For weeks I have watched Odesa’s central port almost daily, logging even the smallest changes. In the past three weeks, I’ve seen exactly one commercial vessel move: the Barbados-flagged bulk carrier Golden Arrow, with an Egyptian crew, which slipped out under cover of darkness earlier this month. Two vessels remain at berth. One of them, the Mariupol dry-cargo ship Vasyl Borshchenko, is listing to one side and blocking access to a crucial fuel storage area. Cranes and fuel tanks lie damaged. Offshore, two large ships sit immobilized, and nearby the Golden Leo rests on the sea bed with its cargo of corn and bunker oil.

Russia hit the Turkish-owned ship with three cruise missiles on 19 July as it left Chornomorsk through Ukraine’s Black Sea corridor. Nine crew members and a Ukrainian pilot were killed. The ship sank in Odesa port waters eight days later.

The numbers explain the clam waters. The Black Sea has overtaken the Strait of Hormuz as the world’s deadliest waterway for merchant mariners. Citing data from maritime security firm Ambrey and the International Maritime Organization, the Financial Times reports that more than 570 vessels have been attacked there since the start of 2026, killing at least 40 sailors. In Hormuz, 24 deaths have been confirmed over the same period.

The violence spiked over the summer. Ambrey counted roughly 387 attacks between July and September, more than five times the previous quarter and over four a day. Crews face aerial drones, missiles, sea mines, GPS jamming and explosive-laden sea drones. The attacks haven’t let up: on 25 October, Ambrey reported that a dry-cargo vessel was hit by a Russian drone in Ukrainian territorial waters off the Odesa coast. Many other ships are hit as collateral damage in strikes on port infrastructure.”

Russia has kept up its assault on Ukrainian ports since the UN- and Turkey-brokered grain deal collapsed in 2023. Ukraine, or its part, has expanded its drone campaign from disrupting Crimean diesel supplies to hitting shipping through the Kerch Strait. According to Ambrey, about 90% of strikes on vessels in the past 45 days targeted Russia. But Moscow’s campaign is of a different kind, aimed at strangling a country’s access to the sea.

The commercial toll is severe. TIS, Ukraine’s largest private port operator, says Greater Odesa’s ports handled fewer than 10 ships last month, down from about 400 in July. War-risk insurance premiums are climbing, and some carriers are refusing to sail at all, raising costs for Ukrainian grain exports.

“Sailing through the Black Sea and calling at Ukrainian ports is practically suicide,” Oleg Grygoryuk, head of the Ukrainian Maritime Transport Workers’ Union, told the FT. Bridget Diakun of Lloyd’s List Intelligence said she had never seen anything like it in years of tracking the war’s impact on maritime trade.

The danger is also spreading beyond Ukrainian and Russian waters. Romanian President Nicușor Dan has accused Moscow of escalating the war on NATO’s doorstep.

It’s worth remembering what is at stake. Agricultural products make up around 60% of Ukraine’s exports, and more than 90% of them pass through the ports around Odesa, shipping grain, corn, sunflower oil and other commodities to markets from North Africa to Asia. The ports are also the lifeblood of the regional economy. What I’m seeing fits a broader Russian pattern: strikes on ports, bridges, roads and border crossings that appear designed to cut Ukraine off from the outside world. The goal, it seems, is to make Ukraine landlocked.

News Briefs
Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s former president and dominant political figure for more than a decade, conceded defeat to the student-led protest movement in the country’s parliamentary elections, potentially ushering in a new era of politics more closely aligned with Europe and away from the Kremlin. “It is clear that we have lost these elections,” he told a news conference late on October 25, after polling stations closed across Serbia. “The Students’ List has won, they will have between 135 and 140 seats and we will have 105. No one else has entered parliament,” Vucic said, citing preliminary results as celebrations erupted among student leaders and supporters in Belgrade, Novi Sad, and other cities. Some observers compared Vucic’s loss to the defeat suffered by fellow Russia-friendly authoritarian leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban, in parliamentary elections in April. A total of 18 electoral lists, with more than 2,400 candidates, participated in the Serbian election, with 250 to enter parliament in the effort to form a new government. While the final election results were yet to be announced, independent observers reported that voter turnout could reach its highest level in decades, approaching 70 percent after a day of long lines at polling stations throughout the Balkan nation of some 6.6 million people. Having served as president since 2017, Vucic resigned in late September. Unable to seek a third term, he was hoping to become prime minister after calling for a snap election - RFE/RL

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won an unprecedented fourth term on Sunday, the country’s electoral court said, in a shock result that defied polls, precedent and global anti-incumbent sentiment to put the brakes on a wave of right-wing election victories across Latin America. Lula, an icon of the global left and the most dominant force in Brazilian politics this century, defeated Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro. The senator had finished first in the election’s first round and hoped to revive his father’s far-right movement. Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year jail term for attempting a coup after his loss to Lula in the country’s last election in 2022. Sunday’s vote was marked by confusion after a Supreme Court ruling extended voting by two hours as some polling stations had already closed. The move came at the request of Lula who complained that buses had been pulled from circulation in various cities, barring citizens from voting. Flavio Bolsonaro also requested an extension in some regions due to heavy rains, but he described the decision as "unacceptable" and a "dirty trick". No candidate who lost the first round has gone on to win the second in Brazil since 1989, the first direct election after the end of the country’s military dictatorship. “People went to vote because we managed to convince them that voting was very important for ensuring democracy in the country,” Lula said in his first comments after the win. Fireworks and vuvuzelas rang out in Rio de Janeiro, while thousands of people dressed in red, the color of Lula’s Workers’ Party, streamed into the streets of Sao Paulo to celebrate - France 24

Washington wants Viktor Orbán to run the UN, and believes Moscow and Beijing will back him

The Trump administration has been pushing Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s former prime minister, to run for United Nations Secretary-General, according to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. Citing sources in three countries, the board says US officials first raised the idea with Orbán and encouraged him to enter the race. Washington believes Russia and China would back him as a joint candidate. A final decision is still pending.

A State Department official told the paper the idea sounds crazy at first, but counted eight Security Council votes for Orbán “comfortably” and 10 within reach. The bet is that Britain and France, both cautious with their vetoes, would not block a candidate backed by the US, Russia and China together. The same official called Orbán the “dream MAGA-conservative candidate,” citing his record on migration, NGOs, the courts and the press. Any announcement is reportedly being held until after the US midterms. Orbán, who lost power in April despite endorsements from President Trump and Vice President JD Vance, declined to comment. The paper says he was receptive but will only run if he is confident of winning.

Orbán would not be Washington’s first unorthodox pick. In July, President Trump was reported to want FIFA president Gianni Infantino for the job, an idea that went nowhere; Infantino is now seeking re-election at FIFA.

The idea to push for Orbán to move to New York isn’t entirely new. In May, reports citing diplomatic sources said figures linked to the MAGA movement were discussing a senior UN post for the bombastic politician, and noted that under the 1946 UN Convention the Secretary-General enjoys full diplomatic immunity.

The race to replace António Guterres, whose term ends 31 December, is deadlocked. In the latest straw poll, every contender received an effective veto. The frontrunner, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan, won nine “encourage” votes but also two disapprovals from veto-wielding members, as did IAEA chief Rafael Grossi. The UAE’s Lana Nusseibeh entered last week, and she faces questions over Emirati support for a paramilitary in Sudan’s civil war. By informal rotation, it is Latin America’s turn for the post.

For Kyiv, the prospect is alarming. A Secretary-General who spent years shielding the Kremlin inside the EU would be an apologist for Putin at the top of the UN, a concern even the Journal’s board raises.

Russia’s pro-Kremlin press is reading Donald Trump’s tough words for Volodymyr Zelensky as a licence to keep bombing Ukraine. That’s the takeaway from the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg, whose latest “Reading Russia” dispatch from Moscow (25 October) walks through how Russian newspapers are framing Washington’s diplomacy. Moskovsky Komsomolets noted pointedly that Russia’s strikes on Ukrainian energy and military infrastructure on the night of 21 October carried on even as Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, arrived in St Petersburg for talks with Vladimir Putin. The message, the paper wrote, is that Moscow won’t make concessions or pause combat operations “for the sake of a round of diplomacy.” In the same edition, MK went further. It recalled Trump’s warning that things would “just get worse” for Zelensky if he didn’t make a deal, and argued that Moscow sees those words as a mandate to keep up military pressure, not an invitation to pause. The strikes on the night of the Witkoff meeting, it said, were a reminder that the cost of delay keeps rising. Argumenty Nedeli, meanwhile, is betting on Europe’s political drift. It argues that support for Kyiv is less solid than it looks: Nigel Farage won’t take Britain to war over Ukraine, Marine Le Pen wants to end direct financial aid, and the AfD is pushing for power in Germany. If even one major European government changes, the paper concludes, “that’s the end for Ukraine.” The pattern is familiar. The Kremlin treats every American nudge toward Kyiv as proof that time is on its side, and is willing to wait out Western resolve.

Moscow will host the 2030 World Weightlifting Championships, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) announced on Sunday. No world championships in an Olympic sport, summer or winter, have been held in Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine. The 2025 World Aquatics Championships, originally awarded to the Russian city of Kazan, were later moved to Singapore. “Concerning the IWF Senior World Championships, Ahmedabad (India) will host the 2029 edition and Moscow (Russia) will host the 2030 edition,” the IWF said in a statement. It will be the first time since 1983 that Moscow has hosted the World Weightlifting Championships. Russian and Belarusian weightlifters have been eligible to compete in IWF events since the International Olympic Committee provisionally lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee in July, a step seen as advancing Russia’s gradual return to international sport. The IOC Executive Board, when it lifted the suspension, said athletes should not be held responsible for the actions of their governments. No decision has yet been taken on whether Russian athletes will compete under their national flag, colors and anthem at the Olympic Games. The National Olympic Committee of Ukraine has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against the IOC’s decision - Moscow Times

In the largest European experiment to counter mosquito-borne diseases, Barcelona has released more than half a million male mosquitoes carrying a parasite that causes effective sterility. The trials, which will continue until mid-November, aim to replicate results from Singapore that demonstrated the wolbachia parasite’s effectiveness in reducing dengue cases by 70%; wolbachia’s significant advantage is the ability to bypass regulations against gene editing, which — by sowing male populations with a so-called “lethal gene” that prevents viable offspring — has also shown promise in checking mosquito-borne illnesses. As climate change expands the insect’s range, “the technology to eradicate mosquito-borne disease already exists,” Works in Progress wrote. “We just have to be brave enough to use it.” - Semafor

The journals…

This week’s World Briefing Plus video opens here in Ukraine - more specifically, in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky, where up to 2,000 people, many of them elderly, remain in desperate isolation. A ceasefire and humanitarian corridor are now planned. The surprise is who’s claiming the credit, and who’s being thanked: Melania Trump and the Vatican.

From there I go up into orbit, over to a tense Middle East, through the US midterms, and on to the summit season in Asia.

I end on something we don’t get to say often: fresh signs of movement toward peace in Ukraine - with delegations from Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. to meet in the UAE in the first half of November. Will this round of talks be any different?

The full video is for World Briefing Plus subscribers. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading, this would be a good week to do it. You’ll get my weekly analysis, the connections behind the headlines, and help keep independent, on-the-ground reporting going.

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Sky says the satellite, Cosmos 2612, came within metres of ICEYE-X36, a spacecraft run by the Finnish company ICEYE that passes over Russia and Ukraine. ICEYE operates a constellation of roughly 80 satellites, and their synthetic aperture radar can image the ground at night and through cloud. As one expert told Sky, that means “in Ukraine, you can see through the foliage.” According to satellite-tracking data shown by Sky, Cosmos 2612 moved into an orbit about 591 km above the Earth. On 15 and 16 October it dropped below and behind the ICEYE craft, then shadowed it in the same orbit, “sometimes closer, sometimes further away.” One analyst interviewed by Sky said Moscow would like to learn how to jam this kind of imaging satellite.

The tracking firm LeoLabs called it the “most advanced and potentially dangerous uncooperative” close approach it has ever observed, Breaking Defense reported. LeoLabs put the closest pass within about 500 metres. Space watcher Marco Langbroek said Cosmos 2612, launched in April, began manoeuvring toward its target on 30 September. ICEYE agreed in 2022 to supply Ukraine with radar imagery from a dedicated satellite but has never said which one. X36 is operated by ICEYE US and was launched from the United States in 2024. Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation has asked why Washington has said nothing.

The experts Sky interviewed say this is only the beginning. The open question, one said, is whether to expect “a sort of space Pearl Harbor” or an attritional conflict in orbit, where the ability to replenish decides the outcome. A satellite collision could also scatter dangerous debris across orbit. Manoeuvring satellites as aggressively as Russia is doing burns fuel and energy, so any sustained campaign would require refuelling operations in space.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence told Sky it is investing more than £3 billion in space capabilities over the next four years.

The warning matches what I heard on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month. A retired US general told us Russia is much further ahead in space capabilities than the West believes. He said those capabilities could, sooner rather than later, be used to immobilise entire countries by knocking out electricity grids, refrigeration, sanitation and mobile networks. It was the starkest warning I have heard from him - pretty much sent chills down my back.

In today’s bonus video

The space theme continues in today’s Friday bonus video, free for all subscribers. Off the back of my BBC interview, I look at the breaking news from Ukraine that its military says drones fitted with Starshield equipment still face speed caps. Put that next to Cosmos 2612’s pursuit of ICEYE-X36 and the picture is hard to miss. Ukraine’s battlefield edge increasingly depends on space-based systems it doesn’t control, and Russia is working out how to blind, jam or shadow them. Watch below.

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If you value this kind of coverage, now is a good time to go paid. Annual World Briefing Plus subscriptions are 30% off until the end of October. Paid subscribers get exclusive Saturday video briefings and support on-the-ground reporting from the Black Sea frontier. We’re also considering a series of Year Ahead briefings in the New Year, for paid subscribers only. Upgrade now using this link.

News Briefs
Israel and Iran ramped up their rhetoric against one another, raising the prospect of a return to open conflict in the Middle East. The US-Israel war with Iran has been dormant for months, beyond sporadic flareups, with Washington and Tehran concentrating on controlling shipping traffic. Israel’s prime minister, who faces a tight battle for reelection, argued this week in favor of overthrowing Iran’s regime, while the US ambassador to the UN told the Financial Times that Washington was ready for a protracted conflict with Tehran. Iran, meanwhile, said it had struck multiple tankers and threatened US bases across the Middle East: “Everyone must understand,” a senior Iranian general told Drop Site News, “that action against Iran carries a cost.” - Semafor

Some 70,000 security forces will be mobilised to keep order at protests throughout France on Saturday, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said Friday. His announcement came as President Emmanuel Macron was due to meet with student organisations in Paris Friday afternoon, for the first time since high school protests began over a month ago. To identify rioters across France last weekend, French authorities are calling on people who filmed scenes of looting to assist the investigation by handing the videos in, an unprecedented decision causing debate. Meanwhile, the Louvre and several other major Paris museums will be closed on Saturday over concerns about potential violence during planned protests, France’s culture ministry said. In a statement to The Associated Press, the ministry said the Orsay and Picasso museums were also among those that will close. Others are taking the same tack. After two days when admission was invite-only, Art Basel Paris opened to the public on Friday — but only for the day, with the threat of unrest prompting organizers on Thursday to cancel the weekend programme. Paris’s Grand Palais is hosting 211 international galleries and their exhibitions for Art Basel, considered one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary art fairs - France 24

Germany, France and at least six other EU countries are pushing against “associate membership” as the name for closer EU ties with Canada, six diplomats involved in the negotiations said. The label is one of the main sticking points in talks over a joint declaration setting areas of deeper cooperation between Brussels and Ottawa ahead of the EU-Canada summit in Montreal on Oct. 29-30, the six diplomats and two EU officials told POLITICO. They were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations. The diplomats said the objections center on the wording of “associate membership,” not the broader goal of closer ties. Five weeks after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first proposed Canada becoming an “associate member” of the EU in her State of the Union speech — to the surprise of both Ottawa and EU capitals — and one week out from the summit itself, the disagreements show the term remains a political and messaging hurdle.

UAE diplomat Lana Nusseibeh has jumped into the race to succeed António Guterres. Her timing is shrewd: six rounds of Security Council voting have failed to produce a candidate backed by all five veto-holding powers, and even front-runner Rebeca Grynspan drew opposing votes from permanent members last week. If selected, Nusseibeh, 48, would be the first woman to lead the UN and only the second from the Middle East, after Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali. She is pitching herself as the antidote to a paralysed organisation, telling Reuters the UN must act as “a problem-solver rather than as a spectator to the world’s crises.” Diplomats in New York regard her as a competent manager, and she points to her role in securing Resolution 2720 on Gaza aid in 2023 as proof of what she calls creative, entrepreneurial diplomacy. But the baggage arrived with her. As a senior Emirati diplomat, Nusseibeh defended Abu Dhabi’s role in Sudan, where UN sanctions monitors found credible allegations that the UAE armed the paramilitary RSF, which Abu Dhabi denies. The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, one of the loudest voices on Sudan, called her a compelling candidate in some ways but said she proved her effectiveness by backing the UAE’s support for a militia accused of mass killing and rape. “Shouldn’t that be disqualifying?” he asked. Nusseibeh says she has taken leave from her government post and will focus on Sudan’s humanitarian crisis.

We’ll be taking a much deeper look at her candidacy, and what it says about the state of the race, in the coming days.

