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In these photos, emergency units carry out rescue work after a Russian attack in Ternopil and Prikarpattia oblasts on December 13, 2024. A large-scale Russian missile attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure left half of the consumers in the Ternopil region without electricity, the Ternopil Regional State Administration reported.
Hard Numbers: Russia hits the heaters in Ukraine, EU Commish survives no-confidence vote, Cameroon’s president runs it back again, scientists find “rogue star”
8: Cameroon’s 92-year-old president Paul Biya has already done it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again – and this Sunday he will seek re-election yet again, for his 8th term in office. His health is so poor that last year he was briefly believed to be dead, and he has only appeared in one campaign event, but he’ll likely win, having disqualified his most prominent challenger.
2: EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen comfortably survived two separate no-confidence votes in the European Parliament on Thursday. The measures were brought to the floor by groups from the left and from the right. Both accused von der Leyen of rolling over in trade talks with the US, and for pursuing a deal with the South American Mercosur bloc that could hurt Europe’s farmers.
6 billion: The rules-based order really is falling apart, everywhere. Astronomers have identified a “young rogue planet” hundreds of light years from Earth that is currently “gobbling up” its surroundings at a rate of 6 billion tons per second. No word on whether the UN Security Council will issue a statement urging planet “Cha 1107-7626” to stop this unprovoked expansion, but scientists are excited about the insights that it provides on early planet formation.
PUPPET REGIME: Putin hears he will lose all of Ukraine
Laughter is cleanser. #PUPPETREGIME
Watch more PUPPET REGIME here!
Trump shifts on Russia: From carrots to sticks in Ukraine war
For years, US policy toward Russia’s war in Ukraine has swung between extremes. Under Biden, “all stick, no carrot.” Under Trump, “all carrot, no stick.” Ian Bremmer says both approaches failed to change Vladimir Putin’s calculus.
What’s different now? Trump himself admits his personal diplomacy with Putin has failed—a rare concession. Instead, he’s pushing oil pressure: urging Hungary, Turkey, and India to cut Russian crude purchases, and exploring deals with Ukraine on drones and long-range missiles.
“The US is closer today to the Ukrainian and European position than Trump was months ago,” Ian notes. “That’s a shift worth watching.”
Why the US-Ukraine minerals deal is a win-win
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm, Sweden.
What is the importance of the so-called minerals deals, which have now been concluded between Ukraine and the United States?
Well, I think it's primarily of political significance, and I think the Kyiv team has done good work and so has the US team in getting a somewhat more realistic agreement. It sets up a reconstruction fund, joint efforts to finance different reconstruction things, so I don't think it's going to have any immediate substantial impact in material terms. But I do think that it takes away an irritant in the Trump-Ukraine relationship, and that is important itself. It might make it somewhat more difficult for the Trump team to just dump Ukraine in the way that some of them might have been inclined to do.
What is the importance of the visit by the Danish King Frederik to Greenland?
Well, I don't think it should be seen primarily in the context of the relationship with Trump and his bizarre ambitions to take over Greenland. It's a new king in Denmark. He's the sovereign. He has a very strong personal relationship with Greenland. It is a new government, a new parliament in Greenland after the elections there in March. And it is to some extent, of course, a new geopolitical situation. So I think it was very natural for the sovereign, the King, to come and spend some days together with the new leadership in Greenland and pave the way also for the new discussions on defense relationships and the overall relationships that are going to come now between the Copenhagen and the Nuuk authorities. But certainly, it sends some sort of signal to Washington as well.
Ian Bremmer on Trump's first 100 days
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: It is a hundred days of President Trump's second administration. How's he doing? And the answer is not so well, certainly not if you look at the polls. Worst numbers for first a hundred days of any president since they've been taking those polls. Markets, of course, down, global economy also down, so much of this self-imposed. And it's not the big-picture policy ideas. The things that Trump says he wants to do are not only popular, but they're also sensible policy: end wars, secure the border, and fair trade. Running on those three planks would work for pretty much anyone in the United States, the things that Trump is committed to, the things that previous administrations, including Biden and the promise of Harris, had not been particularly effective at. But the implementation has been abysmal. The lack of interest in policy specifics, lack of ability to effectively execute, and the dysfunction inside the Trump team/teams, economy, national security has been really challenging.
