Toby Vogel 🇪🇺

I'm currently in Nicosia and the mood is calm; life goes on. But this is very likely to deepen Cypriots‘ unhappiness with the UK sovereign territories at Dhekelia and Akrotiri, a leftover from colonial times.

👋🏻

Wanna try again?

www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02...

What a chart!

Siri, how many Kremlin talking points fit into a single op-ed?

responsiblestatecraft.org/hungary-eu-u...

Probably an interesting story behind rue de la Roche Fatale in WSL as well...

That's because he finally learned how to say Azerbaijan but he can only hold one thought in his brain at a time

Orbán is a traitor and should be excluded from EU decisionmaking. This stuff is too important to be left to a third-rate would-be authoritarian.

Been off grid for a bit

Inside a Detention Site at the Heart of Europe’s Harsh New Approach to Immigration

On the hellish detention and deportation system built by EU countries. With quotes from the current and the former German chancellors expressing their commitment to the inhumane cruelty of this apparatus, described here in forensic detail.

A tale of two billionaires. Jeff Bezos was at fashion week in Europe while he pulled a let-them-eat-cake firing of 30% of Washington Post journalists. Jimmy Lai stood by his newsroom and he will now likely die in a Hong Kong prison. Tell everyone you know about Jimmy Lai.

I don't think the EU could have done anything in this *specific* instance but it's entirely possible that the EU-funded Libyan "coastguard" could have

But the bigger point is about the EU's policy of externalizing migration control and doubling down on "deterrence" and not offering safe pathways

Two Babies Among 53 Dead or Missing After Migrant Boat Capsizes Off Libya Geneva/Tripoli, 9 February 2026 – Fifty-three migrants, including two babies, are dead or missing after a rubber boat carrying 55 people capsized off the coast of Libya, the International Organization...

The EU is just fine with this, am I right?

I'll take that over Mathias Döpfner's Politico any day

All those who religiously read Playbook every morning while quietly cursing about the numerous mistakes and weird takes it serves up daily – could I interest you in The Morning Post Europe? Similar idea but far more substance. In French, English, and Italian.

I know, right?

Sure but that's 22 words instead of my 12 😀

Europe’s ‘Project Ukraine 2027’ Presented by European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion By NICHOLAS VINOCUR PRESENTED BY Send tips here | Contact us on X @gerardofortuna @NicholasVinocu…

...in the national interest to join (TR).

If the quote accurately reflects what "Brussels insiders" are telling Politico they might want to look for better sources.

www.politico.eu/newsletter/b...

Today's @politico.eu Playbook is full of nonsense about EU enlargement such as the quote below. The pace of North Macedonia's and Turkey's accession has nothing to do with the allegedly "labyrinthine process" but with being blocked by EU member states (MK) and deciding it is no longer...

R.I.P., Washington Post books section. Required – and instructive – reading for decades, killed off by a tech bro billionaire who has dozens of millions to bribe the President but no money to keep one of the best newspapers in the world going.

Unsurprisingly, Politico completely missed the story: the story is Lajčák, not Šefčović.

...was essentially a Kremlin PsyOps, clearly the Slovak angle deserves a closer look.

(Here is Lajčák boasting about his honorary degree from MGIMO in 2018.)

english.mgimo.ru/news/lajcak

News digest: ‘I feel like an idiot,’ Lajčák tells radio after Epstein file release A Foreigners’ Police change, a Slovak death in Switzerland and a new trail to Kriváň.

I have no idea what all this amounts to, and I'm not an investigative journalist. (For good English-language coverage of Lajčák's emerging links to Epstein, check out the Slovak Spectator.) But given recent accusations that the entire Epstein saga...

spectator.sme.sk/politics-and...

He also uses the opportunity – an interview with Slovak Radio – to peddle Kremlin talking points, for example about the self-harm the EU is allegedly inflicting with its sanctions against Russia.

www.sme.sk/domov/c/lajc...

Picture showing Slovak Prime Minister Lajčák and Jeffrey Epstein together in the Slovak embassy in Vienna

On January 31, Lajčák was made to resign as diplomatic adviser to Slovak prime minister Fico over the Epstein revelations. But even in his only public comments so far he's still playing dumb about Epstein. Remember, they met in 2017, years after Epstein's conviction.

...together at MGIMO in Moscow before both returning to Slovakia, joining the Communist Party and the foreign service. (Šefčović's official Commission CV omits his time in Moscow, 1985-90.)

Lajčák was almost immediately posted back to Moscow.

But today, Šefčović is clearly not amused by Lajčák's indiscretion. He told reporters through a spokesperson "If Miroslav Lajčák mentioned my name, it was for his own purposes with which I had nothing to do."

Now a bit of context. Šefčović and Lajčák go way back; in the late 1980s they studied...

Screenshot from the Epstein files in which Lajčák tells Epstein that Šefčovic is running for president

Lajčák suggests to Epstein he'd like to replace Šefčović in the college of commissioners, jokingly claiming that this is why he supports his candidacy for president. Given what a careerist Lajčák is, this might even be true.

Lajčák, Slovakia's foreign minister at the time, tells Epstein about Šefčović when the latter – then as now a European commissioner – announces he's running for president of Slovakia, in early 2019. (He lost, and Epstein went to prison.)

www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

EU trade chief Šefčovič rejects Epstein involvement “I did not authorize, request or agree to anyone mentioning my name to Jeffrey Epstein,” Maroš Šefčovič says via European Commission spokesperson.

There is only one reference to Maroš Šefčović in the published Epstein files, and it occurs in the context of Miroslav Lajčák plotting his own future. (Lajčák has a history of leaving posts early to make a step up.) This article curiously omits the content of Lajčák's message to Epstein.