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    When Iranian suicide drones slammed into Ukrainian cities, the new reality dawned on Western Europe: Ukraine needs an effective anti-aircraft shield to protect its people from these terror attacks.

    Paris, criticised over its meagre military support for Kyiv, has pledged its help. On October 12, Emmanuel Macron announced the delivery of “radars, anti-aircraft systems and missiles to protect Ukrainians from attacks, especially drone attacks.”

    After getting to grips with ‘Caesar’ self-propelled howitzers, Ukrainian soldiers will now have to learn how to handle ‘Crotales’, French-made air-defence missile batteries. Paris has committed to supplying them to Ukraine within two months. Although the quantity was not specified, it will be limited: the French army itself has only twelve Crotales.

    Though helpful in the war, they will have very limited impact on the drone battle, according to military expert Vincent Tourret. “The Crotales are rather designed to shoot down aircraft or missiles. They are more likely to be used to hit Russian Sukhoï helicopters or intercept cruise missiles in the terminal phase. It would not be very cost-effective to use them against drones. With their range of only four kilometres, the German Gepard guns would be more effective.”

    By helping Ukraine, Paris also wants to support its own arms industry. It has set up a fund of 100 million euros, “from which Ukrainians can buy whatever they want, provided that the supplier is French,” said Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu.

    Kyiv has reportedly begun using the fund to buy motorised pontoon bridges to help cross rivers. However, this solution has one important limitation: production time. Unlike selecting them from army stocks, the production process is lengthy. On average, it takes a year from order to delivery of a 155-mm shell.

    Last week, 24 deputies of the governing Green and liberal FDP parties published an appeal calling for more German initiative in a European restructuring of the weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

    However, not a single member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD signed the appeal, even though its chairman, Lars Klingbeil, acknowledged a day earlier the party’s misjudgments toward Russia in recent decades as clearly as never before.

    Even today, the party is still struggling to come to terms with its own “Zeitenwende”, the historic shift in German foreign and security policy declared by Scholz on February 27.

    Tens of thousands of freedom-loving teachers and students rallied in Budapest over the weekend on the 66th anniversary of the 1956 revolution, protesting against the government, demanding better wages and educational reform. At the same time, many expressed their disgust at the current abuse of the memory of the revolution by the Orbán regime.

    Why? Because, in a shocking U-turn, the prime minister now says that the Hungarians of 1956, thousands of whom lost their lives, were in fact not fighting for their freedom or democracy – but to force a ceasefire and peace negotiations conducted over their heads by the Western and Eastern blocs.

    That’s what he wants for Ukraine, too. It does not matter what the Ukrainians want, the war can only be ended by negotiations between the US and Russia, Orbán said in Berlin in mid-October.

    To get them to the table as quickly as possible, the parties must be forced, Orbán explained. For example, he said, a major problem is that weapons from the West are pouring to the front. He did not mention weapons from the East. He also hopes that the Americans will turn away from Kyiv.

    Thus, for Orbán, it is not the Russians who need to be coerced, but the country under attack. In the struggle between two political systems, he is rooting for autocracy. Meanwhile, a current government campaign portrays the EU’s sanctions against Russia as bombs falling on Hungary.

    The memory of the revolution could perfectly mirror Ukraine’s struggle today. As in 1956, Russian tanks have once again invaded a country striving for freedom and democracy.

    Unlike our prime minister, who began his career by standing up to the Soviet empire in 1989, many Hungarians have not forgotten this.

    The latest phase of Moscow’s terror strategy in Ukraine tells us something: that Russia is helpless. But it also tells us that there is no better moment than now to further strengthen Kyiv’s military. The Russians are unable to hold the occupied territories, let alone conquer new ones. The Ukrainians are making progress and gradually liberating the country thanks to weapons supplied from the West.

    But the capacity of the countries that have sent most of the weapons so far is slowly running out. This is a dangerous moment for the EU. However, it needs to become even more involved, instead of scaling back the arms deliveries.

    In Poland, the conviction that standing alongside Ukraine means defending itself against Russian aggression has followed both those in power and the entire opposition from the very beginning of the conflict.

    So far, Warsaw has donated equipment worth $1.7 billion. The country has given Ukraine so many weapons that it is now struggling with its own stockpiles. That’s why it is rapidly ordering tanks, aircraft and heavy weapons from the United States and South Korea, regardless of the cost.

    Poland feels that the rest of Europe is not doing enough. In Warsaw’s view, the recently agreed EU military aid package of €3.1 billion is too little. The equipment already handed over by the Poles accounts for more than half of that amount and will not compensate for the country’s outlay (and there are 26 other EU countries waiting to be reimbursed).

    It is time for other European countries to become more involved in the defence of Ukraine. Russia’s withdrawal cannot be achieved other than through military victory. Paradoxically, this is the only way to save thousands more of Vladimir Putin’s victims from death.

    When the first drones struck Kyiv, Oksana Kovalenko, 42, shared in a group chat on Telegram what she was seeing and hearing in real time. For this week’s European Focus, our authors Anton Semyzhenko asked her what she felt then and how she feels now.

    In the first half of 2022, Total, France’s largest oil company, made a profit of 10.4 billion euros. With the war in Ukraine, the price of crude oil has soared while the cost of production has remained stable. This is an unacceptable margin in the eyes of the left… and a perfect occasion to try to capitalise on the energy issue. Last Sunday, the entire French left came together despite its divisions in a demonstration against high living costs and climate inaction. Their main proposal? Taxing the super-profits made on oil.

