The Veritas Brief

Ukraine just forced out its top general in the largest protests of the war — and replaced him with a 43-year-old tank commander they call "The Flying BMP."

In this episode we go inside the crisis that made Mykhailo Drapatyi commander-in-chief: the reshuffle that dropped reformist defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, the street revolt that followed, and the clash of two visions for how Ukraine fights. We trace Drapatyi's record of owning failures in public, the reform agenda he inherits, the drone numbers that explain the whole argument, and the corps reform and manpower problems no reputation can fix. Then we ask what to watch next.

Slow journalism. We read everything. We rush nothing.

Read the full written analysis (free): https://veritaseuropaea.eu/mykhailo-drapatyi-ukraine-commander-in-chief?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=drapatyi

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Sources: Defense News, The Insider, Ukrinform, Resilience Media, Kyiv Independent, Jamestown Foundation, OSW, Just Security, ISW, Gradus Research.

Last year, 8 San Francisco homes sold for at least a million dollars over asking. This year, that number is 144 — and the two companies most responsible, OpenAI and Anthropic, haven't even gone public yet.

In this episode, we follow the money into San Francisco's housing market. Two AI labs headquartered in the city are racing toward trillion-dollar IPOs. Their employees are already turning paper wealth into cash — and bidding up a razor-thin supply of homes. We trace how the wealth arrives before the bell, what the Facebook 2012 listing tells us about what's coming, and why the biggest surge may not land until 2027, when the lock-ups expire.

We also weigh the skeptic's case, look north to Seattle for a very different tech story, and sit with the human cost — the six-figure earners being quietly priced out of the city.

Reported from public SEC filings and named market data: Redfin, Compass, The Wall Street Journal, Marketplace, The New York Times, and Reuters.

Full written analysis, with charts and every source

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Europe will finally build its own ATACMS missiles — on German soil. The catch? Washington still holds the export sign-off. That's the autonomy paradox at the heart of NATO's 2026 Ankara summit.

In this episode of The Veritas Brief, we follow the money through more than €50 billion in new arms deals. We unpack the Lockheed Martin–Rheinmetall missile pact, Europe's rearmament boom, and the dependence on Washington that all the spending still can't buy its way out of.

We don't run ads. We don't hide behind a paywall. We answer to our readers — and no one else.

Read the full investigation (charts + sources)Sources include NATO, Rheinmetall, Lockheed Martin, McKinsey, Bruegel, PwC, CNBC and Morningstar. Every claim in the written piece is cited.

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Reinsurers cut catastrophe prices by up to 25% on 1 July. American homeowners still pay 46% more than in 2021. Both facts describe the same warming atmosphere.

We read the July 2026 renewal reports, the Munich Re and Swiss Re loss data, and EIOPA's protection-gap dashboard, and we follow the money from a Bermudian balance sheet to a renewal notice in Altadena.

Why does the reinsurance market cut prices in the middle of a warming trend it publicly acknowledges? Because reinsurers reprice every twelve months and can walk away. Primary carriers reprice through regulators, which takes years. Households never reprice at all — they pay, they cut cover, or they leave.

And when reinsurers gave up price this year, they kept the fine print. Attachment points held. Which leaves hail, flood and wildfire frequency sitting with primary carriers, and with their policyholders.

Featuring verbatim quotes from Thomas Blunck and Tobias Grimm (Munich Re), Balz Grollimund (Swiss Re), David Flandro (Howden Re), Jim Williamson (Everest Group), Petra Hielkema (EIOPA), Ishita Sen (Harvard Business School) and Günther Thallinger (Allianz).

Ten named sources. No fabricated quotes. No paywall.

Full article, free, with four charts

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The Veritas Brief is the podcast of Veritas Europaea, a reader-funded publication covering European political economy, finance and geopolitics. We take one story a week and we stay with it.

First Abu Dhabi Bank reported a two percent profit decline in Q1. But beneath the headline was a much deeper story: war risk, oil volatility, the Strait of Hormuz, liquidity pressure, capital discipline, and the role of sovereign power behind one of the Gulf’s most important banks.

In this episode of The Veritas Brief, we explain why FAB’s quarter was not simply weak or strong — but a case study in how a major bank behaves when the world becomes genuinely unstable.

Read the full article here

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Britain didn't crash out of the European Union. It leaked — slowly, quietly, for ten years.

