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  • Europe wins, Russia loses as Moldovans deliver a clear message in crucial parliamentary elections

    Europe wins, Russia loses as Moldovans deliver a clear message in crucial parliamentary elections
    2025/09/29

    With almost all of the votes counted in yesterday’s parliamentary elections in Moldova, the ruling pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity of President Maia Sandu has achieved a slim overall majority of just over 50% of the vote.

    More importantly, perhaps, it has garnered more than twice the votes of the main pro-Russian opposition party Patriotic Bloc, which has just under 25% of the vote.

    While Sandu’s party, as expected, did very well in the diaspora vote with almost 80% of votes cast in its favour, it also convincingly beat the Patriotic Bloc in the vote in Moldova with 44% versus 28%.

    In another sign of the changing tide, the party also doubled its vote share in the Russian-controlled break-away region of Transnistria.

    Turnout in the elections, however, has been low again. Just over 52% of eligible voters went to the polling stations. This is slightly higher than in the three previous parliamentary elections in 2019, 2020, and 2021, but below the turnout in the second round of last year’s presidential elections.

    At the end of the day, the results also reflect the long-standing, and by most accounts, deepening polarisation in Moldova between the pro-European and pro-Russian camps. The fact that Sandu’s party achieved an overall, and only slightly reduced majority again, indicates that its support base has held up remarkably well amid unprecedented Russian election interference and the serious economic problems that Moldova has faced for many years, but especially since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

    While slightly weakened compared to the 2021 parliamentary elections, achieving more than 50% of the vote — and probably gaining 55 seats in the 101-seat parliament — is a remarkable achievement for Sandu’s party in these circumstances. It demonstrates the strength of support for the country’s European path among the general population. If the results of other parties and party blocs that claim to be pro-European are taken into account, this means that a solid majority of Moldovans favour membership in the EU over closer ties with Russia.

    The outcome of the parliamentary elections yesterday, as well as of the presidential elections last year, also demonstrates the limits of Russia’s influence campaigns.

    Despite spending millions on vote buying and disinformation, Russia has not been able to turn Moldova into a country in which a majority of the population would want to jeopardise their European future.

    This is an important signal well beyond Moldova and will be noted with significant relief in Chisinau, Brussels, and other European capitals.

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    4 分
  • As Trump looks set to abandon Ukraine peace efforts, Europe must step up to face Russian aggression alone

