Month by month Ukraine’s wishlist of weapons has shrunk. At the start of the war came Javelins and Stingers to take out tanks and planes. Then came artillery. himars rocket-launchers followed in the summer. This January it was tanks. And in August the White House even agreed that European allies could send f-16 jets.

Only one major weapon was left: the Army Tactical Missile System, known by its acronym atacms (pronounced attack ’ems). On September 21st that hurdle fell when Joe Biden, America’s president, told Volodymyr Zelensky, his Ukrainian counterpart, during a meeting in the White House, that “a small number” of atacms were on their way, according to reports in the American press the following day. The move, first reported by nbc News, has not been formally announced.

Atacms has acquired totemic status during the war. It is a ballistic missile that can be fired from the himars launchers Ukraine is already operating. Thus far those have mostly fired gps-guided rockets known as gmlrs, which can travel 70km or so. The initial appeal of atacms was that it could go a lot further—the official range is 300km—allowing Ukraine to reach even those facilities which Russia had moved farther behind the front lines.

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Joe Biden’s critics saw his reluctance to send the missiles as a sign of timidity. His reversal on the issue is a sign of trust—and may have positive knock-on effects https://t.co/YjTRbd80RS

— The Economist US (@EconUS) September 23, 2023

The US House of Representatives China committee plans to hold a Taiwan war game with financial and business executives in New York on Monday, in an effort to raise awareness about the risks attached to Americans investing in China.

Mike Gallagher, the Republican head of the panel, and Raja Krishnamoorthi, its top Democrat, will lead the delegation, according to a person close to the committee.

The war-game participants include representatives from investment banks, in addition to current and former executives from pharmaceutical companies and retired four-star US military officers. The committee declined to name the financial executives who will participate.

The bipartisan delegation will also meet other financial executives in New York, as the committee steps up its scrutiny of how American investment in China could undermine US national security. On Tuesday they have scheduled a hearing that will include testimony from former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission Jay Clayton and Jim Chanos, the hedge fund short seller.

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US House panel plans Taiwan war game with Wall Street executives https://t.co/6majRMqQAH

— Financial Times (@FT) September 8, 2023

Nyamut Gai lost everything four years ago when armed militias stormed through her village in South Sudan, a landlocked African country tormented by civil war, famine and flooding.

Desperate, she and her family fled almost 600 miles north across the border to Sudan, where she worked as a cleaner in the capital, Khartoum, and began to settle in. But then, a fierce war broke out in Sudan in mid-April between rival factions of the military, sending her packing yet again.

As she and her family made the weekslong journey by foot and bus from Khartoum, her 1-month-old son began coughing and withering away from hunger, and soon died. When she finally crossed the border into South Sudan, any sense of relief she felt was shattered when her 3-year-old son succumbed to measles.

“We are not safe anywhere,” Ms. Gai, 28, said on a recent morning at a muddy and congested aid center in Renk, a town in South Sudan.

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Hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese fled a grisly civil war years ago to settle in Sudan. With war now raging in Sudan, they are streaming home to a country ill-prepared to take them back. https://t.co/0u0yV1Hu22

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) September 7, 2023

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Analysis: The crisis in Niger could reach a tipping point this weekend. Kiari Liman-Tinguiri, Niger’s ambassador in Washington, spoke about the fraught state of play in an interview with Today's WorldView. https://t.co/Wa7Z9MBUZr

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 4, 2023

West African leaders on Sunday threatened military action against Niger, where soldiers seized power in a coup on Wednesday, unless the country’s democratically elected president is restored to office within a week.

The demand was issued by the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, a 15-member regional bloc, after a crisis summit in Nigeria. It echoed earlier calls by the United States and France, major security allies of Niger, who warned they will cut aid and military ties worth hundreds of millions of dollars unless the deposed leader, Mohamed Bazoum, is reinstated.

After coup supporters massed on Sunday outside the French Embassy in the capital, Niamey, burning French flags and calling for the withdrawal of French troops, President Emmanuel Macron issued a stiffly worded warning. Any attack on France’s citizens or interests in Niger will be met with an “immediate and uncompromising” reaction, Mr. Macron said in a statement.

