This week, the world heard from an often quiet figure at the center of the Iran-U.S. war: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. While subservient to Iran’s supreme leader, Pezeshkian wields immense power as the head of government, and a fiery speech at the United Nations showed that he has no intention of rolling over for the United States.

Heart surgeon-turned-president

Pezeshkian, 71, was born in the city of Mahabad and completed his military conscription service at the age of 19. During his conscription, he served in “Zabul — one of the most deprived cities in Sistan and Balochestan province, an experience that was said to be his political awakening,” said The Guardian. After returning home, Pezeshkian decided to have a career in medicine and “returned to his hometown to start his medical training.”

He eventually pivoted to cardiac health and “became a heart surgeon and served as the head of the Tabriz University of Medical Sciences,” said The Associated Press. His middle life was also marked by tragedy, after a 1994 car accident “killed his wife, Fatemeh Majidi, and a daughter.” Pezeshkian eventually became a politician, serving as Iran’s “deputy health minister and later as the health minister under the administration of reformist President Mohammad Khatami.”

In 2024, Pezeshkian ran for president as a moderate with a pledge to “open Iran to the world,” said Deutsche Welle. His campaign focused on “rebuilding trust between the government and the Iranian people, fighting disillusionment after persistent economic woes and political repression.” He won the election in a runoff, and his victory came as a stunning upset against his hardline opponent. While Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei remains the country’s ultimate authority, Pezeshkian has become a historically significant leader.

‘Never bow our head or bend at the knee’

Since the war in Iran began, Pezeshkian has largely pushed back against what he views to be U.S. aggression. He asserted himself during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly against President Donald Trump, who had personally threatened Iran when he spoke to the body the day before. The country will “never bow our head or bend at the knee,” Pezeshkian said of Iran during his speech. The Iranian president was “defiant in the face of what he called ‘bullying’ by Trump, while saying Tehran is open to negotiations,” said USA Today.

Pezeshkian’s visit to the United Nations in New York City is an “extraordinary appearance,” given that the U.S. and Iran are in a state of war, said USA Today. Just “months after he and other Iranian leaders were targeted by U.S. airstrikes, Pezeshkian — like other world leaders — is traveling through Manhattan with a Secret Service escort.” Pezeshkian has repeatedly accused the U.S. of war crimes and during his speech he “held up a photo of children killed in a U.S. strike on an Iranian primary school at the start of the war.”

While much of the ongoing tension surrounds Iran’s alleged attempts to enrich uranium, Pezeshkian has denied that his country “wanted a nuclear weapon” but “refused limitations on the country’s civilian nuclear program,” said NPR. His conditions for negotiating in the future include the “halting” of “U.S. hostilities, an end to the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and the release of Iranian funds.”

‘Advice for parents who want to prevent CTE in youth athletes’

Leana S. Wen at The Washington Post

Nobody “disputed that CTE is a serious issue, but many seemed to think that young athletes today are at lower risk than previous generations because of better safety precautions,” says Leana S. Wen. The “majority of head impacts that can cause brain damage do not result in a concussion diagnosis but can still contribute to CTE.” Most “important is taking repetitive head impacts out of the game for kids, including no bodychecking in ice hockey and no tackling in football.”

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‘What peacemaking loses when women are left out’

Cristal Downing at Time

Wars “exact a heavy toll on women and yet, too often their voices and concerns are pushed to the margins of global peacemaking,” says Cristal Downing. The United Nations “has made halting but real progress in bringing women into peace negotiations and postwar reconstruction from Guatemala to Bangsamoro,” but “now that progress is being reversed.” Finding “space for gender diversity could do more than ensure that women are heard; it could also give peace efforts a better chance of success.”

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‘How private equity is killing public access to hospitals and emergency care’

Heather Prendergast at The Hill

Safety-net hospitals “serve a patient population that is disproportionately low-income, publicly insured and racially and ethnically diverse,” says Heather Prendergast. The “corporatization of the healthcare system by private equity has come with significant costs.” While “private equity’s ownership of hospitals may earn millions for their investors, they have put patients, communities and providers at risk.” It is “worth asking what happens to the remaining safety-net hospitals once their primary funding source shrinks even further.”

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‘Trump abuses his pardon power. Getting rid of it would be a mistake.’

Abdallah Fayyad at The Boston Globe

Donald Trump’s “liberal use of his pardon power — particularly his penchant for pardoning wealthy white-collar fraudsters — has created a lucrative industry of so-called pardon brokers,” says Abdallah Fayyad. But “even though the pardon power has undeniably been misused, we shouldn’t dramatically curtail it or get rid of it.” Pardons are a “crucial component of a well-functioning criminal justice system, allowing presidents to undo wrongs when sentences are unjust or punishments are too harsh.”

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What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday night hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state dinner at the White House, after the two leaders spoke privately and toured Trump’s remodeling projects. Trump said he and Xi have “never gotten along better” and presented him with a bald eagle statue. Xi, whose gift for Trump was two pandas for Atlanta’s zoo, said the U.S.-China relationship should be based on “healthy” competition, not a “wrestle in which one either wins or loses.”

Who said what

The “lavish summit” was “heavy on symbolism but light on substance,” Reuters said, “with no sign of breakthroughs on thorny ​issues such as AI, trade, Taiwan and the war with Iran.” Trump is “drawn to the theater of summitry and his personal rapport with Xi,” The Wall Street Journal said. But “for all the pomp and circumstance,” he “appeared to walk away with few tangible gains while handing Xi the images of coequal standing he had come to Washington for.”

China “made clear it views Taiwan as the most sensitive issue in the U.S.-China relationship,” The Associated Press said. A Chinese readout of the private meeting said Xi had urged Trump to “adhere to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence.” The U.S. did not release a readout as of Friday morning.

What next?

Xi’s visit “came six weeks ahead of the midterm elections in which Trump has branded Democrats as communists,” the Journal said. “Trump’s fawning drew complaints among several Republican senators, who said they weren’t sure what the GOP would gain from hosting the Communist leader and U.S. business rival.”

What happened

China’s government has taken possession of “potentially sensitive” F-35 stealth fighter jet parts “inexplicably diverted” to Hong Kong while being sent to the U.S. from Australia via UPS, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the incident. The Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office told Politico last week it was “aware of a shipment issue” involving F-35 parts and was “actively working” to retrieve them.

Who said what

The diverted cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door contain “stealth technology that only the U.S. and its allies have access to,” Politico said, citing sources, and the late May reroute “triggered an ongoing series of briefings” for congressional national security staff. The F-35 is “widely recognized as America’s best and most advanced fighter jet,” Bradley Bowman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said to The Associated Press. China has been “aggressively trying to get F-35 data through electronic espionage,” former congressional military analyst J.J. Gertler told Politico. But studying a part’s schematics is different than “possessing a real one.”

Lockheed Martin manages the F-35 supply chain and “uses commercial shipping providers to transport parts,” Politico said. The Government Accountability Office reported in 2023 that more than 1 million F-35 parts had gone missing over the previous five years.

What next?

The F-35 Joint Progress Office said it was working with “industry partners” to investigate the Hong Kong diversion and “place safeguards to avoid a future occurrence.”

What happened

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday told the United Nations General Assembly that the U.S. “hit us, but we did not bend the knee” and will defend “our beloved” homeland “until our last breath.” His “defiant speech” at the U.N.’s New York headquarters “marked a striking instance of a foreign leader addressing the world body while their country is at war with the host nation,” The Associated Press said. Pezeshkian held up “pictures of people killed by American and Israeli airstrikes” while “standing at the same lectern where a day earlier” President Donald Trump had “threatened to ’annihilate’ his country,’” The New York Times said.

Who said what

Pezeshkian accused the U.S. of violating international law with “cowardly attacks” on civilian infrastructure and said Iran would not give up its civilian nuclear program. Trump “described us as terrorists,” but Iranians are “the victims of terrorism,” Pezeshkian said. “Iran must be powerful to avoid being threatened,” and Trump and others “who seek to bully us” must understand that Iran is “ready for dialogue, diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Iran had little standing to “lecture anyone on human rights or the international system when they habitually violate it.” As Pezeshkian was speaking, the “lone American diplomat sitting in the hall left,” the Times said.

What next?

U.S. and Iranian officials downplayed indirect talks on the sidelines of the General Assembly. They’re “not anything new,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei. Rubio said holding talks was “positive” but “I don’t want to mischaracterize this as a major breakthrough.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Tuesday told the United Nations General Assembly in New York City he was deciding whether to make a deal with Iran or “annihilate the Islamic Republic” and “drive them into hell with no chance of survival.” After his speech, his envoys met indirectly with Iranian officials for what Trump described as a “very good meeting.”

Who said what

In his 35-minute address, Trump also celebrated his military operation in Venezuela, hailed a new agreement on Greenland and criticized efforts to regulate artificial intelligence. But the “heart of the address was a fulsome defense” of his Iran war, The Associated Press said. Trump “didn’t offer an answer” on whether he would annihilate the country, The Wall Street Journal said, leaving the “question to hang over the final weeks of the campaign season as GOP candidates are facing sharp questions” about the war and its fallout, including “sharp increases” in gas and diesel prices.

Trump was “again the center of attention” at the U.N., Politico said, but even as “world leaders scrambled to stay in his good graces,” there was an “undercurrent of discontent — and even defiance — from some leaders who are seemingly preparing for a life after the U.S.-led order.” After Trump threatened to destroy Iran from a “podium where world leaders typically champion peace and global harmony,” The New York Times said, other leaders “warned of the dangers posed by division and unilateral action.”

What next?

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is scheduled to address the General Assembly on Wednesday, where “his remarks will be closely watched,” the Times said.

“If a left-wing candidate can win in New York, then there’s no reason it can’t happen in Berlin.” A year on from her comments after Zohran Mamdani’s victory, Elif Eralp looks likely to be elected as the mayor of Berlin. She would be the first Turkish-origin person in the role, and the first candidate from left-wing party Die Linke to become mayor since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Victory for Die Linke does not guarantee Eralp will become mayor, said The Berliner. The new parliament has to elect the governing mayor and, with 47 seats out of 158 in the state parliament, Die Linke will need to form a coalition. The centre-right CDU refuses to engage with them, but a joint government with the Greens and the Social Democratic Party would be a “realistic” outcome.

‘Generational shift’

Eralp has become the “new face of radical left-wing parties asserting themselves in major cities around the world”, said Le Monde. Her “historic win” is all the more impressive considering she inherited a party “marred by internal divisions”. Now, it is “one of the most dynamic forces in German politics.

Die Linke, which emerged from the communist Socialist Unity Party that ruled East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, has undergone a “striking generational shift” in the last three years, said the Financial Times. A recent overhaul has seen the party “draw a tidal wave of new supporters, doubling its membership in the space of a year, reaching 123,000 at the end of 2025”.

A younger, predominantly female cohort has emerged at the top of the party leadership, who have not been afraid to take on AfD and have become “social media stars on the German left”. Eralp and others have “cultivated a recognisable style: sharp fringes, tattoos, hoop earrings and red lipstick”, which she is often seen sporting alongside “jeans and trainers with a bomber jacket”. She also regularly wears a gold necklace which displays the word “Mietendeckel” (“rent cap”).

On ‘borrowed time’

Berlin’s housing crisis was “at the heart of Eralp's campaign” said Euro News. She called for rent caps, an increase in social housing, and has floated the idea of expropriating properties from large housing portfolios to come under government control. And this fits the issues facing Berliners, said Novara Media. In Berlin, 84% of the population rent, and “more than half from private landlords”, while “10% of Berliners live in housing poverty”. A 2021 referendum saw Berliners support the city government’s seizing of privately-owned flats from large corporate landlords.

Pressure had already been “mounting” on Chancellor Friedrich Merz following the success of the AfD in regional elections, and his “struggles to push through promised economic and social welfare reforms”, said Al Jazeera. Less than 18 months into power, his approval ratings have tanked to around 14%, “raising doubts among fellow party members about whether he can continue to lead”.

The “cumulative effect” of the losses to both the right and the left “can hardly be exaggerated”, said The Guardian. Merz cancelled a planned trip to speak to the UN in New York, “already anticipating he would need to be in Berlin to grapple” with the aftermath of the state election. For now, he has vowed to remain in post, but for many, the German leader is “on borrowed time”.

Andy Burnham, stateside for the United Nations General Assembly, is meeting Donald Trump for their first in-person talks today in a stronger position than Keir Starmer was as a new PM. Trump is increasingly unpopular at home, and preoccupied with the Iran war and looming midterm elections, while the UK has been strengthening its ties with Europe and Canada. “It’s completely different this time,” one official told Politico. “There’s no drama about having to stay in his good books.”

But Trump has previously called Burnham “extremely liberal” and dismissed him as the “mayor of a town”. And if his past meetings with world leaders are anything to go by, there’s still plenty of potential for drama.

What did the commentators say?

In 2024, sucking up to Trump was the “medicine required”, one UK diplomat told Politico. Burnham, however, has inherited “an established relationship” with no need to lavish praise. His job is therefore to “fix the mess of unresolved threads left behind” – and “avoid a barrage of abuse on Truth Social”.

He is “not expected to take a big list of deliverables or policy goals”. His aim, according to senior UK officials and MPs, is: “Get in, smile, press the case for Ukraine, and try to leave without a major upset.” Officials are hopeful that he will encounter a “more pro-Ukraine atmosphere” in Washington, after the House of Representatives approved a “sweeping Russia sanctions bill”. Burnham hopes to persuade the US to increase the deliveries of air defence interceptors – but it’s unlikely that Ukraine is even in the top five of Trump’s priorities, said Daniel DePetris in The Spectator.

Burnham’s more assertive approach seems to be working so far, said Reuters. His team pointed out that Trump “did not push back” against Burnham’s ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. But Trump is a “notoriously fickle and unpredictable” man who “spreads trade tariffs like confetti”, said The i Paper. Burnham will have to avoid the “minefield” of some of Trump’s “fixations”, such as North Sea oil and defence spending.

There is “no suggestion” Burnham will go further and emulate “the more combative approach” of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, said The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar. Nor would it be wise to; Trump is still angry the UK didn’t join him in strikes on Iran, and recent comments on the Falklands and Irish unification “suggest his displeasure has not abated”. The meeting will be “fraught with tension” with “potential for further clashes”. The US president might be weaker domestically, but he’s still in office for two more years. For now, “the power still rests with Trump”.

What next?

Even if Trump and Burnham hit it off, the meeting itself “isn’t the most important event”, said DePetris. “What truly matters is the follow-through.”

The Iran war remains “a dark storm cloud hovering over US-UK relations”, and with Houthi rebels continuing to advance, effectively controlling Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, Trump could grant Saudi Arabia’s request for military intervention. In that case, “you can be almost certain the Trump administration will expect the UK to get involved”, and Trump could slam Burnham’s government for insufficient defence spending in next month’s Budget. Remember, things were fine between Trump and Starmer – “until they weren’t”.

As the United States struggles to extricate itself from the Iran war, longtime regional ally Saudi Arabia is facing a growing Iranian threat of its own. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, long considered proxies of the Iranian regime, have successfully launched a series of military offensives, including the recent capture of the port city of Mokha and the destruction of an overland pipeline. These are key fuel nodes for the Red Sea, made all the more vital as Iran throttles traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The result is a “nightmare scenario for Saudi Arabia” that has “sent jitters through global markets,” said The Associated Press. With fighting between the Saudi-backed government and Iranian-backed rebel forces spreading, Yemen has become a stand-in for larger forces scrambling to capitalize on a new paradigm in the Middle East.

