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A member of the M23 rebel group walks on the outskirts of Matanda in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, March 22, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Civilian killings in the DRC, Musk scraps plans for third party, Swedish church moves to altar-nate site, & More
140: Rwanda-backed rebels killed at least 140 civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in July, per Human Rights Watch, and the number could rise to 300. The two sides had seemed on the path to peace after signing a peace deal in the White House in June, but the killings suggest the conflict is far from settled.
30: Eemeli Peltonen, a 30-year-old Finnish Member of Parliament, passed away in the parliament building yesterday. It appears he died by suicide. The death of Peltonen, who was a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party, has shocked the country. He was one of the youngest politicians in the Finnish government.
79: A bus carrying Afghans who had been expelled from Iran crashed in western Afghanistan yesterday, killing 79 people. It was on its way from the border to the capital Kabul. Iran has deported hundreds of thousands of Afghans this year, in part over unsubstantiated claims that they were spying for the Israelis.
$290 million: So much for that third-party idea: Tesla owner Elon Musk is quietly shelving his own plan to fund a third party in the United States. Musk donated over $290 million to Republican campaigns ahead of the 2024 election, but had threatened to create a new party – and inject it with some of his cash – when Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill. It seems he realized he had a mountain to climb.
672: Talk about a pilgrimage! A 133-year-old church in northern Sweden – all 672 tons of it – completed its two-day relocation today, after shifting three miles down the road in the village of Kiruna. Risk of ground subsidence forced the move – the town’s history of iron ore mining meant the church was no longer on terra firma. To achieve the move, the whole building was placed onto a giant trailer and hauled at a steady pace of roughly 550 yards per hour.U.S. President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping arrive for a state dinner at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, November 9, 2017.
Hard Numbers: US extends trade truce with China, Finland charges Russian-linked tanker over subsea sabotage, Smuggler stuffs turtles in socks, and more
90: President Donald Trump on Monday delayed the US’s tariff deadline with China by another 90 days – hours before a previous agreement was set to expire. Beijing responded Tuesday by suspending additional retaliatory tariffs on US goods. The move follows bilateral talks last month in Stockholm, where both sides had signaled a likely extension of the status quo amid fears of a wider trade war.
5: In a first for any NATO country, Finland brought charges against the captain and crew of a Russian-linked oil tanker for suspected subsea cable sabotage, after the vessel cut five cables by dragging its anchor along the Baltic Sea floor in late 2024. While subsea cables are vital for internet connectivity and electricity infrastructure, prosecuting foreign interference is notoriously difficult, as deliberate damage is often indistinguishable from accidents.
40: On Monday, 40 people were killed in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, after rebels from the Rapid Support Forces attacked Abu Shouk, a famine-hit displacement camp which houses at least 200,000 people. Darfur has witnessed some of the worst violence in Sudan’s two-year-long civil war, which has claimed an estimated 150,000 lives and displaced at least 12 million.
850: A Chinese man pleaded guilty on Monday of attempting to illegally smuggle 850 protected turtles to Hong Kong from the United States. The turtles – worth around $1.4 million – were reportedly wrapped in socks and labeled in boxes as “plastic animal toys.”
Gerald Ford American President and Leonid Brejnev Soviet Leader, on July 30, 1975 at Conference on Security and Cooperation in Helsinki.
Can this Cold War agreement broker peace between Russia and the West?
Fifty years ago, leaders from 35 countries – including rivals from both sides of the Iron Curtain – gathered in the Finnish capital of Helsinki to attend the first Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE).
The talks capped three years of Cold War negotiations, culminating in the signing of the Helsinki Final Act – a landmark agreement that laid the groundwork for stabilizing relations between Eastern and Western bloc countries and paved the way for future economic and security cooperation.
“It was a very unusual assembly,” says Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform. “The fact that two sides that were brandishing nuclear weapons at each other were nonetheless able to find an agreement of this sort, is pretty extraordinary in itself.”
What exactly was so groundbreaking about the Helsinki Final Act? The two most significant legacies from the Helsinki Final Act were its principles on state sovereignty – which acknowledged that each state had the right to choose their own alliances, and political, social, economic and cultural systems – and human rights – which pledged signatories to respect fundamental freedoms, including freedom of thought, conscience, religions or belief.
In the years that followed, Western governments and Soviet-bloc dissidents used these principles to protest abuses under Moscow and its satellite regimes, facilitating the transition of Central and Eastern Europe to democracy.
“Turning the commitments on human rights provided leverage, not only to Western governments to raise human rights issues with communist bloc counterparts, but to internal opposition within those countries,” says Bond. “This laid the foundations for the fall of the Soviet Union.”
Today, Moscow and the West once again find themselves at odds, principally over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In some ways the relationship is worse now than it was during the depths of the Cold War.
