EU and UN Discuss How to Address “Disinformation” on Digital Platforms
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 30, 2023
In an apparent display of bureaucratic synergy, the European Union and United Nations have convened to muse over the implementation of new social media regulations, ostensibly in the pursuit of a more secure and transparent digital milieu. What stirs apprehension, however, is the overt enthusiasm of the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, Melissa Fleming, who anticipates that the EU’s Digital Services Act will establish a “new de facto global regulatory benchmark.” The skepticism arises from the suspicion of veiled intentions to curb free speech under the guise of combating “disinformation.”
Platforms are constantly blamed for the proliferation of “disinformation” and “hate speech,” with detractors painting them as adversaries to science, democracy, and human rights. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres brandishes a doomsday brush, asserting that large-scale disinformation constitutes “an existential risk to humanity.”
What is crucial here is the essence of the dialogue and the response it seeks to galvanize. The UN is fervently plotting a Code of Conduct premised on a policy brief that stresses the imperative for an international clampdown on disinformation. It lays out what seems to be an ambitious and comprehensive framework, involving governments, tech companies, advertisers, and other stakeholders. All very fine, but what remains unaddressed is the question of who gets to define what is “disinformation,” and what criteria determine the line between free speech and misinformation.
The Code of Conduct, steeped in an aura of academic rigor and global research, envisages a change in the fabric of digital platforms. However, the aspects it emphasizes – detaching from engagement-driven business models, and ostensibly placing human rights, privacy, and safety at the forefront – are nebulous in terms of implementation and potential overreach. Furthermore, the UN’s admission of wielding moral authority without sanctions may be viewed as a tacit endorsement of soft power coercion.
While Melissa Fleming’s words convey a seeming commitment to protect human rights and access to information, the phraseology she employs – “human rights-based,” “multi-stakeholder,” and “multi-dimensional” – are threadbare buzzwords that do little to assuage the concerns over censorship and institutional overreach.
The concern is not with the stated objectives of fostering a safe and open digital environment, but rather with the specter of global entities like the EU and UN using the cloak of “disinformation” to infringe on the bedrock principle of free speech.
EU to renew Iran sanctions under defunct nuclear deal: Report
The Cradle | June 29, 2023
European officials recently informed Iran that they plan to renew EU ballistic missile sanctions set to expire in October, according to sources in the know that spoke with Reuters.
The renewal will be conducted under the parameters of the defunct Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which officials say Iran “violated” by moving forward with developing its nuclear energy program after the US unilaterally exited the deal in 2018 and reimposed crushing sanctions.
Other reasons the EU is giving for renewing the sanctions are Russia’s use of Iranian drones in Ukraine and “the possibility of Iran transferring ballistic missiles to Moscow.”
“The Iranians have been told quite clearly [of plans to keep the sanctions], and now the question is what, if any, retaliatory steps the Iranians might take and [how] to anticipate that,” a western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The decision to uphold the sanctions would be the first significant instance of the E3 group of nations — France, Germany, and the UK — not abiding by the terms of the nuclear deal.
EU mediator Enrique Mora, who co-ordinates talks to restore the 2015 deal, raised the issue of keeping the sanctions when he met Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani in Doha on 21 June, but the latter reportedly refused to discuss the matter, according to an unnamed Iranian official who spoke with Reuters.
“Maintaining sanctions, in any capacity and form, will not hinder Iran’s ongoing advancements,” the Iranian official is quoted as saying. “It serves as a reminder that the west cannot be relied upon and trusted.”
Since 2017, the Islamic Republic has significantly advanced with its ballistic missile and satellite launch programs. The country last month made waves by revealing a hypersonic missile with a potential 2,000-km range.
This progress, on top of Tehran’s enrichment of uranium at 60 percent purity and a China-brokered détente with Saudi Arabia, set off alarms in the west and pushed Washington to begin ‘de-escalation talks‘ with Iran.
EU delivers ‘neither peace nor prosperity’ – Hungarian PM
RT | June 29, 2023
The Hungarian government has blasted the EU, declaring that in its current state it brings “neither peace nor prosperity” to member states. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was attending a summit of bloc leaders in Brussels, offered a similar assessment of the bloc.
