Senior US Democrat widens probe into Jared Kushner’ Albania development that sparked Flamingo Revolution

The planned development in a protected coastal area has sparked nightly protests in Tirana and other parts of Albania. / IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Clare Nuttall in Glasgow August 27, 2026

The most senior Democrat on the US House Judiciary Committee has widened his investigation into Jared Kushner's business interests to include the disputed Albanian land where his investment firm plans to build a luxury resort.

The Albania investigation centres on land in a protected area near Zvernec, where Kushner's firm proposed the resort, a project that has sparked daily protests that have persisted for weeks.

Jamie Raskin, the committee's ranking member, wrote to Kushner on August 24 and published the letter a day later, demanding records and communications concerning his dealings with the Albanian government, the US government and the proposed real estate project.

Raskin, who represents Democrats on the Republican-controlled committee, asked for documents relating to real estate and business transactions in Albania, protests against Kushner-linked projects and any government involvement in the approval, financing or consideration of Albanian developments.

He also asked for information on the planned resort on the Albanian coast and whether Kushner or entities linked to him had received benefits from Albanian authorities.

The committee is examining whether the conduct could warrant scrutiny under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and whether federal rules covering bribery, conflicts of interest, foreign agents and special government employees need to be strengthened, Raskin said.

The letter does not carry subpoena power. Raskin is in the minority on the committee, whose chairman is Republican Jim Jordan, and the letter was copied to Jordan rather than issued jointly with him. But it establishes a formal congressional record of the concerns raised by Democrats and puts pressure on Kushner to respond.

Raskin said he had first contacted Kushner in April over what he described as conflicts created by his simultaneous role in private investment and involvement in US foreign policy.

"From the standpoint of the American people, your decision to act simultaneously in these two roles - one public for the government and one private for personal profit - has created a glaring and incurable conflict of interest," Raskin wrote in his April letter, pointing to the fact that 97% of Affinity Partners' funds came from foreign government sovereign funds, related commercial entities and foreign nationals.

Neither Kushner nor Affinity Partners responded, according to Raskin. Committee staff also contacted the firm's chief legal and compliance officer, Ian Brekke, on May 7 but received no response.

Raskin's latest letter says the committee's concerns have since expanded following developments in Albania.

"You may have been too busy causing a new foreign policy fiasco in Albania after your yachting foray in the Adriatic to get back to us," he wrote.

Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, continues to run Affinity Partners while also participating in diplomatic efforts involving international conflicts. That combination has drawn scrutiny because the investment firm has substantial foreign-backed funding and investments.

Kushner acquired the site for more than $120mn from Albanian businessman Artur Shehu, whom Albanian authorities and media have linked to organised crime and drug trafficking. Reporting cited by Raskin's letter has alleged that Shehu used falsified property documents and that local residents warned Kushner about questions surrounding his ownership of the land.

Albanian prosecutors have frozen assets connected with the transaction while investigating suspected fraud. Reuters reported in July that the businessman who sold the land was suspected of falsifying deeds. Kushner has said he was unaware of any fraudulent claim to ownership.

Raskin's letter also raises allegations that Kushner's private security personnel assaulted local residents who protested against the transaction. The allegation is based on media reports and has not resulted in a charge against Kushner or his company.

Flamingo protests

The proposed development has become a flashpoint for environmental and political protests in Albania.

Kushner and his family became interested in the Albanian coast while yachting in the Adriatic. His wife, Ivanka Trump, has described the discovery of the area, while the planned development has focused attention on Sazan Island and nearby protected coastal territory.

The protests have become known as the "Flamingo Revolution", a reference to migratory birds found along the Zvernec coastline.

The movement has already forced the Albanian government to reconsider elements of the project. Prime Minister Edi Rama's administration suspended the resort in June after European lawmakers warned that it could jeopardise Albania's European Union accession process. The government subsequently agreed in July to amend legislation governing protected areas, changes that critics said were linked to the project.

The protest movement takes its name from the migratory birds on the Zvernec coastline, and it has already forced a government retreat. Edi Rama's administration suspended the resort in June after EU lawmakers warned it put the accession process at risk, and agreed in July to amend the protected areas law the project had depended on.

The movement has since become an international cause. Dua Lipa, Albania's best-known export, backed the protests in July, and a pro-Palestinian flotilla arrived to support them on August 22. A Chatham House study in June read the demonstrations as a case of a problem common to developing countries - a government trading environmental protection for foreign political access.