Austria has expelled four Russian diplomats accused of secretly working for Moscow’s intelligence services, among them an official on Russia’s delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), where he handled military security and arms control. The other three were accredited to Russia’s embassy in Vienna, the Financial Times reports. Austrian officials said the domestic intelligence service had been watching all four for some time. The move signals a harder line from a country long seen as a soft touch. The FT notes that Vienna is one of Russia’s largest diplomatic hubs in Europe, with roughly 250 people registered as official representatives of the Russian state. According to Austrian intelligence, as many as a third of them are actually intelligence officers, many running agent networks beyond Austria’s borders. Constitutional neutrality, weak espionage laws and the establishment’s historically close ties to Moscow have made Austria a haven for Russian spies, even as the Kremlin’s agents face mounting pressure elsewhere in Europe. Successive Austrian governments frustrated Kyiv and EU capitals by resisting expulsions after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2018 Skripal poisoning in the UK. Moscow promised retaliation. Deputy Foreign Minister Dmitry Lyubinsky said a response would “follow inevitably,” Interfax reported.

• The OSCE, meanwhile, has questions of its own to answer. Earlier this month I called on the organization to speak out after two Ukrainian journalists were violently detained in Vienna: Mykhailo Tkach, head of investigations at Ukrainska Pravda, and his cameraman, Yaroslav Bondarenko. They were in the city tracking the whereabouts of fugitive former prosecutor general Ruslan Kravchenko. Austrian special forces smashed the windows of their rental car at a traffic light in broad daylight and held both men on flimsy suspicions of espionage, which Austrian authorities later conceded were unsubstantiated. Vienna insists the arrests were unrelated to their journalism. Tkach was freed after 12 hours. Bondarenko, who has since been released, wrote on Facebook that he was pressed face-first into the broken glass. He said doctors removed three shards from under his eye in surgery while he was still handcuffed behind his back, and that no one ever explained his rights to him. International press-freedom organizations demanded answers. The Committee to Protect Journalists and the Vienna-based International Press Institute called for the pair’s release and an urgent explanation from Austrian authorities. Reporters Without Borders said the two had been “subjected to a violent police arrest in Vienna” and urged the authorities “to shed full light on these events and to ensure the protection of their equipment and sources,” AFP reported. From the OSCE, headquartered in the same city, there was not a peep, and none from the one official whose job it is to speak up in exactly these cases: its Representative on Freedom of the Media Jan Braathu. When the OSCE can’t defend journalists on its own doorstep, it’s fair to ask how much heft it still has.

The journals…

▶️ Watch my Sky News interview with Jayne Secker above

On the same day Sky News showed Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied Oleshky fleeing on bicycles down a single road watched by Russian drones, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff sat across from Vladimir Putin and called him “a humanitarian.” This is a man the International Criminal Court has charged with war crimes. Within hours, Russia launched another massive attack on Kyiv. Fifteen people were injured, including two 15-year-olds, and the Southern Bridge and its metro line, as well as a monastery, were damaged.

Look at the past few days together. Washington issued a Treasury licence letting Russian diesel flow to the US until April 2027, and the first tanker sails today. Trump backed away from Lindsey Graham’s sanctions bill. There are reports of a pause in intelligence sharing and of slower Patriot deliveries. Elon Musk ordered a slowdown of Starshield, the military-grade Starlink that Ukrainian drones depend on, a move the Wall Street Journal says blindsided the administration itself. Ukrainian officials say the speed cap is still in place. That limits Kyiv’s ability to carry out mid-range strikes on targets in occupied areas and to intercept fast incoming Russian drones. Moscow, meanwhile, released a jailed American teacher, a gesture that cost Putin nothing. Taken together, these moves point one way, and Ukrainians are paying for it in lives.

European officials worry that Witkoff and the Trump administration now see Putin as a partner in both peace and business. Putin made that pitch explicit in prepared remarks yesterday. The two sides agreed to resume technical-level talks between the US, Russia and Ukraine, which had been suspended in February when Trump ordered strikes on Iran. Zelensky wants more than that: a leaders’ summit, and Europeans at the technical table. Without them, Kyiv risks negotiating against two parties who increasingly sound like partners.

Against that backdrop, Zelensky told Fox News he could accept freezing the front “as it is now” if Ukraine keeps 75% or more of its territory. Russia holds about 20%. That gives Kyiv roughly five points of room, a ceiling on losses rather than an offer. A freeze isn’t a surrender either: under Ukraine’s constitution, any formal handover of territory, even 1%, requires a national referendum, and referendums are banned under martial law.

Even a freeze needs three things: a durable ceasefire, security guarantees from a guarantor willing to be on the hook if Russia attacks again, and a large international monitoring mission to observe and report violations. I served on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission. We had access to occupied areas, and that is how we reached the MH17 crash site in July 2014. Russia, itself an OSCE participating state, forced the dismantling of that mission in 2022. Without something like it, a freeze is just an intermission. Ukraine has seen this movie before. Kyiv knows full well that unless the essential pieces are firmly in place, Putin will attack again.

▶️ Watch my Times Radio Trump Report discussion here, which is heading towards 200,000 views in less than a day. We cover what drives Trump right now: the midterms, enriching his inner circle, and doing everything he can to avoid impeachment or worse legal jeopardy. That helps explain his grovelling and softer line on Putin. It also explains how he’s selling Stephen Hubbard’s release to his base, just as I predicted: I did it. I’m a strong man. Americans held overseas are safe with me.

News Briefs
Ukraine has yet to receive answers from the Pentagon or Elon Musk’s SpaceX over restrictions on satellite communications used by its military, Kyiv’s top diplomat in Washington told RFE/RL, as a growing bipartisan push for a congressional investigation intensified. “Speed restrictions have not been lifted,” Denys Sienik, Ukraine’s charge d’affaires in the United States, told RFE/RL on October 21, adding Kyiv had received no response from either the Pentagon or SpaceX. The dispute over Starlink and its military-oriented counterpart, Starshield, has raised questions about who authorized the restrictions, whether the Trump administration knew about them in advance, and how the changes affected Ukraine’s ability to defend against Russian attacks.

Russia is using its fishing fleet to spy on Britain’s undersea cables, according to an investigation in today’s Daily Telegraph. The paper analysed two and a half years of vessel-tracking data from Global Fishing Watch and followed some 500 Russian fishing vessels. It found more than 300 cases of Russian trawlers loitering directly above the communications cables that link Britain with Europe and the US, or following their routes for miles. Some showed telltale manoeuvres consistent with mapping the seabed or deploying underwater drones. “We’re absolutely aware of what they’re up to,” a Nato source told the paper. “Some of these ships have never seen a single fish on their deck.” Ministers have confirmed that Moscow is using “commercial proxies” to threaten Britain’s undersea infrastructure. The government is expected to announce lengthy jail terms and unlimited fines for cable saboteurs as part of a wider security crackdown. It fits a pattern familiar from the Baltic, where cable and pipeline cuts by Russia-linked vessels have become a recurring feature of Moscow’s grey-zone war on Europe. Cables carry the internet traffic, financial transactions and military communications the West depends on. In a crisis, Russia wouldn’t need to fire a shot to cripple them. It would just need to know where they are, and the Telegraph investigation suggests it increasingly does.

French President Emmanuel Macron met with France’s intelligence services Thursday as authorities braced for a fresh wave of demonstrations Saturday. France 24 reported that the government has said it will put armed troops in the street after rioting and looting broke out on the fringes of mass peaceful demonstrations over the weekend. “We are at a deployment level that is 20 percent higher than it was last week,” French Interior Ministry official, Jean-Didier Berger said, on BFMTV news network. Separately, Thailand has advised its citizens to postpone non-essential travel to parts of Europe rocked by protests, while Malaysia also warned its nationals about visiting France.

• Birkin-maker Hermès has ​increased security ​measures at its French stores following protests that ​included ‌the ⁠looting of one ‌of its stores in Marseille, ⁠the company’s CFO Eric du Halgouet ​said. “At present, it is too early ‌to assess the ​impact on our shops’ business and, above all, on ​tourism,” du ​Halgouet told analysts ​while presenting the company’s ​third-quarter sales. The Marseille boutique, du Halgouet said, won’t re-open “anytime ⁠soon” - France 24

The Trump administration is accusing prominent Canadian politicians of interfering in American elections. The U.S. Embassy in Ottawa detailed the allegations in a “fact sheet” distributed Wednesday to journalists. The unsigned document singles out Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather and Bernadette Jordan, a former Liberal Cabinet minister now serving as Canada’s consul general in Boston. “The Canadian government brushes off concerns about potential interference in U.S. elections, even as its ministers and premiers openly describe plans to influence American politics in official documents and public appearances,” read the document. Prime Minister Mark Carney brushed off the allegations at a Wednesday press conference where Ford also denied engaging in interference - POLITICO

France, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands took government websites offline Wednesday after web developers used AI to identify a bug affecting up to 70% of the world’s websites. The exploit is “the most severe AI vulnerability… ever found,” the co-founder of Google’s Wiz cybersecurity team told The Wall Street Journal, adding that humans probably couldn’t have discovered it without AI. Japan’s prime minister also urged “everyone to take action tonight” to apply the newly-released fixes. But AI will enable hackers to reverse engineer the bug in a “race to exploit” the public fix, a cybersecurity researcher told Reuters, with their next step being the “mass compromise of every vulnerable web server ​on the internet.” An American influencer in Paris told her TikTok followers that Orange mobile service had been knocked offline yesterday.

The White House has restricted access for the journalist whom it called a vile slur for people with Down Syndrome. The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg was scheduled to serve as President Donald Trump’s print pooler on his Thursday trip to Sioux City, Iowa, but the White House suddenly revoked his assignment Wednesday without explanation, reports Semafor. Feinberg is the same reporter who, on Tuesday, was viciously attacked by the president for asking about his proposed D.C. golf course, which the White House later tacked on with a vulgar insult. Fox News reporters Jacqui Heinrich, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, condemned the decision in a statement Wednesday night. “The White House Correspondents’ Association strongly objects to the decision to restrict a journalist’s coverage simply because the president didn’t care for their questioning. That is retaliation,” Heinrich wrote. “The American public’s right to an independent press depends on reporters being able to do their jobs without fear that challenging the president will cut off their access.” Trump, 80, snapped at Feinberg in the Oval Office when asked about his plans for a golf course at East Potomac Park in Washington, D.C.

The journals…

In a Euronews interview this morning, the argumentative and sometimes foul-mouthed O’Leary called European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “useless”, accusing her of preaching competitiveness while delivering none. He wants the EU to stop loading costs onto short-haul European flights while US, Asian and Chinese carriers on long-haul routes into Europe largely escape the same levies, even though those flights produce more than half of European aviation’s emissions.

He’s backing words with action. As Ryanair’s winter schedule kicks in, it is cutting a million seats and 20 routes from Belgium over a tax rise to €7 per ticket. That’s still well below the Netherlands (€30.25) or Germany (€13.03). He also warns fares will rise sharply in 2027, when Ryanair’s fuel hedge at around US$67 a barrel expires. Brent crude has just topped US$110.

But this is about more than one airline boss picking a fight.

Today I priced two one-way economy tickets to Ottawa on Air Canada for early November. The cheapest fare from Chișinău, a bare-bones Basic ticket with no refund, no free checked bag and a 19½-hour layover in Montreal, came to C$1,576.80. The cheapest non-stop from London cost C$2,866.70. One way and off season!

Now look at the breakdown. On the Chișinău ticket, Moldovan, Austrian and Canadian taxes and fees totalled just C$50.10. Air Canada’s “carrier surcharge” was C$325.70, more than six times as much. From London, the UK’s steep Air Passenger Duty and service charge came to C$288.10, and Air Canada still topped that with a C$384.60 surcharge. What’s in it? According to Air Canada’s own website, a mix of fuel, navigation charges and environmental compliance costs, plus “fare premiums” for peak travel periods. In other words, part of it is simply more fare by another name. Passengers are never told how much of the surcharge is which.

O’Leary says Ryanair guarantees no fuel surcharges. Legacy carriers say theirs cover volatile costs such as fuel. Fair enough. But when fuel prices fall, do the surcharges follow, or do they become another permanent revenue stream? With the Middle East war driving up jet fuel, expect another nasty surprise.

Governments aren’t blameless either. On a recent trip from Ottawa via London and Istanbul to Chișinău, I paid a C$45.20 Canadian Airport Improvement Fee, C$34.42 for security and C$42.10 for a UK passenger service charge, before the Turkish and Moldovan charges. Even points don’t spare you. A Rome–Brussels Aeroplan redemption way back in late 2023 cost me 7,500 points plus C$84.40 in cash, including five separate Italian taxes and charges.

Someone has to pay for security, air traffic control and infrastructure. But who scrutinises this ever-growing pile of fees?

Then there are the airports, many now shopping malls with runways attached. At Gatwick, you navigate a luxury retail maze to reach your gate, and it costs £10 just to drop someone off, up from £7. Heathrow brought in its own £5 drop-off charge in late 2021, while passengers were still nervous about flying after Covid. According to an RAC analysis, drop-off charges at major UK airports have risen by a third on average since summer 2025. The pushback has been loud enough that the UK government has now ordered a review, urging airports to show restraint where public transport alternatives are limited. Revenue is rising faster than service.

O’Leary is no innocent bystander. Ryanair pioneered à-la-carte flying, charging for everything from bags to seats. But low-cost carriers also put flying within reach of millions.

Brussels, meanwhile, talks endlessly about competitiveness. Two years ago, former Italian prime minister and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi handed the EU a blueprint to stop Europe falling behind the US and China. O’Leary claims not one of its recommendations has been implemented. A recent assessment puts the figure at about a quarter. Either way, it’s hardly the pace the moment demands.

One final note on accountability: I’ll soon appear on CBC’s Go Public, alongside other Canadian travellers, discussing flight cancellations and the explanations airlines give. My case involves Air Canada. I’ll leave the details to CBC.

For decades, low-cost carriers democratised flying. Now, between government taxes, airport charges, airline surcharges and soaring fuel, air travel risks becoming a privilege of the well-off again.

Everyone takes a slice. Nobody takes responsibility for the final bill.

Your turn. Have you been hit by a carrier surcharge bigger than the taxes on your ticket? Send me your fare breakdowns: just post in the comments (please black out your name and booking reference). I’ll go through what you send and follow up later this week. The airlines are giants, but receipts are hard to argue with. Let’s shake the tree.

What I Told CNN: Don’t Trust the Oslo Optimism

Speaking to Max Foster on CNN International tonight, I made the point that Washington’s actions over the past week, and Donald Trump’s words in the past few minutes, give me no faith whatsoever that he’s interested in giving Ukraine a fair break.

The upbeat messaging out of Oslo, where Zelensky met US envoy Steve Witkoff alongside Finland’s Alexander Stubb and Norway’s Jonas Gahr Støre, has been contradicted almost line by line by Washington. Consider the speed caps on Ukraine’s Starshield-linked drones, the Patriot deliveries that haven’t materialised, the waiver of new Russia sanctions and the intelligence pauses, which the US disputes. Then, hours after Russia struck a Kyiv cardiology hospital for the second time, Trump declared from the Oval Office that it’s “time for Ukraine to end this war.”

Oslo, frankly, is a sideshow. It will be Trump who decides what happens. Is Putin in the mood for a deal? Of course not. With the front foot, as Max put it, he wants it all. Hence his proposal for a three-way meeting with Trump and Xi in Shenzhen next month to discuss Ukraine, without Zelensky in the room, an idea Trump appears to be warming to. If they want to form that kind of club, they might as well invite Iran and North Korea too, since both are helping Russia wage this war.

And watch for the next move after the midterms: Trump encouraging Putin to attend the G20 at his Doral resort in December. What a contrast. Last year’s G20 host, South Africa’s democratically elected president, has been told not to come, while a man wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes gets the welcome mat.

Here’s the video. You can watch the full CNN interview below.

News Briefs
On Monday, people in the oil-rich, western Canadian province of Alberta voted in a referendum that could have important consequences for Canada’s future. But the question attracting the most attention may not be the one that matters most. The tenth question asked Albertans whether they want to remain in Canada or take the next step toward separation. As of the time of writing, only a quarter of Alberta voters opted for another referendum. Three-quarters opted against another referendum and said they wanted to remain in Canada. But results from the other nine questions may tell a more interesting story. All but Question 10 garnered majority support. Ipsos polling for Global News also found that Canadians outside Alberta supported eight of the nine proposals by majority. Albertans may have rejected separation for now, but they also endorsed an agenda for changing Canada that has considerable support elsewhere in the country. Prime Minister Mark Carney seems to understand the message he received. At a rally in Calgary on October 15, he urged Albertans to reject the other nine questions with the slogan “No to the Nine.” Carney wasn’t simply campaigning against separation. He was taking a position against proposals that could reshape our country. The remaining nine questions cover two broad areas. The first five concern immigration and access to public services. They propose greater provincial control over immigration, lower immigration levels, employment preferences and restrictions on access to publicly funded services for temporary residents. They also address proof of citizenship for provincial voting. The other four concern the federal system itself. They propose provincial control over appointments to superior courts, abolition of the Senate, the right to opt out of federal programs without losing funding and provincial laws taking precedence over federal laws in areas of provincial or shared jurisdiction. Some proposals would require constitutional changes. Others could be addressed through existing legislation. None automatically becomes law even though Albertans voted for them. But majority support has given Premier Danielle Smith justification to pursue them - Global News

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has promised a “massive” security operation for further protests expected on Saturday, after weekend cost-of-living demonstrations turned violent across France. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told parliament that soldiers from Operation Sentinelle, the 10,000-strong counter-terrorism force deployed since 2015 at schools, places of worship, stations and airports, will take over static guard duties. That frees police and gendarmes for public-order work against what he called “scattered” and “extremely mobile” groups. Paris imposed partial curfews in some neighbourhoods on Monday night, from 11pm to 6am, Euronews reported.

The mood in the French press is grim. Le Figaro’s front page today (see below) says Macron’s ten-year presidency is ending in chaos, six months before the next presidential election. In an editorial headlined “The State in Danger,” Yves Thréard takes the collapse of the fire-gutted belfry at Limoges town hall as a symbol of the country itself. He describes a republic where authority is mocked and police are treated as the enemy, and asks why no state of emergency has been declared. He also mocks the president’s brief television appearance on Sunday, after which he left for abroad. His warning: without a response equal to the moment, “it is the State that could founder.”

