Europe at a glance
Amsterdam
Sexual assault: A famous Dutch football pundit has had to resign from his TV show in the wake of the furore created by his admission that he’d once sexually assaulted an unconscious woman. To the amusement of fellow panellists on his talk show, Johan Derksen, 73, a former footballer, had jokily recalled how, 50 years ago, he had penetrated a drunken woman with a candle. The ensuing outcry – and announcement by prosecutors that they’d investigate – led him to backtrack and say he only placed the candle close to the woman’s legs. But he has refused to apologise for telling the story, saying only that he’d delivered it “in the wrong tone”.
Madrid
PM’s phone hacked: Spanish officials have revealed that the mobile phone of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been infected with Pegasus, an Israeli-made hacking tool for snooping on phone communications. The firm behind Pegasus, Israel’s NSO Group, insists it is only meant for use by authorised governments to fight terrorism and crime, but there has been much alarm across Europe that it’s being used for political espionage: last year, Emmanuel Macron changed his phone number fearing he’d been targeted using Pegasus; Sánchez’s own government has been accused of using it on members of Catalan’s independence movement. This, however, is the first confirmed case of the head of a Nato state falling victim to the malicious software. Sánchez’s phone and that of his defence minister, Margarita Robles, were targeted last May. It’s not clear where the attacks originated: the details have been passed to Spain’s national court for investigation.
Berlin
“Sulky sausage”: Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin, Andrij Melnyk, has torn a strip off Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, calling him “not very statesmanlike” and a “sulky liver sausage” – a German idiom meaning someone who gets offended easily. The insults stem from Scholz’s refusal to visit Kyiv in person. Several European leaders have visited Ukraine as a show of solidarity since the start of the war, and the main German opposition leader, the CDU’s Friedrich Merz, did so this week. However, Scholz has declined, citing the snub Ukraine delivered to Germany’s ceremonial head of state, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Steinmeier, who served two stints as Angela Merkel’s foreign minister, has been a champion of Germany’s close ties with Moscow, and for that reason Kyiv turned down a mooted visit by him last month. Scholz himself has been much criticised for his faltering response to the Ukraine crisis.
St Petersburg, Russia
“I’m not gay”: Vitaly Milonov, the notoriously homophobic MP who drafted Russia’s “anti-gay law”, has become the presenter of a bizarre online reality show in which contestants have to guess which of their fellow competitors is homosexual. “I hope you will quickly figure out the gay,” Milonov, making a throat-slitting gesture, told contestants in the first episode of I’m Not Gay. Homosexuality is not illegal in Russia, but human rights activists say that the law framed by Milonov in 2013, which bans distribution to minors of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships”, legitimises discrimination. Last week, a St Petersburg court ruled in favour of the Kremlin in shutting down Russia’s largest LGBT rights organisation.
Mariupol, Ukraine
Millions “taken to Russia”: The number of Ukrainian civilians taken to Russia since the start of the war now stands at more than one million, according to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. His comments, made last week, represent the first official Russian estimate for the mass transfer of people from Russian-occupied cities such as Mariupol. Lavrov said those affected have been “evacuated” for their own safety, and were being “offered medical and psychological help” at more than 9,500 temporary facilities set up across Russia. Ukraine’s government has been warning for weeks that its citizens are being forcibly deported to far-flung parts of Russia, or interrogated in so-called “filtration camps” in conditions that amount to torture. Ukraine’s envoy to the UN described this as “kidnapping”, and likened the tactics to those deployed by the Nazis during the Second World War.