Raskin's letter presents the Albanian government's actions in similar terms, suggesting that concessions to Kushner could have been influenced by his close relationship with Trump and his involvement in US foreign policy.

The controversy also echoes a separate Kushner-linked development in neighbouring Serbia, where Affinity Partners had secured a 99-year lease for the bomb-damaged former General Staff complex in central Belgrade.

The Serbian government had granted the lease free of charge for a planned hotel and residential development. The project required the site to lose its protected status and for its damaged buildings to be demolished.

The project collapsed after Serbian prosecutors indicted four officials over abuse of office and forgery in connection with the project, and within hours Kushner's firm dropped it. Serbian students had spent months protesting against it, at one point forming a living wall around the site. The two disputes differ in their legal and political circumstances, but both have raised questions about the advantages governments may offer to investors connected to the Trump family.

The pattern in both countries is the same: a government that wants something from Washington offers a Trump-family-linked investor terms no ordinary bidder would get, on a site the public considers its own, and the legal defect in the concession turns out to be the thing that kills the deal. IntelliNews’ survey of Trump-linked Balkan investments in April flagged the transparency problem.

In both cases, opponents have argued that valuable or historically significant public assets were being transferred on unusually favourable terms, while governments pursued closer political and economic ties with Washington.

Raskin's intervention gives the Albanian dispute a new US political dimension. As ranking member, he cannot compel Kushner to provide the documents he has requested without support from the committee majority. But his letter puts specific allegations, dates and documentary requests into the congressional record.

 

Russia's saboteurs have followed the arms industry east into NATO

Slovakia, Estonia, Czechia and Germany have all had defence plants attacked or targeted this year. The recruits are hired online, paid in cryptocurrency and told to film the job. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin August 27, 2026

Slovak police foiled an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned drone factory near Presov this week, the first documented attempt of its kind in the country.

Officers from the anti-crime unit UBOK arrested three foreign nationals - two in Slovakia and one in Germany under a European arrest warrant - over a plot against a plant belonging to Skyeton, which builds the Raybird surveillance drone, Dennik N reported on August 25. They seized petrol thickened with polystyrene, tools, phones, an action camera and a hand-drawn map of the site. About 70 people were working in the building at the time.

"The recent attempted attack on our facility in Slovakia is further proof that Ukrainian defence manufacturers have become a real thorn in their side, and that we are on the right path," a Skyeton representative, whose identity was withheld for security reasons, told the Kyiv Independent. "The Russians regularly attempt to attack both our production facilities in Ukraine and our reputation."

Slovakia was the last of the Visegrad and Baltic states to be hit. It is not the last that will be, because what has changed is not Russian intent but the location of the target.

Four countries in six months

Russian-back partisans have been operating in Europe since hostilities broke out as far back as 2014, but now they appear to be scaling up as an asymmetric response to the mushrooming number of EU-Ukraine joint defence production projects as a result of Ukraine’s insatiable appetite for modern weapons.

In March, arsonists set fire to a plant in the Czech city of Pardubice belonging to Archer-LPP, a Ukrainian maker of thermal imaging equipment. This month three people were detained in Latvia over an arson attack on a building owned by Milrem Robotics, the Estonian firm that supplies unmanned ground vehicles to Ukraine. German investigators traced explosive drones found at an airport to the network behind the Lithuanian parcel bombs of 2025, and police a hidden weapons cache near Berlin to Russian intelligence on August 21.

Two more incidents this month were at munitions plants and neither has been attributed to anyone. An explosion at the EMCO plant at Belitsa, near Tryavna in Bulgaria, forced the evacuation of about 300 people on August 10; Bulgarian investigators assessed the cause as most likely internal, a truck fire that reached the warehouses. Three days later a fire and a large explosion hit the gunpowder unit at KNDS Ammo Italy's plant at Colleferro, near Rome, which makes 155mm shells for Ukraine. That cause is still under investigation.

The Bulgarian case is of note, as EMCO belongs to Emilian Gebrev, who was poisoned in 2015 in a case Bulgarian prosecutors linked to Russian military intelligence, and because Bulgaria has been here before: a series of arms depot explosions between 2011 and 2020 led Sofia to issue warrants for six Russian nationals.

