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Escalating European Crisis | Sep. 25th/Oct 11th | Reports

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11 NATO member aerial refueling aircraft are currently actively circling across Europe:
1 U.S. tanker operating South of Gotland,
2 U.S. tankers operating in Northern Poland,
2 U.S. tankers operating North East of the UK,
1 NATO tanker operating in Lithuania,
1 NATO tanker operating in Northern Germany,
1 NATO tanker operating South East of Spain,
1 NATO tanker operating in the Black Sea region,
1 Italian tanker operating in Italy,
1 French tanker operating South of France
 
Sweden is offering an anti-drone system to Denmark, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson tells TV4.

– We have seen extensive drone activity in various countries in recent days. Very unwelcome drones. And on Wednesday next week, about 40 heads of government will gather at an EU summit in Copenhagen. So we have offered Denmark to help them with Swedish military anti-drone capabilities to ensure that the meetings can be held, says Kristersson.

The announcement comes after the recent drone alarm at airports in Denmark.
 
The Russian government proposed to increase the VAT rate from 20% to 22% in its 2026 budget plan, while also expanding the list of businesses on which VAT is levied. This is reportedly done to "finance defense and security", i.e. to further fund Putin's war in Ukraine (despite the latter's promise - voiced in 2024 - that the tax rate would remain unchanged "at least until 2030").

Economist Dmitry Polevoy estimates that the effect of this tax hike could be 0.6-0.7% and 0.1-0.2% on inflation in the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, respectively. The annual inflation rate in Russia is currently estimated at around 8% vs. the Russian Central Bank's goal of 4%. Russia's 2025 GDP growth is close to 0%, but if the defense sector is excluded, Russia is already technically in a recession (as outright admitted by Nabiullina on Solovyov's several days ago).

Russian aggression in Ukraine currently consumes a third of all budget expenditures, and the new tax hike is an indirect signal that no letup in military operations is expected. Peskov acknowledged this today using unusually frank language: "What's happening around us is a war. Now is the war's most acute phase. (...) We need to win it for the sake of our children, our grandchildren, our future."

Notably, the current 2026 budget proposal reassigns 1 billion rubles from "defense" to "internal security", possibly indicating that the Kremlin anticipates civil unrest.

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Zelensky announces that Ukraine's airspace has been violated by reconnaissance drones likely of Hungarian origin, whose mission might have been to assess the industrial potential in Ukrainian regions close to the Hungarian border.

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