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Europe

Bulgaria
11/12/2025  Sustained anti-corruption protests had intensified in recent weeks. The demonstrations were sparked by a 2026 draft budget, which protesters branded as an attempt to mask rampant corruption. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Bulgaria yesterday to protest against the government and corruption in the latest rally since the end of last month. The government withdrew the budget last week, but anger has persisted. After less than a year in office, Bulgaria’s prime minister Rosen Zhelyazkov announced today that his government was resigning. His announcement came just ahead of a vote in parliament on a no-confidence motion against the government that the opposition had filed. The Balkan country has seen seven snap elections following massive anti-graft protests in 2020 against the government of three-time premier Boyko Borissov. His conservative GERB party topped the most recent election last year, forming the current coalition government in January. Last week, Bulgarian president Radev declared his support for the protesters and urged the government to resign to make way for early elections. Analysts say low trust in Bulgarian institutions and leaders has been compounded by concerns about prices as the country prepares to adopt the euro. The country is due to join the eurozone on January 1. This is expected to go ahead despite the government resigning. (Source: France 24” with AFP” /France/)

Denmark
December 10, 2025  The US has for the first time described as a potential security risk amid geopolitical frictions over Greenland, according to Denmark's 2025 intelligence outlook published today. The US president has not ruled out taking the Arctic island, a territory of the Danish kingdom, using military force. Still, Russia and China are viewed as the main risks. Uncertainty about the US’ role as a guarantor of Europe’s security will increase Russia’s willingness to intensify its hybrid attacks against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while China’s use of economic and military leverage continues to challenge Western influence, it said. ’The Baltic Sea region is the area where there is the greatest risk that Russia will use military force against NATO,’ the agency said. (Source: Bloomberg - U.S.)

European Union
December 10, 2025  The European Union considered China a systemic rival in 2019. The bloc no longer seeks full decoupling, but aims to reduce exposure in sectors deemed strategic for security and competitiveness. Europe has cut its dependence on Russian gas. It has at the same time become equally reliant on Chinese goods that are essential for the continent’s lofty environmental and technological goals. China dominates the global production and processing of solar photovoltaic (PV) components, rare earth elements (REEs), permanent magnets and advanced battery materials such as graphite and lithium compounds. In several stages of these value chains, Chinese producers control 80 percent or more of global capacity. This concentration creates a new type of strategic vulnerability in the supply of critical technologies. A disruption in Chinese exports of magnets, PV wafers or battery chemicals could delay renewable-energy deployment, electric vehicle (EV) production and power-grid upgrades. Even short interruptions reverberate through prices, investment timelines and industrial output. Europe’s exposure to China is deepest where its ambitions are highest. Trade tensions have added a political dimension. Beijing has tightened export-licensing requirements for certain grades of graphite and REE magnets, signaling that it is willing to weaponize its market share. Brussels is responding through the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), which seeks to build mining, refining and recycling capacity within the EU; but such projects take years to mature. Europe’s strategic dilemma: to accelerate decarbonization while reducing reliance on the Chinese supply chains that enable it. Failure could leave the continent facing another energy crisis – this time rooted in processing plants and export licenses. Four sectors illustrate Europe’s vulnerability to China that underpin the EU’s clean-energy transition:    Rare earth elements and magnets;    Solar photovoltaics;    Magnesium, and    Batteries.    Rare earth elements are indispensable for EV motors, wind-turbine generators and defense technologies. For heavy rare earth elements, the EU’s reliance on China is close to 100 percent. China dominates the refining and magnet-making stages of the supply chain. The EU is highly import-dependent on China for permanent magnets. When Beijing tightened export-licensing scrutiny for high performance magnets in 2025, European manufacturers considered it a warning shot. The CRMA sets diversification targets for 2030, yet meaningful refining and magnet capacity in Europe remains more distant.    Solar photovoltaics: Chinese firms now control over 80 percent of global PV manufacturing capacity, from polysilicon to finished modules. More than 90 percent of the solar panels installed in Europe originate from China, following the collapse of the EU’s own solar industry in the early 2010s. The paradox: Europe’s flagship climate technology depends on a single foreign supplier. Any trade restriction or logistics shock could delay installations and inflate project costs, undermining the bloc’s climate targets.    Magnesium is the lightest of all commonly used structural materials and one that is crucial for lightweight aluminum alloys. 95-96 percent of EU magnesium imports come from China. Efforts to restart smelting in Romania, France and Norway face high energy costs and lengthy permitting processes. In 2021, China briefly cut its magnesium output so that it could reduce its domestic energy consumption, causing immediate price spikes and supply shortages globally. This threatened Europe’s automotive and packaging industries.   Batteries and critical minerals: China refines around 60-70 percent of global lithium and cobalt and about 90 percent of natural graphite, including almost all of the spherical graphite used in battery anodes. Partnerships with Australia, Canada and other allied suppliers are growing, but lternative refining and processing capacity is unlikely to satisfy Europe’s projected demand before the end of this decade.    The immediate strategic exposure and risk lie in clean-energy and industrial materials. These inputs are directly linked to Europe’s power systems, transport and manufacturing competitiveness – the same areas that proved most vulnerable during the Russian gas crises. Solar modules, magnets, magnesium and battery materials together form a new axis of dependency – a European energy transition built on foreign foundations. Europe lacks stockpiles and domestic refining capacity. Any Chinese export pause – intentional or accidental – would transmit instantly through supply chains. Several well-defined transmission channels could rapidly turn a disruption in critical materials into broader economic stress. This crisis would propagate through manufacturing bottlenecks, investment delays and price volatility. Even minor slowdowns could idle European production lines for EV motors or wind-turbine generators. The EU’s anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese EVs and Beijing’s counter-probes into European agricultural exports marked a new phase of politicized trade. If China were to impose duties or quotas on PV modules, magnets or battery materials, project costs would surge and installation timetables would slip, forcing governments to revise their climate-energy trajectories. European tariffs on Chinese goods would raise input prices for the bloc’s own green industries, amplifying inflationary pressures. Even without formal restrictions, disruptions in shipping, insurance or foreign exchange markets could put supply chains under pressure. A geopolitical flare-up in the South China Sea or around Taiwan would reroute maritime trade and lift freight rates. Most of Europe’s energy-transition hardware travels by sea. A few weeks of port congestion or renminbi appreciation could add billions to project budgets. Downstream sectors – utilities, carmakers and construction firms – operate on tight investment cycles. A sudden shortage of PV modules or battery cells would defer revenues, unsettle balance sheets, dampen investor confidence. Even modest delivery delays can translate into market-value losses, feeding through to credit conditions and public budgets.    Taken together these factors: Europe’s vulnerability has shifted from energy consumption to energy technology. Supply shocks in Chinese clean-tech exports could freeze the energy transition itself.    The likely scenario: Europe continues its current course: cautious diversification under the banner of de-risking while maintaining pragmatic trade with China. Chinese producers remain dominant in solar PVs, battery materials and magnets. Supply tensions persist but remain manageable through inventories and flexible contracting. Political pressure for sovereignty fades as economic growth takes precedence. The energy transition proceeds, but the underlying exposure remains: a stable dependence rather than genuine autonomy. „The likelihood of this scenario is 60 percent’.    Somewhat likely: Escalating disputes over EV tariffs or technology transfers trigger a cycle of retaliation. Beijing slows export approvals for graphite and rare-earth magnets; Brussels raises barriers on Chinese clean-tech imports. Project costs rise, renewable-energy build-outs stall and Europe again confronts supply-driven inflation reminiscent of 2022. Governments then scramble to subsidize domestic production, fragmenting Europe’s single market. Utilities and automakers delay investment, and the EU’s climate goals slip further out of reach. The crisis is as political as it is economic: Europe proves unable to reconcile its environmental ambition with its geopolitical vulnerability. ’The likelihood of this scenario is 15 percent’.    Possible: Repeated supply shocks, geopolitical headwinds and rising costs push Europe toward a strategic rethink enabling a continued drive toward clean energy via nuclear power. Ambitious goals for solar and wind power, as well as the switch from combustion engines to EVs, are abandoned. Today several European states join the nuclear power revival as a route to energy autonomy and industrial stability. The British and the Czechs are moving from design to implementation of small modular reactors [SMRs]. Slovakia is choosing Westinghouse for nuclear fuel supplies, Prague is selecting South Korea’s nuclear power firm for new large reactors at legacy power plants. France accelerates its development of SMRs with Croatia and Italy pursuing similar options. Sweden reverses course and allows nuclear power, Poland and Finland partner with U.S. and South Korean suppliers. Even Germany sets new conditions under which it will gradually restart its nuclear plants. The shift ensures long-term, low-carbon baseline energy generation and reduces reliance on Chinese clean-tech inputs to Europe, reducing its carbon footprint and that renewables alone can ensure energy security. Although it slows the expansion of solar and wind capacity and sidelines the drive for EVs in the short term, this scenario offers greater long-term stability, cost predictability and geopolitical control. This approach could ultimately strengthen both Europe’s industrial base and its strategic autonomy. ’The likelihood of this scenario is 25 percent”. (Source: Geopolitical Intelligence Services AG - Liechtenstein)
by Israel, a professor of economics at the Université Catholique de l’Ouest (UCO) in France.

France
(11 December 2025)  During the summer, several French cities imposed night-time curfews on teenagers after a spate of violence linked to drug trafficking. President Macron was holding talks today in an attempt to respond to the crisis. Drug crime has skyrocketed in Marseille, France's second largest city. The port city's fast-evolving drug wars now are marked by chillingly random acts of violence of Marseille drug gangs and by the growing role of children, who often coerced into the trade fall victim to lethal violence. France's Ministry of Justice estimates that the number of teenagers involved in the drugs trade has risen more than four-fold in the past eight years. ’It's chaos now’, said a scrawny Marseille gang-member, now in his early 20s. ’There are no more rules. Nobody respects anything these days. The bosses start... to use youngsters. They pay them peanuts. And they end up killing others for no real reason. It's anarchy, all over town’. Across Marseille, police, lawyers, politicians and community organisers talk of a psychose – a state of collective trauma or panic – gripping parts of the city. It's an atmosphere of fear. It's obvious that the drug traffickers are dominant, and gaining more ground every day. The rule of law is now subordinate to the gangs, said a local lawyer, explaining her recent decision to stop representing victims of gang violence. There's so much competition in the drugs trade that people are ready to do anything, said community organiser Benmeddour. Kids aged 13 or 14 come in as lookouts or dealers. ’The young see dead bodies, they hear about it, every day. And they're no longer afraid of killing, or being killed.’ ’Everything changed since Covid. The perpetrators are getting younger and younger. The victims are younger and younger,’ a prominent 22-year-old anti-gang activist and aspiring politician named Kessaci said. ’There was a time when the real thugs had a moral code. You don't kill in daytime. Not in front of everyone. You don't burn bodies. First you threaten with a shot to the leg... Today these steps have all disappeared.’ In 2020, his older brother, a gang member named Brahim, was murdered. Last month, was also murdered his brother Mehdi, a 20-year-old trainee policeman with no links to the drug trade. It is widely believed his death was intended as a warning to Amine, his anti-drugs activist brother. One gang, the DZ Mafia, now appears to dominate the trade. It operates a kind of franchise system, with a fractious network of small distributors often staffed by teenagers and undocumented immigrants, who clash violently over territory. According to one estimate, up to 20,000 people may be involved in the city's drug industry. Last year officials confiscated €42m in criminal assets from the gangs. Video footage shared on social media routinely shows gang members, armed with automatic rifles, shooting at each other in Marseille's various cités – poor neighbourhoods characterised by high-rise buildings and a concentration of social housing. ’This is not El Dorado. We have a lot of youngsters recruited on social media. They come to Marseille thinking they'll make easy money. They're promised €200 ($233) a day. But it often ends in misery, violence and sometimes death,’ said the city's chief prosecutor, Bessone. He described an industry thought to be worth up to €7bn nationwide and characterised by two new developments: a growing emphasis on online recruitment, sales, and delivery; and a rising number of teenagers coerced into the trade. ’The traffickers enslave these little soldiers. They create fictional debts to make them work for free. They torture them if they steal €20 to buy a sandwich. It's ultra-violence. The average age of the perpetrators and victims is getting younger and younger,’ said Bessone. On Tiktok, dozens of videos, set to music, advertise drugs for sale in Marseille's cités, ’from 10:00 to midnight’, each product with its own emoji, for cocaine, hashish and marijuana. Other adverts seek to recruit new gang members with messages like ’recruiting a worker’, ’€250 for lookouts’, ’€500 to carry drugs’. Authority must be restored. We need to end a culture of permissiveness in our country. We need to give more freedom, more power to the police and the judiciary, said Alissio, a local MP for the ’far-right’ National Rally party, and a prospective mayoral candidate. ’Today, the problem is that we are no longer able to integrate economically and assimilate. Too much immigration. It's the number [of immigrants] that's the problem. And in fact, the drug traffickers, dealers, lookouts, the leaders of these mafia, are almost all immigrants or foreigners with dual nationality’, Alissio argued. Alissio claimed that billions of euros had been poured into Marseille's poorest neighborhoods by successive governments to no effect. He added that he was focused on solving the problem, not doing sociology. Pujol, a local writer and expert on the drug trade in Marseille hit back against calls for tougher police action, arguing it was merely nursing the symptoms of a suffering society, rather than treating the causes of the problem. Describing entrenched poverty as a monster, Pujol painted a picture of a society radicalised by decades of neglect. 'The monster is a mixture of patronage, corruption, and political and economic decisions made against the public interest,' Pujol said. (Source: BBC - United Kingdom)

Russia
12.12.2025  Western countries are trying to impose their militaristic vision in Asia. This contradicts the established system of stability and security in the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Shoygu said, speaking at a meeting with President of Laos, Sisoulith, in the capital Vientiane, today. ’Attempts to create various kinds of new architectures, or, to be more precise, an eastern NATO, cannot satisfy us and contradict the spirit that has been established in the region,’ Shoygu said. His discussions with the leadership of Laos covered issues related to the active militarization of the region - Japan, Taiwan, Philippines. "Once again, we reiterate that we fully support the ASEAN-centric model and security architecture, which has been established for a long time and has demonstrated its viability and efficiency," he said. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Ukraine
December 10, 2025 4:58 pm CET  'Zelenskyy teases wartime election to disarm attacks from Trump and Putin'. 'I am ready for the elections. I’ve heard that I’m personally holding on to the president’s seat, that I’m clinging to it, and that this is supposedly why the war is not ending - this, frankly, is a completely absurd story,' he told several journalists via a WhatsApp audio message late yesterday. Zelenskyy’s closest competitor is former Ukrainian army commander Zaluzhnyi, who currently serves as Kyiv’s ambassador to the U.K. (Source: Politico - U.S.)

United Kingdom
December 12, 2025  The UK’s new Military Intelligence Services. The Ministry of Defence announced an overhaul of all defence intelligence organisations today. ’It brings every defence intelligence unit and organisation under one roof like intelligence units from the Royal Navy, Army, the RA and the UK Space Command’. The move is designed to speed up information gathering, analysis and sharing across the Armed Forces following escalating threats like cyber attakcs, satellite and shipping disruption, and the spread of disinformation, the MoD said. Defence Secretary Healy said: ’For intelligence, this means cutting-edge technology, clearer structures and faster data flows. This gives us sharper insights into what our adversaries might do next, so we protect our forces, safeguard critical infrastructure, and deter changing threats.’ The UK defence spending has been steadily growing in recent years. In the year to March 2025, Britain spent £60.2 billion on defence. This is expected to rise to around £62.2 billion this year, and up to an estimated £73.5 billion in 2028/29. The government has pledged to grow defence spending to the Nato requirement of 2.5% of GDP by 2027. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – all neighbouring Russia – lead the list for 2025 expenditure of what chunk of their GDP Nato countries spend on defence. Britain is 12th on the list. (Source: Metro – United Kingdom)

10 December 2023  In February, the government said it wanted to classify 11 synthetic opioids as Class A drugs. Last month, the Home Office published an updated list, adding four more. Following a sudden spike in UK deaths this summer, the government put out a warning across the NHS and drug services - the second National Patient Safety Alert in three years. Super-strength street drugs more powerful than heroin have been linked to at least 54 deaths in the UK in the last six months. The true total could be higher - the National Crime Agency (NCA) said 40 more cases awaited further testing. Experts say the new drugs can be stronger than both heroin and fentanyl, another synthetic opioid, which is a leading killer in the US - contributing to 75,000 deaths last year. The deaths are all linked to synthetic opioids called nitazenes, which experts fear are being manufactured in labs and then imported into the UK from China. Nitazenes were first developed in the 1950s as a pain-killing medication but are so potent and addictive they have never been approved for medical or therapeutic use. Injected, inhaled or swallowed, mixing them with other drugs and alcohol is extremely dangerous and significantly increases the risk of overdose and death. Nitazenes first made news in the UK in 2021, when an 18-year-old patient was treated for a non-fatal overdose. Yates, National Crime Agency (NCA) deputy director, said he did not believe there was currently a direct link between the availability of nitazenes and the ban of harvesting opium poppies in Afghanistan, which some have suggested. The NCA believes nitazenes are being produced in illicit labs in China and often enter the UK in the ’post’. In most cases, it is then mixed with heroin by organised gangs, strengthening the drugs being sold on the street. There are an average of 42 drug poisoning deaths each week involving opiates - such as heroin, oxycodone and fentanyl - across England and Wales, latest official figures suggest. Signs that someone may have taken one of Synthetic opioids: Small, narrowed pupils; Reduced or loss of consciousness; Dizziness or drowsiness; Difficulty breathing; Nausea or vomiting; Cold or clammy skin; Blue or grey lips and fingernails; Low blood pressure or decreased heart rate. Anyone who has consumed synthetic opioids and experiences the symptoms described should seek urgent medical treatment. Dr Varney said drug users had no sense of the strength of nitazenes. He warned nitazenes could cause ’a global drug problem’. (Source: BBC - United Kingdom)

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United Kingdom
December 7, 2025  The United Kingdom has no desire to give up on the Ukraine War. It has signaled a desire for peace as a way to keep America on board. In just a few months, the British have gone from crying Havoc! and letting slip the dogs of war against Russia in Ukraine to quietly encouraging Kyiv to embrace a settlement to end the war - no matter how distasteful it might be. This is more of a wily wait-and-see approach. The British government does not actually favor a peace deal that would address, as the Russians constantly insist, the 'root causes' of the Ukraine War. Instead, London wants to buy time for Ukraine to restore its fighting capabilities and be prepared to reopen hostilities at a more favorable point. To be clear: the British and the Europeans do not want a permanent peace in Ukraine. They want to essentially wait out the Trump administration, which has around 35 months left in office - and is likely to be hamstrung if the Democrats regain control of one or both houses of Congress after the midterm elections in November 2026. Britain and Europe assume that they can spend the next few years restoring Ukrainian fighting capabilities and then reopen hostilities with Russia once a more amenable American president is elected in 2028. There have also been cogitations at the highest levels of power in Europe and in Britain about the future of Zelensky. After suspending constitutionally mandated elections last year, with no return to normal democracy on the horizon, Zelensky has been riding his wartime image to sustain his political legitimacy in a Ukraine that is increasingly ravaged by a seemingly endless war with Russia. Even Zelensky’s most ardent supporters in Europe and Britain recognize that this is unsustainable. How could they purport to be supporting a besieged democracy if that democracy has suspended constitutional provisions indefinitely and insists on fighting to the last man before any elections can be held? That is why London has been cultivating the likes of Zaluzhny, the current Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom. Zaluzhny is widely seen as MI6’s man in Ukraine’s leadership. Former MI6 spymaster (and notorious dossier author) Steele, clearly still connected to the British intelligence community was pressed on live television about the relationship between Zaluzhny and British intelligence - and their plans. He did not deny it. His only caveat was that Zaluzhny’s purported rise to the Ukrainian presidency must come after an election. As America seeks to step back from the conflict, they’re just going to buy Ukraine more time, ensure that an even more warlike leadership succeeds the oligarchy that currently runs Ukraine, and then restart hostilities once Trump is out of office. This is precisely what Europe did during the Minsk Protocol negotiations. Indeed, such perfidy was already admitted to after the fact by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who once admitted that Europe was never serious about the Minsk protocols - and that they were merely using those negotiations to buy time for Ukraine’s military buildup. With the revelations that the Europeans were not being above-board with the Russians during the Minsk Accord negotiations, and as even the Wall Street Journal recently admitted, Russia has gained the upper hand in the Ukraine War, any appearance of backsliding by the Europeans in terms of a potential peace deal negotiation might end Russia’s involvement in those talks entirely. All this double-dealing and these machinations for acquiring greater leverage in a conflict that is not only a peripheral concern for the United States and a minor one at best for the UK, shows how badly the European and British elite have miscalculated. These current talks are not a chance to once more buy their side in the conflict time and to restart the war on more fortuitous footing. This is the last offramp before Russia ends any chance for a viable postwar scenario where at least the majority of Ukraine remains a sovereign entity. London doesn’t seem to understand this at all - and doesn’t seem to want to. For London and Brussels, war is no longer a means to a strategic end. It’s simply the end; anything to keep the Americans from walking away more fully from NATO and the European project. And the Ukraine War is the great gateway to ensuring permanent American buy-in to this scheme. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)
By Weichert, a senior national security editor. His books include A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine (2024)

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Russia
December 4, 2025  Kuril Islands become a Sino-Russian fortress against Japan. The sparsely populated chain of islands separates the Sea of Okhotsk from the Pacific Ocean - Russia’s Pacific Fleet and Sea of Okhotsk nuclear bastion. The Kuril Islands are strategically positioned at the gateway to Russia’s Pacific Fleet basing areas. The access to the fleet headquarters in Vladivostok, is located on the western shore of the Sea of Japan. Ships that set out for patrols in the Pacific Ocean must navigate through the narrow La Perouse Strait, which lies between Hokkaido and the Russian Sakhalin Island, before passing through the Kuril Islands. These islands under Russian control since 1945, have long been a focal point of territorial dispute between Moscow and Tokyo, spanning approximately 1,300 kilometers, from Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido to the southern tip of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. The Russian Empire first established its naval presence in the Pacific on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Japan lays claim to the four southernmost islands – Iturup (Etorofu), Kunashir (Kunashiri), Shikotan and the Habomai group – referring to them as its Northern Territories. The foundation was laid in the 1855 Treaty of Shimoda, which granted Japan sovereignty over the four southernmost islands. In the decades that followed, fluctuations occurred regarding the tradeoff rights to Sakhalin, a large Russian island north of Japan. At the end of World War II., taking advantage of Japan’s defeat, Stalin ordered the seizure of the four islands by force. Japanese locals were expelled, and Russian settlers moved in. As this occurred after Japan had already surrendered to the United States, Tokyo has never recognized the annexation as legitimate. Japan and the Soviet Union have never concluded a formal peace treaty to end World War II. The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed in 1951, stated only that Japan had relinquished the “Chishima Islands,” without explicitly mentioning the four disputed islands. The 1956 Joint Declaration normalized diplomatic relations but left the territorial dispute unresolved. Japan continues to claim that the four southernmost islands are not part of the Kurils but rather constitute the Northern Territories. It further maintains that because the Soviet Union was not a signatory to the San Francisco Treaty, the treaty cannot be used to justify Russian claims to the islands. At a meeting in Moscow in November 1998, Russian President Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi committed to resolving the dispute over the islands within 14 months. In a joint Moscow Declaration, they aimed to finalize a peace treaty by the end of 2000. Yeltsin was forced to resign in 1999, and the effort was abandoned. The last time a compromise seemed possible was in 2018, when President Putin met with then Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe. By 2017, they had met 20 times, with Japan indicating that it was willing to accept a step-by-step deal in which Shikotan and the Habomai group would be returned first, followed by the larger islands of Iturup and Kunashir, provided Russia recognized Japanese sovereignty over all four. Ultimately, negotiations collapsed. The Kremlin was launching a heavily funded rearmament program in 2009, and it began militarizing the disputed islands after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea. In late 2015, Russian forces stationed on the islands were provided with a Soviet-era Tor-M2U surface-to-air missile system. In 2017, a Bastion anti-ship missile battalion was deployed to Iturup, and a Bal anti-ship missile battalion to Kunashir, followed by significant construction activity on both islands, including the erection of barracks to house an estimated 3,500 troops of the 18th Machine-Gun Artillery Division. In December 2020, air defense capabilities were enhanced with the deployment of an S-300 missile battery to Iturup. Tokyo expressed concern that the P-800 Oniks supersonic missile fired by the Bastion system could threaten much of Hokkaido, enabling the interception of ships in large parts of its coastal waters. In December 2021, additional Bastion launchers were set up on Matua, situated in the middle of the Kuril Islands. On Paramushir, which lies even further north, a new airstrip was constructed alongside extensive barracks complexes. The Putin regime is determined to transform the islands into a barrier that can both threaten Hokkaido and defend approaches to the Sea of Okhotsk. The updated Russian maritime doctrine, presented in St. Petersburg on July 31, 2022, specifically mentioned that both the Sea of Okhotsk and the Kuril Islands would be protected by all means. Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war has produced three major ripple effects for the Kuril Islands dispute. Ukraine has officially recognized Japan’s claim to the Northern Territories as legitimate. in October 2022. Its decree officially acknowledged the Kuril Islands as Japanese territory temporarily occupied by Russia. Considering that Ukraine has already carried out strikes ’on various targets in the Russian Far East, Russian military installations on the Kuril Islands could also come under attack’. Some observers in Japan have suggested that a considerable number of current residents on the southern islands are descendants of Ukrainians who were forcibly relocated there by the Soviets after 1945, following Stalin’s land grab. Estimates from pro-Ukrainian and Japanese sources even claim this figure could be as high as 60 percent. The second point is that Japan was compelled to follow the lead of the major Western countries in condemning Russian aggression and enacting tough sanctions. Moscow’s response to the escalation was harsh, indicating that all discussions on economic cooperation and a potential peace treaty were suspended indefinitely. President Putin chose not to attend Abe’s state funeral. The Russian Vostok-22 war games held in September, under the supervision of Russia’s Eastern Military District, took place in the waters and coastal areas around the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan. China’s participation held political significance with Russian military units, including Pacific Fleet marine infantry, heavily involved in the war in Ukraine. Finally, China’s stance regarding the rights to the islands has shifted. Historically, the official endorsement of Japanese sovereignty was established by Chairman Mao in 1964 and maintained by all Chinese leaders since then. The change was notably highlighted during the February 2022 meeting, where President Putin and Chinese President Xi solidified their relationship under a “no limits” friendship agreement. After that meeting, President Xi stated that the two sides would support each other on issues of sovereignty and territorial integrity. At a press conference in January 2024, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zakharova responded by emphasizing that, “The Russian side acknowledges that there is only one China, that the People’s Republic of China is the only legal government representing the entire country and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. The Russian side opposes any form of Taiwan’s independence.” China is now backing Russia in its confrontation with Japan over the islands. This support from Beijing is tied to Moscow’s endorsement of China’s ambitions in Taiwan. As joint Sino-Russian naval operations become a key strategy for deterring Japan and South Korea from stepping up their support for Taiwan, Russia, with a vantage point near the northern shores of Hokkaido, gains a significant advantage. Control over the island chain not only offers Russia critical forward listening posts but also ensures safer routes for its aircraft. Beyond the fundamental issue of national sovereignty, the Kurils are also crucial for accessing valuable fishing grounds and rare-earth mineral deposits. The question of sovereignty has consistently taken precedence over any potential economic deal. The least likely scenario is that Japan finally gains legal recognition for its claim to sovereignty over the contested islands if the Russian Federation splits, leaving its Far East isolated. Japan could then step in as a protector of the Northern Territories that would otherwise be in serious trouble. Achieving international recognition of sovereignty would still be a long shot, given expected objections from other regional powers. A somewhat more probable scenario is that a collapse of the Russian Federation presents China with a difficult choice about how best to protect its own interests. Beyond securing continued access to energy and other raw materials, China might choose to strengthen its military stance against Japan by acting as a protector for Russian military installations on the Kuril Islands, including but not limited to the Northern Territories. ’The most probable scenario is that, as Russia faces increasing economic decline due to its war in Ukraine, it gradually becomes a vassal state under China’s control’. Beijing may then adopt a firmer stance on Taiwan while tacitly encouraging more assertive Russian actions on the Kuril Islands and near Hokkaido. As a result, Japan will need to reassess the robustness of its security guarantees with the U.S. (Source: Geopolitical Intelligence Services AG (GIS) - Liechtenstein)
By Hedlund, a professor of Russian Studies at Uppsala University.
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Caribbean

