing U.S. commitment to Kyiv and regional security in Eastern Europe.

After two months of political gridlock following a tightly contested parliamentary election, Slovenia’s national assembly has appointed veteran right-wing populist leader Janez Jansa to the post of prime minister, marking a sharp ideological shift for the small Alpine European Union member state previously led by a liberal administration.

The 90-member legislative body cast 51 votes in favor of Jansa’s appointment, with 36 lawmakers voting against the nomination. The new prime minister-designate now has a 15-day window to put forward his proposed cabinet lineup, which will require a second confirmatory vote in parliament before the government can officially take office.

The political stalemate that followed April’s election followed an almost evenly split result. Former liberal prime minister Robert Golob’s Freedom Movement secured a razor-thin plurality in the vote, but failed to cobble together a workable parliamentary majority to form a new government. This week, Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party broke the impasse by signing a formal coalition agreement with multiple aligned right-wing factions. The incoming government also secures outside support from the non-establishment Truth party, a group that originated as an anti-vaccination movement during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Friday’s appointment marks the fourth term as prime minister for the 67-year-old veteran politician, who is known for his open admiration of former U.S. President Donald Trump and long-standing close political alliance with Hungary’s populist former prime minister Viktor Orbán — who suffered a landslide election defeat just one month prior.

In his post-appointment address to parliament, Jansa outlined his administration’s core priorities: revitalizing the national economy, cracking down on systemic corruption and bureaucratic red tape, and decentralizing state power to regional and local authorities. He has pledged to cut taxes for high-income earners and expand state support for private education and private healthcare providers. Jansa sharply criticized the outgoing liberal government for what he called widespread inefficiency, promising his leadership would transform Slovenia into “a country of opportunity, prosperity and justice, where each responsible citizen will feel safe and accepted.”

Like his political ally Orbán, Jansa adopted a hardline anti-immigration stance during the 2015 European migrant crisis, and during his 2020-2022 previous term as prime minister, he faced repeated accusations of undermining independent democratic institutions and restricting press freedom. Those allegations sparked large-scale public protests across Slovenia at the time, and triggered formal oversight scrutiny from EU institutional bodies.

Outgoing prime minister Golob used his address to parliament to issue a stark warning about Jansa’s leadership, framing the right-wing leader as “the greatest threat to Slovenia’s sovereignty and democracy.” Golob also claimed Jansa had previously threatened to have him arrested, arguing that Jansa’s vision of democracy “is that anyone who dares speak a word against you deserves only the worst.”

Beyond domestic policy, Jansa is a vocal supporter of Israel, and has been a prominent critic of the outgoing Golob administration’s 2024 decision to formally recognize a Palestinian state. The April parliamentary election that set this political process in motion was marred by widespread allegations of foreign interference and campaign corruption, leaving the nation of roughly 2 million people deeply ideologically divided between liberal and conservative political blocs.

In a historic departure from traditional congressional diplomatic missions, an all-woman, evenly split bipartisan delegation of U.S. senators is set to leave Washington this week for a multi-stop tour of Arctic nations, aimed at shoring up confidence among American allies at a moment of shifting regional policy under the Trump administration.

Led by Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski and Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, every member of the delegation—from the eight sitting senators to supporting staff and military liaison officers—will be women. The rare composition of the trip sets it apart from past congressional diplomatic visits, and the leaders say it brings unique advantages to diplomatic outreach in the strategically vital region.

Over the course of the tour, the group will conduct official diplomatic meetings with government leaders across four Arctic and sub-Arctic jurisdictions: Canada, Greenland (an autonomous Danish territory), Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago, and Iceland. On Svalbard, one of the northernmost permanently inhabited regions on the planet, the delegation will require armed escorts to avoid dangerous encounters with polar bears during their visit.

The trip emerged directly from the two leaders’ longstanding work to stabilize U.S. alliance networks in northern Europe and North America, after the Trump administration adopted an aggressive, unilateral approach to Arctic policy that has raised anxiety among regional partners. Just this week, the Pentagon announced it would pause U.S. participation in a joint U.S.-Canada continental defense board that has operated continuously since World War II—a move Murkowski and Shaheen have criticized as misaligned with U.S. strategic interests in the fast-changing Arctic.

Murkowski and Shaheen argue that the Arctic has grown dramatically in strategic importance in recent years, presenting both unique security and environmental challenges that demand close collaboration with regional allies. “We will reassure our allies that we recognize and appreciate the importance of our allies and partners in the Arctic as in so many other areas,” Shaheen told the Associated Press ahead of the trip, noting that the delegation will also explore new avenues for Congress to deepen bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the region after the visit.

Alongside diplomatic talks, the delegation has planned a series of site visits designed to give members first-hand insight into the region’s most pressing challenges. The senators will meet with Indigenous communities that have inhabited Arctic lands for millennia, gaining on-the-ground perspective of how accelerating climate change is reshaping daily life and ecosystems. They will also observe military operations in the harsh Arctic climate, learning why remote Arctic outposts require specialized infrastructure—from climate-controlled airplane hangars to overwinter supply drops—that differs dramatically from military facilities in lower latitudes.

Geopolitical competition in the Arctic has intensified in recent years, as climate change melts the region’s thick sea ice, opening up new international shipping lanes including the long-sought Northwest Passage, and unlocking access to trillions of dollars in untapped mineral resources. China and Russia have both expanded their military and economic activity in the region in recent years, prompting NATO to launch a series of joint military exercises to strengthen collective cooperation in the High North. The region also hosts a network of undersea communications cables that carry global data traffic, adding another layer of strategic importance to Arctic security.

