In five days, Americans vote in midterms that may hand the House to the Democrats and leave the Republicans clinging to an even thinner Senate majority. Washington is consumed by the count. But look up from the polls and almost every region is balanced on a blade.
Grace Penn, the president in Netflix’s The Diplomat, has a line about Moscow that I used on Sky News today: “They punch until they hit steel.” That steel has always been America and its allies, standing together. This week, wherever you look, it’s harder to find.
Ukraine. I write this from Odesa after one of the bloodiest days in weeks. I told Al Jazeera there were rivers of blood across eastern Ukraine, and that was no exaggeration: nearly 20 dead and more than 70 wounded in a wave of very violent strikes. Meanwhile, the White House is pulling in two directions. The First Lady’s wing brokered a micro-ceasefire in occupied Oleshky (more on that below). The other wing keeps making it easier for Vladimir Putin to fill his war chest. The latest example is that Washington is weighing whether to lift sanctions on the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. The Biden administration sanctioned it days after the full-scale invasion, and the Treasury itself called it Putin’s slush fund. Lifting those sanctions would let Moscow earn more money and keep its oil and ships moving, all of it feeding the war on Ukraine.
Europe. The continent is pulling in different directions just when unity matters most, especially on Ukraine. Even Britain, one of Kyiv’s staunchest backers, ducked the hard choices in this week’s budget. Chancellor John Healey funded the existing defence plan but left the big decisions on reaching 3.5% of GDP to next year’s spending review. Meanwhile, Russia’s hybrid war is creeping onto NATO’s doorstep. Drones have now hit nine merchant ships in the Black Sea since the start of October, most of them off the coasts of Bulgaria and Romania, sinking several and leaving crew members dead or missing. The latest attack, three sea drones against a container ship about 21 miles off Bulgaria’s coast, came while the Bulgarian, Romanian and Turkish defence ministers were meeting to discuss Black Sea security. Bulgaria’s prime minister has said the evidence points to Moscow.
The Middle East. Oman’s foreign minister, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, was the go-between in talks between Washington and Tehran before Donald Trump and Israel launched their war on Iran. Few people know better what American security guarantees are worth in the Gulf. In an exclusive interview with Channel 4 News this week, he called for a new regional security framework, one that relies less on the United States as the main security provider and more on the Gulf states themselves. That message will carry even more weight after Tuesday if, as I suspect, Washington resumes strikes on Iran alongside Israel. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are both in electoral quicksand, and both need to look like strongmen.
Asia. The same sentiment holds from Bangkok to Taipei to Tokyo. Thailand is America’s only treaty ally on the mainland. The Philippines is a treaty ally. Taiwan, Japan and South Korea all depend on US guarantees. All of them have watched American assets leave the region and promises broken. Little wonder they are quietly recalculating how much they can rely on Washington.
Canada. America’s closest ally is now negotiating deeper ties with the European Union. It is scrambling to send more of its oil and gas west to Pacific tidewater instead of south to the United States, and is even looking at rerouting the pipelines that carry energy from west to east so they no longer cross US territory. It is also rebuilding ties with China and India. Ottawa has concluded that things won’t go back to the way they were with the United States, and it is acting on that.
Latin America. Days after Brazil’s election, Washington gave safe haven to the losing candidate. Flávio Bolsonaro lost the 25 October runoff to Lula. He then left for the United States after ignoring a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports in a money-laundering investigation, and Brazilian police cancelled them. Rather than respect a fellow democracy’s courts, the State Department said it would issue visas to him and his family. According to CNN, Trump officials knew about the passport order and told Bolsonaro he could enter anyway. There’s a word for helping someone escape the reach of the law. It isn’t diplomacy.
Africa. In December, Donald Trump hosts the G20 at his own golf resort in Miami. South Africa, a founding member, a democracy and last year’s host, has been shut out. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, has been personally invited, and Washington is plainly hoping he shows up. Even German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has publicly urged Trump to reconsider, saying Africa belongs at the table.