Meanwhile, seemingly unfazed by the turmoil at home, Macron was basking in full state honours in Doha, complete with cannon salvos and a cavalry procession. He is seeking Gulf energy deals to help ease fuel prices in France and positioning Paris as a player in regional stability.

It reminds me of the waning days of Justin Trudeau’s last term, when he seemed to spend more time abroad, basking in an adoring international press, than at home answering questions about the economy and his own scandals. Leaders on the way out often find a warmer welcome overseas than in their own capitals.

U.K. fighter jets will be sent to aid Saudi Arabia in defending itself against attacks on critical energy and civilian infrastructure by the Houthis. The Iranian-backed Islamist militia group, based in civil war-hit Yemen, has been launching ballistic missile strikes on Saudi Arabia for the past few weeks, successfully hitting three airports earlier this month. The Ministry of Defence announced Tuesday that Royal Air Force Typhoon fighters will be deployed to the Gulf Kingdom — while stressing that they will be only used in a defensive capacity. U.K. Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said the “continuing attacks” on the U.K.’s ally are “absolutely despicable.” “The targeting of the airport in Riyadh in particular shows the lengths the Houthis are going to escalate the situation in the region,” he added, referencing the attacks earlier this month that killed 14 people and injured hundreds more. Streeting said that the fighter jets will be used to protect Saudi airspace from drones and missiles. The U.K. will also send an Atlas A400M aircraft, used to transport the equipment, as well as military advisers - POLITICO

Counter Terrorism Policing in the United Kingdom have re-arrested the two men on Tuesday as part of the investigation into activity near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire last month. The 24-year-old UK national and 25-year-old dual UK and Iranian national, both from the borough of Westminster, London, were arrested on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service. Police added that it was “highly likely that there is Iranian state involvement” after three large vans were stopped near the airbase in the early hours of 27 September. The 24-year-old man was initially arrested that day near RAF Fairford and the 25-year-old was later arrested on 1 October in Westminster, central London. Five other UK nationals in their mid-20s were also arrested after the incident, all are still on police bail as the investigation continues. - Sky News

Georgia’s Constitutional Court will begin hearings on October 21 that seek an outright ban on the country’s ‌largest opposition parties, a move critics say would undermine fundamental democratic freedoms in the Caucasus nation. The court will convene for three days in the Black Sea city of Batumi to consider the case brought by the ruling Georgian Dream party, which has been in power since 2012. A final ruling must be delivered by June 24, 2027. Rights groups, the European Union, and others have criticized the ban, saying it could further fracture Georgian politics and society and hinder the country’s ties with the West. An alliance of opposition parties in Georgia has vowed to protest the ban “fearlessly and forcefully” with a monthlong series of major rallies across the country. The opposition has denounced the proceedings, describing them as politically motivated and arguing the ruling party is seeking to eliminate its main competitors. Georgian Dream officials, including the party’s founder Bidzina Ivanishvili -- a billionaire businessman who amassed a fortune in Russia before serving as Georgia’s prime minister from 2012 to 2013 -- have repeatedly threatened to ban the opposition parties, saying the move protects the constitutional order - RFE/RL

The journals…

In this bonus video, free for all readers, I connect the dots between the unrest spreading across European cities and the war in Ukraine. Over the past few days, Paris has at times looked like a war zone, and protests have flared in Milan, Bologna and Turin. The common thread is the cost of living. The bigger question is where this leads: could a cost-of-living revolt in Europe chip away at support for Ukraine, and play into Moscow’s hands?

For those who prefer to read rather than watch, here’s the gist.

The trigger is money. In France and Italy, anger over rising prices has spilled onto the streets. In Milan, protesters targeted petrol price hikes and the state of the education system, with some references to the wars. Demonstrations followed in Bologna and Turin. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called an emergency meeting, and Milan’s mayor described the unrest as a worrying phenomenon.

In France, the scenes have been worse. Paris, the world’s top tourist destination, began to resemble a war zone this weekend, which is hardly good for the country’s image. Much of the anger is aimed at President Emmanuel Macron. After nearly a decade in power, many ordinary French people feel his promise of a better France hasn’t reached them.

Readers may recall the Gilets Jaunes, the long-running movement sparked by fuel price hikes in 2018. Fuel is again part of the story. The war involving Iran has pushed up energy prices. To a much smaller extent, so have Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries, which have hit the supply of refined Russian oil. That feeds a narrative some politicians are happy to exploit.

What struck me was the tone. Both Macron and Meloni have blamed hooligans. When I watched Macron’s speech last night and then Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s press conference today, I saw a lot of tone deafness. The prime minister’s opening words promised a massive criminal response, with an 80% prosecution rate. He claimed two-thirds of those arrested were adult men already known to police, which is difficult to verify. He floated localized curfews and hinted at a crackdown on social media, where these movements spread. He blamed the far left for the mayhem and warned it could destabilize next year’s presidential election. But almost zilch about the core grievances of students and protesters.

Why this matters for Ukraine: Support for President Zelensky in Europe appears to be slipping slightly. In both France and Germany, figures on the far left and far right are more open to Moscow’s arguments. If cost-of-living anger keeps growing, those voices will get louder, and Kyiv’s backers may find it harder to make the case for sustained support. That is especially true if a far-right politicians such as Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella wins next year’s presidential election in France, one of Ukraine’s most important backers.

News Briefs

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed a summit next month with US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to negotiate an ‌end to the four-year-old Ukraine conflict that would favour Moscow, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the discussions. The proposed summit comes amid warming ties between Trump and Putin especially after the US President announced a deal to buy Russian diesel and signed an order on Friday waiving key sanctions on Moscow. Citing ⁠a former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter, the paper said that Putin’s suggestion came in an October 9 telephone call with Trump that also yielded the diesel deal between the two countries. The Russian and Chinese embassies in Washington did not immediately reply to requests for comment. The Kremlin has suggested holding the trilateral dialogue on the sidelines ‌of ⁠the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, the WSJ report said, citing people familiar with the discussions. That summit is set to take place on November 18 to 19 in Shenzhen. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to the Journal that discussions were taking place over a potential meeting. “There is no clear understanding ⁠yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda, although all three parties acknowledge the hypothetical possibility of such a meeting taking place,” he told the Wall Street Journal. A senior US ⁠official told the Journal that Trump had not agreed to such a summit, but he could be receptive to the idea. Trump’s diesel deal with Putin and the ⁠executive order waiving sanctions on Moscow have drawn criticism from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has warned it would embolden Putin and prolong the war.

Saudi Arabia is set to postpone in-person events at its “Davos in the desert” investment conference following an escalation in Houthi attacks on the country’s airports, according to three people familiar with the matter. One of the people said that the organisers of the annual Future Investment Initiative, which was due to begin next week, are now considering either holding the event virtually on the planned dates or postponing it. But they added that the gathering would not take place in person as planned. The move follows a spate of attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in recent weeks, including strikes on Riyadh’s airport, and deals a fresh blow to the kingdom’s ambitions to establish itself as a global financial centre. The FII is one of the Gulf region’s highest-profile gatherings and typically attracts heads of state and executives from the world’s largest banks, asset managers and energy majors. Over the past decade, the FII has become one of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s main platforms to showcase the country’s economic diversification efforts to an international audience - FT

Funding shortages have forced the World Food Programme to cut food assistance in Gaza by around a third. Half a million people have lost access to critical aid just as winter approaches. More than nine months into an extremely fragile ceasefire, 1.4 million people, two-thirds of Gaza’s population, still face crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity. WFP warns that up to 90 percent of Gazans could face high levels of acute food insecurity by the end of 2026, and that recent modest improvements remain fragile. Most people in Gaza have been displaced multiple times. They live amid insecurity, damaged homes, poor sanitation and limited access to safe water. With 80 percent unemployed, many cannot afford fresh vegetables, fruit, protein or cooking fuel. The cuts are also hitting the West Bank. In September, WFP halved the number of people it assists there, from 400,000 to 200,000. Escalating violence, movement restrictions and a deepening economic downturn have left an estimated 900,000 people food insecure, and a third of families cannot afford a nutritious diet. WFP says it urgently needs US$450 million through March 2027 to keep supporting vulnerable people in Gaza and the West Bank. Without it, the agency warns, the fragile gains made since the ceasefire could be lost.

Ukraine says its Starlink service has been deliberately throttled. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the slowdown as part of a “planned operation” to undermine the country’s defences against Russia, the Financial Times reports. A senior Ukrainian official told the paper on Sunday that the service was still being restricted. Washington has pushed back hard. President Donald Trump said neither he nor Elon Musk was responsible, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed Zelenskyy’s accusation as reckless. Starlink has been central to Ukraine’s civilian and military communications since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and any degradation strikes at the heart of its war effort. The dispute is unfolding alongside a wider transatlantic fight over the satellite network. The European Commission has proposed reserving part of its spectrum for European satellite operators, a move that would limit access for US and Chinese firms, including SpaceX. The US ambassador to the EU, Andrew Puzder, warned that European companies could face devastating retaliation if Brussels goes ahead. SpaceX has argued the change risks poorer connectivity in Ukraine. The backdrop matters too. Ukraine has just carried out its largest-ever drone attack on St Petersburg, setting an oil terminal ablaze, in defiance of US demands to stop hitting Russian energy infrastructure. Nothing so far links the two. But as Kyiv and Washington diverge on how the war should be fought, the question of who controls Ukraine’s lifeline to the battlefield is becoming harder to ignore.

Nearly 46,000 foreign nationals from 151 countries have signed contracts with the Russian army and are fighting, or have fought, against Ukraine, according to Dmytro Usov, secretary of Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, as reported by Suspilne. The biggest pools of recruits remain close to home for Moscow: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. But Colombia, an unexpected name, also makes the top tier. The more striking trend is how far the net is widening. Over the first nine months of 2026, recruits from Indonesia, Peru, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Chad, the Philippines, Congo and Panama rose. Meanwhile, the number of recruits from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Cuba and China is falling. Africa has become a major hunting ground. In Kenya, a joint intelligence and police report presented to parliament put the number of recruits at more than 1,000, five times the government’s earlier estimate. Most had been lured by fake job offers and flown out on tourist visas through Istanbul and Abu Dhabi. In South Africa, where World Briefing reported independently on men tricked into frontline service, the government came under pressure to act. President Cyril Ramaphosa raised their return directly with Vladimir Putin. South African law bars citizens from fighting for a foreign army without government authorisation. The figures suggest that Russia’s manpower model increasingly depends on economic desperation across the Global South. It raises uncomfortable questions for those governments about how their citizens end up on a European battlefield, and who is profiting from sending them there.

CNN’s legendary chief international anchor is departing the network. Christiane Amanpour, 68, has decided to sign off from CNN next June, she announced in a bombshell statement on Monday. “After many months of thought and a few sleepless nights, I have decided to separate from CNN, my partner of 43 fantastic years!” she said, adding that she “looks forward to interesting new projects down the line, and will always be rooting for CNN and maintaining its history of independent journalism. Remember: always be truthful, not neutral.” CNN chairman Mark Thompson broke the news to Amanpour’s colleagues in a memo. “Christiane has thought carefully about this decision, and she and I have been discussing it for some months,” he wrote. “Like so many CNNers who will hear the news today, I’m very sorry to see her go, but I’ve come to accept that this is the right time for her, both personally and professionally.” - AP

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a ban on distilling spirits in private homes more than 150 years ago. Plaintiffs challenging the prohibition on home distilling claim the 1868 law is an antiquated relic of Reconstruction-era politics. They argue that Congress overstepped its taxation powers when it enacted the home distilling ban as part of a tax reform measure designed to curb fraud by commercial distillers. Government attorneys counter that Congress properly restricted where spirits can be distilled to prevent producers from evading federal excise taxes. They warn that lifting the ban would violate Supreme Court precedent and erode congressional powers. Federal law makes home distilling a crime punishable by a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine - AP

The journals…

The news that set off the day: two days before tough new Russia sanctions were due to take effect, President Trump waived them. The law he signed in September, named after his late friend Senator Lindsey Graham, now has no teeth.

In this week’s exclusive video, I cover:

• Putin’s floating war chest gets a free pass. The waiver lets off the foreign tankers carrying Russian oil and LNG, and it has no expiry date.

• Whose hand is on the pen? Trump spent a year mocking Joe Biden’s autopen. Now, does that question need to be turned around?

• Quite the eulogy. Trump called the Graham bill a tribute to the senator. Three months after Graham’s death, he’s gutted it.

• Is the “leader of the free world” due for a rebrand?

• Canada’s painful but necessary break. On the eve of Monday’s Alberta referendum, Mark Carney is in Alberta campaigning for the federalist side and talking up oil and pipelines. I look at what still stands in the way: political will and negotiations with First Nations. I also look at why economic decoupling from the US, which I support wholeheartedly, is about to get more painful. Ottawa needs to start preparing Canadians, laid-off workers and small businesses for that now.

• The topic which ignites passions worldwide: bike lanes - and what the heck does that have to do with Russian oil?

The full video is below for World Briefing Plus subscribers.

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In between many live TV hits today, I take you deeper into the growing rift between Kyiv and Washington. The U.S. is loosening sanctions while denying Ukraine vital tools, including intelligence and the militarized version of Starlink. I also look at the punishing overnight strikes on Ukraine, President Zelensky’s trip to Europe to seek more help, and the latest strikes off the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria.

Then I turn to a cause close to my heart: the future of Ukraine’s badly battered media. I argue it’s time to consider evacuating journalists and building a media in exile.

Finally, a change of subject. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are squeezing key air corridors, especially between Asia and Europe. I share practical tips for travellers, from choosing smarter routes to preparing for delays and diversions.

In the video, I mention a special offer for a paid subscription to World Briefing Plus. You can find it here.

News Briefs
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday that 644 Ukrainian drones were intercepted over 26 Russian regions and annexed Crimea overnight, as U.S. President Donald Trump called Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries a “disgrace.” Vladimir region Governor Alexander Avdeyev said air defenses repelled an attack aimed at municipal heating infrastructure serving the regional capital. According to Avdeyev, there were “minor” damages. Unverified reporting by monitoring channels that shared video of an explosion against the dark sky claimed it targeted a data center owned by tech giant Yandex in Vladimir, which was previously damaged in last weekend’s strike. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defenses shot down 94 Ukrainian drones on approach to the capital between Thursday evening and Friday morning. Nearly 160 flights were delayed or canceled across Moscow’s four main airports, with Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo bearing the brunt - Moscow Times

** Last Friday, a similar raid shut Moscow’s airports as Putin’s delegation returned from a summit in Turkmenistan. According to flight-tracking data cited by The New York Times and the independent outlet Agentstvo, the presidential Il-96 he had flown out on was diverted to St. Petersburg. It remains unconfirmed whether Putin was aboard.

• A bipartisan group of nine US senators has called for an investigation into disruptions to satellite systems supporting Ukraine's military. The senators, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D), Thom Tillis (R), Dick Durbin (D), Susan Collins (R), Jack Reed (D), John Cornyn (R), Chris Coons (D), Lisa Murkowski (R), and Richard Blumenthal (D), sent a letter to the Department of Defense inspector-general calling for an investigation into disruptions to SpaceX's Starshield satellite system, which is overseen by the US government. “We write with grave concern regarding reported disruptions to critical US-supported communications and intelligence-sharing capabilities in Ukraine that have endangered American personnel and potentially compromised Ukraine’s ability to defend against Russian missile and drone attacks,” the letter read. The senators urged an immediate probe to determine whether any US officials “directed, authorized, approved, or had advance knowledge of changes to intelligence-sharing arrangements, warning capabilities, or Starlink and Starshield services affecting Ukraine.” Elon Musk's SpaceX owns the Starlink system. Musk wrote on X, which he also owns, that "Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS (President Trump)." - RFE/RL

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked EU leaders to provide €70 billion in additional financial and military support next year, a hefty amount likely to rattle the bloc at a time of rising debt and borrowing costs. The extra money will be used to launch drones against Russia’s advances on the ground, supply chains and war economy, he explained. It should come on top of the €90 billion loan that the EU has approved to cover the needs of 2026 and 2027 together. “Putin has now put together a federal budget to spend even more money on his war. We have to push back against this. And we know how to do it with technology. It costs much less and helps stop his operations against Ukraine and against you,” Zelenskyy told leaders at an EU summit on Friday. “The war will cost €155 billion next year. And we need at least €70 billion more from you – for defence, for weapons, and for our resilience. This is a realistic amount. And I ask you to find this support. It will help us hold Russia back.” - Euronews

Allies of President Donald Trump with direct access to the White House are openly urging him to take extraordinary steps, including declaring martial law, if they decide next month’s midterm elections are “rigged,” Axios reported. There is no evidence that the vote will be rigged. According to Axios, Peter Ticktin, a childhood friend of Trump and attorney for convicted election-equipment breacher Tina Peters, told a September 30 call of MAGA election activists, streamed on Rumble, that a rigged election would require martial law. He later told Axios that authorities would probably need to commandeer ballots and voting equipment. Peters, who was freed this year after Colorado Governor Jared Polis commuted her sentence, met Trump in October and visited the White House with Ticktin in June. Another speaker, Gregory Stenstrom, proposed pausing the election or invoking the National Emergencies Act to force states to change how they run elections. Experts told Axios that much of this goes beyond the president’s authority. Congress sets the date of federal elections, and states control voting systems and vote counts. Neither emergency powers nor martial law would let Trump seize election materials or override election law. “Emergency powers are not just a blank check,” said Derek Tisler of the Brennan Center. Axios notes that doubts about the 2020 election extend into the administration. Heather Honey, who denied the 2020 results in Pennsylvania and Arizona, is now the Homeland Security Department’s deputy assistant secretary for election integrity. A White House spokesperson said Trump believes every legal vote must count. The midterms take place on November 3.

