Good morning. I’m Mared Gwyn. In this Friday edition: Ursula von der Leyen is set to become a headline act at Hungary’s 1956 revolution commemoration, and Europeans grapple with Trump’s “terrifying” Ukraine approach.
Brussels-Budapest reset: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa will join a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Hungary’s 1956 anti-Soviet uprising in Budapest today, with von der Leyen expected to deliver a speech in parliament alongside Prime Minister Péter Magyar. It’s arguably one of the clearest signals yet of the new chapter in EU-Hungary relations, our Hungarian correspondent Sándor Zsiros writes this morning.
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Major turning point: The thaw in relations between Brussels and Budapest comes after years of acrimony under Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s predecessor, Viktor Orbán – with von der Leyen’s speech likely to capture a moment of change, Sándor reports.
In the past, von der Leyen was portrayed on billboards in Hungary as a public enemy. She is set to address the same parliament where just a few months ago Orbán lashed out at the EU.
The commemoration is the first big international event for Magyar since he took office in May.
He had extended an invitation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as first reported by Euronews, but the Ukrainian leader is unlikely to attend. Diplomatic ties between Ukraine and Hungary have improved dramatically since Magyar’s election in April. Yet, Budapest surprised EU diplomats earlier this week by blocking the next steps in Ukraine’s EU accession talks, despite Kyiv meeting its previous demands.
French President Emmanuel Macron was also set to take part, but cancelled the trip in the wake of riots in France. Moldovan President Maia Sandu and Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze are both expected to attend.
Ukraine latest: Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has offered another remarkable explanation of Russia's war against Ukraine: Moscow doesn't want to fight its neighbour. It is Ukraine, apparently, that insists on fighting Russia.
The Russian president also declared that Russians and Ukrainians are effectively "one people" – an argument Moscow has repeatedly invoked to justify its invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory – and expressed confidence that the two countries could reach an agreement, provided it served Russia's imperialist interests, my colleague Sasha Vakulina writes.
And what if Ukraine doesn't agree?: "Well, then it will be otherwise," Putin said, promising that Russia would achieve all the "objectives" of its all-out war against Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Zelenskyy is awaiting a briefing from US envoy Steve Witkoff on Friday, followed by further consultations between Ukrainian, American and European teams. As diplomacy hangs in the balance, Moscow continues to pound Ukraine.
Overnight on Thursday, Russia launched ballistic missiles carrying cluster warheads at Kyiv, targeting the historic city centre and damaging monastery buildings, homes, shops and cafés.
Maximum alarm: Meanwhile, Europe continues to grapple with Donald Trump’s embrace of Vladimir Putin, which has revived long-gestating fears that the two presidents will secretly thrash out a deal that ends in Ukraine’s capitulation.
Moscow’s pitch for a summit between Trump, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping has further fuelled the impression that Europe’s security architecture is hanging by a thread, my colleague Jorge Liboreiro reports this morning.
“It’s very disturbing. It’s terrifying,” a senior official said. “We’re simply not built to operate in this kind of ruthless transactional environment.”
Jorge Liboreiro, Sasha Vakulina and Shona Murray have this must-read story depicting a continent on edge.
Chin up: Despite the alarming circumstances, European officials insist that engagement with the Trump administration must continue to ensure the European point of view is reflected in the peace process. For Ukraine, European presence is fundamental to counter Washington’s transactional approach.
Russia has indicated it’s prepared to resume trilateral talks at the technical level with the US and Ukraine in mid-November. Brussels hopes the format can expand into multilateral talks to include European representatives as well, although it’s far from guaranteed that Moscow would agree.
PHP security flaw: Why websites across Europe went dark and what it means for you
AI models have uncovered what OpenAI calls "one of the most impactful" security bugs in recent memory, hidden in PHP, a programming language that quietly powers most of the internet. It’s sent organisations worldwide scrambling to shut down websites before hackers can exploit them.
The bugs sat undetected in PHP’s code for more than a decade. It took cutting-edge AI models from OpenAI and Google to turn a long-suspected weakness into a working attack — and now the race is on to close the door.
The Dutch government pulled its DigiD digital identity system, the Overheid.nl government portal and the website of the lower house of parliament, with the Port of Rotterdam, hospitals and the country’s five largest political parties following suit.
Even the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre took its own site down.
Finland’s state IT provider Valtori switched off government web services wholesale “as a precautionary measure,” France’s Interior Ministry put local administration sites into maintenance mode and Germany’s federal IT service ITZBund took down several portals.
CERT-EU, the cybersecurity service for the EU institutions, went further than most, telling any organisation unable to patch immediately to take its websites offline rather than risk being hacked.
The European Commission, ENISA, CERT-EU, Europol and the EU’s network of national cyber response teams also issued a joint statement urging organisations to act immediately, prioritising systems exposed to the internet.
Una Hajdari has more.
More from our newsrooms
EU Parliament awards Sakharov Prize to ICC in rebuke of US sanctions. The European Parliament has awarded the Sakharov Prize to the International Criminal Court in a show of support after the US imposed sanctions on the court. The abstention of the far-right Patriots for Europe group was decisive in breaking the deadlock over the final choice. Vincenzo Genovese has the details.
Italy and Spain to end border checks, easing tensions after Ceuta migrant row. Rome and Madrid have agreed to end temporary border checks, in a sign of de-escalation after weeks of tension over the Ceuta migrant crisis. The decision follows a phone call between the countries’ interior ministers, after prime ministers Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sánchez signalled their intention to end the checks in Brussels last week. Fortunato Pinto has the story.
Gulf nations brace for possible return to all-out war between US and Iran. The volatility around the Israeli and US midterm elections is fueling fears of renewed US-Israeli strikes on Iran in a short and intensive military campaign to push Tehran into concessions, with Iran vowing a devastating response against the Gulf nations. Peter Barabas and the Euronews Doha bureau have more.
We’re also keeping an eye on
- EU trade ministers gather for informal talks in Dublin, Ireland
- Hungary holds a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa to attend.
That’s it for today. Jorge Liboreiro, Sándor Zsiros, Sasha Vakulina and Vincenzo Genovese contributed to this newsletter.