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West African Nations Threaten Military Action Unless Niger Coup Is Undone https://t.co/8i6TQ8W9jg

— Declan Walsh (@declanwalsh) July 30, 2023

Shunned in the West, his authority tested by a failed mutiny at home, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia needs to project normalcy and shore up support from his allies. So on Thursday, he will host African leaders at a flashy summit in St. Petersburg, part of his continuing outreach to a continent that has become critical to Moscow’s foreign policy.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, some African countries have backed Mr. Putin at the United Nations, welcomed his envoys and his warships, and offered control of lucrative assets, like a gold mine in the Central African Republic that U.S. officials estimate contains $1 billion in reserves.

But if Mr. Putin sought to move closer to African leaders as he prosecuted his war, the 17-month-old conflict is now straining those ties. This summit is expected to draw only half the number of African heads of state or government as the last gathering in 2019, a situation that the Kremlin on Wednesday blamed on “brazen interference” from the United States and its allies.

The summit comes against the backdrop of escalating tensions in the Black Sea over Mr. Putin’s recent decision to terminate a deal allowing Ukraine to ship grain to global markets. Russia’s withdrawal has caused food prices to spike, adding to the misery of the world’s poorest countries, including some of those attending the Russia-Africa summit.

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Shunned in the West and tested by a failed mutiny at home, Vladimir Putin will look to project normalcy and shore up support from other parts of the world as he hosts African leaders at a flashy summit in his home city, St. Petersburg, this week. https://t.co/s9flu3mDVI

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) July 26, 2023

As the war in Ukraine unfolded last year, Russia’s best digital spies turned to new tools to fight an enemy on another front: those inside its own borders who opposed the war.

To aid an internal crackdown, Russian authorities had amassed an arsenal of technologies to track the online lives of citizens. After it invaded Ukraine, its demand grew for more surveillance tools. That helped stoke a cottage industry of tech contractors, which built products that have become a powerful — and novel — means of digital surveillance.

The technologies have given the police and Russia’s Federal Security Service, better known as the F.S.B., access to a buffet of snooping capabilities focused on the day-to-day use of phones and websites. The tools offer ways to track certain kinds of activity on encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal, monitor the locations of phones, identify anonymous social media users and break into people’s accounts, according to documents from Russian surveillance providers obtained by The New York Times, as well as security experts, digital activists and a person involved with the country’s digital surveillance operations.

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Leaning more on technology to wield political power, Russia is quickly catching up to authoritarian regimes like China and Iran in using modern tech to exert control.https://t.co/FEZi5ZU8mL

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) July 4, 2023

What options do Washington and its NATO allies have? Just wait and see?

If Washington, NATO, Ukraine, are seen as backing Prigozhin, in cahoots with Prigozhin, it could have the effect of undermining whatever chances he might have to catalyze an end to the aggression. So the response has been properly to just let it unfold, with a bit of tongue in cheek commentary out of Kyiv, but otherwise bite-the-tongue restraint in D.C. and Brussels.

Behind the scenes, of course, it’s 24/7 very close monitoring of everything and anything, and intense consultation. Twelve hours, 24 hours, 36 hours, of nail biting. But after all the Sturm und Drang, we could be right back where we started: Putin in power in Moscow and Ukraine facing a counteroffensive that will be very difficult to pull off.

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“Putin has unwittingly launched a stress test of his own regime.” Read Stephen Kotkin what Prigozhin’s rebellion could mean for Russia’s future.https://t.co/sH0Iu9feqs

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) June 26, 2023

It was the dead of winter in February 2022 when I first met Marwa, a 38-year-old opium addict, sitting huddled under a blanket in the women’s drug rehabilitation center in Kabul with two of her children. Mina, age 2, had just woken up and was writhing in pain, lifting her small head to see her new visitors.

Marwa’s other daughter, Zahra, age 15, was sitting by the edge of the bed. I first mistook her for a boy as she was dressed in boys’ clothing. Her mother said dressing as a boy made it easier for her to buy drugs. Zahra had been wearing the outfit when she was picked up by the hospital’s field team from under Pul-e-Sukhta, a bridge in western Kabul that has transformed into a gathering place for drug users and sellers.