Penn calls alliances the greatest force multiplier on Earth, and she’s right. Without them, there is no steel for Moscow to hit, and right now Europe and America are giving Putin far too much open road. My biggest worry is that Russia’s hybrid war will keep spreading until someone finally stops it.
Tuesday’s vote will decide who controls Congress. It won’t fix any of this, but it could help rein in a president who conducts foreign policy on instinct and reflex rather than on intelligence and the advice of seasoned diplomats.
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News Briefs
The 2 p.m. deadline for residents of Russian-occupied Oleshky to register for evacuation has now passed. Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi told lawmakers during a government Q&A on Oct. 30 that 527 residents plan to travel to Ukrainian-controlled territory. He later said on Telegram that he had shared that figure “by mistake” and that no exact numbers were available yet. Twenty-five buses with 750 seats are standing by, so there is ample room. According to official briefings, evacuees will receive medical checks, and the buses are fully stocked. Medications, hygiene items and blankets have also been delivered into Oleshky. Journalists from Russia, the US, Italy, France and Ukraine are reportedly on hand. There are unconfirmed reports that Russian authorities are pressuring residents to choose Russia over Ukraine. World Briefing cannot verify those reports, but such pressure would fit Moscow’s established playbook. The bigger picture is grim. While this micro-ceasefire holds, Russian strikes elsewhere in Ukraine continue unabated. Across the Dnipro, upriver, roughly 18 people have been killed and at least 70 injured in the past 24 hours.
Here in Odesa, where this is being filed at 3:30 p.m. local time, the city has had an unprecedented three days of calm: not a single air-raid siren and not a single explosion. Whether that is linked to the ceasefire three hours’ drive away is unclear. For now, residents are seizing the chance to rest, sleep and breathe.
I want to be clear about Oleshky. It is good if the elderly, hungry civilians trapped there can finally reach safety. But this is a fragile deal from an administration desperate for any foreign policy win, however small. Moscow gets the PR victory at almost no cost. Oleshky is a strategic position on the southern Dnipro. Don’t be surprised if Russian forces use the pause to dig in and then resume strikes even harder.
The main Israeli opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot and Arab-led party leaders have denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleging foreign interference following the election which saw his coalition lose its majority. Netanyahu’s Likud accused Israel’s Arab-led parties of “stealing” the election. Home security agency Shin Bet is investigating whether they received illegal funding from Qatar and Turkey. Qatar’s foreign ministry denied the “ridiculous and dangerous” allegations and accused Israeli politicians of conducting a disinformation campaign against Doha. Final results confirmed that neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor the Jewish opposition had won a majority in parliament. The two Arab party lists - The Joint List and the Ra’am - defied expectations to win a record 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset following a surge in turnout among Arab voters. That positions them as potential kingmakers, with Netanyahu’s bloc winning 53 seats and his rival Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc securing 48. On Thursday Likud alleged that voters had been “bribed” to vote for Arab parties, after the head of the Central Elections Committee (CEC) asked the Shin Bet security service to investigate “serious suspicions” of foreign interference. Both Arab parties strongly rejected the claim, with the Arab-majority Joint List alliance saying it was baseless. The row is being seen by Netanyahu's critics as an attempt to delegitimise the Arab parties, thereby making it politically impossible for Eisenkot to join forces with them - which is currently his bloc's only route to power - BBC
Flávio Bolsonaro, the Brazilian presidential candidate who faces multiple criminal investigations, is staying in Florida on a temporary status that was given following orders by President Trump, and will likely be granted permanent residency later, U.S. officials said. Mr. Bolsonaro fled Brazil after losing an election this week. U.S. border agents allowed him and his family to enter the United States on what is called parole, usually given for humanitarian reasons, after they landed in Miami on a private jet on Wednesday morning, a U.S. official said that day. The jet had been arranged by a White House official. President Trump said later that afternoon that Mr. Bolsonaro had been given “a pass” to enter the country. The White House and the State Department referred questions about Mr. Bolsonaro’s parole status and Mr. Trump’s involvement to the Department of Homeland Security. That agency said Mr. Bolsonaro and his family “were met and inspected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in accordance with applicable immigration laws and procedures. At the conclusion of the inspection, Mr. Bolsonaro and his accompanying family members were released.” - NYT
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to expand his country’s influence in Africa, where China and the US have been vying for power, appear to be falling short. Though the Kremlin agreed to several deals at a summit with African leaders in Moscow — including selling fighter jets to Ethiopia and creating a geological map of Mali — barely 20 leaders attended the meeting out of more than 50 sub-Saharan nations, a sign of how Moscow’s forced recruitment of Africans to fight in its war against Ukraine has damaged its reputation. Failed defense partnerships with countries in the Sahel have also weakened its regional standing. “Public sentiment toward Russia has begun to sour across many African countries,” Foreign Policy wrote - Semafor
Switzerland has reopened its scientific door to China, on Beijing’s terms.
