With no single European representative negotiating directly with Moscow, some leaders are establishing their own channels – with messy results

The Nordic countries rarely fall out in public over foreign policy, least of all over Russia.

But a 90-minute phone call this week to Vladimir Putin by the leaders of Finland and Norway drew an unusual rebuke from their Danish and Swedish neighbours.

At Bybi in Copenhagen, a dedicated group of staff and volunteers have built a community for all centred on the production of honey – much of which is given away for nothing. Could it be replicated elsewhere?

The bees at Bybi, a collective of beekeepers in Copenhagen, live on the roof. Their home is a complex of Victorian buildings, right in the centre of the city, that looks like an idealised vision of the modern social enterprise, ennobled by the architecture of the past. It’s a place of cottage industry in concert with nature, where the marginalised are brought in from the fringes and corporations stand waiting to help, where jobs happen but a lot of the work is done by volunteers, and where – this bit is important – a lot of time is spent discussing ideas.

Oliver Maxwell, Bybi’s 48-year-old founder, encourages me to examine the buildings more closely. They were once a prison, a workhouse and a hospital; their functions today – a homeless shelter, a young offender institution and, until recently, a job centre – are not so different. Denmark’s Victorian transformation, from “agricultural backwater to industrialised agriculture”, was reflected in how they treated people, Maxwell says.

When influencer/singer/content creator Chiara King visits Copenhagen all the trips to trendy shops and fancy restaurants soon take a turn for the worse

British influencer/singer/content creator Chiara King stars as influencer/singer/content creator Chiara King, or some kind of parafictional version of herself, in this quease-inducing thriller exercise. The ick gets generated not necessarily by the eventual gore that erupts in the last reel, but by the tacky weirdness of the way the film apes the mannerisms of social media reels and streaming nonsense to both satirise the ugly side of the business but also exploit and profit off it at the same time. On one level, it’s an eerily clever exercise in bad faith, like a poor Michael Haneke film (think Funny Games) for gen-Z kicks; on another, maybe it’s just a crappy ripoff of online tropes that have been way overexposed already. Or both.

Anyway, here’s what happens: influencer Chiara gets invited to visit Copenhagen by a tourist organisation, a deal set up by her avaricious manager Alice (Jazmine Summer). Of course, this means practically every moment of her time awake in the city will be filmed, both by Chiara herself on her trusty smartphone, or a camera crew led by director Mike (played by Mike Nybroe, who is also director of The Influencer Project, ha ha); Mike is supported by sound man Daniel (Daniel Parmo) and cameraman Victor (Luca Storm). The early sections turn in all the influence-slop you would expect, with shopping trips to trendy merch vendors such as Baum und Pferdgarten, and meals at fancy local restaurants, and then a livestreamed visit to a “haunted house,” which is the big thing on Instagram and TikTok these days.

Recommended dose of hepatitis B vaccine will be withheld from thousands of newborns by Danish researchers

A controversial research trial that will withhold hepatitis B vaccines from some African newborns was given approval to move forward this week.

It is a central part of the vaccine vision for Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and a longtime vaccine opponent.

Only a few days ago Craig Bellamy suggested Wales had blown Nations League A4 wide open with a hand grenade but here Danny Ward detonated it to gift Denmark a penalty and Rasmus Højlund the chance to earn a slender victory from the spot.

Until that moment of madness, after 73 minutes, Ward had kept Wales in the game, his best stop a sublime right-hand save to prevent Gustav Isaksen a headed opener. But after keeping Denmark at bay, he scored an own goal of sorts by taking out Isaksen in the box after a miskick. Bellamy covered his face, using his right hand as a temporary visor while the video assistant referee, Ivan Bebek, reviewed the incident. Then came the unwanted confirmation from the referee and Højlund rippled a pocket of the Wales net with a flawless penalty. A first clean sheet since beating Liechtenstein last November also went out of the window. The life of a goalkeeper, eh?

• Portugal pull away to 4-2 win in Denmark

• Jürgen Klopp’s Germany beat Serbia 2-0

Portugal maintained their perfect start to Nations League Group A4 as Jorge Jesus’s squad showed little signs of missing Cristiano Ronaldo with a 4-2 victory over Denmark in Copenhagen.

The 41-year-old Al-Nassr forward and five-time Ballon d’Or winner left the camp before the match amid reports of a falling out with Jesus, his former club manager, having been left on the bench throughout a victory in Norway.

Warning comes hours after Poland says fire at Starlink satellite station was ‘act of sabotage’

Russia could launch a limited military attack against a Nato country in the coming months, Danish intelligence said, in one of the starkest warnings yet by western security services.

In a report published on Thursday, the Danish defence intelligence service warned of a “low but growing risk” that Russia could launch long-range strikes on Nato infrastructure supporting Ukraine, or carry out a limited incursion into a neighbouring country with a small number of troops, potentially operating without insignia.

Locals hope agreement signed this week is step towards independence and end to US threats to annex island

Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, and Múte B Egede, the foreign minister, received a hero’s welcome when they landed back in Nuuk from New York on Wednesday night – and a nation took a collective sigh of relief.

Colleagues, friends and members of the public turned out to greet them at an airport where, just 20 months ago, the landing of a Trump-branded plane containing Donald Trump Jr had kickstarted a geopolitical crisis that the people of Greenland now hope is over.

• Danish midfielder has been recuperating in homeland

• Eriksen: ‘I’m pleased we were able to find a solution’

Christian Eriksen and the German side VfL Wolfsburg have agreed to terminate ⁠his contract by mutual consent, the club announced on Wednesday.

