Dreck's Diary — Issue 1
By Sebastian Dreck
Marcin Romanowski, former deputy justice minister of Poland, has written to a Warsaw court from Tiraspol, capital of Transnistria, a breakaway Moldovan territory whose flag features the Soviet hammer and sickle and which is garrisoned by Russian troops. Romanowski, who fled Poland facing eleven criminal charges including the alleged defrauding of forty million dollars from a justice fund for crime victims, fled Hungary when Viktor Orbán lost power, and subsequently disappeared entirely for several months, has requested safe passage to Warsaw on condition that he not be detained on arrival. Moldova has no record of his arrival, which is of limited administrative significance given that Transnistria has no commercial airport and Moldova does not control its borders. A deputy leader of Romanowski's own party said his presence there "would be crossing a line." The line in question runs along the eastern border of Moldova. It is guarded by the Russian army.
Belgium activated the European Union's civil protection mechanism as the worst wildfire in the country's recorded history consumed nearly three thousand hectares of the Hautes-Fagnes nature reserve in the province of Liège. Aircraft arrived from the Netherlands, Norway, Germany and Sweden. Belgium hosts the headquarters of the European Commission, the Council of the EU, the European Parliament, and NATO. It does not host adequate firefighting capacity for its own territory. The Commission notes that this is consistent with the principle of subsidiarity, under which decisions are taken at the lowest appropriate level. The lowest appropriate level was, on this occasion, on fire.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that European Union membership is no longer a priority for Turkey, moderating a position he had described as a strategic goal as recently as 2024, and concluding a negotiation process that began formally in 1987, produced accession talks in 2005, and has been effectively frozen since 2018. Erdoğan noted that Turkey had "not closed the door" on eventual membership, which the Commission described as encouraging. The Commission said the accession process remained open. It did not say open to what.
The United States has withdrawn the USS George Washington, its last aircraft carrier, from the Pacific, leaving the western Pacific without American naval cover as China conducts exercises near disputed territories with Japan and the Philippines. The carrier has been redeployed to the Middle East to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose deployment has been extended well beyond its planned return as the Iran war continues. The Trump administration's stated foreign policy priority is the Indo-Pacific. Asked to reconcile these two facts, a senior Pentagon official told the Associated Press that the United States has "the ability to project force anywhere on the globe" and will "redeploy and reorient" once the Middle East threat "has been attended to." The White House described the situation as consistent with Operation Epic Fury, adding that America's military might is "stronger than it's ever been." The Middle East situation has been attended to since approximately 1948.
German security officials have confirmed the existence of a Russian disinformation campaign targeting Saxony-Anhalt's regional elections, which they have named Matryoshka. The campaign is conducted almost entirely in English. Its intended audience is American MAGA social media users, on the theory that German voters will eventually consume content amplified by people who cannot read German, about an election in a country they cannot locate on a map, concerning a party whose programme has been described by German courts as partially unconstitutional. The AfD is currently polling at 41 percent in Saxony-Anhalt. Russian officials have declined to comment, which German officials describe as consistent with previous practice.