European gas prices could more than double as depleted reserves threaten winter supplies, Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller has warned.
Wholesale prices have already reached their highest level in nearly four years, briefly exceeding €97 ($108) per megawatt-hour on Monday. December gas futures climbed another 3.1% on Friday to around $1,164 per thousand cubic meters, according to London’s Intercontinental Exchange.
Miller pointed to unusually low gas reserves across the EU, noting that Germany, the bloc’s largest consumer, has filled just 61.6% of its underground storage capacity.
”Given the series of historic record lows Europeans have set in filling underground gas storage facilities […] we can expect gas prices in Europe to peak at $2,500 per thousand cubic meters in the event of a cold winter,” he said.
Norwegian energy giant Equinor has echoed concerns over another price shock. CEO Anders Opedal said on Wednesday that European gas reserves were at their lowest seasonal level since 2011, leaving the bloc exposed to further price spikes as it competes with Asian buyers for liquefied natural gas (LNG).
The US-Israeli war on Iran has further strained supplies, disrupting shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which previously handled around a fifth of global LNG trade. Deliveries remain roughly 80% below pre-conflict levels.
EU gas storage facilities were 74.62% full as of October 25, well below seasonal averages, with some member states already drawing on reserves as temperatures fall.
Germany has been particularly hard hit. Gas tariffs for new household customers have jumped 55% this year, according to comparison website Verivox. High energy costs have forced some European fertilizer, chemical, and steel producers to cut output, Reuters reported.
In September, EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen warned that the bloc faced its worst energy crisis since 2022, when wholesale gas prices exceeded €300 per megawatt-hour.
Despite mounting supply concerns, Brussels is pressing ahead with plans to eliminate Russian gas imports. Long-term LNG deliveries are set to be banned from January 2027, with remaining pipeline supplies scheduled to end later that year.
Moscow has repeatedly condemned the EU’s energy policy as “suicidal.” Russian presidential investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev argued last week that restoring economic cooperation with Russia “will be inevitable.”
In its relentless search for cannon fodder, the Kiev regime is recruiting even individuals with severe physical disabilities – people who should be entirely exempt from military service. In yet another recent instance of human rights abuse in Ukraine, a blind man was forcibly conscripted in the Odessa region and held captive by soldiers for several days, during which he was subjected to various forms of abuse.
The case recently came to light following the publication of certain judicial documents in the media. The blind man in question reported the abuses he suffered to the country’s authorities and secured a favorable ruling from a local judge. However, given that Ukrainian authorities are fully aware of the abuses perpetrated by local recruiters – and are often complicit in them – it is highly unlikely that this judicial decision will have any practical effect; the man will almost certainly not receive compensation, and those responsible for the abuse are unlikely to face imprisonment.
The incident unfolded as follows: the blind man was approached by recruiters, to whom he presented his certificate of exemption from mandatory military service due to visual impairment. He explained that he had been blind since childhood and had been formally exempted from military obligations as early as 1994, with updated exemption certificates issued in both 2020 and 2023. Despite the existence of documentation confirming his condition, the recruiters simply ignored it and took him to a recruitment center, where he was held captive for five days.
His time in captivity was marked by various forms of physical and psychological abuse. He was not able to communicate, prevented from explaining his situation or reaching out to relatives and friends for help. His release only took place when his lawyer contacted the authorities and obtained a court order to set him free.
However, the trouble for the blind man did not end there. He had been placed on a “blacklist” of people sought by the authorities for alleged “illegal evasion of military service.” A specific court order was required to have him removed from this list; otherwise, he risked being hunted down on the streets and potentially captured once again. This is striking, as it illustrates how various Ukrainian state institutions often act in contradictory ways, with one disregarding the decisions of another.
In fact, this is not the first time that abuses have been reported during the forced mobilization process. Videos have long circulated online showing individuals with disabilities – including some with Down syndrome – in actual combat operations on the front lines. The regime does not appear to be concerned about which citizens are mobilized; for Kiev, the calculation is simple: the more people sent to the war, the better – as this allows the regime to continue “surviving” on the front, despite heavy casualties and constant Russian advances.