Why are Saudi officials worried?

Saudi Arabia is “becoming a focal point for the Middle East crisis,” as it “contends with a multifront campaign being waged by Iran and its Axis of Resistance allies,” said Newsweek. Houthi forces have “stepped up cross-border attacks” against Iran while “simultaneously gaining ground” against Saudi-backed government forces “in some of the most intensive clashes since an April 2022 ceasefire halted Yemen’s civil war.”

At the same time, the Saudi’s “most essential ally, the United States,” has been “unpredictable and sometimes unreliable” under this administration, said the AP. The White House “seems reluctant to widen an already unpopular and stalemated Mideast war ahead of congressional elections.”

“For a decade,” the Saudi attitude toward Yemen has “rested on the assumption” that “patiently and strategically” applying time, money and force would “eventually produce enough leverage to subdue the Houthis,” said Responsible Statecraft. “Or at least force them into a settlement on Riyadh’s terms.” For the past several weeks, that “assumption has been tested more severely than at any point since 2015,” as Houthi forces press toward the city of Marib, which is the “last major stronghold of forces loyal to the internationally recognized government of Yemen.” And as “Iran-aligned groups” such as the Houthis “increase pressure” on Saudi Arabia, “diplomacy” between the Gulf States and Iran has “hit its own wall.”

What’s at risk for the kingdom?

Attacks by Houthi forces have “already caused a plunge in Saudi oil exports to Asia” from “around 3.4 million barrels a day in June to 128,000 in August,” said the AP. As the group tightens its grip on the Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandab Strait, Houthi figures have “assured U.S. officials” that the group has “no intention of attacking U.S. shipping in the Red Sea,” said Al Jazeera. Instead, any restrictions would “apply only to vessels linked to Saudi Arabia.”

Israel has “reportedly offered to intervene in Yemen on Saudi Arabia’s behalf,” said Al Jazeera. But kingdom officials may be “wary of being seen to rely on Israeli military support” for fear it could “damage Riyadh’s standing and legitimacy throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds.”

Where is Iran in all this?

The Houthis are “agents and proxies of the Iranians,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio to reporters earlier this month, per Off the Press. Iran “arms, trains and coordinates with the Houthis” in a relationship that “indeed deserves scrutiny,” said The National Interest. But the group has “independent origins, an autonomous decision-making structure, its own revenue base and a track record of acting against Tehran’s preferences when its own interests demand it.”

Ansar Allah is an “independent Yemeni actor” that “makes its own decisions,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei on X, using the Houthis’ official group name. It “takes orders from no one and acts as nobody’s proxy.”

The group is “first and foremost” a Yemeni movement “whose fight has always been about power inside Yemen,” said The Conversation. But “Yemeni security sources” have claimed senior Iranian commander Abdul Reza Shahla’i was “on the ground overseeing part of the latest operation in September.” Moreover, there is also a risk that seizing another fuel “choke point” to target Saudi shipping “makes the Houthis look, to much of the world and no small part of Yemen, like Tehran’s instrument,” no matter what their “own objectives actually are.”

Where is China in all this?

Neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia seems “eager to send their forces to die en masse,” said Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft's Middle East program, to Newsweek. Both countries “prefer to rely on superior air power,” which has “proven repeatedly inadequate as a means of holding territory in Yemen and elsewhere.”

Riyadh has instead “turned to China for help” following recent Houthi victories, said Reuters. Accordingly, Beijing has “privately asked Tehran to help rein in Yemen’s Houthis,” going “further” in its private call for restraint and diplomacy than in China’s “public statements.”

Saudi Arabia could also “seek a diplomatic solution with either the Houthis or their patrons in Tehran,” said the AP. But the Houthis have “demanded the lifting of a Saudi-led blockade,” which would allow them to “grow much stronger over the long term.” Iran similarly has “little interest in stabilizing the region without securing major U.S. concessions.”

What happened

Ukraine hit a major oil refinery in Moscow on Sunday, along with a warehouse and residential buildings, in what Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called Kyiv’s “largest ever” drone attack on the Russian capital. Sobyanin said “a few drones” got through, out of 1,600 targeting the Moscow region, including 450 aimed at the city, and the attack was “clearly planned with the aim of disrupting” Sunday’s final day of voting in Russia’s first parliamentary elections since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv said it was targeting Moscow’s Gazpromneft-Moscow Oil Refinery to deprive Russia of war funding.

Who said what

Ukraine has been using its drones to “make the Russian public feel the war’s consequences and pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiating a peace settlement,” The Associated Press said. Kyiv’s refinery attacks have caused months of “widespread fuel shortages” in Russia, The New York Times said. Even before Sunday’s strikes, not “many fuel stations had any gas to sell.”

What next?

With almost all electoral competition quashed, Putin’s “ruling United Russia party is expected to retain its dominance in the parliament and present the win as proof of public support for the war,” Politico said. With 95% of votes counted, Putin’s party had nearly 58%, Russia’s Central Election Commission said Monday, though results will not be official until Sept. 25.

“The Iran war is metastasising,” said Adrian Blomfield in The Telegraph. Having evolved into a struggle for control of the Strait of Hormuz, the conflict is now threatening another key oil-shipping route.

One of the reasons that global oil prices haven’t risen higher in recent months is that Saudi Arabia has still been able to export large amounts of Gulf oil via the Red Sea instead. But this lifeline is now in peril.

Last week, Houthi rebels in Yemen launched a lightning offensive against Yemeni government forces, seizing control of the country’s entire Red Sea coast, including the towns and islands around the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

On Friday, another militia group aligned with Iran – this one based in Iraq – launched drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s vital East-West oil pipeline to the coast, forcing its closure. The combined assault pushed oil prices above $110 a barrel.

Saudi Arabia’s ‘nightmare’

Until the middle of last week, the Houthi forces had appeared to be on the back foot, said Mark Urban in The Sunday Times. But they achieved a sudden breakthrough against divided government factions, reportedly with the help of an AI-generated spoof message that purported to be from a Yemeni government commander and ordered a general troop withdrawal.

It has produced a “nightmare scenario” for Saudi Arabia, which faces a threat to its vital national interests but also knows from “bitter experience” how hard it is to defeat the Houthis in Yemen, having tried and failed to do so for over a decade. Turkey and Pakistan, with whom Riyadh signed a much-vaunted defence pact last month, aren’t rushing to help the Saudis out.

‘Global solution’

Nor is the White House, which already has enough on its plate with Iran and “is increasingly aware of the limits of what it can achieve through military force”, said Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. Yet the US administration is also in a bind. Until the Houthis’ intervention, the oil situation had appeared just about manageable, thanks to Red Sea exports and the US shepherding vessels through Hormuz; oil shipments there are now at roughly a third of pre-war levels. Enough oil was reaching the global market to keep prices safely below the $100 a barrel level.

But supplies of Gulf energy to the West are now looking much more precarious. This is a global crisis requiring a “global solution”, said The Times. President Trump needs to work with China and other consumers of Middle Eastern oil to help stabilise the situation in Yemen and remove the Houthis’ threat to these crucial sea lanes. “Otherwise, the Bab al-Mandeb will continue to live up to its name: the Gate of Tears.”

The Democrats made a very wise decision this spring, said Lauren Egan on The Bulwark. They were considering whether to host their own midterm convention to steal attention from the one staged by the Republicans in Dallas.

In the end, they opted not to, because they were short on cash and thought it might be “strategically smart to cede the stage to Donald Trump in hopes that he would dig his own political grave”. Boy, did that pay off.

Trump, who has already alienated voters this summer by talking about how great data centres are and how he loves inflation, was on unhinged form in the two-day conference. He boasted that America “controls the Trump Strait”; he demanded that the audience join him in a pledge (“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States...”); he even promised every American a $5,000 bounty if his party wins the midterm elections.

Democrat insiders have long joked that Trump is trying to lose November’s midterms, but some are now seriously wondering whether he has lost his grip on reality.

An ‘incredibly risky’ bet

Republican candidates contesting swing seats in November certainly regard him as a liability, said Ayman Mohyeldin on MS Now. Many of them stayed well away from Dallas, wary of association with a president whose approval rating is down to below 35%. The Republican Party has nevertheless decided that, despite everything, it’s worth making Trump the face of the midterms, because of his unrivalled ability to drive Republican voters to the polls.

It’s an “incredibly risky” bet, said Kimberley A. Strassel in The Wall Street Journal. The Maga base is already “fired up”. It’s among the larger category of traditional Republicans that the GOP has a turnout problem. They need to inspire these people to vote by offering a coherent agenda.

There’s little evidence of that, said The Washington Post. Trump’s wild proposal to pay $5,000 to every adult citizen if the GOP retains control of Congress in November beggared belief. It’s a “desperate gimmick” that betrays a total lack of seriousness about America’s fiscal situation. It would cost more than $1.2 trillion, in a country already saddled with $40 trillion in debt.

The Democrats are in no position to accuse Trump of trying to “trade votes for cash”, said Charles C.W. Cooke in National Review. It’s what they do in every election, albeit in more disguised ways. But this bribe is still a terrible idea, not least because it would stoke inflation. Trump says he’s defending America from the socialists, but if his populism means throwing money at voters, “what need is there of socialism at all”?

Another Trump ‘con’

Trump’s cheques will never arrive, said Steve Benen on MS Now. Congress wouldn’t approve the move, the courts would object, and the money’s not there in any case. It’s just another Trump “con”. He pulled the same trick before the 2018 midterms, when he claimed that he and Congress were preparing a new, “very major” tax cut that would exclusively benefit the middle class. Even White House officials were “mystified” by this declaration, which had no basis in reality.

It’s bad enough that Trump spouts nonsense, said Eric Boehm in Reason Magazine. Worse was the sight of his VP, J.D. Vance, defending the bribe plan and insisting it could be funded through tariffs. Vance is supposed to be the heir apparent to Trump – “the guy with the political and policy chops” to redefine this populist movement for the next generation. Yet he has no problem with the concept of bribing Americans with their own money? “Trumpism is out of ideas, and soon it is likely to be out of power – no matter what ridiculous promises the president makes along the way.”

Russian voters joke that, if there’s a “special military operation” in Ukraine, there’s now a “special electoral operation” for their parliament, said The Economist. Polls open for the Duma ballot on 18 September – the first parliamentary election since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine – and, despite ever greater public opposition to the war, Vladimir Putin’s grasp on power is unlikely to be shaken.

But battlefield “bodies are piling up” and “smoke is billowing” from oil refineries across Russia hit by Ukrainian drone strikes. The failing Russian economy and continuing fuel shortages are weighing more heavily on the population and, although this election’s outcome is all but certain, the people’s “tacit consent is crumbling”. The educated and politically conscious, who always voted in the past “no longer see much point in the charade”.

What did the commentators say?

“The system of power in Russia is often referred to as ‘managed democracy’”, where “the Kremlin does the managing”, said the BBC’s Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg. Critics dismiss the elections as “neither free nor fair” but, frankly, the Kremlin “doesn’t care what the critics say”. Does this mean there will be “no surprises”? “Far from it.” We’ve already seen a TV debate with “six empty lecterns”.

The election of 450 deputies to Russia’s lower legislative house “gives the impression of some diversity”, with communists, nationalists and “even some self-described liberals” on the ballot, said Brawley Benson on Foreign Policy. “In reality, scope for disagreement is vanishingly small.” United Russia – Putin’s party – holds 70% of the seats and there’s “little tolerance for genuine opposition”. The other Duma deputies are seen as “systemic opposition”, or parties that partially differ in their priorities, but “broadly support” Putin.

“United Russia’s popularity has been hovering around 32% in public opinion polls,” said political science professor Regina Smyth on The Conversation. That’s the lowest percentage since the invasion of Ukraine, and “even then, the number is likely inflated by respondents’ fear of revealing their opposition”. But the Kremlin has long deployed an “arsenal of tools” to retain its grip on power. Gerrymandering, “significant” levels of electoral fraud and, this time round, the banning of eight out of 19 political parties have, in effect, “eliminated non-partisan organised opposition”. The election is not about who wins but what could be telling is seeing how heavily the Kremlin needs to place “its thumb on the scale to maintain its party’s two-thirds majority”.

“Engineering” the outcome too tightly is “not without a risk for the ruling regime”, said The Guardian’s editorial board. “Too blatant” an election steal can be “a sign of weakness”. Already last month, Russia’s supreme court blocked the “old and marginal liberal party”, Yabloko, from participating in the vote. It does not “pose a serious challenge to the regime” but it is opposed to the war in Ukraine. The case for banning it was “spurious to the point of absurdity”. Putin wants to look as if he is well supported but “the harder the Kremlin is seen to work at constructing electoral proof of that support, the less confident it looks”.

What next?

While there may be “little reason to care” about this “snoozefest” election and its “foregone conclusion”, many Russians “are worried” about what might follow, said The New York Times’ Moscow-based correspondent, Valerie Hopkins.

“Rumours of a large, forced mobilisation are rampant”, as the military “burns through” troops in Ukraine. And, for a country that is a major oil producer, it “has found itself in the unusual position of running short of fuel”. Nearly 60% of Russians think the “people around them are experiencing anxiety”, according to a July poll from the state-affiliated Public Opinion Foundation. That’s “a four-year high”. And the state-owned Sberbank reported Russians withdrawing more money from banks this summer “than in the previous six years”.

Most significantly, the Kremlin public relations machine has been forced to switch tack. Picking up on the fact that many people are “struggling and scared”, it has abandoned its old “business as usual” message for a call “to rally around President Vladimir V. Putin and his war”.

Whether President Donald Trump truly believes he can turn Canada into the 51st state remains as much a question of personal psychology as one of national policy. But it’s clear the president’s increased aggression toward America’s northern neighbor has convinced many in Canada that their national interests lie elsewhere. Despite sharing geographic, cultural and historic ties with the United States, Canadian officials are now turning to other international outlets, like the European Union, in an effort to wean themselves off the U.S.’ turbulent sphere of influence.

Pursuing a ‘unique alliance’ with Europe

With the United States and Canada “embroiled in the worst bilateral trade war in their modern history,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has pushed to “take Canada’s relationship with the EU to the next level,” said The Wall Street Journal. The effort is a “bold gambit” by Canada to “rewire the economic cabling of the Western alliance.” By “accelerating Canada’s pivot to Europe,” Carney is “matchmaking a shotgun marriage to offset the pain of its divorce with America.”

Talks between Canada and the EU have focused on “easing the movement of goods, services and specialized workers in critical sectors, including energy, artificial intelligence, defense and critical minerals,” said The Independent. The two bodies are also exploring “cooperation on subsea cables, cloud storage, data centers, satellite networks and infrastructure to export Canadian energy to Europe.”

“We’re not looking to become a member of the European Union,” said Carney to reporters this past weekend, per The Globe and Mail. “What we are looking for” is a “unique alliance between Canada and the European Union.” EU officials want to work on “opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the European Union,” said EU President Ursula von der Leyen this week in her State of the European Union address. Although “details remain scant and the linkup is not a done deal,” von der Leyen's announcement was “met with a standing ovation from lawmakers,” said The New York Times.