European Council President António Costa took the harshest criticism of his nearly two-year tenure at Thursday’s EU summit in Brussels, as diplomats accused him of losing control of a 14-hour session that produced stalemate on energy prices and the bloc’s next seven-year budget, POLITICO reported. According to outlet, which says it spoke to 16 diplomats and officials on condition of anonymity, talks unravelled over the EU’s second carbon-pricing scheme, ETS2, due to put a price on heating and transport fuel from 2028. Italy, backed by Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Poland, tried to reopen pre-agreed summit conclusions to delay the scheme, and was opposed by Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, the Nordics and the Netherlands. The deadlock forced Costa to cancel the summit’s press conference and push discussions past midnight. One diplomat told POLITICO that Costa was “losing control of the room.” Another said he had performed “worse than Charles Michel,” his widely criticised predecessor. Northern, budget-hawkish states also told the outlet they doubt the former Portuguese prime minister, a Socialist, is acting as an honest broker on the budget, saying he leans toward southern member states. Costa still has defenders. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever called him “capable” and “shrewd,” and several diplomats blamed Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Visegrád group for the disarray rather than Costa. Costa’s spokesperson declined to comment. The stakes are high. Leaders want a budget deal before national elections next year make one harder, and a special budget summit is now set for Nov. 26. POLITICO reports that Costa is expected to seek a second term in 2027.

Britain’s media regulator Ofcom concluded that the United Arab Emirates’ attempted takeover of The Telegraph threatened press freedom and would have run against the public interest, the newspaper reported, citing findings expected to be published on Friday after a two-and-a-half-year delay. According to The Telegraph, which is reporting on its own ownership saga, Ofcom delivered the report to ministers in March 2024. The Culture Department under Lisa Nandy is legally required to publish it but has refused repeated requests, including Freedom of Information requests, which fuelled speculation that the government was shielding Emirati royals from embarrassment. The bid, made through the Abu Dhabi-backed fund RedBird IMI, was never decided on Ofcom’s criticisms. A cross-party revolt in Parliament pushed Rishi Sunak’s government to ban foreign state ownership of British newspapers, which killed the deal outright and opened a diplomatic rift with a major investor. According to the paper, Ofcom found that the fund had political and commercial incentives to influence the paper’s editorial line. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s vice-president, is behind both RedBird IMI and Manchester City. The Telegraph reports that the timing is no accident. London now faces a fresh crisis with Abu Dhabi after Manchester City were found guilty of breaching Premier League spending rules. The UAE has threatened to withdraw billions of pounds of investment, and the case has drawn scrutiny to the prime minister, Andy Burnham, over Emirati money behind Manchester’s regeneration during his time as the city’s mayor. A separate Competition and Markets Authority report is also due Friday. The Telegraph was bought this summer by Germany’s Axel Springer in a £575m deal.

The US appeared to step back from progress on a trade deal with Mexico. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s reported insistence that steel, aluminum, and car levies remain in place with Washington’s biggest commercial partner has thrown the negotiations into question. An expert warned that further undoing the countries’ trilateral free trade agreement with Canada could “jeopardize the financial health” of many American companies, while making US goods more expensive. Elsewhere, however, trade talks between Washington and New Delhi appeared to be gaining momentum — despite US President Donald Trump imposing 100% tariffs on buyers of Russian oil, of which India is the world’s second-biggest. “The big picture, the big framework, the big items are done,” Washington’s ambassador to India said - Semafor

Donald Trump’s favorite aide sent him into a total meltdown by handing him a printed copy of a bombshell report about how he’s thinking of firing his chief of staff. Natalie Harp, 35, printed Politico’s Playbook newsletter out for the 80-year-old president to read on Thursday morning, the outlet reported on Friday. The story sparked a “freakout” as he “blew up” over its coverage of his secret calls to close allies asking who they think should replace Susie Wiles, the ruthless aide so central to the president’s political operation that he calls her his “Ice Maiden,” Politico’s sources said. Wiles and her supporters have since “burn[ed] up phones around town” in trying to calm things down, people familiar with the situation told the outlet. Politico’s revelations that Trump has cooled on Wiles come ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, where the president’s tanking approval ratings have helped Democrats gain a 9-point overall lead over Republicans in the race for control of the House and Senate. The president, for his part, has flat-out denied that any of the reported calls took place. “TOTAL FAKE NEWS Politico doesn’t care about facts, integrity, or honest journalism,” he said in a statement to the outlet on Thursday. “Susie Wiles is my loyal and longest serving Chief of Staff—and there is a reason for that,” he added. “She has been with me since the beginning, is my trusted advisor, and has my COMPLETE confidence.” - The Daily Beast

Watch my live interview with BBC World’s Matthew Amroliwala on Friday afternoon. We unpack Europe’s assistance to Ukraine and the US blocking of intelligence and technology to Kyiv. We also look at the risk that this winter further hollows out Ukraine’s population.

The journals…

Russia is now the single greatest threat to Britain’s security, MI5 director general Sir Ken McCallum declared in his annual threat update. The warning comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited London today to press Prime Minister Andy Burnham for more help in pushing Russian forces back. (During his meeting with Zelensky, Burnham confirmed that the UK would accelerate the supply of crucial air defence missiles to Ukraine - including faster deliveries of British lightweight multi-role missiles to Ukraine, which have proved effective against Russian jet-powered drones).

“Russia remains aggressor number one,” McCallum said. He cited a string of Kremlin-linked hybrid attacks: a cyber attack on Polish energy infrastructure, an attempt to blow up a German cargo plane with an explosive-laden drone, and a thwarted assassination plot in the US. Closer to home, a man was charged last month with allegedly preparing to sabotage a drone factory in Swindon. Moscow, he said, is carefully staying below NATO’s Article 5 threshold. He added that it is “no accident” the Kremlin is trying to unsettle European homelands while its military progress in Ukraine is minimal and horrifically costly.

Only a few months ago, John Healey, then defence secretary and now chancellor, warned that Britain was living through a dangerous moment and needed to increase defence spending. McCallum’s speech suggests that moment has only deepened.

Also from the speech:

• Cold War comparison: MI5 is now devoting more resources to countering state threats than it did during the Cold War, and its state-threat caseload has quadrupled in a decade.

• AI and bioweapons: McCallum warned that AI could put dangerous biological weapons knowledge within reach of even “comparatively low sophistication” terrorists. He launched a new spy-led AI Threat Assessment Centre (AITEC) to assess the risks.

• “State-backed terrorism”: Defence Secretary Wes Streeting described the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare against the UK and its allies in those terms.

• The Brexit row: McCallum cautioned against amplifying Russian trolls and doing their work of sowing discord for them. Burnham had claimed Russia interfered in the 2016 referendum, before his own minister clarified that there was no fresh evidence beyond Parliament’s earlier finding that the Kremlin tried but failed to sway the result.

☝️ For what this means for Ukraine, and why Zelensky’s timing matters, watch my insight video above.

Diesel markets will remain tight well into 2027, and wholesale diesel prices in Europe could rise again in the coming weeks, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned on Wednesday. In its monthly report, the Paris-based energy watchdog said recovering Gulf oil supplies had failed to resolve the fuel squeeze, with global output still falling short of consumption. Supply rose by 2.5 million barrels a day (mb/d) to 102.3 mb/d in September on a Saudi-led jump in Gulf crude exports to more than three-quarters of pre-war levels, but remains slightly below global demand of around 103.5 mb/d, the IEA estimated. The war that began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February is far from over. Iran has choked the Strait of Hormuz, the route for about a fifth of the world’s oil, and recently stepped up attacks on ships there, while Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels are striking Saudi oil sites. “Renewed attacks in the Gulf leave the recovery fragile,” the IEA stated - Euronews

• Iran-backed Houthi fighters reportedly hit the headquarters of Saudi Arabia’s national oil company in overnight strikes, stoking a conflict that risks spiralling into a wider war. The attacks follow a Houthi onslaught that killed 13, injured hundreds, and forced Riyadh’s airport to shut at least through Saturday, denting the kingdom’s reputation for stability and piling pressure on the country’s de facto ruler. Analysts fear the conflict could expand beyond the Arabian Peninsula: The Houthis are reportedly building an advanced missile using Chinese parts. US President Donald Trump has accused the group of “purposefully trying to drive up Oil Prices” ahead of November’s midterm elections; Tehran is reportedly targeting crude tankers in a bid to keep prices elevated - Semafor

Your fridge may soon have ambitions. According to a front-page report in today’s Financial Times, Anthropic is warning that self-replicating AI “worms” could be only months away from hopping between the smart gadgets in our homes: ovens, TVs, robot vacuums and even lawnmowers. As the FT reports, the San Francisco-based developer of the Claude chatbot set out the risk in a research post on Monday. It described AI agents that could copy themselves from device to device with no human pulling the strings, creating a new kind of cyber threat that would be hard to contain. Anthropic says it is already seeing early signs of these worms. It likens their slow creep across poorly secured devices to a “digital slime mold.” Not the mental image anyone wants next to their toaster. The FT notes that the warning comes after investigators were rattled this summer by an attack on Hugging Face, reportedly carried out by swarms of OpenAI agents. The weak spot is the internet of things. Smart thermostats, lights and cameras have multiplied over the past decade, and many come from manufacturers with shoddy security or that have since gone out of business. That leaves no one to patch them. The FT’s account of Anthropic’s prognosis is that the future will be crowded with AI agents running on all kinds of hardware, and that some of them won’t be under human control. The cheap, lightweight ones may also be less squeamish than human hackers about hijacking huge chunks of the world’s connected devices. Time to check what your vacuum’s been up to.

Russia has arrested a Japanese journalist on the far east island of Sakhalin and accused him of spying, in the latest sign of rising tensions between Moscow and Tokyo. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova identified the reporter as Yuki Imai, from the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper, adding that he had been accused of “conducting espionage activities on Russian territory”. Japan’s foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador in Tokyo, Nikolay Nozdrev, over the arrest later on Wednesday. Imai, a reporter at the newspaper’s bureau in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin, was reportedly preparing to return to Japan when he was arrested for allegedly collecting information on Russia’s defence capabilities, according to Russia’s Tass news agency. Russia’s FSB security agency claimed the journalist had intended to pass the information on to Japanese intelligence. The FSB published a video showing masked officers storming a hotel room, pushing a man to the floor and handcuffing him. The man was flown to Moscow, where a court ordered he be held in pre-trial detention. It did not say when the arrest or court hearing occurred. The charges carry up to 20 years in prison - The Guardian

In Wartime Odesa, the Parking Money Goes Home with the Deputy Mayor’s Family

Odesa drivers have started a quiet boycott. Videos by local investigative journalist Kateryna Berendakova, who says she never expected such a public response, have spread across the city’s social media. Her charge: the partner of Odesa’s acting deputy mayor is collecting millions of hryvnias from drivers without investing a thing.

According to Berendakova, the parking signs and equipment were paid for out of the municipal budget. Yet payments go to a private business, and its owner’s name is printed on the signs. The comments under her posts show how the anger is turning into action. Residents say they now refuse to pay, park blocks away, or would rather risk a fine so the money at least goes to the state. Residents, she says, don’t want to pay out of their own pockets to support someone’s private interests. She is now demanding that the city take the lots back into municipal control, and says it’s time officials stopped ignoring Odesans.

Berendakova says it is shameful that, in wartime of all times, Odesa drivers are being fleeced on such a scale.

The numbers behind the backlash come from a May investigation by the Odesa outlet Intent. The municipal operator Odestransparkservice has handed prime parking to private operators, who keep far more than they pass on. Sole proprietor Karina Yablonska runs the parking around the Novyi and Kyivskyi markets. Her business earned about UAH 8.4 million (roughly $200,000) in 2025, and only UAH 3.6 million of that went to the city. Her contracts run to 2029. (Yablonska did not answer Intent’s questions; a representative promised replies that never came.)

Since then, the stakes have risen. In July, Yablonska’s partner, Andrii Makovetskyi, was named acting deputy mayor of Odesa, overseeing the council’s executive bodies. He was formerly first deputy mayor of nearby Teplodar. The couple are in what Ukrainians call a civil marriage, an unregistered union. Her earnings nonetheless appear in his official asset declarations, as the law requires for family members.

A second operator, the NGO Sirena, was co-founded by the father of city councillor Eduard Stas. It controls some 5,600 square metres downtown. Over five years it paid the city about UAH 840,000, while Intent estimates the space could bring in around UAH 20 million a year. The councillor denies any involvement in parking.

Sirena’s contracts expire at year’s end. Whether the city renews them, with a deputy mayor appointed in July whose own household profits from the same system, is now the test.

Trump advisers had been wrangling to save Kimberly Guilfoyle‘s job as US ambassador to Greece before she was asked to resign Tuesday amid allegations of improper and possibly illegal conduct during her time in Athens, insiders tell the Daily Mail. Sources revealed cronies close to the president had been working behind the scenes to keep his former fiancé in the post – fearing she could return to the US with an axe to grind and spill Trump family secrets. Now, after Guilfoyle’s resignation, insiders claim she has kept a secret ‘burn book’ documenting the Trumps and is ready to burn her bridges with the family following her dramatic fall from grace. She is now threatening to release contents of the diary insiders are dubbing ‘The Devil Wears MAGA.’ Guilfoyle, 57, had been a fixture in President Trump’s inner circle throughout her six-year relationship with and engagement to Don Jr – invited to private gatherings and becoming privy to their personal conversations. And while the couple broke off their engagement in 2024, Guilfoyle maintained ties to the family after securing her appointment as US ambassador to Greece – an 11-month stint that came under scrutiny following the Daily Mail’s expose into her lavish lifestyle and allegations of misconduct. The White House on Tuesday confirmed Guilfoyle was asked to resign, following reports that President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been left ‘extremely p***ed off’ by her alleged antics, which prompted a State Department Office Inspector General investigation last week. Allies of the president are said to be relieved that Guilfoyle is leaving her post, but insiders have warned the Trump family may not have heard the last of her - The Daily Mail

The journals…

Live on CBC News: Is the Ukraine–Russia “energy ceasefire” a truce on paper only?

Russia fired six ballistic missiles at Kyiv on Monday evening, and the city didn’t know they were coming. Explosions were heard before the air raid sirens sounded, and Ukraine’s Air Force has now confirmed what residents felt: the missiles were picked up by radar only once they were already over the capital. The Air Force says no warning of launches from Russian territory came in, and it is investigating why.

“A bunch of missiles just arrived without an air raid alert,” a Kyiv TV host told me as it happened. Another resident, sheltering underground on the left bank, said she couldn’t even leave the metro station. She called it terrifying, because the strikes came with no warning at all. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a missile hit a four-storey warehouse in the Desnianskyi district and that transport infrastructure was also struck. Casualty figures were not yet confirmed at the time of writing.

The silence before the strike matters more than the damage. Advance notice of Russian ballistic launches is one of the things Ukraine relies on its partners for. So people on the ground immediately asked whether Washington had stopped sharing intelligence. Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation urged people not to spread that theory and says it is checking the facts. To be clear: there was no confirmation of any cutoff.

The timing is why the question is being asked. A day earlier, the Financial Times reported that the Trump administration was pressing Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries. According to European officials, Washington threatened to suspend intelligence sharing and block PURL, the mechanism Europeans use to buy US weapons for Ukraine - including the crucial Patriot missile defense systems Kyiv heavily relies on. US officials reportedly called Kyiv and European capitals over the weekend, strong-arming them as well as the deputy head of the Presidential Office Pavlo Palisa.

That comes on top of Trump’s announcement of an “energy truce” on October 11, after he had already cleared Russian diesel exports through a temporary US Treasury licence. Zelensky says Ukraine has held off hitting Russian energy targets since the truce was announced, while Russian strikes on Ukrainian power and fuel sites have continued. Asked on Monday whether Moscow had broken the truce, Trump said he would have to check because there were violations “on both sides.”

Whether Monday’s failure was technical, Russian tactics, or a political signal from Washington, the effect on Kyiv is the same: a capital of three million, with an already diminishing population, left wondering whether its early-warning system can still be trusted.

Trump’s Russian Diesel Gamble Could Backfire, Warns Ex-UK Envoy

Donald Trump’s decision to start importing Russian diesel is less of a departure than it looks, and it may not even work on its own terms. That’s the argument Nigel Gould-Davies makes in an opinion piece for The Moscow Times published on Oct. 12. Gould-Davies is Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former British ambassador to Belarus.

In his analysis for the independent, Kremlin-banned outlet, Gould-Davies says the Oct. 9 announcement follows a familiar pattern. Washington again leans toward Moscow and pressures Kyiv. It again chases energy business with Russia. And it again gives up leverage without getting anything back, much as it did in 2025 when it dropped its demand for an immediate ceasefire and its threat of new sanctions.

What is new, he writes, is the motive: lowering pump prices before the Nov. 3 midterms. The plan may still fail. Gould-Davies notes that the volumes are too small to move prices and will likely arrive too late. He adds that Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries could stop the fuel from arriving at all. A bipartisan group of senators has already said the imports would break the 2022 ban on Russian energy. They would also cut across the Lindsey Graham Act passed last month.

The sharper risk, according to The Moscow Times piece, is the reported US threat to cut Ukraine off from intelligence and the PURL weapons pipeline if it keeps hitting Russian refineries. Gould-Davies argues Kyiv would survive this. Ukraine now builds its own long-range weapons, and Europe can fill some of the intelligence gap. The biggest loss would be Patriot interceptors, about 95% of which reach Ukraine through PURL. He contends that US defence firms would also lose out, both on European-funded sales and on Ukrainian battlefield data. Those losses would far outweigh a brief dip in fuel prices.

His verdict is that the White House’s Russia policy is “a masterclass in strategic failure.”