Haiti
30 November 2025  Haiti is in the grip of a security crisis as gangs battle for control of territory in the capital and beyond while continuing to expand their criminal activities. It is feared that gangs are increasingly working with international organized crime networks to traffic drugs. 1,045 kilograms of cocaine was seized in July 2025 near Haiti’s Île de la Tortue off the north coast of the Caribbean nation in a maritime operation by Haitian authorities, believed to have originated in South America and was destined for distribution across the Caribbean and the US. Just two weeks later, 426 kg of cannabis were confiscated in Petite-Anse, near Cap-Haïtien again in the north of the country. The traffickers involved in the cocaine shipment were Bahamian and Jamaican nationals. There have been additional seizures wider afield. Two Haitian nationals were arrested in Jamaica, also in July, with over 1,350 kg of cannabis. The seizures have underlined the island nation’s pivotal role in trafficking routes linking South America, the Caribbean and the United States of America. There is also recent evidence received by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) of drugs being shipped to Europe. In August 2025, Belgian authorities seized 1,156 kg of cocaine in the port of Antwerp in a container originating from Haiti. The largest gangs have entrenched themselves along strategic corridors in and out of the capital Port-au-Prince as well as along the border with neighbouring Dominican Republic controlling key transit routes for drugs as well as other contraband, including arms. Intelligence from Jamaica also links firearms seizures to a guns-for-drugs trade involving Haitian gangs. Île de la Tortue, suitable as a logistics and storage platform for illicit shipments has considerable size, it is remoteness, and its geographical position provides direct maritime access to the Bahamas and Jamaica, as well as the Turks and Caicos Islands. The seizures of drugs both in Haitian waters and in Europe indicate sophisticated, coordinated and established trafficking routes that require a robust regional response by law enforcement agencies. ’Newly established drug routes are also overlapping with migrant smuggling operations, in which Haitian nationals are increasingly involved’. UNODC is reinforcing border security, strengthening maritime control, advancing intelligence-led policing and addressing the corruption and financial crime that allow trafficking networks to operate. A nationwide border-management initiative designed to increase interdiction capacity at ports, airports and land borders has been launched at the request of the Haitian authorities. At sea, UNODC’s Global Maritime Crime Programme is focused on strengthening the Haitian Coast Guard. On land, UNODC is strengthening the ability of law enforcement to carry out intelligence-led operations against organized criminal groups involved in migrant smuggling, trafficking in persons and overlapping criminal activities. Exchange of information between Haiti and regional partners has also been stepped up. Specialized tribunals are being launched which are capable of handling cases involving financial crime, money laundering, gang-related offences and other sensitive criminal matters, with the objective of reducing impunity and restoring confidence in the justice system. (Source: The United Nations Office in Geneva)

North America

Canada
2 December 2025  The European Union and Canada announced an agreement allowing Ottawa to join a €150 billion European defence financing programme called Security Action for Europe (SAFE). (Source: Brussels Signal - Belgium)

United States
Dec 05, 2025  President Trump met with the leaders of both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda yesterday, where those two leaders signed an agreement that will signal the beginning of the end of a long-running conflict in Africa. The peace deal also involves precious minerals access for the United States. The peace agreement cemented yesterday calls for a peaceful resolution of disputes, disarmament, provisions for refugees and ending support for armed groups. It also calls for the launching of an economic framework that would expand the trade of critical minerals. The United States signed bilateral agreements on that measure with both countries. But despite the new deals, violence has continued on the ground. (Source: Scripps News - U.S.)

05.12.25  The US plans to expand the number of countries covered by its travel ban to more than 30, US Homeland Security Secretary Noem said in an interview on Fox News yesterday. Trump signed a proclamation in June banning the citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States and restricting those from seven others, saying it was needed to protect against foreign terrorists and other security threats. The bans apply to both immigrants and non-immigrants, such as tourists, students and business travellers. ’If they don't have a stable government there, if they don't have a country that can sustain itself and tell us who those individuals are and help us vet them, why should we allow people from that country to come here to the United States?" Noem said. (Source: The Telegraph – India / Reuters - United Kingdom)

12/3/2025  Soros changed criminal justice in America. Ads came from an independent political committee bankrolled by a billionaire - in this case, the former hedge fund manager and liberal 'philanthropist' Soros, who set out a decade ago to elect district attorneys who would steer drug offenders and juveniles toward rehabilitation instead of prison, oppose cash bail for minor crimes, and crack down on police misconduct. Over the past decade, the Soros-backed Justice & Public Safety PAC and affiliated committees have built a cost-effective and winning record. These entities spent roughly one-fifth of Musk’s $294 million investment in the 2024 election, spreading that money across at least 62 primary and general election races and winning 77 percent of the time. These district attorneys command extraordinary authority to pick and choose who enters the criminal justice system and for how long. Downballot races have turned into big-money brawls that polls and political science show have eroded public faith in government. Some prosecutors who face better-funded Soros-backed contenders bow out, leaving voters with fewer choices. And while voters can hold candidates accountable for misleading attacks on their opponents, billionaires like Soros do not have to answer to the electorate. When heavy-handed billionaires equate democracy with their personal ideology and drop a ton of money picking candidates and destroying others while the rest of us are left as bystanders, that’s not democracy, said Clements, CEO of American Promise, a nonprofit that advocates stronger campaign finance regulations. 'It’s leading us to disaster because of the level of toxicity and take-no-prisoners warfare. The damage is systematic.' Soros ranks fifth among the top billionaire political donors in the last 10 years, having given more than $321 million to federal and state candidates and committees. In Florida, Gov. DeSantis (R) went so far as to suspend two Soros-backed Democratic prosecutors in a two-year period as part of a crusade against what he described as'woke' ideology. And in Texas, where Soros has boosted about half a dozen prosecutors, Attorney General Paxton has promoted a campaign against 'rogue district attorneys.' A group funded by Musk that tried to dislodge one Soros-backed district attorney in Texas last year sent out mailers featuring a bloodied teddy bear and accusing him of 'filling Austin’s streets with pedophiles & killers.' Amid the backlash by conservatives seeking to tie Soros-backed prosecutors to rising crime, some failed to win second terms. At the end of last year, Musk appeared to be planning a broad counterattack against Soros-supported prosecutors, but his plans for the 2026 elections are unclear. (Source: MSN / The Washington Post = U.S.)

3 December 2025  The United States has imposed a sweeping freeze on immigration processing for applicants from 19 non-European countries, suspending decisions on green cards, citizenship, asylum and other immigration benefits. The directive, issued by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), applies to all applications regardless of when they were filed, including those near approval. This reassessment may require new background checks, additional documentation or fresh interviews, even for people who have lived legally in the U.S. for years. (Source: Outlook - India)

Tue, Dec 2, 2025  US President Trump has threatened military strikes on Colombia amid rising tensions over drug trafficking. Speaking at the White House, he said: "If they come in through a certain country, any country ... I hear Colombia is making cocaine ... anybody doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack." The US President held a security meeting yesterday. (Source: Express - United Kingdom)

December 2, 2025  Trump told Maduro in a phone call earlier this week to quit and offered safe passage for him and his family, a deal that expired Friday without Maduro accepting the offer. According to Reuters, Maduro requested full legal amnesty to leave Venezuela, an end to U.S. sanctions and his case before the International Criminal Court and sanction relief for over 100 Venezuelan officials accused of abuse or corruption. He reportedly wanted his vice president to lead an interim government if he stepped down. Trump rejected the demands. (Source: Miami Herald / Newsweek - U.S.)

(Sunday), November 30, 2025  White House gives Maduro ultimatum as U.S. moves toward land operations. A phone call between the White House and Caracas aimed at defusing the crisis carried a blunt message for strongman Maduro: You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now. The call - which The New York Times reported took place last week, quickly reached an impasse. The two sides’ positions were far apart. One source said the cal stalled over three issues. „Maduro asked for global amnesty for any crimes he and his group had committed, and that was rejected.” „They asked to retain control of the armed forces - similar to what happened in Nicaragua in ’91 with Chamorro. In return, they would allow free elections.” The administration rejected that proposal as well. The third sticking point: Safe passage would be guaranteed for Maduro, his wife Cilia and his son only if he agreed to resign right away. Caracas refused. The call - initially brokered by Brazil, Qatar, and Turkey - has not been repeated. The conversation unfolded amid growing signs that the Trump administration is preparing a more assertive phase of operations targeting Venezuela’s so-called Cartel de los Soles, which Washington says is headed by Maduro and other top officials. On Thursday, President Trump announced that U.S. military actions - until now focused on sinking speedboats suspected of carrying drugs in the Caribbean - would soon expand onto Venezuelan territory. Speaking to service members during a Thanksgiving call, he said the U.S. Armed Forces would very soon begin land-based operations to disrupt what he described as Venezuelan drug-trafficking networks. After Trump’s announcement on Saturday that Venezuelan airspace should be considered closed in its entirety, the Maduro government attempted to place another call to Washington but received no response. Addressing on Truth Social “Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers,' Trump offered no operational details but warned that the directive required immediate attention. Washington has moved to expand its legal authority. The State Department formally designated the Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, placing Maduro, Interior Minister Cabello, and Defense Minister López in the same legal category as leaders of al-Qaeda and isis. The designation, published in the Federal Register, is seen as a tool that grants the administration new latitude to undertake military action without additional congressional approval. Because U.S. officials argue the cartel operates from within the Venezuelan state, the designation effectively treats the Maduro government as part of a terrorist network. Experts note the move could allow the administration to invoke the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the legal basis for most U.S. counterterrorism operations over the past two decades. Trump has suggested it could clear the way for strikes on Venezuelan assets and infrastructure. He has also said he remains open to negotiations. Caracas denounced the move, calling it a false pretext for foreign intervention and insisting the cartel is an American invention. For more than two months, American naval and air assets have surged into the Caribbean near Venezuela’s borders, including the Nov. 16 arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier. At least 10 additional warships, a nuclear submarine and F-35 fighter jets are also deployed. The level of firepower far exceeds typical interdiction activity. (Source: Miami Herald - U.S.)

(Sunday, 30 November 2025)  The White House has launched on Friday a tracker designed to call out media offenders every week. The site is listing news sites, reporters, and stories it claims misled the public. Each story is explained and categorized under labels such as lie, omission of context, or left-wing lunacy. (Source: DW /Germany/; "The Associated Press /U.S./ contributed")

Global

December 01 2025  ’Sales by the world's top 100 arms makers reached a record $679 billion last year’. It's mostly driven by Europe. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza boosted demand, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Many European countries are also now looking to expand and modernise their own militaries, which will present a new source of demand. ’The United States is home to 39 of the world's top 100 arms makers’, including the top three: Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies) and Northrop Grumman. U.S. arms makers saw their combined revenues rise 3.8 percent to reach $334 billion in 2024, nearly half of the world's total. ’The 26 of the top 100 arms maker which are based in Europe’ saw aggregate revenues grow by 13 percent to $151 billion. ’The sharpest increase of all the top 100: Czech company Czechoslovak Group’ saw revenue spike by 193 percent - reaching $3.6 billion. ’The company benefitted from the Czech Ammunition Initiative which provides artillery shells for Ukraine’. European arms makers are also facing difficulties: sourcing materials looks to become more challenging. Airbus and France's Safran sourced half of their titanium from Russia before 2022 and have had to find new suppliers. Chinese export restrictions on critical minerals have led companies - such as France's Thales and Germany's Rheinmetall - to warn of higher costs as they restructure supply chains. ’Two Russian arms makers are also among the top 100’, Rostec and United Shipbuilding Corporation, and they saw combined revenue rise by 23 percent to $31.2 billion, despite a shortfall of components due to international sanctions. The report noted that the Russian arms industry is struggling to find enough skilled labour to support the projected rates of production needed to sustain Russia's war aims. The overall revenues of the ’23 companies based in Asia and Oceania’ went down - their combined revenues dropped 1.2 percent to $130 billion. The overall drop there was the result of by a larger drop among Chinese arms makers. A host of corruption allegations in Chinese arms procurement led to major arms contracts being postponed or cancelled in 2024. The drop deepened uncertainty around China's efforts to modernise its military. ’Japanese and South Korean weapons makers saw their revenues increase’, also driven by European demand. ’Nine of the top 100 arms companies were based in the Middle East’, with combined revenues of $31 billion. ’The three Israeli arms companies’ in the ranking accounted for more than half of that. Their combined revenues grew by 16 percent to $16.2 billion. SIPRI researcher Karim noted in a statement that the growing backlash over Israel's actions in Gaza seems to have had little impact on interest in Israeli weapons. (Source: Hurriyet Daily News - Turkey)

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China
04.12.25, 12:24 PM  Apparently just routine exercises. The People's Liberation Army has not made any announcements of large-scale officially named drills. China is deploying a large number of naval and coast guard vessels across East Asian waters, at one point earlier this week more than 100, in the largest maritime show of force to date. The Chinese ships have massed in waters stretching from the southern part of the Yellow Sea through the East China Sea and down into the contested South China Sea, as well as into the Pacific. The operations exceed China's mass naval deployment in December last year that prompted Taiwan to raise its alert level. Together with warplanes, some of the Chinese vessels in the area have carried out mock attacks on foreign ships. They have also practiced access-denial operations aimed at preventing outside forces from sending reinforcements in the event of a conflict. As of yesterday morning, China has four naval formations operating in the western Pacific, and Taiwan is keeping tabs on them, Tsai, director-general of Taiwan's National Security Bureau, said, without giving details. As of today morning, there are more than 90 Chinese ships operating in the region. Beijing had begun dispatching a higher than usual number of ships to the region after November 14, when it summoned Japan's ambassador to protest Takaichi's comments on Taiwan. Still, the rise in activity is happening as China and Japan are in a diplomatic crisis. after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said last month that a hypothetical Chinese attack on democratically-ruled Taiwan ’could trigger a military response’ from Tokyo. Beijing has also been angered by an announcement last month by Taiwan President Lai of an extra $40 billion in defence spending to counter China, which views the island as its own territory. China's last named war game around Taiwan was in April and called Strait Thunder-2025. China never formally confirmed it held drills during last December's mass naval activity. (Source: The Telegraph – India / Reuters)

(Wednesday/, 03.12.2025  Accompanied by business leaders and government officials, French President Macron today began a three-day trip to China. In Beijing, he will hold talks with Chinese President Xi, Premier Li and China’s top lawmaker Zhao, before traveling on Friday to the city of Chengdu in the southwestern part of the country. Xi will host Macron for one-on-one talks in Chengdu, with bilateral ties, trade and Trump tariffs, and the war in Ukraine and Gaza likely on the agenda. The trade volume between China and the EU’s second-largest economy rose to around $80 billion. The trade friction between China and the EU, whose bilateral trade stood at around $785.8 billion last year, will likely dominate the discussions between the two.
/’From Beijing’s point of view, Europe is asking for concessions it cannot give or enforce. While China will continues to emphasize dialogue and peace proposals, it will not alter its core ties with Moscow. The fact being the more Europe sides with the US against China, the stronger the bonds between Russia and China get, Einar, senior fellow at Beijing-based Taihe Institute * explained. On EU-US ties, Einar said the bloc’s autonomy looks shallow. China sees this as more theater than substance - Europe wants to appear independent, but its economic and security reliance on the US makes the (Macron) visit more of a gesture than a strategic pivot, he explained. Europe may talk of strategic independence, but its leaders still defer to Washington’s line, he said, adding: China will not abandon Russia under external pressure. The analyst said Beijing expects Macron to leave with warm words, vague commitments to dialogue, and perhaps some trade announcements. China will welcome the engagement but privately judge it as half hearted - Europe wants to appear balanced, yet remains tethered to US policy on Ukraine and supply chains. But, China will continue to gauge the situation, looking for a change of attitude and sincerity from Europe, said Einar/. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey/
* /In September 2025, the think tank closed/ (?)

01/12/2025, Monday  China-Japan friction. When the broader Indo-Pacific region is already marked by strategic rivalry and competing security interests, both sides trade diplomatic notes over remarks by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Beijing has sent a second letter to UN Secretary-General Guterres rejecting Tokyo’s latest arguments on Taiwan, accusing Japan of distorting the issue and abandoning its stated “defense-only” posture. The letter was written in reply to a letter submitted last week by Japan’s representative to the UN, Ambassador Yamazaki, who said Tokyo has long contributed to global stability and argued that Japan’s post-war security doctrine remains “strictly defensive.” In his response, Fu, China’s permanent representative to the UN, said Japan’s position was contradicted by recent statements from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who suggested on Nov. 7 that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could be classified as a “survival-threatening situation.” Such a designation could enable Japan to invoke its right to collective self-defense. (Source: Yeni Şafak - Turkey)

India
04.12.2025  Russian President Putin today began his first visit to India since 2021. Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are set to co-chair the 23rd annual India-Russia summit in New Delhi tomorrow. Defense, energy, nuclear cooperation, payment mechanisms, the BRICS bloc they founded, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization are among issues they are likely to discuss. Putin’s visit comes as New Delhi faces mounting pressure from the US to halt purchases of Russian oil - Washington has imposed a 50% tariff on Indian imports. Putin is accompanied by a large group of businesspeople. India and Russia aim to boost the current bilateral trade volume of $68.7 billion – nearly six times higher than pre-pandemic levels – to $100 billion. New Delhi expects to increase Indian exports to Russia - pharmaceuticals, automobiles, and agricultural products (including marine products) are among areas for India to boost its exports. The two sides are also expected to sign multiple agreements and memorandums of understanding in the field of shipping, healthcare, fertilizers, and connectivity. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

December 04, 2025  A forthcoming Fourth Pole, the organising locus for the Global South? End of globalisation and the untidy passage towards a multipolar world is now under way and likely to revolve around three established, old-power poles: Europe, the US and China. A different, more positive element of the evolving world order - the “Fourth Pole” – is a geo-economic region centred around the fast-growing Gulf states and stretching to parts of India, its vast diaspora and beyond. Individually, many of these states top the league tables for growth, are emerging as active investors in and consumers of new technologies and are arguably more geopolitically busy than the large European countries. Trade and infrastructure deals, migration and the consequences of great power competition ’are creating the conditions for a regional locus, or pole, of economic, financial and soft power’. Such a pole needs to have at least two criteria – a co-ordinated economic mass and a coherent method, or way of doing things. Europe, the US and China have mass economically and financially, as well as diplomatically (’even Europe is increasingly co-ordinated’). They all have increasingly focused industrial strategies and are military powers. By comparison, ’while Russia has nuclear weapons, it is not a pole’ given its isolation on much of the world stage. Each pole has a defined method – ’Europe is a liberal social democracy with increasingly co-ordinated policies’, China has the China Dream social contract ’between the Chinese people and the communist party’ while the US is making itself great, again. Each one has a distinctly different approach to technology, the internet and, lately, to regulating AI. So, in terms of mass and method, the idea of the Fourth Pole is a nascent one. India and Saudi Arabia, to take two of the Fourth Pole players, are meaningful economically, though less so at this stage as global or military financial players. Currently there are few policy areas where there is policy collaboration at a detailed and well-coordinated level. Building mass would take time and investment and would demand a coherence in strategy between very disparate countries. The India to Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC)/Saudi Arabia corridor is yet very different in terms of its cultures and development models and is very far from a common method. This is something that can arrive after at least 40 years of close trade and co-operation, and will be highly influenced by the Indian diaspora, which is present in huge numbers in the Gulf and Africa. Several factors suggest quicker co-operation between the Gulf states and their economic neighbours. The first is attitude. Some refer to the Middle East and North Africa as “Mena”, and this suggests a confident position on the world stage. The region has developed strong independence in its foreign policy (as opposed to being a policy taker from the US and the EU). This is evident in finance, infrastructure, labour markets and trade. On trade specifically, the Gulf has to be geopolitically ambidextrous in how it builds relationships with the US and China, though when it comes to technology, the sense is that it is very much plugged into America. Another attitudinal aspect is a form of economic agnosticism. While the great powers are busy cutting off access to each other’s supply chains, trade through the Gulf is less encumbered by geopolitics. Moreover, there are signs that the tariff war and great power rivalry have attracted more activity and talent to Gulf ports. Another factor is demographics and development economics. There is a great deal of talk about the Global South – the fast-growing, populous countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It does their individual cultures little justice to group them together, and the idea of the Global South vastly overestimates the ability of these countries to act as a single entity. The primary challenge for these countries is to find ways to increase the level of trade between themselves, and in the long run it may be that the India-Gulf corridor becomes the organising locus for the Global South. The rise of individual Gulf states over the past 30 years proves their singular ambitions and visions. A more complicated world will bring co-ordination challenges. One is to leverage collective influence to steward lasting peace in the Middle East’s conflict zones, such as Palestine. The second is to actively co-ordinate development plans, though the GCC’s co-operation mechanisms already provide an institutional framework for this. If these succeed, then the basis of the “Fourth Pole”, one of the positive surprises of the post-globalisation era, will be set in place. (Source: National News – United Arab Emirates)
by O’Sullivan, an economist, investor and the author of ‘The Levelling – what’s next after globalisation’

Israel
(Sunday, 30.11.2025)  From early morning, thousands of people formed long lines Saturday in front of the Portuguese Embassy in Tel Aviv to apply for Portuguese citizenship, according to a report from the Times of Israel. The embassy’s special “return to the old days” in-person appointment day, organised to overcome heavy congestion in the online booking system, attracted significant attention. Those standing in a line were waiting to apply for citizenship or to renew their Portuguese passports. Portugal, through a law adopted in 2015, granted the right to apply for citizenship to Sephardic Jews. Due to the high volume of applications, the Portuguese government announced in 2023 that the law had achieved its purpose and introduced more restrictive requirements. It is noted that Israelis seek Portuguese citizenship for benefits such as free movement within EU countries, lower living costs, easier admission to European universities and lower tuition fees. Since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, the number of Israelis seeking a second passport has increased. Tens of thousands of Israelis have left the country, interest in Portuguese citizenship continues to rise. (Source: TRT World - Turkey)

Pakistan
02/12/2025, Tuesday  Pakistan and China launch their annual Warrior-IX joint counterterrorism drill which began at the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) in Kharian district's Pabbi area in northeastern Pakistan, running until mid-December. (Source: Yeni Şafak - Turkey)

