Friendly meeting: Friedrich Merz's visit to the White House – DW – 06/05/2025
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Phil Gayle
06/05/2025
June 5, 2025
If German Chancellor Merz was worried of having to listen to a telling-off as other state leaders had to during their visit to the Oval Office, he must be relieved now. The atmosphere at his meeting with US President Donald Trump was quite friendly, says DW's Ines Pohl.
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Hungary: Orban's new hate campaign against Ukraine – DW – 07/15/2025
After an ethnic Hungarian conscript died in unexplained circumstances in Ukraine, Hungary's leader has renewed his campaign against the neighboring country. DW's research shows he has been spreading falsified videos. Hungary has only just concluded a months-long campaign against Ukraine aimed at blocking it from joining the EU. The autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orban, and his political apparatus have been portraying their neighboring country as a mafia state, overrun with hordes of dangerous criminals who would rob, kidnap, and kill Hungarian people. If people thought this was the nadir of Orban's anti-Ukraine propaganda, they are in for a disappointment. The Hungarian leadership is portraying the death of a recruit of Hungarian origin in Ukraine on July 6 as an attack on the Hungarian nation as a whole, declaring Ukraine to be a sort of evil empire. And he's taking this stance, even though the circumstances of the man's death are not clear. Orban has claimed that "a Hungarian citizen was beaten to death in Ukraine." With no proof whatsoever, he is accusing Ukraine and the EU of covering up this supposed crime. He published a post on Facebook, on a black background, that read: "The truth cannot be silenced!" Pro-government Hungarian media have published hundreds of highly emotional articles about the conscript's death. Sandor Fegyir, Ukraine's ambassador to Budapest, was summoned — an unequivocal sign of anger in diplomatic circles. Hundreds of furious people, led by Orban's chief propagandist, Zsolt Bayer, demonstrated outside the Ukrainian embassy in the Hungarian capital. In a letter to the dead man's parents, the Hungarian president, Tamas Sulyok, wrote that he was "utterly horrified" by what he had heard about the circumstances leading to their son's death. "Such a thing cannot happen in Europe," he said, adding that it "completely contradicts all human values" represented by European nations. So what actually happened? The man in question was a 45-year-old named Jozsef Sebestyen from the city of Berehove in the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine, home to almost 100,000 ethnic Hungarians. Berehove itself, just a few kilometers from the border with Hungary, has a population of 23,000, and around half are ethnic Hungarians. Sebestyen ran a guesthouse, and, like many ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia, he had both Ukrainian and Hungarian citizenship. Like most Ukrainian citizens of fighting age, he was registered with the Ukrainian military administration (TZK) after the outbreak of full-scale war in February 2022. In mid-June of this year, he was stopped by TZK personnel at a roadside checkpoint in Berehove. Sebestyen was mobilized, declared fit for military service, and sent for basic training. On July 6, he died in a psychiatric clinic in Berehove. Those are the verified facts. As far as all other aspects of the case are concerned, accounts differ widely, and have not been verified. On July 9, the Hungarian pro-government portal Mandiner published a report that claimed Jozsef Sebestyen had been beaten with iron bars, so badly that he subsequently died of his injuries. The report cited and was based on a Facebook post by Sebestyen's sister Marta. However, this post either does not exist, or has been deleted. DW reached out to Marta Sebestyen, but she did not reply. We also contacted the editors of Mandiner, whose response was to publish an article declaring that they would not allow the issue to be "trivialized." After this, Mandiner also published videos that it said showed Jozsef Sebestyen after he was physically abused. In one video, he is seen kneeling in a field with paramedics and people in military uniform asking him questions. He has no visible injuries. After a while, he lets himself fall onto the grass. Two other videos show him crawling on all fours, on terrain that could be a training camp. He appears exhausted and confused. The videos do not show or indicate that he was subjected to violence. It is not clear who filmed these videos. Nonetheless, they have been circulated all over Hungary and shown repeatedly in pro-government media, including the news programs of the public-service broadcaster MTVA, as supposed evidence of the brutality of the Ukrainian military. Reports by the MTVA news program Hirado also include a video of a man in a hospital, probably in intensive care. Captions on the video say it shows Sebestyen "in hospital shortly before his death," which was on July 6. However, DW has established that the video was first published on a Ukrainian Telegram channel on May 22, 2025. The owner of this channel, Vitaliy Glagola, has told DW that the video shows a different man, and that it is being misused by the Hungarian media. This video has also been posted by Viktor Orban on his TikTok and social media accounts. The news program Hirado has also misused a second video taken from Glagola's channel. This too was published on May 22, well before Sebestyen was mobilized. At the time of writing, neither the broadcaster MTVA nor the Hungarian office for government communication has responded to DW's written enquiries. In a statement dated July 10, 2025, the leadership of the Ukrainian land forces denied abusing Sebestyen in any way. The statement says he was brought to a training unit on June 15, 2025, and that he deserted three days later. It says he presented at the district hospital in Berehove on June 24, feeling unwell, and was transferred from there to a psychiatric hospital, where he died of a pulmonary embolism on July 6, "with no sign of any injuries indicative of violence." The Ukrainian foreign ministry accuses Hungary of exploiting the Sebestyen case in a "manipulative manner and for political purposes." Indeed, Viktor Orban not only claims that "a Hungarian was beaten to death in Ukraine" — he goes on to assert that "such a country cannot be allowed to become an EU member." It is a continuation of his campaign to prevent Ukraine from joining the EU. So far, though, despite intense propaganda, this has been only moderately successful. But the Sebestyen case is different. Many Hungarians are very emotionally invested in the concerns of ethnic Hungarians in neighboring countries. Orban's regime has revived the issue of the "Trianon trauma" — a taboo subject for many years. It's one that has resonated strongly with the people. Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory and population under the terms of the Treaty of Trianon, which was signed after World War One, in 1920. These days, around two million ethnic Hungarians live in neighboring countries. Many Hungarians have been shocked and dismayed by the death of Jozsef Sebestyen. However, many are also starting to weary of Viktor Orban. It remains to be seen whether his latest campaign will change that.