Orban’s position was relayed via his government’s official Facebook account on Tuesday, the first day of the high-profile two-day gathering in Brussels. The statement apparently came from an interview that the Hungarian leader had given to the German media earlier in the week.
Asked by the German tabloid Bild whether he could explain the rising popularity of Alternative for Germany (AfD), a right-wing political party, the prime minister cited disillusionment with the EU as a possible cause.
“The European Union was created for two reasons. The first is peace – and now there is war. The second is prosperity – the economy is in an increasingly worrying state, it is difficult to maintain competition and it is increasingly difficult to ensure prosperity for people,” Orban argued.
“That is why I see the so-called protest parties gaining strength everywhere in Europe. I’m not talking about Germany alone, I’m talking about Europe in general,” he added.
Hungary stands out among EU members for having consistently criticized the West’s approach to the Ukraine conflict. Arming and training Kiev’s troops and punishing Russia with economic sanctions have not brought a truce any closer and have caused serious damage to the bloc itself, according to Budapest.
Ukraine is one of the top items on the agenda of the EU summit. The bloc’s leaders are expected to offer some form of security guarantees to Kiev and provide assurances of continued military assistance.
Orban told Bild that Ukraine has no chance to win against Russia regardless of the amount of Western money that is poured in, because eventually Kiev will run out of manpower.
15 Signs That You Might Be In An Abusive Relationship…
… With Your Government
The Naked Emperor | June 28, 2023
The Workplace Mental Health Institute delivers mental health training and consultancy to medium and large-sized organizations across the world. On their website they have various resources that you can download and put in your office, to help boost productivity, by addressing mental health issues.
One of their infographic downloads provides 15 signs that your might be in an abusive relationship. You may be in an abusive relationship if they [your partner]:
- Stop you seeing friends and family;
- Won’t let you go out without permission;
- Tell you what to wear;
- Monitor your phone or emails;
- Control the finances, or won’t let you work;
- Control what you read, watch and say;
- Monitor everything you do;
- Punish you for breaking the rules, but the rules keep changing!
- Tell you it is for your own good, and that they know better;
- Don’t allow you to question it;
- Tell you you’re crazy and no one agrees with you;
- Call you names or shame you for being stupid or selfish;
- Gaslight you, challenge your memory of events, make you doubt yourself;
- Dismiss your opinions;
- Play the victim. If things go wrong, it’s all your fault.
Now go back through that list and see which ones your government has subjected you to over the past three years. For most western countries it is every single one.
Your government has been mentally abusing you for years, in an almost identical fashion as an abusive partner would.
‘Journalism is Not a Crime’: Experts Lambast EU Media Freedom Act
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 26.06.2023
The European Media Freedom Act envisages installing spyware on journalists’ phones for the sake of “national security”. Sputnik sat down with some international observers to discuss how the provision correlates with the act’s name and basic European principles.
“There is no legitimate reason to spy on journalists,” Lucy Komisar, an investigative journalist based in New York, told Sputnik.
“Remember, this law targets people identified as journalists, not as spies or terrorists or criminals. Journalism is not a crime, unless Julian Assange does it. The real reason is to protect government officials from journalists reporting on officials’ misguided policies, abuses and corruption. It’s quite ironic in view of the EU’s self-congratulatory rules trumpeted as protecting peoples’ data from tech companies. Stealing data when a company does it is bad, stealing audio and written text when a government does it is just fine.”
Tightening Screws on Free Press
The bloc’s new media regulation was proposed by the European Commission (EC) in September 2022. The initial draft stipulated that European governments could deploy spyware on journalists’ devices “on a case-by-case basis” to ensure national security or to investigate “serious crimes,” such as terrorism, human or weapons trafficking, exploitation of children, murder or rape.
However, in May 2023, Politico obtained a document penned by French policy-makers who called to narrow journalists’ immunity under the new EU rules and strike what they called “a fair balance between the need to protect the confidentiality of journalists’ sources and the need to protect citizens and the state against serious threats.”
According to the media, Paris’ argument was accepted by the EC. As a result, the draft legislation was amended to loosen safeguards for the journalists’ immunity. The EC’s original list of “serious crimes” allowing surveillance on reporters was replaced by a broader 2002’s Council Framework Decision of the European arrest warrant consisting of 32 offenses.
