Rien van Keulen - EU citizen in France #FBPE #NAFO

Let’s talk solutions. 👏 We don’t need or want more closed-door hearings, internal reviews, or institutions protecting themselves behind redactions and secrecy. We need an independent Epstein Truth Commission. 🧵

Our long-range capabilities are significantly changing the situation – and, more broadly, the world’s perception of Russia’s war. Many partners are now signaling that they see what is happening and how everything has changed – both in attitudes toward this war and in the reachability of Russian targets on Russian territory. The war is quite predictably returning to its “native harbor,” and this is a clear signal that one should not pick a fight with Ukraine or wage an unjust war of conquest against another people.

A Russian tank is 40 kilometres from the front line. The crew thinks they’re safe. The crew is wrong. A Ukrainian fixed-wing reconnaissance drone is already overhead. The tank’s coordinates are already in Delta — Ukraine’s combat coordination system. The strike drones are already queuing up. The tank has minutes to live, and the soldiers riding past in the truck behind it don’t know they’re about to be a bonus. Meet “Domakha” — the reconnaissance wing crew of Ukraine’s 42nd Separate Mechanised Brigade. ArmyInform spent a day with them. This is what modern warfare actually looks like in 2026. 🧵👇

The hypocrisy is absolutely volcanic. For years, Orbán’s propaganda machine screamed about “foreign interference”, “sovereignty”, “rolling dollars”, and evil foreign money corrupting Hungarian politics. Meanwhile, the same regime was quietly using Hungarian taxpayer money to build its own foreign influence network through the state-funded Danube Institute, tied to the Batthyány Lajos Foundation. According to Átlátszó, the Danube Institute became one of the regime’s main vehicles for cultivating foreign right-wing populists, MAGA-world conservatives, Brexit nostalgics, and sympathetic Western intellectuals. And this was not some harmless academic tea party. The contracts reportedly required media appearances, articles, conferences, networking, and the promotion of Orbán’s Hungary abroad. In plain English: Hungarian public money was used to manufacture foreign validation for Orbánism. The spending exploded. Átlátszó says Danube Institute research contracts rose from 76.76 million forints in 2022, to 179 million in 2023, to 284.6 million in 2024. Then in 2025, just before the election, DI-linked partners signed contracts worth more than 389 million forints. So while Hungarian hospitals were rotting, schools were begging, and ordinary people were counting every forint, the regime was shovelling public money into foreign cheerleaders. Lord David Frost reportedly received more than €43,000 in total, averaging over €3,600 per month. His tasks included appearing regularly, or at least twice a month, in British media. David L. Dusenbury was identified as receiving €4,666 per month for three years, totalling €168,000. His duties reportedly included writing books, teaching, and representing the institute at events. Timothy Burns reportedly received $12,500 for 36 days of work, plus a return transatlantic flight. Melissa Ford Maldonado was connected to an $8,400 contract for a 10-page paper on Hungarian migration policy and lessons for Texas. Philip Pilkington was linked to a €5,000-per-month contract involving British media networking and themes connected to Ireland, Northern Ireland, and alleged risks of liberal political shifts. Carlos Roa reportedly signed contracts worth $160,000 over 16 months. Rod Dreher was also part of this ecosystem, with Átlátszó previously reporting a Danube Institute contract worth $8,750 per month, or $105,000 a year. Jonathan Price reportedly received €5,000 per month for 12 months, totalling €60,000, while objecting to disclosure on privacy grounds. And then there was the article-production model: Átlátszó reported a $4,500-per-month contract requiring at least two articles per month for Western outlets such as American Conservative, National Review, Newsweek, The Federalist, The Spectator, and UnHerd. Átlátszó said the contract was most likely signed by Michael O’Shea. So let’s say it clearly. This was not “sovereignty protection”. This was Orbán’s taxpayer-funded foreign influence operation. A public-money laundromat for ideological networking. A state-financed fan club for foreign right-wing pundits, academics, Trump-world operators, Brexit nostalgics, culture-war influencers, and professional Hungary-praisers. They accused everyone else of foreign interference while literally paying foreigners to interfere on their behalf. They cried about NGOs while funding their own GONGOs. They screamed about the “dollar left” while running a forint-funded international propaganda export business. And the dirtiest part? Much of this was happening while Hungarian public services were collapsing. Hospitals without toilet paper. Schools without teachers. Families crushed by inflation. Villages abandoned. Public transport rotting. But there was always money for some Western “conservative intellectual” to write a love letter to Orbán or explain why Hungary is the glorious model of the future. NER using Hungarian taxpayers as an ATM for its international ego project.

The consensus at the top of the Labour Party appears to be that Keir Starmer won’t announce a timetable for his departure until Andy Burnham fights the Makerfield by-election. But that makes very little sense to me. Because, as I said on ITV’s News at Ten, the probability he can survive as PM, even if Burnham were to lose the by-election is low. This is what his cabinet colleagues and trade union leaders have made clear to him (and to me). So the timing and manner of his exit are now at the mercy of events, which makes him a lame duck prime minister - whose utterances about policy will barely be heard above the racket of speculation about how and when he will go. This would be humiliating for any PM, but perhaps doubly so for Starmer given that his genuine success in taking Labour to a landslide victory after the nadir of the 2019 election would risk being forgotten and ignored if his last weeks in office are spectacularly chaotic. The limitations on his power are already conspicuous. As his closest colleagues tell me, he was only powerful enough to do the most limited and unambitious of reshuffles to fill the vacancy at health created by Wes Streeting’s resignation - although the disaster of last week’s elections would have been the trigger for a more comprehensive reshaping of the Cabinet if the PM were stronger. Starmer lacks the authority to force any of his ministers to move or leave the government. It’s telling that the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood kept her job even after her allies briefed she told the PM his time is up, and that Streeting dictated the timing of his own resignation, even though his enforcers were actively briefing against the PM. In the Cabinet, the prime minister is supposed to be the first among equals. In Starmer’s case, scrap “the first” and maybe insert “second”. Also, resignations and sackings have over months left his Downing Street team depleted. As even his friends tell me, few want to take a career risk by working for him, partly because of the open secret that he won’t be in post much longer (and partly because the Whitehall zeitgeist is that he is the worst kind of delegator, one who insists on delegating but then shows little loyalty or understanding when things go wrong). So what’s the alternative to him being in office but not in power, as it were? Perhaps he should emulate Tony Blair, despite many in his party having repudiated the Blair years. In September 2006, Blair announced he would resign within a year and he stood down the following June. This longer timetable meant Blair wasn’t tainted by the chaos of unexpected immediate elections. And because the election schedule was dictated by him rather than by factors beyond his control, he looked commensurately stronger. He appeared to be the master of events, not the victim. The “will he? won’t he?” about Starmer last week was exhausting just to narrate, as I had to do. Goodness knows how bad it was for the main protagonist, Starmer. To be clear, any PM that says he’s off is weakened by that very pledge. But Starmer might actually have even less authority in today’s limbo, where everyone but he acknowledges the reality that he is a short-dated stock.