‘Cozying up is a no-brainer’

Talks of Canada actually joining the EU as a full member-state are “more meme than reality,” said Bloomberg. But the apparent “openness to talks on ‘anything other than membership’” has driven “justified enthusiasm among the Ottawa and Brussels crowds.” The “logic of cozying up is a no-brainer” as Canada works to “diversify trade away from its southern border,” and the EU hopes Canada’s “vast reserves of energy and minerals” will help it “carve a middle path between the U.S. and China.”

Carney hopes to “build an alliance of liberal powers” that are “committed to the multilateral order thrown into chaos by Donald Trump,” said the Financial Times. To that end, he intends to “show commitment to European allies” by potentially contributing to the EU-led 90 billion euro Ukraine Support Loan, of which the U.K. is the “only other non-EU country to have participated.”

While it’s unlikely that Canada and the EU will reach a “deeper overarching agreement any time soon,” they are slowly creating a framework for what it “actually means to be a ‘trusted partner’ in the context of economic security,” said Canada EU Trade and Investment Association President Mark Camilleri to the Financial Times. “If Canada and the EU can get this right, it is a model that can be adapted to other like-minded countries such as the U.K., Norway, Japan and Australia.”

In the meantime, said Politico, Canada is set to “make its Eurovision debut in 2027.” The country will “host an EU summit in Montreal” in late October.

“The United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

This was US air force secretary Troy Meink confirming for the first time at a conference in Maryland this week that such weapons exist. Meink said the US was “ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist”.

It has been an “open secret” that the US, Russia and China are developing space weapons, but to say it officially is “extraordinary”, said The Guardian. Over time, the “cooperation” of the post-Cold War era has “gradually become a potential battlefield”, and announcements such as this threaten to “accelerate a risky arms race”.

What are the weapons?

Meink declined to give any details on the capabilities of the weapons, only that they were “important from a deterrence perspective”.

There is a “broad range of possibilities” for what they could be, Clayton Swope, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told CNN. There could be “satellites capable of jamming enemy communications” or weapons that could “target and destroy ground-based equipment”. In the extreme, there might also be anti-satellite weapons that could “seek out and physically destroy” enemy satellites in orbit.

In its “war-fighting framework”, the US Space Force has acknowledged that threats of orbital strikes on the country can include “both kinetic – or physically destructive – weapons and non-kinetic ones”, said the Financial Times, implying weapons would need to be capable of nullifying them.

What is the US space strategy?

Donald Trump established the US Space Force in 2019, making it the first new branch of the US military in more than 70 years.

Under the control of the Department of the Air Force, its primary goal is “bolstering the nation’s defence capabilities” and maintaining satellites for communication and surveillance, said CNN. But last year, Trump issued an executive order underlining the USSF’s “role in not only defending assets, but also as an attacking force”, said the BBC.

Russia and China are perceived to be the main threats to US national security. The USSF claims that China already “operates space and counterspace capabilities”, while Russia “views space as a war-fighting domain and believes space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts”.

Next year, the department is “slated to have a budget of $71.3 billion”, said The Times. New space weapons form a part of the wider “Golden Dome” missile defence shield, protecting the US from foreign attack. Trump has “championed” the “$185 billion” programme, which “would potentially involve deploying interceptors to space”.

How have others reacted?

Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for the Kremlin, told reporters that Russia believed “space must be free of any weapon” and called for “the complete demilitarisation” of space.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun has urged the US to “stop expanding military build-up in outer space, and uphold global strategic stability with concrete actions”. The country “stands for peaceful use of outer space and keeping it safe” and “opposes any arms race in outer space or any attempt to weaponise it and turn it into a war zone”.

Chinese military analyst Song Zhongping told the state-owned Global Times that “if the US continues down this path, other countries may be forced to respond”.

Could this development spread?

In theory, weapons in space are banned. Following Starfish Prime – the “largest nuclear test in outer space” – in 1962, nations signed the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which “banned weapons of mass destruction in orbit”, said The Telegraph.

But while it bans the use or testing of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in orbit, “it does not prohibit the use of conventional weapons in space or the use of ground-based weapons against assets in space”, said CNN. This leaves “room for interpretation”.

And the “emerging space weapons race is not limited to the US, Russia and China”, said Al Jazeera. India has already demonstrated “anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons” capability and is “developing technologies that could allow spacecraft to operate alongside other satellites”. France has reportedly begun developing similar “co-orbital capabilities”, and the UK has “conducted on-orbit cooperative operations” in conjunction with the US.

The Secure World Foundation found that while the threats from Iran and Israel are “less visible”, they are relying on “jamming and spoofing satellite-based services” and “electronic-warfare capabilities” respectively to advance their space security. North Korea is also “racing to develop more sophisticated space-based tech”.

Brics has been described as a “motley collection of emerging markets that agree on little and achieve even less”, said the Financial Times, but its leaders signed off on a 45-page statement at the recent summit in India.

The group represents 49.5% of the global population, 40% of global GDP and 26% of global trade, but many of its members are at odds with their supposed allies, which limits the group’s influence.

What did it agree?

The acronym Bric – which stood for Brazil, Russia, India and China – was first coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, then chief economist at investment bank Goldman Sachs, to describe a group of emerging economies expected to sustain a prolonged period of growth. It has expanded and now includes Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates.

At last weekend’s India summit, the “historically unruly bloc” agreed a statement “blasting protectionism and economic sanctions and calling for peace in the Gulf”. Brics expressed “deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions” in the Middle East around the war in Iran and called for “maximum restraint”. It also encouraged nations to avoid actions that could further aggravate the situation.

The bloc also expressed “firm opposition” to the forced displacement of Palestinians and called for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza. It restated its support for a two-state solution, with the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.

The Ukraine war is a “source of tension” within the group because Russia is a founding member of Brics, said Al Jazeera. The declaration called for international disputes to be resolved through “dialogue, consultation, and diplomacy”. It was a “generic” statement that didn’t mention Ukraine.

Brics leaders called for “the elimination” of “unlawful” unilateral sanctions that were not authorised by the UN Security Council, saying they “undermine international law and the principles and purposes of the UN Charter”. This “position is significant for Russia, which has faced extensive Western sanctions”.

On US tariffs, the declaration spoke of the organisation’s worry about the “unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures” that distort trade. It called for cooperation to protect global trade, supply chains, energy flows and maritime security as wars disrupt international commerce.

Brics says it wants a “multipolar” world: a global system where power is spread across several major countries or power blocs instead of being controlled by just one or two. It reiterated its “commitment to strengthening multilateralism and multipolarity”, stating that this could expand opportunities for emerging markets and developing countries to develop “constructive potential and enjoy universally beneficial, inclusive, sustainable and equitable economic globalisation and cooperation”.

What does this mean?

For Iran, the summit was “a chance to show that it does not stand alone amid the US and Israel’s military attacks and economic pressure”, said the BBC. In the face of Washington’s sanctions, Iran “pressed for deeper economic ties” with Brics members, including Malaysia, India and Ethiopia.

This was Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first visit to India in seven years and, despite “deep mistrust” between the two countries, the weekend was “still a big moment” for China and India. Xi and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi “agreed to strengthen business ties and transport links and address barriers to trade”. So the summit, held in Delhi, showed that Brics can “create space for rivals to talk and manoeuvre outside Western-dominated institutions”.

But “key members and partners of the bloc are at serious loggerheads”, said Stefan Wolff, a University of Birmingham academic, on The Conversation. Iran is “effectively in a state of war” with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, while the Saudis and the UAE “have been at odds for years” over Yemen, Sudan and Somalia. So a group “whose sole remaining source of unanimity is opposition to the US and its allies” is “hardly likely to become a pole of a multipolar order”.

What happened

President Donald Trump over the weekend caused uproar by advocating for Irish reunification. Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, and the independent Republic of Ireland have been separated since 1921 and coexisted in relative peace since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Trump’s comments “touched a live rail” in Irish and U.K. politics, The Associated Press said.

Who said what

“I don’t want to cause any problems,” but “I’d love to see it unified,” Trump said Saturday during a meeting in Dublin with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. It would be “fantastic” and “it’s going to happen eventually,” though “the U.K. will have something to say about it, obviously.”

Trump’s comments broke “longstanding U.S. presidential convention of not taking sides” on Northern Ireland’s future, Axios said, and “managed the unusual feat of delighting Irish nationalists while alarming some Northern Irish politicians who have previously expressed support for him.” Martin said there was “no need for an overreaction” and urged politicians to “keep a calm perspective.”

What next?

The Good Friday Agreement allows for reunification if Belfast agrees and Irish and Northern Ireland voters approve the merger in referendums. The British government said unification was “off the table” unless public opinion shifts.

Preliminary results from Sweden’s general election suggest a narrow three-seat lead for the centre-left opposition over the right-wing ruling bloc that had promised ministerial seats to the far-right.

The election is being fought on multiple fronts. Current prime minister and leader of the centre-right Moderate party, Ulf Kristersson, has been fighting for re-election on a platform of cutting asylum numbers and reducing gang shootings, while Magdalena Andersson, leader of the centre-left Social Democrats, has been focusing on the economy, the welfare state and suppressing the country’s growing far-right faction.

Like many nations across Europe, Sweden “has been subject to increased fragmentation” in its politics, said the Financial Times. The closeness of the votes so far herald “weeks of uncertainty” and protracted coalition talks. And the final result, and the fate of the far-right, will be closely watched elsewhere in Europe, where similar nationalist movements are gaining ground.

How does the Swedish electoral system work?

There are currently eight political parties in Sweden, and they are fighting this election in two major blocs: the Moderates, the Sweden Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals on the right, and the Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Centre Party, and the Green Party on the left.

Sweden uses a “mandate distribution” voting system, a type of proportional representation. To get “mandates”, or seats, in the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament, a party must pass the minimum threshold of 4% of the vote. After that, roughly speaking, a party that gets, say, 20% of the vote will get 20% of the seats.

This means that “coalitions are the norm”, said Politico. And in those coalition-building efforts, “Sweden’s smaller parties often have outsized influence”. With the “razor-thin victory margin” currently projected for the left, “that will be true again this time”.

Why has this election been so tight?

Party campaigns this year were “unusually heated and polarised”, said The Guardian. There have been months of “personal attacks between leaders, accusations of misinformation and Maga-inspired ads”.

The friction between the two main blocs has been growing since the right-wing coalition “broke a long-standing taboo” by partnering with the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party with “neo-Nazi roots”. Kristersson has promised members of the party cabinet positions, should the right-wing bloc be re-elected.

With a campaign slogan of “Make Sweden Sweden again” – clearly aligning itself with Donald Trump’s Maga movement – the Sweden Democrats’ policies include banning headscarves and expanding a “repatriation grant” worth SKr350,000 (£27,000) to immigrants who have already become Swedish citizens. They have run bus advertisements, saying “Do you miss Mogadishu? The repatriation grant will help you get ​home”. One of their MPs “recently called for Muslims to simply ‘stop being Muslims’”, said The Economist, and their leader, Jimmie Åkesson, casting his vote in an immigrant neighbourhood in northern Stockholm announced that “Sweden shouldn’t look like this”.

Why does it matter?

The shifts in the balance of power triggered by this election will not only affect government decisions on taxation, welfare, health, education and crime but also “shape decisions affecting communities with limited influence over Stockholm politics” said The European Times. These include disputes over industrial development on Indigenous land, most prominently near Kiruna, which could impact the remaining Sámi reindeer-migration corridor.

This election has broader implications across the continent, too. If European centrists were hoping to take lessons from Sweden on how to beat the populist right, these “confusing” results make things “far from clear”, said The Economist. Although Sweden Democrats have suffered their first decline in support since their founding, they won’t be “too unhappy”. The party that was previously ostracised has now “attained mainstream acceptance that was once unthinkable”.

What will happen next?

It’s unlikely a final election result will be announced until Wednesday or Thursday. “Hundreds of thousands of overseas votes and late ballots” are still to be counted, said the Financial Times. Overseas votes in particular “typically skew conservative, so the final result is still considered too close to call” by some experts.

Once all the votes are in, “there is likely to be intense wooing of the smaller parties in the middle of the political spectrum”. And these talks are “likely to be protracted”. Both Kristersson and Andersson have “hinted that they might try to form centrist coalitions”.

Former cricket star and Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan now lives in a 6ft-by-8ft prison cell in the Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s fourth-largest city. According to his family, his conditions are dire: Khan, 73, prime minister from 2018 to 2022, has been placed in indefinite solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, and is given dirty water to drink. He has lost 85% of his eyesight and his health is failing.

In a recent interview, his sons Kasim and Sulaiman, who are British citizens, accused Pakistan’s authorities of “trying to kill” their father. Pakistani officials reacted with fury; it briefly appeared that they might order a Test match against England to be abandoned. Pakistan’s government issued a statement claiming, against all the evidence, that Khan is actually being held in a seven-cell compound with home-cooked food, a TV and regular visits.

Why is the case so sensitive?

Because Khan is, to many, a national hero, and probably Pakistan’s most popular politician. Born to an affluent Pashtun family in Lahore, Khan graduated from Keble College, Oxford, in 1975, and captained Pakistan’s cricket team to World Cup victory in 1992; in Britain, he is still best known as a sportsman and a playboy, who later married Jemima Goldsmith.

But in Pakistan he became a prominent philanthropist, and then a very successful – and very divisive – populist politician. In 1996, he founded the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice, or PTI) party, railing against the corruption he views as endemic among the two political dynasties that have dominated Pakistani politics, the Bhutto and Sharif families. His supporters cast him as a brave challenger to a venal establishment, who fought for years to fix a broken system; his critics say he is irresponsible and has polarised Pakistani politics, by casting all opponents as crooks.

What did he do in office?

Khan became PM by a slim majority, after winning the backing of Pakistan’s military – which has intermittently ruled the country and still wields great power – in a contest marred by allegations of vote-rigging and intimidation. In power, Khan proved erratic, and his record was at best mixed. He promised to end corruption within 90 days; but according to Transparency International, it actually worsened.

Pakistan’s economic woes continued on his watch: in 2019, he was forced to negotiate a $6 billion bailout from the IMF. Although he expanded the provision of healthcare, pledges to build an “Islamic welfare state” went unfulfilled. And his independent foreign policy (he was seen as pro-Taliban, and had close links to China and Russia) was criticised in the West. Meanwhile, he worked with Pakistan’s generals to control the media and crack down on opponents, some of whom were jailed.

How did he lose power?

In April 2022, having apparently fallen out with key figures in the military, he became the first Pakistani PM to be ousted in a parliamentary confidence vote. Khan claimed that the US and Pakistan’s military had conspired to remove him, and launched street protests. Within days, news outlets in Pakistan began following an army diktat to stop referring to him by name (instead calling him “the founding chairman of the PTI”).

In November 2022, he was shot in the leg at a rally, which he also blamed on the military. The new government, meanwhile, sought to bury Khan in dozens of legal cases; in May 2023, he was arrested by paramilitaries who smashed through the windows of Islamabad’s high court, where he was appearing on corruption charges. Fresh protests erupted. Although initially bailed, Khan has been in jail since that August.

What is he accused of?