    As Trump looks set to abandon Ukraine peace efforts, Europe must step up to face Russian aggression alone
    2025/09/26
    Donald Trump appears to have had a major change of heart regarding Ukraine. On the face of it, it looks like he has embraced outright optimism that Kyiv “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form”.However, this came with the message that Europeans will need to be in the driving seat to make this happen. According to Trump, a Ukrainian victory depends on “time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO”.The only US commitment is “to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them”. Most tellingly, Trump signed his Truth Social missive off with: “Good luck to all!” This is perhaps the clearest indication yet that the US president is walking away from his efforts to strike a peace deal.It also suggests that he has given up on a separate deal with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. But this is where the good news ends — and where the European-led coalition of the willing will need to deliver security and stability for the continent in an ever more volatile environment.After several weeks of Russian incursions into Nato airspace, drones — thought highly likely to be linked to Russia — twice disrupted Danish airspace in the vicinity of Copenhagen airport. It felt like a presentiment of the dystopian drone wars predicted by Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in his speech at the UN general assembly in New York on September 24.Putin’s continuing provocations are a brazen challenge to Kyiv’s European allies. At the heart of this coalition of the willing, the European Union certainly has demonstrated it is willing to flex its rhetorical muscles to rise to this challenge. EU institutions in Brussels have never left any doubt about their determination that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine “needs to end with a just and lasting peace for Ukraine”, as Ursula von der Leyen, the EU commission president, put it most recently in her state-of-the-union address.Beyond rhetoric, however, the coalition of the willing is facing a number of potential problems. Individually, none of them is insurmountable, but taken together they illustrate the unprecedented challenge Kyiv’s European allies are facing.To begin with, the coalition of the willing is not a coherent body. Its membership includes members of Nato and the EU, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. But the United States is not among their number.It grew from eight countries plus the EU and Nato in February 2025, to 33 participants in April, and 39 in September. Its relationship with the 57-member Ukraine Defense Contact Group of countries supporting Kyiv with military equipment, which held its 30th meeting in early September, is not entirely clear.The lack of coherence in membership in the coalition of the willing is mirrored by different levels of commitment, whether that’s the willingness to deploy a reassurance force after a ceasefire in Ukraine — or the capacity to do so.It’s also not entirely clear whether the leaders of the EU and Nato are speaking for all members of their organisations. Among EU and Nato members, Hungary and Slovakia, for example, have taken ambiguous stances when it comes to defending Ukraine and Europe against Russia.These different levels of commitment also reflect partially conflicting priorities. European members of Nato are deeply — and not wrongly — concerned about US abandonment. Add to that fears of a disastrous trade war, and placating Donald Trump becomes a priority.Doing so by buying US arms may please Trump and plug gaps in Europe’s ability to supply Ukraine. But it is perhaps not the best way of ensuring the urgently needed development of an independent European defence-industrial base.Trump’s return to the White House swiftly ushered in the end of US largesse in support of Ukraine. Europeans have only partly filled that gap, with Germany taking the lead and the EU mobilising over €10 billion (£8.7 billion) in its current budget to 2027, with the aim to supplement efforts by member countries.But it’s not clear how long these efforts will be sustainable in light of inflation and domestic spending pressures. France’s public finances are in distress, while Spain has openly defied Nato’s 5% spending target.Part of the solution to these problems would be much swifter defence-industrial cooperation across the coalition, including with Ukraine. Over time, this could help to build the indigenous defence-industrial capacity needed to produce military equipment at the scale required. But making up for critical gaps in manpower, dealing with the Russian drone threat, strengthening air defences and long-range strike capabilities, and replacing the potential loss of US intelligence support will not happen overnight.Individual countries and the various multilateral forums in which they cooperate will need to decide how to balance three only partially aligned priorities. ...
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    7 分
  • Ukraine’s coalition of allies needs to be more than willing — it needs to get ready

    Ukraine’s coalition of allies needs to be more than willing — it needs to get ready
    2025/09/24
    While the air and ground war in Ukraine is grinding on, Moscow is increasing pressure on Kyiv’s western allies. Russian drone incursions into Poland in the early hours of September 10, and Romania a few days later, were followed by three Russian fighter jets breaching Estonian airspace on September 19. And there has been speculation that drones, which forced the temporary closure of Copenhagen and Oslo airports overnight on September 22, were connected to the Kremlin as well.While this might suggest a deliberate strategy of escalation on the part of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, it is more likely an attempt to disguise the fact that the Kremlin’s narrative of inevitable victory is beginning to look shakier than ever. A failed summer offensive that has been extremely costly in human lives is hardly something to write home about. Estimates of Russian combat deaths now stand at just under 220,000. What’s more, this loss of life has produced little in territorial advances: since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia gained some 70,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian land. While this means that Moscow has nearly tripled the amount of territory it illegally occupies, during its most recent summer offensive, it gained fewer than 2,000 square kilometres. On 1 September 2022, Russia controlled just over 20% of Ukrainian territory, three years later it was just 19% (up from 18.5% at the beginning of the year).Perhaps most telling that the Russian narrative of inevitable victory is hollow is the fact that Russian forces were unable to convert a supposed breakthrough around Pokrovsk in the Donbas area of Ukraine in August into any solid gains amid a successful Ukrainian counterattack.That Russia is not winning, however, is hardly of comfort to Ukraine. Moscow still has the ability to attack night after night, exposing weaknesses in Ukraine’s air defence system and targeting critical infrastructure.The western response, too, has been slow so far and has yet to send a clear signal to the Kremlin what Nato’s and the EU’s red lines are. While Nato swiftly launched Eastern Sentry in response to the Russian drone incursion into Poland, the operation’s deterrent effect appears rather limited given subsequent Russian incursions into Romania and Estonia, as well as undeclared flights in neutral airspace near Poland and Germany. Subsequent comments by Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, threatened to “shoot down flying objects when they violate our territory and fly over Poland” while cautioning that it was important “to think twice before deciding on actions that could trigger a very acute phase of conflict.”On the other side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump, the US president, in his latest missive opined that Kyiv can “WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.” But he has generally said little about Russia ratcheting up pressure on Nato’s eastern flank. Regarding the Russian drone incursion into Poland, he mused that it could have been a mistake, before pledging to defend Nato allies in the event of a Russian attack and encouraging allies on the eastern flank to shoot down Russian intruders.This is certainly an improvement on his earlier threats to Nato solidarity, but it is at best a backstop against a full-blown Russian escalation. What it is not is a decisive step to ending the war against Ukraine. In fact, any such US steps seem ever farther off the agenda. The deadline that Trump gave Putin after their Alaska summit to start direct peace talks with Ukraine came and went without anything happening. The US president’s so-called phase-two sanctions on Russia and its enablers have now been conditioned by Trump on all Nato and G7 countries to impose such sanctions first. And the last line of his “Ukraine can win” post on his TruthSocial platform — “Good luck to all!” — looks more like him completely abandoning his hitherto unsuccessful peace-making efforts. Meanwhile US arms sales to Europe, meant to be channelled to strengthen Ukraine’s defences, have been scaled down by the Pentagon to replenish its own arsenals. At the same time, a long-standing US support programme for the Baltic states — the Baltic security initiative — is under threat from cuts and could be discontinued as of next year.As has been clear for some time, support for Ukraine — and ultimately the defence of Europe — is no longer a primary concern for the US under Trump. Yet, European efforts to step into the gaping hole in the continent’s security left by US retrenchment are painfully slow. The defence budgets of the EU’s five biggest military spenders — France, Germany, Poland, Italy, and the Netherlands — combined are less than a quarter of what the US spends annually. And even if money were not an issue, Europe has serious problems with its defence-industrial base. The EU’s flagship Security Action for Europe programme has faced months of delays over the...
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    7 分
  • Russian drones in Polish airspace (part 2): A provocation – and a test

