Analysis: Europe — 24 October 2026
Albanian students clash with police in bid to oust Edi Rama
Student-led protests in Tirana entered a more violent phase last Saturday, the fifth and fiercest day of unrest lasting more than a week. UnHerd’s Aris Roussinos, reporting from the boulevard outside the Prime Minister’s Office, describes petrol bombs against armoured trucks, tear gas, water cannon and a car set alight and rolled at police lines. Teenage demonstrators took sanctuary in the Catholic cathedral grounds. The demand is the resignation of Edi Rama’s Socialist government, elected last year to a fourth consecutive term, and its replacement by a caretaker cabinet before new polls.
The same boulevard hosted the largely peaceful “Flamingo Revolution” from May, aimed at alleged corruption and a Jared Kushner-linked coastal project at Zvërnec. Conservative critic Genc Pollo told UnHerd that mockery and police force, rather than concessions, turned discontent into confrontation. Football ultras and older men have joined students. Chants now include the wartime Balli Kombëtar slogan “Albania for Albanians, Death to Traitors.” Democratic Party vice-chairman Belind Këlliçi called Rama head of “the first narco-state in Europe.” The government, which declined a live interview, blamed antifa, “neo-Communists”, “neo-Ballists”, the opposition and Iran. Conspiracy theories about Israeli crowd-control aid circulate among some protesters.
A Socialist insider warned UnHerd that imported inflation, a fatality, or an all-or-nothing demand that Rama quit before talks could make the crisis unmanageable. Këlliçi claimed Rama’s circle wanted a death to justify ending the protests. Politico Europe, by contrast, folds Tirana into a wider cost-of-living “winter of discontent.” The UnHerd dispatch points instead to a specifically Albanian collision of corruption charges, nationalist rhetoric and an attempt to collapse the government. Whether the street can force a constitutional exit in an EU candidate state remains open.
Sources: UnHerd, Politico Europe.
Russia and Ukraine signal talks as Europe still talks of victory
In recent days both Moscow and Kyiv have indicated willingness to resume negotiations on a peace deal, UnHerd reports. Anatol Lieven and Ted Snider argue those signals matter only if Brussels and Kyiv make a joint offer on terms Russia might accept. In their analysis, one reason for Russian intransigence is the belief that European governments are not interested in a settlement and will try to block one.
Ukrainian opposition MP Oleksiy Honcharenko has said Ukraine is “losing the war” and lacks funds “to operate the country.” Russia’s air campaign against energy and transport is wrecking industry and, the authors write, Ukraine’s practical path into the EU—which Moscow has said it does not oppose in principle. The World Bank puts reconstruction at $588 billion, a figure that would rise if fighting continues into spring. France’s Marine Le Pen, currently favourite for next summer’s presidential election, has said she would end French aid. Lieven and Snider propose a settlement that keeps most of Ukraine independent, with a real EU track and a deterrent, but without Nato membership. They treat Russian objections to Nato expansion as historically grounded in late-Cold-War assurances and Ukraine’s former constitutional neutrality, and argue Kyiv would have to accept the loss of occupied territory and official minority status for the Russian language.
European official language still implies a “just” peace and Ukrainian victory, while fiscal capacity, French politics and the battlefield point the other way. Whether Brussels will treat a frozen-line deal as success rather than defeat is unresolved. The authors ask whether another year of war would leave Ukraine with worse terms and a wrecked economy.
Sources: UnHerd.