Dr. Shaista Hakeem, director of the 150-bed National Center for the Treatment of Addiction for Women and Children in Kabul, introduced me to her patients that day, telling me the family had been at the hospital for more than a week. They were seeking treatment for opium addiction, which consisted of 15 days of medication and 15 days of counseling, awareness, and skill training. It was an ordeal, especially for the children, who suffered withdrawal symptoms despite regular doses of medication. The effectiveness of treatment varies from patient to patient, Hakeem added.

Marwa had been taking opium and heroin, a more refined opioid, for 10 years, and had passed on her addiction to her youngest child, Mina, through breast milk.

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'The % of women reporting drug addiction rose to 9.5% in 2015 from 3% in 2009. Furthermore, 9.2% of children up to 14 years old tested positive for drugs and were likely to be engaged in active drug use' '#Afghanistan's #opium tragedy' https://t.co/fvRJYb7pAX via @NikkeiAsia

— Kenneth Maxwell (@Kenny_Maxwell) June 21, 2023

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said ties between New Delhi and Washington are stronger and deeper than ever as India moves to secure what he sees as its rightful place on the world stage at a moment of geopolitical turmoil.

“There is an unprecedented trust” between the leaders of the U.S. and India, Modi said in an interview ahead of his first official state visit to Washington after nine years in office. He hailed growing defense cooperation between the two countries as “an important pillar of our partnership,” which he said extends to trade, technology and energy.

In Washington this week, Modi is expected to complete deals to manufacture jet-fighter engines in India to power advanced light combat aircraft, and to purchase high-altitude armed Predator drones from the U.S. in a multibillion-dollar agreement to boost surveillance efforts over the Indian Ocean and near its disputed border with China in the Himalayas.

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It's been a very long time since Modi did an interview with a Western media outlet. In WSJ, he hits on some of the key themes of India's foreign policy during his term-especially India as a leader of the global South and taking on a greater global role.https://t.co/8gnS2ZC2bF

— Michael Kugelman (@MichaelKugelman) June 20, 2023

Early this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a mock wartime meeting of his security cabinet in a bunker. Communities in northern Israel are preparing shelters for a long-term conflict. And the military is working overtime on a new laser system to intercept rockets.

Their focus is Iran and its nuclear ambitions.

For years, Israel has considered a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat, and directed its energies to confronting it and its regional proxies in Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian areas.

But much is new in the past few months. Iran has emerged from diplomatic isolation, forging a key military alliance with Russia from which it’s seeking air defenses, restoring diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia and pushing its allies to fire missiles at Israel. It is also enriching more and more uranium, including a small amount almost to weapons grade — while denying any plans for making a bomb.

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Israel's sudden daily talk of a military strike on Iran serves as a messaging tool and a warning — not just to Tehran but also to Washington https://t.co/jpgy2BExNh

— Bloomberg (@business) June 13, 2023

Since President Xi Jinping secured a precedent-defying third term in October, the Communist Party’s top decision-making body has skipped publishing a statement for three separate months. During the Chinese leader’s second term, it took the party nearly five years to miss the same number of statements.

While there is no public mandate for the Politburo to meet monthly, it has done so for 90% of Xi’s decade-plus tenure, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of government statements.

It’s unclear whether the Politburo failed to convene in November, January and May, or if the elite group discussed sensitive matters it didn’t want to reveal. It’s still possible for state media to release statements on the body’s activities. Sometimes the party releases transcripts of Xi’s remarks months, or even years, later.

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China’s Missing Politburo Statements Fan Fears of Data Gaps https://t.co/Er8jen72mx

— Andrew J Phelan (@ajphelo) June 7, 2023

For months a guessing game has played out in military circles worldwide: where and when would Ukraine conduct its counter-offensive? Most expected it to come through Zaporizhia province, in the south of the country, perhaps directed at the city of Melitopol, with the aim of cutting the “land bridge” seized by Russian troops at the start of the war that connects occupied Crimea with Russia itself. Western officials had expected the offensive to begin two weeks ago, and some were getting impatient.

