World Briefing Plus: Doom, Drones, and the Zig-Zag President - A World on Edge

From calm Moldova to battered Ukraine, EU paralysis over Russian assets, Trump’s erratic foreign policy & tremors off Venezuela — this week’s World Briefing Plus tracks an increasingly unstable globe

Credit: Bas van der Schot

Greetings from Moldova — a rare pocket of calm just across the border from a Ukraine under relentless missile and drone attack. Here, the air is still; across the Dniester, it’s filled with sirens. In this week’s World Briefing Plus, I look at the widening gap between peace and peril — as Europe again fails to release $162 billion in frozen Russian assets, stalled largely by Belgium’s resistance. And Britain’s most senior army commander, Field Marshal Lord Richards, bluntly says what many fear: Ukraine cannot win without NATO boots on the ground.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump — now deservedly dubbed the zig-zag president — claims to have “sorted” several wars even as he stirs new military tensions off Venezuela’s coast. It all points to a world growing more unstable, and more unpredictable, by the week — something even Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong warns of in the clip I share.

Finally, I preview our next stops: southern Africa for the G20 Leaders’ Summit and deeper reporting from under-covered regions. If you value this kind of on-the-ground, independent journalism — connecting the dots so you don’t have to — please consider upgrading to a paid subscription, supporting via Patreon, or even a one-time PayPal contribution. Every bit of support fuels this global reporting mission and keeps World Briefing free of corporate and political influence.