Host: Forty-five leaders in Yerevan, drones over the Baltic, and Britain edging back into an EU financial instrument. This is Europa Daily.
Host: The European Political Community summit opens in Yerevan today with roughly 45 leaders attending — and for the first time, a non-European guest. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will join the gathering, part of what Ottawa describes as an effort to build new trade and diplomatic alliances after the loss of US markets under Donald Trump. Canadian diplomats have batted away suggestions that Ottawa might seek EU membership, but Carney's presence is being read as a show of western support for Armenia as it works to distance itself from Russia.
Armenia's role as host is itself significant. The EU is sending a team of specialists in combating Russian propaganda and interference to the country, and EU leaders will hold their first-ever summit with Armenia on Tuesday, directly after the broader EPC gathering.
The Starmer government has a full delegation in Yerevan, and the summit feeds directly into the wider UK-EU reset talks. The agenda is dominated by security: the US troop drawdown from Germany, the Iran conflict, and the war in Ukraine. These are problems that cut across the EU–non-EU divide, which is precisely why the EPC format exists — it pulls in the UK, Turkey, the South Caucasus states, and others who sit outside Brussels' institutional machinery but inside Europe's security perimeter.
One footnote worth mentioning: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's plane made an emergency landing in Ankara on Sunday evening due to a technical fault. His delegation is expected to continue on to Yerevan this morning.
Host: Ukraine launched a wave of strikes against Russian oil targets on Sunday, hitting the key port of Primorsk on the Baltic Sea. A night-time drone strike started a fire at the port, which is operated by Russia's state oil firm Transneft and is capable of handling hundreds of thousands of barrels per day. Primorsk sits between the Russian-Finnish border and St Petersburg — more than a thousand kilometres from Ukraine.
President Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces also hit a guided missile corvette, a patrol boat, and a tanker belonging to Russia's so-called shadow oil fleet — vessels used to evade western sanctions and price caps. Two more shadow-fleet tankers were struck near the entrance to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
The Kremlin's response was pointed. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that global oil prices may rise further if Ukraine continues to hit Russian oil infrastructure. That matters here: Britain imports no Russian crude directly, but Brent pricing — still the global benchmark, still set in London — is directly affected by anything that disrupts supply from the Baltic. Zelenskyy framed the strikes as limiting Russia's war potential.
Meanwhile, Russia attacked Ukraine overnight with 269 drones and ballistic missiles. Ten people were killed across Ukraine, including in the Odesa, Kherson, and Dnipropetrovsk regions. A passenger bus carrying 40 children was damaged in Dnipropetrovsk, though no one inside was injured.
Host: Donald Trump is threatening to go well beyond the 5,000-soldier withdrawal from Germany announced last week. "We are going to cut way down, and we're cutting a lot further than 5,000," he told reporters on Saturday. That initial announcement left 30,000 US troops still in the country, according to CNN. The withdrawal followed Chancellor Merz's public comment that the US was being "humiliated" by Iran.
Merz went on ARD on Sunday night to try to hold the line. "I am not giving up on working on the transatlantic relationship," he said. "Nor am I giving up on working with Donald Trump." He insisted there was no connection between disagreements over the Iran war and the troop pullout, and said he shared Trump's goal of ensuring Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon.
The troop threat has unsettled some senior Republicans as well. And it lands directly on the table in Yerevan, where European leaders are gathering with US policy uncertainty as the backdrop to virtually every conversation. For Britain, the calculus is specific: British forces in Germany were largely withdrawn by 2020, but a deeper American drawdown increases pressure on the UK to help fill gaps on NATO's eastern flank — a commitment that sits squarely within the defence review Whitehall is already conducting.
Host: Now to a story that's had less attention but may matter more in the long run. Britain is on the verge of joining the EU's €90 billion — that's roughly £78 billion — loan scheme for Ukraine. That's according to Sky News, which reports the move is part of Starmer's effort to shore up support for Kyiv and deepen defence ties with the bloc.
If it goes through, this would make the UK a co-funder alongside the 27 EU member states, binding British and European financial commitments to Ukraine together for years. It is, quite simply, the most significant institutional linkage between Britain and the EU since Brexit — not a trade deal or a regulatory alignment, but a shared financial instrument for a shared security problem.
For the EU side, having Britain inside the loan scheme strengthens the package and spreads the financial risk. For Downing Street, it's a concrete demonstration that the post-Brexit reset is producing more than communiqués. The details — governance, terms, the UK's precise role — will matter enormously, and they're still being finalised. But the direction of travel is clear: on Ukraine at least, Britain is choosing to operate inside European structures rather than alongside them. It deserves proper scrutiny when the terms emerge, but as a signal of intent, it's hard to overstate.
Host: That's Europa Daily. The Yerevan summit gets underway shortly — we'll be back tomorrow with what came out of it.
Sources
- The Guardian Europe: EU forging closer ties with Armenia as it sends experts to help counter Russian interference
- Sky News World: UK on verge of joining EU's £78bn loan for Ukraine as Starmer seeks reset with Brussels
- France 24 Europe: Europe, Canada leaders meet in Armenia amid uncertainty over US policy
- The Guardian Europe: Ukraine war briefing: Strikes on Russia’s Primorsk oil port and ships
- France 24 Europe: Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez’s plane makes emergency landing in Turkey
- DW World: Merz 'not giving up' on Germany's relationship with US
- The Guardian Europe: Merz ‘not giving up on working with Trump’ despite Iran war spat
- The Guardian Europe: Canada to be first non-European nation at EPC summit as Carney seeks allies
- France 24 Europe: Ukrainian drones strike Russia's Primorsk oil port
- BBC Europe: Russian strikes kill 10 as Zelensky says Ukraine hits oil tankers and terminal
- The Guardian Europe: Republicans ‘concerned’ after Trump threatens to withdraw more US troops from Germany