DW
5 hours ago
- DW
US drone war: Berlin not absolved of all responsibility – DW – 07/15/2025
Germany's top court has decided that the US air base in Ramstein may be used for lethal drone strikes, but Germany also has a duty to protect. Does the "right to life and physical integrity" guaranteed in Article 2 of Germany's Basic Law also apply when people are killed far away from Germany by another state with at least indirect German assistance? The Federal Constitutional Court, the equivalent to the US Supreme Court, was tasked with answering this tricky question on Tuesday. The case was brought by two men whose relatives were killed in a targeted US drone strike in Yemen in 2012. The technical infrastructure of the US air base in Ramstein was also used in the strike. In this specific case, the lawsuit was dismissed as unfounded. However, the ruling is not a complete carte blanche for potentially lethal drone missions in the future. According to the court's official reasoning, Germany must also protect fundamental human rights and the core norms of international humanitarian law abroad. However, the court also granted the federal government considerable leeway to determine its foreign and security policy. The mandate now announced is subject to two conditions: A sufficient connection to German state authority and the serious risk that international law could be systematically violated. According to the Constitutional Court, this was not the case with the drone strikes in Yemen. The court ruled that the US took sufficient account of the protection of civilians in its fight against international terrorism, and referred to "legitimate military targets." However, innocent people were killed alongside the suspected terrorists in the attack controlled from Ramstein, which brought criticism from legal scholar Paulina Starski of the University of Freiburg on the TV channel : "If they don't know exactly who they are attacking, they have to assume that it is a civilian." That is why targeted killings carried out by state actors are often highly problematic from a humanitarian and international law perspective. If the US Air Force could guide its missiles remotely from US territory straight to their targets, it would not need logistical support from its Ramstein airbase. But direct radio links between the US and Yemen are not possible, due to the curvature of the Earth. This is why signals are redirected via Ramstein, which makes the base indispensable for attacks in the Middle East. And they are very simple: A drone pilot sits in Florida, connected to the Ramstein hub via fiberoptic cables, guiding the deadly weapon to its target. The lawyer representing the unsuccessful plaintiffs from Yemen, Andreas Schüller, called the Constitutional Court's decision painful and disappointing. But he added that the duty to protect now formulated also provides guidelines for future conflicts: "Following today's ruling, there may be situations in which violations of human rights and international law abroad are brought before German courts." The federal government reacted with relief. State Secretary Nils Schmid of the Ministry of Defense emphasized that compliance with international law was always a priority. At the same time, he said, the ruling gave German security policy "the necessary leeway" to be a reliable you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter, Berlin Briefing.