    Russian drones in Polish airspace (part 2): A provocation – and a test
    2025/09/12
    It's not the first time that Polish airspace has been violated by Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. But early in the morning of September 10, 2025, after Poland shot down Russian drones in its airspace, it became the first time a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member opened fire during this war.Regardless of whether it was intended or accidental, the drone incursions are a serious escalation of the Russian war against Ukraine.There is a real danger of the conflict spilling over into NATO territory and a potential direct confrontation with Russia.The Russian drones forced the temporary closure of several Polish airports, including the main hub in the capital Warsaw and a regional airport in eastern Poland that is a critical for deliveries of Western aid to Ukraine. This and the fact that a significant number of drones were involved — Poland reported 19 of them — and that they only entered Poland — but not Slovakia or Hungary next door — makes it even less likely that this was just an accident.Earlier airspace violations could have been dismissed as drones or missiles simply going astray. In August, a Russian drone crashed in eastern Poland, and on earlier occasions, missiles entered Polish airspace before hitting targets in Ukraine. Russian drones have also previously come down in two other countries on Ukraine’s western border — Moldova, which has ambitions to join the European Union, and EU and NATO member Romania.So far, Ukraine and its European allies have strongly condemned Russian actions as a deliberate escalation. Poland has invoked NATO Article 4 to formally open consultations among the allies.This latest Russian provocation looks more like an actual act of aggression and a concerted test of Western responses.Consider the timing: Russia’s escalation comes just after last week's high-profile meetings in China. First, the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation which provided an ideal platform for Russian President Vladimir Putin, to demonstrate to Ukraine and the West that he retains the strong support of two key allies – China and India.Mr Putin then stayed on for bilateral meetings with senior Chinese officials, including his counterpart, Xi Jinping. Among other things, these resulted, after many years of protracted negotiations, in the conclusion of an agreement to build the Power of Siberia-2 pipeline which, if completed and reaching full capacity, will provide a long-term perspective for Russian hydrocarbon exports to China.Finally, during the military parade celebrating China’s defeat of Japan in World War II, the closer relationship between Russia, China and North Korea was on full display.All of this is likely to have been interpreted in the Kremlin as a significant strengthening of the Russian position in general and in relation to its war against Ukraine in particular. The Kremlin’s key allies are unlikely to issue an outright condemnation of Russia’s reckless escalatory actions — and even less likely to put any pressure on Mr Putin to bring this war to an end.Importantly, the latest Russian provocation also happened just before the start of the Zapad-2025 military exercises in Belarus. Although these are regular joint drills of Russian and Belarusian forces, they have taken on additional significance since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.Poland has already announced that it will close its border with Belarus for the duration of the exercises, while Lithuania will block off part of its airspace. In addition, Poland will host the Iron Defender-25 military exercises, framed as a direct response to the Russian and Belarusian Zapad-2025 exercises.The potential for inadvertent escalation into actual hostilities between Russia and NATO is now even higher.This does not bring Europe to the brink of war, but, as the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, noted, the continent is now the closest ever since the end of World War II to a major military confrontation between Russia and the West.The Western response overall does not instil much confidence. There are serious questions about NATO’s preparedness. Fighter jets were scrambled to shoot down the drones, and not all of the 19 drones were actually downed by them.If NATO countries struggle to deal with such a small number of incursions, how, one might wonder, would they be able to cope with the kinds of attacks that involve hundreds of drones as well as missiles at a time — something which Ukraine has experienced every night for months?Beyond full-throated condemnation from Western capitals and talk of more sanctions and the creation of an air defence wall along NATO’s borders with Russia, the subsequent political and diplomatic response has also been underwhelming.This will give Russia a sense of what the Kremlin can get away with. If Mr Putin was yet against testing those boundaries, he has not yet run into a brick wall.Given the feckless EU and NATO response...
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    6 分
  • Russian drones over Poland are a serious escalation of the war in Ukraine