Why here, and why now

The targets are consistently Ukrainian or Ukraine-supplying manufacturers operating inside Nato and EU countries, which is a cheaper way of degrading Kyiv's supply chain than trying to reach it inside Ukraine and a less politically charged way of striking the factories with Russian ICBMs.

It is also, increasingly, where the industry is. Ukrainian producers went looking for capacity and customers abroad as production scaled past 4mn drones a year; Skyeton announced its Slovak site at Haniska in spring 2024, put $3.5mn into it and expected up to 200 staff by the end of 2025. Last year it turned over €33mn, against just over €2mn in 2024, and made a net profit of €730,000 with about 100 employees.

European primes have moved the same way. Rheinmetall alone is building a €535mn ammunition powder factory in Romania, two plants in Bulgaria and more than €1.5bn of munitions capacity across the Balkans, plus a €400mn propellant powders joint venture in Romania. Central and Southeastern Europe has gone in three years from a place that bought weapons to a place that makes them, and the risk register has not caught up.

The method is disposable

Russian spies have a long history of operating on European soil from the Sergei Skripal poisoning case in the UK to the assassination of a Chechen rebel by Vadim Krasikov, a FSB hit man, in a Berlin park.

The action camera the Slovak police seized is the most informative item on the list. Arsonists working for themselves do not usually film the work. Filming it is how a recruited operative proves delivery to whoever is paying, and it is a recurring feature of the campaign that has run across the EU since 2022, in which Russian services have hired both foreign nationals and their own citizens through messaging apps and paid them in cryptocurrency to hit industrial and logistics sites.

And using freelancers is a cost effective and deniable way of sabotaging European defence establishments. A recruit costs a few thousand euros, has no prior intelligence connection, is often unaware who is paying, and is expendable if caught. The Slovak arrests followed a joint operation involving military intelligence; the German arrest came on a European warrant, which is the part of the system that works. What does not work is prevention: three people were stopped at Presov, and the state has no way of knowing how many others are being recruited this week.

The Skyeton plot also had a public-facing accompaniment. The destruction of the company was promoted on Facebook by the pro-Russian commentator Andrej Palko, though Dennik N noted there is no evidence linking his posts to the thwarted attack.

What it costs, and what it is meant to cost

Slovak police put the property at the Presov site in the tens of millions of euros. Set against the €1.5bn Rheinmetall is putting into the Balkans alone, one burned building is not a material blow to European production.

But the target was not the building per se. It is the insurance premium, the security cost, the board conversation about whether to put the next plant in Slovakia or Portugal, and the willingness of a Ukrainian company to keep manufacturing in a country where a jury may be asked to decide whether burning its factory down was sabotage or arson. Those costs land on every producer in the region, including the ones that have not been attacked.

In the meantime, Russia has been putting the conventional means to destroy European factories in place alongside the covert ones. The Kremlin suggested that a Wiltshire-based factory producing British-made Nyan drones that Ukraine has been using against Russian oil refiners is now a legitimate military target. Speculation has been swirling in the last weeks that Moscow is preparing to test Nato’s Article-5 resolve with attacks that is believed to have prompted an eight-hour visit to Moscow by CIA boss John Radcliffe this week to warn the Kremlin off.

Ten newly constructed drone bases on Russia’s boarder now put six Nato states within range, and US intelligence assessments reported this week hold that Moscow may try to test the alliance's collective defence commitment within the next few years - through sabotage, cyberattacks, unattributed armed groups or a limited local incursion. The first item on that list is the one already happening.

Missile War Monitor: two economies being taken apart, target by target

Ukraine goes after Russian refineries and warehouses. Russia goes after Ukrainian power and shops. A ledger of what has been hit since June, and how little of it is being stopped. / bne IntelliNews

By Ben Aris in Berlin August 27, 2026

Two target sets now define this war, and neither of them is military. Ukraine hits Russian oil refineries and the warehouses of its two big online retailers. Russia hits Ukraine's power system and its shops. Both sides describe the other's campaign as terrorism and their own as a legitimate military targets.

On the Russian side the refinery campaign has moved from raids that cost a plant a few days of repairs, to outages that last weeks. Ufa, Nizhnekamsk, Perm, Novokuybyshevsk, Afipsky, Novoshakhtinsk, Volgograd and now Kstovo have all been hit since mid-August, and the whole of Lukoil's major domestic refining is currently shut. Petrol, diesel and jet fuel exports are banned, motor oil prices are up 40%, a second wave of the fuel crisis is building and July crude output was the lowest in six years.

