Category: france24.com

Estonia’s Narva has become a tense microcosm of the NATO-Russia standoff. Since 2022, Estonia has fortified the border with anti-tank obstacles and moved to sever ties with Moscow. In this 95% Russian-speaking town, the government has mandated Estonian in schools and recently banned Russian citizens from local voting. Amid Russian provocations like removing border buoys, […]

Shared economic and security interests still bind Europe and the United States, even as trust has eroded, insults have flown and rhetoric has hardened in the transatlantic relationship, Brando Benifei, the chair of the delegation for relations with the United States at the European Parliament, tells FRANCE 24 in Talking Europe.

Ukraine said on Thursday that Starlink internet terminals used by Russian forces on the battlefield have been deactivated, disrupting Moscow’s military operations in several areas. The move comes after discussions between Ukrainian officials and Elon Musk. Russia had relied on thousands of Starlink units for mobile, hard-to-disrupt communications, particularly for drone operations, and has few […]

Europe has experienced numerous crises since Donald Trump returned to the White House: on trade and tariffs; on Ukraine; and perhaps the most surreal one – on Greenland. The latter was unprecedented: NATO’s leading member, the US, openly expressing its territorial designs on another NATO member, Denmark. With each emergency, the same calls have been heard for Europe to wake up and […]

Long confined to tourist clichés, Swiss yodelling is moving on from being a folkloric curiosity. This ancient Alpine vocal technique, which alternates between “chest voice” and “head voice”, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list in December 2025. Today, yodelling is sung in a multitude of contexts and crosses the boundaries of folk music […]

The 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics open tomorrow following a frantic race to complete venues like the Cortina sliding centre and Milan ice hockey arena just in time. While the total cost has climbed to $6.7 billion—exceeding original estimates—it remains significantly lower than the record-breaking budgets of Sochi and Beijing. Despite these financial pressures, organizers view […]

Russian military intelligence official Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev is in hospital after being shot multiple times in Moscow on Friday. The shooting follows a slew of apparent assassination attempts on Russian military figures in the wake of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – some of which Kyiv has claimed responsibility for.

Calls grew on Thursday for Portugal’s presidential run‑off on 8 February to be postponed after Storm Leonardo triggered deadly floods, evacuations and severe disruption in parts of the country, but electoral authorities insisted the second‑round vote will go ahead as scheduled despite concerns about safety and access for some voters.

Starlink internet terminals used by Russian troops in Ukraine have been deactivated, Kyiv said on Thursday, dealing what one official said was a big battlefield setback for Moscow that had disrupted assault operations. Russian forces ​have made unauthorised use of thousands of satellite-based Starlink internet connections for secure communications after the invasion of Ukraine in […]

The U.S. and Russia agreed Thursday to reestablish high-level military dialogue for the first time in more than four years in another sign of warming relations between the two countries since President Donald Trump returned to office and sought to end the war in Ukraine. High-level military communication was suspended in late 2021 ahead of […]