BERLIN/CHIȘINĂU (own report) - Germany and the EU can celebrate an initial victory in their tussle with Russia for influence over the de facto republic of Transnistria, which seceded from the Republic of Moldova in the early 1990s. The factor pushing Transnistria into the arms of Brussels is a desperate energy crisis affecting the region, triggered by the Ukrainian government’s decision to stop the flow of Russian gas westwards through Ukrainian pipelines. Kiev had honoured gas transit agreements until the end of 2024. Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova have been particularly dependent on cheap Russian gas for energy security and this is transited via Ukraine. Kiev also benefited from the arrangement, receiving some 800 million US dollars a year in transit fees. With Transnistria now extremely vulnerable, Germany and the EU under Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s leadership are able to strengthen ties with the de facto republic’s government in Tiraspol. The traditionally dominant Russian influence over the territory is receding due to the war in Ukraine, which has cut it off from Russia. As one Western expert recently argued, Transnistria’s “future lies in Europe”. From Berlin’s point of view, this would represent a success in its efforts to push back Moscow’s influence in south-eastern Europe. Read more

BERLIN (own report) - The number of politically motivated attacks on refugee centres in Germany reached a new high last year. And the recorded number of attacks on refugees themselves remains stubbornly high. The alarming statistics show that offences committed with an extreme right-wing motivation averaged around one hundred every day in the first eleven months of 2024. This all follows a rapidly rising trend already visible over several years and includes a leap in anti-Muslim offences ranging from insults to assault and damage to property. Racists and far-right elements are encouraged by what happened last week in the German Bundestag. A motion that, only a few years ago, would have only met with the approval of neo-Nazi parties like the NPD was carried by a majority of parliamentarians. This outcome was only made possible by, for the first time, depending on the votes of the hard-right AfD. Since that breakthrough, the AfD has continued to climb in the opinion polls and will now hope for over 20 per cent in the upcoming federal election. Read more

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (own report) – Now in power, the Trump team continues to support the AfD and other far-right parties across Europe. And the new administration in Washington is openly threatening to annex territory belonging to Denmark, an EU member state. While tech oligarch Elon Musk, a close backer of US President Donald Trump, was cheering on the AfD’s election campaign at the party’s kick-off event on Saturday, news spread that Trump has already warned Copenhagen of concrete coercive measures if it does not voluntarily cede Greenland to the United States. Trump has also floated the idea of mass deportations to “clean out” the Gaza Strip. The territory would then be open to integration into a “Greater Israel”. Resistance by Colombia to receiving mass deportations of Latin American refugees fleeing poverty was quelled by Trump, at least temporarily, after he threatened to ruin the Colombian economy by imposing coercive measures. However, an emergency Latin American summit has been convened for Thursday to discuss possible countermeasures. Germany, economically now highly dependent on the US export market, is so far signalling compliance. Washington’s policy of brute force against friend and foe alike is driven by the desire to maintain its dwindling global dominance. Read more

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (own report) - In his video address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, newly incumbent US President Donald Trump reiterated his threat to impose painful tariffs on imports into the United States. Indeed, he now declares that businesses from other countries should invest in the US. Anyone who refuses to do so but wants to sell products manufactured outside the US will, he declares, have to face high tariffs. While Canada, for example, is discussing serous retaliation, including an oil embargo, German politicians and business representatives along with the EU leaders have been arguing for concessions to Washington. The reason for this stance is that German industry is highly dependent on doing business with the US. The major alternative would be to ramp up trade relations with China. But this path has been closed by the EU on political grounds. Several economic think-tanks have been predicting serious damage to German industry if the tariffs are indeed imposed and warning that a tariff scenario should be avoided at all cost. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is particularly keen to appease Trump. She wants to avoid confrontation by welcoming even greater imports of US liquefied natural gas. This coincides with the new US administration’s goal to achieve a massive hike in LNG output as part of a strategy aimed, in the words of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at “energy dominance”. Read more

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (own report) - The new US administration has offered the AfD and other extreme right-wing parties from around Europe a stage for their further normalisation and for transatlantic networking. This is the significance of their invitation to President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Of the many heads of state and government in the European Union, only the most right-wing, Giorgia Meloni, was invited to the major event, which attracted worldwide attention. Trump’s team also welcomed representatives from the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the Spanish Vox party, the French Reconquête! party and, from outside the EU, the British Reform UK party. The AfD was also represented in the US capital with two of its senior functionaries. Their presence at Trump’s inauguration will effectively counteract attempts by the political establishment to ostracise them. Indeed, they will also be integrated to some extent into the network of transatlantic relations. We can see the emergence of the vague outlines of a transatlantic hard right. The Trump administration, now the driving force behind this trend, is backed by tech oligarchs such as Elon Musk. These supporters are among the richest people in the world and some of them openly espouse anti-democratic ideologies. Read more