Khan has faced charges in more than 100 cases, including bribery, corruption and the leaking of state secrets. He is now serving a 14-year sentence following a corruption conviction in which prosecutors alleged that he and his third wife, Bushra Bibi received land worth up to $25 million through a charitable trust, as a bribe from a real-estate tycoon. All Khan’s other convictions have been overturned or suspended; few were of exceptional gravity by the standards of Pakistani politics.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Federation for Human Rights have criticised Khan’s incarceration; and, in July 2024, a UN working group said that his detention had “no legal basis” and was part of a “campaign of repression” against him and the PTI.

How has Khan responded?

In October 2022, Pakistan’s Election Commission disqualified him from running for political office for five years. The PTI has also been prevented from using its cricket bat symbol on ballot papers – a setback in a country with low literacy rates. But Khan has been undeterred. He continues to protest his innocence from jail, attracting widespread support. Using AI-generated audio clips and images, he held virtual online rallies in the run-up to the February 2024 general election, in which candidates backed by his PTI party won an unexpected victory. However, it fell short of an outright majority, and has sat in opposition since; Shehbaz Sharif of the PML(N) took over as PM, at the helm of an eight-party coalition.

Could he be released?

For the moment, his prospects appear bleak. Pakistan’s supreme court ruled in August that Khan should be transferred to hospital to undergo medical checks; instead, he was taken to a government facility for cursory checks, and was then sent straight back to 23-hour isolation. Given that some 48 Pakistani political leaders have been assassinated or executed, some observers fear the government plans to keep Khan in prison until he dies. Western governments, meanwhile, have remained largely silent about his treatment – apparently wary of angering a strategically important nuclear power.

It was “a predatory move” that reeked of old-school colonialism, said Le Monde (Paris). Last week, in a typically grandiose social media post, Donald Trump announced that the US and Venezuela had struck “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY”. It would, he claimed, give America majority control over 65 billion barrels of oil found at 17 sites in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt and Lake Maracaibo.

Trump has been demanding this as a prize ever since US forces seized Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in a dawn raid on Caracas in early January, said Joseph Zeballos-Roig on MS Now (New York). “To the victor belong the spoils, right?” he told a rally in Nevada back in August, boasting how, with Caracas, he wanted to do things “the old-fashioned way”.

By strong-arming interim president Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former deputy, into agreeing the deal, he has made Venezuela America’s “51st state in all but name”.

‘Smells pretty unconstitutional’

Venezuelans are horrified, said Luis Manuel Aguana in La Patilla (Caracas). We are a “culturally patriotic and anti-imperialist” people who, like other Latin Americans, loathe “external oppression”. And Rodríguez’s flimsy promise that the deal will generate $209 billion in taxes over the next 25 years hardly makes this bitter pill any easier to swallow. But it is a deal that’s unlikely to hold, said Caracas Chronicles. It “looks, sounds and smells pretty unconstitutional”; any future government is more than likely to abrogate its terms.

Legally speaking, the accord is a “complete monstrosity”, agreed Rafael Quiroz Serrano in Tal Cual (Caracas). A leader with no electoral mandate, Rodríguez lacks the legitimacy to sign away our oil deposits; and under Venezuelan law the state oil company, PDVSA, must have a controlling stake in any oil production projects. Be that as it may, Caracas has been persuaded under the deal to appoint a private company – North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) – to control the 17 oil fields, on the understanding that the Pentagon is given a 35% stake in the business and receives 20% of all output at cost price.

And that’s a real cause for alarm, said Caracas Chronicles. NABEP’s Venezuelan owner, Alejandro Betancourt, is a byword for corruption. He made his fortune building power plants for Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez, and “became synonymous with the vanishing of hundreds of millions of dollars” that Chávez had allocated to fixing Venezuela’s power grid. And he is now being investigated in Spain (where he lives) for alleged money laundering.

‘Wildly optimistic’

Betancourt would anyway have to work miracles for the deal to work out, said Catherine Bosley in Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Only 1% of global crude oil is currently produced in Venezuela, despite it having 17% of the world’s reserves. And given the dilapidated state of its oil infrastructure after decades of socialist misrule, that won’t change any time soon. Vast sums of investment are needed. True, Chevron, which already operates in Venezuela, promised to invest $7 billion over the next five years in a separate deal last week. But none of the other oil giants, some of whom lost billions when Chávez booted them out in 2007, are keen to engage.

With good reason, said Keith Johnson in Foreign Policy. Trump’s numbers are “wildly optimistic”. Venezuela’s oil is very heavy and hard to process: only 20 billion barrels are likely to be recoverable from the 17 oil fields. And even that will take years to retrieve, a fact Trump conveniently overlooked when claiming the deal would drive down US energy prices that have spiked as a result of his war in Iran.

The deal’s economic prospects may be in doubt, said The Daily Beast (New York), but the political consequences are already being felt. By shoring up Rodríguez’s undemocratic regime, it has dashed any immediate hope of Venezuela turning to democracy. And it has given the green light to countries such as Russia to “attack and steal from weaker neighbours”.

Tom Homan is owed an apology, said Rich Lowry in National Review. When President Trump put his border czar in charge of unwinding Operation Metro Surge – the immigration enforcement drive that caused such controversy in Minneapolis earlier this year – critics on the Right took it as a sign of a climbdown.

Trump, they said, had clearly lost his nerve on his signature issue and was retreating from the ambition to carry out mass deportations. Yet while things have been quieter since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) ended its Minneapolis crackdown, there has been no lull in efforts to deport illegal immigrants.

Homan has avoided militarised raids, relying instead on picking up illegal aliens at routine traffic stops, immigration check-ins and airports. His low-key approach has been highly effective: in August, for the third month in a row, Ice achieved a new record for arrests, detaining almost 51,000 illegal aliens.

Campaign promise

Nobody can accuse Trump of failing to deliver on his campaign promises on immigration, said Daniel J. Flynn in The American Spectator. He pledged to stop “the invasion at our southern border” – and he did. Net migration in 2025 fell to its lowest level since the Great Depression. There are 2.3 million fewer illegal immigrants in the US today than when Trump began his second term.

Given that, as recently as 2024, Americans told pollsters that immigration was their number-one concern, you’d think voters might credit Trump “for more or less solving this vexatious problem”. No such luck. As is often the case in politics, “success engenders not gratitude but complacency”.

Shrinking workforce

Trump’s immigration restrictions may have been successful on his terms, said Stuart Anderson and Mark Regets in The Washington Post, but they’ll cost America in the long run. They’re largely responsible for the fact that Trump is set to be possibly the first ever US president to preside over a reduction in the labour force.

The labour force grew by 6.7 million during Reagan’s first term, and by 8.7 million in his second. Falling birth rates later slowed growth, but thanks to migration, Obama’s terms still added 1.6 and 3.9 million workers, respectively.

In Trump’s second term, by contrast, the workforce has fallen by 1.6 million. Economic growth is hard without a growing supply of workers. “A declining labour supply is new territory for America” – and it will leave everyone worse off.

What happened

Yemen’s Houthis on Thursday seized control of the key Red Sea port city of Mokha, giving the Iran-backed rebel group more control over the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The “lightning Houthi advance” down the Red Sea coast “came with direct guidance from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seeking to open a new front in Iran’s war with the U.S.,” Reuters said, citing Yemeni and Iranian sources.

Who said what

Mokha, or Mocha, is about 50 miles north of Bab el-Mandeb, a “geopolitical chokepoint similar to the Strait of Hormuz” on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula, CNN said. If the Houthis “use their presence in Mokha to ramp up threats or attacks on shipping in the Red Sea,” The Associated Press said, that “gives Iran another potential point of leverage in its war with the U.S.”

Saudi Arabia “pivoted to the Red Sea to export most of its oil” after the Iran war shut down Hormuz, The New York Times said. After Mokha fell Thursday, Brent crude rose above $106 a barrel and U.S. diesel prices topped $6 a gallon for the first time.

What next?

The Houthis are “expected to try to push farther south to try and take territory next to the strait,” the Times said. An “effective Houthi blockade of Bab al-Mandeb” could “require U.S. military intervention,” CNN said.

The Italian government has “moved in a unilateral and arrogant way, treating Sardinia like the Cayenne of Italy”, said Alessandra Todde, governor of Sardinia.

The official, referring to the former penal colony off the coast of French Guiana, nicknamed “Devil’s Island”, has accused the government of ignoring her objections, and not permitting her to be “involved in decisions that directly affect” Sardinia, said Il Sole 24 Ore.

Last weekend, 88 high-security prisoners arrived on the island, said The Times. They are among the “746 inmates held under Italy’s toughest solitary confinement rules”, taking Sardinia’s total to 183, a quarter of the national total.

Starting with protest flashpoints in February, Sardinians continue to oppose the prisoners’ relocation to the island, but one prison official told the newspaper: “we can’t send them to Sicily because many of them come from there in the first place”.

‘Alcatraz of Italy’

This is not the first time the island has been perceived by the central government as a favourable location for prisons, said The Times. In the 1990s, Sardinia “endured an influx of mobster prisoners” after a government crackdown on Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia. Many were locked up on Asinara, a small island off the Sardinian coast, including Raffaele Cutolo, a crime boss from Naples, and Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the head of Cosa Nostra. Asinara was nicknamed the “Alcatraz of Italy”, and only one prisoner escaped during its 112 years as a prison before it closed in 1997.

Implementing this process is the “first concrete result of the government’s plan to concentrate harsh imprisonment in seven Italian facilities, three of which are located in Sardinia”, said L’Independiente. Transferring the prisoners to the island also required significant logistical planning. Transporting the 88 prisoners required two finance police aircraft plus “10 military flights, 65 vehicles, eight ground convoys, seven ambulances, two drones and 207 officers”.

The prisoners will continue to be detained under the “hardline” “41 bis” programme, which promotes near-complete isolation, said The Italian Times. Introduced in 1992 following the assassinations by the mafia of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the regime is designed to “sever” contact with criminal networks outside jail.

The government has framed this “Sardinia expansion” as part of a “multi-region overhaul” of this system, concentrating the most high-risk criminals in regional posts. But the 41 bis regime has come under fire, being repeatedly challenged by the European Court of Human Rights. The initial stages of this rollout are a “test of how far Rome can concentrate its highest-security prisoners without triggering a fresh rights dispute at home and abroad.”

Movement of mafia clans

With its “silky, white beaches, turquoise bays and terracotta villages, Sardinia has worked hard” to forget its past and to “position itself as one of Europe’s most popular holiday destinations”, said The Telegraph. Asinara, which once hosted a maximum-security prison, became a national park in 1997. Now, it is “famed for its unique population of albino donkeys”. Local businesses are concerned this appealing image will be “tarnished” by the government’s plans to “dump hundreds of maximum-security prisoners in its jails”.

Locals fear that the island’s culture, once linked to “notorious mobsters and convicted terrorists” incarcerated away from the mainland, could re-emerge, said The Independent. As more high-security prisoners arrive, mafia clans could “move from mainland Italy to be near jailed relatives”. The risk would no longer be of violence, but of “white-collar crime”, with authorities concerned that the “precarious working conditions and low salaries provide an ideal environment for the clans”. There would be clear opportunities to “launder illicit money and infiltrate business, particularly in less developed areas”.

Sardinia already faces one of the country’s highest prisoner-to-inhabitant ratios, and increasing that could strain services. Like much of southern Italy, Sardinia has a “fragile healthcare system and an ageing population”. Additionally, islanders face “higher inmate healthcare costs than in other parts of the country.” If a “mobster” in prison were to require hospital treatment, they would require an escort of “dozens of prison guards”, and in order to accommodate them, and protect the public, authorities could be forced to “shut entire wards”.

Twenty-five years on from the most deadly terrorist attack in history, and almost 25 years into the War on Terror, “the world is a less safe place despite our actions”, said Iraq veteran Joslin Joseph on The Hill.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, the military interventions after 9/11 led to the deaths of over 900,000 people and cost the United States more than $8 trillion (£5.9 trillion). “Afghanistan and Iraq ended in failure”, said The American Conservative’s David Brady, while “most Americans believe that the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East were a mistake”. Indeed, this was a major part of Donald Trump’s initial appeal: “They lied,” he said of the War on Terror architects in 2016.

But while “there is much to criticise in the war on terrorism,” said Douglas J. Feith in The Washington Post, on its main objective “the success has been remarkable”. There has been no second 9/11. “Terrorists have not exploded skyscrapers, stadiums and power plants across the country” and “they have not transformed America into a police state.”

What did the commentators say?

“Hasn’t Osama Bin Laden gotten everything he wished for?” asked The American Conservative’s Brady. The financial costs “have taken an undeniable economic toll, fuelling unprecedented levels of debt” while the “human costs have soured many Americans, not just on Mideast wars, but on the elites who got us into them”. Syria is even “run by a former member of al-Qaida, who has been welcomed to the White House”.

But the “most costly single event to the US would have been another successful major attack”, said The Guardian’s Jason Burke. The fact that this never came is an “unarguable success of US policymaking since 9/11 and a major failure for al-Qaida”. And despite the obvious economic problems in the US, “no one could argue that the country has suffered a similar fate to the USSR”.

The terrorist group that Bin Laden headed up, meanwhile, faces the question of whether it can replace its ageing fighters. Although this is conceivable, al-Qaida as a brand is “visibly fading”, terrorism expert Behnam Heidenreuter-Said, head of the research centre for Strategic Police Research at Hamburg Police Academy, told Deutsche Welle. In Europe in particular, militant jihadism has become less attractive.

Some analysts “add together the presumed strength of groups in Somalia or Mali that have very loose, historic links to al-Qaida, and warn that their total membership is higher than those loyal to Bin Laden in 2001”, said The Guardian’s Burke. However, “these few thousand young men with AK-47s have little in common with the organisation Bin Laden led 25 years ago, both in aims and capabilities”. The fact that al-Qaida “still exists is an achievement of sorts for the group and, posthumously, for its founder”. But “it should not be described as any victory”.

What next?

A key lesson of 9/11 is that “perils grow when enemies conclude that America lacks the will, capability or staying power to defend itself”, said The Washington Post’s Feith.

But America and the West are again under attack, this time “from a Cold War enemy” in Russia “that watched the US and its allies waste lakes of blood and trillions in treasure enfeebling themselves after 9/11”, said The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley.

The West is now “spiritually and politically impoverished, deeply indebted and unable to meet new defence needs, and therefore vulnerable”. Vladimir Putin “has Bin Laden to thank for that”.

A “deportation war” being waged by Sweden is “tearing British families apart”, said The Telegraph.

Criticism is mounting over the country’s contentious approach to Britons who chose to make Sweden their home before Brexit.

Why are British people being deported?

The problem has been “rumbling” since Brexit, said the broadsheet. When the UK left the European Union in 2020, British citizens stopped being EU citizens, which meant they no longer had automatic right of residence status in Sweden.

A transitional period, when British citizens could apply for residence status under the withdrawal agreement between the UK and the EU, ended on 31 December 2021.

By 2024, there were 14,233 applications for post-Brexit residency, including from family members joining British citizens after the deadline. Just under 4,000 were rejected, a refusal rate three times higher than any other EU state and considerably higher than the bloc’s average of between 3% and 4%, according to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

According to data from the European Commission, between 2021 and 2025, 2,490 UK nationals were ordered to leave Sweden – almost a third of the total of more than 7,500 UK nationals ordered to leave the 27 EU Member States during that period. The Migrationsverket, the Swedish government agency, said that 458 British citizens have been deported or forcibly removed since Brexit.