The retail campaign is the more expensive one. Between July 18 and August 24, the warehouse war got underway and drones hit 15 Wildberries logistics sites totalling about 1.8mn square metres, roughly a third of the company's entire warehouse estate, Kommersant calculates. Ozon has since been added to the target list, and its shares fell 28% in the last week.

Sellers on the two platforms now put their combined losses above RUB600bn ($7.1bn). Data Insight puts lost stock alone at between RUB517bn ($6.1bn) and RUB580bn ($6.9bn) for Wildberries sellers, and between RUB88.5bn ($1.05bn) and RUB107bn ($1.27bn) for Ozon's. Rebuilding the destroyed warehouses would cost a further RUB186bn ($2.2bn) to RUB344bn ($4.1bn) and RUB30bn ($356mn) to RUB62.5bn ($742mn) respectively.

On the Ukrainian side the power system is the constant target and the shops are the newer one. The Kryvyi Rih thermal power station can no longer generate at all after an August 18 strike; 90,000 customers lost supply in Kyiv on August 20; Kernel, the country's largest grain exporter, says it has lost about half its own generation. Two Epicentr megastores were hit in Odesa on August 24, three retail chains' Kyiv warehouses on August 20, and the largest shopping centre in Kryvyi Rih on August 21, killing 16 people.

Interception rates for the week of 18-25 August 2026. The Ukrainian Air Force stopped publishing its ballistic and hypersonic counts during August, which is why its weekly missile figure is partial and the open-source total is higher. Source: IntelliNews, based on publicly available sources.

Drones are still being shot down at better than four in five. Missiles are not, and against the ballistic and hypersonic weapons that carry the heaviest warheads the rate on August 20 was zero out of 23, with only two Patriot interceptors fired in the capital's defence. That is not a failure of the system but the absence of ammunition for it, and it is the reason the interceptor shortage has become the single most consequential number in the war.

Russia's own claims run the other way and are not credible as counts: its defence ministry says it neutralised 1,671 fixed-wing drones in the 24 hours to August 18 and 1,504 on August 20. It also says it shot down all eight to 11 Flamingo cruise missiles Ukraine fired on August 24.

Major strikes & targets

Strikes on economic infrastructure since 1 June 2026. Compiled by IntelliNews based on publicly available sources, including our own reporting and the Centre for Eastern Studies' war reports. Dates are of the strike where known and of first report otherwise; the list is of significant strikes on economic targets and is not exhaustive.

The pattern in the dates is a conversation. The Tambov warehouse strike of July 18 killed seven people and was followed the next day by the heaviest Russian bombardment of the war to that point. The Novorossiysk grain terminals went down in mid-August; the Odesa ports and the Danube crossings were hit through the rest of the month. Each side is now answering the other inside 48 hours, and both are aiming at the part of the other's economy that generates foreign currency.

Neither campaign is winning in the sense either government uses the word. Russia's refining is being removed faster than it can be rebuilt and its crude cannot be exported instead, because the ports and the tankers are being hit too. Ukraine's grain cannot leave and its power stations cannot be replaced before winter. The monitor exists to keep count of a process that has no obvious stopping point.

Russia Steps Up Multi-Front Pressure On Ukraine With Drones, Decoys, Missiles, And North Korean Forces – Analysis


Drone factory in Russian Republic of Tatarstan. Photo Credit: 

Screenshot of Russian media

August 27, 2026
Hudson Institute
By Can Kasapoğlu

Key Takeaways:

Russia is intensifying mixed-vector pressure on Ukraine with large Shahed/Gerbera drone salvos, missiles, and decoys—including repeated strikes on Ukraine–Moldova border crossings—while North Korean personnel and drone/missile units expand Moscow’s capacity.

Ground fighting remains heavy, with more than 200 daily engagements focused on Kostiantynivka, Pokrovsk, and other eastern axes.

The UK authorized release of classified Storm Shadow/SCALP data so France and Ukraine can set up local assembly, shifting support toward Ukrainian production capacity; Moscow has already threatened UK arms factories in response.

1. Battlefield Assessment

Long-range salvos enabled by missile and drone warfare continued to shape the war. Overnight on August 25, a Russian Shahed drone struck the Vynohradivka international road crossing between Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast and Moldova. The strike damaged infrastructure, temporarily closing the checkpoint and redirecting traffic elsewhere.