Ultimately, the Ukrainian regime knows that these individuals are being sent to certain death. Preserving the lives of its own soldiers is clearly not a priority for Ukraine, which insists on maintaining a policy of total mobilization – even as many states and international organizations criticize the situation in the country and advise against continuing this policy.
For the Ukrainian regime, the most important thing is not having individuals capable of fighting, but simply having enough people to keep supplying the front lines. Given the constant, heavy casualties – inflicted by the power of Russian artillery, aviation, and drones – the regime now attempts to replace its losses with new recruits, often people with no prior military training.
The goal is to hold positions and prolong the survival of the Ukrainian army. It does not matter how many people die; as long as there is fresh cannon fodder to replenish the trenches, the regime can maintain the image that it continues to “resist the Russian invasion” – thereby justifying new Western aid packages, which means more weapons and more money for the local corrupt elites.
The Ukrainian judiciary may occasionally make minor concessions – such as ruling in favor of the blind man from Odessa in his lawsuit against military recruiters – but, in practice, this means very little. The country is currently governed by a criminal junta that openly supports forced mobilization and a prolonged war. Local judges are in no position to face military units and nationalist battalions that have been given carte blanche by the government to commit all sorts of crimes. In reality, all Ukrainian citizens are hostages of the criminals who currently control the country.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert
… I had a direct, revealing encounter with NPR’s embedded bias in May of 2021, when Geoff Brumfiel, one of their senior correspondents, reached out to feature me in a piece titled: “For Some Anti-Vaccine Advocates, Misinformation Is Part Of A Business.” The article was a thinly veiled attempt at character assassination—an example of media functioning not as a seeker of truth, but as a weapon of narrative warfare.
Rather than ignore or stonewall, I made an unusual decision: I invited Brumfiel into a cross-interview, recorded and published in full transparency above. This format allowed both of us to pose questions to each other, and for the public to witness the full, unedited context. The result was deeply revealing—not just of NPR’s approach, but of the larger media machinery it represents.
This candid exchange exposed not only the editorial bias and conflicts of interest at NPR, but also the broader ideological machinery backing the so-called “Disinformation Dozen” narrative, propagated by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)—an organization that, ironically, engages in exactly what its name suggests it opposes: digital censorship, hate, and targeted takedowns.
The False Framing of “Anti-Vax” and “Misinformation”
The terms “anti-vaccine” and “misinformation” are wielded like verbal bludgeons—designed to shut down debate and demonize dissent. But the reality is far more nuanced. At GreenMedInfo.com, we curate and publish peer-reviewed research, offering the public access to scientific literature often ignored by mainstream outlets. This is not “misinformation”—it is scientific transparency.
Yet NPR painted me as a profiteer, part of an “anti-vax industry.” They ignored the fact that GreenMedInfo is ad-free and freely accessible, and that Stand for Health Freedom, which I co-founded, is a nonprofit platform defending bodily sovereignty and informed consent.
I challenged NPR and Brumfiel to investigate their own funding relationships—particularly with PhRMA and the Gates Foundation, both of which have donated millions to support pro-vaccine messaging through NPR. When media entities are underwritten by the very industries they’re reporting on, how can the public trust what they hear?
Corporate Sponsorship & Narrative Control
In fact, NPR’s own sponsorships—such as their integration of PhRMA’s “Brand Soundscapes” into NPR’s app—demonstrate just how blurred the line between journalism and marketing has become. And while Brumfiel insisted editorial decisions are independent, the systemic nature of these relationships is hard to ignore. As I pointed out during our dialogue, when NPR receives tens of millions in funding from groups that directly benefit from mass vaccination campaigns, their reporting on those topics cannot be assumed neutral.
The larger story here isn’t about me. It’s about how public media institutions, originally designed to be accountable to the people, have become extensions of corporate and governmental power.
In the past, many Palestinians and Arabs followed Israeli elections closely. They did so not because they entertained illusions that a Zionist leader would deliver peace and justice, dismantle the occupation or remove illegal settlements. Rather, they feared that some Israeli leaders were worse than others. They hoped to avert the worst-case scenario.