Southeast Asia
2 Dec 2025  At least 1,250 people dead. What caused the extreme weather - record floods and landslides? La Nina is a natural climate pattern in which the Pacific Ocean becomes cooler than usual in the east and warmer in the west, causing winds to strengthen and push more warm water and moisture towards Asia. Different kinds of tropical storms - two cyclones and a typhoon – contributed to the disaster. Cyclone Senyar, Cyclone Ditwah and Typhoon Koto were not categorised as severe storms due to their wind speeds. They are producing more rain than they’ve ever produced. Warmer oceans fuel stronger rain bands around tropical cyclones, and a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture and releases it in more intense bursts. The latest storms came less than a week after the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) ended in Brazil, without delivering the responses that countries experiencing climate change harms have repeatedly called for. Earlier this year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ruled that states must act urgently to address the existential threat of climate change by cooperating to cut emissions, following through on global climate agreements, and protecting vulnerable populations and ecosystems from harm. 'Failure of a state to take appropriate action to protect the climate system … may constitute an internationally wrongful act,' said ICJ President Iwasawa, in response to the case which was brought to the court by developing countries led by Vanuatu. A growing number of climate change lawsuits are making their way through courts around the world. A case was recently launched by survivors of the 2021 Super Typhoon Odette in the Philippines, who announced last month that they are suing British oil giant Shell for its role in causing the climate crisis through courts in the United Kingdom. (Source: Al Jazeera - Qatar)

December 01, 2025 3:01 AM  After a rare tropical storm formed in the Malacca Strait fuelling heavy rains and wind gusts for a week, the death toll mounted to over 600 from floods and landslides across Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Over four million people have been affected - nearly three million in southern Thailand and 1.1 million in western Indonesia. There were 435 dead in Indonesia, 170 in Thailand, and three deaths reported in Malaysia. In Indonesia, in the western island of Sumatra, three provinces had been devastated by landslides and floods. 406 people were still reported missing and 213,000 displaced. The death toll from flooding in southern Thailand at 170, and 102 injuries. Songkhla Province had the highest number of fatalities at 131. Hat Yai, the largest city in Songkhla, received 335mm of rain last Friday, its highest single-day tally in 300 years, amid days of heavy downpours. Neighbouring Malaysia had evacuated over 6,200 Malaysian nationals stranded in Thailand. Parts of Malaysia were battered last week by heavy rain and wind. There are still about 18,700 people in evacuation centres. Separately, across the Bay of Bengal, another 153 people were killed by a cyclone in the island nation of Sri Lanka, with 191 others missing and more than half a million affected nationwide. (Source: The Straits Times - Singapore)

Taiwan
(Thursday), December 04, 2025 7:27 AM  Taiwan expressed thanks and China was upset yesterday after President Trump signed into law on Tuesday the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requiring the US State Department to regularly review and update guidelines no less than once every five years on how the United States officially interacts with Taipei. The United States is Taiwan's most important international backer despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties, and the issue is a constant source of irritation in Sino-US relations given Beijing views the democratically-governed island as its own. In 2021 under the first Trump administration, then Secretary of State Pompeo lifted restrictions on contacts between US officials and their Taiwanese counterparts, put in place after Washington recognised Beijing in 1979. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin said China firmly opposes any form of official contact between the United States and ’the Taiwan region of China’. The Taiwan question is the core of China's core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-US relations; the United States should exercise the utmost prudence not to send any wrong signals to Taiwan independence separatist forces, Lin said. Taiwan's government rejects China's territorial claims and says it has a right to freely engage with countries around the world. (Source: AsiaOne – Singapore)

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Belgium
(3 December 2025)  The European Commission was due to make public later today details of its proposal to use the Russian money as collateral to help meet Ukraine’s considerable needs through a 'reparations loan.' Russia has described the scheme as 'theft.' Ukraine’s budget and military needs for 2026 and 2027 are estimated to total around 130 billion euros ($150 billion). The European Union has already poured in over 170 billion euros ($197 billion) since 2022. Belgium rejects the plan, saying it is too risky, it fails to address its concerns. EU leaders are due to discuss the scheme and Ukraine's economic and military needs at a summit in Brussels on December 18. (Source: TRT World - Turkey)

Germany
December 1, 2025  The topic in question: the past and future of German militarism and its meaning for German society. After the Nazi surrender, the Allies destroyed what was left of Germany’s war machine and put its leaders on trial for crimes against humanity. At first, disarmament was imposed on Germany. American and Russian forces seized weapons depots, sealed off factories, and sent trainloads of military equipment out of the country. During the Cold War, countering the Soviet threat required a new West German military, always under Washington’s supervision. After the Cold War, the country’s pacifism became a mark of its faith in a global system of rules and treaties. Germany, the thinking went, could relinquish its own self-defense because brutish competition for continental dominance was over. U.S. power signs in Germany were everywhere - on bases where American troops were deployed and American nuclear weapons were stored, in cafés where Radio Free Europe broadcast American news and music, in schools and hospitals rebuilt under the Marshall Plan. Now Germany is arming itself again.    The Bendlerblock once served as the headquarters of the Wehrmacht. Now the complex houses Germany’s defense ministry. This past summer Lieutenant General Freuding was in charge of the ministry’s Ukraine unit. The next chief of the army’s role - inspector of the army - he assumed in October. His grandfather served in both world wars and was imprisoned by Allied forces in 1945. Freuding said that he spent time as a teenager in the 1980s at American bars in Grafenwöhr, a town near a U.S. Army garrison that serves as one of NATO’s most important training bases. American soldiers were a constant presence, and he liked them. But now that order is vanishing, Freuding said. Communication with his counterparts in Washington had been “cut off, really cut off,” he said. „The Trump administration had offered no warning, for instance, about its move to suspend certain weapons shipments to Ukraine”. For information about American policy, Freuding has looked to the German embassy in Washington, where “there is somebody who tries to find somebody in the Pentagon.” ’You not only have an enemy knocking at the door, but you also are in the process of losing a true ally and friend.” Freuding said. ’So Germany has recognized that it needs to rearm’. „As the United States upends the global order it created, Germany may have no other choice’.    Pistorius. His father was a pacifist who didn’t allow toy guns in the house. During the Cold War, Pistorius joined the Social Democratic Party, which had made Ostpolitik, aimed at easing relations with Moscow, the center of its foreign policy. After the Iron Curtain fell, Pistorius recalled, Germans thought they were living in a world without threats. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, in 2014, Germany agreed to work toward spending 2 percent of its economic output on defense within a decade. Trump complained in his first term that Germany and other NATO members weren’t paying their share. It was common then for members of the officer corps to purchase their own gear: boots, pants, field jackets, German soldiers told. In 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Germany’s army chief admitted in a public post that the forces under his command were more or less bare. The German government promised a burst of cash for the Bundeswehr that would bring the country in line with NATO targets. On the main stage of the Munich Security Conference last February, the vice president was attacking America’s NATO partners, comparing European democracies to authoritarian regimes and accusing Europe’s leaders of stifling free speech and suppressing support for ’far-right’ parties. The targets of his criticism sat before him: the presidents of the European Commission and the European Council; heads of government from countries including Germany, Sweden, Ireland, and Latvia. A stunned silence fell over the grand hall of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia; it’s not China. What I worry about is the threat from within” he said. Criticism of the host country is considered uncouth. That is unacceptable, German defense minister Pistorius shouted in English from the second row. Vance continued, unfazed. The White House was pressing for a quick settlement to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and signaling that Europe would have to enforce the terms. After the Munich Security Conference, when German officials ’watched in disbelief’ as Trump, in a televised Oval Office meeting, reprimanded Zelensky for refusing peace on terms dictated by the White House, Freuding said that ’he had never sent as many texts in a single night as he did on that occasion, to his friends and colleagues in Ukraine’.    For Merz, a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, then the chancellor-in-waiting, ’the confrontation made clear that Europe could no longer rely on the United States’. A senior German official told that Merz is haunted by the question “Will America serve its allies to the dogs?” After the spectacle in the Oval Office, ’he became convinced of the need to amend Germany’s constitution to authorize unlimited government borrowing for defense’. Within a month, the Bundestag approved the reform.    Across the Spree river from the Bundestag is an office building occupied by a start-up called Stark, founded in Berlin in 2024, that makes suicide drones. The drone is named Virtus. Guided by artificial intelligence, it circles a target area, identifies an enemy asset, and slams into it with an explosive warhead. The government plans to purchase a large stock of such drones next year. The start-up has begun supplying the German armed forces with weapons for testing and certification. Stark now has outposts in both England and Ukraine. It works only with NATO ’and allied’ militaries. The company’s pitch is that a drone is cheaper, and more cost-effective, than a tank. Powered by a battery, Virtus can fly for about 60 minutes at a cruising speed of 75 miles an hour. It’s easy to order it, easy to produce it, and easy to pay for it, Arlt, a former air-force officer and Social Democratic Party politician who is now a Stark executive, told. Thiel, ’a Vance mentor ’has invested in Stark. Another is the American venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital, whose most outspoken partner, Maguire, is a prominent Trump supporter.   The Germans still need to import weapons from abroad. Colonel Krüger at the General Steinhoff Barracks, home to Germany’s air force showed a retired Patriot launcher, made in the United States. The anti-ballistic-missile system is a pillar of NATO air defense. Krüger told about traveling to Tel Aviv to fine-tune a missile-defense system purchased from the Israelis that can intercept and destroy long-range ballistic missiles in space. For decades, Germany has been a top exporter of arms to Israel, its commitment to the security of the Jewish state a legacy of the Holocaust. Arrow 3, the largest defense deal in Israeli history, reverses that logic by making Israel a guarantor of German safety.    Last February, then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz heralded the city Görlitz, adjacent to the Polish border. as a hub of rearmament. Production lines once used for double-decker train cars are being altered to make parts for Leopard 2 battle tanks, Puma infantry fighting vehicles, and Boxer armored vehicles. The defense firm KNDS is taking over a factory from the rail company Alstom. The transition will be complete in 2027. By one estimate, Germany had only about 340 tanks by 2021. ’According to Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, effective European deterrence - averting a Russian invasion of the Baltics, for example - would require 1,400 tanks and 2,000 infantry fighting vehicles, more than the combined capabilities of Germany, France, Britain, and Italy’. ’Germany will devote more than 460 billion euros, or $538 billion, to the Bundeswehr over the next four years’. The ’far-right’ Alternative for Germany is the largest opposition bloc in the Bundestag, controlling nearly a quarter of the seats. The AfD’s national co-leader Chrupalla, who represents Görlitz in the Bundestag, is ’scornful’ of the need to deter Russia. In a recent interview with a German broadcaster, he asked, ’Do we really believe that we can defeat the world’s greatest nuclear power and win this war that isn’t even ours?” Weapons made in the city must be used only to defend Germany, not to arm Ukraine, Wippel, the AfD candidate who narrowly lost Görlitz’s mayoral race in 2019, told. Deterrence, he said, can’t mean threatening Russia. Some on the left are also skeptical of rearmament. Environmental and social activists protested in the spring against the planned assembly of weapons in Görlitz. In the decades since World War II, Germans have developed a deep aversion to anything that resembles the Nazi veneration of the soldier. They’ve been outraged by recent scandals that seem to reflect the Third Reich’s lasting imprint on some corners of the military. Today, screening for extremism is a Bundeswehr priority. Röwekamp, who chairs the Bundestag’s defense committee, told that the government needs to convince a generation raised in peacetime ’that they can’t take their safety for granted anymore’. Germany is set to begin compulsory military screening in 2026. Conscription was suspended more than a decade ago. All 18-year-olds will receive a questionnaire assessing their willingness to join the armed forces; men must respond, and women will have the option to do so. Pistorius still hopes that a voluntary model can work. Recruitment advertising is everywhere. Calls to enlist adorn train stations and buses, even fast-food packaging’s texts printed on pizza boxes. NATO targets call for a German fighting force of 260,000, far more than the country’s current roster of about 182,000 active-duty soldiers.    The last time Germany had a permanent armed presence in Lithuania was during the Nazi occupation, when the Wehrmacht swept east, invading the Soviet Union. Vilnius, the capital city, once was called the Jerusalem of the North. By the end of the war, the Jewish population of Lithuania had been slaughtered. Now Germans carrying guns are back in Lithuania, a NATO member since 2004. They’re stationed in Vilnius, in the city’s business district. Across the street from the brigade’s headquarters is the old Jewish cemetery. Memories of Soviet terror are fresher, and fears of Russian aggression are ever present. Panzerbrigade 45 is the first permanent foreign deployment of German troops since the Second World War. The German military is more popular in Vilnius than in Görlitz. The German soldiers’ mission is to help fend off a Russian attack. The brigade is projected to number about 5,000 by 2027. A permanent base will lie near the border with Belarus, that serves as a depot for dozens of Moscow’s nuclear weapons. Lithuania is located along the Suwałki Gap, the 60-mile expanse separating the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad from Belarus. That strip of land is NATO’s only overland route connecting Western Europe to the Baltic states. Brigadier General Huber leads the German soldiers in Lithuania. Huber is studying Russia’s tactics in Ukraine, ’anticipating the war of the future.’ In June, members of the Panzerbrigade cleaned up graves at a Jewish cemetery in Merkinė, a Lithuanian town where hundreds of Jews were shot by Nazi forces and local collaborators in 1941.    ’The fear of a weak and indecisive Germany is bigger than the fear of a strong Germany,’ Pistorius said. A bronze statue of a naked man with bound wrists is in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock honors the army officers who plotted to kill Hitler, and who were shot in the courtyard on a summer day in 1944.  Germany must be the only country in the world, to place a memorial to an attempted coup within its defense ministry. He appreciates the statue as a reminder of the democratic sources of his country’s military power. Pistorius said, no oath is ever taken again on a leader, but on a constitution. But constitutions can be amended, the oaths of soldiers can change as well.    An illiberal German government could reverse the country’s international allegiances - the tanks and drones now equipping the Ukrainian resistance instead ’advancing Russian interests’. Militarism can serve illiberal ends anywhere. (Source: The Atlantic - U.S.)
by Stanley-Becker

European Central Bank
(2 December 2025)  The European Central Bank has refused to backstop a €140bn payment to Ukraine, dealing a blow to an EU plan to raise a 'reparations loan' backed by frozen Russian assets. The ECB concluded that the European Commission proposal violated its mandate. (Source: Luxembourg Times)

European Commission
04/12/2025 16:50  Mogherini, the former EU foreign policy chief resigns as College of Europe rector, the university specialised in European affairs, amid fraud accusations. (Source: Euronews - based in Lyon, France)

Dec 4, 2025  Viktor Orbán is hardly short of material. ’EEAS-gate’ engulfing the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the College of Europe - two bastions of the EU establishment - comes hot on the heels of Qatargate, Huawei-gate, and the charges filed against Reynders, the former justice commissioner who regularly lectured Hungary on the rule of law. The corruption scandals have touched figures from all three of the mainstream political families: socialists, liberals, and conservatives. At the EEAS, Kallas is trying to steady the institution, promising transparency, including a Q&A with diplomats. “It’s not just dysfunctional but a corrupt organisation,” his senior adviser Orbán – no relation – told in Brussels. He argued the EEAS should be disbanded and reduced to a technocratic body that coordinates foreign policy positions without political influence. At the Commission, however, the crisis comms (read: stonewalling) aren’t going well. Sannino – the DG MENA chief now a suspect – told staff in an internal email that he would step down at the end of the year. It was the first major scalp of the scandal, and an unusual way for a director-general to exit. Sannino was due to retire as planned at the end of December and would take leave until then ’in light of allegations’ from prosecutors, a spokesperson said. Well, which version is true? As for Mogherini crisis meetings will take place today at the College as outrage, speculation, and memes ricochet through the student and alumni community. For Viktor Orbán, it proves everything he’s ever said about Brussels elites who hammer him ’for his Russia-friendly populism’. “These are just signs of Brussels leadership failing,” he said, who will lead the ruling party’s campaign in the run-up to the election next spring, casting the EU establishment firmly as the enemy. Also enjoying the ride: the ’far right’. And questions are mounting over why the Socialists & Democrats let Qatargate MEP back in the EP. They reinstated an Italian PD lawmaker, MEP Moretti they knew was under scrutiny in the Qatargate probe, linked to Panzeri and accused of taking direction from Qatar and Morocco. S&D suspended her in March. Yet she was quietly readmitted in July. MEPs have endorsed Germany’s Ritter to succeed Romania’s Codruța Kövesi at the helm of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office next year, handing him a docket packed with some of Brussels’ most sensitive investigations. (Source: Euractiv - Brussels, Belgium)

Dec 2, 2025 - 17:23  Around 10 officers dressed in civilian clothes entered the European External Action Service (EEAS) headquarters at 7:30 am today. Belgian police arrested the EU’s former top diplomat Mogherini, a socialist who headed the EU’s foreign service between 2014 and 2019, and senior Commission official Sannino, a fellow Italian diplomat who heads the Commission’s directorate general for the Middle East and Northern Africa (DG-MENA), as part a sweeping fraud investigation, renewing fears about corruption in the highest ranks of the European bureaucracy. The ongoing probe involves alleged misuse of EU funds. A third person, who works in the executive education department of the College of Europe, was also detained. All three were questioned on suspicion of procurement fraud, corruption, and criminal conflict of interest. A spokesperson for the EEAS said to requests for comment he ’had no information’. The affair the latest major scandal to hit the EU in the wake of the Huawei and ‘Qatargate‘ investigations. Authorities suspect the College of Europe and its representatives had privileged access to confidential information about a public tender launched by the EEAS to host a new EU diplomatic academy, giving them an unfair advantage over other bidders. Mogherini was rector of the College of Europe and Sannino, who had worked for Mogherini in the Italian foreign ministry, was secretary-general of the EU’s foreign service, a position that may have given him sway over the tender. The tender ended in Mogherini’s favour. In addition to running the College of Europe, she now also oversees the new EU Diplomatic Academy. She began a second five-year term in Bruges this year. During the period under scrutiny, the EEAS was led by another socialist former foreign minister, Spain’s Borrell. (Source: Euractiv - headquarters located in Brussels, Belgium)

Russia
(Thursday), December 4, 2025 11:57 AM ET  Putin says there are points he can't agree to in the U.S. proposal to end Ukraine war. He said his five-hour talks Tuesday in the Kremlin with Witkoff and Kushner were necessary and useful, but also difficult work, and some proposals were unacceptable. In Tuesday's talks, the sides "had to go through each point" of the U.S. peace proposal, which is why it took so long. "This was a necessary conversation, a very concrete one," he said, with provisions that Moscow was ready to discuss, while others "we can't agree to." Putin spoke to the India Today TV channel before he landed today in New Delhi for a state visit. (Source: NPR / The Associated Press = U.S.)

Thursday 04 December 2025 11:28 GMT  'If the crazy European Union does, after all, try to steal Russian assets frozen in Belgium under the guise of a so-called ‘reparations loan’, Russia may well view this move as tantamount to a casus belli (an act that justifies war) with all the relevant implications for Brussels and individual EU countries,' Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, wrote on X. Der Leyen said the reparations loan plan had been 'positively received' by US Treasury Secretary Bessent. 'The Commission said the EU could proceed with the scheme if 15 out of 27 member countries, representing at least 65 per cent of the bloc's population, voted in favour'. (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)

Thursday 04 December 2025 09:56 GMT  Russian President Putin has declared in an interview published today in India Today that Moscow intends to seize full control of Ukraine's Donbas region through military force, unless Ukrainian troops withdraw. (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)

December 03, 2025 at 12:33 pm  Putin accepted some US proposals on Ukraine and rejected others in what was a normal negotiation process, Kremlin spokesperson Peskov said. (Source: Times - South Africa)

11:22 PM CET, December 2, 2025  Today, Putin accused Kyiv’s European allies of sabotaging U.S.-led efforts to end the war in Ukraine. 'They don’t have a peace agenda, they’re on the side of the war,' Putin said of the 'Europeans'. He also reiterated his long-held position that Russia has no plans to attack Europe - a concern regularly voiced by some European countries. But if Europe suddenly wants to wage a war with us and starts it, we are ready right away. There can be no doubt about that, Putin said. (Source: AP - U.S.)

December 2, 2025 4:24 AM  Putin claims a significant victory in Ukraine, saying his forces had taken full control of Pokrovsk - Krasnoarmeysk - in the east, a logistics center for supplying the Ukrainian forces - a battlefield development that, if confirmed, would strengthen Russia’s hand in the negotiations. Witkoff and Putin are due to meet at around 5 p.m. local time in Moscow (10 a.m. ET). They will discuss the revised version of Trump’s peace plan following U.S.-Ukraine negotiations on an earlier draft proposal that Kyiv viewed as too strongly weighted in Russia’s favor. (Source: Miami Herald / Newsweek = U.S.)

Ukraine
December 3, 2025, 9:58 AM  ' Any potential peace deal to end Russia’s war with Ukraine is likely to feature some form of security guarantee that is designed to ensure foreign assistance for Ukrainians in the event of a renewed Russian attack. But whether any such guarantee would ever be credible is unclear. The United States has categorically refused to deploy troops under any potential scenario. Europeans have likewise made it clear that they are not ready to die for Ukraine either. The original draft of the peace deal placed a permanent veto on Ukraine’s NATO membership on Russia’s behalf, as well as on the deployment of European troops, presumably even as trainers. It even alluded to a rollback of NATO infrastructure, with European fighter jets to be deployed in Poland. All of that is ostensibly in exchange for a vague mention of security guarantees that will be decided at a later stage. Europeans are livid, sidelined and desperate to find a way to influence Trump. But they have also engaged half-heartedly to support Ukraine - sending some weapons, blocking more - since 2022. They have not worded the end game, which is likely to avoid being cornered into matching that ambition with action. France and the U.K. have been taking a lead on deciding future guarantees for Ukraine through what’s called a coalition of the willing - a total of31 nations. Each country is expected to deliver in a specific way to aid Ukraine’s future defense. Europeans are still arguing over whether to use, or not to use, frozen Russian assets - worth more than $300 billion, the largest share of which lies in European countries - to help Ukraine rebuild its cities and strengthen its defense sector. Ukrainians have been in the trenches for nearly four years. ’In just the first seven months of 2025, 110,000 cases of soldiers going absent without leave’ were registered. “Anything that limits the size of armed forces, anything that limits what outside guarantors can do inside Ukraine or on behalf of Ukraine, puts limits on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, especially when no such limits are placed on Russia,” Loss, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations said. ’Increasingly, Ukrainians and their European allies are realizing that their best hope for a lasting peace may be an explicit reliance on the Ukrainian military’. ’Ukraine must turn itself into a militarily strong country like Israel’. French President Macron said soldiers from France, the U.K., and Turkey - which has friendlier ties with Russia - could be sent to Ukraine as part of a so-called reassurance force that’s expected to monitor the peace deal once an agreement is reached. Europeans have no idea what to do if such a force is deployed and a European contingent is attacked by Russia, said an EU official. The first security guarantee for Ukraine will be the strength of its army, the second will be European support, and the third, hopefully, will be an American commitment, a source in the French president’s office said. A militarily strong Ukraine and a strong and large Ukrainian army, however, is also a buffer for Europe. Europeans are increasingly earnest about arranging funding to pay salaries, pensions, and benefits for Ukrainian soldiers, as well as developing mechanisms to jointly produce and procure key equipment such as ammunition, drones, and air defense systems. According to a Ukrainian assessment shared with Europe, the cost of country’s defense needs will range anywhere from $70 to $100 billion for next year. Despite the endless privations of war, the heartache, the pain and loneliness, Ukrainians have no other option but to train, arm, and remain wary.  ' (Source: Foreign Policy - U.S.)
by Vohra, a Brussels-based columnist

(Sunday) November 30, 2025, 9:02 AM  Russia launched overnight aerial strike with drones on Vyshhorod, Kyiv region. Zelenskyy's top advisers traveled to the United States for talks with the Trump administration over its proposed plan for peace between Russia and Ukraine. They are expected today in Florida, where Secretary of State Rubio, Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Kushner are due to lead the talks. Ukraine is trying to hammer out its best starting position before White House special envoy Witkoff early next week goes to Putin who has already signalled he won’t compromise - saying any talks with Zelenskyy are pointless. Today's talks are the first high-level negotiations between the U.S. and Ukraine since they met in Geneva, Switzerland. Those talks had begun with a 28-point plan proposed by the United States, which through negotiations became a 19-point plan. ’But even that revised plan had not settled what were perhaps the most difficult issues - including whether Ukraine would cede any territory to Russia and whether Ukraine could in the future apply for NATO membership’. The Ukrainian delegation is being led by Umerov, the head of the National Security Council. It follows Zelenskyy’s Chief of Staff Yermak being forced to resign amid a corruption scandal that has rocked the country and „left Zelenskyy without his right-hand man’. We need real, reliable solutions that will help end this war. I thank everyone who is helping, Zelenskyy said. Umerov was questioned in connection with the scandal by investigators, according to Reuters and local media, but he has not been formally accused of wrongdoing. (Source: ABC News – U.S.)