The strike was Russia’s third attack in two weeks on a Ukraine–Moldova border crossing. This pattern suggests a coordinated Kremlin campaign rather than a series of isolated strikes. Moscow is likely targeting the connective tissue of Europe’s eastern frontier.

On the night of August 24–25, Russia also attacked Ukraine with 150 Shahed-Gerbera loitering munitions. Moscow launched Iskander-M and Kh-31 missiles, as well as Parodiya decoy drones, including jet-powered variants. Ukrainian aircraft, missile and electronic-warfare units, interceptor drones, and mobile teams neutralized 124 unmanned aerial vehicles involved in the attacks. Nonetheless, Russia struck 17 locations in Ukraine.

The barrage illustrated how Russia has organized its concept of operations around mixed-vector pressure designed to exhaust Ukraine’s layered defenses. In May 2026, Ukrainian intelligence services estimated that Russia intended for half of its Shahed drone-warfare deterrent to be jet-powered variants of the loitering munition. Russian planners aimed to produce 500 such jet-powered drones per month and launch 60,000 long-range attack drones and 50,000 decoy drones over the course of a year. Ukraine’s recently unveiled jet-powered Alexa Spatium interceptor is one part of Kyiv’s answer to Russia’s strategy.

Additionally, North Korea’s role in Russia’s war continued to expand into the robotic warfare domain. Major General Vadym Skibitskyi, the deputy head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (GUR), reported that the Kremlin has deployed 8,500 North Korean personnel in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, including 400 drone operators assigned to reconnaissance and attack missions. A North Korean missile unit in Russia’s Voronezh Oblast could field six launchers and 120 ballistic missiles, supplementing the KN-23 and KN-24 missiles Pyongyang has already delivered.

The land-warfare segment of the conflict remained consistent with recent patterns. Combat activity remained elevated. Officials reported more than 200 tactical engagements daily. Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk bore the brunt of the fighting. The axes of Lyman, Sloviansk, Kupiansk, and Huliaipole also remained highly active.

2. Ukraine’s Storm Shadow Moment

On August 24, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham made a major announcement in Kyiv. He revealed that the United Kingdom had authorizedMBDA, a European multinational corporation that specializes in the design and production of missiles, to release classified data on the Storm Shadow/SCALP components. The decision enables France and Ukraine to establish local assembly lines to produce the missile, which to date has been produced primarily in the UK.

The UK first supplied Ukraine with the munition in 2023 and replenished its stocks in 2025. Storm Shadow, the UK variant of the joint Anglo-French cruise missile, has enabled Kyiv to strike command centers, air-defense positions, shipyards, logistics nodes, and hardened infrastructure beyond the front lines. Burnham’s announcement shifts British support for Ukraine from weapons transfers toward giving Kyiv greater control over its own strike capacity. The ability to manufacture the missile locally could reduce Ukraine’s dependence on European inventories and allow production to reflect Kyiv’s own adaptations and targeting priorities.

Moscow recognized the importance of Burnham’s announcement: Kremlin adviser Andrei Fedorov threatened British arms factories with “semi-military” attacks by “unknown sources.” This cryptic comment signaled Moscow’s potential willingness to expand the Ukraine conflict into Europe’s industrial rear through familiar methods of obscuring attribution, testing allied resolve, and raising the costs of supporting Kyiv. Russian strikes on UK manufacturing nodes could create production bottlenecks affecting engines, seekers, guidance systems, warheads, certification, financing, and launch aircraft.


Nonetheless, Russian threats only highlight the importance of the Storm Shadow/SCALP missile. MBDA describes the weapon as an air-launched deep-strike system for high-value fixed targets, including hardened bunkers and infrastructure. The missile operates in all weather, day or night, and combines inertial navigation, Global Positioning System capabilities, terrain referencing, low-altitude flight, and infrared image matching.

The munition provides Ukraine with precision, penetration, and survivability while allowing Kyiv to keep its launch aircraft beyond the reach of Russian air defenses. The missile’s dual-stage warhead can defeat hardened targets. Its principal limitation is that it is optimized for pre-planned fixed targets rather than mobile battlefield hunting. Regardless, domestic production of Storm Shadow/SCALP, previously available only in limited quantities, would allow Ukraine to sustain pressure on Russia’s operational depth.