DW
5 hours ago
- DW
After huge US cuts, who pays for aid in the Middle East now? – DW – 07/15/2025
For the first time in 30 years, in 2024, some of the world's biggest spenders on aid and development cut funding. Now aid organizations in the Middle East are forced to seek new, potentially more demanding, donors. Ask around various civil society organizations working in the Middle East and the answer is always the same. "Nobody really knows what's happening," one project manager running a Syria-based project told DW about the US cuts in aid funding. "They haven't put a complete stop to it yet so we're just spending the money on a monthly basis and hoping for the best." "We still don't know if we're going to get the funding we were promised this year," the founder of an Iraqi journalists' network in Baghdad said. "We probably won't be able to pay some of our journalists. Right now, we're approaching other organizations to try to replace the money." Neither interviewee wanted their names published because they didn't want to criticize their donors publicly. They are not alone. Since US President Donald Trump took power, he has slashed US funding for what's known as "official development aid," or ODA. Often simply called foreign aid,the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developmentdefines ODA as "government aid that promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries." ODA can be bilateral — given from country to country — or multilateral, where funds are pooled by an organization like the UN, then disbursed. The US is not the only country cutting ODA. Even before what insiders described as the US' "chaotic" budget cuts, reductions in ODA were a longer-term pattern. Global ODA fell by over 7% in 2024, as European nations and the UK also reduced ODA in favor of channeling more money into defense. Last year marked the first time in nearly 30 years that major donors like France, Germany, the UK and the US all cut ODA. In 2023, countries in the Middle East got around $7.8 billion (€6.7 billion) out of the $42.4 billion (€36.3 billion) the US spent that year. That is why, Laith Alajlouni, a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain, wrote in March, "the effects of US aid cuts … will be felt deeply in the Middle East, where key US partners continue to rely heavily on US assistance to meet their military and economic needs." Between 2014 and 2024, the US pledged around $106.8 billion to countries in the region. Israel gets just under a third of that, although much of the money is earmarked for military purposes. But for other countries, funds from the US were equivalent to a significant portion of their national income, Alajlouni pointed out. Now funding for emergency food and water in Sudan, medicines in Yemen, children's nutrition in Lebanon, and camps for the displaced, including families allegedly connected to the extremist "Islamic State" group in Syria are all are at risk, Alajlouni argues. Other countries, like Jordan and Egypt, are heavily reliant on foreign funding for "economic development" to keep their ailing economies afloat, he noted. It remains unclear exactly how much Middle Eastern countries will lose due to ODA cuts. Last month, researchers at Washington-based think tank, the Center for Global Development, tried to calculate the fallout. "Some countries are projected to lose large amounts of ODA simply because of who their main donors are," they noted, "while others are projected to lose very little." For example, Yemen will likely see its ODA reduced by 19% between 2023 and 2026. In 2025, its three biggest donors, via the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or UNOCHA, were Saudi Arabia, the EU and the UK. Somalia, on the other hand may lose as much as 39%. Its main donors, via UNOCHA, were the UK, the EU and the US. "It is clear that in the short term, the shortfall in aid funding will not be closed," Vincenzo Bollettino, director of the resilient communities program at Harvard University's Humanitarian Initiative in Boston, told DW. "In the mid-to-long term, it's likely there will be a tapestry of different forms of aid." Part of that will be a larger number of states "providing aid and development assistance where it aligns with their own political objectives," Bollettino predicts. Russia's main agency for international cooperation, Rossotrudnichestvo, recently announced it would restructure to be more like USAID and will open outposts in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. But at just $70 million annually, Rossotrudnichestvo's budget is comparatively small. Chinese money could be another alternative to US and European funding. "China has positioned itself as the US' greatest competitor in global development," experts at US think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned in July. But China isn't all that interested in the Middle East, experts point out, and is more engaged in Southeast Asia and Africa. "Neither Russia nor China have played traditionally significant roles in the international humanitarian aid system and this is unlikely to change anytime soon," Bollettino explains. Much more likely donors in the Middle East will be the wealthy Gulf states, says Markus Loewe, a professor and the coordinator for research on the Middle East and North Africa at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, or IDOS. Over the last two decades, four Gulf states — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait — have been internationally significant donors. "For example, Saudi Arabia is already offering substantial support to Syria," Loewe told DW. "They have been supporting Lebanon to quite a degree and they would definitely be ready to pay a lot of the costs of reconstruction in Gaza, provided there is an acceptable agreement on a ceasefire." Most of that ODA has gone to Arab countries, although Qatar and Kuwait have also funded work in Turkey, Afghanistan and some African countries. Hardly any Gulf money goes into what are called "pooled" funds like those run by the UN. Most is bilateral, from country to country, because the Gulf states tend to use their ODA in a more transactional way. That is, as a diplomatic tool where it ties into different Gulf states' often-competing foreign policy aims. "Aid recipients who are considered politically important for Gulf donors tend to receive more aid," Khaled AlMezaini, a professor at the UAE's Zayed University, wrote in a recent analysis. For example, despite waging war on parts of Yemen from 2015, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also the country's biggest donors. But as Harvard's Bollettino points out, ODA is not meant to be political. That goes against basic humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality. "The essential problem with instrumentalized aid is that it's just as likely to be a catalyst of conflict and violence as a source of peace and security," he argues. "The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — where 'humanitarian aid' being delivered to starving civilians has resulted in hundreds of Palestinians being killed — is a case in point." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