    Russian drones over Poland are a serious escalation of the war in Ukraine
    2025/09/11
    When Nato jets were scrambled over eastern Poland in the morning of September 10 to defend the airspace of an alliance member against an incursion by Russian drones, it was the first time that the west fired shots in the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. This incursion marks a serious escalation by Moscow. But it also highlights yet again that the west has no clear red lines and is unprepared to respond decisively if red lines that were taken for granted in the past — like the territorial integrity of Nato members — are crossed.This latest Russian escalation isn’t the usual war of words. It was only last week that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, warned that foreign troops in Ukraine would be legitimate targets for his invasion force. He slightly qualified his comments by noting that this would be the case “especially now, while the fighting is ongoing”. But the message was nevertheless clear. Russia will oppose any international security guarantees that involve western troops in Ukraine. This has been a long-standing and oft-articulated position by Russia. Yet, Putin’s rhetoric threatening to target western troops clearly ups the ante.But these are not the only ways in which the Kremlin has markedly turned up the pressure over the past few weeks and months. Russia has also retained some momentum in its military campaign in Ukraine and has been further empowered by several successes on the diplomatic front.On the battlefield, Russia has continued to demonstrate significant advantages in manpower and materiel.Where the entire Nato alliance struggled to cope with the incursion of just 19 drones, Ukraine has been subject to an intense air campaign with hundreds of drones and often dozens of missiles every night for months. The attacks have become more brazen – recently targeting Ukraine’s government building in Kyiv. They have also become more deadly, leading to increasing loss of lives among civilians. As in past years, Russia has also targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which bodes ill for another grim winter for the country.On the ground, Russian gains have been small and Ukraine has regained strategically important territory around the key city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. Nonetheless, and this is what matters for Putin’s messaging, Russia is advancing, however incrementally and costly it might be.Diplomatically, Putin received an important boost from the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Tianjin and subsequent bilateral deals agreed with China. He will also have been cheered by the cordial relations on display between Russian, Chinese and North Korean leaders at the September 3 military parade to mark China’s victory over Japan in the second world war. The Russian president can now be more assured than ever that key partners will have his back – economically in the case of China and India, and militarily in the case of North Korea.Buoyed by such “successes” that his war machine will not suddenly grind to a halt, the Russian president felt confident enough to demand that Ukraine negotiate an end to the war with him or face the consequences of him ending the war by force. Putin’s idea of a negotiated end to the war, however, is anything but that. What he has in mind is that Ukraine and its western allies should simply accept his longstanding demands: territorial losses, no Nato membership, and no western forces to secure any peace deal.This multi-layered Russian pressure campaign is not merely an accidental confluence of unrelated forces somehow magically lining up in Putin’s favour. It is part of a carefully crafted campaign for Russia to retain relevance in what will likely shape up as future bipolar US and Chinese-dominated international order. If Putin has accepted Chinese dominance in Asia, he still sees opportunities for Russia to be the dominant power in Europe — and restore at least part of its Soviet-era zone of influence.For that to be achieved, the Kremlin needs to demonstrate that Ukraine’s western partners are feckless in the face of Russian determination. So far, Putin is doing well. All of the deadlines and ultimatums set by the US president, Donald Trump, have so far been ignored by Russia — at zero cost. Trump’s response to Russian drones in Polish airspace was a short post on his Truth Social network that indicated surprise more than an actual response to what could quickly develop into a serious crisis. Meanwhile, Trump has yet to offer his support for a bi-partisan bill in the US senate to put more sanctions pressure on Russia.Similarly, while European leaders have been quick and forceful in their condemnations of this latest Russian provocation, their reactions have, as usual, been at the rhetorical level. Poland merely invoked Nato’s Article 4 procedure for formal consultations among allies in the North Atlantic Council. But the outcome of this consultation was little more than a meek statement by Mark...
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    7 分
  • China’s plans for a new world order are built on a fragile consensus