3. What to Monitor in the Coming Weeks

Russia may intensify its shadow war against the UK in response to the transfer of Storm Shadow technology. Russian retaliation could include cyber intrusions, surveillance of MBDA-linked facilities, arson and sabotage carried out by criminal proxies, disruption of defense logistics, and attempted assassinations of senior British political, military, intelligence, or defense industry officials.

About the author: 

Can Kasapoğlu is a nonresident senior fellow at Hudson Institute. His work at Hudson focuses on political-military affairs in the Middle East, North Africa, and former Soviet regions. He specializes in open-source defense intelligence, geopolitical assessments, international weapons market trends, as well as emerging defense technologies and related concepts of operations.

Source: This article was published by the Hudson Institute

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Hudson Institute is a nonpartisan policy research organization dedicated to innovative research and analysis that promotes global security, prosperity, and freedom.
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Sloviansk is declared a combat zone as Ukraine's air defence stops firing back

Not one of 23 ballistic and hypersonic missiles aimed at Kyiv on August 20 was shot down, and only two Patriot interceptors were launched. Zelenskiy puts the defence funding gap at $27bn. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin August 27, 2026

Sloviansk, the anchor of Ukraine's Donbas fortress belt, has been designated an active combat zone by its own regional authorities.

The Donetsk Regional Military Administration made the designation on August 21, according to the Sloviansk has become a combat zone war report published on August 25 by Warsaw's Centre for Eastern Studies, or OSW.

It followed a heavy bombardment of Sloviansk and neighbouring Kramatorsk the day before, which killed one person and injured 24, and Russian troops pushing into the town of Mykolaivka, where the Sloviansk thermal power station sits idle.

The declaration is important after Kostiantynivka fell to the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) earlier this month – the first of the three so-called Donbas Fortress cites to be captured by Russia. Sloviansk and Kramatorsk are the other two cities.

The change of status for Sloviansk triggers a mandatory evacuation planning (including monetary compensation for residents), for the withdrawal of civil services and for the emergency legal regime that has preceded the loss of every large Ukrainian town since Bakhmut. Kyiv has spent two and a half years insisting the fortress belt would hold, but the defences of the strategic important cities appear to be crumbling.

The shape of the attack

Russian forces have made further gains on a broad front east of both cities but cannot yet close the pocket from the north, where Ukrainian counterattacks around Lyman are working, OSW said.

Four lines of pressure have taken shape: from the east towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, from the south-east and south-west towards Druzhkivka, from the south and east towards Dobropillia, and from the north and east through Lyman. Russian sabotage and reconnaissance groups have entered Dobropillia itself.

Increased volumes of drone around these towns have moved the frontline. FPV drones attacking Dobropillia and its surroundings have reached 1,200 a day, and those hitting Druzhkivka and its supply routes 1,500 to 2,000 a day, according to Ukrainian sources cited in the report. At that density the roads into a defended town stop working before the town does.

In Zaporizhzhia region the fighting is around Orikhiv, where Ukrainian counterattacks have pushed Russian infiltrators back out of the eastern districts, though the Russians have advanced to the north-east and, by some accounts, crossed the Verkhnia Tersa river.

 

Polish Olympic chief detained as Zondacrypto probe widens

Investigators are examining whether Radosław Piesiewicz received a material benefit from Zondacrypto chief Przemysław Kral. / Polski Komitet Olimpijski via FacebookFacebook

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By Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw August 28, 2026

Polish Olympic Committee (PKOl) president Radosław Piesiewicz was detained on August 27 as part of the ongoing investigation into the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Zondacrypto, Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek said.

The detention is the most visible development since prosecutors announced a “significant breakthrough” two days earlier, citing new evidence

Investigators are examining whether Piesiewicz received a material benefit from Zondacrypto chief Przemysław Kral.

Kral bought a €40,000 Patek Philippe watch later received by Piesiewicz, while their messages discussed Piesiewicz’s possible help with the exchange’s problems at Poland’s competition authority, TVN24 and Wirtualna Polska reported. Piesiewicz said he paid Kral cash for the watch.

Kral appears to have reached a cooperation arrangement with prosecutors and is seeking a reduced sentence in return for evidence, Onet reported. Prosecutors have not confirmed Kral’s status.

Kral is now represented by Roman Giertych, a lawyer and a prominent MP for the ruling Civic Coalition (KO) party, and also a fierce opponent of the radical right Law and Justice (PiS) party, which ruled Poland between 2015 and 2023.