On June 4th—two days before the anniversary of D-Day, the start of the liberation of Europe from the Nazis—Ukrainian forces launched what Russia’s defence ministry called a “large-scale” assault on five axes in the south-east of Donetsk province, in eastern Ukraine. Some of them may indeed threaten the land bridge; others were further to the north. Western officials tell The Economist that this does in fact mark the start of the offensive, with attacks also under way on other parts of the front. Yet the cream of Ukraine’s forces has not yet appeared on the battlefield.

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Our take on Ukraine’s counter-offensive—by me, @ArkadyOstrovsky & @olliecarroll. We think attacks of last 24 hours in Donetsk (& elsewhere) are not just as business as usual. But we probably aren’t seeing the main effort just yet. Watch this space. https://t.co/lTyDJc7ykX

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) June 5, 2023

On the surface, Iraq appears to have achieved a measure of stability. The country finally has a functioning government after a yearlong political vacuum. Terrorist violence has fallen to its lowest rate since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Even the country’s Iran-backed militias—long a source of tension with Washington—have significantly reduced their attacks on U.S. diplomatic and military sites. In a May 4 speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan credited a U.S strategy built on the “twin pillars of deterrence and diplomacy” for the decrease in attacks on U.S. interests.

As Sullivan’s speech illustrates, President Joe Biden’s national security team sees a quiet Middle East as an end unto itself—including in Iraq. Although Sullivan was quick to add that he was “not pulling out the victory flag on Iraq” and that the United States still has “a broad agenda” to strengthen Baghdad’s independence from Tehran, his real metric of success was clearly the de-escalation of tensions between the United States and the Iran-backed militias that dominate the Iraqi government. The White House believes that regional de-escalation is necessary to allow the United States to focus on its competition with China. But in Iraq, this approach promises to have long-term costs: the U.S. desire for calm is being exploited by Tehran’s allies to destabilize its politics.

Iraq may look calm, but looks can be deceiving. The country is actually entering a uniquely dangerous period: Iran’s allies have achieved unprecedented control of Iraq’s parliament, judiciary, and executive branch, and they are rapidly rigging the political system in their favor and looting the state of its resources. Washington’s complacent attitude toward these events is only setting it up for costly involvement later. Iraq is the world’s third-largest oil producer and a country whose collapse could destabilize the entire Middle East through the spread of refugees and terrorism. Great-power competition has never been an excuse to tune out the threats facing the country—and it shouldn’t be one now.

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.@Mikeknightsiraq discusses the Iran-backed militias standing behind Iraq’s current government—and how Washington can help give Iraq’s youth, reformers, and anticorruption investigators the opportunity to defend the country’s fragile democracy. https://t.co/V5VSWBzH75

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) June 5, 2023

The F-16, with its longer-range radars, sensors and missiles, would restore the Ukrainian air force’s edge both qualitatively and quantitatively — and push the VKS back into Russia. That will, in turn, protect both Ukraine’s ground forces and its critical infrastructure. But boosting its effectiveness in the absence of wider air power packaging will require imagination.

Integrated air defence systems work far better than those operating in isolation. The Ukrainian air force must link together its western surface-to-air missiles and their advanced radars to provide its pilots with an enhanced picture of the aerial battle. Ground-based electronic warfare systems can do much to degrade Russian radars, and thereby its surface-to-air missile belt. Using rapidly-prototyped drones in reconnaissance and suppressing enemy air defence missions would make Russia’s fighter aircraft more vulnerable. This package of largely ground-based supporting systems — much cheaper than airborne ones — would allow Ukraine to retain the initiative in the air battle.

Finally, there is a moral dimension to consider. Nato would fight Russia by winning the air battle first, and then using air superiority to drive a more efficient land battle. Given the weakness of the VKS, this is no pipe dream. But the west’s constrained donations to date have forced Ukraine to pursue grinding land tactics. We have restricted Kyiv to fighting in a way that we would not, and to take casualties that we would not.

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Our taboo on giving aircraft to Ukraine made the war longer and deadlier. New European and US initiatives to help Ukrainians secure their own skies will save lives and shorten the war.https://t.co/4B8r815gWG

— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) May 26, 2023

Evidence is mounting that Moscow has failed to make much progress in the Donbas of eastern Ukraine, despite months of fighting in the industrial and agricultural region close to the Russian border.

