From the primacy in the skies to a genuine concern. This is what the continent has been talking about this week.

In today’s special supplement, we bring you to Greece, where citizens will be called to the polls on Sunday to choose who will drive the country on the right path.

Jets set

This week, the Heads of State and Prime Ministers of 46 countries are gathering in Iceland for the fourth summit of the Council of Europe (for those of you who are not Brussels bubble–geeks, that is not the umpteenth institution of the European Union, but the central European human rights organisation which also upholds democracy and Rule of Law). Despite the latitude, and after 18 years since the last meeting, the main goal of the Reykjavík gathering is to break the ice on a hot topic: securing fighter jets for Ukraine’s defence forces. Although such an occasion should focus on human rights, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine turned the table.

Kyiv is about to begin the biggest counteroffensive since the beginning of the war, and to get the most significant impact, President Zelenskyy wants to build an “Iron Dome” (on the model of the one used by Israel) to shut down high-tech Russian missiles and get fighter jets. The British and Dutch PMs, Rishi Sunak and Mark Rutte, had launched a call to create an “international coalition” to give Ukraine fighter jets and help train air force pilots. The move comes after Zelenskyy completed a tour of EU capitals — though the people he needs to convince are in Washington.

According to your storyteller, the sentiment in Europe starts to be clear enough. As EU leaders slowly become aware that their economies can do without Russian raw materials, there is a fast-growing guilty pleasure to inflict a decisive, crushing, and irreversible defeat on Putin.

Let the ball begin.

Has anyone seen Lukashenko?

Six days of absence from the public scene. It was enough for rumours to swirl about Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko in a critical, if not desperate, state of health. In the last few hours, even more insistent (fake) rumours have been reporting the death of the Belarusian dictator, thus reinforcing the imminent ‘Judgement Day’ climate reverberating for days among opposition channels.

Then the return to the scene, a visit to the central command of the air force designed in all probability to calm the rumours, particularly those describing his recent transfer to hospital for an unspecified ‘illness’ on the evening of 13 May.

According to reports by the Belarusian monitoring group Hajun, a sudden hospitalisation occurred at the Republican Clinical Medical Centre, with the streets blocked by the long presidential motorcade and security forces deployed to guard the health facility.

Reconstructions that added to the disturbing spectacle offered by Lukashenko in Moscow for the Victory Day parade, the last public appearance before the absence, with the leader of White Russia visibly limping in his gait, prevented from laying wreaths of flowers for the fallen along with the other heads of state, and then forced to leave the company prematurely, evading who knows how pleasant a working lunch with Putin and his flunkies.

So, what is the hype for? For the reasons mentioned above, Lukashenko’s health condition is also a political discussion topic within the opposition. Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, a presidential candidate in 2020 after her husband’s arrest, declared the need to be ‘well prepared for any scenario’, pressing for ‘the international community to be proactive and swift’. New translation: she is evoking the possibility of Lukashenko’s death.

The regime’s opponents are considering more options. Has the dictator left clues about what to do even in his ‘absence’? Probably. Will these be implemented by averting chaos? More difficult. Russia would no doubt try to rule the vacuum. And at that point, what would the opposition do? Would it launch negotiations or start an open confrontation, invoking external support that is difficult to define? Both options are being considered by Tsikhanouskaya & Co. A cautious approach would suggest attempting dialogue and then moving on in the absence of results. But that would entail another risk: a loss of time that would give Moscow a chance to organise itself, perhaps by annexing Minsk, its ultimate desire, as intelligence reports have claimed for years. All futuristic talk: Lukashenko permitting, of course.

Diplo focus: Greek election

After the thrill of the Turkish election (which we will return to in a week for round two), today we bring you to Greece. Greek citizens are called to the polls on Sunday for elections very different from those that followed the crisis that brought Greece to the exit door of the euro.

Greece had one of the most robust post-pandemic recoveries, with GDP growth of 8.4% in 2021 and 5.9% in 2022. When Grexit, Greece’s exit from the euro, was called for in so many quarters, it was taken for granted that the debt would never be sustainable, that primary surpluses would be impossible, and that the banking system could not reduce the stock of bad loans. Quite the opposite: the debt-to-GDP ratio fell last year to 171%, the lowest level since 2012 and one of the fastest rates of decline in the world, with a further decline expected in 2023; last year, the country recorded a primary budget surplus (net of interest on debt) of 0.1%, and non-performing loans on banks’ balance sheets fell from over 50% in 2016 to almost 7%.

Notwithstanding this unexpected positive trend for the country, political protagonists remain the same. The current prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the centre-right party New Democracy, is favoured by the polls with around 35 per cent of the voting intentions. Former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, leader of the leftist Syriza, is close to 30 per cent. Both have changed a lot in recent years.

Mitsotakis may boast economic successes, but he has also been hit by several scandals, including spying on journalists and opponents with Pegasus spyware and last February’s railway disaster. Tsipras has become a full-fledged pro-European, although he has returned to the extreme left in the election campaign. Also, to be watched are the centre-left Pasok, which could return to double digits, and the far-right party, Greek Solution, which could inherit Golden Dawn’s support after its outlawing.

The big question is whether Mitsotakis will get an absolute majority in parliament. Compared to 2019, New Democracy could lose almost five points. If not, Greece could return to the polls in a few weeks with a new electoral law that rewards the largest parties, guaranteeing Mitsotakis the seats he needs to govern. But another possible scenario is a coalition between Syriza, Pasok and a third party.