Drones struck two merchant ships off Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast early Tuesday, prompting Prime Minister Rumen Radev to summon Russia’s ambassador. “The latest attack on a commercial vessel in the immediate vicinity of Bulgaria’s territorial waters is absolutely unacceptable,” Radev wrote on X. He said Bulgaria had no “clear and conclusive evidence” to point fingers, but that “the logic suggests that the outcome benefits the Russian Federation.” Three aerial drones hit the Ukrainian-owned Chelsea 3, sailing under the Maltese flag near Bulgarian territorial waters at around 1:30 a.m., Radev said. All 15 crew members — seven Ukrainians and eight Azerbaijanis — were taken safely to Varna, with five receiving medical assistance. A second vessel sank and one crew member was rescued, the prime minister added. Sofia is seeking international support to investigate the strikes and strengthen air and maritime surveillance. Radev — whose Russia-aligned government took office earlier this year — said he would summon Moscow’s ambassador to Bulgaria, Eleonora Mitrofanova, and speak with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Spillover from Russia’s war against Ukraine is escalating. The incident comes a week after drones hit two other merchant ships in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone, sinking one - POLITICO

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s recent attacks on data centers of Russian tech giant Yandex have lowered the number of Internet bots promoting pro-Kremlin hate, a claim that has been disputed by many technology researchers. In recent days Ukraine has struck three data centers belonging to Yandex, often called “Russia’s Google,” causing significant disruptions to many of the company’s services, including ride-sharing, payments, food-ordering, cloud computing and chat-bots. The latest attack hit a Yandex facility in Vladimir, around 180 kilometers east of the capital Moscow, on October 11, forcing a complete suspension of operations - RFE/RL

“The word fear in the Saudi dictionary does not exist,” Saudi’s energy minister said Monday at a conference skipped by top oil executives, as back-to-back Houthi strikes on Riyadh’s airport threaten the kingdom’s economic ambitions. “Efforts to project a business-as-usual calm look strained,” Semafor’s Saudi bureau chief wrote. Saudi’s push to attract foreign investment and tourism is facing setbacks, with limited travel options for its upcoming flagship business event: The main airport is closed, some governments advised against traveling there, and Delta delayed plans for nonstop service to Riyadh. Saudi has poured money into global tech and AI projects, The Wall Street Journal noted, and how it responds to this crisis “will have consequences that stretch well beyond the kingdom.” - Semafor

• The view from Kuala Lumpur is gloomier. Malaysia’s foreign ministry, Wisma Putra, has advised Umrah pilgrims to postpone travel to Saudi Arabia after deadly attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, the New Straits Times reports on its Oct. 13 front page. The paper says a fresh attack on the airport left one person dead and 11 injured. Several flights from KLIA and Johor to the kingdom have been delayed or cancelled indefinitely, and Umrah operators say they will follow the airlines’ lead. For a kingdom selling a bright future, Malaysia’s pilgrims are one more sign that the security picture still gets a vote.

Actor and disability rights advocate RJ Mitte, who brought a lifetime of experience with cerebral palsy to fictional family struggles in an essential role on “Breaking Bad,” died Monday at age 34, authorities and his representatives said. Cameron County Justice of the Peace Cyndi Hinojosa said she had declared Mitte dead at about 1:30 pm local time at what she believed was his home in Brownsville, Texas. She said she was unable to provide a cause, but an autopsy will be performed. Mitte played Walter White Jr., the son of Bryan Cranston’s chemistry teacher-turned-meth dealer Walter White on nearly every episode of the five seasons of the AMC show, which recently ranked as the best of the 21st century in a New York Times poll. Cranston said he is in “deep despair” for the loss of his “sweet son.” “I met him when he was only 14 years old when he was cast as Walter White Jr., a part he played with such joy and enthusiasm,” Cranston said in a Facebook post on Monday night. “Born with Cerebral Palsy, he never — ever — allowed that challenge to be an excuse for anything. He met the demanding shooting schedule head on with great determination.” Mitte told the AP news agency in 2014 that his disability and the surrounding struggles with physical therapy, family problems and exorbitant medical bills, all key subjects on the show, made him better at his job - Euronews

CNN host Kaitlan Collins has humiliated Donald Trump by airing footage of hundreds of vacant seats at his latest rally. The 80-year-old president is desperately trying to energize MAGA voters with campaign rallies across the country before the Nov. 3 midterms. Trump appeared at the Covelli Center in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday, his second rally this month in the bellwether state. His focus on Ohio comes as a CNN poll put Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown 6 points ahead of incumbent Republican—and Trump thirst-magnet—Jon Husted. The same poll, conducted Sept. 29-Oct. 5, had Trump’s own approval with Ohio voters at a dismal 36 percent. That brewing dissatisfaction saw around 3,000 people attend Monday’s rally, at a venue to which he drew around 7,000 supporters in 2017 and about 5,500 in 2022, according to estimates by the Tribune Chronicle. Entire sections of the Covelli Center arena and upper levels were empty, according to the Washington Post. The publication also pointed out that Trump, who regularly brags about the size of his audiences at rallies, did not mention the topic of attendance on Monday. Post reporter Emily Davies shared photos on X showing “entirely empty sections” in the arena, with the damning pictures taken as Trump walked on stage. A quarter of the seats in the venue were covered in tarps, and only two-thirds of the available seats were ever filled, according to local station WFMJ - The Daily Beast

The journals…

Some US officials are also rethinking trips to the kingdom. Saudi officials insist the Future Investment Initiative, the kingdom’s flagship gathering of global financiers later this month, will go ahead (the official website makes no mention of the disruptions, with the speaker list including the King of Jordan, the prime minister of India and the president of South Korea).

The pull-outs follow Saturday’s missile strike on a passenger terminal at King Khalid International Airport, which killed 12 people and wounded more than 300, some critically. It was the deadliest attack on a Gulf Arab state since the Iran war began. Riyadh blamed the Iran-backed Houthis and called the strike a cowardly terrorist attack that would meet a decisive response. A fourth attack on Sunday set off a fire in a different terminal. Saudi authorities said a cruise missile had been intercepted, and AP reported injuries. The airport stayed closed, and the US, German and other embassies told citizens to avoid it.

As energy officials gathered at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton on Sunday, where delegate prices are priced at north of US$3,500, the Houthis renewed their warnings to airlines, workers and passengers to stay away from Saudi airports and airspace. The group says it has used ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, and has also targeted Dammam airport and two Aramco sites in the Eastern Province.

The official handling has deepened the unease. Semafor reports that foreign embassies warned citizens away from the airport hours before Saudi authorities acknowledged Saturday’s attack, while state-aligned Al Arabiya aired reruns. Since the war began on February 28, Gulf governments have curbed coverage and criminalized social media posts. Saudi Arabia had projected an image of insulation from the conflict, and that image is now cracking.

Riyadh is turning to its allies for help. France said last month it would send troops, radars and air defence systems to protect the Yanbu oil terminal on the Red Sea. Last week, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and NATO member Turkey triggered their mutual defence pact for the first time. President Trump says the US may join strikes on the Houthis and will decide quickly. If it does, the Gulf is likely to bear the brunt of any retaliation.

Sources: Financial Times, AP, Semafor, Reuters

• Deadly strikes on Riyadh’s airport threaten more than travel to Saudi Arabia. It also threatens one of the last practical corridors for airlines flying between Europe and Asia. Western carriers already avoid Russian airspace, and the Iran war has pushed many of them out of Iranian and Iraqi skies too. Europe’s aviation regulator, EASA, also advises against flying over Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Oman. That has left Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt, as the main workaround. Some European airlines have been routing south across the kingdom specifically to avoid the central Gulf. That option is now narrowing. On September 30, EASA issued a conflict-zone bulletin, valid until mid-November, telling the airlines it oversees to avoid parts of Saudi airspace in the west of the country. Across the rest of the kingdom, it told them to fly with caution. The Houthis have gone further. Since October 5 they have warned all airlines that Saudi skies are a military operations zone, sparing only the airspace over Mecca and Medina.

  Several carriers have already cut service to Riyadh. Lufthansa Group has suspended flights to the city until at least October 16, and Emirates, Etihad and Air India have also cancelled flights. The bigger question is whether airlines that only cross Saudi airspace will start avoiding it too. If they do, passengers should expect longer flights and higher fares. Earlier detours around the Gulf added an hour or more to some Europe–Asia journeys, and the remaining alternatives run over a contested Red Sea or take much longer routes. Airlines are also likely to treat the conflict as an extraordinary circumstance, which usually rules out compensation for delays and cancellations.

  Sources: EASA, Reuters, Gulf News, Euro Weekly News

The Trump administration is threatening to choke off Ukraine’s weapons supply to force Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries, the Financial Times reports. Officials briefed on weekend calls from US counterparts said the threats include cutting intelligence sharing and blocking PURL, the mechanism Kyiv’s European allies use to buy US weapons for Ukraine. Washington is lobbying European capitals as well as Kyiv. The White House declined to comment. The pressure follows two Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow’s oil refineries on Saturday. Trump said Zelensky “better damn well stop” and suggested Ukraine find a new leader who can make a deal. He complained that Kyiv had been told to hit Russia however it liked but leave refineries alone, and went after diesel anyway. A US official reportedly said that Zelensky had ignored about half a dozen such requests before Trump struck his own fuel deal with Putin. Multiple power plants in Ukraine were struck by Russia hours after Trump claimed an “energy ceasefire” between the two countries. A drone hit a power plant in Kyiv, causing outages in the capital, and strikes on Kharkiv’s energy infrastructure and Odesa’s internet network followed. Earlier, Trump said Russia and Ukraine had agreed to halt strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure. “Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!” he wrote on Truth Social, without giving further details. The ceasefire announcement came two days after Trump said Putin would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel to US and global markets, with another 1.5 million tons to follow by year-end. Trump is under pressure over fuel costs before November’s midterms. US diesel prices have climbed about 70% since the Iran war began, reaching $6.28 a gallon on Friday, up from $3.68 a year earlier. Zelensky publicly rebuked the deal as a gift to Putin that would bankroll more Russian terror. Zelensky said he had not been informed of the energy ceasefire. “It was news for me. But if Russians agree to an energy ceasefire, Ukraine will agree,” he told Axios. Kyiv’s allies said they were awaiting details. There was no immediate confirmation of an agreement from Russia, which has escalated deadly attacks in recent weeks. Its only response was strikes on Ukrainian power plants. “If President Trump negotiated it with Putin, please tell us when the ceasefire begins. We are ready, and we will accept it,” Zelensky said.

• In an interview with ABC News, Zelensky said Ukrainians would decide whether they want a new leader, responding to Trump’s call for Ukraine to pick a new leader. “First of all, with all respect to President Trump, it’s up to our society, up to our people to choose one or another leader,” Zelensky said. The day before, Trump had said Ukraine needed a new president who would agree to end the war. Zelensky said his country could hold elections if Russia agreed to a 60-day total ceasefire.

• The United Kingdom, Germany and Poland have reaffirmed their support for Zelensky after Trump said the country needed a new leader. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X that he was “absolutely convinced” nobody could break Ukraine and its president in their “fight against Russian aggression.” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also backed Zelensky on Sunday, while calling for greater pressure on Moscow to return to peace talks. “We need continued consistency and clarity on the side of Ukraine,” he told Reuters at a meeting of the governing Christian Democrats.

• Kyiv kept up its long-range campaign regardless. A Ukrainian drone strike on Sunday shut down a data centre run by Russian tech giant Yandex, the third strike on the company’s facilities in four days. (FT)

• A bipartisan group of six senators on Sunday called on the Trump administration to “immediately reverse course” on a plan to purchase diesel from Russia to lower high fuel prices. They said the administration had failed to consult Congress or submit any justification for its decision, as required by statute. “The United States should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians. The Administration must immediately reverse course,” they wrote. The signatories are Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Curtis of Utah, and Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. (AP)

• The deal may matter more to Moscow than the cash. Pro-war Russian Telegram bloggers calculate that the promised deliveries add up to about 1.8 million tonnes, or roughly 13.5 million barrels, and cast the deal as Washington bowing to a global diesel shortage. They argue the bigger prize could be access to spare parts and custom-built units for refineries knocked out by Ukrainian drones. Those parts are made to order and slow to source around sanctions, and with Washington now an interested party, manufacturers may be more willing to look the other way. They conclude that the deal, in its current form, benefits Russia far more than the West, and could undercut the strategy of squeezing Moscow through sanctions and lost export revenue.

Sources: Financial Times, Euronews, Axios, ABC News, Politico, Reuters, AP

Watch: Live on BBC World this weekend, I called the U.S.-mediated talks what they are: buffoonery on an epic scale. While Ukraine’s negotiators sat across from Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump was cutting a diesel deal with Putin behind their backs. Kyiv should turn to a more neutral mediator, such as Turkey, Oman or Pakistan.

The US has pulled its B-1 bombers out of Britain over fears of an Iranian-linked drone attack. Former Pentagon official Stephen Bryen argues in Asia Times that bringing them home won’t make them any safer.

Writing in a piece first published on his Weapons and Strategy Substack, Bryen says the US withdrew all 12 B-1s from RAF Fairford on October 4, after intelligence warned that a drone strike on the base was imminent. Reports say the aircraft went to Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. Bryen says the feared attack would have used drones launched from trucks near the base. That echoes Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb in June 2025, which hit Russian strategic bombers deep inside Russia.

Bryen’s core argument is that the drone threat follows the aircraft home. He points to more than 350 unauthorized drone incursions detected at roughly 100 US military installations in late 2024, and says the pace has stayed high since. Ellsworth itself has reported repeated waves of drones in restricted airspace nearby. Bryen reads that as a sign the base has been systematically scouted. Drones recovered near US bases have been commercial, mostly Chinese-made models, and he notes they are easy to buy and hard to trace.

In Britain, Lakenheath, Mildenhall, Feltwell and Fairford have all seen unauthorized drone activity. RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, which also hosts US units, was hit by a Shahed-type drone on March 1. Bryen says the UK lags the US on countermeasures, and that most incursions on either side of the Atlantic go unchallenged.

His warning is that drone surveillance could become an actual strike at any moment, and that bases in the US are no more secure than those abroad.

The journals…

In this week’s World Briefing Plus video, I unpack a dramatic 48 hours for Ukraine.

Kyiv’s negotiators sat through eight hours of talks in Miami, only for day two to be scrapped after it emerged that President Trump had, mid-negotiation, phoned Putin and agreed to lift sanctions on Russian diesel. The Ukrainian side is furious, and has vowed to keep hitting Russian energy infrastructure.

Even more troubling: Washington reportedly threatened, once again, to cut off the intelligence sharing that makes those long-range strikes possible.

And since I recorded this, things have only got worse: Trump is now echoing Putin’s line that Ukraine needs a new president. I’ll have more on that soon.

I also look at the shameful US reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize going to Navi Pillay, a richly deserved honour.

Then I take you outside with me for a walk along Odesa’s port and beachfront, with context and on-the-ground detail you simply won’t find anywhere else. This is what boots on the ground looks like.

The full video is just for paid subscribers. If you value independent reporting from places most foreign correspondents have left, please consider upgrading to World Briefing Plus. Your support directly funds this work, and there’s a great deal coming between now and the end of the year that I’d like you to be part of.

Thank you for being here!

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Navi Pillay celebrated her Nobel Peace Prize the way only an 85-year-old jurist who has seen everything could: with a joke at Donald Trump’s expense. Applauded after the announcement, she quipped: “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump.”

Washington’s answer came within hours. The Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court itself, not just individual judges and prosecutors this time, but the institution. That threatens to cut it off from the banks, insurers and software providers it needs to function. Secretary of State Marco Rubio left no doubt about the intent: “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.” Trump, who has openly coveted the prize, posted on Truth Social that the Nobel committee had “demeaned” it by choosing Pillay. The court called the sanctions an assault on the international legal order and urged its 125 member states to defend it.

The timing could hardly be more pointed. The committee’s chairman warned that the system of international law is under tremendous pressure and its institutions under attack. Pillay, a defence lawyer for Nelson Mandela and the first woman of colour on South Africa’s High Court, went on to serve on the Rwanda tribunal, the ICC and as UN human rights chief.

Former ICC judge Geoffrey Robertson, speaking to the BBC Friday evening, described the Trump team in terms best summed up as “fairly putrid.”

The daughter of a bus driver born under white minority rule, Pillay has spent her life advocating or advising women who’ve faced discrimination, The Times Africa correspondent, Jane Flanagan, told Times Radio today. “I cannot think that she is going to be very bothered by the very severe criticism she’s had - including from Donald Trump, including the very strong criticism from the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and also the Israeli Foreign Ministry who have condemned her as a bigot and even saying that the news of this award would make (one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted followers) Joseph Goebbels applaud from hell. I don’t think she will be bothered by those sort of comments.”

For Ukraine, this is not an abstract fight. Kyiv joined the Rome Statute in 2024, and it leans on the ICC more than almost any other country. The court’s arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over the forced deportation of Ukrainian children anchors what has been called one of the most important international law investigations in modern history. Crippling the court strikes at that work directly.

And yet, on the very day Washington moved to strangle the ICC, Ukraine’s negotiators were sitting in Miami with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the men leading the US-mediated “peace” effort. Speaking to CNN (see video below) and the BBC today, I called it what it is: buffoonery on an epic scale. Their many trips, mostly to Moscow and more recently to Kyiv, have produced nothing. We are no closer to a settlement than when they began. The reflexive move for President Zelensky would have been to pull his team out of Miami, bring it home and turn to a more neutral mediator: Türkiye, which has hosted talks with Russia before, Oman, or even Pakistan. Here on the ground, I detect zero support for leaning on the Americans.

The urgency is hard to overstate. Russia’s recent strikes on bridges, railways, airports, border crossings and Odesa’s port are not the work of an aggressor trying to make life uncomfortable. They show a state bent on taking all of Ukraine, and then some. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, told AFP this week that the capital is entering survival mode. Repeated strikes on the Dnipro bridges have choked traffic between the two banks, rolling blackouts have briefly halted the metro, and parts of the city have gone without water (as did parts of Odesa today). He is again urging residents with somewhere to go to consider temporarily relocating, a suggestion that drew a backlash last winter. He refuses, though, to call for a full evacuation, warning that “the best scenario for Putin is that we all leave.” In Odesa, where I am reporting, the port that fed the world and sustains the regional economy has been immobilized. It is the equivalent of taking the launch pads out of Cape Canaveral. On the sidelines of UNGA, the clearest minds I spoke to agreed that Putin believes the West is afraid to fight him. He feels zero deterrence, and the war is spreading faster than any of us imagined.