Russia’s military bloggers and like-minded activists have in recent weeks lamented the lack of progress from the winter campaign. Russia has not secured victory in the city of Bakhmut, or in the towns or Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Lyman or Marinka.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, said on Sunday that his forces had raised a Russian flag over an administrative building in Bakhmut, according to the Reuters news agency, but acknowledged that Ukraine was still holding the western part of the city. Mr. Prigozhin has prematurely called such victories before.

“The winter campaign in the Donbas is over,” said Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who led a military intervention in eastern Ukraine and now blogs about military affairs. “We can say that the winter campaign ended unsuccessfully.” The comments by Mr. Girkin, who uses the nickname Strelkov, were echoed by others in Russia who have ties to the military and have at times been critical of the Kremlin’s approach to the war.

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Russia’s assault in eastern Ukraine appears stalled. via ⁦@nytimes⁩ https://t.co/3frQ6Z4H1H

— Amb Antonio Garza (@aogarza) April 4, 2023

 The secret contract was finalized on Nov. 8, 2021, a deal between a company that has acted as a front for the United States government and the American affiliate of a notorious Israeli hacking firm.

Under the arrangement, the Israeli firm, NSO Group, gave the U.S. government access to one of its most powerful weapons — a geolocation tool that can covertly track mobile phones around the world without the phone user’s knowledge or consent.

If the veiled nature of the deal was unusual — it was signed for the front company by a businessman using a fake name — the timing was extraordinary.

Only five days earlier, the Biden administration had announced it was taking action against NSO, whose hacking tools for years had been abused by governments around the world to spy on political dissidents, human rights activists and journalists. The White House placed NSO on a Commerce Department blacklist, declaring the company a national security threat and sending the message that American companies should stop doing business with it.

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NEW: Days after the White House in 2021 blacklisted NSO, the notorious Israeli hacking firm, a secret contract was signed for a hacking tool. The contract states that the USG is the user. A thread https://t.co/i2PSUXq3NJ

— Mark Mazzetti (@MarkMazzettiNYT) April 2, 2023

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, flew into Moscow this week cast by Beijing as its emissary for peace in Ukraine. His summit with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, however, demonstrated that his priority remains shoring up ties with Moscow to gird against what he sees as a long campaign by the United States to hobble China’s ascent.

Talk of Ukraine was overshadowed by Mr. Xi’s vow of ironclad solidarity with Russia as a political, diplomatic, economic and military partner: two superpowers aligned in countering American dominance and a Western-led world order. The summit showed Mr. Xi’s intention to entrench Beijing’s tilt toward Moscow against what he recently called an effort by the United States at the full-fledged “containment” of China.

Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin used the pomp of the three-day state visit that ended on Wednesday to signal to their publics and to Western capitals that the bond between their two countries remained robust and, in their eyes, indispensable, 13 months after Mr. Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. They laid out their vision for the world in a nine-point joint statement that covered everything from Taiwan to climate change and relations with Mongolia, often depicting the United States as the obstacle to a better, fairer world.

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When Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin issued a joint statement last year, they had said their countries had a “limitless friendship.” This time, they sought to draw clearer boundaries, declaring that they are not in a traditional political and military alliance. https://t.co/eaNVkt4CCk

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) March 22, 2023

The quality of Ukraine’s military force, once considered a substantial advantage over Russia, has been degraded by a year of casualties that have taken many of the most experienced fighters off the battlefield, leading some Ukrainian officials to question Kyiv’s readiness to mount a much-anticipated spring offensive.

U.S. and European officials have estimated that as many as 120,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the start of Russia’s invasion early last year, compared with about 200,000 on the Russian side, which has a much larger military and roughly triple the population from which to draw conscripts. Ukraine keeps its running casualty numbers secret, even from its staunchest Western supporters.

Statistics aside, an influx of inexperienced draftees, brought in to plug the losses, has changed the profile of the Ukrainian force, which is also suffering from basic shortages of ammunition, including artillery shells and mortar bombs, according to military personnel in the field.

Read it all.