“We’re in a phase where the two sides aren’t really talking to each other and are not really interested in talking to each other,” says Bond, “and that’s particularly true on the Russian side.”
So, could a new Helsinki process broker peace between Russia and the West again? Perhaps, says Bond, but the will to find peace needs to be there first. Helsinki wasn’t a tool for managing active conflict, rather, it was designed to guide parties already committed to de-escalation.
In the lead up to the Helsinki Act, the driving force was a shared recognition that tensions between the East and the West were reaching a breaking point.
“Diplomats tend to overestimate the ability of diplomatic processes to find a solution when the two parties to a conflict…have not themselves already decided that they want [in] a settlement,” says Bond. “The precondition is that both sides have decided that they will get more out of de-escalation than maintaining the conflict. And we’re not at that stage yet.”
For another Helsinki-style breakthrough to happen, both sides need to already be ready to ease tensions and look towards rebuilding some basic level of mutual trust.
What relevance, if any, does the Helsinki Final Act hold today? While the prospect of Russia and West returning to the negotiating table still remains distant, preserving Helsinki’s foundation for cooperation and core principles is vital for any future de-escalation.
“All wars end eventually, and at that point you will need some sort of mechanism for managing the relations between adversarial powers,” says Bond. “And that’s basically what the Helsinki Final Act provided and might provide again.”
Russia’s next target? Why the Baltics are wary of Putin
How far will Russia go to reassert its influence? This question has haunted Europe for decades. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was supposed to mark a turning point, but for the Baltic nations—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—the shadow of Russian aggression has never truly lifted.
Fast forward to Christmas Day of 2024, when a rickety oil tanker flying the flag of the Cook Islands was caught dragging an 11-ton anchor along the seabed of the Gulf of Finland, severing a critical power cable between Estonia and Finland. Finnish authorities boarded the ship, confiscating 100,000 barrels of illicit Russian oil. EU officials believe the vessel was part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet”—aging tankers used to evade sanctions. Some of those same ships, they warn, may also be engaging in acts of sabotage.
Energy infrastructure isn’t the only target. Cyber warfare has long been part of Russia’s playbook. A 2007 cyberattack on Estonia, widely attributed to Moscow, was an early warning of how modern warfare would evolve. Today, those threats have only intensified. Google’s intelligence experts have recently identified Russia’s elite hacking unit, Sandworm, probing Baltic energy grids for weaknesses—the same strike team that has repeatedly shut down power across Ukraine.
It’s no wonder that Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania now spend more on defense, as a percentage of GDP, than most NATO members. Latvia, for example, has boosted its defense budget from under 1% of GDP in 2014 to a projected 5% by 2026. That’s a figure high enough to impress even US President Donald Trump. And as President Trump signals a more conciliatory stance toward Moscow—softening relations while berating Ukraine’s leadership—the question isn’t just how far Putin will go, but will the West be able to stop him?
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
- Lithuanians decide on dual citizenship ›
- Sweden deploys troops to Latvia ›
- When Russia is your neighbor: Estonian PM Kaja Kallas' frontline POV ›
- Could this spread beyond Ukraine? ›
- Leaders of Poland, Nordic & Baltic countries affirm strong support for Ukraine ›
- As Russia gains ground in Ukraine, Baltic states worry the war will spread west ›
Vaccines including varicella, hepatitus A, prevnar and measles, mumps and rubella at Lurie Children's Primary Care — Town & Country Pediatrics on Oct. 18, 2022, in Chicago.
Hard Numbers: Measles returns to US, Finland remains happy, Ukraine ramps up drone-making, Italian PM seeks damages in deepfake porn case, Biden announces major climate regulation
>58: We love a good comeback story — just not this one. Cases of measles, which is a (checks notes) preventable disease, are rising in the US, thanks largely to unvaccinated travelers. The CDC has already tallied more cases of measles in the US this year than the 58 recorded throughout 2023 (full data will be released in the coming days). Though measles is highly contagious, it’s not expected to spread across the country, but the CDC is encouraging folks to stay up to date on their immunizations.
7: Are saunas and reindeer the key to a happy life? The annual World Happiness Report was released Wednesday, coinciding with the International Day of Happiness. For the seventh year in a row, Finland ranked as the world’s happiest country. Meanwhile, the US dropped out of the top 20 for the first time since the report was first launched over a decade ago – to No. 23, down eight spots from 2023.
2 million: Ukraine says it could make up to two million drones a year — if its Western pals provide more funding. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, says the country is already on track to produce over a million drones this year. Drones have played a major role on the battlefield in Ukraine, and Kyiv has frequently used them to launch strikes against targets in Russia. Kyiv sees domestic manufacturing as crucial to its war effort, but it’s facing financial hurdles, and internal disputes in Western countries are holding up much-needed aid.