Who has been deported?

The rejections include some “disturbing cases of vulnerable Britons” who were told to leave either because they missed the application deadline or, in other cases, where the deadline was met, but other necessary documentation or conditions were ruled missing or unmet.

Some Britons have been “told to go” after living in the country for more than 25 years, and even “vulnerable elderly people with dementia” have been affected, said The Guardian. One 34-year-old man was deported even though he had been in Sweden since he was 10 years old. This separated him from his wife in Gothenburg, who said Brexit had “crushed families”.

A 78-year-old British widow, Joyce Thomas, had been told to remove herself from Sweden before 9 September. “I don’t take anything from this country,” she told the newspaper. “I am self-sufficient, I put money in this country, have no criminal record.” She has since won a temporary reprieve pending an appeal by her lawyer, but “her plight remains the same with the threat of a deportation merely in abeyance”, said The Guardian.

Horace Mason, 74, who has lived in Sweden for 25 years, has dementia and receives full-time care, but he’s “been given 10 days to leave” after losing a post-Brexit migration court case, said The Telegraph. According to reports, he applied in time, but Swedish authorities say he did not supply documentation confirming he met requirements to stay.

Nigel Davies, 64, had lived in Sweden for 17 years before he was taken to a deportation centre last July and driven to the airport at 4am. He wasn’t allowed to tell his teenage children what was happening, even though they were alone because his wife had died from cancer. His “only crime” was that his application to remain in Sweden was six days late.

What’s behind this?

A broader political backdrop is at play: Sweden’s current government has adopted a significantly tougher immigration policy, after Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister, said: “improving re-migration is high on my government’s agenda”.

The Sweden Democrats, a far-right party that’s “outside the government but backs it in parliament”, is exerting more influence on the scene, said Reuters. Once the country was known for its welcome to migrants, but there’s now an “insularity and “anti-British feeling”, Davies told The Telegraph.

A Foreign Office spokesperson told The Telegraph that the government “regularly raise concerns regarding Sweden’s protection of citizens’ rights” with Swedish authorities and the European Commission.

Meanwhile, the “young, the old, vulnerable people, the wealthy” will continue to be the “target of harsh and often aggressive immigration policies”, said Swedish journalist Martin Gelin in The Guardian, and, although the country goes to the polls this weekend, “it will take more than one election to get the old, tolerant Sweden back”.

What happened

Iran on Wednesday said it attacked two U.S. ships and eight tankers near the Strait of Hormuz in response to the U.S. sinking five Iranian oil tankers. The Pentagon said the tanker strikes were retaliation for Iran’s first confirmed attacks on U.S. Navy ships during the six-month war. Those attacks “failed,” The Wall Street Journal said, but “officials described some of them as close calls.”

This was the “biggest wave of attacks on shipping by both sides” yet, Reuters said, and it “sent the price of oil surging” above $100 a barrel for the first time since July. U.S. gas prices hit $4.22 per gallon, and diesel rose to a record $5.94 per gallon. On Thursday, five gas stations in California maxed out diesel at $9.99 per gallon, the highest possible price on the pump, according to GasBuddy.

Who said what

The U.S. and Iran “appear to be stuck in a cycle that is draining U.S. air defenses and deepening Iran’s economic crisis,” The New York Times said. Iranian ballistic missiles did “minimal” damage to a U.S. military base in Jordan, officials told the Times, and it may have left some U.S. troops with “traumatic brain injuries.” They also damaged “several fighter jets” at the base, CBS News said.

What next?

“I think war ​is going to end immediately after the election,” sending oil prices “tumbling downward,” because Iran “can’t hold out any longer,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday. Top White House advisers have “privately” discussed with Trump “that the Iran war could drag on through the remainder of his term,” the Journal said, citing U.S. officials.

Ukraine’s air defences are “dwindling” and Vladimir Putin is “planning to make the most of it”, said international relations expert Rajan Menon in The New York Times. While Russia might be suffering an estimated 30,000 casualties a month and is struggling to replenish its troops, its president appears “adamant he will pay whatever price – human or financial – necessary to win”.

Last week Donald Trump sent his son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow for talks with Putin. Then on Sunday they travelled to Ukraine for the first time to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who announced plans to widen peace discussions. The Ukrainian president agreed that he wanted to resume trilateral negotiations with the US and Russia in September, amid mounting civilian casualties and intensifying Russian strikes.

But afterwards, senior Kremlin officials “doubled down on Putin’s demands for Ukrainian capitulation”, said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, claimed the situation “worsens each day” for Ukraine.

What did the commentators say?

This year has brought “a series of Ukrainian successes that led many to believe Kyiv may have regained the initiative”, said Miro Sedlák on the Atlantic Council. But the “technological gap” between Russia and Ukraine is narrowing, “dramatically reducing” the chances of battlefield breakthroughs. Zelenskyy’s dismissal of his “tech-savvy” former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov sparked “widespread dismay” in Ukraine, while many Russian commentators “cheered the news”.

Ukraine has run out of Patriot missile interceptors, said Menon in The New York Times. Russia is gearing up for “massive strikes” on Ukraine’s energy grid during the winter, aiming to “break morale” and increase pressure on Zelenskyy to “seek a deal”.

Ukraine’s drone strikes are still “inflicting pain on some of the most strategic sectors of the Russian economy”, said Alexander Osipovich in The Wall Street Journal, especially on oil refineries, leading to fuel shortages. “The costs are adding up.”

Ukrainian air strikes are “bringing the war home to a misled, disillusioned public”, said Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. But does “out-of-touch” Putin even realise? He doesn’t use a smartphone or the internet, and relies on “inner circle apparatchiks” and loyalists telling him what he wants to hear. He’s likely to “double down” by becoming more aggressive and expanding the war beyond Ukraine, intensifying “hybrid warfare operations across Europe”, than to sue for peace.

Putin’s understanding of the war is “severely distorted by the Russian military’s systematic lying”, which is emboldening him to insist on “his maximalist demands”, said the ISW.

And if Putin cared about the Russian economy, he wouldn’t have launched the invasion in the first place, said Owen Matthews in The Spectator.

He remains “determined” to keep fighting and Trump has “no new plan for peace” other than letting the war end on Putin’s terms. Zelenskyy is “deluded about Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russia”, and about stopping Moscow’s “slow but relentless advances” and its “ruthless campaign to render Ukraine’s cities unliveable”.

Western sanctions on Russia have “basically failed” because of the West’s “hunger” for its cheap oil and gas. Russia is “stepping up” its defence capacity, while Ukraine’s allies in Europe are also “prioritising their own defence”. Ukraine is heading into “the hardest and most punishing winter of war”, and it’s about to run out of missiles, men and money.

What next?

There are signs that Europe’s “political taboo” on talking to Putin is cracking, said Matthews in The Spectator. Alice Weidel, co-leader of the pro-Russia AfD in Germany, has called for “an open channel to Russia” to reach “an understanding and achieve a peaceful solution”. Putin’s intention seems to be to give Ukraine “a brutal final kicking” before settling the war “on his terms”.

He may try to freeze the conflict while reorganising and re-arming, said Tisdall in The Guardian, or he could accept Zelenskyy’s ceasefire offer “without sincerely committing to a lasting settlement”. But a ceasefire without “cast-iron, pre-agreed security guarantees” could leave Ukraine more, not less, “vulnerable to renewed aggression”.

After the Russian parliamentary elections from 18-20 September “we’ll see whether Putin is going to throw the kitchen sink at this wall to finish it, in his view, once and for all”, said Sky News military analyst Michael Clarke.

What happened

Britain, France and Canada on Tuesday announced sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including banning all trade and services linked to them. The rapid expansion of settlements and increasing settler violence “pose a direct and urgent threat” to a two-state solution, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement. At least nine other countries said they intended to impose similar sanctions.

Who said what

“The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists,” Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in Parliament on Tuesday. And too often, the “Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse.”

The economic impact of the sanctions is “likely to be limited, since the settlements produce only a small amount of largely agricultural exports,” The Associated Press said. But it’s a “symbolic expression of displeasure with Israel by some of its closest allies” and a “new sign of the Israeli government’s growing isolation as a result of the Gaza war.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “responded to Britain’s announcement with fury and indignation and announced countermeasures,” including closing the British Consulate General in East Jerusalem, The New York Times said.

What next?

The U.S.’ Israeli ambassador, Mike Huckabee, called the sanctions “discrimination against the Jewish people” that could bring “repercussions or retaliations” from the U.S. But the White House “did not oppose” the U.K.-led effort, Axios said, citing officials and diplomats. And U.S. officials told Britain they “shared their concerns about the Netanyahu government’s West Bank policy.”

Ukraine has spent years using its drone arsenal to great effect, both in its wartime front with Russian forces and in penetrating deep into Russian territory for daring aerial attacks on fuel and commercial infrastructure. Now, Ukraine has a new target: Russian airports and Moscow’s commercial air travel industry.

“Every airline that uses Russian airspace, every insurer and everyone who still uses Russia’s key airports” should know “Russian airspace is becoming completely unsafe,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a statement last week. Although Ukrainian drones have filled Russia’s skies before, Zelenskyy’s implied threat to commercial air routes suggests the war for aerial supremacy in the region has taken a new and potentially even more dangerous turn.

Why focus on commercial air travel?

Zelenskyy’s warning comes as part of Ukraine’s “effort to disrupt Russia’s economy” and “pressure Moscow to end the war,” said The Wall Street Journal. Ukraine has “vowed to avoid targeting airliners and civilian deaths.” Instead, it intends to “scale up so-called Operation Carpet,” which circulates drones “near Russian airports, forcing air-traffic control to pause takeoffs and landings.”

The strategy is “no longer simply a repetition of isolated, sporadic emergency alerts” that have shuttered Russian airways in the past, said Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Southern Command, to the Journal. Ukraine intends to “transition to constant pressure aimed at paralyzing civilian air traffic” for eastern Russia.

The problem for Russia is “not that Ukraine has to shoot down an airliner,” said industry news site Live and Let’s Fly. “Quite the opposite.” Ukrainian drones merely need to “create enough uncertainty” for authorities to close airports or until “airlines or insurers decide the risk is no longer worthwhile.” The tactic is a “useful tool of war.”

Trying to shutter an airport permanently “would be difficult,” as a “sustained attack would become predictable and easier for air-defense systems to halt,” said The Guardian. But “periodic closures of Russian airports on a semi-regular basis” are achievable by “relying on an element of surprise,” said Royal United Services Institute aviation analyst Justin Bronk to the outlet.

Ukraine has also “urged the U.N.’s aviation agency” to “ask its members ‌to fully ban operations in Russian airspace,” said Reuters. The International Civil Aviation Organization itself has observed “heightened risks of civil aircraft being targeted or caught in crossfire,” said the group in a statement this week. Though the airline industry can “reroute flights and maintain operations during conflicts,” that type of “operational ​flexibility does not address the ​fundamental security threat.”

What are Russia’s options?

Russian President Vladimir Putin “vowed that Russia would keep pummeling Ukraine” at a press conference last week where he “dismissed” Zelenskyy’s threat to Russian airspace, said The Washington Post. “If this has been voiced, it amounts to nothing less than a call for state terrorism,” said Putin. “And I would point out that they are asking us to resume negotiations and requesting face-to-face meetings. One does not negotiate with terrorists.”

Although Ukraine’s airspace has been closed to commercial travel for several years, Russia has “refused to close the country’s airspace for civil aviation, despite the escalating war,” said the Journal. While American and European operators have pulled back from Russian sorties, their absence “has proven a boon” to operators from Asia and the Middle East, thereby “offsetting the risk of operating in skies regularly penetrated by Ukrainian drones.”

Russia’s military is “focusing on striking manufacturing and storage sites around Kyiv and energy and port operations in Odessa,” said former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Bryen on Substack. While it is “uncertain whether Zelenskyy’s warning will change the current pattern of attacks and retaliations,” it is also “hard to see” how Ukraine can “keep launching hundreds of drones (sometimes as many as a thousand)” nightly into Russia. It could simply be, said Bryen, that Zelenskyy is “saying more than he can do.”

What happened

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday said he was “deeply shocked” by the far-right Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) victory in the weekend’s state elections in Saxony-Anhalt. AfD won a 43.8% plurality, according to exit polls, but fell three seats short of the majority needed to form a government. No far-right party has governed a state or major city in Germany since the Nazi era, and the AfD’s win in the small eastern state was the biggest challenge yet to the “firewall” that Merz’s Christian Democrats and other mainstream parties have erected against political extremism.

Who said what

“This is the worst election defeat the CDU has suffered in years, even decades,” Merz told reporters. “Of course, there will have to be consequences,” but “giving up is not an option for me.” The “embattled leader,” saddled with “sagging poll numbers” and a stagnant economy, “faces an uphill battle to save his government,” The Wall Street Journal said. “Impatience with Merz is now turning to panic” in his party, with many officials “pushing him to shift the government’s political course” and a “minority” seeking to lift the party’s “ban on cooperating with the AfD at the state level.”

What next?

AfD leaders said they will try to poach CDU lawmakers to gain the crucial three seats in Saxony-Anhalt or partner with the far-left BSW party, which shares the AfD’s anti-immigrant and pro-Russia views.

What happened

Canada on Tuesday morning imposed steep tariffs on about $20 billion of U.S. imports, aiming to match President Donald Trump’s recent 50% tariffs dollar for dollar. The hundreds of U.S. products slapped with the tariffs, ranging from 15% to 50%, include steel, aluminum, cheese, clothing, appliances and farm equipment. Trump has been “trying to humiliate Canada economically” since trade talks broke down in acrimony last month, The New York Times said, but Prime Minister Mark Carney has his “insulted and angry nation solidly behind him.”

Who said what

Carney’s new retaliatory tariffs cover goods worth “roughly 6%” of U.S. exports to Canada last year, so they’re “unlikely to dent U.S. growth overall,” The Associated Press said. But “Canada has already gone beyond tariffs in other ways,” slashing U.S. alcohol sales with provincial bans and boycotting other goods, while Canadians “sharply cut travel” to the U.S.

The “spat with Canada” is the “latest evidence” that Trump “remains as committed as ever to his disruptive strategy of trade brinkmanship,” the Times said, despite “nearly two years of blistering court defeats, vicious international disputes and mounting domestic blowback” over rising prices and severed trade relationships.

What next?

Trump over the weekend suggested ending all trade with Canada and on Monday night threatened to block sales of Canadian Bombardier aircraft inside the U.S. Carney has “become symbolic of resistance,” Canadian historian Robert Bothwell told the AP. So Trump will try to “make an example” of him and Canada to “theoretically terrify everybody else while in fact showing them that they need to remove themselves even further from the United States.”

Donald Trump suggested last week that the US might reconsider its tacit support for British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands in retaliation for the UK’s failure to support him in the Iran war. The US president implied that he would not support the UK in a territorial dispute with Argentina.

Soon after, in a televised address, Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, said he would reopen the country’s claim to the islands it calls las Malvinas, declaring that the geopolitical “winds of change” would favour Buenos Aires. He proposed a “handover” of the islands akin to the transfer of Hong Kong to China, dismissing Britain as a country “in decline”.