BERLIN (own report) - The Bundeswehr has announced the formation of a Homeland Security Division, which is to become an integral part of the German Army. An armed forces spokesperson has said that this new “Heimatschutzdivision“ would combine all the existing homeland security companies and regiments, generally made up of reservists and organised regionally under commands based in Germany’s individual states. The new division will be put on an equal footing with the three combat divisions which are readying for frontline deployment, presumably to the east, in the event of war. The Homeland Security Division is tasked with guarding key military infrastructure in Germany and protecting militarily relevant infrastructure, including railways, bridges and digital infrastructure. The overall number of troops currently available for homeland security operations comes to around 6,000, which is not nearly enough for its remit, according to military planners. What is needed is “at least a high five-digit number”. In principle, the required division size could be made up largely of reservists, as is the current situation in the vast majority of existing homeland security units. And, claim military leaders, it will not be difficult to train civilians as reservists. To this end, military planners have long been looking at the reintroduction of compulsory military service. In the event of war, of course, a mass mobilisation of civilians to support homeland security forces is firmly planned. Read more

KIEV/BERLIN (own report) - Ten days before the inauguration of future US President Donald Trump, the debate about scenarios for ending the war in Ukraine is hotting up. The Biden administration and the majority of European governments have been seeking to drag the war out, not least by supplying ever new weapons and funding Kiev. Trump, who once declared his intention to end the war straight away is now talking about needing up to six months. Meanwhile, popular support for the war is clearly on the decline, both in Ukraine itself and in Western Europe. Surveys show that there are majorities in a number of countries in favour of moving quickly to negotiations. With regard to the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine, politicians are increasingly demanding the complete expropriation of Russian central bank assets parked in Europe. Following the West’s anti-Bejing narrative, German politicians are also categorically against accepting Chinese assistance in rebuilding the ravaged economy. Beijing should “definitely not play any role in the reconstruction of Ukraine,” demands Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), Chairwoman of the Defence Committee in the European Parliament. Meanwhile, some observers expect to see elements in an exhausted post-war Ukraine develop a “hatred” towards the West as they realise NATO countries have not kept their promises to Kiev. Read more

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (own report) - US high-tech oligarch Elon Musk is topping his interventions in support of the AfD election campaign with a live chat with AfD spokesperson Alice Weidel this Thursday. The subject of the discussion, which Musk and the AfD are unanimously promoting, is above all “the AfD’s ideas for getting Germany fit for the future”, a Weidel spokesperson is quoted as saying. Musk has previously openly backed the party, just as he has spoken in support of ultra-right forces in other European countries, including the UK and Italy. The European far right had already enjoyed support from Donald Trump’s circle during Trump’s first presidency. The then US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, for instance, abandoning all diplomatic reserve, declared in June 2018 that he “absolutely wants to strengthen other conservatives across Europe”. And, again in 2018, Trump’s former ‘chief strategist’ Steve Bannon tried to coordinate larger parties of the far right across Europe and help them achieve greater electoral success. Bannon may have failed back then, but since 2022, the US Republican’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has become systematically rooted in Europe, linking European far-right forces to the US right via an offshoot based in Hungary. Read more

BERLIN (own report) - The German economy has started the new year in a desolate state. The outlook for the near future is not good in view of further setbacks expected from the escalating disputes with the United States and China. Analysing the data, experts estimate that German economic output in 2024 shrank for the second year in a row and expect the downward trend to continue in 2025. This will be a first in the economic history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Investment has seen record declines. And industrial production is estimated to have shrunk by three per cent last year. The only area of growth in the economy is insolvencies. Three major projects worth billions were supposed to secure Germany’s position as a world leader in key future technologies – semiconductors and state-of-the-art batteries, including an Intel chip factory – but have failed. What is more, if US president-elect Donald Trump does impose crippling additional tariffs on imports from Germany after taking office on 20 January, Germany’s export industries will face severe setbacks in their most important market. Despite the dire outlook, Germany and the European Union are still expanding a painful economic war against China. Read more

DAMASCUS/BERLIN (own report) - Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has promised Syria’s new rulers a “new beginning” in bilateral relations. A widening of cooperation is, she says, possible if the new government, installed by the jihadist organisation Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), conducts “a political dialogue involving all ethnic and religious groups” and guarantees women’s rights. Baerbock put forward these conditions on Friday during her first visit to the Syrian capital. The HTS-led government is busy concentrating power in its hands across the country and has begun to set a new political and ideological course. In the education field, for example, non-Islamic content is to be removed from school textbooks and religious expressions such as ‘the damned’ are to be replaced specifically by ‘Jews and Christians’. At the same time, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is working closely with old allies Turkey and the Arab Gulf states, hoping now to attract substantial direct investment. The new leaders in Damascus are not prepared to comply with the demands coming from Berlin and the EU that they should close down the Russian military bases immediately. Good relations “with the second most powerful country in the world”, says al-Sharaa, align with Syria’s “strategic interests”. Read more