NATO

3 Dec (2025), 22:02  Leading European NATO countries do not want peace in Ukraine; they want war with Russia, Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjártó told reporters. "I can tell you that NATO member countries belonging to the European mainstream do not want peace. The mainstream does not want peace, it wants war against Russia and therefore seeks to undermine peace efforts [to settle the conflict in Ukraine],' the top diplomat said at a press conference following a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels. (Source: TASS - Russia)

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United States
Nov. 28, 2025 9:00 pm ET  Three powerful businessmen - two Americans and a Russian - in Miami Beach last month, were privately charting a path to bring Russia’s $2 trillion economy in from the cold - with American businesses first in line to beat European competitors to the dividends. Witkoff was hosting Dmitriev, who had largely shaped the document they were revising. The two businessmen shared President Trump’s long-held approach to geopolitics. The borders matter less than the business. Dmitriev was pushing a plan for U.S. companies to tap the roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank assets, frozen in Europe, for U.S.-Russian investment projects and a U.S.-led reconstruction of Ukraine. U.S. and Russian companies could join to exploit the vast mineral wealth in the Arctic. Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had arrived from his nearby home on an island. His investment fund, Affinity Partners, drew billion-dollar investments from the Arab monarchies whose conflict with Israel he had helped mediate. The picture that emerges is a remarkable story of business leaders working outside the traditional lines of diplomacy to cement a peace agreement with business deals. Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and Putin’s handpicked negotiator, arrived at the White House on April 2 and presented a list of multibillion-dollar business projects the two governments could pursue together. In April, Dmitriev welcomed Witkoff to the St. Petersburg presidential library for another three-hour meeting with Putin. Witkoff took his own notes, relying on a Kremlin translator, then briefed the White House from the U.S. Embassy. There were no limits to what two longtime adversaries could achieve, Dmitriev had argued for months. Earlier this year, Exxon Mobil met with Russia’s biggest state energy company, Rosneft, to discuss returning to the massive Sakhalin gas fields. “We can transition investment trust into a political role,” he said in an unpublished interview that month. That same month, European national security advisers planned to meet Witkoff in London to integrate him into their peace process. But he was busy with his other portfolio - negotiating a cease-fire in Gaza - and couldn’t make it. Afterward, one European official asked Witkoff to start speaking with allies over the secure fixed line Europe’s heads of state use to conduct sensitive diplomatic conversations. Witkoff demurred, as he traveled too much to use the cumbersome system. Dmitriev and Witkoff meanwhile were chatting regularly by phone about increasingly ambitious proposals. In late July, Bakanov, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, visited NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston - the first such visit since 2018 - as well as the spacecraft manufacturing facilities of Boeing and SpaceX. Their rival space industries, which raced one another during the Cold War, could even pursue a joint mission to Mars with Musk’s SpaceX. Many in the Trump White House, key presidential advisers see an opportunity for American investors to become the commercial guarantors of peace in a new postwar Russia. Elsewhere, a cast of businessmen close to the Trump administration have been looking to position themselves as new economic links between the U.S. and Russia. Trump donor Lynch, the Miami-based investor, had been asking the U.S. government to allow him to bid on the sabotaged Nord Stream Pipeline 2 if it came up for auction in a Swiss bankruptcy proceeding. Lynch, who in 2022 was given a license by Treasury to complete the acquisition of the Swiss subsidiary of Russia’s Sberbank, had been seeking a license for the pipeline since the Biden administration, but in April dialed up his lobbying efforts by hiring McDowell, a friend of Trump Jr. Lynch, pays $600,000 over six months of this year to the lobbyist’s firm who is helping him seek a Treasury Department license to buy the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from a Russian state-owned company. Beach, a college friend of Trump Jr. and campaign donor to his father, has been in talks to acquire a stake in a Russian Arctic gas project if it is released from sanctions. He was in talks to acquire 9.9% of an Arctic LNG project with Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer - which is partly owned by Timchenko - if the U.S. and U.K. remove sanctions on it. In a statement, Beach said that his company, America First Global, “actively seeks investment opportunities that strengthen American interests around the world.” He is “extremely grateful” for the efforts Witkoff and others are making to end the war in Ukraine. Elliott Investment Management eyed buying a stake in a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas into Europe. In secret talks, Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Chapman met Rosneft boss Sechin, Putin’s former private secretary, in the Qatari capital Doha, to discuss Exxon’s return to the massive Sakhalin project. The U.S. sanctioned in October Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer to increase pressure on Moscow, prompting the company to put its overseas assets up for sale. Exxon, billionaire investor Boehly and others have explored buying assets owned by Lukoil. By dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals, Moscow ’could reshape the economic map of Europe - while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies’. In the days after Alaska, a European intelligence agency distributed a hard-copy report in a manila envelope to some of the continent’s most senior national security officials, ’who were shocked by the contents” „Inside were details of the commercial and economic plans the Trump administration had been pursuing with Russia”, including jointly mining rare earths in the Arctic. A question for history will be whether Putin entertained this approach in the interest of ending the war, or as a ploy to pacify the U.S. while prolonging a conflict he believes is his place in history to slowly, ineluctably win. Some of his most-trusted friends, sanctioned billionaires from Putin’s St. Petersburg hometown -  Kremlin-linked businessmen Timchenko, Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers - have sent representatives to quietly meet American companies to explore rare-earth mining and energy deal. More recently, they have been offering U.S. counterparts gas concessions in the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as potentially four other locations. Russia has also mentioned rare-earth mining opportunities near the massive nickel mines of Norilsk and in as many as six other Siberian locations that are still unexploited. Witkoff’ is confident that any settlement with Russia would benefit America broadly, not just a handful of investors. On Aug. 6, Witkoff flew to Moscow, at Putin’s invitation, for a meeting prepared only a few days in advance. Dmitriev walked him through Zaryadye Park overlooking the Moskva River, then escorted him to the Kremlin for another three-hour session with Russia’s leader. Putin mentioned wanting to meet with Trump personally. He gave Witkoff a medal, the Order of Lenin, to pass to a CIA deputy director ’whose mentally unwell son’ was killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine. The next day, Witkoff dialed into a videoconference with officials and heads of state from top European allies, and explained the outlines of what he understood to be Putin’s offer. If Ukraine would surrender the remaining roughly 20% of Donetsk province that Russia had failed to conquer, Moscow would forfeit its claim to Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces. The European officials were confused. On Aug. 9, Witkoff retreated to the Spanish island of Ibiza. European leaders were still seeking clarity from him, the White House, and the State Department, on what exactly Putin had offered. The Aug. 15 summit fell apart almost as soon as it began. Witkoff, Rubio, and Trump arrived on Air Force One, meeting Putin, his longtime adviser Ushakov, and Foreign Minister Lavrov. Putin launched into a 1,000-year history lecture on the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian people. Witkoff left uncertain where things stood, but hopeful talks would accelerate soon. When a version of the 28-point plan was leaked earlier this month, it drew immediate protests - keaders in Europe and Ukraine worried that Russia, after violently redrawing European borders, was being rewarded with commercial opportunities. As Western leaders convened this week to digest the plan, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk offered a pithy summary: ’We know this is not about peace. It’s about business.' “As the President said, his national security team has made great progress over the past week, and the agreement will continue to be fine-tuned following conversations with officials from both sides,” White House spokesperson Kelly said. Witkoff has worked closely with Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio. He is set to visit Russia for the sixth time next week and will again meet Putin. Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, former Lt. Gen. Kellogg, has been all but frozen out of serious talks, and last week said he is leaving the government. An administration official said that Kushner and Witkoff also met with Ukraine’s national security adviser, Umerov, in Miami and spoke with Zelensky. In October, Zelensky flew to Washington, hoping to secure long-range, U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles. By the time Zelensky arrived, Trump had spoken to Putin a day earlier and decided not to offer the Tomahawks. Instead, Witkoff encouraged Ukrainian officials to ask Trump for a 10-year tariff exemption. It would supercharge their economy, he said. (Source: The Wall Street Journal - U.S.)

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Sunday 23 November 2025 18:49, UK  ’Europe's’ 28-point counter proposal to US-Russia peace plan for Ukraine, drafted by France, Germany and United Kingdom.   Reuters reports that the text is as follows:    1. Ukraine's sovereignty to be reconfirmed.    2. There will be a total and complete non-aggression agreement reached between Russia and Ukraine and NATO. All ambiguities from the last 30 years will be resolved.    (Point 3 of the US plan - "There will be the expectation that Russia will not invade its neighbours and NATO will not expand further." - is deleted.)    4. After a peace agreement is signed, a dialogue between Russia and NATO will convene to address all security concerns and create a de-escalatory environment to ensure global security and increase the opportunity for connectivity and future economic opportunity.    5. Ukraine will receive robust Security Guarantees.    6. Size of Ukraine military to be capped at 800,000 in peacetime.    7. Ukraine joining NATO depends on consensus of NATO members, which does not exist.    8. NATO agrees not to permanently station troops under its command in Ukraine in peacetime.    9. NATO fighter jets will be stationed in Poland.    10. US guarantee that mirrors Article 5:  a. US to receive compensation for the guarantee  b. If Ukraine invades Russia, it forfeits the guarantee  c. If Russia invades Ukraine, in addition to a robust coordinated military response, all global sanctions will be restored and any kind of recognition for the new territory and all other benefits from this agreement will be withdrawn.    11. Ukraine is eligible for EU membership and will get short-term preferred market access to Europe while this is being evaluated.    12. Robust Global Redevelopment Package for Ukraine including but not limited to:  a. Creation of Ukraine Development fund to invest in high growth industries including technology, data centres and Al efforts  b. The United States will partner with Ukraine to jointly restore, grow, modernise and operate Ukraine's gas infrastructure, which includes its pipeline and storage facilities  c. A joint effort to redevelop areas impacted by the war to restore, redevelop and modernise cities and residential areas  d. Infrastructure development  e. Mineral and natural resource extraction  f. A special financing package will be developed by the World Bank to provide financing to accelerate these efforts.    13. Russia to be progressively re-integrated into the global economy.  a. Sanction relief will be discussed and agreed upon in phases and on a case-by-case basis  b. The United States will enter into a long-term Economic Cooperation Agreement to pursue mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, AI, datacenters, rare earths, joint projects in the Arctic, as well as various other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities  c. Russia to be invited back into the G8.    14. Ukraine will be fully reconstructed and compensated financially, including through Russian sovereign assets that will remain frozen until Russia compensates damage to Ukraine.    15. A joint Security taskforce will be established with the participation of US, Ukraine, Russia and the Europeans to promote and enforce all of the provisions of this agreement.    16. Russia will legislatively enshrine a non-aggression policy towards Europe and Ukraine.    17. The United States and Russia agree to extend nuclear non-proliferation and control treaties, including the START I Treaty.    18. Ukraine agrees to remain a non-nuclear state under the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty].    19. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant will be restarted under supervision of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] IAEA, and the produced power shall be shared equitably in a 50-50 split between Russia and Ukraine.    20. Ukraine will adopt EU rules on religious tolerance and the protection of linguistic minorities.    21. Territories:   Ukraine commits not to recover its occupied sovereign territory through military means. Negotiations on territorial swaps will start from the Line of Contact.    22. Once future territorial arrangements have been agreed, both the Russian Federation and Ukraine undertake not to change these arrangements by force. Any security guarantees will not apply if there is a breach of this obligation.    23. Russia shall not obstruct Ukraine's use of the Dnieper River for purposes of commercial activities, and agreements will be reached for grain shipments to move freely through the Black Sea.    24. A humanitarian committee will be established to resolve open issues:  a. All remaining prisoners and bodies will be exchanged on the principle of All for All  b. All civilian detainees and hostages will be returned, including children  c. There will be a family reunification program  d. Provisions will be made to address the suffering of victims from the conflict.    25. Ukraine will hold elections as soon as possible after the signing of the peace agreement    26. Provision will be made to address the suffering of victims of the conflict.    27. This agreement will be legally binding. Its implementation will be monitored and guaranteed by a Board of Peace, chaired by President Trump. There will be penalties for violation.    28. Upon all sides agreeing to this memorandum, a ceasefire will be immediately effective upon both parties withdrawing to the agreed upon points for the implementation of the agreement to begin. Ceasefire modalities, including monitoring, will be agreed by both parties under US supervision. (Source: Sky News – United Kingdom)

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United States
Saturday 22 November 2025 21:13, UK     Trump's 28-point Ukraine peace plan:    "1. Ukraine's sovereignty will be confirmed.    2. A comprehensive non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine and Europe. All ambiguities of the last 30 years will be considered settled.    3. It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and NATO will not expand further.    4. A dialogue will be held between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation in order to ensure global security and increase opportunities for cooperation and future economic development.    5. Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees.    6. The size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be limited to 600,000 personnel.    7. Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future.    8. NATO agrees not to station troops in Ukraine.    9. European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland.    10. The US guarantee:   The US will receive compensation for the guarantee;   If Ukraine invades Russia, it will lose the guarantee;   If Russia invades Ukraine, in addition to a decisive coordinated military response, all global sanctions will be reinstated, recognition of the new territory and all other benefits of this deal will be revoked;   If Ukraine launches a missile at Moscow or St Petersburg without cause, the security guarantee will be deemed invalid.    11. Ukraine is eligible for EU membership and will receive short-term preferential access to the European market while this issue is being considered.    12. A powerful global package of measures to rebuild Ukraine, including but not limited to:   The creation of a Ukraine Development Fund to invest in fast-growing industries, including technology, data centres, and artificial intelligence.   The United States will cooperate with Ukraine to jointly rebuild, develop, modernise, and operate Ukraine's gas infrastructure, including pipelines and storage facilities.   Joint efforts to rehabilitate war-affected areas for the restoration, reconstruction and modernisation of cities and residential areas.   Infrastructure development.   Extraction of minerals and natural resources.   The World Bank will develop a special financing package to accelerate these efforts.    13. Russia will be reintegrated into the global economy:   The lifting of sanctions will be discussed and agreed upon in stages and on a case-by-case basis.   The United States will enter into a long-term economic cooperation agreement for mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centres, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities.   Russia will be invited to rejoin the G8.    14. Frozen funds will be used as follows:   $100bn (£76bn) in frozen Russian assets will be invested in US-led efforts to rebuild and invest in Ukraine;   The US will receive 50% of the profits from this venture. Europe will add $100bn (£76bn) to increase the amount of investment available for Ukraine's reconstruction. Frozen European funds will be unfrozen. The remainder of the frozen Russian funds will be invested in a separate US-Russian investment vehicle that will implement joint projects in specific areas. This fund will be aimed at strengthening relations and increasing common interests to create a strong incentive not to return to conflict.    15. A joint American-Russian working group on security issues will be established to promote and ensure compliance with all provisions of this agreement.    16. Russia will enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine.    17. The United States and Russia will agree to extend the validity of treaties on the non-proliferation and control of nuclear weapons, including the START I Treaty.    18. Ukraine agrees to be a non-nuclear state in accordance with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.    19. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant will be launched under the supervision of the IAEA, and the electricity produced will be distributed equally between Russia and Ukraine - 50:50.    20. Both countries undertake to implement educational programmes in schools and society aimed at promoting understanding and tolerance of different cultures and eliminating racism and prejudice:  Ukraine will adopt EU rules on religious tolerance and the protection of linguistic minorities.   Both countries will agree to abolish all discriminatory measures and guarantee the rights of Ukrainian and Russian media and education.   All Nazi ideology and activities must be rejected and prohibited.    21. Territories:   Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognised as de facto Russian, including by the United States.   Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be frozen along the line of contact, which will mean de facto recognition along the line of contact.   Russia will relinquish other agreed territories it controls outside the five regions.   Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the part of Donetsk Oblast that they currently control, and this withdrawal zone will be considered a neutral demilitarised buffer zone, internationally recognised as territory belonging to the Russian Federation. Russian forces will not enter this demilitarised zone.    22. After agreeing on future territorial arrangements, both the Russian Federation and Ukraine undertake not to change these arrangements by force. Any security guarantees will not apply in the event of a breach of this commitment.    23. Russia will not prevent Ukraine from using the Dnieper [Dnipro] River for commercial activities, and agreements will be reached on the free transport of grain across the Black Sea.    24. A humanitarian committee will be established to resolve outstanding issues:   All remaining prisoners and bodies will be exchanged on an 'all for all' basis.   All civilian detainees and hostages will be returned, including children.   A family reunification program will be implemented.   Measures will be taken to alleviate the suffering of the victims of the conflict.    25. Ukraine will hold elections in 100 days.    26. All parties involved in this conflict will receive full amnesty for their actions during the war and agree not to make any claims or consider any complaints in the future.    27. This agreement will be legally binding. Its implementation will be monitored and guaranteed by the Peace Council, headed by President Donald J Trump. Sanctions will be imposed for violations.    28. Once all parties agree to this memorandum, the ceasefire will take effect immediately after both sides retreat to agreed points to begin implementation of the agreement.' (Source: Sky News – United Kingdom)

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Europe
November 22, 2025  In military history, there are instances in which one side unleashes a completely new weapon or form of combat, leaving the adversary so entirely off guard that they are unable to muster any effective defense. Europe is presently under attack from just such an unexpected form of warfare. The undercover invaders are wreaking havoc, upending the economies, undermining civil security with hitherto unseen levels of crime, splitting domestic politics, degrading the education systems, gridlocking the courts, and altering the cherished cultural practices of their host nations. While also plotting terrorist attacks, building isis cells, and unleashing a wave of sexual assault, European governments are struggling even to grasp what is happening, let alone formulate an effective response. The initial error of the Europeans was to fall for the illusion, in 2014, that the mass of arriving persons were primarily migrants and refugees. By 2024, there were 11 million refugees (excluding illegal immigrants) from 147 countries. Enter the Afghans, Pakistanis, Syrians, Iraqis, Chechens, Somalis, and others who have no such issues. They happily produce 3-6 children per non-self-fulfilled, non-equal woman. Western European governments had in the past set up programs to reward multiple childbirth with multiple financial benefits. The policy was aimed at their own young couples, but money - especially in the modest amounts offered -  didn’t work. Now, though, it is creating a rentier class of foreign men living off the wombs of their women. And this group shows a pronounced and overt disinclination to join European society, to adapt, integrate, or be productive. There is zero indication that the current immigrant cohort intends to adapt and integrate, and every indication that many are pursuing the exact opposite goal. And there are clear signs that the second generation of this cohort will not be better, but considerably more problematic than the first. Here is the definition of a nation: it is “a country considered as a body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language.” The migrants will increase Europe’s population, yes, but the inhabitants won’t be Europeans anymore. If your country is suddenly populated by people from an entirely different background, who don’t speak your language, are the products of a completely different history and culture, have no common roots with you, express hate or contempt for you, are committed to an expansionist religion that believes in conversion, and have principles very different from yours on basic matters such as dress, food, drink, behavior, status of women; if they are determined and able to enforce your compliance with their principles, then you have not been joined by immigrants. You have been invaded by an occupying force. In Austria, the unemployment rate for citizens is 5.7 percent. For the refugees, it’s over 31 percent. 62.2 percent of the country’s welfare recipients are migrants, the majority of whom, according to Minister of Integration Plakolm, are young and capable of working. In November 2025, the Austrian Teachers’ Union was confronted with a culture war in the classrooms. Increasing numbers of their pupils were not just doing poorly in language acquisition; they were actively refusing to learn German on principle. Nearly two-thirds of isis-linked arrests in Europe over the past year involved immigrant teenagers aged 13 to 19. Germany spends over a billion Euros annually on leisure and education, homework help, and community outreach programs to charm the migrants into becoming happy fellow campers. These programs are outsourced to NGO’s. The substantive costs for migrant support in Germany alone run to 60 billion Euros a year. TVBZ counts how many individuals out of 100,000 in Germany were implicated in a violent crime (such as armed robberies, knifings, assaults) in a particular year. In 2024, the number of German citizens was 163 out of every 100,000 native Germans implicated in a violent crime. For Ukrainians, the number was 443. For Turks, 538. For Iraqis, it was 1,606; for Afghans, 1,722; for Syrians, 1,740; and for Moroccans, 1,885. One aspect of these violent crimes is the astronomical rise in sexual violence. Gang rape crime was practically unknown in Europe before the barbarians arrived. In Germany, migrants comprise around 10 percent to 12 percent of the population, but they are associated with 50 percent to 55 percent of all gang rape cases, according to data from the Bundeskriminalamt. In Austria, a gang of 17 men recently stood accused of repeatedly raping a 12-year-old girl. They filmed it on video, which was played in court, and on which you could hear her pleading with them to stop. How to reform European immigration? Rigorous application of the rule of law. Commit a crime; you’re out. Be found ineligible for asylum or a visa: out. Falsify your documents, blatantly misrepresent your age or identity, have an isis association, fail to be financially self-supporting after a designated period without serious extenuating circumstances: Out. End the child subsidies. At a minimum, cap them at the second child. Stop concealing the nationalities of criminals in the media and in your published police and court statistics. Their home countries, too, need to be held accountable. Focus a massive security effort on public transportation. Arrest offenders. Stop letting the liberals and the Left - your fifth column - sabotage your survival. Work with your young people to develop plans for work-life integration and logistical support for young families, and the pensions will take care of themselves. European governments are finally discussing - and promising their citizens - a speedier deportation of unqualified and criminal migrants and asylum seekers. Their main obstacle is the EU, which has so far blocked several attempts in that direction. The urgency could not be greater. Europe must expel this occupying force while it still can - if it still can. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)
by Benard, who was the program director in the RAND National Security Research Division. She is the author of Veiled Courage: Inside the Afghan Women’s Resistance and Securing Health, Lessons from Nation-building Missions, as well as the editor of Afghanistan: State and Society, Great Power Politics, and the Way Ahead and Democracy and Islam in the Constitution of Afghanistan. Currently, she is the Director of ARCH International, an organization that protects cultural heritage sites in crisis zones.

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Europe
20 November 2025    „OPEN LETTER to Euro-parliamentarians. Over 800 organisations call Euro-parliamentarians to move the money from war to peace.    Dear Member of the European Parliament,    Next week, you will be called upon to vote on a crucial issue, the 2026 budget, and other important votes and negotiations are coming up or already underway, including the next long-term EU budget (MFF 2028-2034) and a series of “omnibus packages”, that is, deregulation processes. All these proposals contain massive increases in military spending and gifts to the arms industry. We strongly ask you to oppose these dangerous moves and redirect resources to genuine peace policies.    We are Stop ReArm Europe, a coalition of more than 800 civil society organisations and movements from across Europe, representing a variety of sectors and/or political backgrounds, and we have something in common: We want genuine security, i.e. security focused on human needs such as environmental and climate security, food and economic security, social and health security, community and political security - for Europeans and for all citizens of the world. We want a transformational and just peace that includes the conditions for societies to flourish, such as addressing root causes of conflicts, good governance, liberty, and advancing human creative potential. In short, a common security for both states and peoples. As civil society actors, we are more determined than ever to do everything in our power to make this eventually happen; but we cannot do it alone.   We need your help as decision-makers; we need your help to make universal human rights values and international law the guiding principles of EU policies, and to put an end to decades of double-standard practices that have become so blatant in recent years. The very history of European integration makes it particularly vulnerable to undue influence from corporate interests, as demonstrated by numerous reports, and rearmament policies are no exception to this rule – quite the contrary. The discreet but powerful lobbying of the arms industry played a decisive role in the adoption of the first EU subsidies ten years ago, and its influence on both military and civilian European policies has continued to grow ever since. The lobbying budgets of the ten largest arms companies increased by 40% between 2022 and 2023. In 2025 alone (up to October), the Commission met with arms lobbyists 89 times to discuss rearmament and geopolitics, and only 15 times with trade unions, NGOs or scientists on the same topics. Meanwhile, MEPs met with the arms lobby 197 times between June 2024 and June 2025, compared to 78 times over the previous five years. As a result, the so-called ’defence readiness’ plan for supposed European autonomy ultimately boils down to subsidising large, often international, military companies, boosting production and increasing arms sales, including exports outside Europe. The ‘defence omnibus’ package follows the same logic, as it further deregulates social and environmental norms as well as ethical and arms exports standards, diverts resources from civil programmes such as the Cohesion policy, and perverts sustainable finance principles, all in the interests of the armament sector. When will enough be enough for the arms industry?     In addition to indebting Europe, and therefore its citizens, for the benefit of the arms industry and an extractive and unfair economic model, rearmament plans divert financial, human and political resources away from human security as well as from the prevention and peaceful resolution of conflicts and the major challenges facing humanity, from climate change to biodiversity loss or health crisis, to name but a few. And the proposal for the next financial framework takes a further step in that direction, as it provides for a fivefold increase in the budget allocated directly to defence and space policies, in addition to civilian programmes being largely open to the arms industry. With the overall EU budget remaining virtually stable, this necessarily means a diversion of financial resources previously allocated to civilian policies, even if the profound restructuring of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) makes it very difficult to identify specific transfers.    Overall, the ReArm Europe plan of March 2025, along with all previous and subsequent policies related to it, is doomed to failure because it will essentially reinforce European and global insecurity, fuel the global arms race – which in turn fuels armed conflicts – and exacerbate climate change and environmental damage, given the carbon and environmental footprint of the military. Is this the future that you and us want for the next generation?  We don’t, and we are convinced that you do not either.    We therefore urge you to move the money from war to peace, in order to create the environmental, economic, social, political and diplomatic conditions for positive peace, human security and common security. There are a number of concrete steps and decisions you can take in the coming weeks and months to start preparing a better future. In particular we urge you to:      1. Reject the 2026 budget at the plenary vote next week, and ask for:    a restart of negotiations to reduce subsidies for the arms industry and increase allocations to diplomacy and peaceful conflict prevention and resolution as a matter of urgency;    the end of all exemption clauses that prevent the normal parliamentary oversight on all military-related programmes.      2. Defend the social and environmental norms as well as ethical standards by opposing different proposals of the ‘omnibus for defence’, in particular:    prevent the EU Defence Fund to start funding testing activities outside Europe, as this would allow to use EU’s taxpayers’ money for testing weapons and military technologies in any war zone such as Gaza and Ukraine;    object before 29 November the proposal to limit the definition of controversial weapons to prohibited weapons, as long as the EU funds the development of disruptive weaponry;    reject the easing of arms transfers within the EU which contradicts EU countries obligations under international law;    reject the extension of exemptions and derogations to labour, chemicals, environmental and other norms in favour of the arms industry;    reject the easing of reporting obligations on the arms industry within existing corporate responsibility and sustainability frameworks.      3. Reject the current proposal of the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF 2028-2034) with regard to the following aspects:    reject the Competitiveness Fund allocating €130 billions for arms and militarised space;    reject the diversion of civil programmes, in particular civil research like Horizon as well as digital, mobility, Cohesion and other programmes, for military purposes;     reallocate these funds to strengthening diplomacy and external aid, with a clear focus on fighting climate change, poverty and inequality as well as on protecting human rights and the environment, and a resolute and consistent support for the peaceful resolution of conflicts with the involvement of women, youth and marginalised communities.       4. Strongly oppose current pressures to significantly limit the capacity and legitimacy of civil society actors to counterbalance corporate influence at EU level; the current balance of power is already heavily skewed in favour of corporate interests, and further marginalising civil society voices poses a direct threat to democratic debate in the public interest.    If you wish to interact and discuss with us about the issues raised in this letter, please contact us at contact@stoprearm.org. We would be delighted to organise online gatherings where you could exchange with many of us about your vision, hopes and plans for peace.     We thank you for your attention and we look forward to hearing from you.    On behalf of the Stop ReArm Europe campaign The coordination team of StopReArm Europe” (Source: International Peace Bureau)

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Africa

Nigeria
(Saturday), 22 Nov 2025  Nigerian gunmen abducted a total of 303 schoolchildren and 12 teachers from St Mary's Catholic primary and aecondary school in Papiri, in north-central Nigeria’s Niger State yesterday. The attackers are still moving with the children into the bush. The school kidnappings come after an attack on a church earlier this week and after armed men stormed a secondary school in northwestern Nigeria, abducting 25 schoolgirls in similar circumstances in neighbouring Kebbi State’s Maga town, early on Monday morning. United States President Trump threatened military action over what he described as targeted killings of Nigeria’s Christians. Trump’s assertions echo claims that have gained traction among right-wing and Christian evangelical circles in recent months. (Source: Al Jazeera - Qatar)

South Africa
November 23, 2025  The White House has mounted a new verbal attack on South Africa over the G-20 Leaders' Summit in Johannesburg this weekend after South African President Ramaphosa refused to allow a U.S. embassy delegation to take part in the summit’s closing ceremony. The U.S. takes over the G-20’s presidency next year. Trump withdrew all U.S. participation in the summit over his claims that some White South Africans were being racially discriminated against. Now South Africa’s chief rabbi, Dr. Goldstein, has also lashed out at the G-20, saying, "How can it be that in the long wish list of items that make up the G-20 Leaders Declaration, there wasn’t space to condemn one of the greatest human rights crises in Africa – the continent wide jihadi war on Christians?' He continued: 'How can it be that the first G-20 hosted in Africa by an African government ignores how Africa – from Mozambique to Mali, the DRC, Nigeria, Sudan and so many other countries – has become the central front of Islamist terrorism?' (Source: Fox News - U.S.)