What did the commentators say?

During the Falklands War in 1982, Margaret Thatcher had “the solid backing of the special relationship, and her ideological soulmate, Ronald Reagan, in the White House”, said Robert Tait, The Guardian’s US political correspondent. But Andy Burnham “must contend with the chill wind emanating from the menacing and destabilising presence of Trump”.

The US president’s “vindictive mindset” is to Milei’s advantage and “was almost entirely the trigger” for his address; the Argentinian president is trying to counter his own “falling political popularity”. Indeed, the same factor “may have played a key role” in the military junta’s decision to invade the Falklands in 1982.

But there’s no suggestion that Argentina would “dream of repeating” that “disastrous” decision, which led to the death of 907 sailors and soldiers, said The Economist. Milei “appears uncompromising” but, in truth, he knows forcing any change in status for the Falklands is a “tall order”. In a 2013 referendum with a turnout of more than 90%, all but three of 1,517 islanders voted to remain a British Overseas Territory .

Milei claims “this territory is ours”, but he wants to reach a “consensus solution” over the future status of the islands, similar to Britain’s agreement with China to cede control of Hong Kong. There are “risks to stirring up fresh confrontation”: Britain could block the sale of weapons containing British parts to Argentina, or influence how the International Monetary Fund “deals with” Milei’s struggling government. Milei may simply be trying to “shore up the more conservative parts of his base” ahead of elections next year. “Amping up his rhetoric” is less a show of strength than a reflection of Milei’s weakening domestic position.

In the event of a conflict, even a deployment of “two destroyers and three or four frigates” would be a “stretch” for the Royal Navy, said Lewis Page in The Telegraph. However, the UK’s aircraft carrier capability would be “completely dominant against Argentina”. Their forces are “even more run down than ours”.

While the UK could not sustain an aircraft carrier presence “indefinitely”, we could “dominate the skies over the Falklands for long enough to mount a campaign there”. And, unlike in 1982, the Falklands are “at least somewhat garrisoned”, which would be a “serious problem for a renewed Argentinian invasion”.

What next?

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said British support for the Falkland Islanders’ right to determine their own future was “unwavering”.

However, as part of a “furious backlash” to the UK’s plans to sanction Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Israel is now calling for sanctions on Britain over the Falklands, said The Independent. Far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir described the islands as “Argentine territory under occupation”. Yair Netanyahu, the son of the Israeli prime minister, took aim at what he called Britain’s “hypocrisy and hostility towards Israel”, saying Israel would only “stop recognising the Malvinas” once Britain stops “recognising Palestine”.

Plans for large-scale oil production around the Falklands “raise the economic stakes”, said Al Jazeera. Milei declared that the Sea Lion deep-sea oil project, a joint UK-Israel operation due to begin production in 2028, was a “clear and present danger” to Argentinian interests. Argentina has threatened to file criminal charges against Israeli energy company Navitas Petroleum and its executives, claiming they have violated Argentinian law by holding UK-issued exploration and exploitation licences.

Syria is on the verge of an “economic revolution”, said Ksenia Svetlova in Haaretz. Its interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former al-Qa’eda militant who led the rebel offensive that overthrew dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, has been struggling to rebuild a nation devastated by almost 14 years of civil war.

One of his biggest coups last year was to persuade the Trump administration to lift the strict economic sanctions imposed on Syria in 2019. But the country was still on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation first made in 1979 in response to Damascus’ support for Iran and its harbouring of Palestinian terrorist groups. So, like Iran, it remained cut off from the international banking system, and large-scale reconstruction proved impossible.

But that all changed last week at the stroke of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s pen. Now, at long last, the flow of “dollars, dinars and dirhams” to Syria can begin in earnest. Saudi Arabia has promised to build desalination plants and two airports, and invest in telecommunications projects worth more than $1 billion. Other countries are keen to follow suit. “If everything goes according to plan, Syria will soon become one vast construction site.”

‘Limited progress’

The rehabilitation of Syria into the world order has happened at “remarkable speed”, said Ilan Berman in The Washington Post. And there’s an obvious logic to it. By removing Damascus from its terrorism list, the US has pulled it towards the West and away from Iran and Russia’s orbit. Yet there are dangers to being so hasty: Washington is “basing its bet more on hope than hard evidence”. For all their promises of liberalisation, Sharaa and his government haven’t fully moved on from the past. Jihadist ideology is prevalent in school curriculums, and there has been no more than “limited progress” in removing 5,000 foreign fighters – extremists loyal to the current regime – from the new Syrian army.

Sharaa also won a significant victory last week in his quest to centralise power, said Smadar Perry on Ynet: he has managed to disband the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led militia founded in 2015 to fight Islamic State and create a secular, democratic and federalised Syria. At its height, it controlled at least a quarter of the country, including its major oil fields. Its commander, Mazloum Abdi, has now agreed to let his troops be incorporated into the national army, in what he calls “a genuine transition from battlefields to the fields of construction”. But the truth of it is that Sharaa forced his hand by seizing swathes of the SDF’s territory in a lightning offensive in January. Folding the SDF into the army is going to be a hard ask: and though the president has promised to make Kurdish a national language and to protect Kurdish rights, many Kurds still don’t trust him.

Victor’s justice

Sharaa’s government has also been busy bringing members of the Assad regime to justice, said Chris Doyle in Arab News. In August, nine of its most senior figures, including Assad himself, were sentenced to death for war crimes – verdicts that gave rise to an “outpouring of joy”. However, only Atef Najib, Assad’s cousin, a security chief infamous for his brutality, is likely to face execution, the rest having been tried in absentia.

Nor is this exactly a victory for the rule of law: the accused can hardly be said to have received a fair trial; and no corresponding action has been taken against the perpetrators of last year’s massacres of over 1,400 Alawites, the minority sect to which the Assad family belongs. There’s a strong smell of victor’s justice about it all.

Still, progress is undoubtedly being made and “the psychological importance of the removal of sanctions should not be underestimated”, said The National. We have room to hope that the barriers now being torn down in Syria will be replaced “with bridges, roads and tunnels en route to a more stable, secure and prosperous future”.

“Now is the twilight of Donald Trump’s supremacy,” said Rafael Behr in The Guardian. The US is “still the richest and most heavily armed nation on Earth”, and the president – indulged by a “supine” Congress – still has far-reaching powers. Nevertheless, with more than two years of his second term still to run, Trump looks “thwarted and impotent”.

‘Deranged demands’

History will record that the disastrous war against Iran was a “turning point”. But evidence of his policy failures can be seen all around the world. Canada, citing unreasonable last-minute demands from US negotiators, has promised all-out trade war. The Ukraine conflict is as bloody as ever, despite Trump’s promise to end it. Europe, horrified by his indulgence of Vladimir Putin and his “deranged demands” for Greenland, has turned away. In the Middle East, America’s allies are furious that they’re bearing the brunt of Iran’s attacks. And at home, fuel prices are rising, and electoral disaster is looming: November’s midterms are set to flip the House of Representatives, and maybe the Senate too, against the Republicans.

In a matter of months, Trump has “burned through decades of accumulated goodwill” across the democratic world, said Daniel Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. “He has created a sense that it is better to be America’s enemy than its friend, for it buys its enemies and sells its friends.” Never once has Trump spoken about Putin in the way he talks about Canadians, Danes, South Koreans and other partners.

‘Erratic behaviour’

A couple of years ago, it would have seemed impossible, said The Spectator. Now it’s quite normal for Washington, in its dealings with its allies, to threaten economic coercion, the withdrawal of military support, and even outright annexation. When Russia behaves like this, it is sanctioned. But in the case of the US, we sit back and do nothing.

There are still some who believe that “Trump’s erratic behaviour is part of a cunning plan to discombobulate opponents and get his way”, said Sam Freedman on Substack. The truth, as his lack of success makes clear, is simpler: “this guy is in obvious cognitive decline, ill-informed, and doesn’t know what he’s doing”.

Worse may be to come, said The Economist. Many would be delighted if “a fuming, friendless Mr Trump, so weakened by his own blunders and by plunging approval ratings” were to retreat to the White House to “tinker with plans for his ballroom”. Alas, that is not in his character. He’ll be less a “lame duck”, and more an ageing “silverback gorilla” – lashing out ever more viciously at anyone within his reach. “Now that his dominance is threatened, the world will find him more disruptive than ever.”

America’s midterm elections are looming, and are expected to turn on voters’ frustration with the rising cost of living. Hardly the moment, then, for a damaging trade war with Canada, said Rex Huppke in USA Today.

Yet following an acrimonious breakdown of trade talks between the two nations, Donald Trump last week slapped 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian goods, including down jackets, wine, dairy products and hockey sticks. He later threatened to double tariffs on vehicles and car parts, posting on social media: “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, who accused US negotiators of effectively declaring war on his country by introducing a raft of unacceptable last-minute demands, promised to retaliate with dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs, starting on 8 September.

Economic pain

Carney isn’t bluffing, said Zeeshan Aleem on MS Now. Canada relies more on exporting goods to the US than the other way round, so its economy is set to lose most from any trade war, but Carney has staked his reputation on standing up to Trump. He reckons Canadians will have more tolerance for economic pain resulting from a trade war they’ll blame on Trump “than Americans will have for rising prices”.

The polls certainly suggest as much, said Andrew Day in The American Conservative. Only a third of Canadians have a favourable view of the US today, down from 54% in 2024; 76% back Carney’s stance. For someone so adept at promoting nationalism at home, Trump has a “curious blindspot” about the impact of stirring such passions abroad.

‘Personal fixation’

He can’t help himself, said Zack Beauchamp on Vox. After all his “jokes” about absorbing Canada as the 51st state, Trump has now signed an order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” to spite the Canadians. The US and Canada have a long history of trade disagreements over issues such as dairy and lumber, but these rows have never blown up into a trade war, “for the simple reason that they simply aren’t that large as a percentage of GDP”.

There don’t appear to be any political, ideological or business interests egging on Trump to get into a fight with Canada. The desire to “vassalise” and control America’s northern neighbour is just the president’s “personal fixation” – one so important to him that he’s apparently willing to pursue it, even at the cost of jeopardising his party’s Senate majority.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been deporting thousands of people to their home countries, but many are also being sent to “third countries,” nations the deportee is not originally from. This often leaves the deported person stranded in a place where they do not speak the language or understand the customs.

Mexico

While thousands of Mexican migrants have been deported to Mexico, the country has also been far and away the one with the greatest number of third-country deportations. About 20,000 people without Mexican heritage have been deported to Mexico during the second Trump administration, according to Refugees International’s Third Country Deportation Watch (TCDW).

These deported people are also racing against the clock, as the Mexican government “gives third-country citizens just 10 days to remain in the country, with its overstretched asylum system the only option for most,” said the Washington Office on Latin America. As it stands, at least “1,100 deported people per month in Mexico are citizens of other Latin American nations.”

Guatemala

Though the third country agreement between the U.S. and Guatemala wasn’t renegotiated until July 2025, ICE has been ramping up deportations significantly since then. Several thousand people have since been sent to Guatemala, including 2,284 Mexicans deported to the country from the U.S. between April and August 2026, according to the TCDW.

This marked a notable change for Mexican deportees, given that before the deal with Guatemala, most Mexicans deported from the U.S. were “sent almost exclusively back to their country by air and land,” said The Associated Press. But these migrants are “part of a ‘transit stopover’ before being taken to Mexico as part of an ‘arrangement’ with the Mexican government,” said Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo.

Panama

About 360 non-Panamanians have been deported from the U.S. to Panama, according to the TCDW. The nation has been a third-country destination during almost all of the second Trump administration. In one instance, a group of refugees “were put on U.S. military planes,” said Human Rights Watch. They didn’t know their destination and “realized they were in Panama only after landing.”

Another notable story came just one month after President Donald Trump returned to power, when “hundreds of asylum-seekers were sent to Panama instead of being allowed to present claims in the United States,” said the American Immigration Council. They were eventually “released by the Panamanian government and told they had 30 days to leave the country.”

Costa Rica

Costa Rica is another large Central American third-country destination where about 331 people have been deported from the United States, the TCDW said. Costa Rica agreed to take on these people because the country “seeks a closer alliance with Donald Trump’s government, which has been securing cooperation from other Central American countries in accepting deportees from other nations who have been detained by U.S. immigration agents,” said The Guardian.

Human rights observers are concerned that “some of the people being deported to Costa Rica may be asylum-seekers who were never given a fair chance to present their cases in the United States,” said Refugees International.

El Salvador

About 250 people without El Salvadorian heritage have been sent to the country from the U.S., according to the TCDW. Flights to El Salvador are relatively new, as ICE transfers to the nation only began in July 2026.

This number may seem minimal, and it is generally true that third-country deportations only “represent a small share of U.S. removals,” said the Migration Policy Institute. When it comes to the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, though, “fear may be their main function.”

Honduras

While Mexican immigrants are being sent to Guatemala, many others are also being sent to Honduras; about 170 non-Hondurans have been deported to the country, according to the TCDW. A transfer deal between the U.S. and Honduras has been in place since October 2025.

Officials have said that “one of the objectives of the deportations, which have not been formally announced by the U.S. government, is to deter illegal immigration from Mexico by sending some of its citizens further south and farther away from the U.S.-Mexico border,” said CBS News in a report on deportations to Honduras and Guatemala. This comes as Mexico has “voiced its opposition to the deportation of Mexican citizens to other countries.”

Uzbekistan

While most countries in this list are in Central America, one nation thousands of miles away also makes a surprising appearance: Uzbekistan. Over 130 people have been deported to the Central Asian nation as a third country, according to the TCDW.

Many of the deportees to Uzbekistan are from neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. There have been concerns about how these deportees are being treated in Uzbekistan, particularly “given that human rights organizations have documented a consistent pattern of harassment, restrictions and reprisals against activists and rights defenders” in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, said the Global Detention Project, which could create “risks for those being returned.”

Ghana

Over 100 people living in the U.S. without Ghanaian heritage have been deported to Ghana, according to the TCDW. But unlike some other nations on this list, legal action has actually been taken against Ghana, with an “international coalition of human rights lawyers and advocates” suing the country, said The Associated Press.

The lawsuit accuses Ghana of not allowing these people to stay in the country, instead “forcing deportees from the U.S. back to the home countries they had fled in violation of their rights,” said the AP. Many of these people were allegedly “flown from Ghana to their home countries within hours or days of arriving.”

“We hate the French! We fight wars against the French! Did all those men die in vain on the fields of Agincourt?” What would Edmund Blackadder think to see Emmanuel Macron and King Charles cosying up in front of the Bayeux Tapestry?

The tapestry, as Andy Burnham said at its unveiling at the British Museum this week “shows a new leader emerging from a northern territory, travelling to the south of England in search of the crown. Something clearly that couldn’t happen today.”

Macron has now become the first EU leader to visit Burnham at No. 10. This week of renewed bonhomie between the British and the French comes as Donald Trump’s America “is threatening to leave Europe to fend for itself”, said The Economist. So that might be one reason why France is “being so nice to Britain”.

What did the commentators say?

Another reason for this French “love-bombing”, as The Economist put it, is that “it costs France very little and buys it so much”, said the UK’s former Brexit negotiator David Frost in The Telegraph.

