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Trump announces new plan to arm Ukraine
In this episode of World in :60 Ian Bremmer breaks down why Trump is now backing missile shipments to Ukraine after long opposing them.
"Trump has flipped on Ukraine more than any other issue in foreign policy over the last six months,” says Ian.
On Israel, Ian emphasizes a coalition shakeup could make a Gaza ceasefire more likely, but don’t expect quick progress.
As for Trump’s threat of 100% tariffs on Russia? “Not a serious point,” Ian says.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Head of the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring Yury Chikhanchin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on July 8, 2025.
Russia’s dark future
At first glance, Russia has coped well under the weight of Ukraine-related Western sanctions. In 2024, its economy grew at a faster rate than every G7 country. Though Europe has gone almost entirely cold turkey on Russian oil and gas supplies, thirst for these resources in China and India, quenched by a shadow tanker fleet that helps evade those sanctions, has kept Russia’s energy trade stable.
Longer term, climate change can help. Warming temperatures will open new Russian lands to farming and boost its agricultural output. They will open new sea routes that lower Russia’s cost of commerce and bring revenue from transit fees imposed on others. Perhaps most importantly, the Kremlin has long claimed it can transition from its currently heavy reliance on oil and gas exports to deeper investment in wind, hydro, geothermal, biomass, hydrogen, and solar energy.
But the realities of Russia’s future are darkening.
Its economy has become addicted to war in Ukraine. Its growth over the past two years was fueled mainly by the tidal wave of military spending needed to eke out modest gains in what’s become a war of attrition. Military and security spending now make up about 40% of Russia’s total government expenditure. This spending surge is sending inflation into overdrive, forcing Russia’s central bank to raise interest rates to a record 21%, raising borrowing costs for businesses and slowing future investment. Manufacturing has slowed and ordinary Russians aren’t spending.
None of this will persuade President Vladimir Putin to cut a deal with Ukraine – and that’s Russia’s bigger problem. Current evidence suggests Putin intends to keep doubling down on a war that leaves a supposed great military power to take 1,000 casualties per day to make tentative gains of a few kilometers, to kill Ukrainian civilians, and to laud slow advances on individual towns and villages in a war that’s already dragged on for three years and four months.
In addition, while China and India remain eager to buy the energy Russia pumps out of the ground, they know the loss of Moscow’s best customers in Europe allows them to buy the product at a below-market price. China, with an economy nearly nine times larger than Russia’s, has done remarkably little to help Putin win his war. India has shifted large volumes of arms purchases from Russia to the United States. The Kremlin’s trade problem is compounded by the reality that even ending the war with Ukraine won’t bring mistrustful Europeans to return to their former volumes of trade with Russia.
But Russia’s biggest problems are found inside its borders. Longtime reliance on the revenue from exports of oil, gas, metals, and minerals has allowed Russia to avoid large-scale investment in the digital-age industries needed for an innovative 21st-century economy. The most recent credible measure of this comes from the Global Innovation Index 2024, produced by the World Intellectual Property Organization, a UN agency. According to the report, which measures entrepreneurship and innovation-driven growth and development across 133 countries, Russia ranks 59th in the world, behind Mauritius, Georgia, and North Macedonia.
This problem probably has many sources – an economy dominated by well-connected elites who don’t need innovation to remain wealthy, a lack of entrepreneurial tradition, and increased investment focus on a war Russia isn’t winning. But the larger challenge facing Russia is the depletion of the generation of young people that might help solve these problems. A report last month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies found “250,000 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine, with over 950,000 total Russian casualties.” That’s a tremendous blow for Russia’s potentially most productive generation, with no end of the sacrifice in sight. Here’s another: aware of both Russia’s long-term economic problems and the much more urgent problem of avoiding war, nearly one million Russians have fled the country in search of better opportunities since the earliest days of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia, a resource-rich country with 11 time zones and an economy about half the size of California’s, still depends almost entirely for its great-power claims on its stockpile of nuclear weapons, the world’s largest. But these are weapons that can only be used at high risk of self-annihilation, and Russia’s sophisticated arsenal of cyber-weapons is useful only for undermining other countries.
Worst of all, it’s hard to imagine any Kremlin change of direction toward creating a more dynamic and innovative Russia anytime soon. The war in Ukraine grinds on. For now, Putin and his enablers seem content to define Russia’s “greatness” solely by its ability to disrupt and punish others.
How Ayatollah got ghosted
"Thought we were bros" #PUPPETREGIME
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Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on June 23, 2025.