Beyond the core strategic goals of the trip, Murkowski says she hopes the first-hand exposure to the Arctic’s unique landscape and communities will leave the delegation inspired to prioritize Arctic policy on Capitol Hill. This is not the first time Murkowski and Shaheen have collaborated to defend Arctic alliances: when Trump publicly suggested the U.S. could purchase Greenland earlier the same year, the pair introduced legislation to block any U.S. military action against the NATO-aligned territory, and have pushed to add language to annual defense policy bills that would prevent the Trump administration from withdrawing security commitments to NATO allies.

The delegation’s all-woman composition is not a gimmick, Shaheen argues, but a deliberate choice that brings tangible benefits to diplomatic engagement. Research consistently shows that agreements negotiated with women at the table have higher rates of long-term implementation, and that greater female representation in government correlates with more stable societies and greater public investment in community infrastructure, she noted. For many of the nations the delegation will visit, high female political representation is already the norm: Iceland’s parliament, for example, counts women among 46% of its members, ranking it among the top countries globally for gender parity in legislative politics. “There are very real reasons why we need to make sure that women are at the table,” Shaheen added.

A controversial court ruling that nullifies the 2023 leadership election of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has plunged the country into a new political crisis, with opposition chief Özgür Özel slamming the decision as a carefully orchestrated “judicial coup” against democracy.

On Thursday, Ankara’s appellate court overturned a 2025 lower court ruling that had dismissed claims of vote rigging during the CHP primary that elevated Özel to the party’s top position. The appellate court’s judgment not only removes Özel and the entire CHP executive board from their posts, but also orders the reinstatement of 77-year-old Kemal Kilicdaroğlu, the long-time party leader who lost the 2023 presidential election to incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and was later voted out of his leadership role by CHP members. All policy and administrative decisions made by the current CHP executive are also expected to be invalidated following the ruling.

The decision triggered immediate shock and outrage across the CHP. BBC Turkey correspondent Ayşe Sayin reported that many CHP staffers at party headquarters were reduced to tears, and internal tensions boiled over when some members removed a portrait of Kilicdaroğlu from the building’s walls while labeling him a traitor. Thousands of supporters flocked to CHP headquarters in Ankara to protest the ruling within hours of its announcement.

Özel, who has positioned himself as one of Erdogan’s most vocal critics, has pledged an all-out fight against the court’s decision. “We are living through a dark day for Turkish democracy,” Özel told supporters. “These coup plotters do not arrive with tanks, cannons, rifles or camouflage; they come wearing the robes of judges and prosecutors.” The CHP leader has formally submitted an objection to the ruling to Turkey’s supreme election council (YSK), which began deliberations on the challenge on Friday. He also moved to dismiss widespread speculation of a party split, saying, “Tenants leave, homeowners stay.”

Critics argue the ruling is the latest in a years-long campaign by Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to sideline political opponents and consolidate power. Özel has explicitly accused the AKP of pursuing a deliberate strategy to “eliminate its rivals.” A key red flag for opponents is the role of current Justice Minister Akin Gürlek, a hardline prosecutor who was hand-picked for the cabinet post by Erdogan earlier this year. Before his appointment, Gürlek served as chief prosecutor in Istanbul, where he led high-profile investigations targeting opposition figures—most notably Ekrem Imamoğlu, the popular CHP mayor of Istanbul who remains Erdogan’s most formidable potential challenger. Imamoğlu has been held in prison for more than a year on corruption charges brought by Gürlek that carry a combined potential sentence of more than 2,000 years behind bars.

Defending the court’s decision, Gürlek claimed the ruling “reinforces our citizens’ trust in democracy.”

Senior CHP figures have echoed Özel’s condemnation. Jailed and suspended Istanbul mayor Imamoğlu released a social media statement calling on all Turkish citizens to “stand together for their country.” Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş, another high-profile CHP leader, warned the ruling’s core goal is to split Turkey’s largest opposition bloc and neutralize it as a political force ahead of potential early elections. With Turkey’s economy already struggling, Yavaş argued that ruling-party leaders are likely to call snap elections before the 2028 scheduled date to capitalize on the opposition’s disarray.

The ruling has already rippled through Turkish financial markets: the country’s benchmark stock index plummeted 6% in late trading Thursday, though it clawed back some losses on Friday morning. While Özel plans to appeal the decision all the way to Turkey’s Court of Cassation, legal analysts warn the process will likely drag on for months or even years, leaving the opposition in limbo. Many political observers now suggest that if Özel cannot reverse the ruling through the courts, he and his supporters may be forced to form a new breakaway party to contest future elections.

In a separate, concurrent development that has drawn further criticism of the Erdogan administration, the president on Friday ordered the permanent closure of Istanbul Bilgi University, a respected independent higher education institution that enrolls roughly 22,000 domestic and international students. The 30-year-old university was effectively shut down overnight, according to Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor who has taught at the institution for 15 years. “An institution where I’ve taught for 15 years, one we’ve nurtured alongside thousands of young people, is being completely disregarded,” Akdeniz said. Turkey’s Council of Higher Education has stated it is putting measures in place to minimize disruption for current students and ensure they can continue their studies at other institutions.