Much of the British establishment loves this kind of thing and it does so “because it sees diplomacy primarily as a matter of personal relationships and symbolism”. But that belief “generates the besetting sin of British diplomacy: the wish to be liked rather than respected” and sadly “nowhere is that truer than with France”.

But “in these fractured times, the enduring appeal of this 11th-century artefact speaks of a need for a national story”, said The Guardian. The Bayeux Tapestry is a “devastatingly human saga” and, with war raging in Europe, “this medieval masterpiece is a reminder of conflict’s brutality, human suffering and the importance of collaboration between countries”.

Indeed Macron himself “played an instrumental role over nearly a decade in pushing for the tapestry loan”, said France24, and it “is viewed as another step towards healing the rancour of the Brexit years”.

On a political level there is “no shortage of common ground” between Burnham and Macron, said Le Monde, “particularly regarding their policies on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East”. The French president praised Burnham's recent trip to Kyiv, but also highlighted that, while Paris and London “collaborate in vital areas such as defence, nuclear energy, space or artificial intelligence”, they “do not always agree on everything”.

What Macron “seems to be saying is that despite Brexit, despite Donald Trump, or perhaps because of both, France and Britain need to stick together now”, said The Economist.

A new Charles De Gaulle biopic “not only evokes nostalgia for an age of unimaginable bravery” but “also speaks to modern worries about national sovereignty, dependence and democratic values”. The film “carries another message too”: that “the dark forces of nationalism can be beaten”. With Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage on the rise, the new-found affection from Macron could signify that “this battle is yet another that Britain and France are in together”.

But “what did the love-in between Andy Burnham and Emmanuel Macron actually achieve?” said The Sun. “For a start, don’t expect the small boats to stop any time soon” as it remains in “France’s interest to let migrants set sail and wait for British border forces to rescue them – especially as we pay £1 billion for the privilege”. And Burnham was “gushing over France’s role in another terrible idea: helping him achieve closer ties to the EU”.

What next?

“To move forward on all these issues and put the entente amicale to the test,” said Le Monde. A French-British summit is due to take place later this year, Burnham confirmed, but he did not give a date.

In 2024, before the US presidential election, young Africans were asked whether they expected their countries to fare better under Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

Across a range of measures, most respondents to the African Youth Survey believed Biden to be the better bet: 42-44%, compared with 23-24% choosing Trump. But in the most recent edition of the survey, nearly two-thirds of the near-5,000 18- to 24-year-old participants said they would benefit from the Trump administration, according to Foreign Policy. That’s despite the president’s foreign aid cuts, dismantling of development programs and “disparaging remarks about the continent”.

“This generation has worked out what much of the Western commentariat still refuses to,” said Ivor Ichikowitz, the survey’s founder. “Diplomacy is about what you can get from the man in the Oval Office, not whether you like him.”

‘Strikes a chord’

Trump has never made a presidential visit to Africa. He has “seldom been polite about the continent”, said The Economist in 2018, “allegedly dismissing Nigerians as hut-dwellers and African states as ‘shitholes’”. Yet “he is more popular in Africa than in any other region”.

Even before Trump entered politics, there was a “large affinity towards him” in Nigeria, the most populous African nation, said The Guardian in 2020. His image as a “bombastic, straight-talking, self-made billionaire made his books a hit” in the country. Portraits of Trump, sometimes depicted in traditional clothing or in the military uniform of Nigerian dictators, are common. His image “strikes a chord”.

“Judging by our own president, it isn’t entirely surprising that a septuagenarian economic nationalist with a born-again vice-president, minimal respect for rule of law and archaic views about women is popular in Nigeria,” said Sa’eed Husaini, a political analyst in Lagos.

Nigerians have a “unique attachment to America”, wrote Africa expert Ebenezer Obadare on the Council on Foreign Relations. Whether in an “individualism that sometimes borders on outright sedition, or a risk-taking that often verges on self-immolation”, Nigerians see in the US an “admirable analogue of their own buccaneering spirit”.

Make Africa Great Again?

In 2025, 79% of Nigerians said they had confidence in Trump “to do the right thing regarding world affairs”, according to a Global Attitudes Survey by the Pew Research Center. That’s 21% higher than the same survey showed in 2017.

Many see Trump as the only president to defend Nigerian Christians; his administration claims they are being persecuted by Islamist groups.

The US went on to strike northern Nigeria, where Islamic State has a foothold, on Christmas Day in 2025, before beginning joint counterterrorism operations with the government this year. In the 2026 Global Attitudes Survey, confidence in him among Nigerian Christians had risen by six percentage points since 2025.

But more broadly, African Christians share commonality with American evangelicals and Trump, said the Council on Foreign Relations: a feeling of “being simultaneously persecuted by secular authority and pressured by a cultural momentum”, particularly with regard to sexuality and gender.

There is “overall African evangelical love for Trump”; he’s viewed as a “defender of family values” and a “symbol of masculinity in an age menaced by a rampant effeminacy”.

Trump’s business acumen is also admired among those who aspire to wealth, said Tendai Marima in Foreign Policy.

The so-called manosphere also has a strong influence in Africa, and Trump is seen as a “positive role model because of his values of manhood”. In South Africa, there is also strong support for Trump among the anti-migrant movement.

“As an African, what resonates with me most about the America First message is not that Africa should become America, but that African countries should also put their own citizens first,” said Freeman Bhengu, a member of anti-migrant group Operation Dudula.

In the Sahel, many see Trump as “ideologically close to their own military governments”, and their “nationalist-sovereign” rhetoric, said Lisa Tschörner, an international affairs researcher. Those countries perceive the US withdrawal of aid as “amounting to non-interference”.

According to the African Youth Survey, 26% of young Africans believe the US aid cuts could actually have a “positive impact”, despite experts’ concerns. As Ichikowitz said, some young Africans associate the withdrawal of aid with the “possibility of greater self-reliance and government accountability”.

What happened

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at a summit in Kyrgyzstan that Moscow will continue supplying “the assistance you need” and “the necessary goods” during “this difficult period.” Since President Donald Trump “launched his war against Iran” in February, Russia “has backed the Iranians with intelligence, including on U.S. assets in the Persian Gulf,” and “drone components,” said The New York Times. Moscow has also been secretly helping Iran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles, the Financial Times reported. The U.S. and Iran traded airstrikes last night, in their “first serious combat since July,” Reuters said.

Who said what

Russia’s transfer of the “strategically important military technology” to build supersonic missiles “would require political approval from Russia’s top leadership,” Conflict Armament Research analyst Fabian Hinz told the Financial Times. Such missiles would be a “qualitatively new strategic weapons system capable of threatening U.S. Navy ships,” former CIA military analyst Jim Lamson told the Financial Times. Iran has already done considerable damage to U.S. military bases in the Middle East with a new ballistic missile it calls “the Kheibar Shekan, or ‘Castle Breaker,’” USA Today said. The missile, likely developed “with the help of Chinese and Russian technology,” can “evade American air defenses and strike with far greater precision.”

What next?

Tehran vowed to respond to last night’s airstrikes with more “crushing and devastating blows” and claimed its own counterstrikes killed several U.S. personnel in Jordan and Iraq.

What is life like in Afghanistan today?

For the vast majority of Afghans, it is grim. Around 90% of the population lives below the poverty line, more than twice as many as before the U.S. pullout, and more than 3.5 million children suffer from malnutrition. Under the Taliban’s draconian interpretation of sharia, watching movies, playing chess, singing, and playing or listening to music are all banned. Men must wear long beards and attend daily prayers. And for women, whose movements are governed by some 200 Taliban edicts, it is the most repressive country on Earth. Women can’t attend school past sixth grade, work in most jobs, travel without a male relative accompanying them, uncover their faces in public, or even speak in public. “Imagine living every day not knowing whether the door to freedom will ever reopen,” said former Afghan lawmaker Shukria Barakzai, who now lives in exile in the U.K. “The psychological trauma is immense.

How did the Taliban take control? 

In February 2020, the first Trump administration struck a deal with the Taliban—sidelining the teetering Afghan government—that traded U.S. troop withdrawal for Taliban assurances that the country would not be used as a base for terrorist attacks on Americans. Incoming President Joe Biden then promised to get the troops out before Sept. 11, 2021, but the execution was chaos. When the Afghan government collapsed on Aug. 15, 2021, thousands of desperate Afghans rushed the Kabul airport trying to board U.S. planes as the Taliban overran the capital. At least 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were killed in an ISIS-K suicide bombing. While the Taliban have mostly succeeded in containing ISIS-K and other terrorist groups, their promises to govern more moderately than they did before 2001 proved worthless. They soon reintroduced floggings, public amputations, and stoning. When women tried to march for their rights, they were violently suppressed, and by 2023, nearly all those in Afghan jails were political prisoners, and many were tortured. Now Afghanistan is a global pariah, its Taliban government recognized only by Russia.

Has that hurt the economy?

Yes, deeply enough that a third of its population of 45 million is going hungry. Taliban rules have stifled the formal economy, though they tolerate some opium cultivation and have turned themselves into arms dealers hawking the $7 billion worth of military hardware the U.S. and its allies left behind. But ordinary Afghans have been further battered by Taliban repression, major earthquakes in 2022 and 2025, and the rollback of most U.S. and other Western humanitarian aid. Rural Afghans must contend with water shortages and contamination from U.S. burn pits and bomb residue. The country has long had one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates, now exacerbated by the Taliban’s ban on medical training for women and the requirement that women patients be accompanied to appointments by a male guardian. “In the beginning, I found it very hard when I saw children dying,” said Fatima Husseini, a nurse in central Ghor province. “But now it has almost become normal for us.”

How do Afghans cope?

Some resort to selling their children into bondage or forcing them into marriage. More than 6 million Afghans fled to neighboring Iran and Pakistan, but both those countries have kicked out nearly all their Afghan refugees in recent years—even Afghans who arrived back in 1979, during the Soviet invasion. In Iran, Afghans have been attacked by mobs and baselessly accused of collaborating with Israel; some legal residents have had police tear up their documents in front of them. In Pakistan, authorities have demolished Afghans’ homes, stripped them of their valuables, and forced over 2.5 million refugees to march back across the border. Once back home, they often have no access to employment or basic services; roughly 25% of returnees are homeless. Western countries, too, have been seeking to deport Afghans, even collaborating with the Taliban to make it happen.

What about the U.S.?

The Biden administration welcomed more than 190,000 Afghans into the U.S. after the troop withdrawal, prioritizing former interpreters, U.S.-allied fighters, and others who aided the American war effort. But the second Trump administration moved to cancel their immigration status, and last year, after an Afghan national trained by the CIA and resettled in the U.S. shot two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., President Trump halted all visas for Afghans. More than 100 have been deported directly to Afghanistan; hundreds of others have been shipped to unsafe “third countries.” Currently, the administration is trying to send most of the 1,100 Afghans at a U.S. base in Qatar—all of them thoroughly vetted exiles who either helped the U.S. military or are the spouses or children of U.S. service members—to the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. The only other choice, officials tell them, is returning to Afghanistan.

What happens to returnees?

They face imprisonment, torture, and death. Kamin Jan, a former interior ministry employee deported from Iran, was shot dead in Takhar province in October 2025, just weeks after he was expelled from Iran. Hundreds of Afghans who once worked with American forces have been executed; some reported having their toenails pulled out and being hung by their feet during Taliban prison interrogations. Some U.S. military officials warn that the deportations could set a precedent that undermines American interests. Potential allies are likely to think twice if American promises “have the shelf life of one administration,” says Marine veteran Kyleanne Hunter, head of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “You cannot win a future war with partners who watched you abandon the last ones.”

What happened

President Donald Trump late last week said his administration had reached the “BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” with Venezuela. The agreement, later confirmed by acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, gives the U.S. rights to 65 billion barrels of the country’s oil reserves. Trump on Sunday described the oil as a “Gift from Venezuela,” and said it would start refilling the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve “very shortly.” But “no text of any agreement has been released,” The Associated Press said, and “many questions” remain unanswered.

Who said what

Trump has been withdrawing oil for “months to keep prices from rising even higher” during the Iran war, and the strategic reserve “now sits at its lowest level since 1982,” The New York Times said. But refilling the reserve with this Venezuelan oil is “something of a pipe dream.” Experts have “repeatedly warned that Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure will take years and billions of dollars to repair,” the AP said, and it’s unclear “who would pay for infrastructure investments.”

The details we know “aren’t cause for enthusiasm,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board said in an op-ed. The Trump administration, through the Pentagon, is “essentially getting in bed with a foreign dictator and her favored capitalist,” energy company CEO Alejandro Betancourt.

What next?

Oil companies “will remain cautious even if the terms of the deal, once released, pass legal muster,” Bob McNally, an energy adviser to former President George W. Bush, told the AP. “A future president could withdraw, and Caracas has twice thrown foreign investors out.”

What happened

The U.S. on Sunday struck two missile launchers on Iran’s Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, its first confirmed airstrikes on Iran since July 29. U.S. Central Command said Iran was preparing to fire sea mines into the strait, days after President Donald Trump declared the international shipping lanes clear of mines.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the U.S. strikes killed “several” military personnel and civilians, and warned of “severe repercussions.” Jordan said it successfully intercepted eight missiles that entered its airspace Monday morning, headed for U.S. airbases.

Who said what

The resumption of airstrikes heightened the “risk of a return to all-out conflict,” The Wall Street Journal said, something Trump “has been working to avoid.” The administration recently pivoted to sanctions as it “weighs diminished munitions stockpiles” after six months of war, The Associated Press said.

The “heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force” and other “four-star commanders” warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this month that “prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland,” The Washington Post reported. The U.S. military is “experiencing a ‘beyond critical’ shortage of advanced missile interceptors in Europe,” the AP said last week, citing a U.S. defense official.

What next?

As the war “grinds on, Trump’s talk of finding a quick end” appears to be “fading,” the AP said. He has “repeatedly declared that the ‘Strait of Hormuz is open,’” but Iran continues to strike cargo ships. Brent crude oil jumped 2.8% to $90.57 a barrel after Sunday’s attacks.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” inside the U.S. government, needling Canada amid an intensifying trade war. Trump’s order directed the Interior Department and the Board on Geographic Names to remove and replace Lake Ontario on all federal maps and documents within 30 days, though he told reporters the name change was “effective immediately.”

Who said what

Trump’s Lake America rebrand “most likely requires only federal entities to recognize the change,” The New York Times said. “It does not have to be recognized by other countries.” New York, the only state that borders the lake, “won’t be calling it that,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), and neither will any Canadian entities. The name, from the “Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,’” is “more than 400 years old,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said on social media. “America is changing,” but Canadians “know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always.”

What next?

The hydronym snub is “likely to harden public sentiment against the Trump administration in Canada,” The Wall Street Journal said. But Trump suggested he wasn’t satisfied with Lake America and the Gulf of America. “Now, all we need is an ocean,” he told reporters. “Maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.”

“Leaked diplomatic correspondence” shows that Andy Burnham is “embroiled” in a row with Cuba over Britain’s “looming ban” on cigars, said The Telegraph.

Cuba’s former president Fidel Castro, who was often photographed puffing away, said the cigar “made our country famous” and gave “prestige” to Cuba. But now the island’s cigar industry is facing a perfect storm of existential challenges.