The development triggered a storm of criticism from European journalist organizations, NGOs and activist groups. In particular, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), representing over 300,000 members, denounced the EU’s move as a “blow to media freedom”. The EFJ warned that empowering EU governments to install spyware on journalists’ devices under the guise of “national security” would in particular have a “chilling effect on whistleblowers” and confidential sources.
“Since the eighteenth century when newspapers began to circulate, the secrecy of sources has been sacrosanct,” Professor Ellis Cashmore, the author of Screen Society and an independent media analyst, told Sputnik. “Journalists have, over generations, respected this and steadfastly refused to reveal sources. As recently as 2005, Judith Miller, a New York Times journalist, was sentenced to prison for not revealing sources. So, it is an extremely important principle in the media.”
For their part, the British media warned that despite the UK leaving the EU, the bloc’s legislation in its current form poses a surveillance risk to British journalists residing in the EU. European Digital Rights (EDRi), a network of digital rights advocates, urged the European Council to reconsider the legislation’s spyware provisions.
The proposed legislation will not only infringe the freedom of press but contribute to the further erosion of the public trust in the Western mainstream media which is increasingly merging with the government and elitist structures, according to Sputnik’s interlocutors.
“The two cataclysmic events of the COVID pandemic and the Ukraine conflict have changed the media’s relationships with governments,” explained Cashmore. “One important effect is what we might call a neutering of the media. I mean by this that news organizations are now so reliant on governments for intel that they have been deterred from being critical of administrations. In the West, the phrase is ‘do not bite the hand that feeds you’.”
One shouldn’t delude oneself into believing that those proposing the spyware provision are really concerned about “national interests,” echoed Lucy Komisar: “The security they are protecting is not that of European nations but of themselves,” she pointed out.
According to Komisar, much of the Western media “already walks in lock-step with their governments.” The newly proposed bill “aims at the few courageous ones left, to keep the public from finding out about officials’ abuses and lies” and “to intimidate the few Julian Assanges who are left in European media that reach the broad public.”
Once the legislation is passed “real journalists will have to do what other critics of repressive governments do: user burner phones, have computers not connected to the internet, have secret meetings with brave sources,” the investigative journalist projected.
“Democracy is distorted when citizens are prevented from getting the information they need for informed choices,” Komisar warned.
Bans and Censorship Do More Harm Than Good
Meanwhile, the latest developments don’t seem surprising against the backdrop of the West’s steady attack on freedom of speech over the last several years. One glaring example is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who has been persecuted for exposing the US-NATO criminal conduct in Afghanistan and Iraq and the CIA’s cyber-spying techniques. Assange is indicted on 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act in the US. The WikiLeaks founder has been held in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison for more than four years and is now facing extradition to the US.
Likewise, Washington charged former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden under the Espionage Act for shedding light on the US global surveillance program and spying on American civilians in a clear contradiction with the nation’s constitution. Snowden evaded Assange’s fate by finding asylum in Russia. In September 2022, Vladimir Putin signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to the whistleblower.
Most recently, the collective West has ramped up pressure against Russian media outlets by resorting to censorship and outright bans after the beginning of Moscow’s special military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.
In particular, in March 2022, the EU slapped sanctions and suspended the broadcasting activities of Sputnik and RT thus stripping Europeans of any alternative news about the Ukraine conflict and imposing a one-sided vision of what’s going on in the Eastern European military theater. Concurrently, the UK passed legislation ordering social media, internet services and app store companies to block content from RT and Sputnik.
Remarkably, some Western human rights advocates warned at the time that banning Russian media “does more harm than good”: “History offers numerous examples of emergency speech restrictions threatening the very democracies they were supposed to protect,” wrote Danish lawyer and free speech activist Jacob Mchangama in August 2022.
“I am not a conspiracy theorist, but any sentient person can see a systematic removal of the media’s ability to operate without fear or favor – that is, impartially,” said Cashmore. “A dependency has been cultivated: the media have been encouraged to rely on political powers for information and, if they don’t, they face expulsion. The ejection of Sputnik and RT from the UK illustrates the measures governments are prepared to take to eliminate not just critical but alternative commentary. So, I believe the EU is seeking a closer compliance with mainstream or dominant narratives and the minimization of perspectives that challenge or criticize.”
