Then There Were Three: Xi, Putin, Modi Close Ranks as Trump Swings His Tariff Club
With world leaders flocking to Tianjin for the SCO Summit, China, Russia, & India present unity. The fourth 'big man,' Donald Trump, finds himself on the outside — frozen out by his tariff tantrums
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Likely Russian GPS jamming of the region through which a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was flying is likely to blame for the pilots being forced to use paper maps to land in Plovdiv Airport in central Bulgaria on September 1. Many mainstream media has erroneously reported that the aircraft itself was targeted. The Institute for the Study of War quoted a knowledgeable official source that confirmed GPS in the airport’s vicinity “went dark.” Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority stated that there has been a notable increase in GPS jamming since February 2022 and that there have been issues with spoofing more recently. ISW previously observed reports that Russian electronic warfare (EW) interference significantly impacted flights in the Baltics, Poland, and Finland, particularly in early 2024. Russia notably likely jammed the satellite signal of a Royal Air Force (RAF) jet transporting then-UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, his staff, and select journalists back to the UK from Poland in March 2024. The latest reports of likely Russian GPS jamming indicate that Russia is continuing its hybrid operations in Europe, and Russia could continue to target Western political and military officials as part of these operations, ISW said.
Kremlin officials continue to deny White House statements about the prospect of a bilateral Ukrainian-Russian or trilateral US-Ukrainian-Russian meeting in the near future. Russian Presidential Aide Yuriy Ushakov stated on September 1 that “there was no agreement” on a bilateral meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, or a trilateral meeting between US President Donald Trump, Zelensky, and Putin. Ushakov stated on August 16, after the US-Russian Alaska summit, that he did not know when Trump and Putin would meet again and that the leaders had not discussed the prospect of a trilateral meeting.[2] US President Donald Trump stated on August 18, however, that he was planning a bilateral meeting between Zelensky and Putin with a subsequent meeting between Trump, Zelensky, and Putin.[3] Ushakov’s reiteration of Russia’s refusal to commit to Trump's desired bilateral and trilateral meetings undermines Trump’s ongoing diplomatic efforts to achieve a peace settlement in Ukraine - ISW
Watch my panel appearance on India Today, moderated by Executive Editor Geeta Mohan. I call out the hypocrisy in Brussels — talking tough on Ukraine while quietly buying Russian oil and keeping Russian-owned steel plants running in Belgium. We also unpack the theatre of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Tianjin.
Thirteen people in Gaza, including three children, have died “due to famine and malnutrition” in the past 24 hours, Gaza’s Health Ministry says. That brings the total number of hunger-related deaths in the territory to 361, including 130 children. The ministry added that 83 of those deaths, including the deaths of 15 children, had occurred since a global hunger monitor confirmed famine was occurring in Gaza on August 22. It added that 43,000 children below 5 years of age were suffering from malnutrition, along with more than 55,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women. Two-thirds of pregnant women were suffering from anaemia, the highest rate in years, it said - Al Jazeera
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Syria is seeing promising signs of revival nine months after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime and the end of a 14-year civil war. The country recently exported its first official crude oil shipment since 2010: It had sold 380,000 barrels per day until the war began, and while the first shipment of 600,000 barrels is relatively small, the dispatch marks the return of a key driver of its economy. The sense of optimism has made its way into the Syrian diaspora. Half the country’s 23 million population fled during the war, but the United Nations said 850,000 have returned from neighboring countries and that figure could reach 1 million in the coming weeks. - Semafor
Rescuers are using helicopters to search for survivors in the ruins of remote villages in eastern Afghanistan after a powerful earthquake killed 800 people and injured 1,800 others. Many are feared trapped under the rubble of their homes after the magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck on Sunday near the country's border with Pakistan. Authorities searched by air for the second day on Tuesday as roads blocked with debris and the mountainous terrain in the affected areas made land travel difficult. The Taliban government has appealed for international help. The United Nations has released emergency funds, while the UK has pledged £1m ($1.3m) in aid. Sunday's earthquake was one of the strongest to hit Afghanistan in recent years. The country is very prone to earthquakes because it is located on top of a number of fault lines where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet. The most recent earthquake hit Afghanistan when it is reeling under severe drought and what the UN calls an unprecedented crisis of hunger. The country has also experienced massive aid cuts especially from the US this year which is further reducing the aid that many of these people could have got. This disaster couldn't have come at a worse time - BBC
French Prime Minister François Bayrou’s last-ditch attempt to woo the far-right National Rally and thereby prevent his government from collapsing came up short, party President Jordan Bardella said. “The miracle did not happen, the meeting today will not change the position of the National Rally,” Bardella told reporters Tuesday after he and Marine Le Pen met with Bayrou. Bardella said that Bayrou had crossed some of the National Rally’s red lines with the unpopular €43.8 billion budget squeeze that will be at the heart of a confidence vote on Monday. The far right believes Bayrou did not sufficiently target costs associated with immigration and European Union membership. “If the question is: Do we have confidence in this government? The answer is no, we don’t,” said Le Pen. Bayrou is holding talks with parties from across the political spectrum this week, ostensibly to find common ground. After the prime minister unveiled his plans to hold a confidence vote last week, France’s political opposition quickly said they would vote to bring down his minority government, leaving the longtime centrist little hope of survival. According to Le Pen, Bayrou already knows his government is toast. “He chose to hit the eject button, and then lead consultations. If he really wanted to talk in earnest, he would have started negotiations as early as July,” she said. Should Bayrou fall, it’s unclear how French President Emmanuel Macron will find a way out of deadlock. Opposition parties have shown little appetite for budget cuts necessary to balance France’s books and stave off growing concerns about runaway public spending in the eurozone’s second-biggest economy - Politico
China is drilling for oil and gas inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a move that analysts believe is likely part of Beijing’s unilateral grab for disputed territory that could also aid a future invasion of Taiwan. During July and August at least 12 oil and gas vessels and permanent structures were detected inside Taiwan’s EEZ – including one within 50km of the restricted-waters border of the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands – as well as several steel supports for fixed offshore drilling platforms, called jackets. Their presence inside Taiwan’s EEZ have not been previously reported. Experts said the activity fit the pattern of Beijing’s “greyzone” strategies for seizing disputed territory. Beijing claims the entirety of the South China Sea, despite The Hague ruling the claim unlawful in 2016. Beijing also claims Taiwan is a province of China, and in preparation to forcibly annexe it has ramped up a campaign of “salami slicing” Taiwan’s territory, forcibly shrinking the space that Taipei can control and defend. “China’s greyzone aggression routinely leverages commercial activity for expansionist goals,” said Ray Powell, director of SeaLight, a maritime transparency project at Stanford University. However, there is no sign of the Taiwan government having responded to this drilling, despite frequently enforcing its EEZ elsewhere - The Guardian
The journals….
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