A decade on from the referendum, the argument about Brexit has moved from prophecy to forensics, and the evidence is finally in. In this episode, we follow the money through the slow subtraction: the contested GDP estimates, ranging from the OBR's 4% to Stanford's 6–8%; the trade friction that turned one firm's 40 annual customs transactions into 10,000; the investment that quietly went to Poland instead of the Midlands; a pound that never came home; and a record-high FTSE that is steadily losing its place in the world.

We also give the dissenters a fair hearing — because the case against the consensus isn't made by cranks, and honest analysis tests its own conclusions.

Read the full long-read, with every chart and source:

https://www.veritaseuropaea.eu/2026/06/brexit-at-ten-slow-subtraction-british-economy/

The Veritas Brief is the podcast from Veritas Europaea — reader-funded slow journalism on European political economy, markets, and geopolitics. Support it for €2/week at https://www.veritaseuropaea.eu

Read carefully. Think slowly.

A far-right party polling at 38% — the highest in its history. A governing coalition built to keep one man out, now sitting on a trapdoor. And a country in its third straight year of recession.

In this episode of the Veritas Brief, we ask what a Herbert Kickl chancellorship would actually mean — for Austria, for its economy, and for a European Union it sits at the very heart of.

We unpack the austerity feeding the FPÖ's rise, the arithmetic behind Kickl's tax-cut-and-remigration economic blueprint, the Russia alignment alarming Austria's allies, and why an Austrian veto inside the EU could be far more dangerous than Hungary's.

Slow journalism for European and world affairs. Independent, ad-lite, reader-funded.

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The largest IPO in history made Elon Musk a paper trillionaire overnight. The stock popped 19% on day one. A rocket launched an hour before the opening bell. And almost nobody read the document underneath it all.

In this episode of Veritas Brief, we turn the volume down on the spectacle and reads the SpaceX S-1: a company valued at more than 100x sales, a "space" business that loses money, a Starlink telecom doing two-thirds of the revenue, and a cash-burning AI division (xAI) folded in just weeks before the float. Plus dual-class control, a related-party web, an unusually loose insider lockup, and a fast-track index inclusion that could force passive money — maybe yours — to buy the stock automatically.

This is not anti-SpaceX. The engineering is genuinely extraordinary. This is a skeptical reading of a price, a structure, and a story — and a question the headlines never asked: not "how high will it go?" but "what, exactly, did they just sell you?"

Veritas Europaea is reader-funded slow journalism — no advertisers from the companies we cover, no spin. Your subscription is the entire business model.

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Editorial commentary, not investment advice. Figures sourced from SpaceX's S-1 (filed 20 May 2026) and public trading data through 22 June 2026.

Russia didn't collapse after 2022 — and the Kremlin never stops saying so. But beneath the stocked supermarket shelves and the headline GDP figures, independent economists describe something slower and far more dangerous: a war machine consuming the very foundations it stands on.

In this episode of The Veritas Brief, we go beneath Russia's surface stability to the structural crisis its own budget documents reveal — the GDP illusion built almost entirely on war spending, a sovereign wealth fund nearly drained, an oil paradox where Russia sells more crude and earns less money, a labour shortage even Putin's closest allies now call a threat to national survival, and a deliberate blackout of official data.

This analysis draws entirely on independent institutional research: SIPRI, the Bank of Finland's Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT), Chatham House, the Kyiv School of Economics, and the IMF.

📖 Read the full investigation — every figure, source, and chart:https://www.veritaseuropaea.eu/2026/05/the-real-russian-economy-war-budgets-and-structural-decay/

🎙️ The Veritas Brief is a slow-journalism podcast on European and world affairs. No noise. No rush. Just context, evidence, and clear analysis.

▶️ Subscribe for new episodes — and support independent, reader-funded journalism for just €2/week at https://www.veritaseuropaea.eu

Germany’s far-right AfD is no longer just a protest movement. It is now leading national polls, gaining historic strength in eastern Germany, and moving closer to real political power.

In this episode of Veritas Brief, a slow-journalism podcast by Veritas Europaea, we examine what the AfD’s rise could mean not only for Germany, but for Europe and the wider global economy.

This is not only a story about party politics. It is a story about markets, the euro, German industry, energy policy, supply chains, investor confidence, and the future of European integration.

We look at why the AfD is gaining support, how Germany’s economic stagnation has created political volatility, what a potential AfD breakthrough could mean for the DAX, German Bunds, the euro, the Mittelstand, and why the debate around “Dexit” could become one of the most serious risks facing Europe in the coming years.

Rather than following the daily news cycle, this episode takes a deeper look at the structural forces behind Germany’s political shift — and why the consequences could reach far beyond Berlin.