The value of the concept of the freedom of speech is fading given that just a handful of European parliamentarians have shown any independence or courage to uphold this basic principle of the EU, according to Komisar. She expects that the draconian legislation may be passed, apparently with a meaningless disclaimer “this should not be used to attack a free press.”
“Calling this ‘Orwellian’ becomes a cliché,” Komisar concluded.
Europe approaching a ‘catastrophe’ – Hungary

Peter Szijjarto in Budapest, Hungary, December 7, 2021 © AFP / Attila Kisbenedek
RT | June 28, 2023
Europe is moving closer to “catastrophe in every sense,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto declared on Monday, before extending Budapest’s veto on EU arms transfers to Ukraine.
“Europe is moving closer to a catastrophe – in every sense, unfortunately,” Szijjarto wrote on Facebook before meeting with EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday. “Now even bigger trouble could be prevented and many thousands of lives could be saved,” he continued, “but to do this one would have to break out of the war psychosis.”
“I have no illusions that this will happen at the meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg today,” he concluded.
Szijjarto’s prediction played out on Monday. After an address by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, the bloc’s top diplomats voted to increase their joint weapons fund for Ukraine by an additional €3.5 billion ($3.85 billion).
Known as the ‘European Peace Facility’ (EPF), the fund is a €5.6 billion ($6.08 billion) purse that the bloc uses to finance foreign militaries and reimburse its own members who send arms to foreign conflicts. Before the conflict in Ukraine, the ‘Peace Facility’ had only been used to supply non-lethal equipment to Georgia, Mali, Moldova, Mozambique, and Ukraine, for a total of less than $125 million.
While the EPF’s ceiling will be increased, Szijjarto confirmed on Monday that Hungary will maintain its veto on the latest €500 million ($546 million) tranche of arms from the fund for another month. Budapest is currently blocking the transfer of EU weapons to Ukraine due to Kiev’s blacklisting of Hungarian companies doing business in Russia.
Szijjarto and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have both repeatedly called for a ceasefire and peace deal in Ukraine, while insisting that anti-Russia sanctions hurt Europe more than they hurt Russia.
In an interview with German tabloid Bild on Tuesday, Orban stated that the idea of a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield is “impossible” and that without an immediate ceasefire, Ukraine will “lose a huge amount of wealth and many lives, and unimaginable destruction will occur.”
“What really matters is what the Americans want to do,” Orban said, explaining that “Ukraine is no longer a sovereign country. They don’t have any money. They have no weapons. They can only fight because we in the West support them.”
Ukrainian victory is ‘impossible’ – Orban
RT | June 27, 2023
The idea that Western military aid would enable Ukraine to defeat Russia on the battlefield is wrong, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
“I stand on the grounds of reality. The reality is that the nature of cooperation between Ukraine and the West is a failure,” Orban said in an interview with German tabloid Bild on Tuesday.
Suggesting that the weapons, funding and intelligence being provided to Kiev by the US and its EU allies would allow Ukraine to win “is a misunderstanding of the situation. That’s impossible,” he argued.
“The problem is that the Ukrainians will run out of soldiers earlier than the Russians, and this will be the deciding factor eventually,” the prime minister said.
He rejected the interviewer’s contention that all of Ukraine would have been captured by Russia without NATO aid, describing this as “a hypothesis to which there’s no evidence.”
According to Orban, a ceasefire must be reached in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev as soon as possible or Ukraine will “lose a huge amount of wealth and many lives, and unimaginable destruction will happen. That’s why peace is the only solution at this moment.”
However, he said fighting would not stop until Kiev’s main backer, Washington, decides that there should be peace.
“What really matters is what Americans want to do. Ukraine is no longer a sovereign country. They don’t have any money. They have no weapons. They can only fight because we in the West support them,” the Hungarian leader explained.