Live from Odesa, I told Zain Asher on CNN Friday that the latest U.S.-mediated talks to end the war in Ukraine amount to "buffoonery on an epic scale." Ukraine, the United States and European officials met to discuss a settlement, but Russia was not even at the table.

News Briefs
The Omani co-pilot who attacked the captain of the Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv had planned to crash the plane into Tel Aviv’s international airport in a suicide attack, according to the United Arab Emirates‘ top prosecutor. The statement released on Friday by Attorney General Hamad Saif al Shamsi and published by the state media did not appear to implicate Flydubai in any wrongdoing. According to the statement, UAE public prosecutors believe that the co-pilot’s plan was inspired by the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US and aimed at “causing the greatest possible loss of life.” The investigation found that the suspect had used two previous flights to Tel Aviv to familiarize himself with the flight route and airport. He had worked for several airlines in different countries, including Oman Air and Royal Air Maroc, before joining Flydubai in January 2026. The prosecutor’s findings also showed that he met the professional and security requirements for employment. These requirements included holding a pilot’s license, providing a certificate of good conduct, and completing the necessary background checks. “None of the procedures revealed any indications of his extremist views or his intention to carry out a terrorist plot,” according to the statement - DW

King Charles has paid Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s £1.5m repair bill that’s owed for the poor condition of Mountbatten-Windsor’s former home at Royal Lodge in Windsor. It’s understood that the money is coming from the King’s private income - and will cover what Andrew owes his former landlords, the Crown Estate, on leaving Royal Lodge. There was a total £1.8m penalty for the “dilapidations” to Royal Lodge, but that has been reduced by the £300,000 Mountbatten-Windsor would have received for an early surrender of his lease. The Crown Estate say they have not given any money to Mountbatten-Windsor at the conclusion of his lease and have now received the net £1.5m payment they were owed. Mountbatten-Windsor left his Royal Lodge home in February, in the middle of a storm of revelations about his connections to the US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein - BBC

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the White House will consider anyone who does not adopt his preferred term of “super intelligence” as “the enemy,” escalating his campaign to rebrand artificial intelligence amid calls to erect more guardrails. “The White House considers anyone that uses the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, ‘Super Intelligence,’ THE ENEMY!” Trump said on Truth Social. The renaming of AI to “super intelligence” is part of a rebranding effort by the president to cast a more positive light on the rapidly developing technology. The technology has encountered intense scrutiny by lawmakers and experts about whether it has the appropriate guardrails to address safety and security concerns, particularly as instances of rogue agents accessing government websites have cropped up in different parts of the world. Trump has largely brushed off calls to rein in AI development, meeting with billionaire executives at the White House to vouch for the rapidly developing technology as an overall positive for the world, as well as necessary for economic growth and national security. He has argued that “super intelligence” is a better portrayal of the technology’s capabilities and has gotten some of the industry’s executives to use the term -POLITICO

Europe’s airlines are bracing for a brutal winter. Industry bosses told the Financial Times that persistently high fuel prices, driven by the energy shock from the Iran war, will force them to cut flights, slash spending and delay payments on leased aircraft. “Everybody is going to be hurting next year,” warned Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, who expects elevated fuel costs to last until at least 2028. The pain is spreading. easyJet and Lufthansa are among carriers scaling back winter capacity, and Delta Air Lines has slashed its annual profit forecast, saying the fuel spike will cost it an extra $6bn this year. Jet fuel is still running at $1,200 to $1,300 a tonne, against a norm of around $700, and the squeeze will tighten as fuel hedges expire. Analysts and financiers now openly raise the prospect of airline failures before winter ends in March. That would come on top of the collapses of US carrier Spirit Airlines in May and airBaltic last month. Medium-sized and smaller carriers are the most exposed, the FT reported. IAG’s Luis Gallego says Europe’s leisure market is suffering most, while premium travel is holding up. For passengers, expect fewer seats, higher fares and more last-minute uncertainty.

Accused of Spying, Treated Like Terrorists

Masked, armed officers dragged a Ukrainian investigative reporter from his car in Vienna and held him for 12 hours on suspicion of spying for Ukrainian military intelligence as he tracked a fugitive former prosecutor general. His injured cameraman is still in custody, and Austria has yet to produce a shred of evidence.

Austria has some explaining to do, and so far it has offered suspicion instead of explanation.

Mykhailo Tkach, head of investigations at Ukrainska Pravda and one of Ukraine’s most respected investigative journalists, was detained in Vienna on Thursday while on assignment. He was tracking former Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, whom Ukraine’s parliament fired on September 15 amid a major corruption investigation. Kravchenko had left the country the day before, ostensibly for a conference in Paris whose organizers say they never expected him. Last month Tkach revealed that Kravchenko and his wife had registered their Vienna residence at the office address of a corporate services firm. The Ukrainian outlet Media Hub now reports that Kravchenko is under protection in Austria. World Briefing could not independently verify that claim, and it is not clear what form any such protection takes.

Tkach’s account of his arrest, given to Ukrainska Pravda after his release, is chilling. “They detained us like terrorists,” he said. Armed men in masks smashed the windows of their car and dragged him and his cameraman, Yaroslav Bondarenko, onto the road. One knelt on Tkach’s neck as he repeated that he was a journalist. Because the men did not identify themselves or explain what they were doing, Tkach says that for the first half hour he believed they were being kidnapped.

At the police station, he says, his belongings were taken and he was put in a solitary cell for two hours, where a doctor visited him. He was then ordered to strip completely, and his clothes were taken away before being returned. Officers weighed him and measured his height. When he refused to sign a document in German, saying he could not understand it, an officer grew angry and began shouting. Only when he was brought before two people he took to be investigators, he says, did a real conversation begin.

Tkach was released at 4 a.m. on Friday after roughly 12 hours in custody. His phones have not been returned. Bondarenko fared worse. He was injured during the arrest and taken to hospital, and his questioning began only overnight. At a press conference on Friday, Austria’s Interior Minister, Gerhard Karner, confirmed that Bondarenko remains in custody and said the two journalists had been detained on suspicion of espionage.

The accusations go far beyond a routine check. Tkach told Ukrainska Pravda that Austrian authorities accused him and Bondarenko on three counts: espionage on behalf of Ukraine’s military intelligence, membership in a criminal organization, and causing harm to the Republic of Austria. Vienna prosecutors told the public broadcaster ORF that the espionage suspicion has not been confirmed, and Tkach says it became clear during questioning that there is no evidence against either of them.

The prosecutors’ office also disclosed that two other Ukrainian citizens were detained earlier this week on suspicion of espionage in separate investigations. Spokesperson Nina Bussek said one has been released and the other is still being questioned, and that the suspicions against both have so far not been substantiated. That makes four Ukrainians held as suspected spies in Vienna in a matter of days, and so far not a single suspicion has stood up.

Tkach believes his detention may have been triggered by information someone fed to Austrian police, possibly in a deliberate attempt to manipulate them. He did not say who. But Austrian authorities now face an obvious question: who pointed armed officers at two reporters tracking a fugitive former prosecutor general, and why did they act on it so aggressively? On what basis were two accredited journalists treated as spies and handled like terrorists, and why is one of them, injured, still being held?

Ukrainska Pravda calls the detention unlawful. Ukraine’s embassy in Vienna says it expects a prompt official explanation of the circumstances and legal grounds for Bondarenko’s detention, and has requested consular access. Tkach credits Ukrainian diplomats with making a real difference to his case. World Briefing has put detailed questions to Austria’s Interior Ministry, its Foreign Ministry and the Austrian Embassy in Kyiv. As of Friday evening, none had responded.

The Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which I worked for in Ukraine, has gone quiet too. The office of its Representative on Freedom of the Media, Ambassador Jan Braathu, which also sits in Vienna, told World Briefing early on that he was aware of the case and seeking clarification. There has been nothing since: no public statement, no condemnation, no demand for Bondarenko’s release. Ukraine is an OSCE participating State. So is Austria, and both are bound by the same commitments on the safety of journalists. As a former OSCE spokesperson, I expect far more than “seeking clarification” when a journalist is injured and held on the organization’s own doorstep.

This is not the first time this team has been stopped by the authorities of an EU country while doing its job. In February 2024, Polish police detained Tkach and Bondarenko near the Belarusian border as they filmed freight moving between Poland, Russia and Belarus. They were held for at least four hours, their phones and memory cards were taken, and they were not allowed to contact anyone. Reporters Without Borders condemned that episode. Vienna has now gone much further.

For the country that hosts the OSCE - ostensibly the continent’s leading advocate for press freedom - this is a stain on its reputation. Reporters chasing a fugitive former prosecutor general were accused of spying, and one was hurt and remains locked up. The man they were chasing walks free. It also fits a pattern. Austria does not generally extradite Ukrainian citizens. Tkach’s 2022 “Battalion Vienna” investigation documented how comfortably Ukrainian businessmen and former officials, several of them wanted at home, had settled in the Austrian capital.

Then there is Dmytro Firtash. The Ukrainian oligarch was arrested in Vienna in 2014 on US bribery charges, which he denies, and has lived there ever since. Last December, Vienna’s Higher Regional Court finally ruled out his extradition, after prosecutors missed the deadline to appeal and after Firtash had claimed diplomatic immunity as a one-time representative of Belarus to international bodies in Vienna. Ukraine has sanctioned him for supplying titanium to Russia’s military industry, and Britain has sanctioned him too. Austria also turned down a Spanish money-laundering extradition request.

A country that lets a sanctioned oligarch run out the clock on extradition, while treating the reporters tracking a fugitive prosecutor like terrorists, has its priorities backwards. Bondarenko should be released without delay, and Austria owes the public the evidence, if any exists, behind the accusations. As host of the OSCE, Austria should hold itself to a higher standard. Right now, it is falling well short. World Briefing will update this story as responses come in.

And finally, on a positive note….

The journals….

VIDEO: Back in Odesa after a few weeks away, taking the city’s pulse from Taras Shevchenko Park. On one side stands Chornomorets Stadium, one of the port city’s landmark structures, badly damaged in a recent Russian strike. On the other is world port Odesa, visibly more battered - much more battered - than when I last saw it and worryingly silent. Meanwhile the war keeps spreading: into NATO waters, into Moldova and beyond.

Britain’s foreign office on Thursday announced new sanctions targeting individuals and entities it ‌said were involved in the production or transport of Russian oil, facilitating military manufacturing and circumventing financial services sanctions. According to Reuters, the package included:

• A further 12 oil tankers ⁠which Britain says are operating as part of Russia’s shadow fleet and helping Moscow evade sanctions on oil exports

• Three crypto exchanges and two payment platforms suspected by Britain of being used by Russia to circumvent financial sanctions

• Britain said two of those ‌entities ⁠sanctioned had processed and facilitated transactions with the A7 illicit finance network

• Seventeen entities and individuals involved in the supply of goods deemed ⁠by the UK, US and EU to be vital for the Russian war effort, including ⁠Russia-based importers of machine tools, electronics and materials used to produce missiles and ⁠drones

A Ukrainian drone attack ignited a fire at a data center owned by Russian tech giant Yandex in the Ryazan region overnight, the company said Thursday, suspending the site’s operations and triggering service disruptions. The attack marks the first confirmed strike against Russian data infrastructure since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, weeks after Moscow launched attacks against Ukrainian data centers. Yandex confirmed that operations at the facility in the town of Sasovo were fully suspended while emergency teams worked to contain the damage, according to a statement circulated in the media. Governor Pavel Malkov said the roof of a Sasovo district company, which he did not name, caught fire. No casualties were reported. Outage tracking platform Downdetector recorded more than 1,300 user reports of disruptions affecting Yandex Cloud, Yandex Documents and Yandex Tables, while core consumer tools like search and taxi services remained online. Yandex shares dropped more than 3.4% during Thursday morning trading on the Moscow Exchange - Moscow Times

Commentary: The WSJ’s Rogue Pilot Problem

The Wall Street Journal led today’s front page with a striking claim: pilots deliberately crashing their own planes is now one of aviation’s biggest safety threats.

In fairness, the news hook is legitimate: on 30 September, the Omani first officer of flydubai FZ1073 allegedly attacked his captain with the cockpit crash axe on a Dubai–Tel Aviv flight carrying more than 170 people, most of them Israeli. According to Israeli officials cited by Reuters, he told UAE interrogators he had planned the attack before flydubai hired him.

But the Journal’s wider case is weaker - much weaker. It puts MH370, China Eastern 5735 and Air India 171 alongside Germanwings, the only crash on its list officially ruled a deliberate act. China Eastern 5735, a Boeing 737-800 flying Kunming to Guangzhou in March 2022, plunged almost vertically from cruising altitude into a hillside in Guangxi, killing all 132 on board. Beijing has never published a final report, which has left US officials’ suspicions of a deliberate act to fill the silence. The others also rest on what unnamed US officials believe, while the investigators in charge have reached no such conclusion. MH370 remains officially unexplained. India’s final report on Air India 171 is still pending and fiercely contested.

MH370, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, vanished in March 2014. It is believed to have ended in the southern Indian Ocean, but the main wreckage has never been found and the cause remains officially unexplained. Air India 171, a Boeing 787 bound for London, crashed into a residential area of Ahmedabad seconds after takeoff in June 2025, killing 260 people on board and on the ground. India’s final report is still pending and fiercely contested.

Connecting the dots: FlyDubai is a security failure, a would-be attacker who got onto a flight deck. A pilot in a mental-health crisis is a different problem with different fixes. Combining them into one alarming death toll makes a better front page than a sound diagnosis. Families still waiting for answers deserve findings, not leaks.

The White House chief of staff’s daughter has turned up in a photo, rifle in hand, at a shooting range in a pro-Russian Balkan statelet that pays her firm $35,000 a month. Katie Wiles, daughter of Susie Wiles, is a partner at Continental Strategy, according to the Financial Times. In February the firm signed on to lobby for Republika Srpska, the Serb entity in Bosnia run by Milorad Dodik’s party. CBS News verified the photo, which shows her beside Srpska’s interior minister. The firm says the August trip was for another client. But a fellow partner, ex-Trump campaign aide Alejandro Garcia, arranged a White House meeting last month between Susie Wiles and Dodik ally Željka Cvijanović. It follows a New York Times report that Trump operatives James Blair and Chris LaCivita advised the Srpska government before Bosnia’s 4 October election. Connecting the dots: Srpska has spent at least $8.9 million on Washington lobbyists since 2025. Sanctions on Dodik were lifted last October. A $1.5 billion pipeline deal then went to a firm run by Trump’s former lawyer and Michael Flynn’s brother. On election night, Dodik thanked Putin.

Nigeria’s president is spending his re-election campaign fighting a lone Californian in a US courtroom. For three years Bola Tinubu has used American lawyers to keep sealed the FBI records from a 1990s Chicago drug investigation, and he is losing ground. In August the FBI acknowledged for the first time that it holds an investigative file on him. Together with the DEA, it has since released hundreds of partially redacted pages. The man pushing for more is Aaron Greenspan, founder of the legal records site PlainSite. He is representing himself, has no stake in Nigerian politics, and is best known for years of litigation against Elon Musk and Tesla. Against him is Chicago firm Henderson Parks, which argues that releasing the files would be an unwarranted invasion of Tinubu’s privacy. The case centres on a 1993 IRS affidavit describing a heroin network allegedly run from Nigeria. It cites an associate saying Tinubu helped move money for the alleged ringleader. US authorities seized about $460,000 from accounts tied to Tinubu in a civil forfeiture. He was never charged and has consistently denied wrongdoing. His spokesman calls it a long-settled civil matter. The defence has stumbled. In one filing Tinubu’s lawyers described him in 1993 as a private “student” with full privacy rights. He had graduated 14 years earlier and was then a serving senator. They later withdrew the claim. Connecting the dots: Nigerians vote in January, and analysts expect the economy and insecurity to dominate the campaign, not a 30-year-old case. But a sitting president asking a foreign court to keep his own records hidden is a bad look. Rival Peter Obi has called it profoundly embarrassing. If the next release contains anything new, the story could quickly matter more. Source: Semafor.

Guilfoyle sought $100,000 from Trump donor ahead of confirmation, WSJ reports

Days before her July 2025 confirmation hearing as U.S. ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle pressed Kentucky Trump donor Eric Deters to pay off a $100,000 American Express balance, according to Signal messages and texts reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. She sent him wiring instructions, telling him a direct payment to Amex “won’t show up anywhere.” Deters declined, saying it would cost him his marriage.

The request came as Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s former fiancée, was promising to use her access on Deters’ behalf. He had dangled payments of up to $1 million for help with an IRS dispute over a tax deduction, a push for the Justice Department to seek the extradition of a fugitive Ohio surgeon, and a Tucker Carlson booking. The messages show her forwarding her outreach to incoming IRS chief Billy Long, now ambassador to Iceland, and repeatedly warning Deters not to put money talk in writing because it could cost her the ambassadorship. Deters, a twice-suspended lawyer and former radio host who says he paid her $300,000 in speaking fees over the years, says she delivered nothing.

Guilfoyle’s lawyer says she disputes the messages’ authenticity and was owed money for past speaking work. Deters denies owing her anything. The report follows last week’s call by Democrats on the Senate and House foreign affairs committees for a State Department review of her conduct, prompted by an earlier Journal investigation into her promotion of a Greek company. On Wednesday in Athens, Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly praised her as a “strong ambassador.”

Why it matters: The story raises a direct question about whether a nominee was trading on proximity to the Trump family for personal payment during Senate vetting, and Rubio’s endorsement signals the administration is standing by her for now.

