Signal No. 184 · Kushner lists five goals for European security

Late on Thursday, Washington time, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and envoy, set out the aims of what he called "a broader European security architecture", in a post written, he said, with the office of Steve Witkoff, the special envoy. "We are exploring five principal goals", it says: "permanent security consultations, reliable crisis communications, greater military transparency, reciprocal measures to reduce escalation risks, and an enduring framework for long-term European security and stability". The aim is "practical arrangements that address the security concerns of all sides". Each country would keep authority over its own security and alliances, "no country would have a veto over another's sovereign choices", and "NATO will remain central to European collective defense"; the initiative "would build upon existing institutions and commitments". Consultations continue in what the post calls the Shell Bay format, with Ukraine, NATO, the EU and European partners, and Russia is to be engaged "as part of the peace negotiations". Shell Bay is the Florida golf club, developed by Witkoff, where US and Ukrainian negotiators met in November 2025.

The post followed a meeting in Brussels on Thursday of US, Ukrainian, NATO, EU and other European officials. The same day Trump received Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin's investment envoy, at the White House and told reporters a settlement "might involve all of Europe". For next week's US–Ukraine–Russia talks in Abu Dhabi, the first in that format since February, the post says Washington will consult European partners "on the sidelines" and, "if progress is made", aim for a broader format "with their direct participation".

Trump called Friedrich Merz overnight, and on Friday Stefan Kornelius, the government spokesman, said Germany agrees with Washington on four basic points: the war in Ukraine must end before a European security order can be discussed; there can be an agreement only "when everything is agreed"; NATO allies must be on board by consensus; and talks on peace in Ukraine concern Europe at its core and will not achieve their aim without European participation. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the discussion would "turn to the future security system in Europe" once Russia and Ukraine talk about mutual guarantees, that this was impossible "without the Europeans at some stage", and that, as for European ideas, "we have not received any". In a letter to Giorgia Meloni on Thursday, Antonio Costa, the European Council president, took note of her request to discuss the EU's role in the talks at the informal European Council in Dublin on 13 November and said he would make time for it; the EU's participation, he wrote, "must be organized in a manner that enables it to convey a clear and unified message", the Kyiv Independent reports.

The hoax bomb threats widened on Friday. NATO issued an alpha scramble, the order for quick-reaction fighters to intercept at once, for three airliners under threat in Hungarian airspace, Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, the defence minister, said: an Airbus A321 from Brussels to Sofia and two flights out of Prague, to Cyprus and to Bucharest. Hungarian Gripens already airborne on a training flight responded. As the airliners left Hungarian airspace, NATO ordered the pair to patrol near the Serbian and then the Romanian border. The French prime minister's office counted four new threats against aircraft over France; all the aircraft landed safely.

In Dublin, RTÉ evacuated its Donnybrook campus after a threat sent by email to the broadcaster and to other media in Ireland and Britain; Mediahaus and Independent News Media briefly cleared their offices. Bulgaria's Nova TV received a message under the same headline. Headlined "Message to the West" and purportedly from "Mikhail Andropov", it claimed responsibility for the threats against flights; Reuters could not establish who sent it or whether it came from the same source as those threats. An RTÉ reporter read out excerpts of the email, which claimed its sender planned to blow up Europe's "airplanes, cruise ships, subway stations and trains", CNN reports. The Irish government said it was not yet known whether individuals or a co-ordinated effort were responsible, but that "it seems likely that this is a co-ordinated campaign of disruption". Micheál Martin, the Taoiseach, said gardaí, the Defence Forces, and cyber and aviation authorities are working to establish who is behind it, "as are their European counterparts". José Manuel Albares, Spain's foreign minister, said "the most reasonable assumption" was an attempt at hybrid aggression and psychological warfare. No government has said who sent them.