What We’re Watching: Iran meets with Putin, NATO gathers at the Hague, Venezuela targets black markets
US bombing of Iran creates Russian conundrum
Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed Iran’s foreign minister on Monday, offering rhetorical support for Tehran – but it’s unclear what more the Kremlin is willing to do for its last major Middle Eastern ally right now. Putin has cultivated good ties with Iran, but also with Israel. At the same time, with Washington focused on Iran, Russia continued to hammer Kyiv with airstrikes over the weekend. Just days ago, Putin openly declared that the “whole of Ukraine is ours” – does he think the end goal is in sight?
NATO allies meet for an uncomfortable summit
Defense expenditure will be the top agenda item when leaders of 32 countries – all from Europe and North America – gather at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit tomorrow in the Hague, Netherlands. Ahead of the gathering, the group agreed to increase its defense-spending target from 2% to 5% of GDP, but granted an exception to Spain due to the prime minister’s political problems at home. Questions about the strength of the alliance are swirling: US President Donald Trump has sparred with his NATO allies for years now, and there’s no sign that the tensions will subside – his decision to bomb Iran undercut European efforts to foster a truce in the Middle East.
Venezuela cracks down on black markets – could it backfire?
The Venezuelan government has arrested dozens of people, including former top officials, in a crackdown on the country’s sprawling black market for dollars. Authorities blame off-the-books dollar traders for destabilizing the exchange rate, but experts say that the government’s economic mismanagement, coupled with US sanctions, means that black markets are the only way to satisfy popular demand for greenbacks. Stamping out those channels could, they warn, make things worse. Venezuela’s inflation rate has already surged past 200% this year.
Ukraine drone strikes deep inside Russia
In this episode of Europe in :60, Carl Bildt provides an update on the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
Bildt highlights Ukraine’s recent drone strikes on Russian bomber bases that was “beyond what you see in James Bond movies.” The bold Ukrainian operation comes amid a shifting geopolitical landscape that may be encouraging Russia to double down. Bildt notes that Russia’s maximalist demands and Trump’s apparent withdrawal of pressure on Putin have emboldened Moscow to continue military operations. Bildt warns, “we are facing further tragic months of war in the East of Europe."
Ukraine’s drone strike shocks Russia and redefines modern warfare
Ukraine’s unprecedented drone strike deep inside Russian territory destroyed up to 20 aircraft, including nuclear-capable bombers and early warning systems.
Ian Bremmer calls it “one of the most extraordinary asymmetric attacks in modern warfare,” raising urgent questions about Russia’s nuclear deterrence and the global balance of power.
Powered by a homegrown drone program and diaspora technologists, Ukraine’s low-cost innovation dealt a massive blow to Moscow’s high-value assets. Ian draws parallels to Israel’s strikes on Hezbollah, showing how modern warfare is being redefined.
“The dangers are not just to the Ukrainian people—the dangers are increasingly global,” warns Ian.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the Kursk-II nuclear power plant under construction, in the Kursk region, Russia, on May 21, 2025.
What We’re Watching: Putin celebrates in Kursk, “Death camp” discovery in Mexico, & DRC seeks US help against China
Putin takes a victory lap
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Kursk on Tuesday for the first time since the Kremlin declared that it had ejected Ukrainian fighters from the Russian region. It’s another flex for a leader who signals no interest in halting the war in Ukraine. The next challenge for Moscow: Can its army secure major battlefield gains this summer to further boost its bargaining position?
Activists press Mexico’s government on cartel “death camp”
Pressure is growing on Mexico’s government to take action against drug cartels that have kidnapped, tortured, and killed tens of thousands of people over the last two decades, after relatives of some of the 120,000 disappeared persons learnt this week about a “death camp” in the western state of Colima. Authorities discovered mass graves there 18 months ago, but only just passed on the information to victims’ families. Taking on these gangs is a complex task for President Claudia Sheinbaum, as local authorities lack the manpower and firepower to quell them.
US vs China in the DRC
Felix Tshisekedi, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has picked a fight with China over its cobalt and wants US help. The sub-Saharan nation banned exports of the metal – an essential input for the battery, defense, and aerospace industries – in February, but China’s top cobalt producer, COMC, is now pushing the DRC to lift the ban. The DRC produces about three-quarters of the world’s cobalt, and is seeking to engage the Trump administration to find new investment partners in a bid to limit Chinese influence in its cobalt trade.
Trump’s call with Putin fails to deliver Ukraine ceasefire
Ian's takeaways:
On Trump’s Ukraine policy: “Absent a ceasefire, there is no breakthrough deal between Trump and Putin. None of that’s going to happen.”
On Western backlash over Gaza: “At the end of the day, unless Trump is going to squeeze Israel hard and say, 'Suspend intelligence and aid,' the way he did with the Ukrainians, I have a hard time seeing the Israelis in any way backing down from what is at this point an completely unconscionable military intervention and ethnic cleansing across the board in Gaza."
On tech power vs. government: “In the US digital space, it’s the tech CEOs who hold the power and the government isn’t ready for what’s coming.”