Tariffs, of course, so far have been the big problem, big internal fight on what it was that Trump should do and for what purpose. In terms of the purpose of these tariffs, you had so many ideas, and a lot of them were mutually contradictory. You're meant to raise revenue and lower taxes and reshore manufacturing and balance deficits and decouple from China and improve national security and on and on and on. These tariffs were going to be a panacea for absolutely everything, and you can't accomplish all of it. And that means that all of the fights that are going on, these countries don't know what the Trump administration actually wants. Bessent, the secretary of treasury, came in with one idea, and Peter Navarro, who initially won, came in with a second, the senior trade advisor in the White House, and Lutnick sort of had a third, and now Bessent is in charge for now, nominative.
Of course, Trump is really in charge, and Trump isn't interested in the specifics. He just wants deals. He wants wins. And he's saying, "Well, you guys, you other countries, you tell us what you're going to do. Well, it's not our job to tell you what we want, even though we're the ones that are expecting these deals to come together." And of course, it's happening with the Americans picking fights with all of these countries, literally everybody in the world simultaneously. And the impact that's going to have on the American economy is going to be dramatic. It's going to be long-lasting. It'll be, in many ways, as big as the pandemic, but completely self-imposed.
And even if deals were put together tomorrow, and they won't be, with the Europeans, with the Mexicans and Canadians, with the Chinese in particular, you'd already have a massive long-term disruption because the supply chains, the tankers, the contracts have already been severed for a period of time. And every day this goes on is a day that it's going to get worse. So that's going to lead to a lot of inflation in the United States, going to lead to a lot of bankruptcies and need for stimulus in other countries around the world, and the average voter's not going to be happy about that at all, which does help to explain why they did Liberation Day the day after elections in the US, special elections in Wisconsin and Florida and elsewhere.
Ending wars, Gaza did have a ceasefire early on, but not now. And now Trump is planning his trip to the Gulf and doesn't have Israel on the schedule, at least not yet, because there's more fighting happening between the Israeli Defense Forces and what's left of Hamas. And that fighting is not something Trump wants to see. Let's see how successful he is at bringing it to a ceasefire.
More important for everyone right now in the United States is the Russia-Ukraine War. The Americans are pushing to end that war, and Trump has had some success in getting the Ukrainians to the table because they understand that the or else is their intelligence and defense support from the US will be shut down, as it was suspended, so they're taking it very seriously. But the Russians are not because Trump has not displayed much of an or else for the Russians, hasn't said directly that if Russia refuses to do a ceasefire, that the US will provide more support for Ukraine, even though Trump advisors were saying that before he became president, has said, "Well, maybe there'll be secondary sanctions." But Trump is not making this very serious for Putin, and so Putin isn't taking it very seriously. Nobody thought he was really going to end the war in a day, but it's been a couple of months of effort, and clearly now Trump and team are losing patience and it's looking increasingly that they might walk away, which is why they're engaging with the Iranians and why, heck, Kim Jong Un probably is going to get a call at some point, right? Because Russia-Ukraine not working so well. So much for ending those wars.
And then on the border front, where Trump is having much more success in terms of policy, you don't see illegal immigrants coming into the US at anywhere close to the numbers they were under Biden or during Trump first term, and that has been a response to effective US policy. But there's also been overreach in terms of refusal to carry out the rulings of federal justices and even the Supreme Court, and that overreach is something that most Americans oppose. So even in the area where Trump is doing the best, his numbers are actually not as favorable as you might otherwise expect because of the dysfunction and because of the overreach of a more revolutionary Trump orientation.
Look, even DOGE, where I was kind of hoping in the early days that DOGE was certainly going to be effective at taking a lot of the corruption and the overspending out of the US government, but much less has been done on that front. There's been lots of claims of fraud, but very little evidence of actual fraud. There's been lots of claims that they were going to take two trillion, then one trillion, then maybe 150 billion, and now looks like less of that with Elon in charge of DOGE. And the focus that they have had has been much more politicized, much more ideological. Anything that looks like DEI or woke, let's just remove all of it and not necessarily do it with a scalpel, but more with a sledgehammer or a chainsaw, which means a lot of important programs get caught up, along with programs that no Americans should be funding.
And so overall, it's been a very challenging first hundred days. This is very much a move fast and break things approach. They are moving very fast. They are breaking a lot of things. There's not a lot of building, at least not yet. And a lot of Americans, while they feel that their government is inefficient and bloated, very few Americans want to see the government be broken further than it already is and less effective than it is, and that is so far what people are seeing. They're seeing it at home and they're seeing it internationally.