The journals…

VIDEO: From the Moldova–Ukraine frontier: why I’m more worried now than at any point since the full-scale invasion began. Russia’s war is spreading further and faster than Europe’s leaders seem willing to admit. Drones are hitting ships in NATO waters, strikes are landing near the joint Ukraine-Moldova Palanca crossing, and Brussels is quietly planning for the first deaths from a hybrid attack. Yet London is talking about the mid-2030s. In this short video I set up today’s combined issue: why the US isn’t coming, why Europe isn’t ready, and why the choice is to spend now or pay far more later. Reporting from here, where few foreign journalists are based, is only possible because of paid subscribers. If you value seeing this story from where it’s happening, please consider upgrading to World Briefing Plus. The 30% off offer ends very soon.

👉 Upgrade here

CHISINAU — I’ll be blunt: I am more worried now than at any point since the full-scale invasion began.

Here on the Moldova–Ukraine frontier, the war doesn’t feel hybrid. In recent days Russian strikes have hit around the Palanca crossing, one of the main arteries between Odesa and Moldova. On Tuesday, drones hit two merchant vessels in Bulgarian waters, inside NATO territory, and several sailors are missing. As I told Times Radio yesterday, this war is spreading further and faster than any of us expected.

Europe has to face two hard truths. First, the United States is not coming to the rescue. Second, Europe is not ready to meet a kinetic attack on one of NATO’s smaller members, whether that’s a Baltic state, Romania or Bulgaria. The question is no longer whether Putin will test Article 5, but when.

Britain’s answer is a better defence plan by the mid-2030s. But every scenario I’m hearing points to an attack much sooner than that. At a briefing on the sidelines of UNGA last month, the message was stark: the most likely threat comes from the skies. It would be a campaign to immobilise our way of life by taking down power grids, transport and communications.

I’m not alone in sounding the alarm. “It is absolutely clear right now that there isn’t enough urgency,” General Sir Richard Barrons, the former commander of UK Joint Forces Command, told Times Radio Breakfast this morning. He warned that the government is putting the country in great jeopardy, and said he has laid in his own provisions, including a generator. When a former joint forces commander is preparing his own household for disruption of up to a few days, ministers should take note.

Instead, Prime Minister Andy Burnham does not appear to have the wherewithal to level with the British public and push through the major spending needed to meet the UK’s NATO commitments. Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, floated an “Iron Dome”-style shield for Britain, then walked it back to mean protection against drones.

Putin’s calculus is simple. He believes the West is afraid to go to war with him, so he feels little deterrence. Each unanswered provocation confirms it.

Moldova shows how thin the margin is. This country is massively unprotected. It would take only three or four Russian drones or missiles to trigger a mass exodus, perhaps half a million people or more, towards the Romanian border. That is a crisis Europe would own whether it likes it or not.

Telling people to stock up on provisions is not a defence policy. British and European leaders need to put their societies on a genuine war footing now, not in 2035.

The bottom line: Spend what you need to now to protect yourselves, or spend far more later on reconstruction and on playing catch-up with Russia.

News Briefs
EU ambassadors have been meeting in closed-door “restricted format” sessions, with no phones and no aides, to plan how the bloc would respond to a Russian hybrid attack that kills multiple citizens, POLITICO reports. Five EU diplomats and officials told the outlet such an attack is looking increasingly likely. The talks intensified after an explosives-laden drone was found at Leipzig airport in August. They have focused on deploying emergency teams, releasing EU funds for a stricken member state, and coordinating the bloc’s public messaging. Officials privately describe the absence of fatalities so far as luck. But the planning is exposing old fault lines. Some capitals say the EU is duplicating NATO. Eastern flank states are wary of sharing intelligence in EU forums that may leak to Moscow. And Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed “emergency security protocol” faces resistance from diplomats who say existing crisis tools are enough. Former NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu, now at RUSI, offered the sharpest line: “Putin doesn’t care whether decisions are taken by Coreper 2 or the NAC.”

Houthi forces have targeted Aden International airport with ballistic missiles and drones, forcing a civilian flight from Cairo to divert to Jeddah, with no casualties reported. Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen says it has intercepted and destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile north of Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh - Al Jazeera

The former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of treason and conducting espionage on behalf of foreign governments, in a major blow to Berlin’s security establishment. Though the BND has historically been plagued by spying scandals — deterring some Western partners from sharing intelligence — August Hanning, who left the agency in 2005, is its first former chief to face charges. The revelations add pressure on an intelligence establishment trying to remake itself after decades, and complicate Berlin’s efforts to counter Russia’s hybrid war, as lawmakers debate expanding the BND’s powers. But a ruling party lawmaker cast the arrest in a positive light, telling DW it shows that Germany “will not tolerate the betrayal of secrets.” - Semafor

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu will make a public address later Wednesday on the nation-wide student demonstrations as well as the country’s finances, his office said. President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency meeting with Lecornu and other key ministers on Tuesday after hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, union workers and parents joined nationwide demonstrations protesting lack of national education funding. The Interior Ministry put the number of demonstrators at 250,000, while organisers estimated that almost twice as many people had joined the protests. Police arrested 488 people during the demonstrations, and the Interior Ministry said 43 members of law enforcement had been injured. A total of 891 high schools out of the 3,700 across France saw their lessons “suspended, either completely or partially, for various reasons”. Around 40 percent of public higher education institutions were also disrupted on Tuesday, the French higher education ministry said - France 24

Odesa member of parliament, Oleksiy Goncharenko, one of Ukraine’s most prominent lawmakers, has said Kyiv is losing the war. He argues Ukraine should urgently seek talks with Moscow, including issue-by-issue deals and a possible hint at neutrality, RFE/RL reports. Zelensky accused him of sowing panic. On October 5, Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party expelled him from its faction. Yet Danylo Hetmantsev, a senior MP from Zelensky’s own party, also called for negotiations to become the top priority. Goncharenko is no fringe voice. He founded the Black Sea Security Forum, which draws prominent foreign politicians and analysts, so his words carry weight in Western capitals. Why it matters: Coming soon after Mykhaylo Fedorov’s bruising exit as defence minister and ahead of a hard winter, the debate over what “winning” means is now out in the open.

Latvia on Tuesday moved to kick out a Russian journalist and noted online commentator who has been living in the country for more than a decade. “Taking into account the information received today from the competent authorities, and after discussions with the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior, I have decided to initiate the process of adding another Russian citizen to Latvia’s list of personae non gratae,” said Riga’s Foreign Minister Baiba Braže. A senior European official with direct knowledge of the case confirmed that the individual concerned was Leonid Ragozin, a Russian journalist who formerly worked for the BBC and contributed to Bloomberg and POLITICO. In recent days, Ragozin said Russia is compelled to respond to assumed Western provocation with “brute force” on a podcast hosted by Aaron Maté of the Grayzone, a U.S.-based news outlet that is skeptical of Western support for Ukraine - POLITICO

Skydance CEO David Ellison reassured a nervous Anderson Cooper that CNN will retain its editorial independence in the wake of the blockbuster Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Cooper interviewed Ellison and his new co-CEO Ynon Kriez about life under the newborn media behemoth at a Los Angeles town hall in front of CNN staff. “I want to start with a smaller part of this company, but it’s going to cause you headaches: news,” Cooper shakily said to laughter, according to leaked audio of the sit-down. “Asking for a friend — or frenemies, I’m not sure.” Cooper went on to lay out criticism from some observers, who have slammed CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’ handling of the network — which was already owned by Paramount before the merger — along with the Ellison family’s Trump ties and War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent call for the exec to overhaul CNN. “Are there changes you want to see in coverage at CNN, are there lessons you do or don’t want to apply from CBS News?” Cooper asked. “I believe deeply in journalism,” Ellison replied. “In the world we live in today, having truth-based, fact-based, bi-partisan news that informs the public has never been more important.” The exec added that both CBS News and CNN’s work is “vital to democracy” and that he supports it — while planning “to scale and transition the business digitally.” Earlier Tuesday, Ellison and Kreiz reportedly gestured at layoffs in a memo to employees. “Integrating two companies will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce. We are committed to handling this process thoughtfully and respectfully,” they wrote, according to Variety, though they did not detail any such plans at the town hall - New York Post

The journals…

In the video below available to World Briefing Plus subscribers, I wrap up what happened, why this crossing matters, and what it tells us about where this war may be heading. I also mention signs that people are leaving Kyiv ahead of what could be a brutal winter. New data from the property portal LUN backs this up: rental listings in Kyiv have jumped 66 per cent in two months and more than tripled in Odesa, while listings in western cities have dropped by roughly 60 per cent. People appear to be heading west, toward relative safety.

After I finished filming, more news came in from the other end of Russia’s western frontier. The Moscow Times reports that the Kremlin brushed off news that Estonia is moving its main combat units to within about 50 km of the Russian border. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov’s response was a pointed reminder that Russian intelligence is watching.

On the same day, Germany's foreign intelligence chief warned that Russia could launch "low-intensity military activities" in the Baltic states. And Poland announced it is beefing up its military presence in the Lublin region near the Ukrainian border, including a new drone brigade and, for the first time, a Patriot air-defence battery there.

Moldova in the south, Poland in the middle and the Baltics in the north. Moscow is probing Europe’s edges, and the pressure is building on both flanks at once.

Why upgrade now? World Briefing has just broken into Substack's ‘Rising in News’ Top 40 chart for the first time, at #36, and that's thanks to readers like you. For the foreseeable future I'll be reporting from the Black Sea region, where few or no foreign journalists are based and the major outlets at best parachute in from time to time. This is exactly the kind of frontline reporting that is missing right now. Upgrade to World Briefing Plus here. Only four days left to get 30 per cent off monthly and annual subscriptions.

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Video briefing, filmed in Istanbul: why women closing in on top jobs from Nashville to New York to Geneva is rare good news.

A striking front page (see below) in Knoxville this morning: “Madam Governor.” Tennessee, a deeply red state, is about to make history. For the first time in the state’s 230 years, both major parties have nominated women for governor, so Tennessee will almost certainly get its first female governor. Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn faces Democrat Jerri Green, a Memphis city council member, on November 3. A third independent female candidate is also gaining ground. Only six women had ever run for governor in Tennessee before this year.

The same trend is playing out on a much bigger stage. At the UN, the race to succeed António Guterres, who retires at the end of the year, is increasingly led by women. In the Security Council’s fourth secret straw poll on Tuesday, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan widened her lead, with 10 “encourage” votes against three “discourage” and two “no opinion.” She has already cleared the nine-vote threshold the Council needs to recommend a candidate. In second place is Guyana’s first-ever female foreign minister, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, who briefly took the lead in the August poll. The UN has never had a woman as secretary-general in its 80-year history. The decisive factor is still the P5 veto, and Rodrigues-Birkett is reportedly facing pushback from Washington over her perceived closeness to China and her positions on Gaza.

At a debate at Goals House during UNGA week, I argued that this is far more than a symbolic milestone. As I often said during my years as a UNICEF spokesperson, the evidence is clear: women in leadership and decision-making roles drive more inclusive, gender-responsive, and family- and community-friendly policies. At a time when children and families bear the brunt of conflicts from Gaza to Sudan to Ukraine, a woman at the helm of the UN would be good news indeed.

In Geneva, the Wold Health Organization (WHO) succession is also shaping up as a contest with strong female candidates, I was told at the UNGA in New York. Six candidates have been nominated to replace Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: Qatar’s Hanan Al-Kuwari, Saudi Arabia’s Hanan Balkhy, Belgium’s Hans Kluge, Spain’s Maria Neira, Indonesia’s Budi Gunadi Sadikin and Gevorg Tamamyan of Botswana. Three of the six are women. The Executive Board will draw up a shortlist in January 2027, and the World Health Assembly will make the final choice in May. (UNICEF, where I worked for the better part of a decade, has had several female executive directors;

The common thread is that women may be taking charge of institutions at the point when they are most strained: a UN facing budget cuts and calls for reform, and a WHO still recovering from Washington’s 2025 exit. The cynical reading is the “glass cliff,” where women are handed the top job once the building is already on fire.

Polls have closed in Brazil’s general election, after voters queued in long lines for a tight first round of the presidential race. After casting his ballot, 80-year-old left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva warned that the choice was between democracy and “barbarism”. His challenger, right-winger Flávio Bolsonaro, 45, said he wanted to “free the Brazilian people”. The result is forecast to be close. BBC Brazil’s poll aggregator shows that the gap between Lula and Bolsonaro is only two points. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the election will go to a run-off on 25 October. Just over 90% of votes have been counted so far, with no candidate claiming more than 50% at the time of writing. Bolsonaro leads with 48.05%, while the incumbent Lula trails with 43.97%. According to Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), more than 158.7 million Brazilians, including one million people abroad, are eligible to vote in the election. Lula is challenged by 11 candidates, although the vote count so far indicates that candidates other than Lula and Bolsonaro will get only about 10% of the vote - BBC

Merz in Kyiv: Solidarity, with Strings Attached

Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv by train early Sunday, bringing economy minister Katherina Reiche and a delegation of German business leaders. The message was solidarity; the subtext was that support for Ukraine can pay off for Germany too. “You can rely on us,” the chancellor posted on X, adding that Germany’s own security hinges on how this war ends. Russia answered within hours. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said an air strike hit the city’s North Bridge shortly after Merz’s visit began, with sirens sounding and black smoke rising over the Dnipro. Drones had already struck the South Bridge on Friday and Saturday, injuring several people. On Saturday, Moscow’s foreign ministry warned foreigners, diplomats included, to stay out of Ukraine. It said strikes would continue systematically, framing them as retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil.

Zelensky offers a different explanation. He says Ukrainian intelligence has obtained documents showing Putin has signed off on a “new doctrine” that widens the range of civilian targets ahead of winter. The aim, he told the FT, is to cut major cities off from the rest of the country and push people to leave. In Zelensky’s view, Putin wants to look strong while his army loses ground and takes heavier casualties. Kyiv’s answer, he says, will be to hit Russian oil refineries harder, not civilians.

France 24’s Gulliver Cragg, filming on the riverbank with the bridge behind him, said Merz’s core line was that an unchecked Russian war machine would eventually be turned on Germany and Western Europe. That is “exactly what Ukrainians want to hear,” Cragg said. What worries him is the next sentence: the anti-corruption and tax reforms Brussels attaches to European money. Cragg granted that those reforms strengthen Ukraine. But if Europe’s leaders say Russia will come for them next, Zelensky may be tempted to ask why the money should depend on reforms at all. Connecting the dots: Merz’s security argument also gives Kyiv leverage against his conditionality.

Berlin has its own evidence of that threat. Last month it formally blamed Moscow for an explosive-laden drone found at Leipzig/Halle airport, a hub for Western military aid. Merz warned of potentially severe hybrid attacks to come.

This is only Merz’s second Ukraine trip as chancellor. Since May 2025, Germany has overtaken a retreating Washington as Ukraine’s largest military donor. Merz loosened the constitutional debt brake to fund rearmament and roughly €10bn a year for Kyiv. He is celebrated in Kyiv and across European capitals, but at home he faces record-low approval ratings and growing unrest in his own party.

Moldovan President Maia Sandu on Saturday hit out at Moscow after saying debris from five Russian air attack weapons violated the country’s airspace and exploded on the country’s territory. “I condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine this morning. Its war is dangerously reaching Moldova,” she wrote on X. “Russian air attack weapons, including Banderol missiles and drones, violated our airspace and exploded on our soil. In all, three missiles and two drones flew over the country between 7.45 a.m. and 8 a.m., with fragments later found in the country’s eastern districts of Hincesti, Anenii Noi and Causeni. The police were dispatched to secure the debris, which caused a fire to break out but no casualties. Meanwhile, Lithuania temporarily closed its airport in Vilnius for around an hour on Saturday morning and scrambled NATO jets after a dangerous objectwas spotted in the skies, possibly crossing the border from Belarus - Politico

Ukraine’s campaign against Russian refineries is reshaping what Russians drive, The New York Times reports. Electric vehicle sales, including hybrids, nearly doubled to more than 83,000 in January–August from 43,000 a year earlier, per Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade. Pure E.V.s and plug-in hybrids now make up 11.5 percent of the market, up from about 5 percent in January — slightly ahead of the U.S., though far behind China’s 45 percent. Most are Chinese, a sign of Moscow’s sanctions-era pivot east. The trigger is fuel scarcity. On Friday, only 46 percent of Russian gas stations had fuel, according to the tracker Gdebenz; in Nizhny Novgorod, just 27 percent. Moscow saw hours-long queues in July and August, and emergency permission to sell lower-grade fuel has led to breakdowns, mechanics told The Times. E.V. dealerships are now sold out, and lines are forming at chargers, whose number has grown from under 1,500 in 2022 to more than 8,000. Tax breaks, free parking and toll exemptions help. But cost, patchy infrastructure and machismo remain barriers. One driver waiting for gas told the paper E.V.s are “bad for men’s health.” The bigger picture: a fuel crisis once felt as a distant nuisance is becoming a political problem for the Kremlin.

The US kicked out two more members of the Iranian delegation on Sunday who had remained in New York after the UN General Assembly had concluded. This occurred a few days after they were asked to leave the country, according to Axios. “Secretary Rubio means business. Two more members of the Iranian delegation were found still in New York long after the UN General Assembly had passed. They have now been kicked out of the country,” says a US official. According to the official, the two Iranian diplomats failed to comply with the State Department’s demands, which were presented to the Iranian mission to the UN on Monday. The demands called for the immediate departure of the entire delegation from the country. As early as Friday, the Iranian mission to the UN was informed that the US was aware that two of its diplomats were still in New York, despite requests for them to leave the country. As a result, the Iranian side was again told that these two individuals must leave immediately. One of the Iranian diplomats left on the evening of Friday, October 2, and the other on Saturday morning.

The journals…

As if that wasn’t enough to spill your Tim Horton’s ‘double double,’ Alberta’s referendum is approaching. The pain of the rupture with the United States is now being felt in kitchens, Tim Horton’s drive-throughs and boardrooms across the country.