    China’s plans for a new world order are built on a fragile consensus
    2025/09/04
    China’s president, Xi Jinping, has been busy on the diplomatic front. China has just hosted the largest annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), followed by an impressive military parade to mark the defeat of Japan in the second world war — all accompanied by key bilateral meetings with heads of state from like-minded countries. You could be forgiven for thinking Beijing is now the diplomatic capital of the world.But look behind the facade of bonhomie on display in the Chinese capital, and the unity underpinning a new China-led global order looks a lot more fragile than Xi Jinping would have you believe.The most important result of the SCO summit on August 31 and September 1 was not the fact that leaders adopted a lengthy communique and more than 20 joint statements on issues as diverse as artificial intelligence, green industries, and international trade. What mattered most was the attendance of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the rapprochement between New Delhi and Beijing.This was Modi’s first visit to China in seven years. That his country’s relations with China continue to improve was made clear by Modi’s positive assessment of his bilateral meeting with Xi Jinping as “fruitful”. The Indian prime minister also emphasised that the bilateral relationship with China is based on “mutual respect, mutual interest and mutual sensitivity”, thereby acknowledging that not all of the issues between the two countries are resolved.One of these issues is the relationship with Pakistan. But as an obvious indicator of China trying to pull India closer into the SCO fold, Xi Jinping pushed for the unequivocal condemnation of the terror attacks in Pahalgam in Kashmir in April 2025 in the SCO’s summit declaration. China’s earlier failure to do so, as well as its support for Pakistan in the military confrontation between New Delhi and Islamabad, had soured relations with India and prevented India’s defence minister from signing a similar communique at a meeting of SCO defence ministers in June.Modi’s attendance also provided the opportunity for him and Xi Jinping to demonstrate their continuing support for Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. As far as alliances go, one between China, Russia, and India would be a formidable factor in the remaking of the international order. But while there was an impressive display of solidarity between the three leaders, they are united by little more than their opposition to the current US-dominated order.There was plenty of talk from Xi Jinping at the SCO summit about reforming the current system of international affairs — the latest blueprint of which is his Global Governance Initiative, which aims to transform the UN into a Beijing-led instrument. But the prospects of rapid change are limited.China and India are both deeply integrated into the current international financial and economic system — as are most other SCO member states and partner countries. They may all resent the current dismantling of trade relations by US tariff policies but — with the partial exception of China’s dominance of the global rare-earth trade — they have little leverage.Another problem for Xi Jinping is the fact his various forays into reshaping the international system are at best complementary and at worst contradictory. There is some overlap between the SCO and his other signature project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But while the BRI is global and primarily aims to extend China’s influence by economic means, the SCO is much more regional in outlook and focused on security.Add to that the Brics group — with China, Russia, and India plus Brazil and South Africa at its core, and another five recent joiners primarily from the Middle East and Africa — and China’s approach to remaking the international system begins to look less like a coherent strategy. It resembles more a series of trial balloons — with even Xi Jinping unsure which of them will eventually pave the way to China’s global leadership role.A final issue for Xi Jinping is that he is limited in his choice of partners. At the SCO summit in Tianjin, it was all about relations between China, Russia, and India. China and Russia then proceeded to finalise their long-overdue agreement on the Power of Siberia II pipeline as part of their bilateral relationship-building. At the victory parade in Beijing, the fledgling alliance between China, Russia, and North Korea seemed to take centre stage. The absence of Modi from the latter two is telling: on the one hand, relations between Moscow and Beijing are at a different level than their individual bilateral ties with New Delhi and rather exclusive; while India, on the other hand, does not want to be too closely associated with North Korea.Clearly, Xi Jinping has different options in how he pursues his challenge to the current world order — but some are mutually exclusive. Not everyone in his orbit is comfortable...
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    8 分
  • Xi, Putin, and Modi will showcase their unity at the SCO summit in Tianjin