    Matthias Quent is a sociologist and expert on the far right. He teaches at the Eastern German University Magdeburg-Stendal, where he also co-founded the Institute for Democratic Culture.

    Concerning the recent rightist demonstrations in the eastern part of Germany – are they rather a “grassroots” uprising or organised by some central players?

    It’s a bit of both: on October 8, we had the big demonstration called “Energy security and protection against inflation – our country first”, organised by Germany’s far-right party AfD with more than 10.000 people in Berlin. It was the only big demonstration in recent times: we mostly see decentralised gatherings being part of networks which have emerged during the pandemic.

    Can the huge financial aid from the government help to keep rightist protests down?

    What we see just now are no social uprisings, we see nationalist uprisings. They are campaigning against migrants as well as against covid prevention measures and mixing it up with the energy topic.

    Of course, good social politics is extremely important to prevent discontentment among those who do not yet identify as far right, a discontentment which may be instrumentalised by nationalist players. However, nationalism is present anyway, it doesn’t need an energy crisis to emerge.

    There will also be real social protests during the upcoming weekend by left-wing groups trying to differentiate themselves clearly from alleged social protests of the right.

    How strong is Russian influence over the German far right?

    It’s difficult to say. On October 3, Björn Höcke, a right-wing exponent even within AfD, held a speech in Gera where he explicitly stood up for a pro-Russian agenda. Of course, one popular argument of the far right doesn’t work anymore now: the call for opening Nord Stream 2.

    Although there is no renewed proof of concrete Russian influence in recent times, it doesn’t seem that the far right is dependent on it so much: it is strong in eastern Germany anyway.

    Viktor Orbán uses Twitter to tackle Hungary’s energy crisis. This is the only logical explanation as to why he joined the platform a week ago, why he communicates entirely in English and why he was looking for his friend Donald Trump with a confused Travolta meme. He wants to win an international audience for his cause.

    The Hungarian prime minister is trying to maintain his popularity with cheap petrol, which he can only finance because Russian oil coming by pipeline is much cheaper than sea freight. Orban has built his economic success so far on Russian energy imports.

    The country’s budget cannot pay for the much needed transition away from Putin’s companies. That’s why he must seize every opportunity and use every platform to lobby against sanctions, which he sees as the root of all his problems. His dependence makes him more aggressive than ever.

    On Sunday, many Estonians gathered on Tallinn’s Freedom square to join the right-wing populist EKRE party in a protest against high energy costs. The event was attended by many who were in genuine distress.

    At 25%, Estonia has the highest inflation in the EU. A great deal of that comes from the electricity bills that keep growing at a seemingly endless rate. The same is happening to the popularity of EKRE and it’s not even winter yet.

    The media is ablaze with ads featuring party leader Martin Helme’s promises of electricity at a fraction of the current cost. On March 5, with the suffering likely at its peak, Estonians will vote in a general election.

    Many believe that what’s happening is the result of Putin’s attack on Ukraine. This is what Estonia’s liberal prime minister, Kaja Kallas, keeps pointing out. She has been popular, but is now on the defensive and might soon lose her lead to Helme, who says that Kallas and Ursula von der Leyen, not Putin, are responsible for rising prices.

    Speaking to European Focus, Kaja Kallas said that Estonia, bordering Russia, would be politically lonely in the West were it to be led by the far right. “With a neighbour this aggressive, we would be extremely vulnerable.”

    Her party can’t blame all of what is happening in the polls on deceitful and manipulative messages from Helme and his allies. The Reform Party has been in government for all but five years since 1999.

    Many experts have complained that Estonia has had an aimless energy policy throughout this time. The result is a poor energy mix with too few renewables and too much dependence on other countries.

    The consequence may be Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gaining one more ally at Europe’s decision-making table.

    “The nation has risen!” exclaimed organisers of the demonstration “Czechia First” in Prague at the end of September. “We are taking the country back!” Not really. The crowd was half the 70,000 who three weeks earlier “filled up Venceslaus square” – a symbolic feat.

    Yet, the thousands who came together marked a solid attendance. The protest, which focused on high energy prices and the cost of living but quickly morphed into a general political demonstration, is maintaining momentum.

    “Let the Praguers see how expensive life is,” says a man from Eastern Bohemia. “I’m from Prague, whaddya talking about?” asks a woman nearby. “It sucks everywhere,” they agree. The culprits: the government, Brussels, Berlin and Washington, helping Ukrainians instead of their own people.

    Organisers demand the demise of the government, a gas deal with Russia, no support for Ukraine, no electricity exports, ‘czexit’ and the ‘complete turnover’ of Czech politics.

    Ladislav Vrábel and Jiří Havel, the men behind the protests, established themselves on the far-right scene during the pandemic by opposing restrictions (and spreading disinformation, by some). This is the first time they’ve received national attention, though. The huge success of the first protest was a booster. The far right, having failed to capitalise on the pandemic, now feel it may have a shot.

    Households are still to get (supposedly horrendous) utility bills. Companies have their bills fixed till winter. Government offers help and price caps, the question is whether it is enough. Other cost-of-living protests attracted few attendees. Either all dissatisfied people are pro-Russian enthusiasts, or “Czechia First” syphoned off all the discontent. The latter is likely.

    But the movement is marred by mutual distrust and bickering, typical for the Czech far right. The next gathering is planned for the national holiday of October 28. Either they can capitalise further on the wrath of the people, or it’s another ‘missed opportunity’ for the Czech far-right.