A pretty bleak assessment of the state of Ukraine’s military in the Washington Post:
Ukraine short of skilled troops and munitions as losses, pessimism grow https://t.co/ySom9PZkE0

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 13, 2023

Xi Jinping has pledged to strengthen China’s security and build the military into a “great wall of steel” to defend the country’s interests as relations with the west reach the lowest point in decades.

The Chinese president’s speech on Monday to the nearly 3,000 delegates of the National People’s Congress came at the close of the country’s annual rubber-stamp parliamentary session, during which Xi secured an unprecedented third term as president and appointed a close ally as his number two.

After thanking delegates for his unanimous re-election last week, Xi said he would “build the military into a great wall of steel that effectively safeguards national sovereignty, security and our development interests”.

He also pledged to better marry “development and security”, stating that “safety is the foundation of development, and stability is the prerequisite for prosperity”.

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Xi Jinping pledged to build China's military into a 'great wall of steel' to defend the country’s interests, including Taiwan https://t.co/3bFpc3200Y

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) March 13, 2023

More than 190 countries have reached a landmark deal for protecting the biodiversity of the world’s oceans, agreeing for the first time on a common framework for establishing new protected areas in international waters.

The treaty, whose text was finalized Saturday night by diplomats at the U.N. headquarters after years of stalled talks, will help safeguard the high seas, which lie beyond national boundaries and make up two-thirds of Earth’s ocean surface. Member states have been trying to agree on the long-awaited treaty for almost 20 years.

Environmental advocacy groups heralded the finalized text — which still needs to be ratified by the United Nations — as a new chapter for Earth’s high seas. Just 1.2 percent of them are currently environmentally protected, exposing the vast array of marine species that teem beneath the surface — from tiny plankton to giant whales — to threats such as pollution, overfishing, shipping and deep-sea mining.

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More than 190 countries have reached a landmark deal for protecting the biodiversity of the world’s oceans, agreeing for the first time on a common framework for establishing new protected areas in international waters.https://t.co/vbfbMP1329

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 5, 2023

In the contest of the century—the U.S. rivalry with China—the deciding factor will be innovation power. Technological advances in the next five to ten years will determine which country gains the upper hand in this world-shaping competition. The challenge for the United States, however, is that government officials are incentivized to avoid risk and focus on the short term, leaving the country to chronically underinvest in the technologies of the future.

If necessity is the mother of invention, war is the midwife of innovation. Speaking to Ukrainians on a visit to Kyiv in the fall of 2022, I heard from many that the first months of the war were the most productive of their lives. The United States’ last truly global war—World War II—led to the widespread adoption of penicillin, a revolution in nuclear technology, and a breakthrough in computer science. Now, the United States must innovate in peacetime, faster than ever before. By failing to do so, it is eroding its ability to deter—and, if necessary, to fight and win—the next war.

The alternative could be disastrous. Hypersonic missiles could leave the United States defenseless, and cyberattacks could cripple the country’s electric grid. Perhaps even more important, the warfare of the future will target individuals in completely new ways: authoritarian states such as China and Russia may be able to collect individual data on Americans’ shopping habits, location, and even DNA profiles, allowing for tailor-made disinformation campaigns and even targeted biological attacks and assassinations. To avert these horrors, the United States needs to make sure it remains ahead of its technological competitors.

The principles that have defined life in the United States—freedom, capitalism, individual effort—were the right ones for the past and remain so for the future. These basic values lie at the foundation of an innovation ecosystem that is still the envy of the world. They have enabled breakthroughs that have transformed everyday life around the world. The United States started the innovation race in pole position, but it cannot rest assured it will remain there. Silicon Valley’s old mantra holds true not just in industry but also in geopolitics: innovate or die.

Read it all (registration).

Eric Schmidt: Why Technology Will Define the Future of Geopolitics https://t.co/LP2imSEoSu

— Albert Royo (@AlbertRoyo5) February 28, 2023

Chinese researchers lead their American counterparts in the study of dozens of critical technologies, according to a new report that proposes Beijing is dominant in some scientific pursuits and positioned to develop key future breakthroughs.