Europe

European Commission
(Saturday ), Nov 22, 2025  ’The EU has responded to Trump’s 28-point peace plan, with der Leyen reiterating’ that there can be no agreement on Ukraine without Ukraine. European Council President Costa and European Commission President der Leyen have already held a call with Zelenskyy, as well as with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and French President Macron. The leaders of the UK, France, and Germany also met earlier today to discuss a joint response to a unilateral US plan for Ukraine, the French presidency said. ’The European Union’ will hold a meeting later today with leaders in South Africa on the margins of the G20 gathering in Johannesburg to discuss the peace plan proposed to Ukraine by US President Trump. The countries participating in discussions are Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom. 'Costa will also invite all 27 EU leaders to a meeting on Ukraine on the margins of the EU–African Union Summit in Luanda (24-25 November)'. Ukraine and the US are launching consultations in Switzerland on ways to end the war, the Secretary of Ukraine’s Security Council, Umerov, who is on Ukraine’s negotiating team, wrote on social media today. Zelenskyy had minutes earlier approved the Ukrainian delegation for the talks, which will be led by his top aide Yermak. (Source: Euractiv - Brussels, Belgium)

Ukraine
(Sunday), 23/11/2025  US Secretary of State Rubio and head of Ukraine's delegation Yermak both hailed good progress in talks underway in Geneva today to discuss a proposal to halt the Ukraine war. The new document proposes that 'Ukraine's military be capped at 800,000 in peacetime' rather than a blanket cap of 600,000 proposed by the US plan. It also says negotiations on territorial swaps will start from the Line of Contact rather than pre-determining that certain areas should be recognised as de facto Russian as the US plan suggests. The counter-proposal was drafted by the so-called European E3 powers – Britain, France and Germany. The head of the Ukrainian delegation, presidential chief of staff Yermak, wrote on social media that the first meetings were held with national security advisers from the E3. (Source: France 24 "with AFP /France/, Reuters /United Kingdom/ and AP' /U.S./)

North America

United States
(Sunday), November 23, 2025  Secretary of State Rubio on Saturday night was writing in a social media post that "The peace proposal was authored by the U.S. It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine. "As Secretary Rubio and the entire Administration has consistently maintained, this plan was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians, State Department spokesperson Pigott posted on social media. (Source: CBS News - U.S.)

(23 November 2025)  US President Trump, who has championed the 28-point plan, said on Sunday that Ukraine had not been grateful for American efforts over the war, even as US weapons continue to flow to Kyiv via NATO and Europe keeps buying Russian oil. (Source: Irish Independent - Ireland)

(November 23, 2025  War Secretary Hegseth met with Nigerian National Security Adviser Ribadu last week amid threats from Trump to cut off aid to Nigeria if it 'continues to allow the killing of Christians.' Nigerian officials have pushed back on the accusation. "Hegseth emphasized the need for Nigeria to demonstrate commitment and take both urgent and enduring action to stop violence against Christians and conveyed the Department’s desire to work by, with, and through Nigeria to deter and degrade terrorists that threaten the United States," the Pentagon said in a statement. (Source: Fox News - U.S.)

Friday), November 21, 2025 The White House is pressuring Ukraine to sign on to its new peace proposal by Thanksgiving or lose U.S. support to the country, even as Driscoll took a lighter tone in Thursday’s meeting. U.S. Army Secretary Driscoll presented Zelensky on Thursday „with a version of the 28-point plan President Trump’s special envoy Witkoff recently drafted with Russian envoy Dmitriev”. Zelensky requested changes to the document on Thursday and Driscoll’s team agreed some changes could be made. The document would initially be signed by Zelensky and Trump before being presented to the Russians. The U.S. appears to have divided the teams between Witkoff and Driscoll to play good cop and bad cop - one presses, the other tries to say: let’s work together to change the plan. Following the Thursday meeting in Kyiv, U.S. officials including Davis, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, said the timeline for signing is aggressive. This deal is between the U.S., Ukraine, Russia and Europe so I think it will be more like 12 months to negotiate. "I think this is the beginning of the peace process, not the end,” one person familiar with the contents of the plan said. The Kremlin has yet to signal its backing for the plan. Kremlin spokesman Peskov on Friday said that Moscow officially had not received any new peace proposals, and added that Russia and the U.S. had made virtually no progress on issues that are irritants in bilateral relations. “The effective work of the Russian Armed Forces should convince Zelensky and his regime that it is better to negotiate and do so now, better to do so now than later,” Peskov said. Zelensky has been weakened in recent weeks by a major corruption scandal that has ensnared several of his close associates, and which - coupled with the exhausting pace of Russian military strikes and slow advances on the ground - could leave the Ukrainian leader with diminishing options as U.S. officials exert greater pressure on him to accept a deal to end the war. (Source: The Washington Post - U.S.)

(November 21, 2025)  Senior foreign policy correspondent reports on President Trump's 28-point peace plan for Ukraine and Russia and the reactions from Putin and Zelenskyy. (Source: Fox News - U.S.)
/Video/

South America

Brazil
(22 November 2025)  There is a bitter dispute over whether to include any reference to fossil fuels in the COP30 final text. Fears grow of collapsed summit as fossil fuel row threatens to derail it. The draft released by Brazil yesterday omitted both the phrase "fossil fuels" and the word "roadmap". European Union calls host nation Brazil's proposed COP30 agreement unacceptable. EU climate commissioner Hoekstra warned the summit risked ending with no agreement. Consensus is required for a deal among nearly 200 nations. The summit is held without the United States after President Trump shunned the event. Thirty-six countries - a group including wealthy states, emerging economies and small island nations - had written to Brazil warning they would reject any outcome that failed to include a clear plan to move away from oil, coal and gas. The rejected draft called for a manyfold increase in financial support for developing countries and urged efforts to triple adaptation finance by 2030. But divisions remained, including over the inclusion of trade measures - particularly Europe’s new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism - which developing nations say could damage their export revenues. (Source: TRT World - Turkey)

Venezuela
November 22, 2025  According to a recent report in The Warzone, a senior Russian general, Makarevich, has been deployed to Venezuela to head what is described as a rotational advisory mission of roughly 120 Russian troops. The report details how these Russian troops have been placed in advisory roles for the Venezuelan Armed Forces, specifically in infantry, drone operations, special forces, military intelligence/signals intelligence, armor, aircraft, artillery, even dogs and domestic surveillance. General Makarevich’s unit is part of a larger movement of Russian forces into Venezuela. The Russians have been flying planeloads of military equipment into the country since the start of the geopolitical crisis. Russians have allegedly been getting moved into Venezuela from the Russian Africa Corps - indicating the need for Russian troops with expertise in jungle warfare. It is likely that these Russian advisers will play a similar role for Venezuela as American advisers are embedded in nominally non-combat roles in Ukraine. It has been speculated that the Wagner Group mercenaries in the country will be working directly with elite Venezuelan units, preparing to build an insurgency against the invading American forces. The Russians are attempting to project power into America’s strategic backyard, which complicates American freedom of action. It signals Moscow’s willingness to hedge geographically far from Ukraine. There could even be a scenario wherein Moscow basically trades its position in Venezuela for America’s role in Ukraine. The training of Venezuelan forces in drones, special forces, signals intelligence, and even domestic surveillance hints that asymmetric warfare is afoot. A US mission in the Caribbean might face higher stakes if Russia provides not only advisory support but actual weapons (air-defense, standoff missiles) to Venezuela. For regional actors the Russian presence becomes a signal: Russia is well inside of America’s. That could influence regional alignments, arms purchases, or intelligence cooperation. In all, the United States needs to seriously understand that the Russians are not leaving Venezuela, and are placing their forces there for a specific reason. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)
by Weichert, who has consulted regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine.

(Thursday), Nov. 20, 2025  For more than two decades, a loose-knit group of Venezuelan generals and senior officials has enabled the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine to Europe, the Caribbean and the U.S, American and Colombian officials say. Venezuela hardly grows any coca, the leaf from which cocaine is made, and has few laboratories. Nearly all cocaine is produced in neighboring Colombia. Venezuela plays an important role in allowing the drug to move through its territory and then onto ships and planes that traffic it. Most cocaine bound to the U.S. is shipped from Colombia’s Pacific coast and next door Ecuador. Venezuela’s military permits Colombian guerrillas and cocaine gangs who pay millions of dollars in bribes to move cocaine through the country. It does facilitate the security, the logistics by the National Guard and the Army. The cocaine is then shipped by air to Central America or by sea to Caribbean islands and Europe. This Venezuelan network, known as the Cartel of the Suns, is in the Trump administration’s sights. The Cartel of the Suns isn’t a hierarchical cartel but rather a diffuse network, a loose and sometimes fractious group mostly made up of military officers who facilitate drug shipments, getting payoffs along the way. The group’s name, “Suns” refers to the gold insignia, equivalent to a U.S. general’s stars, worn on the epaulets of Venezuelan generals’ uniforms. Venezuela denies that it facilitates the shipment of drugs to the U.S. But a 2020 indictment accused President Maduro and his associates of enriching themselves and using cocaine as a weapon that flooded the U.S. with the drug and inflicted damage on Americans. Maduro denies the charges in a September letter to Trump, urging dialogue over conflict. U.S. prosecutors trace the drug-trafficking connections to the presidency of the late Chávez, who took power in 1999 and ordered generals to provide weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which fought the Colombian state until a 2016 peace accord. Maduro, then the country’s vice president, succeeded Chavez as president in 2013. Since then, Maduro has presided over Venezuela’s economic meltdown, exacerbated by U.S. economic sanctions imposed in 2019. Venezuela’s GDP has contracted by 80%, forcing eight million Venezuelans, a quarter of the population, to flee. The U.S. accuses other senior Venezuelan leaders in the alleged conspiracy, placing a $25 million bounty on Venezuelan Interior Minister Cabello and $15 million for Gen. Padrino, Venezuela’s defense minister. Cabello recently denied the existence of the Cartel of the Suns, which he calls an imperialist narrative. The involvement of military officers in the drug trade is central to Maduro’s staying power. Permitting them to benefit from the drug trade binds them to Maduro, building regime cohesion. Two of the alleged members of the Cartel of the Suns are already in American prisons. Both Gen. Carvajal, a former head of Venezuelan military intelligence known as The Chicken for his long neck, and Gen. Alcalá, have pleaded guilty to helping to smuggle tons of cocaine to the U.S., and providing weapons to the FARC. In 2006, senior officials sent 5.6 tons of U.S.-bound cocaine in a DC-9 jet from the Caracas airport to Mexico, the Maduro indictment says. They created an air bridge which in 2010 alone sent 75 cocaine-laden flights from Venezuela to Honduras. In 2013, Venezuelan officials sent another planeload with 1.3 tons of cocaine to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. The arrest in Colombia of Makled, then Venezuela’s top drug boss on a U.S. warrant in 2010 shed a light on the links between senior government officials and drug traffickers. At the height of his powers he exported 10 tons of cocaine to the U.S. a month and allegedly controlled Puerto Cabello, Venezuela’s most important port. ’All my business associates are generals,’ Makled said, claiming to have 40 generals on his payroll, in correspondence with an associate. In one incident, Makled bought about eight tons of cocaine from Venezuelan generals and law enforcement sources the officials had themselves stolen from major drug traffickers. Drug trafficking even reached deep into Maduro’s own family, the Maduro indictment says. In 2015, two of his wife’s nephews were arrested in a sting in Haiti after they offered to get hundreds of kilos of cocaine to DEA undercover agents. The two told agents they were at war with the U.S. and bragged about their connection to a top FARC commander. Convicted in 2016 in New York, the pair was set free in exchange for seven U.S. prisoners in 2022. Maduro is accused of stealing two presidential elections. Last year’s candidate González, now is living in exile in Spain. The State Department says it will designate the Cartel of the Suns as a foreign-terrorist organization on Monday. (Source: The Wall Street Journal - U.S.)

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Asia

China
Sun, November 23, 2025 Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi's suggestion to the Japanese parliament on November 7 was that a hypothetical conflict in the Taiwan Strait would trigger a military response from Tokyo. For Beijing, the comments warranted economic retaliation and furious daily rebukes, including a protest to the United Nations, warnings to its citizens against travelling to Japan and suspending Japanese seafood imports. [Mainland China] will never allow external forces to interfere in Taiwan, and will never allow Japanese militarism to resurface, Beijing has also said. The Japanese prime minister says there has been no change to Tokyo's relationship with Beijing, nor has its position on the Taiwan issue shifted. But observers in China say her comments reflect Japan's years-long rightward shift, one that increasingly frames China as its main rival. It's clear that Japan has been working towards this direction for several years, Zhu, executive dean of Nanjing University's School of International Studies, said. In 1998, China and Japan signed a Joint Declaration aimed at building a partnership for peace and development. And in 2008, they signed a joint statement, pledging to fully advance a strategic, mutually beneficial relationship. No new documents have been signed in the past decade. Wu, the dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said change had been occurring since conservative, right-wing forces first returned to power [in 2012]. A host of issues have dogged relations over the years, from territorial disputes around the Diaoyu Islands, which are called the Senkakus in Japan, to concerns over peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. The late Japanese prime minister Abe spearheaded efforts to loosen Japan's constitution, with the Japanese parliament voting through legislation in 2015 that could allow troops to fight overseas. This year, Japan's annual military white paper made repeated mentions of China, framing the People's Liberation Army's rapid military build-up in recent years as Japan's greatest strategic challenge. Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the United States and Japan, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state. But Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons. China's strong reaction this time might aim to set clear rules on issues regarding Taiwan and send signals to other Western allies, Zheng, a research associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Centre for Japanese Studies said. From China's perspective, it appears determined this time to set clear rules - not only to send a signal to Japan, but also to the Philippines, the US and other allies, Zheng said. (Source: Yahoo - U.S. / South China Morning Post)

Gaza
(Sunday), 23/11/2025  Gaza’s health ministry said today that 23 Palestinians were killed and 83 injured over the past 24 hours amid ongoing Israeli attacks across the enclave. Since the ceasefire took effect on October 11, 2025, the ministry has recorded 339 deaths, 871 injuries, and 574 bodies recovered. (Source: SANA - Syria)

Israel
November 21, 2025  In Israel, the extreme orthodox Haredi segment of the Jewish population holds a vision of the proper and desirable social order that is at odds with the country’s modern, progressive, mainstream society. They believe in gender segregation, reject secular and scientific learning, and consider the study of Torah to be the only worthwhile activity. Most of their men eschew wage-earning professions and live instead on government subsidies and on money earned by their wives. The wives believe that financially supporting the husband’s lifelong full-time Torah study by working, birthing, and raising as many children as possible is the fulfillment of a woman’s role in the divine order. The Haredim disapprove of the state of Israel as an entity and vigorously oppose the recent attempts to include them in the military draft. Though disengaged from their nation, for tactical reasons, they maintain high voter turnout, voting as a bloc and as instructed by their rabbinical leadership. This makes them a critical factor in coalition building and lends them considerable weight. It’s a clever strategy. No need to fight, no need for the men to slog away at boring jobs. They need only industriously impregnate their women. Currently, the Haredi population accounts for about 21 percent of Israel’s Jewish population. At their rate of 6.7 children per woman, projections place them near or over 50 percent of the Jewish Israeli population by the end of the century. They make no secret of their wish to impose strict religious rules of behavior on the rest of the population, and by their numbers, they will be able to do that. Their triumph will, alas, be short-lived. Israel will have a population half of which is pacifist, its males economically unproductive and, with their sedentary scholarly lifestyle, not physically fit, its females pregnant, lactating, and overworked; it won’t make them very competitive in a neighborhood dominated by hyperactive, aggressive Arab males and their equally procreation-inclined wives. The Haredim seem on course to win control of Israel, briefly, until they lose it all to the Arabs. And the secular Israeli state is hastening this outcome by paying bonuses for each additional child. This program failed to incentivize its modern citizens and ended up benefiting only the minority that is poised to bring the house down. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)
by Benard, who was program director in the RAND National Security Research Division.

Japan
Nov 23, 2025  Prime Minister Takaichi on Nov 7 raised the theoretical possibility that Japan could deploy its military with other nations if China attacked Taiwan, drawing an angry response and economic retaliation from Beijing. She has since reverted to the government’s longstanding policy of not discussing particular scenarios that might involve Tokyo’s military, but Beijing continues to demand a retraction. Japan's Defence Minister Koizumi said Japan has to build up its deterrence by increasing its own capabilities and deepening ties with the US military. Visiting a military base close to Taiwan on the southern Japanese island of Yonaguni, he said plans to deploy missiles to the post were on track. Tensions smoulder between Tokyo and Beijing over the East Asian island. Japan is planning to station medium-range surface-to-air missiles on Yonaguni, about 110km east of Taiwan, as part of a broader military build-up on its southern island chain. Yonaguni is also home to a surveillance radar facility that scans nearby seas and airspace, as well as an electronic warfare unit introduced in 2024 that could be used to jam enemy communications and guidance systems. In recent weeks, the US military held a training exercise to bring supplies from Okinawa to Yonaguni to simulate the creation of a forward-operating base that might be needed in any regional crisis. Yonaguni is the end point of the Ryukyu island chain that stretches several hundred miles from the Japanese mainland. As tensions with China intensified in recent days, Chinese state-controlled media has published articles questioning Japan’s sovereignty over the islands and highlighting how the Ryukyu Kingdom was independent from Japan several hundred years ago. Before arriving in Yonaguni, Mr Koizumi visited bases on the islands of Ishigaki and Miyako. The Ishigaki base is equipped with anti-ship missiles, while Miyako is a hub for air surveillance and other military facilities, including ammunition storage. Japan and the US also have major bases on the larger island of Okinawa further to the east. (Source: The Straits Times - Singapore / Bloomberg - U.S.)

Pakistan
20 Nov 2025  Tensions simmer between Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan and India. Pakistani security forces have killed 23 fighters of banned groups, including the Pakistan Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).in two separate raids near the Afghan border. The killings add to more than 30 that the military has reported throughout the week, following a suicide bombing on November 11 outside Islamabad court, that killed at least 12 people and wounded 30 more. Pakistan has long alleged that fighter groups are backed by India and Afghanistan, a charge that New Delhi and Kabul deny. Afghanistan has blamed Islamabad for violating its sovereignty through military strikes. In recent months, the Pakistan Taliban – which wants to overthrow the Pakistani government – has escalated its attacks, which surpassed a decade-old high in August. In 2024, the number of incidents recorded surged to 856, up from 645 in 2023. The Pakistan Taliban has been emboldened since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 after the United States’s withdrawal. (Source: Al Jazeera - Qatar)

South Korea
November 23, 2025  President Lee in Johannesburg for the Group of 20 summit said today reunification with North Korea remains South Korea's ultimate goal and a constitutional duty, vowing to pursue it through dialogue rather than unilateral action. "Our government seeks gradual and phased reunification through peaceful coexistence and mutual development, reflecting the democratic will of all people on the Korean Peninsula," he added. Since taking office in June, Lee has repeatedly expressed his intent to resume talks with North Korea, saying his government respects the North's political system and will not seek reunification by absorption. Seoul has been coordinating closely with Washington and he asked U.S. President Trump to play the role of peacemaker, while also offering his diplomatic support for renewed U.S.-North Korea dialogue, he added. (Source: Yonhap News Agency - South Korea)

Syria
November 21, 2025  On November 19, the government-controlled Syrian army and the predominantly Kurdish, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) battled in the area of Maadan, east of Raqqa. The SDF was able to seize “several positions in Maadan, killed two Syrian soldiers and wound a few more. The Syrian Ministry of Defense stated that the army carried out a counterattack in which it regained the positions lost to SDF forces, pushing them to retreat. The SDF’s narrative was different, as the group announced that it had foiled an attack by government-aligned forces east of Raqqa. The SDF further claimed that its retaliation was proportionate and aimed at preventing the military conflict from spreading. At the same time, the SDF said in a statement that its troops had engaged targets used by the islamic state to launch drones east of Raqqa and claimed that its forces shot down two drones originating from positions held by factions backed by the Damascus government. The SDF released video clips extracted from a shot-down Matrice M30 drone, claiming the footage shows isis elements using those positions as bases for launching drones. Tensions between the Syrian government and the SDF had previously escalated on October 6, when Syrian troops clashed with SDF units in the Kurdish enclaves of Sheikh Maqsud and Ashrafiyeh in Aleppo. A ceasefire was brokered the following day, on October 7, with the United States mediating between the two sides. The effort to implement the March 10 integration agreement was also part of the agenda during Syrian President Sharaa’s visit to Washington. Washington confirmed Syria’s entry into the anti-islamic state coalition. The US government also formally delisted Sharaa, formerly the leader of Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al Nusra, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). Syrian Minister of Interior Khattab, whom the United States also delisted as an SDGT, stated that the SDF and the Syrian government would meet in the following days to discuss integrating the SDF’s military and security units. The end-of-year deadline for the integration agreement they signed in March 2025 approaches. Sharaa has repeatedly signaled that he has managed to prevent Turkey, which views the SDF’s core component, the People’s Defense Units (YPG), as a terrorist group and extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), from military action to allow the political process to move forward. ’While neither side appears willing to enter a full-scale military confrontation, Turkish military action may be possible’. (Source: FDD’s Long War Journal - U.S.)
by Sharawi, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Yemen
November 23 2025  A court operating under Yemen's Houthi rebels has sentenced 17 people to death for spying. The charges included colluding with foreign nations in a state of enmity with Yemen during the 2024-2025 period, namely Saudi Arabia, Britain and America and spying for their interests through officers from those countries and from the Israeli Mossad intelligence service. It said they were sentenced to be executed by firing squad. (Source: Hurriyet Daily News - Turkey)

North America

United States
November 22, 2025  Tensions escalated between China and Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi’s remarks about potential Japanese involvement in a Taiwan contingency. The U.S. State Department on Nov. 20 reaffirmed its support for Japan, saying, “Our commitment to the U.S.-Japan alliance and Japan’s defense, including the Senkaku Islands, remains unwavering. This statement made clear that the United States would defend the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which Japan administers but China claims. The State Department also emphasized the need for trilateral cooperation among South Korea, the United States, and Japan to address challenges in the Indo-Pacific, including the Chinese Communist Party’s revisionism and a hostile North Korea. South Korea Lee’s administration’s pragmatic diplomacy, which seeks to strengthen ties with China faces increased pressure. The United States has repeatedly urged South Korea to participate in countering China, particularly after approving a nuclear-powered submarine. U.S. State Department spokesperson Piggott mentioned the Senkaku Islands on Nov. 20 on X: Washington opposes any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea, or the South China Sea. On the same day, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Glass, met with Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu and described China’s ban on Japanese seafood imports and advisories against travel and study in Japan as typical economic coercion. He also criticized Chinese Consul General Xue in Osaka, who referenced beheading Takaichi, calling the remark outrageous. Taiwan President Lai posted a photo on Facebook on Nov. 20 showing himself eating sushi made with Japanese seafood. Takaichi said on Nov. 21 that she had no intention of retracting her remarks. Russia and North Korea have expressed support for China. North Korea voiced support on Nov. 18, saying, Japan is denying and distorting its historical crimes. On Nov. 20 Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zakharova called Takaichi’s remarks very dangerous and stressed that Taiwan is part of China’s internal affairs. (Source: The Dong-A Ilbo - South Korea)