President Guy Parmelin met Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday. Several agreements were signed, including an optimised free trade agreement and a deal on research and development cooperation. Most of the attention will go to trade. Bern puts the tariff savings at about CHF 244 million a year. Swiss watches, however, will still face China’s luxury tax.
The more consequential document may be the one on research data. China has passed a series of laws classifying data by its importance to the state, and exporting scientific data can be blocked or made conditional. That uncertainty led the Swiss National Science Foundation to freeze joint calls with China in 2021. By 2025, SNSF-funded projects with Chinese teams had fallen to 30 a year, down from an average of 70 in 2015–2018.
The fix is pragmatic but lopsided. Chinese partners must flag, before and during a project, whether results are “sensitive” under Chinese law and therefore barred from leaving China. Swiss researchers’ recourse is to withdraw. In practice, Beijing’s definition of “sensitive” now sits inside Swiss-funded projects, and Bern has no say over it.
Compare Washington. When the US renewed its science pact with China in 2024, it added provisions on researcher safety and data reciprocity, plus a dispute-resolution mechanism. The Swiss text, at least as Bern describes it, contains no reciprocity clause.
The timing matters. The trade deal was announced a year after Trump hit Switzerland with the highest US tariffs on European exports. Squeezed by Washington, Bern is hedging toward Beijing. At home, the Social Democrats and Greens have demanded binding human and labour rights protections. The trade deal still needs ratification by parliament, so expect the research-data agreement to come up in that debate too.
Donald Trump is ending his midterm campaign largely by phone, and some in his own party are relieved.
The Daily Beast reports that the president, 80, has cancelled an in-person rally in Kansas planned for Saturday and another in Iowa set for Sunday. He will hold virtual events instead ahead of Tuesday’s vote. Friday’s rally at Daytona Beach, Florida, is now expected to be his last in-person stop.
The cancellations end a heavy October schedule. Trump launched a seven-state blitz in Kansas on 19 October, mostly through states he carried in 2024, as weak polls and close races in Republican strongholds raised fears of large Democratic gains. Voters are angry about fuel prices, which have jumped since the US went to war with Iran, and tariffs are adding to the pressure on consumers.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins called the change “pretty unusual” on Anderson Cooper 360°, comments the Daily Beast reported. She noted the president likes to boast about his time on the road and put this month’s rally count at 25. She contrasted it with 2018, when Trump was holding two or three rallies a day in the final stretch. His in-person speeches typically run around 90 minutes, while a tele-rally is a scripted call of 10 to 15 minutes.
The White House says the format lets Trump reach more people. An official told the Daily Beast he would hold more than 20 tele-rallies before Election Day.
Republicans seem less concerned. Later on The Source, Collins said, according to the Daily Beast’s account, that CNN sources described some GOP officials as relieved. One top Republican reportedly said Trump “hasn’t moved the needle anywhere.”
His health is also in the frame. When Reuters reporter Jacob Bogage asked about the cancellation and Trump’s health, the president said he felt “perfect” and insulted the reporter’s appearance. Collins said the question was straightforward and the response “says a lot.”
The journals…