Polish media have speculated that the inquiry will now center on Zondacrypto's financing of entities linked to PiS, such as a foundation close to the fugitive former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro (whose extraditon from the US Poland is seeking), the pro-PiS broadcaster TV Republika, and the CPAC conservative conference held in Poland last year that was effectively a campaign event for then-candidate Karol Nawrocki.

Nawrocki went on to win the presidency in June 2025 and has since vetoed the government-proposed bill to regulate the cryptoassets market three times, prompting Prime Minister Donald Tusk to hint that the president was too close to Zondacrypto.

The political strand of the Zondacrypto probe exists alongside the broader case, centred around the exchange's clients losing an estimated PLN2.4bn (€557mn).

The Polish government has also hinted that Russian organised-crime and intelligence money financed BitBay, Zondacrypto’s predecessor, but the supporting evidence remains undisclosed. 

The fraud investigation has been merged with a probe into the 2022 disappearance of BitBay founder Sylwester Suszek, who is feared dead by his family.

French PM visits Mayotte to speed up 'slow' reconstruction after cyclone

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu arrives in the French overseas territory of Mayotte on Wednesday to try to speed up the reconstruction of the archipelago, 18 months after Cyclone Chido caused widespread destruction.


Issued on: 26/08/2026 - RFI

Cyclone Chido had a devastating impact on shelters and houses in the town of Vahibe, on the outskirts of Mamoudzou. © PATRICK MEINHARDT / AFP

While Mayotte’s children returned to school on Monday, Lecornu said there was still a need to build and renovate schools following the deadly cyclone, which struck on 14 December, 2024.

He also raised the issue of delays in the delivery or opening of public facilities.

“These difficulties fuel an impatience that I understand and share,” he wrote in a letter to the mayors of the French Indian Ocean territory on Monday, adding that progress with the reconstruction was "too slow".

A law passed in August last year provides €4bn in funding over five years to repair damage caused by the cyclone, which devastated the archipelago and killed at least 40 people.


But only 12 percent of the funding committed and allocated for 2026 has been spent, the government said.

Lecornu promised to get projects approved under the law up and running.

Despite the delays, he stressed the “definitive and irreversible nature” of projects set out in the law, including a second hospital, a new airport, a second prison and a desalination plant.

Climate change made Cyclone Chido stronger: scientists

Immigration issues

This is Lecornu’s first visit to France’s overseas territories since he became prime minister in autumn 2025.

He is expected to visit a security post and an urban renewal area, and meet schoolchildren.

He is also due to address the Mayotte Assembly and meet mayors to discuss reconstruction efforts.

Leading trade unions, including the CFDT and CGT have called for strikes and demonstrations during his visit.

Unions are demanding higher wages to compensate for the high cost of living, as well as equal rights for residents of France’s overseas territories.

In his letter, Lecornu referred to upcoming decisions on tackling illegal immigration. Around half of Mayotte’s 323,000 residents are foreign nationals, according to France’s national statistics agency Insee. Most of them are from neighbouring Comoros.

Anchya Bamana, an MP from the far-right National Rally, has called on the prime minister to dismantle the Tsoundzou 2 camp, where more than 1,000 asylum seekers live in poor conditions. She also called for a French Navy vessel to be deployed to improve surveillance of the coast.

France and Comoros clash over migrants lost in Mayotte cyclone disaster

Presidential candidate visits

A number of leading politicians have begun visiting the predominantly Muslim territory, where far-right leader Marine Le Pen won 59 percent of the vote in the second round of the 2022 presidential election.

She is expected to remain the favourite in Mayotte in the 2027 presidential election in April and May

Former prime minister Edouard Philippe, a candidate for the centre-right Horizons party, visited Mayotte last week and made a series of proposals aimed at “closing the immigration floodgates” on the archipelago

, prompting criticism from the left.

Republican presidential candidate Bruno Retailleau visited before the March local elections to denounce a state that “no longer responds to emergencies” over insecurity and “migratory pressure”.

Lecornu has promised to return to the archipelago in early 2027 and set up an inter-ministerial monitoring committee before then.

(with newswires)

French soldiers disciplined over Rhodesian flags linked to white supremacists

France's Ministry of the Armed Forces has launched disciplinary proceedings against several soldiers photographed holding flags linked to Rhodesia, a former white minority-ruled territory in southern Africa whose symbols have been embraced by white supremacists.


