Important Takeaways:
- “Xi said the military should ‘comprehensively strengthen training and preparation for war, (and) ensure troops have solid combat capabilities,’ CCTV reported,” according to the AFP and reported on Barrons Saturday.
- The drills were accompanied by China declaring the possibility of invading and taking over Taiwan.
- “China’s communist leaders have insisted they will not rule out using force to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control,” Barrons said on Saturday.
- Days after the Sino naval drills around Taiwan, the Chinese military criticized the U.S. and Canada for sending warships through the Taiwan Strait as the two power blocks exercise show-of-force operations in the region.
- The recent directive by Jinping builds upon a similar order he dictated in 2023, a call for stronger military combat readiness, as well as echoes the ruler’s directives in 2018 to prepare for war.
- The recent war escalation with China follows escalations with Ukraine and Russia and Israel and Iran.
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Important Takeaways:
- South Korea’s foreign ministry called the Russian ambassador to the carpet Monday over North Korea’s alleged deployments of troops to join the Russian military in its war against Ukraine.
- The use of North Korean troops in the Ukraine conflict is a violation of the U.N. charter and General Assembly resolutions and threatens South Korea’s security, the ministry said in a statement.
- “We condemn North Korea’s illegal military cooperation, including its dispatch of troops to Russia, in the strongest terms,” Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun told Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev, the ministry said. “We will respond jointly with the international community by mobilizing all available means against acts that threaten our core security interests.”
- South Korea’s intelligence service said on Friday that North Korea had shipped 1,500 special forces to train at Russian military bases in the Far East. The troops would likely be deployed to fight in Ukraine, the spy agency said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also accused North Korea of sending 10,000 troops to Russia.
- Zinoviev countered that Russian cooperation with North Korea was in line with international law, and was not directed against South Korea, according to a Facebook post from the Russian embassy.
- Reports that Russia will deploy North Korean troops in its war with Ukraine are unconfirmed. The Kremlin earlier denied them.
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Important Takeaways:
- Reports from Kyiv say 10,000 North Korean troops are undergoing training in Russia’s Far East and could be used to fight in Ukraine.
- The account of North Korea’s deployment of troops to Russia is the latest sign of tightening security ties between two prime U.S. adversaries. Last week, unconfirmed reports said a Ukrainian missile strike killed six North Korean officers in the raging war with Russia across Ukraine’s occupied southern and eastern regions.
- A South Korean military official told the Yonhap News Agency that the reports were being “closely monitored.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iran’s president on Friday, at a time when Tehran is supplying weapons for Moscow’s war in Ukraine and concerns are growing over escalating attacks between Israel and Iran and its militant allies.
- “We have many opportunities now, and we must help each other in our relationships. Our principles, our positions in the international arena are similar to yours,” Pezeshkian said at the start of his meeting with Putin.
- Pezeshkian said that Israel’s “savage attacks,” on Lebanon are “beyond description.”
- Both countries were accused this week by Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, of carrying out a “staggering” rise in attempts at assassination, sabotage and other crimes on U.K. soil.
- McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022 and warned that it could expand its targets in the U.K. if conflicts in the Middle East deepen.
- Speaking Friday as the forum opened, Putin said he wants to create a “new world order” of Moscow’s allies to counter the West, according to video provided by the Kremlin`
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Important Takeaways:
- Before the Russian invasion in early 2022, Ukraine was exporting about 6.5 million tonnes of grain overseas every month, according to figures from the Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, bringing in revenues of $27.8bn for the year 2021. It was the world’s seventh-largest exporter of wheat and fourth-biggest exporter of barley, according to the Foreign Agriculture Service of the US Department of Agriculture.
- Grain exports had fallen to just over 2 million tonnes per month in mid-2023, just over a year into the war.
- The reasoning behind Moscow’s targeting of grain-exporting ships was not yet clear.
- Russia may be emboldened by its recent gains in Donbas, or it may be seeking retaliation for Ukraine’s surprise attack across the border in the region of Kursk
- It may also simply be looking for new ways to weaken Ukraine. “If you can weaken Ukraine economically, that reduces its ability to resist,” Gorenburg said.