Then I turn to Ukraine as I make my way back to Odesa. Kyiv is becoming a frontline city, the destruction is massive, and more people are telling me they’re leaving. All of this is happening as the financial ties between Trump’s transactional circle and the Kremlin come to light, at the very moment Ukraine needs Washington most. I’ll also share a few takeaways from UNGA week in New York.

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Ukrainians have started using a new phrase for their capital: frontline city. Kyiv sits hundreds of kilometres from the nearest trenches, but after countless hours of continuous air-raid alerts, that is how residents now describe it in videos posted overnight. Russian strikes hit the Southern Bridge over the Dnipro, one of the capital’s main arteries. It was closed, traffic was restricted on two other bridges, and hundreds of people were forced to cross the river on foot, BBC News Ukrainian reported.

“Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse,” one resident posted on TikTok, “the capital has been split in two.”

Kyiv calls it the opening salvo, and there’s a blueprint behind it. The New York Times has obtained what Ukraine says is an intercepted Russian plan, dated August, which Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal showed European partners in Paris last month. The Times could not authenticate it. It lays out up to 1,000 missiles, drones and glide bombs, launched in three stages:

1. Knock out the substations near the western border that import power from Europe.

2. Destroy the hydroelectric plants.

3. Force Ukraine’s three working nuclear plants offline by striking the switchyards that connect them to the grid, which sit less than a mile from the reactors.

Water is a target too: pumping stations and sewage treatment plants, which Russia has never hit at scale. Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa are singled out, with targets of up to 90% cuts in power and heat.

The document is dated August, so it is a blueprint rather than a battle report. But it is playing out in real time. And speaking of blueprints, Moscow has plenty. Much of Ukraine's critical infrastructure, from Kyiv's metro lines to its power grid, substations and sewage networks, was designed and built in the Soviet era, often by design institutes based in Moscow. Russia doesn't need to guess where the weak points are. In many cases, it drew them.

Ukraine has spent heavily on repairs and protective shielding over critical sites. One Kyiv energy analyst likened getting through a fifth war winter on this grid to “running a marathon with only one lung.”

Why this is Europe’s problem

Putin has publicly framed the grid campaign as payback for Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian refineries. At Valdai on Thursday he admitted those strikes have cost Russia about 1% of GDP. In the same speech he threatened nuclear retaliation over Kaliningrad, days after Moscow put that threat in writing to NATO. The two campaigns aim at the same target: Europe’s nerve.

Zelensky, speaking to the Financial Times from a bomb shelter in a school just hit by a Russian drone, went further: he says Putin has ordered his commanders to abandon the rules of war, and that strikes on civilians are rising steeply as a result.

A city without heat, water or working sewers in January cannot be lived in. People will leave. In the TikTok videos coming out of Ukraine, and in my conversations with contacts there, people are already making plans, and online, the chatter about leaving Kyiv has grown loud. Some are heading for relatives in the western regions; others are looking across the border.

Europe has been here before. A record 4.41 million Ukrainians already hold temporary protection in the EU, more than 1.2 million of them in Germany and nearly a million in Poland. Brussels has just extended that protection to March 2028, but host-country patience is thinner than in 2022, and the politics of migration are far harsher.

And Canada?

Writing this from Ottawa, I’m struck by how little the debate here reflects what’s coming. Roughly 300,000 Ukrainians came to Canada under the emergency CUAET program. They arrived as temporary residents, not refugees. One Ukrainian community member here on a work permit estimates that only about half remain; the rest have gone home or moved on.

Those who stayed live by the deadline. Work permits can be renewed once more, potentially to 2030. But the application window has been extended at the last minute, year after year, and the family route to permanent residence closed in 2024.

“There’s no stability for Ukrainians here,” she told me. “No one can plan for the future, because you don’t know whether you’ll go back, move on or stay. It’s extremely hard psychologically.”

Their children finish Canadian high schools and then hit a wall: international student fees. “We’ve paid taxes for four years like any Canadian,” she said. “What ordinary Canadian can pay $50,000 a year for their child’s education?”

Did President Zelensky ask Prime Minister Carney to keep permanent residence off the table, to encourage Ukrainians to eventually return home? My source doubts we’ll ever know. “No one will ever say whether he asked,” she said. Ottawa’s line, they predict, will be that Ukrainians are no different from anyone else and should use existing programs.

Indeed, the Prime Minister's Office referred World Briefing's questions - including whether Zelensky had asked Carney to keep permanent residence off the table - to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. IRCC said the question about the Prime Minister should be answered by his office, and that it would respond to the remaining questions as soon as possible. No answers had been received by publication time.

If even part of Moscow’s plan works, the next wave won’t wait for spring, and Canada won’t be spared the question.

Voices from Kyiv: “We don’t know when, how or where”

Posted to social media in the past 24 hours

“All of Kyiv is burning.” Khrystia, posting at 6 a.m. after 40 minutes’ sleep.

“How are we supposed to get to work, and even if we make it, how are we meant to function?” A Kyiv resident on bridge closures cutting the left-bank districts off from the city centre.

“I don’t know whether to stay or go.” Alina, who works online from home, after air-raid alerts sounded for 13 hours straight.

“We now live constantly to a rhythm of air-raid sirens and explosions. Before it was from time to time — now it’s permanent.” Inna Tsaruk, radio host.

September is normally for planning, at work and at home. Not this year. “Life has been turned completely upside down,” says Anna Rizatdinova, the Olympic gymnast. “We don’t know when, how and where.”

Getting out isn't easy either. A Ukrainian charter flight attendant says air-raid alerts can shut crossings into Poland, stretching delays to a full day. On Friday, travellers routing through Moldova were held up when Chișinău airport suspended operations over a bomb threat, which proved false, a day after drone debris was found near the Moldovan capital.

News Briefs
Vladimir Putin used his annual Valdai Forum appearance on Thursday to tell the West the world is living through a “dangerous moment.” According to Moscow Times reporting, he warned that any threat to Kaliningrad, Russia’s heavily militarized Baltic exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania, would put the use of “all the weapons at our country’s disposal” on the agenda “inevitably and immediately.” Days earlier, Russia sent NATO a diplomatic note, seen by Reuters, warning that it was ready to use nuclear weapons if the alliance tried to isolate Kaliningrad. The note also raised the prospect of strikes on “decision-making centers” in alliance capitals from the outset of any conflict. Russian embassies in at least three European countries followed up with public statements accusing NATO of rehearsing Kaliningrad scenarios. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called them reminders to “hotheads in Europe.” NATO replied in writing that it is a defensive alliance and told Moscow to cease its “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric.” Not everyone is shrugging it off: a senior European defence official told Reuters it was the first time since the Cold War that Russia had threatened Europe this way. Buried in Putin’s remarks, the report said, was a rare admission: he said Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries had cost the country about 1% of GDP. It landed the same week the government submitted a budget projecting a record $88 billion deficit for 2026, and as Moscow mulls easing its diesel export ban. He also ruled out halting Russian strikes on Ukrainian targets in the Black Sea area, so the pressure on Odesa’s export lifeline continues. He said he was ready for a three-way meeting with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, but only once a proper agenda is agreed. And he said Russia was not planning to hit the European arms plants supplying Kyiv “tomorrow.” That last word is worth noting. Nuclear signalling has long been the Kremlin’s tool of choice when the conventional picture is going badly. This week the threats escalated in form, from podium remarks to formal diplomatic notes, while the economic damage became something Putin himself now quantifies in public.

• US authorities designated the A7 financial network as a “significant transnational criminal organization” in the latest step by Western authorities to try and choke the sprawling Kremlin-backed scheme to evade sanctions. The move, announced by the US Treasury Department on October 1, comes as A7 -- backed by a fugitive Moldovan oligarch and a major Russian Defense Ministry-linked bank -- continues to grow, by some expert accounts, exponentially. Treasury said the A7 network of companies, known as subagents, disguised payments involving sanctioned entities as legitimate commercial transactions, helping Russian and Iranian entities move money outside traditional banking channels, including to facilitate Iranian oil sales and weapons procurement. “Treasury is dismantling the financial infrastructure that allows Iran and other adversaries to evade sanctions, move illicit funds, and undermine the integrity of the global financial system,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. **Read World Briefing’s special reporting on the A7 financial network here

Big news out of the G7 meeting, with US president Donald Trump saying that Europe has agreed to release some of its diesel reserves “immediately.” Indeed, France’s Emmanuel Macron said G7 leaders agreed “to work in a coordinated manner to help bring down the prices of petroleum products, particularly diesel.” He says: “We have decided to: make production more flexible to produce at the maximum capacity of our refineries; release our strategic reserves up to 100 million barrels, within 4 months, with our partners, under the coordination of the International Energy Agency; take no measures to restrict the exchange of energy and petroleum products between partner countries.” The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, responded to the G7 announcement, stressing the citizens “need and deserve affordable energy.”

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South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said on Friday that Seoul would take "further measures" if Ukraine refuses to publicly apologise over what he called its unilateral disclosure of North Korean prisoners of war being sent to South Korea. Seoul has taken a hard stance on Ukraine disclosing the transfer of two soldiers captured fighting for Russia, warning that their families could be targeted by Pyongyang. North Korea is known to retaliate against defectors and their families. Both POWs are identifiable as they had been photographed by South Korean media before their arrival to the South. The POWs were captured by Ukrainian forces early last year after being deployed alongside thousands of North Korean troops to support Russia’s war against Ukraine, in exchange for economic and military assistance to Pyongyang. Hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy disclosed last week the transfer in remarks at the United Nations, Lee expressed his dismay, with Seoul claiming confidentiality was key to protecting the POWs’ relatives. Analysts say that from South Korea’s perspective, keeping the transfer of the POWs confidential may have partly been for Ukraine’s sake, as making it public could have complicated Kyiv’s own prisoner exchanges with Russia - Euronews

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz came under growing pressure from allies and rivals alike over electoral and legislative failures, raising the possibility that the leader of Europe’s biggest economy could be ousted. His government yesterday withdrew a key tax proposal, while labor and pensions plans that economists regard as necessary to bolster the country’s languid growth are also under pressure. His party’s retreat comes after a series of embarrassing election showings in which the far-right AfD made huge inroads. Germany has little record of a mid-term change in federal leadership, but at least two European capitals have held internal war games on the implications of Merz’s chancellorship ending, Politico reported, while Handelsblatt described him as a “pseudo-dead man.”

Meghan Markle is selling a $148 advent calendar decorated with a picture of the Montecito house she no longer lives in. The limited-edition set includes 24 chocolates, about $6.17 each, made by Los Angeles chocolatier Compartés. The countdown numbers on each piece are painted in edible gold in a replica of Meghan’s own handwriting. The duchess said the treats were “thoughtfully inspired by our Montecito garden.” The box carries a representation of their $14.6 million California home, while the inside says the chocolates are there to “sweeten each day.” It is the latest addition to her As Ever range, along with her tea, candles, jams, bookmarks and wine. Her behind-the-scenes promotion video, filmed in a golf cart with Compartés’ boss, was made in California this summer. She captioned it “Christmas planning in June,” indicating it was all done before she left for the U.K. She and Harry returned to Britain in August with their children, Archie and Lilibet - The Daily Beast

The journals…

It is worth noting that Saudi Arabia, not Israel, is holding and questioning him. Riyadh and Jerusalem do not have diplomatic relations.

According to Haaretz, the jet dropped from 34,000 to 16,000 feet in less than two minutes and squawked the hijack code, and Israel scrambled fighter jets. Passengers and off-duty pilots, carried because of possible rerouting, forced their way into the cockpit, restrained the co-pilot and landed the plane in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. The captain, Indian national Smit Machchhar, was seriously wounded. The first reports, which blamed a fight between a Ukrainian pilot and a Russian pilot, turned out to be false, Haaretz notes.

The central question is how he was in that seat. Under the UAE–Israel aviation agreement, only pilots holding passports from countries with diplomatic ties to Israel may fly there, The Telegraph reports. Oman has none. Transport Minister Miri Regev has demanded that all flydubai flights to Israel be suspended and asked Israel’s aviation authority to examine whether the UAE broke the agreement. Flydubai has already halted the route. Abu Dhabi’s official line is much more guarded than Israel’s: the UAE’s aviation authority calls it a “security incident” and has urged the public not to speculate, and flydubai describes an “altercation” between the pilots with motives unknown.

Riyadh, meanwhile, refused to let an Israeli military or El Al aircraft collect the passengers and is running the interrogation itself, leaving Israel to get its information secondhand.

Why it matters: If the attacker acted alone, this is a screening failure, serious but containable. If anyone sent him, the stakes change. Iran has spent the past week warning its neighbours, the UAE in particular, against joining new US sanctions on Iranian airlines. There is no evidence of an Iranian hand, but proof of one could draw Israel back into direct conflict with Tehran. Either way, the UAE–Israel air link, the most visible dividend of the Abraham Accords, is now in question three weeks before an Israeli election.

Sources: The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, The Times of Israel, The National, The Telegraph

The Trump administration has circulated a proposal to European governments asking them to release a large portion of the bloc’s strategic diesel reserves to ease soaring fuel costs, according to four officials in European and U.S. governments. The plan, put forward by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, was pitched as an alternative to President Donald Trump’s threat of a blanket ban on diesel exports from the U.S. Under the proposal, EU governments would release 120 million barrels of diesel from their national strategic reserves over 180 days, a government official from a European country told POLITICO. That would account for well over a third of the approximately 315 million barrels of diesel EU countries held in reserve as of June this year, according to Eurostat figures. Among EU countries, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland hold the largest reserves of the essential transport fuel. POLITICO reported Tuesday that the White House was floating the idea of asking the EU to use its diesel reserves to bolster global supply and thus lower prices. A German government official on Thursday confirmed that the United States had contacted Berlin in the matter. Multiple countries in Europe were approached for a coordinated release, according to a person familiar with the Trump administration’s plans. “It was very hypothetical: ‘What do you think about Europe releasing some of the reserves in order to decrease prices, put pressure on supplies?’” the official said. “’It could also help our government not to continue the discussion on the export ban.’”

The US political calendar is shifting from making legislation to the fight for November’s midterms, with a top Democrat telling Semafor the race for control of Congress is “50-50.” US President Donald Trump is set to kick off a month of campaigning, though GOP candidates in tough battles have distanced themselves from a historically unpopular leader. Republicans passed a sweeping tax cut last year, but worry they have not addressed voters’ concerns over inflation and AI regulation. Democrats lead in nationwide polling, but key races remain up for grabs: “The battle for the Senate is on a knife’s edge,” Semafor’s congressional bureau chief wrote, though the top Democrat in the Senate told him, “We’re right on the edge of winning.”

South Koreans have given up on talking to Pyongyang

South Koreans’ distrust of North Korea has hit its highest level since tracking began nearly two decades ago, the Korea Herald reports.

Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies found in its 2026 annual survey that 78.3% of respondents believe dialogue and compromise with the North Korean regime are impossible. That is a record since the survey started in 2007. Another 86.4% feel threatened by the North’s nuclear arsenal, and 90.4% expect Pyongyang never to give it up. More than four in five (81.8%) now see the two Koreas as effectively separate states.

The mood has been hardened by events on the border. According to Defence Ministry figures cited by the Herald, North Korean troops crossed the Military Demarcation Line about 50 times in August and September. Two explosions inside the DMZ on September 21 wounded three South Korean soldiers. The UN Command has since found that the incident involved armistice violations. In a separate poll, 70.5% of respondents called the government’s handling of the aftermath inappropriate.

Why it matters: President Lee Jae-myung is still pressing for dialogue and de-escalation, but the public he would need behind any opening has largely moved on.

Source: The Korea Herald, Oct. 1, 2026

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President Xi Jinping used his National Day address on Wednesday to call for the “peaceful development” of relations with Taiwan. The South China Morning Post notes that the phrase was absent from last year’s speech, given at a time of high cross-strait tension. The speech still contained the usual warnings. Xi pledged to resolutely oppose “Taiwan independence” separatist forces and interference by “external forces,” and said the “great rejuvenation” of the Chinese nation is unstoppable. But the softer line comes in Beijing’s warmest stretch with Washington in years. Xi made a state visit to the US last week, and he and Donald Trump are due to meet again at APEC in Shenzhen in November and at the G20 in Miami in December. That would make four leader-level meetings in one year. The speech came weeks before the Communist Party’s fifth plenum (October 26–29), which is expected to tighten party discipline ahead of next year’s leadership transition. At home, Xi struck a confident tone about the economy. Beijing, however, has acknowledged new pressures, including weak domestic demand made worse by the energy shock from the Iran conflict, and this week it announced new subsidies on mortgage interest.

Why it matters: Beijing appears to be cushioning its Taiwan language while it has Trump’s attention. For Taipei, and for US allies across Asia, the question is what Washington offers in return.

President Donald Trump will not win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize as he wages war with Iran, but his influence will still be felt by the awarding body that picks the laureate, according to experts. Last year’s award, presented to Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado, marked an unprecedented moment in the prize’s 125-year history after Trump persistently lobbied to secure the award himself. Weeks later, Machado handed her gold Nobel medal directly to Trump in a bid to gain support for her efforts to advance democracy in Venezuela. This year, the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee will be mindful of selecting a candidate capable of withstanding pressure from Trump, according to Haakon Gjerloew, acting director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. "I think last year's events around the Nobel Peace Prize, Maria Corina Machado giving it to Trump afterward, will affect some of the considerations that they make," he told Reuters. "One worry the committee might have is whether awarding it to someone could put them under pressure from Donald Trump ... I think the committee will consider whether the award does more harm than good." According to experts, that caution could lead the panel toward choices such as Pope Leo, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, or Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The formal announcement is scheduled for October 9. Leo, who made history as the first US-born pope, said he intends to keep speaking out against military conflicts. His comments came after the president described him as “weak” for voicing criticism of the U.S. conflict with Iran. Meanwhile, Italy's Albanese has drawn substantial criticism from both the U.S. and Israel over her sharp condemnation of Israel's conduct during its war against Hamas in Gaza, as well as its occupation of the West Bank - The Independent

The journals…