100,000: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is seeking damages to the tune of €100,000 ($109,000) in a defamation case linked to deepfake pornographic videos of her that were uploaded online. Two men are under investigation over the videos, which were viewed millions of times. Meloni’s legal team says that if their pursuit of damages is successful then the Italian leader will donate the money to a fund supporting female victims of male violence.
56: President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced a major new regulation to curb climate change that aims to ensure a majority of vehicles in the US (56%) are all-electric or hybrids by 2032. The ambitious rule increasingly restricts levels of pollution allowed from tailpipes each year. The EPA says the regulation will prevent more than seven billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere over the next three decades.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with winners of the Leaders of Russia national management competition at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia March 12, 2024.
Despite Putin’s current swagger, Russia remains vulnerable
After last year’s failed Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has signaled confidence that, thanks to lagging support from the West and Ukraine’s shortage of troops and weapons, Russia can win a war of attrition. But a series of stories today remind us the Kremlin still has plenty of security concerns.
Tuesday’s raids by Ukraine-aligned paramilitaries into Russian border provinces won’t change the war, but they raise the threat level for this weekend’s Russian elections.
Tuesday’s drone attacks on energy sites in multiple regions of central Russia, including one that reportedly inflicted major damage on one of the country’s biggest oil refineries, demonstrate again Ukraine’s ability to hit long-range targets. Ukraine has already disabled about one-third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
NATO's newest members are also creating new security headaches for Moscow. Sweden’s prime minister is reportedly weighing a plan to refortify the Swedish island of Gotland, a strategically crucial piece of real estate in the Baltic Sea.
And for the first time, Sweden and Finland have joined in Operation Steadfast Defender, exercises involving 90,000 troops from all 32 NATO countries. This year’s event is the largest NATO military exercise since the end of the Cold War.
The EU, meanwhile, is expected to approve €5 billion in funding for new military supplies for Ukraine on Wednesday.
Naming names: The nonprofit tracking corruption around the world
What is the least corrupt country in the world? According to a Berlin-based nonprofit called Transparency International, that would be Denmark. Finland is close behind. At the very bottom of the list is Somalia, dead last out of 180 nations.
Founded in 1993 by a retired World Bank Official, Transparency International operates in more than 100 countries, promoting accountability and exposing public sector corruption.
The team, led by CEO Daniel Eriksson, attended the 2024 Munich Security Conference last week with a warning about the rise of “strategic corruption,” a geopolitical weapon involving bribes and disinformation to attain a political goal in another nation.
“Our definition of corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for personal gain,” Eriksson told GZERO’s Tony Maciulis.
This year is critical for democracy as dozens of countries head to the polls for elections that could determine policy and politics for the remainder of the decade. Among other projects aimed at rooting out political corruption, Eriksson’s team tracks foreign funding meant to influence the outcomes of campaigns or get certain candidates elected.
Check out the complete rankings list for 180 countries published yearly in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
See more coverage of the Munich Security Conference from Global Stage.
- The Graphic Truth: The World Cup of graft ›
- David Miliband and Ian Bremmer discuss the Atlas of Impunity ›
- Hard Numbers: Kenyans march against femicide, Corruption costs Ukrainian defense, Germans protest far right, Evergrande tries to avoid liquidation (again), Say more than ‘Oui’ to Paris! ›
- The Graphic Truth: Where corruption is rising, falling ›
Alexander Stubb talks to the media ahead of the announcement of the results, at an election night event, in Helsinki, Finland, February 11, 2024.
Stubb takes Finnish presidency in close race
Finland’s former Prime Minister, Alexander Stubb, narrowly defeated former Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto in a presidential runoff election this Sunday, with 51.6% of vote. Stubb will replace two-term President Sauli Niinisto, known as “the Putin Whisperer” due to his cordial relations with the Russian president prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
That said, Niinisto’s successor is no fan of the Kremlin: as Stubb told Reuters last month, "Politically, there will be no relations with the president of Russia or with the Russian political leadership until they stop the war in Ukraine."
As president, Stubbs’ role is to shape foreign policy and act as commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces. In the past, Finnish presidents largely focused on diplomacy and maintaining the Nordic country's historically neutral foreign policy to avoid antagonizing Russia — but Moscow's belligerent behavior changed the channel and prompted Finland to join NATO in April 2023. Helsinki also signed a defense cooperation agreement with the US in December. That treaty gives the US access to Finnish military bases, an airfield, and locations to store equipment, including ammunition.
In response, Russia has threatened Finland with retaliation and is beefing up its military presence along the countries’ shared 830-mile border. Stubb therefore promises to be a key player not just for Finland’s security, but for that of NATO as a whole.