- Rather than targeting ports, the “intimidation of commercial shippers is a much better way to do that”.
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Important Takeaways:
- As the war in Ukraine enters a critical period, the European Union has decided it must take responsibility for what it sees as a security threat in its own neighborhood, and it’s preparing to tackle some of the financial burden, perhaps even without the United States.
- The EU rarely moves ahead on international matters without the U.S., particularly involving major conflicts, but it hopes this decision will encourage others to come forward.
- EU envoys have been working this week on a proposal to provide Ukraine with a loan package worth up to 35 billion euros ($39 billion).
- “Crucially, this loan will flow straight into your national budget,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv last week. “It will provide you with significant and much-needed fiscal space. You will decide how best to use the funds, giving you maximum flexibility to meet your needs.”
- Zelenskyy wants to buy weapons and bomb shelters and rebuild Ukraine’s shattered energy network as winter draws near.
- Most of the 27-nation EU fears a Putin victory would lead to deep uncertainty. Russia’s armed forces are depleted and currently incapable of another war, but the prospect of a future land grab in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland remains.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. President Joe Biden announced more than $8 billion in military assistance for Ukraine on Thursday to help Kyiv “win this war” against Russian invaders, using a visit by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to make a major commitment.
- The aid includes the first shipment of a precision-guided glide bomb called the Joint Standoff Weapon, with a range of up to 81 miles (130 km).
- The bulk of the new aid, $5.5 billion, is to be allocated before Monday’s end of the U.S. fiscal year, when the funding authority is set to expire.
- Another $2.4 billion is under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which allows the administration to buy weapons for Ukraine from companies rather than pull them from U.S. stocks.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has flatly stated that any long-range missile strikes carried out by Ukraine against the territory of Russia will constitute an act of war against the Russian Federation by NATO.
- He warns that if Ukraine is empowered to strike Russia with long-range missiles supplied by NATO, the alliance would be at war with his country:
- Putin notes that Ukrainian drone attacks have already taken place within Russia, most recently in Moscow. However, “When it comes to using high-precision long-range Western-made weapons, it’s a completely different story.”
- “The Ukrainian army is not able to strike with modern long-range precision systems of Western manufacture. It cannot do this. It can only do so using intelligence from satellites, which Ukraine does not have. This is data from [European Union] satellites, or from the United States, in general from NATO,” he said.
- Putin believes only NATO servicemen can enter flight assignments for the missile systems, arguing the real question is whether NATO wants to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine or not.
- Putin’s ominous words come after Biden-Harris Secretary of State Anthony Blinken hinted that Ukraine may get the green light to use long-range missiles against Russia earlier this week.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ryan Routh, a 58-year-old man living in Hawaii, has been identified as the would-be assassin who targeted former President Donald J. Trump as he played a round of golf on Sunday at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. The suspect, currently in the custody of law enforcement, had an extensive social media presence almost entirely focused on support for the Ukrainian war effort and opposition to Israel.
- The would-be assassin appears to have been deeply involved with efforts to send Afghanistan military veterans, who fled the country after the Taliban retook power, to Ukraine to bolster the Eastern European nation’s efforts to halt the Russian invasion.
- According to his social media and two 2023 interviews with Semafor and The New York Times, Routh ran the International Volunteer Center in Ukraine and spent a great deal of time in Kiev over the past several years.
- “Most of the Ukrainian authorities do not want these soldiers,” Routh told Semafor last year. “I have had partners meeting with [Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense] every week and still have not been able to get them to agree to issue one single visa.”
- FOREIGN TIES.
- Even more concerning with respect to Routh’s foreign ties are the comments he made to the NYT. “We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country,” he said regarding plans to move Afghan soldiers to Ukraine to join their fight. Routh insinuated he’d move the soldiers to Iran and, from there, fly them to Ukraine.
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Important Takeaways:
- Routh, who has so far refused to talk to police following his arrest on Sunday, was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. He faces additional charges related to the alleged assassination attempt.
- Routh, according to news reports, appeared in court with shackled hands. He smiled and laughed as he talked to his attorney, according to Fox News producers who were inside the courtroom.
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