Issued on: 26/08/2026 - RFI

France's Ministry of the Armed Forces has launched disciplinary proceedings against several soldiers photographed displaying Rhodesian flags, which have become associated with white supremacist movements. AFP - LUDOVIC MARIN

Two separate groups of French soldiers – one in Nîmes in southern France and another in the United Arab Emirates – have been pictured displaying the same banner, with the images later shared in online groups glorifying the former British colony – which operated a white-minority ruled system similar to South African apartheid – investigative website Mediapart revealed.

One image posted on social media shows three soldiers holding a flag with three green and white stripes. At its centre is a coat of arms depicting a pick axe on a green background, flanked by antelopes and topped with a golden bird.

Another image shows four French soldiers in front of a tank holding the same banner.

The Ministry of the Armed Forces said the soldiers involved had been identified and disciplinary proceedings were under way. It said the two incidents were separate, with no connection between the soldiers involved or their activities.

“The ministry's position is unambiguous: French armed forces do not tolerate any manifestation of a racist, supremacist or extremist nature,” it said.

“Military personnel are subject to a particular requirement of exemplary conduct and neutrality, which also applies to their behaviour and posts on social media.”

Defying decolonisation

Rhodesia's prime minister, Ian Smith, unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November, 1965 in an effort to preserve political power for the white European minority – which made up just 5 percent of the population, fewer than 250,000 people.

Rhodesia's green and white flag was first raised on 11 November, 1968, three years after Smith's declaration, which was made without British agreement or international recognition.

“Rhodesia wanted to signal to the world what it regarded as a betrayal: the fact that the United Kingdom was accepting the decolonisation of Africa,” South African historian Saul Dubow, who teaches Commonwealth history at the University of Cambridge, said.

Rhodesian propaganda portrayed the territory as “threatened by Communism” and therefore forced to defend “civilised standards”.

In practice, this meant defending the social and political superiority of white people, Zimbabwean researcher Bruce Berry wrote in his thesis on Rhodesian identity and its symbols.

African nationalist movements resisted Smith's government, particularly Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union, known as ZAPU, and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union, or ZANU.

The conflict between Rhodesia's white minority government and African nationalist movements became known as the Bush War, or Second Chimurenga. It killed thousands of people, most of them African nationalists and civilians, and led to the militarisation of Rhodesian society.

As this civil war intensified in the country during the 1970s, Rhodesia became heavily dependent on neighbouring South Africa, then operating an apartheid regime, for its survival.

Negotiations and a ceasefire followed, and Rhodesia became the independent and renamed state of Zimbabwe on 18 April, 1980 – with ZANU leader Mugabe as prime minister.

Military mythology

With the white population having rallied behind its soldiers and the country's founding myths, those narratives survived beyond the ceasefire and the birth of the new country, feeding nostalgia for a “heroic” past – one in which the suffering of the black population was concealed.

“There is an enormous body of literature written by people who took part in the Bush War. They celebrate their victory and talk about black people in very insulting terms,” Dubow explained.

Many white Rhodesians, he said, became convinced that they had not lost the war, but had instead been abandoned by their leaders and cheated by politics.

“It is the myth of the small white minority that resisted the black majority for 15 years,” said Hugh W Macmillan, a professor from the region.

That fascination with Rhodesia's military past has also surfaced among soldiers elsewhere.

In 2018, Canada's military opened an investigation into some of its personnel accused of running a website selling equipment and memorabilia inspired by the "Fireforce" – a tactic developed by Rhodesian forces to surround and attack independence fighters in the bush.

Flags from apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia were among the items sold by the online shop.

Symbol of a 'lost cause'

In some white supremacist circles, Rhodesia provides a similar function to the southern Confederate States in the United States, with both seen as “lost causes” unjustly condemned by history.

In June 2015, white supremacist Dylann Roof opened fire in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine African American worshippers who had gathered for bible study.

Roof had written a racist manifesto published on a website called The Last Rhodesian. In a photograph that became notorious, he wore the former orange, white and blue South African flag on his jacket lapel, with the green and white Rhodesian flag immediately below it.

As Berry wrote in his thesis: “These flags – Rhodesian and South African – are popular in white supremacist circles because they allow people to signal their beliefs to others who share the same ideas, without exposing themselves as openly as they would by wearing or displaying a swastika."

This article has been adapted from the original version in French by Liza Fabbian