The report, published Thursday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, puts Chinese researchers ahead of Americans in 37 of 44 technologies examined, across the sectors of defense, space, robotics, energy, environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials and quantum technology.

“In the long term, China’s leading research position means that it has set itself up to excel not just in current technological development in almost all sectors, but in future technologies that don’t yet exist,” ASPI concludes. No other nation is close to China and the U.S. in the research race, according to the Canberra-based think tank, which is primarily funded by Australia’s government. The report put India and the U.K. distantly behind them in most sectors, followed by South Korea and Germany.

The report says China’s research interest and performance in military and space sectors are particularly notable….

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Beijing is globally dominant in some scientific pursuits and positioned to develop key future breakthroughs, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute says https://t.co/3SjLk37lu2

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 2, 2023

When Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, it shocked the world.

Although, in hindsight, it probably shouldn’t have — after all, Russia had amassed at least 100,000 troops along its border with Ukraine in the months leading up to the invasion, insisting all the time that it had no plans to invade.

Moscow had also been rebuffed by the West after it presented NATO with a list of demands asking for the military alliance to essentially roll back its activity in Eastern Europe, and to guarantee that Ukraine would never become a member of NATO.

Needless to say, the Western military alliance refused to accede to Russia’s demands and a few months later, on Feb. 24, 2022, Russian troops invaded Ukraine from the north, east and south of the country. It targeted the capital Kyiv, Kharkiv in the northeast, Donbas in the east, and the southeast of the country, along a swathe of territory reaching across to Crimea — a peninsula Russia had annexed back in 2014.

While Russian forces were able to seize a portion of Ukraine in the east and south, aided by the conduit offered by Russian-occupied Crimea, the overly-ambitious scale and breadth of the invasion quickly came back to haunt Moscow. In April, it was forced to withdraw its forces from the Kyiv area, a retreat seen as a humiliating defeat for Russia.

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After a year of death and destruction, Ukraine braces itself for a major escalation in the war https://t.co/vPM1vf7XNJ

— CNBC (@CNBC) February 24, 2023

Valentyn Lymarenko and his infantry unit have already been seasoned by a year of combat, but they are grunting through exercises in this snowy trench to prepare for the next phase of fighting: a much-anticipated Russian offensive.

“We know they are coming,” Lymarenko said amid the pop of practice rifle fire. “We don’t know where.”

As Moscow struggles to turn the tide of a war that so far has largely failed, Ukrainians are bracing for a Kremlin do-over. But just where Russia will seek to land its blow remains a mystery, forcing Kyiv to ready its troops along a varied and forbidding front stretching from Belarus to the Black Sea.

From boggy northern wetlands to raging street fighting in the east to the treeless southern steppe, each range of terrain presents its own set of challenges and openings for Russian invaders and the Ukrainians intent on expelling them.Read it all.

Russian and Ukrainian forces dig into position for war’s next phase – The Washington Post

https://t.co/MI1MSnhsk2

— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) February 9, 2023

Nobody expects America to go back to the 1990s. It is right to seek to preserve its military pre-eminence and to avoid a dangerous dependence on China for crucial economic inputs. Yet this makes other forms of global integration all the more essential. It should seek the deepest co-operation between countries that is possible, given their respective values. Today this probably requires a number of overlapping forums and ad hoc deals. America should, for instance, join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Asian trade pact based on an earlier deal it helped write but then abandoned.

Saving globalisation may seem impossible, given the protectionist turn in American politics. But Congress’s aid to Ukraine shows that voters are not insular. Surveys suggest the popularity of free trade is recovering. There are signs that the Biden administration is responding to allies’ concerns about its subsidies.

Yet rescuing the global order will require bolder American leadership that once again rejects the false promise of zero-sum thinking. There is still time for that to happen before the system collapses completely, damaging countless livelihoods and imperilling the causes of liberal democracy and market capitalism. The task is enormous and urgent; it could hardly be more important. The clock is ticking.

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Since 1945, the world economy has run according to a system of rules and norms underwritten by America. This system is in peril as a destructive new logic threatens globalisation https://t.co/SNpJji4joc pic.twitter.com/iDOvJpGsgA

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 12, 2023

As the war in Ukraine soon enters its second year, Ukrainian troops will find it much more challenging to reclaim territory from Russian forces who are focused on defending their remaining land gains rather than making a deeper push into the country, American officials say.