Space

25 Nov 2025  China has rushed to launch a Long March-2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-22 uncrewed spacecraft to relieve three astronauts left on board the Tiangong space station without a passage to Earth. The spacecraft was lifting off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre shortly after noon local time (04:00 GMT) today. The Shenzhou-22 mission was originally planned to be crewed and take off in 2026. Debris damaged the Shenzhou-20, which is currently attached to the Tiangong station, making it unsafe for carrying humans to Earth. Three taikonauts – as Chinese astronauts are known – who had arrived in April for their six-month stay were forced to use Shenzhou-21 to return to Earth. That left the three astronauts currently on board Tiangong without a flightworthy vessel that could return them home in the event of an emergency. The uncrewed Shenzhou-22 will fill that gap. (Source: Al Jazeera - Qatar)

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Europe

France
20.11.2025  France’s Chief of the Defense Staff Mandon’s call for the French public to accept losing its children in order to deter Russia has drawn widespread criticism from political figures. His controversial statement came in a context where he was saying that France has all the expertise, along with economic and demographic strength, 'to deter the Moscow regime.' Voicing his total disagreement with Mandon's remarks, Melenchon, leader of the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI), said that it was not his place to urge anyone toward war preparations decided by no one. "Nor is it his place to forecast sacrifices that would be the consequence of our diplomatic failures, on which his public opinion was not sought! Where is President Macron? Why is he allowing this?' Melenchon wrote on the US social media company yesterday. Communist Party chief Roussel also described Mandon’s remarks as a dangerous intervention. "The answer is NO! Are the 51,000 war memorials in our towns not enough? Yes to national defense, but no to these unbearable warmongering speeches!” Roussel said on X. Vice president of the 'far-right' National Rally party, Chenu, stressed that Mandon has no legitimacy to alarm the French people with statements that in no way reflect the country’s official position. 'If he is saying what Macron thinks, that’s serious. If he is saying what Macron does not think, that’s serious. He is overstepping his role!' Chenu added. Dupont-Aignan, 2027 presidential candidate and president of Debout la France (France Arise), was stressing that what truly threatens French children is the daily insecurity they experience within the country. "No, Mr. Chief of the Defense Staff, France will not accept losing its children for the sake of a drifting regime," Royal, ex-presidential candidate from the Socialists, also wrote on social media. Earlier in October, Mandon also said that the French military 'must be ready for a clash' in three to four years, whether as a test already unfolding in hybrid forms or as something potentially more violent. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

20/11/2025  France 'must accept losing its children' warns chief of defence staff General Mandon. He sparked the anger of the political class with this sentence during his speech at the Congress of Mayors of France. (Source: France 24)

Germany
20.11.2025  Speaking to reporters in Brussels, German Foreign Minister Wadephul voices concern over reports that US President Trump approved a secret peace plan developed with Russia which would demand substantial concessions from Ukraine. He warns against sidelining Ukraine, Europe in peace talks with Russia and says any negotiations on Ukraine must include Kyiv, Europe must be involved in, and it must be preceded by a ceasefire. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Italy
20.11.2025  Italy approves extradition of Nord Stream blast suspect Ukrainian man to Germany. He was detained in August on European arrest warrant while holidaying with his family at campground near Rimini, on Italy’s Adriatic coast. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

European Commission
20.11.2025  The European Commission and the Board of Digital Services Coordinators yesterday published the first-ever Digital Services Act (DSA) systemic risk report, outlining key threats emerging on major online platforms and search engines across the EU. According to the findings, platforms face recurrent risks related to public health misinformation, harmful or illegal goods sold online, and large-scale coordinated disinformation campaigns. Regulators also flagged the misuse of generative AI, including its role in producing manipulated media or child sexual abuse material. A significant portion of the report focused on risks to minors. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

20/11/2025  Brussels has expressed frustration at being left out of the rumored US-Russia peace plan for Ukraine, 'with EU foreign policy chief Borrell' stressing that any plan would need Europe on board to succeed. (Source: France 24)
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20/11/2025  Today's meeting of foreign ministers represents the first political discussion on the European Commission's 'options paper to support Ukraine's military and financial needs in 2026 and 2027, estimated to be about €135 billion in total'. 'One of the options would use the immobilised assets of the Russian Central Bank to issue a zero-interest reparations loan to Ukraine', a project without precedent. The other two options would entail the 'borrowing of fresh money on the markets, which could be a challenge for highly indebted countries' weary of taxpayers' and investors' backlash. The European Union is pushing back against a 28-point plan first reported by US outlet Axios, to end the war in Ukraine, reportedly being drafted behind closed doors by the US and Russia, demanding that any diplomatic attempt must have Kyiv and European leaders at the table. Asked if there had been any European engagement in writing the reported plan, High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kallas said: "Not that I know of.' (Source: Euronews - based in Lyon, France)

European Union
20/11/2025  European ministers meeting in Brussels. (Source: France 24)
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Ukraine
November 20, 2025 / 7:14 PM EST  Zelenskyy receives draft plan from U.S. aimed at ending Russia-Ukraine war. (Source: CBS News - U.S.)

Africa

Sudan
20 Nov 2025  Sudan is the third-largest country in Africa, about 1.9 million sq km. In Sudan, the nation of 50.5 million, the main religion is Islam, the official language: Arabic. Sudan’s civil war, now in its third year, is a devastating struggle for power between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). More than 9.5 million people were forced from their homes across Sudan’s 18 states. Millions are facing starvation. Sudan has large natural resources, including vast oil, gold and agricultural resources that could help feed its people, but the fighting and shifting control of these resources make that impossible. Three sectors of Sudan’s main exports lead: Oil, gold, and agricultural products. In 2023, Sudan’s exports worth $5.09bn were mainly crude oil ($1.13bn), gold ($1.03bn), animal products ($902m), oilseeds ($709m, of which $613m was sesame), and gum arabic ($141m). Sudan is the world’s largest exporter of sesame seeds and gum arabic, which is used as a stabiliser and emulsifier by the global food and beverage industry and goes into pharmaceuticals, supplements, and cosmetics. The Nile River, which floods annually, is watering the agricultural lands. Sudan’s croplands are mostly concentrated between the Blue and White Niles, where Gezira state lies, an area controlled by armed forces. The White Nile meets the Blue Nile in Khartoum and continues northwards into Egypt as the Nile. The Greater Khartoum area has a population of about seven million. 35 million people live along the Nile river in Sudan. The army holds much of the north and the east, including the capital, Khartoum, as well as other key cities along the Nile and the strategic Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Other main cities are el-Obeid (560,000), Port Sudan (547,000). Nyala city in South Darfur has almost 1.15 million people. The RSF has consolidated its grip on the western region of Darfur, after it captured el-Fasher (253,000), the capital of North Darfur state, on October 26, having besieged it for nearly 18 months. About half (51.4 percent) of Sudan is covered in grazing land, or rangeland, mostly across the southern part of the country, ending roughly at Khartoum. It can support the herding and animal husbandry industries – control is divided roughly equally between the army and the RSF. The northern sector of rangeland is a strip known as the “gum arabic belt” where the acacia trees that produce the valuable resin are planted. By 2023, oil exports, Sudan’s primary source of revenue. had fallen to 70,000bpd. Crude oil remained one of Sudan’s top exports that year, valued at $1.13bn, making it the world’s 40th-largest crude exporter. Its top buyers were Malaysia ($468m), Italy ($299m), Germany ($125m), China ($105m), Singapore ($80.3m) and India ($51.4m). As of 2024, Sudan’s oil reserves were estimated at 1.25 billion barrels, while natural gas reserves stood at 3 trillion cubic feet. Most of Sudan’s oilfields are in the south near the South Sudan border, and the two countries’ oil sectors remain closely linked. Many of these fields are currently under RSF control. The industry is supported by five refineries in the central and northern regions. The largest is the Khartoum refinery, which can process 100,000bpd and, as of late January 2025, is held by SAF. The army also controls the smaller Port Sudan refinery. Pipelines carry crude from the southern fields to the Bashayer export terminal south of Port Sudan, a crucial route for Sudanese and South Sudanese oil. The line from el-Obeid to Port Sudan remains mostly under army control. Since the war began in 2023, control over gold mines and trade routes has become a critical source of funding for both sides in the conflict. One of Africa’s leading gold producers, Sudan has deposits across the northeast, centre and the south. Most of the deposits in eastern Sudan are controlled by the Sudanese army. The central and southwestern goldfields are largely under RSF control. Much of the gold is extracted through artisanal and small-scale mining, which employs hundreds of thousands of people but operates largely outside government regulation. In July, despite the conflict, Sudan’s gold production surged to 64 tonnes in 2024, up 53 percent from 41.8 tonnes in 2022, generating $1.57bn in legal export revenues. An unquantified black-market trade continues, fuelled by the instability. The United Arab Emirates bought more than 99 percent of the $ 1.03bn in Sudanese gold exports in 2023. In 2023, the UAE was Sudan’s top trade partner, importing $1.09bn, or 21 percent of Sudan’s total exports, almost entirely in gold. Some 80 percent of Sudan’s exports are to Asia, followed by 11 percent to Europe and 8.5 percent to Africa. China ranked second, importing $882m (17 percent), primarily in vegetable products. It was followed by Saudi Arabia, with $802m (16 percent) worth of mostly livestock; Malaysia, with $470m (9 percent) of primarily crude petroleum; and Egypt, with $387m (7.6 percent) of a mix of goods. These five countries account for more than two-thirds of Sudan’s exports. (Source: Al Jazeera - Qatar)

Arctic

20 November 2025  Monitoring mercury pollution in waters and seafood is becoming increasingly important. The Arctic is warming at a rate four times faster than the rest of the world. This means that the permafrost in places such as Siberia is thawing, and the glaciers on Svalbard are shrinking. These processes could release methylmercury, one of the most toxic forms of mercury into the oceans. Methylmercury, which has been stored by nature for centuries, poses a serious threat to living creatures. Methylmercury can find its way to our plates through absorption in algae, plants, fish and other wildlife. (Source: The Barents Observer - Norway)

North America     Észak-Amerika

United States    Egyesült Államok
Thursday 20 November 2025 22:45, UK  Ukrainian support for peace plan 'very much in doubt'. Trump's plan – the 28-point proposal ’cooked up’ between Trump negotiator Witkoff and Kremlin official Dmitriev without European and Ukrainian involvement - is non-starter for Ukrainians, being pounded with devastating drone attacks, on the verge of losing a key stronghold city, Pokrovsk, and with Zelenskyy embroiled in the gravest political crisis since the war began, with key officials facing damaging corruption allegations. ’The suspicion is Mr Witkoff and Mr Dmitriev conspired together’ to choose this moment to put even more pressure on the president. The genesis of this plan is unclear. Trump's overrated Gaza ceasefire plan attracted lavish praise from world leaders, but now seems mired in deepening difficulty. The fear is Mr Trump's team are finding ways to allow him to walk away from this conflict altogether, blaming Ukrainian intransigence for the failure of his diplomacy. Mr Trump has already ended financial support for Ukraine, acting as an arms dealer instead, selling weapons to Europe to pass on to the invaded democracy. Europe and Ukraine cannot reject the plan entirely and risk alienating Mr Trump. ’They will play for time and hope against all the evidence he can still be persuaded’ to desert the Kremlin and put pressure on Putin to end the war, rather than force Ukraine to surrender instead. If he were to take away military intelligence support too, Ukraine would be blind to the kind of attacks that in recent days have killed scores. (Source: Sky News - United Kingdom)

(2025. XI. 21., péntek)  Zelenszkij csütörtökön délután hivatalosan is megkapta azt az amerikai javaslatot, amelyet Washington szerint a diplomácia felgyorsítására dolgoztak ki. A dokumentum átadásáról és tartalmi kereteiről az Elnöki Hivatal számolt be, hangsúlyozva, hogy a tervezet nem lezárt anyag, hanem egy olyan alap, amelynek finomítása még hátravan. A közleményben az is szerepelt, hogy a béketervezet-vita hamarosan újabb szintre léphet, amikor a felek közvetlenül megvitatják a kulcspontokat. A háborús konfliktus árnyékában ez a folyamat különös jelentőséget kap. Mutatjuk a terv összes pontját, amelyet a Strana közölt.    1. Ukrajna szuverenitását megerősítik.    2. Teljes és átfogó megnemtámadási egyezmény jön létre Oroszország, Ukrajna és Európa között. A múlt 30 évének minden vitás kérdését rendezettnek tekintik.    3. Oroszországtól nem várható, hogy megtámadja szomszédos országait, és a NATO-tól nem várható további bővítés.    4. Oroszország és a NATO párbeszédet folytat az Egyesült Államok közvetítésével minden biztonsági kérdés rendezése és a feszültség csökkentése érdekében a globális biztonság és a jövőbeni gazdasági együttműködés javítására.    5. Ukrajna megbízható biztonsági garanciákat kap.    6. Az ukrán fegyveres erők létszámát 600 000 főben korlátozzák.    7. Ukrajna vállalja, hogy alkotmányba foglalja a NATO-csatlakozás tilalmát, a NATO pedig vállalja, hogy alapszabályába beírja: Ukrajna a jövőben sem léphet be.    8. A NATO vállalja, hogy nem telepít csapatokat Ukrajnába.    9. Európai vadászgépeket telepítenek Lengyelországba.    10. Amerikai garanciák:   Az Egyesült Államok kártérítést kap a nyújtott garanciákért;   Ha Ukrajna megtámadja Oroszországot, elveszíti a garanciát;   Ha Oroszország támadja meg Ukrajnát, a koordinált katonai válasz mellett az összes globális szankciót visszaállítják, és a megállapodásból fakadó minden előny megszűnik;   Ha Ukrajna ok nélkül rakétát lő ki Moszkvára vagy Szentpétervárra, a biztonsági garancia érvényét veszti.    11. Ukrajna jogosult lesz az EU-tagságra, és amíg a kérdés napirenden van, rövid távú kedvezményes hozzáférést kap az európai piachoz.    12. Globális újjáépítési csomag Ukrajna számára, többek között:   a) Ukrajna Fejlesztési Alapjának létrehozása – befektetések a technológiai, adatközponti és mesterséges intelligencia ágazatokba;   b) Az Egyesült Államok együttműködik Ukrajnával a gázvezetékek és tárolók helyreállításában, fejlesztésében és üzemeltetésében;   c) Háború sújtotta területek újjáépítése, városok és lakóövezetek rekonstrukciója;   d) Infrastrukturális fejlesztések;   e) Ásványkincsek és nyersanyagok kitermelése;   f) A Világbank külön finanszírozási csomagot dolgoz ki az újjáépítés felgyorsítására.    13. Oroszország visszaintegrálása a globális gazdaságba:   a) A szankciók feloldását szakaszosan, egyénileg egyeztetve tárgyalják meg;   b) Az USA hosszú távú gazdasági együttműködési megállapodást köt Oroszországgal energia, infrastruktúra, mesterséges intelligencia, adatközpontok, ritkaföldfém-bányászat és más területeken;   c) Oroszország visszatérhet a G8-ba.    14. A befagyasztott pénzeszközök felhasználása:   100 milliárd dollárnyi orosz vagyonból Ukrajna amerikai vezetésű újjáépítését finanszírozzák;   Az Egyesült Államok a profit 50%-át kapja;   Európa további 100 milliárd dollárt biztosít az újjáépítésre;   A befagyasztott európai pénzeket feloldják;   A többi orosz vagyonból közös amerikai–orosz beruházási alap jön létre, amely közös projekteket valósít meg, a konfliktusok elkerülésére ösztönözve.    15. Közös amerikai–orosz munkacsoport jön létre a biztonsági kérdések kezelésére és a megállapodás végrehajtásának biztosítására.    16. Oroszország törvényben rögzíti, hogy nem támadja meg Európát és Ukrajnát.    17. Az USA és Oroszország meghosszabbítja a nukleáris fegyverek elterjedésének megakadályozásáról szóló szerződéseket, beleértve a START–1-et.    18. Ukrajna vállalja, hogy nem válik nukleáris állammá, az atomsorompó-szerződésnek megfelelően.    19. A zaporizzsjai atomerőmű újraindul, IAEA-felügyelet mellett, az áramot 50–50 arányban kapja Oroszország és Ukrajna.    20. Oktatási és társadalmi programok indulnak a kulturális tolerancia erősítésére és a rasszizmus csökkentésére:   a) Ukrajna átveszi az EU vallási és nyelvi kisebbségeket védő szabályait;   b) Mindkét állam garantálja az ukrán és orosz média és oktatás jogait;   c) A náci ideológia minden formáját tiltani kell.    21. Területi rendelkezések:   a) Krím, Luhanszk és Donyeck de facto orosznak lesz elismerve, az USA által is;   b) Herszon és Zaporizzsja a frontvonal mentén „befagyasztásra kerül”, ami de facto elismerést jelent;   c) Oroszország felad bizonyos területeket, amelyeket az öt megyén kívül tart;   d) Az ukrán erők visszavonulnak Donyeck egy részéről, amelyből nemzetközileg elismert, orosz területhez tartozó demilitarizált övezet lesz. Orosz csapatok nem léphetnek be.    22. Mindkét fél vállalja, hogy a területi egyezményeket nem változtatja meg erővel. A biztonsági garanciák érvényt vesztenek, ha valamelyik fél megsérti ezt.    23. Oroszország nem akadályozza Ukrajna kereskedelmi célú Dnyeper-használatát, és megállapodnak a gabona szabad fekete-tengeri exportjáról.    24. Humanitárius bizottság létrejön, amely:   Az összes fennmaradó hadifoglyot és holttestet „mindenkit mindenkiért” alapon cseréli;   b) Visszaküldi az összes civil fogvatartottat és gyermeket;   c) Családegyesítési programot indít;   d) Intézkedéseket hoz a konfliktus áldozatai szenvedéseinek enyhítésére.    25. Ukrajna 100 napon belül választásokat tart.    26. Teljes amnesztia illeti meg a háborúban érintett összes felet, és minden fél vállalja, hogy nem támaszt későbbi követeléseket.    27. A megállapodás jogilag kötelező érvényű lesz, végrehajtását Trump elnök által vezetett Béketanács felügyeli. A megsértése szankciókat von maga után.    28. A dokumentum elfogadása után azonnali tűzszünet lép életbe, miután mindkét fél visszavonult az egyeztetett vonalak mögé. (Forrás: Origo - Magyarország)

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Guinea
15 Nov 2025  The first Simandou iron ore shipment to China and Australia’s strategic choices. Most extracts from US$20 billion mining project in Guinea’s Simandou – the world’s largest known untapped deposit of high-grade iron ore – are expected to be shipped to China, given the heavy investments by Chinese firms in the project. Guinea’s Simandou 2040 plan aims to use mining revenues to develop infrastructure, agriculture and education in the West African country, while also signalling the mine’s immediate global importance. Guinean officials are aware of the possibility that Chinese firms would use the massive influx of high-grade ore to suppress global iron ore prices. The officials have pledged to actively collaborate with the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto to leverage the mine’s premium product and Rio Tinto’s market expertise to maintain stable high prices for the ore. The Guinean minister of mines and geology, Sylla, who is a member of the Simandou Strategic Committee that monitors the project for the government, said the country was monitoring the formation of China Mineral Resources Group (CMRG), which aims to centralise Chinese iron ore imports to maintain a high iron ore price. As Rio Tinto is a pure miner, Guinea is often closer to Rio Tinto in the desire to maintain a high iron ore price, he added, referencing the diverse interests of the Chinese stakeholders, which also include processing and steelmaking. The project is expected to ramp up production over 30 months to reach its full commercial capacity of 120 million tonnes annually, a volume that will position Guinea among the top global iron ore exporters. Since China Baowu Steel Group was a major partner for Simandou, a lot of this ore will go to China. Rio Tinto and the Aluminium Corporation of China (Chinalco) own blocks 3 and 4 of Simandou under a consortium called Rio Tinto Simfer, while blocks 1 and 2 are owned by the Winning Consortium Simandou (WCS), whose key partners include Singapore’s Winning International Group, as well as China’s Weiqiao Aluminium and Baowu Resources. The Guinean government holds a 15 per cent stake in both, with an 18 million tonne share per year. To overcome delays caused by a lack of infrastructure, Simfer and WCS jointly funded and built the shared 650km railway and port of Morebaya infrastructure. Sylla was noting that Guinea’s interests sometimes aligned with Rio Tinto, sometimes with Baowu, and other times with WCS because WCS is a logistics specialist. Sylla also highlighted a complementarity between Simandou and Australian Pilbara ore. Simandou’s high-grade deposit targets the premium 65 per cent iron content blend market, making it comparable only to Brazil’s Vale, especially the Carajás deposits. He said this gave Rio Tinto the unique opportunity to offer both products and sell the premium ore not only to China but also to European and Middle Eastern steel mills. But the Simandou project is widely dubbed a potential Pilbara killer, a reference to its long-term threat to Western Australia’s market dominance. According to Sylla, this superior quality is critical to China’s “green steel” industry and gives Rio Tinto the unique opportunity to offer both products globally, as most of Australian Pilbara ore typically focuses on the larger 62 per cent blend market. Aitchison, general director of Rio Tinto Simfer, said that emerging steelmaking technologies required high-grade ore and Simandou’s quality allowed for reduced energy input in the process, thereby lowering carbon dioxide emissions. Beijing-based lawyer Kai noted that China’s shift from infrastructure to a hi-tech economy was reducing its demand for steel and iron ore. China produced 54 per cent of the world’s steel in 2023, this transition signals a long-term contraction for the global iron ore market. “With supply rising and demand falling, someone will inevitably be pushed out and that someone is likely to be the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The reason is geopolitical,” he said of Simandou’s entry. Xue argued that Australia’s Pilbara region was likely to be displaced due to Australia’s 2021 entry into the Aukus security pact with the United States and United Kingdom, focused on acquiring nuclear-powered submarines to boost its military standing in the Indo-Pacific. This move prompted China to diversify its supply chains, unblocking the long-stalled Simandou project in Guinea. Initiated by Rio Tinto in 1997, the project experienced many delays due to legal and political challenges before advancing with the partnerships involving Rio Tinto, Chinese firms and the Guinean government. Final construction started in 2022. The first shipment marks the moment Australia’s strategic choices began to undermine its own resource economy, Xue said. (Source: South China Morning Post)
by Nyabiage - a Kenyan journalist, the South China Morning Post's first Africa correspondent

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Italy
November 10, 2025  Africa is becoming a more competitive geopolitical arena, creating openings for new political, commercial and security alliances. Former colonial powers such as France have lost much of their influence, creating a security vacuum in the Sahel that Russia has been keen to fill. China, India and Turkiye are finding ways to bolster their influence. Italy’s role in Africa is growing. In 2008, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Lybian ruler Qaddafi signed the Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation, helping the countries build their relationship around energy, with Libya becoming a key supplier of natural gas and oil and the two cooperating on security matters in the Mediterranean. The geopolitical uncertainty unleashed by the Arab Spring uprisings of 2010 and 2011 in North Africa and the Middle East, coupled with increasing refugee flows into Europe, prompted Italy to revise its approach, dedicating greater attention to Africa and to the “wider Mediterranean.” In 2013, Italy established the National Support Military Base in Djibouti and, in 2018, launched the Bilateral Support Mission in the Republic of Niger (MISIN), to support local security forces in the fight against terrorism, human trafficking and organized crime. Italy also took part in multilateral initiatives like the United Nations Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) or the Takuba Task Force, a European Union mission in the Sahel that was placed under French command. The nature of Italy’s current foreign policy means its progress largely depends on the prime minister remaining in office. In October 2022, during Prime Minister Meloni’s inaugural address to parliament, she named the Italy-Africa strategy the “Mattei Plan for Africa” after the late Christian Democrat politician and founder of Eni. Italian PM Giorgia Meloni has described the approach a “new pact among free nations, which choose to cooperate because they believe in the values of the centrality of the individual, the dignity of work and freedom.” The Mattei Plan seeks to break with the previous aid paradigm. The “Mattei formula,” a 75/25 profit-sharing model offered more advantages to producing countries than the more prevalent 50/50 arrangement. The current global landscape is marked by fragmentation, a crisis of multilateralism, the exhaustion of the post-Cold War aid system and the reshaping of Africa’s geopolitical order. At the same time, migration has become a key issue in Italian domestic politics. Italy increasingly plays a strategic role in Africa through cooperation with other regional powers. The Mattei Plan is based on six pillars: energy, infrastructure, water, agriculture, education and training, and health. Energy is a particularly critical domain. In January 2024, the Italy-Africa Summit, held under the slogan “a bridge for common growth,” was elevated from ministerial to head-of-state level. The Mattei Plan’s activities are run by a steering committee placed under the direct supervision of the prime minister. It was initially focused on Maghreb countries and later expanded to the sub-Saharan region, namely Mozambique (where Eni has a major gas extraction operation in the Rovuma Basin), as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya and Ivory Coast. Ms. Meloni has emerged as one of Europe’s most pragmatic leaders. On the international stage, she has reinforced transatlantic ties at a time when relations between the EU and United States face mounting strain. Her time in office has enabled Italy to craft a foreign policy that addresses the country’s national and international interests, particularly as a European and Mediterranean power. Italy’s relations with Tunisia have deepened, especially in the energy and agricultural sectors. Prime Minister Meloni’s administration provides diplomatic support for President Saied and, in return, Tunisia has bolstered its commitment to curbing irregular migration flows to Italy. A flagship initiative for the near future is the ELMED project, a planned electricity interconnection linking Tunisia and Italy across the Mediterranean. Ties with Egypt have strengthened, expanding into emerging fields such as green hydrogen, while Italy has also played a key role in the EU’s decision to designate Egypt a “safe third country” for the return of asylum seekers. Algeria has become Italy’s primary supplier of natural gas. Unlike France, in most (but not all) cases, Italy is not viewed as a hostile former colonial (or neocolonial) power. With anti-French sentiment in Africa mounting, this legacy has helped Italy increase its role in the Sahel’s rapidly evolving security landscape. Italy is the only Western country maintaining a military presence in Niger. Italy has become involved in Angola’s Lobito Corridor project. Another key initiative under the Mattei Plan framework.is the Blue-Raman submarine-cable project linking Europe to India via the Mediterranean and Eastern Africa. The program is cofinanced by the European Commission and is being implemented by Telecom Italia Sparkle. African countries and institutions are becoming more engaged. The African Development Bank has now become a leading financial backer of the Mattei Plan. Ms. Meloni’s ability to manage difficult trade-offs while safeguarding core interests has been a key factor. On the other hand, a strategy that centers so deeply around any individual prime minister ’runs the risk’ of being short-lived. Another risk is that Italy increasingly, if only partially, fills the voids left by declining French influence throughout Africa – a potential for growing tension between Rome and Paris. There are two main scenarios for the program’s future. In the most likely scenario, Italy’s influence in Africa increases, with projects in African countries involving other Western actors, such as the EU or the U.S. This could help mitigate Russia’s growing presence in the Sahel. This scenario also foresees the deepening of strategic trilateral relations between Italy, African states and non-Western actors, namely Gulf countries. In a less likely scenario in the short to medium term, the Mattei Plan would be compromised by a gradual loss of Italian autonomy, as third parties like the EU assume a greater role in funding and implementing projects with African states. The EU and other European powers like France are seen as less effective or even as potential threats to African states’ national sovereignty. More risk to the plan’s viability lies in the ’possibility of sudden political shifts across Africa’. (Source: Geopolitical Intelligence Services (GIS) - Liechtenstein)
by Nogueira Pinto, an African affairs expert