The 34-year-old collapsed during a Denmark friendly ⁠against Ukraine in June. Eriksen said in July he would ​return to his homeland to undergo a ‌rehabilitation programme. He previously suffered a cardiac arrest during Denmark’s opening Euro 2020 group match ⁠against Finland in Copenhagen in 2021.

The US president made the comments as he arrives at the UN headquarters in New York

Nordic correspondent

Emotions among Greenlanders are a mixture of hope, scepticism and fear ahead of the signing of a new much vaunted deal on Arctic security between the US, Greenland and Denmark.

“There have been many different reactions in Greenland because they are talking about a deal but no one can see the deal, we don’t know what it is all about, and what’s in it for us or what’s in it. Also, because we have been terrorised as a people for the last 1.5 years by the American president, so many people feel no trust at all.”

Statement sought to clarify Trump’s announcement that US will have ‘permanent control’ over Greenland’s security

Denmark and Greenland have said any agreement with the US to develop a significant military presence in the strategic Arctic territory will not compromise Greenland’s sovereignty.

In a statement on Saturday clarifying an announcement by Donald Trump that an agreement had been reached to give Washington “permanent control” ⁠over Greenland’s security, Denmark and the semi-autonomous territory ⁠expressed hope that a deal would end friction with the US over the issue.

The agreement would allow the US to expand its military presence, while Denmark and Greenland say it preserves their sovereignty and right to self-determination

Donald Trump announced on Friday that the US had struck an Arctic security pact with the leaders of Denmark and Greenland, after threatening for much of his second term to annex the semi-autonomous Danish territory by force.

The full scope of the deal Trump described as “very important, historic, and special” was not immediately clear. But soon after his announcement in a post on Truth Social, the leaders of Denmark and Greenland issued statements indicating the deal would be signed by the three governments on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly in New York City next week.

The European Commission’s president warned that recent actions in Denmark and Lithuania are ‘not isolated incidents’

• Russian warship fires flares at Danish helicopter as Nato jets shoot down drone over Lithuania

Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha responded to the incident in Denmark, declaring Kyiv’s “full support” after “unacceptable actions targeting a Danish helicopter.”

“Moscow continues its attempts to destabilise Europe, not just Denmark. Joint and decisive action is required and Ukraine is ready to contribute to all efforts aimed at strengthening the protection of Europe from Russian threats,” he said.

Mathilde Arcel, who won the Volpi Cup on Saturday for her role in Golden Lion winner Woman Unknown, said job offers have now begun to arrive

The winner of this year’s best actress prize at the Venice film festival has revealed that she is on unemployment benefits and had to fly to back to Copenhagen to report to the job centre before receiving her award.

On Saturday night, Danish actor Mathilde Arcel won the prestigious Volpi Cup for her first leading role in a feature film, May el-Toukhy’s post-second world war drama Woman Unknown, which also won the Golden Lion award for best film.

Ursula von der Leyen says incidents ‘part of broader pattern of Russian aggression and provocation against Europe’

A Russian warship fired two emergency flares at a Danish helicopter in the Baltic Sea and an Italian Nato fighter jet shot down a drone carrying an explosive device over Lithuania in what the EU described as “reckless and dangerous” Russian behaviour.

Poland also scrambled fighter jets “due to the activity of Russian jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicles conducting strikes on Ukrainian territory”, the day after Polish security forces retrieved a suspected Russian drone adrift in its waters.

Venice film festival
A nanny becomes the new lady of a prosperous Copenhagen house as accused Nazi sympathisers are violently shamed in May el-Toukhy’s shrewd, painful portrait of survival

Here is an elegantly appointed drama-thriller from May el-Toukhy, about sexual shame and political paranoia in postwar Denmark, with something of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, which it consciously recalls. As director and co-writer, El-Toukhy has created a shrewd and painful movie about the terrible things you need to do to survive, and what it takes to forget those things afterwards.

The scene is a prosperous, upper-middle-class apartment in Copenhagen just after the second world war, when the Danish resistance was permitted the powers of a secret-police militia to detain and interrogate those suspected of having given assistance to the Nazis. Christian (Carsten Bjørnlund) is a ageing factory owner and widower who has evidently fallen in love with his infant daughter’s nanny: this is Marie (fiercely and convincingly played by Mathilde Arcel). Or at any rate, he sees that the child needs a new mother, finds Marie attractive and appreciates her submissive attitude. They are now engaged.

This Danish concept encourages everyone to stop wasting energy on things we can’t change. You can even buy a pyt button to press. But does it help?

We wouldn’t ignore tennis tips from Serena Williams, or culinary advice from Nigella Lawson, so when one of the happiest countries in the world lets slip a life strategy, we should probably pay attention. Even if it does, at first, sound a little simplistic and perhaps provoke an eye roll.

Obligatory mention of hygge now dealt with, get ready to embrace “pyt”. Not to be confused with the 1983 Michael Jackson single, this Danish concept means accepting when a situation is out of our control. Then, even though we may be so angry and exasperated that we are in danger of spontaneous combustion, we don’t waste energy thinking any more about it and instead move on.

Governments are now quicker to point the finger at Moscow, but critics say their inaction invites more sabotage

Russia’s suspected sabotage campaign across Europe appears to be gathering pace again, confronting governments with a problem they have struggled to solve since the start of the war in Ukraine: how to impose a meaningful cost on Moscow for attacks that remain deliberately below the threshold of conventional war.

Over the past month alone, an explosives-laden drone was discovered next to a Ukrainian cargo plane at Germany’s Leipzig airport, Poland has faced suspected acts of sabotage, and a string of unexplained explosions and fires have hit defence facilities supplying Ukraine across Europe.