Flydubai Plot Foiled as Russia's Hybrid War Widens

A Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv came within minutes of catastrophe on Wednesday when the co-pilot allegedly tried to seize the controls and crash the plane; passengers in civilian clothes wrestled him away and the jet made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, Israeli officials say. The scare landed amid hardening confrontation with Russia. Fresh strikes on Kyiv killed two people, and Lithuania summoned Russia's ambassador to protest that attack and an arson strike on Estonia's Milrem Robotics. The same day a drone crossed from Transnistria into Moldova and exploded near a village, while Belgium's defence minister warned Europe faces a “dark winter” of Russian hybrid attacks unless it adopts Ukraine's drone defences. Ukraine's foreign minister urged the world to force Russia to end its siege of Oleshky, where he says residents are starving. Diplomacy moved in parallel: Lithuania offered to fund a permanent US troop presence, and the EU is drafting a plan to fast-track Ukraine, Moldova, Albania and Montenegro into the single market before an October 15 summit. Spain's Senate, meanwhile, voted down a friendship treaty with France during Macron's state visit. Turkey's stock market fell 12% after a fund-fraud scandal hit 455,000 investors, Trump rejected binding AI legislation for self-regulation, and a Budapest court cut German activist Maja T.'s sentence to seven years.