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Europe

European Commission
November 10, 2025  Last week, the European Commission handed over grant agreements for EU transport infrastructure funding in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine and Moldova. (EU Reporter - based in Brussels)

7 November 2025  Belgium, home to Euroclear - an international central securities depository that holds most of the frozen Russian assets - is demanding firm guarantees before allowing that money to be used to fund a loan for Ukraine. The European Commission has sent experts to Brussels to help resolve the stand-off and reassure the Belgian Government. The European Central Bank (ECB) shares concerns, warning that any misstep could weaken confidence in the euro’s reliability as a reserve currency and drive investors away. With Germany, France and others backing the plan, pressure is mounting on Brussels to approve it at the December summit. (Source: Brussels Signal - Belgium)

European Parliament
(10 November 2025) The Environment, Climate and Food Safety Committee adopted its position on the Commission’s proposal for an amendment to the EU Climate Law today, setting a new, additional, intermediate and binding 2040 EU climate target of reducing net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 90% compared to 1990 levels. Plenary is expected to vote on Parliament’s position on 13 November, after which negotiations with the member states on the final law can begin. (Source: European Parliament)

Norway
07/11/2025  Norway has grown vastly richer after overtaking Russia as Europe's main gas supplier following the invasion of Ukraine. Will 'war profiteer' Norway come to Ukraine's financial rescue? Norway made an extra 109 billion euros from soaring gas prices after Russia's invasion, thanks to its AAA credit rating and its sovereign wealth fund, the world's biggest, valued at around $2.1 trillion. At a time when many EU member states have strained public finances, the European Commission plans to use part of the frozen Russian assets to give Ukraine a 140-billion-euro loan, interest free, to finance its budgetary and military support over the next two years. Belgium, home to the international deposit organisation Euroclear, which holds the bulk of the frozen assets, has demanded strict guarantees from other EU countries in order to share the risks. 'Some heavily indebted countries, such as France, would have a hard time agreeing to such a demand”. ’Norway has the financial means to guarantee a loan that would enable Ukraine to better defend itself against Russia, and I think we should do it,’ the head of Norway's small opposition Liberal Party, Melby, told. The idea resonated with some European political leaders. ’That would be great,’ said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen during an EU summit in Copenhagen last month. Norway's government has already earmarked civil and military aid of more than 275 billion kroner ($27.4 billion) to Kyiv ’over the 2023-2030 period’. According to AFP's sources, Norway is in talks with Brussels but has no current plans to provide a single-handed safety net to Kyiv. (Source: France 24 / AFP = France)

United Kingdom
November 9, 2025  BBC Director-General Davie and the British broadcaster's top news executive Turness both resigned today after criticism of the way the organization edited a speech by U.S. President Trump made on Jan. 6, 2021, before protesters attacked the Capitol in Washington. The way the speech was edited for a BBC documentary last year was misleading and cut out a section where Trump said that he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully. Pressure on the broadcaster's top executives has been growing since the Daily Telegraph newspaper published parts of a dossier complied by Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines. It criticized the BBC's coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC's Arabic service. The BBC faces greater scrutiny than other broadcasters - and criticism from its commercial rivals - because of its status as a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by all households with a television. It also is bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial in its output, and critics are quick to point out when they think it has failed. (Source: NPR - U.S.)

North America

United States
November 10, 2025  The gnawing and weeping and gnashing of teeth in Washington, DC, over the recent US troop drawdown in NATO’s eastern flank has been quite an ordeal to witness from afar. After all, the roughly 1,000 US troops that had been deployed were only ever meant to be deployed there temporarily. But it just goes to show how the NATO bureaucracy really works. What was always intended by the Pentagon to be a temporary deployment to NATO’s eastern periphery was actually meant to be a backdoor toward a larger and longer commitment by the United States on behalf of the NATO bureaucracy. And now that Trump has gummed up those carefully laid designs, the Europeans (and their globalist allies in DC) are screaming like stuck pigs. But the real reason that so many Atlanticists in Europe and Washington are raging over the move is because they fear what this is a prelude to. Politico leaked a document believed to have been penned by the Euroskeptical Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colby that effectively outlined how the US was going to deprioritize the theaters it has been involved in - mainly Europe and the Middle East - and instead would prioritize USSOUTHCOM and USNORTHCOM for a Western Hemispheric Defense strategy. A related document, the Unified Command Plan (UCP) made mention of the need to shift key resources out of the European Command (EUCOM) and Central Command (CENTCOM) areas of responsibility and into the Western Hemisphere. One must not write off the possibility that such a rotation to the Indo-Pacific is merely a pitstop for US forces that will ultimately be permanently redeployed to the Western Hemisphere. Colby’s document remains on Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s desk. The fear and loathing exhibited by the globalist set in Washington and Brussels is an indicator that they know there’s more going on (without actually knowing it). Between Trump’s insistence with acquiring the Panama Canal Zone, empowering Argentina, threatening Venezuela, attacking drug cartels, and absorbing Greenland into the United States, it is clear that his vision for American grand strategy is ultimately Western Hemispheric Defense. It’s why NATO is so scared right now. Removing a light infantry unit that was technically never going to be permanently stationed in Romania is one thing. But what that move heralds is why so many are angry. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)
by Weichert. His newest book: A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine.

November 8, 2025  Six young men, hailing from three different states and all between the ages of 19 and 21, have been accused in a sprawling plot that federal investigators allege includes two thwarted terror plots, one a Halloween mass shooting and the other involving plans to travel to Syria and fight for the islamic state terror group. Their alleged plot to join isis represents what immigration expert Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center called a fundamental failure of American assimilation and the speed at which radicalization can happen over the internet. Three of the suspects from Dearborn, Michigan, a Detroit suburb are accused of planning to attack gay bars on Halloween. Another comes from Kent, Washington, who had "strong family ties [and] stable housing." One is a New Jersey college student, another is the son of an English professor. At least two have familial ties overseas, and the alleged plot included contacts in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Nigeria. One, living in Washington state, had alleged ties to a juvenile terror suspect in Canada. The other lives in New Jersey and is accused of talking about a potential terror attack in Boston during a livestream. The thwarted Detroit plot was allegedly planned to be similar to a mass terror attack in France in 2015 that killed more than 130 people and injured hundreds, as well as the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, which killed another 49. While isis was defeated militarily in 2019, terrorist ideas continue to spread online. A suspect allegedly said he hoped he would end up with a documentary made about him and his own page on Wikipedia, according to court documents. Ries argued that the U.S. and similar nations are under coordinated ideological attack by academic groups and foreign organizations. ’There is a real globalist effort to invade, to commit violence, to deconstruct Western civilization from within, through division and violence,’ Ries warned. "The U.S. is on that same path, not as far down as the U.K. or France, nonetheless, we're on the path.’ "We need to get back, as a sovereign nation, we need to get back to teaching assimilation and encouraging assimilation and civics, one language, encouraging loyalty to your fellow Americans," Ries said. "The Trump administration is now returning to neighborhood visits for naturalization applications to see if [an applicant] is going to uphold the oath that they would take if we grant them naturalization," Ries said. "Are they gonna be loyal to America and their fellow Americans?" (Source: Fox News - U.S.)

07/11/2025 - 19:27  US President Trump told Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán today that he would consider exempting this close ally from sanctions on Russian oil purchases. He hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the White House, citing his country's reliance on energy from the region. "We are looking at it because it is very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas. As you know they don't have the advantage of having sea," Trump told reporters as he met Orbán. Orbán said that Russian energy was vital for his country and he would explain to Trump what would be the consequences for the Hungarian people and for the Hungarian economy not to get oil and gas from Russia. "Because we are supplied by pipelines. Pipeline is not an ideological or political issue. It's a physical reality because we don't have port(s)," Orbán said. (Source: France 24 ”with AFP” = France)

(6 November 2025)  75% of Tesla shareholders have approved a pay package for boss Musk that could be worth nearly $1tn. (Source: BBC - United Kingdom)

South America

Bolivia
09/11/2025  Pro-business conservative Paz was sworn in as Bolivia’s new president on Saturday, ushering a new era after nearly 20 years of one-party rule. As he took office, Paz vowed that Bolivia would open up to the world after two decades of leftist rule that many blame for the country's economic ills. (Source: France 24)

Colombia
November 10, 2025  Representatives of European, Latin American and Caribbean nations began a two-day summit yesterday in Colombia to try to strengthen ties. Colombian President Petro is among the strongest critics of the U.S. strikes against alleged drug-carrying vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific which have killed more than 60 people since September. Petro has called the deaths extrajudicial executions and has identified at least one of the killed as a Colombian citizen. One of two known survivors of the attacks is also Colombian. Colombia’s Foreign Ministry was highlighting the presence of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and European Council President Costa. (Source: AP - U.S.)

Ecuador
(Monday, 10.11.2025)  Authorities said at least 27 inmates were found dead by asphyxiation Sunday afternoon at the prison in Machala, a southwestern city in El Oro province, where an armed riot left four others dead and dozens injured in the morning. Prison authorities said the 27 individuals found dead had ’among themselves committed asphyxiation, which caused immediate death by suspension,’ while 33 inmates and one police officer were injured. Ecuadoran prisons have become operational centers for rival drug-trafficking gangs, with over 500 inmates killed in fighting between groups competing to control the illegal trade. Local residents could hear gunfire, explosions, and cries for help coming from inside the prison's walls. Violence is believed to be connected to plans to move some inmates into a new maximum-security prison built by the government of President Noboa in another province that is due to be inaugurated this month. At the end of September, another armed confrontation at the prison in Machala left 13 inmates and a prison official dead. (Source: TRT World - Turkey / AFP - France)

Global

November 6, 2025  The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) kicked off its two-day leaders’ summit in Brazil today - with one notable absence. For the first time since the summit began 30 years ago, the United States did not send any top government officials to represent Washington’s interests. Such a snub represents the Trump administration’s broader disregard for green technology, clean energy, and the threats from climate change. The United States is the second-largest carbon emitter in the world after China, accounting for more than 10 percent of total global emissions, according to 2023 data. Yet under Trump, the White House has abandoned climate pledges and instead teamed up with other oil-producing nations to oppose key green legislation, such as a global plastics treaty and a worldwide fee on carbon pollution. In his U.N. General Assembly speech in September, Trump called climate change the world’s “greatest con job' and 'trumpeted' the use of fossil fuels. Experts are unsure whether COP30 can run effectively. The European Union, which has one of the world’s most ambitious emissions reduction policies, has tried to portray itself as a leader in climate talks. But recent infighting and the weakening of the bloc’s own reduction target have undermined its influence and put European leaders on shaky ground to start the conference. (Source: Foreign Policy - U.S.)

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Germany
9 November 2025  German 'far-right' activist seeks asylum in U.S. Seibt, 25, said she is being persecuted in Germany for her political views - the 'target of intelligence surveillance' and 'state media defamation' , and has received death threats from antifa. Seibt alleges that German police refused to protect her when she contacted them about death threats she had received. Seibt has more than 459,000 followers on X and 112,000 subscribers on YouTube. Seibt shared a letter from German domestic intelligence documenting its tracking of her activities, which she said prompted her decision to seek asylum. Seibt met on Oct. 30 with Rep. Luna (R-Florida), who said in a statement that she is personally assisting with Seibt’s asylum application and making her case to Secretary of State Rubio. The Trump administration has signaled plans to prioritize protections for White refugees and Europeans who claim they are being targeted for their populist views. “It is clear that, due to her support for President Trump and her refusal to conform to leftist ideology, she has been targeted and could face imprisonment/physical danger if she returns to Germany - simply for rejecting the groupthink that is currently dominating the country and destroying its economy,' Luna wrote in a statement on X. The Trump administration has already granted refuge to dozens of White South Africans who claimed to be persecuted at home. A draft proposal from the State Department also would give consideration to free speech advocates in Europe, according to a former U.S. official who had seen the document. The New York Times reported that administration proposals would also prioritize Europeans who have been targeted for peaceful expression of views online such as opposition to mass migration or support for ‘populist’ political parties. The broader interpretation of free speech in the U.S. compared with most of Europe might prompt American courts to take Seibt’s case seriously. A spokesperson of the State Department said the department was “extremely concerned by increasing censorship by E.U. bureaucrats and government officials,' adding that the U.S. “supports all Europeans working to defend our common civilizational heritage.” (Source: The Washington Post - U.S.)

Slovakia
(9.11.2025)  Slovakia voices dissent over EU plan to use frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s defence. PM Robert Fico warns EU plan would prolong war, rejects participation in military financing schemes. Fico described his position as a pro-peace stance. EU leaders are expected to discuss the usage of the Russian frozen assets proposal in December, where unanimous approval will be required. (Source: TRT World - Turkey)

Belarus
Monday 10 November 2025  Belarus’ leader is threatening to seize over 1,000 Lithuanian trucks stranded in the country following the closure of its border with Lithuania after repeated incursions by air balloons carrying smuggled cigarettes. (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)

Russia
Sunday, 9 November 2025 13:15  Russia’s defence ministry says that it had encircled Ukrainian troops in Pokrovsk today as it said that eight attempts to break out of the encirclement had been repelled. It added that six Ukrainian attempts to unblocked surrounded units in the Kupiansk area had also been thwarted. Ukraine denies its troops are surrounded. (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)

November 9, 2025  Last summer, Ukraine’s security service and navy carried out a successful attack targeting a Russian facility in Crimea. Using a host of lethal drones and cruise missiles, Kyiv was reportedly able to disable both Russia’s S-300 and S-400 systems by using Neptune missiles in the assault. Earlier this month, Ukrainian special forces reportedly carried out a precision strike on multiple Russian assets, including command and radar components of its S-400 “Triumf” air defense division. According to Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate, the attack successfully took out a 92N6E multi-function radar and the power supply system supporting the command post. As the war rages on, Kyiv will undoubtedly attempt to destroy additional SAM components. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)
by Carlin, an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel.

Serbia
10.11.2025  Wedges in the Eurasian Transport Corridors. The China-Europe Railway Express is one of the most under-reported stories in the West. It is a large-scale, cheaper, faster and more secure China-Europe trade via the Russian Federation – as the main transit hub – which is not only possible, but already fully operational and highly profitable. The China-Europe Railway Express during the September blockage of the Poland-Belarus border stranded Europe-bound convoys of Chinese goods for two weeks. Poland, citing the Russian-Belarusian Zapad-2025 military exercises, closed its eastern border. It also served as an opportunity for Poland to try to drive wedges between Beijing and Moscow, by directing Chinese ire at Russia’s responsibility, as well as attempting to motivate Chinese authorities to move away from their positions on the conflict in Ukraine. This immediately impacted the entire supply chain across Eurasia, affecting shippers in China, companies in Central Asia, Russia, and Belarus, and residents of the border area. Warsaw was finally urged to reopen the border by its own traders. The issue redirected officials’ attention to the alternative railway route, the Middle Corridor Route bypassing the Russian Federation. At the mid-October “Dialogues on China” conference in Belgrade, Serbia, this alternative was analysed on several occasions by experts on China and transport corridors. Their conclusion, in the geopolitical sense, was that ramping up the alternative route would be a boost for US and Turkish interests, and a loss for Russia and Iran. Driving wedges to gain strategic advantage in the transport and energy infrastructure has also been a feature of attempts to curb Serbia’s foreign policy independence and diversification. As an EU candidate facing stalled negotiations, Serbia has firmly stood by its military neutrality, rejecting NATO membership, Western sanctions against Moscow, and in 2024, elevating bilateral relations with Beijing to the highest level. Such eastward hedging is considered unacceptable among Western governments for a country surrounded by EU and NATO members. Along with Hungary, Serbia has been a key proponent of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Europe. Beyond bilateral projects with China, a milestone trilateral project and a flagship for China’s cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe has been the construction of the Belgrade-Budapest high-speed railway. Since 2014, this project has faced numerous obstacles – often stemming from Brussels targeting the Hungarian side. Yet, the Serbian portion of the railway – constructed by Russian and Chinese companies – was completed and launched in October 2025, with the Hungarian part to follow in the first part of 2026. The railway is considered as an important portion of China’s “belt” connectivity strategy – as it is ultimately aimed to connect with the Mediterranean port of Piraeus, near Athens, owned by China’s COSCO and a major entry point for Chinese goods into Europe. The EU, which for a long time has stayed away from major investments in regional infrastructure, recently stepped in to offer loans and grants for a key portion of the Serbian railway heading south from Belgrade to the city of Niš. Sceptics could point to possible dangers of Brussels actually stalling the construction of the high-speed railway with political conditionality in order to slow down the establishment of the Piraeus connection with Budapest and Central Europe, thus obstructing China’s trade. In addition, the US recently launched a renewed attempt to curb China’s control of the Piraeus port as part of its wider strategy aimed against Chinese investments in global ports. Washington has also promoted the IMEC trade corridor – the India-Middle East Economic Corridor – as an alternative to the BRI. The Greek port of Alexandroupolis has been seen as a US military and LNG hub against Russia’s interests, as well as a possible port gateway for the IMEC in countering China and the BRI. Serbia’s energy connectivity, primarily with Russia, has also been targeted. Before exiting the White House in January 2025, the administration of US President Biden set in motion a mechanism aimed at sanctioning the petroleum company NIS, which owns of the country’s oil refinery and is the largest contributor to Serbia’s state budget. The aim of the mechanism was to eliminate the majority ownership of the company by Russia’s Gazpromneft. The sanctions entered into force in October 2025. In the meantime, Serbia and Hungary set in motion the building of a new Hungary-Serbia pipeline, connecting it to Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline. As Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjártó argued : “We’re moving forward with Serbian and Russian partners to build a new oil pipeline between Hungary and Serbia. While Brussels is banning Russian energy, cutting links and blocking routes, we need more sources, more routes.” In late October 2025, the main connectivity hub of the proposed new pipeline – the MOL oil refinery in Százhalombatta, near Budapest – was hit by an explosion and a fire. The attack occurred as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk argued in an interview with the British press that Ukraine had a right to attack Russia-linked targets anywhere in Europe. Also in October, the European Council agreed on its negotiating position on the draft regulation to phase out imports of Russian natural gas, a move with potentially dramatic long-term consequences for Serbia, as it is fully reliant on its import of Russian gas through the Turkish/Balkan stream transiting through Bulgaria. This decision, in addition to targeting Moscow, can also be seen as part of a long-planned, well-thought-out and precisely targeted plan to remove the comparative advantage Serbia’s economy has had thanks to its favourable gas arrangement with the Russian Federation. In the era of multi-polarisation, particularly in the context of the conflict in Ukraine, Brussels is unwilling to tolerate geopolitical dissonance. Such a position is unlikely to change in the light of Brussels’ securitisation narrative and militarisation over the 'Russian threat', just as the US strategic narrative and statecraft repertoire will not shy away from driving new wedges between China and its key partners in Europe and elsewhere. (Source: Valdai Discussion Club - Russia)
by Mitić, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Belt and Road Studies at the Institute of International Politics and Economics in Belgrade, Serbia.

Ukraine
9 November 2025 12:15  State-owned energy company Tsentrenergo said the attacks on its facilities were the largest since the start of the war in February 2022. It said had halted operations at its plants in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions. “The last strike was not even a month ago and the enemy has now struck all our generating capacity at the same time. The stations are on fire!” Tsentrenergo, which generates about 8 per cent of Ukraine's power, said in a statement. “Our generation is now zero.” (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)

Europe
10 November 2025  Ukraine never seems to tire of lecturing the world on “values”. Brussels has turned that battered, unfortunate country into a sort of sacred object, a totem of Western virtue before which all nuance is silenced. Among the questions forbidden amid this inquisitorial, groupthink frenzy, is how Kiev treats those within its borders who are not ethnically Ukrainian - the Hungarians of Transcarpathia, the Poles of western Volhynia, the Romanians of Bukovina, its Russian residents. The crackdown began long before the Russian invasion of 2022, it does not reflect an emergency. Hungarians have suffered much as a consequence. In Transcarpathia - home to some 150,000 ethnic Hungarians and to the former great Hungarian stronghold of Ungvár, today Uzhgorod - the Hungarian language was gradually erased from classrooms, courtrooms, and local administrations. Teachers were told to switch to Ukrainian, even when neither they nor their pupils spoke it fluently. Kiev has imposed a homogenising policy that, in practice, feels nothing other than forced assimilation. It bears reminding that Transcarpathia is not historically Ukrainian. The area’s connection to Kiev is a legacy of Stalinist expansionism, with it only being annexed by the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1945. Before, with few interruptions, the region had belonged to Hungary ever since King Saint Stephen, of the House of Árpád, conquered it in the 11th century. Hungary, with its deep historical ties to Transcarpathia, has repeatedly protested; its offers of bilingual schooling and cultural support have been met with accusations of foreign interference. In 2022, the Ukrainians demolished a monument in Mukachevo replacing the Hungarian Turul eagle with a Ukrainian coat of arms. Later, in 2023, they had numerous Hungarian cultural associations raided and shut. The targets were harmless village administrators. And language activists, teaching Hungarian grammar. Is such repression of a minority, much of it composed of citizens of Hungary and, therefore, of the European Union, reasonable in a country so desperately in need of EU solidarity? The same Brussels officials who issue communiqués on the rights of gender minorities in Hungary have found nothing to say about the suppression of linguistic minorities in Ukraine. This hypocrisy truly corrodes Europe’s credibility. Budapest cannot be asked to ignore the insults suffered by its countrymen in Ukraine and, indeed, by itself. Its stance on the successive EU aid packages for Ukraine is not alien to Ukraine’s mistreatment of Hungarians in Transcarpathia. For years, minority communities in Ukraine have been tormented by an accelerating erosion of their linguistic and cultural rights. An Education Law enacted in 2017, later reinforced by the infamous State Language Law from 2019, effectively prohibited the use of minority languages in secondary schools. In 2022, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, enacted legislation that forced all media in the country to be published in Ukrainian. The law made it next to impossible for national minorities to retain a press of their own. Poland, despite its closer relations to Kiev, finds itself in a contradiction. Warsaw has spent vast billions in aid, taken in over a million Ukrainian refugees, and lobbied tirelessly for Western arms to be given to Ukraine. Yet the Polish minority in Ukraine - some 140,000 people - continues to see Polish-language schools shuttered or ’restructured’ into Ukrainian ones. Lviv was once a leading bastion of Polish culture - not a single Polish-language university exists in Ukraine. The graves of massacred Poles in Volhynia, victims of ethnic cleansing by Nazi-tied Ukrainian nationalists during the Second World War, are repeatedly desecrated even while their killers are publicly honoured by the modern Ukrainian state. Statues of Bandera, whose followers slaughtered tens of thousands of Poles, are erected in Ukrainian towns with official blessings. The same goes for other many vile, civilian-butchering thugs. Poland’s patience is wearing thin. Recent disputes over trade and grain have added to Warsaw’s understandable, and rising, exasperation at Ukraine’s apparent inability to show its neighbours a modicum of respect. Polish President Nawrocki’s initiative to ban the Ukrainian nationalist flag was met with fury in Ukraine. Why should Poles be expected to keep mum while those who so desperately need their help wave the flags of Pole-slayers in the heart of Warsaw? Europe’s task is to insist that Kiev comes to terms with its ethnic and linguistic diversity and drops its uniformising mania. Europe’s blindness is strategically foolish. A Ukraine that alienates its own minorities will never be stable, nor genuinely European and the moral rot becomes irreversible. (Source: Brussels Signal - Belgium)

