Signal No. 140 · Kallas's group, withdrawn

On Sunday afternoon the roughly 150 people invited to Monday morning's launch of the High-Level Group on Defence, a fireside conversation with Kaja Kallas at the Bibliothèque Solvay for the institutions, NATO, academia and the think tanks, were told the event would not take place; on Monday her spokesman confirmed that, after discussions with ministers, the initiative would not proceed. Kallas had announced the group at the defence ministers' informal in Wicklow on 1 September as "senior political and military leaders from several EU countries, but also from UK and Ukraine", sitting "under my auspices", meant to look "beyond institutions" and to deliver "a report setting out concrete recommendations for Europe's defence", with the names to be revealed at the launch. Christian Wigand said: "Some Member States felt that this was not the right path to take at this time", and that after discussions with ministers "we have decided not to take the initiative any further"; the High Representative "is exploring new ways to engage with Member States". Commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho said the countries concerned "did not support" it and are "in a better position to explain why".

Politico, citing three diplomats, reported that Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO's secretary general from 2009 to 2014, was to chair the group, with Jüri Luik, Estonia's former defence minister and ambassador to NATO, and Florence Parly, France's armed forces minister from 2017 to 2022, among the members. Eunews reports that France and Germany withheld their support and that Italy did not back the initiative. The objections relayed through Politico were three: overlap with the work of Andrius Kubilius, the defence commissioner; insufficient preparation and coordination with capitals; and, from one EU official, a dispute inside Italian domestic politics over which names would be put forward. None of the three governments has given a reason on the record. The group would have carried no budget, no legislative role and no authority over forces or procurement; its output was to be one report.

The Wicklow informal that produced the announcement also produced, the same day, no release of expiring Patriot interceptors from Greece and Spain, on one Dutch minister's account, and Kallas's "no concrete success today"; that was carried in No. 136. Sunday's withdrawal came six days later, after what Wigand called discussions with ministers.

Witkoff and Kushner sat with Putin for over three hours on Saturday. Yuri Ushakov, Putin's aide, called the talks "substantive, very frank and constructive", and said the Americans "put forward a number of ideas on possible routes to a settlement"; the same readout recorded that "the Russian army's successes were noted; confidence was expressed that the set objectives would be achieved". Peskov, on Saturday: "The Russian president, the commander-in-chief, has given the order from midnight tonight not to strike Kyiv for three days." Zelenskyy: Ukraine is "ready to observe a halt in aerial strikes on the cities involved in the negotiating process", through Monday; the two formulations do not give one end time. Putin declined Kyiv's proposal of a wider truce along the front. On Sunday the envoys held three rounds in Kyiv, one with the national security advisers of Britain, France and Germany. Zelenskyy afterwards: "If the war continues — and we expect the war will continue — we are counting heavily on the winter aid package"; territorial questions "can only be resolved at the level of leaders"; US production of anti-ballistic interceptors rises "next year". Kushner said it would be productive to "go back to the trilateral format".

At Monday's briefing Peskov said: "We also do not rule out the resumption of this trilateral format", that "it is premature to speak about the venue and exact timing", and that a call between the presidents "may take place following the visit of the American negotiators". Asked whether the American proposals differ from those discussed at Anchorage: "No, I cannot tell you that." He called it "a small step towards peace". Witkoff wrote on X in the evening that "substantive progress was made, including movement on scheduling additional trilateral talks". Élysée sources told Ukrinform that "the groundwork for this process has been laid", linked any renewed Russian readiness to negotiate to the period after the State Duma elections, and said the E3 sat in "to demonstrate our commitment to ensuring that certain parameters of the negotiations are respected", naming territory, sanctions, reparations and security guarantees. A US official told the Kyiv Independent that Trump would call Putin first and Zelenskyy second, likely on Monday; neither call had been reported by 19:00 CEST. The Kyiv Independent, citing people familiar with the talks, reports that Putin rejected a truce covering energy infrastructure and repeated the demand for withdrawal from Donbas.