Unjustified barrier 

The Cuban ambassador in London has been writing to the UK government since 2024 to express concerns about plans for a “smoke-free Britain”, according to the leaked correspondence. Diplomats from Honduras and the Dominican Republic have also weighed in.

The incoming generational smoking ban brought in during Rishi Sunak’s reign will “disproportionately impact cigar-producing countries” and amounts to an “unjustified barrier to trade”, they said. Cigars “neither contribute to youth smoking initiation nor share the same public health profile as cigarettes”.

The rift is thought to have “deepened” after the UK government opened a consultation on extending the ban to premium cigars.

National pride

Cuban cigars have “held an unrivalled position at the pinnacle of the cigar world”, said Simply Cigars. They are “renowned for their heritage, craftsmanship and distinctive terroir”.

They are a “valuable export” and a “draw for many visitors”, as well as a “historic national industry” and a “point of national pride”, said CBC. The Cubans who farm tobacco are a symbol of “nationalism and resistance”.

But it’s getting harder to farm tobacco in Cuba, because climate change has made growing conditions “increasingly unpredictable, with a longer and wetter rainy season, and more intense storms”, including hurricanes.

Other challenges facing Cuba’s tobacco farmers include “finding workers and making their product financially viable”, as “falling global demand” for cigars means “lower prices for the leaf”.

But since the US imposed a “de facto oil blockade on the island, the Cuban cigar industry is facing its greatest challenge yet”, said Al Jazeera.

Since the start of the year, precious “little oil” has entered Cuba and the resultant energy crisis has “complicated the cultivation” of tobacco crops. The shortage has been worsened by the US seizing oil shipments from Cuba’s long-standing ally Venezuela.

Manufacturing has also been hit. Dried tobacco leaves are driven to Havana, where they are hand-rolled in state-run factories, but the “scarce supply” of petrol makes transportation “difficult”, and the “lack of electricity” to provide lighting for the factories “complicates production”.

In February, Cuba’s “iconic” annual cigar fair was postponed, said The Associated Press. Tabacuba, a state-run tobacco company, blamed “the complex economic situation” that the island is facing, due to the “intensification of the economic, commercial and financial blockade” imposed by the US. The organisers did not set a new date for the 26th edition of the cigar fair.

What happened

A catastrophic mix of floodwater and mud crashed through Himalayan valleys in Nepal and China-administered Tibet on Wednesday, killing at least 359 people, officials said this morning. More than 1,300 people were reported missing, including 517 foreigners in Nepal and 260 foreigners in Tibet. The death toll is expected to rise as rescue teams reach areas cut off by washed-away roads and bridges and buried under up to 6 feet of mud.

Who said what

“There are no human-made things, no human settlement left,” Sagar Pandey, CEO of a tourism operator that serves Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims who flock to the area, told Reuters. “Everything is just flat.”

Scientists around the world are “trying to solve the mystery of what caused such a destructive flood,” The Wall Street Journal said. The “leading hypothesis” is that a “large piece of a glacier broke off and tumbled hundreds of feet into the valley below, where the ice was pulverized into water by the sheer velocity of the fall.” The impact of the “enormous chunk of ice — possibly a half-mile wide,” registered as the “equivalent of a 5.2-magnitude earthquake and crushed the ice into a fast-moving mix of water, ice and rock that pulverized everything in its path,” said The New York Times.

What next?

Searchers are using helicopters to seek out survivors and drop supplies to hard-hit areas.

A significant drought in Panama caused by the El Niño weather pattern has forced the Central American country to slash the number of vessels it lets through its major canal. And the reduced flow of goods through one of the world’s most consequential shipping lanes could create a ripple effect that shakes the world’s economy.

What did the commentators say?

Starting on Sept. 15, the Panama Canal Authority will let 32 ships pass through the canal’s locks daily, a drop from the 36 it currently allows. While a decrease of just four ships per day may not sound significant, it represents a major change for a “critical chokepoint that moves about 5% of the world’s shipping,” said CNN. The United States is the “canal’s biggest user — about 70% of all the goods moving through it are coming to or going from the U.S.”

These reductions are necessary because the Panama Canal “relies on fresh water to operate its locks and has had less rain than normal” in recent years, said the Financial Times. The coming El Niño, when “surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean rise, potentially causing severe drought and warmer winters, could be one of the most intense ever.” And for Panama, the “result is a wet season that’s already been drier than usual and is likely to get worse,” said CNN, possibly causing a massive shortage of freshwater in the canal.”

This shift in the number of vessels could result in higher prices for consumers in the U.S. and globally, experts say. While some ships “may wait to transit to avoid the higher fees, those carrying more time-sensitive cargo are likely to take the plunge and pay the steep transit prices, driving up the price of those goods,” said CNN. One notable example: the pharmaceutical ingredients in Tylenol and certain prescription drugs, which “come, in large part, from China and are believed to transit through the Panama Canal to the U.S. East Coast,” said Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, to CNN.

Others are not convinced the change will have much impact on prices, especially in the United States. There is only a “small chance that cargo owners, pressed by paying more for shipping and other costs, will pass on this increase to customers,” Simon Heaney, a senior manager at the Drewry shipping research and consultancy firm, told Newsweek — especially since global shipping has already “been upended for months by the U.S.’ war with Iran,” said the outlet.

What next?

The shipping reductions are just the Panama Canal’s latest in a line of “other water conservation measures, such as lowering the maximum draft — the vessel’s depth in the water — for the largest ships,” said The Guardian. But the canal itself could also turn into a hindrance for vessels, as officials said that with the “upcoming reduction, waiting times for ships trying to get through without making a reservation beforehand will increase.”

In the meantime, shipping companies have already been “preparing for possible disruptions in the 110-year-old canal,” said the Financial Times, with many taking drastic measures to get ahead of the cuts. For ships that don’t make reservations to pass through the canal, officials typically issue several extra slots through an auction; at least one large ship “paid a staggering $4 million to fast-track its trip,” said CNN, leaving “others, either unwilling or unable to shell out that kind of sum, in maritime limbo.”

What happened

Canada on Tuesday released a list of more than 700 U.S. products it plans to tax at up to 50% in response to 50% tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on $20 million of Canadian goods over the weekend. The “dollar-for-dollar, rate-for-rate counter-tariffs” will be paired with $5.4 billion in support to protect Canadian workers and businesses, said Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne in a press conference. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said Canada was “targeting products” that will “put political pressure” on the Trump administration in certain states.

Who said what

Trump’s “trade war with Canada is escalating as the midterm elections approach,” voters are angry over rising costs and “control of the U.S. Senate hinges on states along the border,” like Michigan, Ohio, Maine and Alaska, The Associated Press said. Senior Canadian officials maintained that Ottawa “did not design the new measures around the U.S. electoral map.”

But Canada’s retaliatory tariffs “targeted products made in states with hotly contested congressional elections,” The Wall Street Journal said. Ottawa is “trying to show the Republican Party that there’s a systemic cost to doing this sort of thing,” former U.S. trade official Ed Gresser told the Journal.

What next?

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs don’t take effect until Sept. 8, so “there’s still time to pull back from the brink of an even bigger trade war,” the AP said. “Voters hate tariffs,” and Trump must be “hearing from political folks that if he wants any chance of salvaging the midterms he can’t start a trade war with Canada,” Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute told the AP. “My guess” is “cooler heads do prevail somewhere in the next few weeks.”

What happened

The world’s ocean temperatures reached 70 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend, the hottest on record, Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Monday. The previous daily average record was set in March 2024, but oceans may not have been this warm in “millennia,” The Washington Post said.

Who said what

Global ocean temperatures typically peak in March or April, so this off-season record is “another clear signal of an ocean under growing stress,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. The brewing “super” El Niño is “adding heat to the system, but it is doing so on top of decades of human-driven warming.” The seas are likely the warmest they have been “for the entire Holocene period, and possibly even as far back” as “125,000 years ago,” University of Ottawa environmental studies professor Ryan Katz-Rosene said on social media. “Should be major news!”

“An ocean this warm destabilizes weather patterns and threatens food security, economic prosperity and marine life,” former NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco told The Associated Press. “A warmer ocean is not our friend.”

What next?

“Warmer seas help to fuel more extreme weather,” supercharging storms and intensifying heatwaves, the BBC said. This year’s El Niño “is expected to keep strengthening until Christmas” and is “on course to be the strongest in centuries.”

North Korea has been hailed as “the world’s most surprising economic success story” by the leading US financial daily, The Wall Street Journal.

Despite being tightly controlled, technologically backward, and subject to crippling Western trade embargoes, the country has recorded year-on-year GDP growth of more than 3%, of which many advanced economies could only dream. Their unlikely success story has been “aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia” to fuel the Ukraine war, support from China, and “the ability to flout international sanctions to import more energy, components and materials”.

What has changed?

Five years after making a rare admission that the nation’s economic policies were falling short, in February Kim Jong Un addressed the Workers’ Party Congress to celebrate a turnaround, declaring “everything has fundamentally changed”. But while the supreme leader may have triumphantly taken credit for the boom, in reality “he has Russia and China to thank”, said Forbes.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, North Korea has earned an estimated $14 billion providing military support to the Kremlin, and hundreds of millions in trade and foreign aid from China. North Korea’s “emergence as a modern-day pirate state on the back of its lucrative cryptocurrency theft operations” has also helped, Shreyas Reddy of Korea Risk Group, told the Financial Times.

The effect of this influx on the so-called hermit kingdom has been sudden and startling. The regime has used some of the windfall to modernise Pyongyang with new brightly lit shopping districts filled with luxury and high-tech goods, and high-rise apartments blocks. Cars, once a rarity, are increasingly common and frequently electric, and can even be hailed with ride-sharing apps.

Outside the capital, the regime’s ambitious “20x10” regional development initiative aims to build new factories, housing and public infrastructure in 20 counties each year over a 10-year period.

All of this is an “incredible accomplishment for a country that is this poor”, regional expert Stephan Haggard told the WSJ.

Can it last?

Due to a lack of reliable data and the regime’s complete control of the media, accurately assessing what is happening on the ground in North Korea is notoriously difficult, said WioNews. But “a closer look beneath the headlines reveals a more complicated picture than either Western critics” or the Pyongyang regime acknowledge.

While the growth over the last three years appears genuine, said the Financial Times, North Korea’s “economic resurgence fell short of a genuine transformation” in that it “was mostly being driven by participation in Russia’s war in Ukraine”.

Peter Ward of the Sejong Institute in Seoul said North Korea was in the throes of a “Russian sugar high” fuelling a slew of “shovel-ready, exciting-looking projects that will catch the eye of the leader, but aren’t necessarily sustainable”.

Ultimately, said Asia Business Daily, the racks of luxury goods and the Pyongyang construction boom are “merely an optical illusion”, in that they are enjoyed “almost exclusively by the leadership and a privileged class in Pyongyang”.

North Korea remains incredibly poor. Out of its 27 million citizens, 17 million are still believed to live in extreme poverty, and the UN estimates that more than 40% of the population are undernourished. Analysts are sceptical that Kim can turn the short-term gains brought about by the war in Ukraine into sustainable long-term growth. “Knowing the North Koreans, they probably haven’t fixed the roof while the sun is shining,” said Ward.

The UK will continue to support Ukraine despite the “outrageous threats” made by Russia, said Andy Burnham in Kyiv on the 35th anniversary of the nation’s independence.

On his visit to Ukraine, his first overseas trip as prime minister, Burnham will also be giving his hosts blueprints for building long-range missiles, which can strike “around 150 miles (241km) into Russia”, said the BBC.

Last week, following reports that drones made by British companies were being used to attack targets within Russia, Moscow’s embassy in London said that the UK’s “actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer”.

“Blustering” threats have been directed at the UK before, said Owen Matthews in The Independent. But now, with Russia growing “restless” amid a fast-evolving geopolitical landscape, the UK is antagonising Vladimir Putin more obviously than ever before.

What did the commentators say?

The relationship between the two countries has “already sunk close to rock-bottom”, said Jonathan Singh and Will Hazell in The i Paper. Moscow withdrew its ambassador to the UK last month, reflecting a deepening trend with both nations of “reducing staffing in their respective embassies and expelling each other’s diplomats”.

“Most Britons have little grasp of just how much their country is hated in Moscow,” said former diplomat Andy Pryce on the Centre for European Policy Analysis. In “Kremlin demonology”, it is “Britain that wears the Devil’s face”.

But curiously, Russian media outlets also “mock the UK, at some length”. Britain may be the “organising hand behind Russian failure, especially in Ukraine”, but its “army is too small, its navy overstretched” and its economy is “exhausted”. But this contradiction in propaganda is not a “flaw”: it presents the UK as “large enough to hate and weak enough to be worth threatening”.

But Britain has long been on the receiving end of “regular, blood-curdling warnings” from Russia, said Matthews in The Independent. Supplying Storm Shadow missiles and more recently “BAE-made Nyan drones” to Ukraine is the latest provocation for the “Kremlin’s attack dogs”. Putin believes Britain can be “kicked about with impunity” whereas his “complicated on-again, off-again relationship” with the Trump administration tells of very different priorities.

There were arson attacks in 2024 in Leyton and Birmingham that were both thought to be orchestrated by Moscow. A thwarted attempt by a “gang of dim-bulb Eastern European crooks” to assassinate journalists and activists, and the arson attacks on Keir Starmer’s former home also point the finger at Russia. The success of this “aggravated hooliganism” has been somewhat limited, but one thing is clear: Britain is becoming “extremely vulnerable and unprepared for attack”, whatever form it will now take.

Now is “as good an opportunity as any for the Kremlin to make a political point”, said Dan Sabbagh in The Guardian. Any effort to “undermine public confidence” in the UK, with Parliament in recess and “less domestic political news to crowd out the embassy’s remarks”, is vital for Putin’s agenda. As its economy suffers, and with Moscow being in range of Ukrainian drones, Russia is more vulnerable than ever. What would be concerning is if, now that it feels cornered, Russia’s “brinkmanship” spirals out of control.

What next?

Russia is unlikely to launch direct missile or armed drone strikes on the UK, said David Blair and Roland Oliphant in The Telegraph. Their first port of call would be to “intensify the existing campaign of sabotage, drone incursions and cyberattacks”. Disruptive incidents – like the recent drone attack in Leipzig – cyber attacks and sending drones to “loiter” near airports will all become more regular. Attacking British military targets in Ukraine, whether personnel or equipment, would also be a “straightforward way of retaliating” against the UK.

But, more broadly, Nato has a “deterrence problem”, said Katia Glod in Prospect. The alliance has “formidable mechanisms” to prevent a full-scale armed attack on its member states, but Russia can “operate precisely where those mechanisms become less automatic”, effectively in a “grey zone” where it knows there won’t be a response.

Deterrence will work only if the Kremlin believes there will be proportionate “consequences”. Nato, therefore, needs to “make activity below the Article 5 threshold more costly” to its adversaries, providing stronger protection of military logistics, communication, better counterintelligence and “graduated responses to hostile activity”. The objective should be to deny Moscow the “freedom to operate below the threshold of war”. Nato must “balance between avoiding an unnecessary war with Russia and ensuring that fear of one does not become a weapon Russia can use against us”.