It didn’t go down well. Finally, weeks ahead of the big reset summit, Starmer has started to publicly relent: ditching a canned response that he had “no plans” for the scheme. EU officials, meanwhile, said that U.K. negotiators were starting to show openness to the idea.

But London has presented a compromise option: to keep immigration statistics down, the number of youngsters who can take part in the scheme will be capped, and their stays will be shortened to just one year to keep them from sticking around in the figures. British negotiators are also resisting EU pressure to restore European students’ access to lower home tuition fees at universities, a key ask of some capitals.

“It seems like there’s a bit of a deadlock, especially when it comes to tuition fees and quotas,” the EU official quoted above said, adding that “discussions with the U.K. are planned all of next week.”

At their check-in last week member country capitals urged the European Commission’s negotiators to stick to their guns. “Most of them really pushed on youth mobility,” the official said. Brussels has apparently attempted to compromise by dropping its earlier plans for four-year stays — it is now arguing for two years, or one initial year extendable to two. London is not yet buying it.

Go fish

Then there is the question of fishing. When Boris Johnson signed the maritime chapter of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement in 2021, EU fishers breathed a sigh of relief. In exchange for a Brexit trade agreement, the then-British prime minister had given away generous access to U.K. waters until June 2026.

With that access now due to expire and Britain back at the negotiating table, member countries like France want assurances it will continue for the foreseeable future. They’ve privately hinted they are prepared to send Starmer home empty-handed if they don’t get it.

Yet, last week, Francis urged young Russians, gathered for an All-Russian Meeting of Catholic Youth in St. Petersburg, not to give up their “legacy” as heirs of a “great, enlightened Russian empire.” And in a clip of his address that was posted online, he invoked Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, both of whom Russian President Vladimir Putin has cited to justify the invasion of Ukraine and whip up martial passion.

So, while Henry VIII was shunned six years ago, Peter the Great, whose reign was decisive in setting Russia on the path of imperialism and European conquest, is apparently deserving of respect.

Is this a case of a tin-eared Pope, or is there something more?

One could almost hear the chortles in the Kremlin, as Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, described the remarks as very gratifying. “The pontiff knows Russian history and this is very good,” he said, adding that Francis was “in unison” with the Russian government’s efforts to teach history as written by Putin.

Unsurprisingly, the Pope’s comments drew condemnation from Ukraine, including from Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who said Francis’ words had caused “great pain and apprehension.” Criticizing the Pope for praising “the worst example of extreme Russian imperialism and nationalism,” the Ukrainian prelate said, “We fear that these words will be understood by some as an encouragement of this nationalism and imperialism, which is the real cause of the war in Ukraine.”

Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, similarly stated it was “very unfortunate that Russian grand-state ideas, which, in fact, are the cause of Russia’s chronic aggression, knowingly or unknowingly, come from the Pope’s mouth, whose mission, in our understanding, is precisely to open the eyes of Russian youth to the disastrous course of the current Russian leadership.”

“I know it sounds devastating, especially to people of the younger generation, but we have to mentally get used to the arrival of a new era,” he said. “The pre-war era. I don’t exaggerate. This is becoming more and more apparent every day.”

Amid Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which started in February 2022, Western allies and top military officials have become increasingly worried about a potential spillover of violence — despite Russian President Vladimir Putin repeatedly denying any intentions to attack NATO.

Last week, a Russian missile entered Polish airspace, prompting Warsaw to activate F-16 fighter jets, in what Tusk called a “troubling incident.”

But while tumult is on the horizon, Tusk warned that Europe is not ready to face the threat.

“We must be ready. Europe still has a long way to go,” he said. The first step is for countries to meet NATO’s target of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense, he added.

“Today we have to spend as much as we can to buy equipment and ammunition for Ukraine, because we are living in the most critical moment since the end of the Second World War,” he said. “The next two years will decide everything. If we cannot support Ukraine with enough equipment and ammunition, if Ukraine loses, no one in Europe will be able to feel safe.”

According to Ukraine’s Ombudsman for Human Rights Lyudmyla Denisova, a group of 25 women and girls were kept in a basement by Russians for nearly a month. Now nine of them are pregnant.

“Russian soldiers told them they would rape them to the point where they wouldn’t want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children,” Denisova said.

Ukrainians say the slayings and rapes are integral to a campaign of genocide, part of the effort to disappear a nation Putin doesn’t think really exists — or should exist. Last month, U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the killings of non-combatants as part of a deliberate campaign of terror, not just random acts of rogue units and ill-disciplined soldiers.

However, neither Blinken nor Ukrainians have offered hard evidence proving that this was part of a deliberate campaign of terror. And in testimonies from the interrogations of Russian prisoners of war released by Ukrainians, soldiers do not say they were instructed to shoot civilians or rape and torture them.

Some locals from Bucha that I spoke to noted that the first wave of Russian soldiers to occupy their once-peaceful town had been brutal, but the second wave was different.

Veronika, who managed to flee the town after living under Russian occupation for three days, told me the initial occupiers seemed more professional, more disciplined, but the soldiers who came after, many of whom were Chechens, “really were beasts.”

A dramatic escalation in the Middle East — following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities — has cast a shadow over the meeting. | Bilawal Arbab/EPA

As Trump returns to the NATO table and conflict brews in the Middle East, leaders are hoping unity survives a tightly choreographed summit.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The setting is stately, the schedule is tight, and the goal, if you ask European officials, is simple: Keep it short, keep it smooth — and keep Donald Trump from blowing it up.

That’s the mood as NATO leaders descend on The Hague for a two-day summit designed less for big strategy than careful stage management. It’s the U.S. president’s first return to the alliance table since 2019, and officials are openly hoping that his brief visit — less than 24 hours on the ground — is uneventful.

The stakes are high, and not just because of what might happen given Trump’s notorious unpredictability. A dramatic escalation in the Middle East — following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities — has cast a shadow over the meeting. The crisis isn’t on the official agenda, but it’s already dominating the private chatter.