    Xi, Putin, and Modi will showcase their unity at the SCO summit in Tianjin
    2025/08/27
    The upcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, 2025, will be the organisation’s largest gathering of heads of state to date. It comes at a time when the existing liberal international order is rapidly disintegrating — but rather than offering a concrete new order, the SCO demonstrates the persistent difficulties that anti-liberal powers, such as China and Russia, have in agreeing and implementing a credible alternative.Founded in Shanghai in 2001 with just six members — Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — the SCO has grown rapidly over the past decade. India and Pakistan joined in 2017, Iran in 2023, and Belarus in 2024. Beyond these now ten member states, the SCO also has two observers — Afghanistan and Mongolia — and 14 dialogue partners, including Turkey, Egypt, Armenia and Azerbaijan, several of the Gulf states, and a number of other Asian states. If measured by the population of its core member states, it is the world’s largest regional security organisation.Size clearly matters, but in the case of the SCO it creates problems instead of contributing to their resolution. The organisation did little in response to escalating tensions between India and Pakistan in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Kashmir that brought the two long-standing rivals to the brink of nuclear confrontation. It took US mediation to de-escalate the violence.The SCO’s subsequent failure to condemn cross-border terrorism explicitly in a joint statement of the meeting of defence ministers at the end of June led to India refusing to sign it.When Israel attacked Iran, the SCO issued a strongly-worded condemnation of the attacks. But India distanced itself officially from the SCO statement.These and other simmering tensions, such as between India and China over a new dam project in Tibet, are likely going to be papered over at the SCO summit in Tianjin. China’s president, Xi Jinping, will be keen to demonstrate Chinese leadership of a large coalition of like-minded countries who oppose the hitherto US-led liberal international order.The theme of this year’s summit — “Upholding the Shanghai Spirit: SCO on the Move” — sounds more like an aspirational plea to member states, observers, and dialogue partners rather than a concrete plan for action. The so-called Shanghai spirit — a hazy mixture of standard Chinese talking points about mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation — is little more than empty rhetoric. It is also very fragile. Two member states — India and Pakistan — have recently gone to war with each other. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been involved in several full-scale violent confrontations since they became dialogue partners almost a decade ago. And if they have now embraced the Shanghai spirit, they did so, ironically, in Washington and after both their relations with Russia significantly soured.Nor does the SCO have much of a track record of constructive involvement in internal conflicts in its member states and dialogue partners, such as Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar. This is even more obvious in the case of Afghanistan where Russia’s recent official recognition of the Taliban government poses yet another challenge to the SCO. China has cautiously welcomed Russia’s recognition but not followed suit, while several Central Asian member states of the SCO already have a wide range of economic ties with Afghanistan. But Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states remain deeply ambivalent about the Taliban regime.It is also worth noting that the SCO’s very selective commitment to the Shanghai spirit does not extend to relations between the organisation and non-member states. That much is evident from the SCO’s lack of condemnation of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Previous summits in 2022, 2023 and 2024 produced lengthy declarations of intent — but little follow-through. It is, therefore, difficult to see where the SCO will move.The marked difference to these previous summits is, of course, Donald Trump’s return to the White House. On the one hand, Trump has demonstrated the near-irrelevance of the SCO as a security player compared to the indispensability of the United States when it comes to managing crises, such as those between India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Cambodia and Thailand.On the other hand, Trump’s weaponisation of trade has created a new dynamic within the SCO that might see the organisation’s most powerful countries — China, Russia and India — align more closely against the United States. Sanctions against Russia, however unlikely they may be to be fully implemented by Trump, are still on the table. Heavy tariffs have now been imposed on India for continuing to buy Russian oil. And the US trade war with China is only paused but not settled.For their own sake, and even more so for the sake of their actual and potential ...
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    7 分
  • Transatlantic unity at the White House disguises lack of progress towards just peace for Ukraine