He criticized EU sanctions imposed on Moscow over the conflict, saying they failed in both “bringing Russia to its knees” and in achieving peace in Ukraine. “Sanctions have not worked. I am surprised that we turned out to be incapable of formulating them appropriately,” he said.
Budapest has been one of the few EU capitals to maintain business relations with Moscow because it was “good for the Hungarian people,” Orban said. “I’m fighting for Hungary. I don’t care about [Russia’s President Vladimir] Putin. I don’t care about Russia. I take care of Hungary.”
He also commented on the failed revolt by the Wagner private military company, which occurred in Russia last week. “I don’t see much significance in this event” because it has no effect on “the most important thing,” which is the prospect of achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine, he stated.
“NEW EASTERN OUTLOOK” THANKS EU FOR SANCTIONS COMENDATION
New Eastern Outlook – June 23, 2023
In connection with the inclusion of New Eastern Outlook in the EU’s 11th sanctions package, we sincerely appreciate the free and effective promotion of our journal.
For many years, New Eastern Outlook has been an open forum for experts from different countries to express their views on a wide range of political, economic and social issues. We have honestly and consistently reported on the neocolonial policies of the EU and the United States in various regions of the world, and we consider the sanctions policy against us to be our highest commendation.
We note that since the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on us, the geography of our readers has expanded considerably and the number of our readers has grown steadily.
Thank you, European dictators! Have a safe journey into your troubled future!
We appreciate your sincere interest in our publications.
Polish-German dispute on the rise
By Uriel Araujo | June 23, 2023
German-Polish relations have been in a crisis, and the climate just keeps getting uglier, as exemplified by recent developments. For instance, Alice Weidel, spokesperson for Alternative for Germany (AfD), Germany’s third-strongest political force today, called in a tweet the area of former East Germany a “Central Germany” – thus implying that territories which today belong to Poland are German lands. This has sparked outrage: Poland’s former PM Beata Szydło, in response, said the AfD could in the future power over all of Germany, thus creating a “dangerous scenario for Europe”, because, she claims, it is a party “whose leaders openly negate the existing borders.” She added that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has recently demanded the abolition of the right of veto within the EU and asked: “Should Europe go in this direction? Towards a German-dominated federation?” This provocation from a German political figure takes place in the context of a rising Polish campaign against Berlin.
Meanwhile, two families of Polish WWII victims are suing German companies Bayer and Henschel for €4.3 million over the persecution of Polish businessmen during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Brzozowska-Pasieka, head of the War Compensation Foundation (Fundacja Odszkodowań Wojennych), the Polish organization which represents the claimants, claims that these lawsuits are groundbreaking because they have been filed against private companies instead of the German state. Further claims on behalf of other families are being prepared. Commenting on the lawsuits, deputy culture minister Jarisław Sellin, lent his support, saying that “German companies which used forced laborers and actually participated in crimes during World War Two were never legally held accountable for what they did.”
Considering that Polish officials back these initiatives, one must see them as also part of a larger trend and context. Last month I wrote on the legal campaign Warsaw has been launching against Berlin for wartime reparations. It is accompanied by harsh anti-German rhetoric, which often describes Germany’s prominent role within the European Union as a “Fourth Reich”.
Polish discourse on the issue is not without its dose of hypocrisy: while criticizing Ukraine for celebrating genocidal Nazis, as recently as 2019, with Polish President Andrzej Duda’s support, Warsaw opened ceremonies honoring the Holy Cross Mountains Brigade of the National Armed Forces – an underground force which, in the end of Second World War, collaborated with the Nazis in their anti-Soviet struggle. This was denounced by Poland’s chief rabbi as “dangerous revisionism”. Moreover, Warsaw so far has refused to publish state archives which would expose the degree of Polish collaboration with the Nazi persecution of Jews. It is no wonder the German ambassador to Poland, Thomas Bagger, warned the country not to “open Pandora’s box”.
Behind the weaponization of WWII resentments lie also geopolitical goals. As I wrote in September 2022, Washington has apparently been promoting Warsaw’s ambitions regarding regional hegemony as mainly a means to counter Berlin, Poland in turn also benefits from this situation. For a while, Warsaw has, for example, been urging Washington to support the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) as a Western “counterweight” to Chinese investments in “critical infrastructure” – as Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau and his Romanian counterpart, Bogdan Aurescu, both wrote in a June 2021 piece published in Francis Fukuyama’s “American Purpose”.