Russia paused strikes on Kyiv; Ukraine said it would refrain from striking Moscow through Monday; nothing else was covered. The Russian ministry's published list for Saturday night, 258 drones over fourteen regions, Crimea and two seas, did not include Moscow region, and it claimed 306 for Sunday night; Ukraine's General Staff and Zelenskyy claimed the Ryazan refinery on both nights, an airfield, a radar and two Pantsir systems in Rostov region, and on Monday Lukoil's Perm refinery and a plant in Tatarstan; Perm's governor reported one person killed. Over Ukraine the air force counted 108 drones and Banderol munitions on Saturday night with 88 downed, and 92 drones on Sunday night with 71 downed; the Orlivka crossing to Romania was hit a second time in a week. On Monday evening Kyiv's city military administration declared a drone alert as monitoring channels reported drones heading for the capital; a house and a car in Brovary district and a warehouse in Boryspil district were damaged, nothing in the city. Neither side has said what follows the pause.

At 16:58 Moscow time the Russian foreign ministry said notes had been handed to Germany's chargé d'affaires: the consulate-general in St Petersburg "must cease its activity no later than 18 September 2026", with all staff to leave Russia by that date, and the Goethe-Institut's sites are to stop work at once, their seconded staff to leave by 13 September. The ministry called Berlin's closure of the Bonn consulate-general and the Russisches Haus "unfriendly actions" and wrote that "full responsibility for the consequences rests entirely with the government of the Federal Republic". A Foreign Office spokesperson in Berlin, via dpa: "This decision is a regrettable mistake that makes the way back to constructive relations even harder"; Germany had responded "in a determined but also measured way to hostile activities against our country". On Sunday Sergei Lavrov, interviewed by Pavel Zarubin, described the Leipzig case, in which Berlin named Russia on 1 September, as "the beginning of such a real war"; Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt had said on 1 September that Germany is not at war but is a daily target of hybrid warfare.

The Goethe closure was announced by Lavrov on Thursday and Berlin said on Friday it saw "no further need to react", as No. 139 carried; the consulate is Monday's addition, and its date is the one Berlin set for Bonn.

On Monday afternoon, after reports of "a suspicious person in the vicinity of the Weisweiler power plant" near Aachen, Cologne police found "several launch devices at a high-voltage line" by the plant and closed the A4 in both directions between Eschweiler-Ost and Langerwehe while the area was searched; the motorway reopened after 18:00. The police appeal asks: "Who made observations today that could be connected with the setting up of launch ramps?", and for wildlife-camera footage, through the state's tip portal. Weisweiler was searched on Friday after the confession letters named it; Monday's devices are a new placement, and police have not said whether they fired. In the night to Monday a hole was found in the fence of a substation in Kreis Wesel, traces secured, no further evidence; a spokesperson: "We are now sensitised with regard to such facilities and patrol there more." Sunday's search near Kerpen and the Hambach forest ended at about 19:00 without result.

On Saturday the Saxon state criminal office defused twelve home-made explosive devices found on Friday evening at lines south of the Bärwalde substation near Lippen and east of the Graustein substation near Schleife, in the Lusatian lignite field; no damage and no outage, and the Dresden prosecutor general is examining the link to Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia. Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia police published a joint wanted notice with two photographs of the 48-year-old from Gevelsberg the same day; a 60-strong investigation group is reading the documents seized from him for further sites, and police believe he may be moving by bicycle. Interior Minister Dobrindt's characterisation was probable "climate terrorism" by a lone actor; Herbert Reul: "No ideology serves as an excuse." The federal prosecutor general's examination of a takeover, reported on Thursday, had produced no announcement by Monday evening.

Assemblies at the five Spanish sites voted on Monday on whether to keep the indefinite strike called from 25 August, after Friday's preliminary agreement at the industry ministry that No. 139 itemised: real CPI plus 7.95 points over four years to 2029, telework kept, a binding referendum in September. Cádiz, Tablada and Illescas voted to suspend; San Pablo in Seville voted to continue; Getafe, with more than 8,000 of the 14,000 employees and the A330 MRTT conversion line, and Albacete had not reported by El Español's 17:08 update or by our deadline. Union sources told Europa Press that participation was below ten per cent of the workforce. UGT had been reported on Friday among the signatories; on Monday it issued a statement of "absolute rejection" of the "attempt at manipulation", said it "has signed no agreement or preliminary agreement whatsoever with the company", and keeps the 12 September demonstration in Madrid; CGT and ÚTIL, the two unions kept out of Friday's table, called it. The referendum date is not set.