Geopolitics

Maxim Kruglov, former deputy leader of Russia’s liberal Yabloko party, was sentenced to seven years in prison on June 24 for spreading “false information” about the Russian military through two Telegram posts made in 2022. He told the court his conviction amounts to a ban on political dissent. “In essence, this is a ban on […]

The architecture of global trade is being dismantled, not by accident but by design. When U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer addressed the Council on Foreign Relations on May 26, 2026, he effectively declared that the post-1945 multilateral trading order is no longer the foundation of American trade policy. For the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, […]

A Japanese trade delegation walked into a meeting room in Beijing this week led by a Liberal Democratic Party member of parliament. The handshakes were cordial. The agenda was business: supply chain resilience, tariff relief, and resuming suspended commercial ties. It was the first visit of its kind since bilateral relations between China and Japan […]

Ukrainian drones cripple Sevastopol’s power grid, leaving Crimea’s largest city in the dark as temperatures push toward 30C. A coordinated Ukrainian drone strike knocked out the main power substation serving Sevastopol, the largest city in Russian-occupied Crimea, plunging tens of thousands of residents into what officials warned could be a multi-day blackout during a blistering […]

Senate delivers bipartisan rebuke as Congress moves to reclaim war authority on Iran The U.S. Senate voted 50-48 on June 23 to pass an Iran war powers resolution that would require President Donald Trump to seek congressional authorization before using military force against Iran, delivering the most significant legislative challenge yet to the administration’s handling […]

Israel has no intention of withdrawing its troops from southern Lebanon, Defense Minister Israel Katz declared this week, directly undercutting the fragile U.S.-Iran peace process that entered a critical 60-day negotiation window just days ago. Speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv, Katz made the government’s position unmistakably clear. “The IDF is prepared… and we […]

Travelers heading to Europe this summer are being warned to expect significant delays at airports and border crossings as the European Union’s new digital border system faces persistent technical problems, staffing shortages, and surging passenger volumes. The Entry/Exit System (EES), which went fully operational across 29 countries on April 10, replaces the traditional passport stamp […]

Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces have annihilated a strategic railway bridge over the North Crimean Canal, severing one of the last rail links between occupied Crimea and mainland Russia and signaling a new phase in Kyiv’s campaign to isolate the peninsula. The operation unfolded in two stages over the night of June 22 and the early […]

Kim Jong Un commissions his largest warship and declares the nuclear arming of the navy is on an “unerring” course, marking a strategic shift for a regime that has historically relied on land-based missiles and ground forces. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the commissioning of the Choe Hyon, the country’s first 5,000-ton multi-mission […]

America’s intelligence community just got smaller. By how much is debatable, but the direction is not. Donald Trump’s newly installed acting Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, has fired six career and political intelligence staff from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and sent 45 others back to their home agencies. These 51 […]