Over the course of the first 10 months of the war, the Ukrainian military has — with significant American support — outmaneuvered an incompetent Russian military, fought it to a standstill and then retaken hundreds of square miles and the only regional capital that Russia had captured.

Despite relentless Russian attacks on civilian power supplies, Ukraine has still kept up the momentum on the front lines since September. But the tide of the war is likely to change in the coming months, as Russia improves its defenses and pushes more soldiers to the front lines, making it more difficult for Ukraine to retake the huge swaths of territory it lost this year, according to U.S. government assessments.

All of these factors make the most likely scenario going into the second year of the war a stalemate in which neither army can take much land despite intense fighting.

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As Ukraine Prepares for a Second Year at War, the Prospect of a Stalemate Looms https://t.co/VfOBYpVi7f

— Jose Manuel Paredes (@JMParedesC) December 22, 2022

A court in Belgium ruled on Wednesday that two suspects in a case linking current and former European lawmakers to alleged bribery by Qatar should remain in prison until trial and that a third should wear an electronic monitor, as the snowballing scandal continued to rock European Union institutions.

Four people, including Eva Kaili, a former vice president of the European Parliament who is from Greece, were charged last week with corruption, money laundering and participation in suspected bribes from Qatar, in what may be the biggest scandal in the history of the Parliament.

A court hearing for Ms. Kaili was postponed until Dec. 22, the office of the Belgian federal prosecutor said on Wednesday, so she remains imprisoned outside Brussels. Parliamentary lawmakers also stripped Ms. Kaili of her title as vice president during a plenary session in France.

Court documents seen by The New York Times identified the other suspects as Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former member of Parliament; Francesco Giorgi, Ms. Kaili’s partner and an assistant to a current European lawmaker; and Niccolo Figa-Talamanca, secretary general of a Brussels-based charity. Mr. Panzeri and Mr. Giorgi were ordered to remain detained until trial, and Mr. Figa-Talamanca was ordered to be placed under electronic monitoring.

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A Brussels court ordered two suspects in a case linking current and former European lawmakers to alleged bribery by Qatar to remain in prison until trial and a third to wear an electronic monitor, as the snowballing scandal continued to rock the EU. https://t.co/nyHhW3JT7w

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) December 15, 2022

Russia is massing men and arms for a new offensive. As soon as January, but more likely in the spring, it could launch a big attack from Donbas in the east, from the south or even from Belarus, a puppet state in the north. Russian troops will aim to drive back Ukrainian forces and could even stage a second attempt to take Kyiv, the capital.

Those are not our words, but the assessment of the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny. In an unprecedented series of briefings within the past fortnight the general, along with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and General Oleksandr Syrsky, the head of its ground forces, warned us of the critical few months ahead. “The Russians are preparing some 200,000 fresh troops,” General Zaluzhny told us. “I have no doubt they will have another go at Kyiv.” Western sources say that Russia’s commander, General Sergey Surovikin, has always seen this as a multi-year conflict.

This is not the view outside Ukraine. In the freezing mud, the conflict is thought to be deadlocked. There has been almost no movement for a month along the 1,000km or so of battlefront. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Britain’s most senior officer, this week said that, right now, a shortage of artillery shells means Russia’s scope for ground operations is “rapidly diminishing”.

The appearance of stalemate is feeding new interest in peace talks. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, America’s Joe Biden and (for very different reasons) the Russian aggressor, Vladimir Putin, have all in recent days talked about a diplomatic solution. Many in the West, appalled at the suffering, and, more selfishly, wearying of high energy prices, would welcome this. But Ukraine’s commanders argue that it should not happen too soon, and they are right.

If Ukraine sought to stop the war today, freezing the battle lines where they are, the Russians could prepare better for the next attack.

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In an unprecedented series of briefings, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his military commanders warn of a looming Russian offensive and the critical months that lie ahead https://t.co/HW9h47yBzB pic.twitter.com/IXWcPHqJLX

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 15, 2022