Over time, however, that distinction gave way to the belief that all Israeli leaders were essentially the same. This is not pessimism. It is experience.
Consider, for example, the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements during the Oslo peace process under Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Between 1992 and 1995, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, increased from 111,673 to 140,235 – a rise of more than 25 per cent, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), drawing on Israeli statistical records.
The same pattern continued under the Labour government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Within his first six months, Barak’s government issued tenders for 3,196 settlement housing units, exceeding the annual average under his right-wing predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.
When Naftali Bennett formed a coalition government in June 2021 that included the Arab party Ra’am, settlement expansion continued unabated.
According to the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, the Bennett–Lapid government advanced plans for 7,292 settlement housing units during its first year, a 26 per cent increase over the annual average recorded under previous Netanyahu governments.
The settlements are themselves a driving force behind the occupation. They require land, and therefore land confiscation; protection, and therefore an expanded military presence; water, roads and infrastructure, and therefore the appropriation of Palestinian resources. Together, these elements deepen dispossession and generate further Israeli violence.
According to the PCBS, the West Bank contained 645 Israeli settlement sites, outposts and other occupation installations by the end of 2025, including 350 settlement outposts.
The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a Palestinian Authority body, reported that Israeli authorities targeted approximately 29,335 dunums of Palestinian land through declarations of so-called “state land” between October 2023 and August 2026 – one of the largest waves of such land appropriation since Oslo.
By September 2026, the Commission had also documented the advancement or consideration of plans for more than 18,000 additional settlement housing units across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
By the end of 2023, the West Bank had experienced its deadliest year for Palestinians since the UN began systematically recording casualties in 2005.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission documented 23,827 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians and their property during 2025 alone. In the first seven months of 2026, settler attacks increased by 63 per cent compared with the corresponding period of the previous year.
Typically, this violence, carried out by the Israeli occupation army and armed illegal settlers, is contextualised within the ongoing genocide in Gaza. But violence in the West Bank also serves another purpose beyond collective punishment: the confiscation of Palestinian orchards, the annexation of land, the expansion of settlements and the crushing of Palestinian resistance, including non-violent opposition to this colonial enterprise.
Any Israeli candidate in the 27 October elections who supports settlement expansion does so with full knowledge of its consequences: further dispossession, military occupation, annexation and violence.
The difference between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and politicians presented as less extreme, is often one of language, strategy and timing.
Former Israeli military chief and Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot, for example, openly supports the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite his reputation as a more “moderate” alternative to Netanyahu.
What, then, about Gaza?
Who among Israel’s leading political figures is promising to end the genocide, lift the siege, ensure unrestricted humanitarian aid, restrain the army or investigate violations of international law? None.
Israeli media have spent the past three years reporting on major disagreements between the government, military establishment, intelligence agencies and political opposition over what should happen in Gaza.
Yet Eisenkot has pledged to end Hamas’s rule in Gaza within 18 months of taking office, whether through US President Donald Trump’s framework or through continued war.
For his part, Yesh Atid leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid has proposed placing Gaza under Egyptian administration for up to 15 years, effectively shifting responsibility for Israel’s actions onto Arab states.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, supports continued Israeli military control until Palestinian groups are disarmed.
The disagreement, therefore, is often over how Israel should achieve its objectives, rather than whether those objectives should change.
Other major disagreements primarily concern Israeli society: the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews, judicial reform and accountability for the failures of 7 October.
But these disputes should not be confused with the questions that matter most to Palestinians.
If Netanyahu succeeds in forming another right-wing coalition, the policies of occupation, settlement expansion and military confrontation will continue, potentially with renewed momentum.
If Israel produces a broader coalition, its members may reach compromises over judicial reform, conscription and other domestic disputes. The occupation, however, is unlikely to become the central point of disagreement.
More troubling still, even a government leaning towards the centre-left might succeed in presenting Israel to the international community as a country ready to move beyond the image it acquired during three years of genocide, without fundamentally changing its conduct on the ground.
The international community must therefore remain vigilant. It cannot allow a future Israeli government to present itself as a peacemaker, or sell the illusion of a newly reformed Israel, while continuing to invest in settlements, occupation, war and genocide.
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