    Transatlantic unity at the White House disguises lack of progress towards just peace for Ukraine
    2025/08/19
    At a high-stakes meeting in the White House on August 18, the US president, Donald Trump, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, hammered out the broad contours of a potential peace agreement with Russia. Their encounter was in marked contrast to their last joint press conference in Washington back in February which ended with Zelensky’s humiliation by Trump and his vice president, J.D. Vance.The outcomes of the American and Ukrainian presidential get-together, and the subsequent, expanded meeting with leaders of the European coalition of the willing, was also a much more professional affair than Trump’s summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on August 15. What’s more, the results of the meetings in the White House, while not perfect, are a much better response to the reality in which Ukrainians have lived for the past more than three-and-a-half years than what transpired during and after the brief press conference in Alaska.This relatively positive outcome was not a foregone conclusion. Over the weekend, Trump put out a statement on his Truth Social platform that “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately” — provided that he would accept Ukraine’s loss of Crimea to Russia and forego his country’s future Nato membership. This, and similar ideas of land swaps between Russia and Ukraine, were roundly rejected by Zelensky. Importantly, Kyiv’s position was fully backed by Ukraine’s European allies, with leaders of the coalition of the willing issuing a joint statement on August 16 to the effect that any territorial concessions were Ukraine’s to make or refuse.On Nato membership, the statement was more equivocal. European leaders asserted that Russia should not be allowed to have a veto on Ukraine’s choices. But with Nato membership often used as a shorthand for credible security guarantees for Ukraine as part of any future peace agreement, the reiteration of the commitment that the coalition of the willing as “ready to play an active role” opened up a pathway to Trump offering “Article 5-like protections” for Ukraine against future Russian aggression and promising “a lot of help when it comes to security”. A possibly emerging deal – some territorial concessions by Ukraine in exchange for peace and joint US and European security guarantees – became more certain during the televised meeting between Trump and his visitors before their closed-door discussions. In different ways, each of the European guests acknowledged the progress that Trump had made towards a settlement and they all emphasised the importance of a joint approach to Russia to make sure that any agreement would bring a just and lasting peace.As an indication that his guests were unwilling to simply accept whatever deal he had brought back with him from his meeting with Putin in Alaska, the US president then interrupted the discussions in the White House to call the Russian president. By then, signals from Russia were far from promising, with Moscow rejecting any Nato troop deployments to Ukraine and singling out Britain as allegedly seeking to undermine the US-Russia peace effort.When the meeting concluded and the different leaders offered their interpretations of what had been agreed two things became clear. First, the Ukrainian side had not folded under pressure from the US, and European leaders, while going out of their way to flatter Trump, held their ground as well. Importantly, Trump had not walked away from the process either but appeared to want to remain engaged.Second, Russia had not given any ground. According to remarks by Putin’s foreign policy advisor, Yuri Ushakov, posted on the Kremlin’s official website, Russia would consider “the possibility of raising the level of representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian parties”. This statement falls short of, but does not rule out, the possibility of the Zelensky-Putin summit, which Trump announced as a major success after the discussions in the White House yesterday.Such a meeting was seen as the next logical step towards peace by all the participants of the White House meeting and would be followed, according to Trump, by what he called “a Trilat” of the Ukrainian, Russian and American presidents. The lack of clear confirmation by Russia that such meetings would indeed happen raises more doubts about the Kremlin’s sincerity.But the fact that a peace process – if it can be called that – remains somewhat intact is a far cry from an actual peace agreement. Little if anything was said in the aftermath of the White House meeting on territorial issues. Pressure on Russia only came up briefly in comments by European leaders, whose ambitions to become formally involved in actual peace negotiations remain a pipe dream for the time being. And despite the initial optimism about security guarantees, no firm commitments were made, with Zelensky only noting “the important signal...
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