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Europe

Hungary
(8 November 2025)  Orbán's key win: an exemption from US sanctions. Szijjártó, Hungary's foreign minister, said would be indefinite. 'A White House official told the BBC was time-limited to one year’. Trump clearly wants to help his friend win the election in April. ’The one-year window' granted by the US is a valuable respite for Hungarian households this winter. Orbán told pro-government reporters who travelled with him to Washington that otherwise utility bills "could have gone up by up to three times in December’. Capping those bills by various means has been a central plank of his popularity in Hungary since 2013. Under the US exemption, Hungary can continue to buy Russian gas through the Turkstream pipeline, which traverses the Balkans, and pay for it in hard currency ($185m in August alone) using a Bulgarian loophole. The Hungarian energy company MOL has been upgrading two of its refineries - Százhalombatta in Hungary and the Slovnaft facility in Bratislava - to process Brent crude instead of the high-sulphur Urals crude which flows through Russian pipelines. Orbán has agreed to buy LNG from the US worth $600 million, according to Bloomberg. Another key part of the Washington deal is nuclear. Hungary agreed to buy US nuclear fuel rods for its Paks 1 nuclear power station (at a cost of $114m), in parallel to those bought from Russia's Rosatom and France's Framatome. The Paks 1 nuclear power station was built by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and supplies around 40% of Hungary's electricity needs Russian plans to finance and build the nuclear extension, called Paks 2, have been long delayed by technical and licensing issues. The US agreement to lift all nuclear sanctions on Hungary may help restart that project. Hungary has also agreed to buy US technology to extend the short-term storage of spent nuclear fuel at Paks for between $100m and $200m. Perhaps the biggest part of the deal was a Hungarian commitment to buy up to 10 small modular nuclear reactors from the US, for somewhere between $10bn and $20bn. Finally, a currency swap deal - similar to a recent US-Argentina deal to prop up the peso - under which US and Hungarian central banks can exchange currency is being discussed. This would mean that in a future financial crisis in Hungary, the US central bank could feed dollars to Budapest, which boosts financial security in Hungary. So in summary, Hungary struck a deal to buy US gas, nuclear energy and unspecified weapons systems in exchange for a ’temporary’ waiver from US sanctions on Russian oil and gas. It failed to get the re-introduction of the US visa waiver system, abolished in 2022. And it did not get a new date for a potential Trump-Putin summit in Budapest as part of efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Energy dependence on Russia ’is being replaced’ by energy dependence on the US. The Orbán government argues it is achieving greater diversity of supply. (Source: BBC - United Kingdom)

07.11.2025  Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said today Hungary and the US are entering what he called a “golden age” of bilateral relations under President Trump. Addressing Trump directly, he said: "You restored the old level of the relationship. You improved the bilateral relations. You repaired what was done badly by the previous administration. So now, we are in quite a good position to open up a new chapter, let's say a golden age, between United States and Hungary." Orbán said he would discuss with Trump "how we can contribute to help you in your peace effort" to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Orbán said the US and Hungary had a different approach to the war than other European nations and the EU. "The only pro-peace governments are the United States government and small Hungary in Europe. Anyway, all the other governments prefer to continue the war, because many of them think that Ukraine can win on the front line, which is a misunderstanding of the situation," Orbán said. Trump asked Orbán: "So, you would say that Ukraine cannot win that war?" "You know, miracle can happen," Orbán replied. Trump continued, ’grinning’: "Yeah, that's right." Orbán said another focus of negotiations would relate to the "consequences for the Hungarian people and for the Hungarian economy not to get oil and gas from Russia.’ "We are supplied by pipelines. Pipelines are not an ideological political issue. It's a physical reality, because we don't have ports, exactly as the president explained to you. So we will negotiate on that point. It's vital for us," Orbán said. The prime minister said 90% of Hungarian households use gas-based heating. "We have only one pipeline delivering gas to Hungary, which is the main pipeline, the Turkish one," he added. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

07/11/2025 - 17:58  How are the US sanctions impacting Hungary? Hungary is hoping to seek a waiver on US sanctions on Russian oil as its Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is meeting US President Trump. „Being his only supporter in Europe", Orbán is hoping he will be able to appeal to Trump. (Source: France 24)

Bulgaria
08.11.2025  Bulgaria would face an extremely difficult situation if the Lukoil-owned refinery in Burgas stopped operating, Vice President Iotova reportedly said today. Her comments follow yesterday's adoption of urgent legal amendments granting sweeping powers to a special commercial administrator who will oversee Lukoil's operations in Bulgaria. The move allows the state-appointed administrator to approve or even sell shares in the country's largest refinery. It strips the company's shareholders of voting and disposal rights. This is the second emergency law in seven weeks in response to the refinery crisis, which escalated after the US imposed sanctions on Russia's Lukoil amid the war in Ukraine. In October, Bulgaria also suspended exports of refined oil products such as diesel. Iotova rejected claims that Bulgaria is nationalizing the refinery, saying lawmakers had adopted elements of Germany's model of temporary state management of strategic assets. In Germany, this system has been in place for three years and will continue until 2026. This is neither a sale nor nationalization, she said. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Germany
11/8/2025  Pistorius, Germany’s gruff defense minister is a social democrat in a government led by conservatives, and the man now responsible for revamping and expanding the armed forces in a country that has been allergic to militarization for 80 years since instigating two world wars. His party is in free fall, scoring its lowest vote share since 1887 in federal elections earlier this year. The administration in which he serves has seen its approval rating tumble to 25 percent. At 65, he is blunt and a bit rough around the jowls. He was widely criticized by the left flank of his own party for saying Germany needed to become “kriegstüchtig” - war-ready. And yet 'in survey after survey, after nearly three years in the job, Pistorius is far and away Germany’s most popular politician'. Three days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Scholz announced a “Zeitenwende,” or turning point. He secured a 100 billion euro ($115 billion) special fund for defense, which has since been massively boosted by an exemption of defense spending from Germany’s debt brake that typically limits government borrowing. Scholz turned to Pistorius, a relatively unknown state bureaucrat whose military experience was largely limited to his compulsory service in the 1980s. Merz took over as chancellor, and his coalition opted to leave Pistorius in place as the government committed to higher NATO spending targets and accelerated the military buildup. Looming over it all is the matter of recruitment. But most people between 18 and 29 - those likeliest to be drafted - are against it. The probability of the SPD providing the next chancellor is quite small. And Germany’s heavy industry is beginning to shift toward defense production. Pistorius’s friends and colleagues 'attribute his popularity to his candor - a willingness to speak unpleasant truths about the inadequate state of Germany’s military and the enormous infusion of cash and personnel' required to be ready to defend the country 'and the continent'. (Source: MSN / The Washington Times = U.S.)

Greece
06.11.2025  Greece starts offshore drilling in Ionian Sea with participation of ExxonMobil, which will own 60% of the consortium, followed by London-based Greek-owned energy company Energean at 30% and Greece’s HelleniQ Energy at 10%. The consortium will focus on the Block 2 offshore area in the Ionian Sea west of Corfu, which has been managed by Energean and HelleniQ Energy since 2020. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)

Romania
November 7, 2025  Today Romania has urged the United States to reconsider its plan to withdraw hundreds of troops stationed in the country, warning that such a move could undermine NATO’s unity and play into Russia’s hands. The Pentagon last week confirmed it would redeploy an infantry brigade of around 800 U.S. soldiers from Romania back to the United States. Deputy Defense Minister Moldovan told that the decision announced by the Pentagon risks sending the wrong signal. The move is part of Washington’s broader effort to shift military focus toward domestic priorities, including border security and the Indo-Pacific region. Moldovan expressed concern that this repositioning could damage the strong bilateral relationship between Bucharest and Washington, calling for deeper consultations with the U.S. to ensure that the regional security situation 'is fully understood'. Publicly, both European and NATO officials have sought to minimize the significance of the U.S. move. „Operationally, nothing has changed, but politically, this decision sends a strange message', Moldovan said. As Washington focuses more on Asia, the Romanian official also argued that Russia’s war in Ukraine is increasingly supported by other U.S. adversaries. North Korea has sent soldiers to Ukraine. Iran provides assistance with its capabilities. We must see the full picture, Moldovan stated. Our security is built on trust in our allies, and we rely heavily on U.S. support on the eastern flank, NATO is only strong when all allies stand together, Moldovan said. On November 5, NATO Secretary General Rutte and Romanian President (’Iohannis’) emphasized that the withdrawal would not create any security gaps in Romania’s defense. Britain and Norway also voiced confidence in the Alliance’s readiness, rejecting claims that the U.S. was retreating from its NATO obligations. (Source: Novinite - Bulgaria)

European Commission
Nov 7, 2025 9:39 pm KST  The European Union has announced stricter visa rules for Russian citizens starting today. It would deny Russians multi-entry visas. ’Under the newly adopted provisions, all visa applications submitted by nationals of the Russian Federation will be subject to enhanced verification procedures and elevated levels of scrutiny,’ EU internal affairs commissioner Brunner said. The EU in 2022 suspended its visa facilitation agreement with Russia and has told member states to ’deprioritize’ visas for Russians. Tourist hotspots France, Spain and Italy are among the countries that issue the most visas. ’Brussels says the number of visas issued to Russians fell from more than four million before the war to some 500,000 in 2023’. The Kremlin's opponent Navalnaya have urged the bloc in September not to cut them off from Europe. "For the purpose of achieving peace in Europe it is counterproductive to assist Russian authorities in isolating Russian society," Navalnaya wrote in a letter to EU foreign policy chief Kallas, 4. The bloc already tightened controls on travel by Russian diplomats stationed in the EU's 27 countries last month. Hawkish EU countries have long pushed for tougher visa limits on ordinary Russians, arguing they should not be able to travel freely for tourism while the war rages in Ukraine. Proponents of tougher measures insist ordinary Russians should feel more impact from the war. Starting a war and expecting to move freely in Europe is hard to justify, Kallas wrote on X. (Source: Korea Times - South Korea / AFP - France)

Russia
Friday 07 November 2025 16:39 GMT  Lavrov spoke by phone to US Secretary of State Rubio on 20 October to discuss the possible summit, days after it was announced by Trump following a phone call with Putin. The Financial Times cited a source as suggesting that Lavrov's conversation with Rubio had put Washington off. Lavrov subsequently repeated about the need to address the root causes of the conflict, before Trump sanctioned Russia’s two largest oil companies. The Kremlin today dismissed speculation that Lavrov had fallen out of favour with Putin after the efforts to organise the summit were put on ice. Kremlin spokesman Peskov dismissed the idea. „There is nothing true in these reports,' Peskov told reporters. "Lavrov is working as foreign minister, of course," Peskov added. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova suggested today that the FT article had been published to stoke speculation that was unhelpful to Moscow and part of what she called a hybrid war against Russia. Putin has made it clear that, aside from the Ukraine issue, he believes that a rapprochement between Moscow and Washington is in Russia's national interest and important for global security, as the two countries possess vast nuclear arsenals. (Source: The Independent - United Kingdom)

12:26, 07/11/2025, Friday  Major powers navigate relationships with African nations and former Soviet states. Russia has called on the United States to comply with international legal standards amid reports of potential American military intervention in Nigeria. The US expands both military planning in Africa and diplomatic initiatives in Central Asia through the Abraham Accords framework. When questioned about Kazakhstan's intention to become the first Central Asian nation to join the Abraham Accords, Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman maintained a position of diplomatic reserve which indicates Moscow's cautious approach to the expanding normalization agreements between Arab states and Israel, particularly when involving countries within Russia's traditional sphere of influence. (Source: TRT World - Turkey)

November 6, 2025  Russian deputy foreign minister Grushko accused NATO of preparing to blockade Russia through the Baltic Sea. 'During the alliance’s exercises, scenarios such as blocking the Kaliningrad region are being practiced. The [Baltic] region is undergoing active militarization, with an influx of coalition forces and resources,’ the senior Russian official stated. The Kaliningrad enclave offers Moscow a second gate to the Baltic Sea. The other point of access is to the north at St. Petersburg. Naryshkin, the head of SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, also accused NATO of preparing for military operations against Russia. He said that NATO is rapidly mobilizing military resources and shaping public opinion to justify conflict, NATO and the European Union have embarked on a multiple-fold increase in the production of military equipment, and are also conducting active mobilization training. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)

Ukraine
08 November 2025  A massive Russian attack hit Ukraine's energy infrastructure, prompting power cuts in several regions. Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted 406 out of 458 drones and nine of 45 missiles launched in the overnight assault. The strikes hit Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Odesa, Chernihiv, Poltava, Sumy and Zaporizhzhia. The attack was one of the heaviest on the energy grid since October, when Russia’s strikes destroyed around 60% of Ukraine’s gas production capacity. Ukraine announced a new commander, Cherevashenko, for its drone air defence forces. State-owned Naftogaz confirmed plans to import at least 300 million cubic metres of US liquefied natural gas through Poland’s Orlen. Officials in Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv warned residents to prepare for extended outages as temperatures drop. Russia’s Ministry of Defence confirmed it had carried out a massive strike using long-range precision missiles launched from land, air and sea. The statement said the targets were energy and defence industry sites across Ukraine. (Source: Helsinki Times - Finland)

Africa

Mali
November 6, 2025  Suspected jihadists have killed 14 civilians in Lere, central Mali, in recent days. The Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) has blockaded Lere and other towns for the past two weeks and, since September, has stopped fuel tankers entering Mali from neighbouring countries, in a bid to put pressure on the ruling military junta by stifling the economy. (Source: Channels TV - Nigeria)

North America

United States
November 7, 2025 2:02pm EST  President Trump said today that European leaders should respect Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán "very strongly because he's been right on immigration." "Look what's happened to Europe with the immigration. They have people flooding Europe all over the place. And it's hurting it. Crime rates are way up. A lot of bad things are happening. His crime rates are very low. They're the same as they always were, which is very little crime. Because he's kept it the way it should be," Trump said as he hosted Orbán at the White House. "He was right on immigration. They were wrong. They are flooding Europe with people from all over the world. And Europe is becoming a different place. And I tell the leaders all the time „you better stop or you're not going to have Europe anymore.’’ It's a very dangerous thing they're doing,’ Trump added. "So on migration issue, just for clarification, in Hungary, the number of illegal migration is like that - zero, zero because we have a crystal-clear system. If somebody would like to come to Hungary first, he should ask for that," Orbán said. "If he gives the permission, they can step in. Nobody can step on the territory of Hungary without having permission from the Hungarian authorities. This is the regulation. Simple, while working." "What is the consequence of that? If we are under sanctions, financial sanctions of European Union, because we don't let the illegal migration to come to Hungary and to the European Union as well. So we have to pay just to inform you, we have to pay every day €1 million as a punishment... this is the absurd world we are living now in Europe,’ Orbán added. In June 2024, the European Union’s top court ordered Hungary to pay a $223 million fine for depriving migrants of their right to apply for asylum and an additional fine of 1 million euros per day for failing to comply."Viktor's had a very hard stance on more than anything else, immigration or even illegal immigration. He literally has accepted no one over the years. Think of how much greater these countries would be if they didn't have the tremendous crime that has come in with the immigration, people just flowing into Europe. They've got to stop it and not only stop it, they have to reverse it. They have to get them out," Trump continued. "We've done that here. We have zero people coming in now. The borders are closed. We take people, but we take them legally. But we've done it very strongly and we're moving, hundreds of thousands, millions of people out," Trump also said. (Source: Fox News - U.S.)

.5 11 7 11:50

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Asia

China
10/11/2025, Monday  China has successfully deployed another cluster of low Earth orbit communication satellites from the Hainan Satellite Launch Center today, as part of its ambitious space-based internet initiative. A Long March-12 carrier rocket lifted off at 10:41 a.m. local time (0241 GMT), carrying the satellites to their designated orbit. The development of independent space-based internet capabilities is viewed as strategically vital for national security and technological sovereignty. (Source: Yeni Şafak / Anadolu Agency = Turkey)

Friday, November 7, 2025  Wednesday China has commissioned at a naval base on southern China’s Hainan island the Fujian, its latest aircraft carrier after extensive sea trials. The ceremony was attended by top leader Xi. It is China’s third carrier and the first that it both designed and built itself. China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was Soviet made and its second, the Shandong, was built in China but based on the Soviet model. Both use older-style ski-jump type systems to help planes take flight. The Fujian skips past the steam catapult technology used on most American carriers to employ an electromagnetic launch system found only on the latest U.S. Navy Ford-class carriers. It gives China the ability to launch heavier aircraft, with full fuel loads, like the KJ-600 early warning and control plane, which it successfully tested during its sea trials. Its latest J-35 stealth fighter and J-15T heavy fighter were also launched from the Fujian. For China’s navy, one goal is to dominate the near waters of the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea around the so-called First Island Chain, which runs south through Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. Deeper into the Pacific, it also wants to be able to contest control of the Second Island Chain, where the U.S. has important military facilities on Guam and elsewhere, Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said. A carrier is key to that contest, if you want one, with the Americans in the wider Indo-Pacific, Poling said. If China had the ability to position an aircraft carrier group or groups around the Second Island Chain - between Taiwan and the U.S. Pacific Fleet headquarters in Hawaii - that could delay possible American military assistance in the event of a Chinese attack. The Pentagon in its latest report to Congress continued to call China the only competitor to the United States with the intent and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order. At the same time, it is Beijing’s right to transform its navy into a blue-water strategic navy commensurate with China’s national strength, said Song a Hong Kong-based military affairs expert. China is a great power and our overseas interests span the globe; we need to be globally present, Song said. We believe that China’s military intends to advance its operational capability at distant sea and air by strengthening sea power, Minoru, a former defense minister and now chief cabinet secretary in Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s new government told, emphasizing that Japan was watching China’s military activity and would calmly but decisively respond if necessary. One of the important things that an aircraft carrier can do is extend the range of China’s domain awareness to keep an eye on activities in the air, on the sea, and below the sea, said Hart, deputy director of CSIS’s China Power Project. Numerically China only has three carriers compared to the U.S. Navy’s 11, and while China’s carriers are all conventionally powered, the U.S.’s are all nuclear powered which means they can operate almost indefinitely without being refueled - dramatically increasing their range. China also lags behind the U.S. in guided missile cruisers and destroyers, which are critical in providing air and submarine defense and support for larger naval groups, as well as nuclear-powered submarines, Hart said. Beyond just equipment, China lacks the network of overseas bases that the U.S. has, which are critical for resupplying carriers and also providing alternative runways should aircraft not be able to return safely to the carrier. They’re fielding and building more aircraft carriers, they’re fielding more nuclear-powered subs, they are fielding more, larger destroyers and other vessels that carry a larger number of missiles. So they’re really catching up, Hart said. China hasn’t fought a war since 1979. It is possible that China’s capabilities are overstated, as real-world operational readiness lags behind its showcased arsenal, Singapore-based analyst Tang told. A World War II Victory Day parade at the start of September signaled China’s broader strategic intent, which is to deter major powers, pressure regional actors, expand its global influence, and reinforce its domestic legitimacy, he said. (Source: The Washington Times / Associated Press = U.S.)

Iran
November 7, 2025 7:28 AM  President Trump has said Iran has asked whether U.S. sanctions could be lifted, calling the current measures very heavy. Speaking at the White House late yesterday, Mr. Trump offered no timeline or conditions for engagement but signalled a potential opening for dialogue: "I’m open to hearing that, and we’ll see what happens, but I would be open to it," he noted. Any easing of U.S. sanctions would mark a significant shift in American foreign policy toward Tehran. Any change in policy could influence the balance of power in the Middle East, affect global oil markets, and reshape relations with U.S. allies in the region. The maximum pressure strategy, reinstated early in Trump’s second term, was designed to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions and limit its regional influence. Trump also addressed the recent conflict between Israel and Iran, providing new details on U.S. involvement. "Israel attacked first. That attack was very, very powerful. I was very much in charge of that," he said. "When Israel attacked Iran first, that was a great day for Israel because that attack did more damage than the rest of them put together." Iran responded with hundreds of missile strikes against Israel, after which the U.S. joined the conflict by bombing Iran's three major nuclear facilities. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei speaking in Tehran on Monday ruled out cooperation with Washington as long as the U.S. maintains military forces in the region and supports Israel. ’Only if the United States completely cuts its backing for the Zionist regime, removes its military bases from the region, and ceases interfering in its affairs, their request for cooperation with Iran, not in the near future but much later, could be examined’, he said. Iran has also resisted international demands to limit uranium enrichment, a key sticking point that has derailed past nuclear negotiations. Any movement toward easing sanctions would likely require verifiable guarantees from Tehran-a condition it has so far refused to meet. While Trump's remarks open the door for dialogue, progress will depend on Tehran providing concrete assurances about its nuclear program. (Source: Miami Herald / Newsweek = U.S.)

Saudi Arabia
Nov. 7, 2025  Facing an influx of amphetamines, executions near a record high, the kingdom has put hundreds of people to death, many of them foreigners from countries including Egypt, Ethiopia and Somalia, convicted of low-level smuggling, who ferry hashish and amphetamine pills into the kingdom. The Saudi government has disclosed at least 320 executions so far this year - more than 90 executions have been for charges solely related to hashish. Saudi officials have argued that drug smugglers deserve harsh punishment because the crime is akin to a violent attack on their conservative Islamic society. Some drug crimes are “on a par with murder,' the Saudi government wrote in January, responding to a letter from United Nations special rapporteurs about the planned executions of 29 foreign citizens. Saudi Arabia has no written penal code, lending considerable opacity to criminal proceedings. The death penalty is typically applied for crimes including murder, terrorism and treason. But the kingdom’s narcotics law also calls for a death sentence to be applied at a judge’s discretion for any defendant convicted of drug smuggling, receiving drugs from a smuggler or manufacturing drugs. Among the most commonly used substances is captagon, an illegal amphetamine that was Syria’s biggest export during its nearly 14-year civil war. Executions no longer occur in public. (Source: The New York Times - U.S.)

United Arab Emirates
November 7, 2025  Rivalries may be deepening between the world's biggest economic powers. Fast-growing Middle Eastern financial center, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, aims to seal its place as a hub for them and the rest of the world. Abu Dhabi now aims to be one of the top five global financial centers in the next 10 years-alongside such places as New York, London, Singapore and Hong Kong. It got a later start on becoming a financial hub than the country's biggest city, Dubai. "We are starting to see the world is more multipolar. People are looking for new hubs. We believe Abu Dhabi is that," Ramamurthy, Abu Dhabi Global Market's (ADGM) international financial center and its free economic zone chief market development officer, told in Abu Dhabi. „Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been to China three times. I’ve been to India twice, but actually going to India again. I was in New York two weeks ago. I was in London a week ago…. I’ve been in Japan…. We cover all these markets, and we see the UAE and Abu Dhabi and ADGM being that gateway for those capital flows.’ Since starting as a financial hub in 2015, Abu Dhabi now has more than 300 financial firms, which manage a combined $28.6 trillion in assets - not far short of the value of America's entire annual gross domestic product. From 2015 through the end of 2024, it said it had an average annual growth in assets under management of 123 percent. Abu Dhabi's push to become a major financial hub is driven in part by a need to diversify away from the oil revenues that have been the bedrock of its wealth. Now, it is also becoming a leading player in artificial intelligence. Abu Dhabi has been ranked the world's safest city for nine years in a row. It is home to three of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds. Ramamurthy also said that where GMT had been the world's central time zone when the United Kingdom was key to the global economy, ’that was now shifting in the direction of Abu Dhabi’. ’The zero of the future,’ Ramamurthy said. The closeness of the UAE to President Trump has underscored its pivotal position in the Middle East and beyond. The U.S. administration seeks to reshape the region with agreements between Arab countries and Israel. The UAE was in the vanguard of the Abraham Accords with Israel in the first Trump presidency. "The UAE is a critical strategic partner in advancing America's economic security and technology leadership," Under Secretary of State Helberg wrote on social media this month during a visit. (Source: Miami Herald / Newsweek = U.S.)

Globalization

(7.11.2025)  Dozens of ministers and several heads of state and government, including those of Spain, Germany, and Namibia, are meeting in Belem, Brazil for a second day of meetings today, before COP30, the United Nations' annual two-week conference starts on Monday. UN chief Guterres and a series of national leaders said yesterday that the world will fail to keep global warming below 1.5C, the Paris Agreement's primary target set a decade ago, but said they have not yet given up on its fallback goal of 2C. World's biggest polluters are absent at Brazil climate summit. (Source: TRT World - Turkey)

.5 11 7 19:30

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Trump-Orbán csúcstalálkozó előtt.

Interjú Washingtonban, Szijjártó, magyar külgazdasági és külügyminiszterrel

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(Forrás: Youtube - Egyesült Államok / Mandiner - Magyarország)

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Trump, amerikai elnökkel folytatott megbeszélést követően

Orbán Viktor miniszterelnök és Szijjártó, külgazdasági és külügyminiszter közös sajtótájékoztatója Washingtonban

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(Forrás: Youtube - Egyesült Államok / Mandiner - Magyarország)

49 038 megtekintés

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Adria kőolajvezeték    Atlanti-óceán    Ausztrália    Barátság kőolajvezeték    Egyesült Államok    Európa    Európai Unió    Franciaország    Horvátország    Lengyelország    Lukoil    Magyarország    Magyar Villamosművek Zrt    Németország    Oroszország    Parlament    Shell    Szerbia    Szlovákia    Török Áramlat    Ukrajna    űr    video

.5 11 8 14:34

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Orbán Viktor miniszterelnök és Donald Trump amerikai elnök sajtótájékoztatója Washingtonban

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(Forrás: YouTube / Magyarország Kormánya)

22 543 megtekintés

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Barátság kőolajvezeték    Egyesült Államok    Európa    Európai Unió    Horvátország    Kína    kommunista    Magyarország    NATO    Oroszország    Románia    Spanyolország    Török Áramlat    Ukrajna   ünnep    video

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President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Lunch with the Prime Minister of Hungary

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(Source: The White House)

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China    communist    Croatia    Druzhba pipeline    Europe    European Union    holyday    Hungary    NATO    Romania    Russia    Spain    TurkStream    Ukraine    United States    video

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