Already in 2020, during the “Defender Europe 2020” military exercises, it had become clear that Poland aspired to become the main stronghold of American military presence in Eastern Europe – and the current conflict in Ukraine, since February 2022, has opened a window of opportunity in that regard.
By doing so, Poland aspires to establish itself as a new EU geopolitical center, while challenging Germany’s leading role in the continent. From a German perspective, this is ironic in itself, considering the fact that Berlin’s contribution to the EU budget has been the highest of any other member state, and therefore one could argue that the more recent EU member states such as Poland itself have been able to implement sustainable development policies largely thanks to Berlin’s disproportionate financial injections into the European budget. Therefore, according to this reasoning, Warsaw basically strives to get the maximum financial and economic benefits from its EU membership, at the expense of its “allies”, Germany especially.
For decades, Poland has arguably been on the path of refusing to contribute with the building of an intra-European system of relations. Warsaw pursues exclusively its own interests and shows no interest in building pan-European cooperation within a framework of mutual respect. Germany and France today are potentially forces for strategy autonomy in the European bloc (at least up to a certain point); Poland, on the other hand, is perhaps the main promoter of European “alignmentism”.
Warsaw, for instance, actively opposed the (now gone) Russian-German gas pipeline Nord Stream 2. The pipeline’s still unexplained explosion, denounced by journalist Seymour Hersh as an act of sabotage carried out by Washinton, remains an open wound in Germany – and a German investigation into allegations that Poland could have been used as a hub for the sabotage only make German-Polish tensions even worse. The Polish National Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement that such suspicions are “not supported by the evidence.”
In any case, Polish-German and intra-Europeans tensions in all likelihood will keep building up, because the Polish government weaponizes anti-German feelings, as it also does with Russophobia, in its rewriting of history. These tensions mirror a short-circuit in the European narratives as well as the continent’s own ideological and geopolitical contradictions.
The ramifications of EU efforts to isolate China
Press TV – June 22, 2023
The European Commission is proposing a €10 billion fund to develop strategic technologies in order to become less dependent on high tech imports from China.
It also wants to block EU nations from dealing with China when it comes to so called sensitive technologies. The claim is that it’s to reduce risk.
It would appear that positive ties being advanced outside of the West’s control are putting Washington and Brussels on edge.
Trade between the EU and China is worth an incredible 2.3 billion euro per day. Some analysts believe the US is trying to scupper this vital economic link.
During recent European Parliament debates, lawmakers have heavily criticized the EU’s policy towards Russia and China.
The fallout from energy sanctions against Moscow is severely harming EU citizens and businesses.
At a time of dire economic pressures, the European Commission wants to prioritize the government in Kyiv.
Analysts say vested interests in the United States are benefiting most from deteriorating EU-Russia and EU-China relations.
EU leaders are due to hold a summit at the end of next week to discuss the Commission’s trade proposals.
It’s already clear there are major concerns in member states because current arrangements with China are so lucrative.
It is reported that some EU countries believe the European Commission is overstepping the mark.
EU Transfers to Ukraine Another $1.6Bln in Financial Assistance – Von der Leyen
Sputnik – 22.06.2023
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday the European Union have transferred to Ukraine another 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) in financial assistance to support its infrastructure.
“Today we disburse another €1.5 bn for Ukraine in macro-financial assistance. We help keep Ukraine’s services and infrastructure afloat in its brave fight for freedom,” von der Leyen tweeted.
She also promised to give Kiev more money, recalling the recently announced 50 billion euros of four-year financial reserves for Ukraine.
The head of the commission reiterated the EU was willing to provide Kiev with “long haul” support.
Earlier, the European Commission has reviewed the draft EU budget for the 2024-2027 period and asked member states to increase it by 66 billion euros ($72 billion), mostly to fund assistance for Ukraine.
Western countries have supplied Ukraine with military aid since the start of hostilities in February 2022. The support evolved from lighter artillery munitions and training in 2022 to heavier weapons, including tanks, later that year and in 2023.