And they're not seeing a lot of restraint, even as mistakes are made, not only because Trump is never going to admit to have made any mistakes, of course that is something that you see from pretty much every president, but also, unlike most presidents, he's surrounded by people that don't tell him when he gets things wrong. And that is very different from Trump's first term, and that's a problem because you want to have people, irrespective of how loyal they are to you, you want them to be loyal first and foremost to the country. But Trump doesn't want that. He wants them loyal to him before they're loyal to the country, and that means not giving him information when he screws up because he will retaliate against them. And that's going to get you negative outcomes, I think, not just for the first a hundred days, but also for a much longer period of time in the United States and internationally. I hope I'm wrong. I certainly want to see him succeed, I want to see the country succeed, but that is not the trajectory that we are now on.
That's it for me, and I'll talk to y'all real soon.
Rescuers search for a 17-year-old and his parents near an apartment building hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, on April 24, 2025.
A “critical” week for Ukraine
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that this week is “very critical” for Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Ukraine. Russia’s Vladimir Putin made news on Monday by offering a three-day ceasefire beginning on May 8, a move perhaps motivated by skeptical recent comments from Trump on Russia’s willingness to bargain in good faith.
The list of issues still separating Russia and Ukraine remains long, but the larger reason for doubting the war will end soon is a near-complete lack of trust between Moscow and Kyiv and each government’s hope that it can still improve its position on the battlefield.
For Ukraine, there are new signs of hope. In recent days, reports have emerged that Russia’s wartime economy has begun to sputter – Goldman Sachs reports that Russia’s annualized economic growth has fallen from about 5% at the end of last year to below zero now. The boost that Russia’s shift to wartime production provided the country’s economy appears to be used up. In addition, the lower global oil price is biting into Russia’s export revenues, particularly from economically slumping China.
Ukrainian forces can also take heart from the early successes of its plan to build more and better drones domestically, including smaller exploding models that can be controlled remotely from underground bunkers.
For now, all eyes remain on Trump and his waning patience with a war he’s so far proven unable to stop.
Trump tariff is starting a US-China trade war
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Are the US and China rushing into a trade war?
Absolutely. I mean, if the Americans are actually going to impose tariffs of over 100% on Chinese exports of goods, it's essentially a trade embargo. That is a decoupling, and it's an unmanaged decoupling of US-China direct trade. Still an awful lot of goods from China to get to the United States through third countries. It's not clear all those will be cut off as the US negotiates with a lot of those countries. So people in America will still be buying Chinese goods, but inflation's going to go up. There's no question. And this is going to end up hurting the Chinese even more than it hurts the United States.
With an in-person nuclear talk set for Saturday, how confident is Trump that he can rein in Iran's nuclear program?
Well, it's interesting. What Trump is saying is that Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons. That's different from what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying, which is that they cannot have a nuclear program of any sort. Trump wants to rein the program in. He did announce that there are going to be direct talks between the US and Iran. Iran didn't quite say that. They said they're having indirect talks, but if they go well, they'll lead to direct, which is certainly a concession to the Americans. And it's interesting that Trump did that while the Israeli prime minister was in the Oval Office visiting him. Bibi thought he was coming over for tariff relief, and what he got was Trump saying that Erdogan's his bestie, that the Israelis should be really thankful they get billions from the US, the tariffs aren't going anywhere, and that there's going to be negotiations with Iran. Really interesting. I think Bibi's got to be unhappy on his flight back to Israel.
Zelensky claims Ukrainian troops have captured two Chinese nationals fighting for Russia. How does it change the dynamics of the war?
Not at all. It does reflect the fact that Ukraine is under an awful lot of pressure and is trying to do anything they can to stay in the headlines, stay relevant, keep the Americans engaged and focused. I'm not surprised that there are two Chinese nationals fighting in Ukraine. Doesn't mean they were sent by the Chinese PLA. I mean, there are American nationals that have been fighting for the Ukrainians and it's not because they're sort of involved with NATO or sent by the US government. So I really don't think there's any there, but important enough for you to ask question. That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
Is Europe in trouble as the US pulls away?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: I want to talk about the transatlantic relationship. The US relationship with Europe. Because of all of the geopolitics in the world, this is the one that I think has been impacted in a permanent and structural way in the first two months of the Trump administration. I wouldn't say that, for example, look at the Middle East and US relations with Israel, the Saudis, the Emiratis, the rest of the Gulf States, frankly, all very comfortable with Trump. If there's a significant change, I would say it's incrementally more engaged, and in terms of worldview than under the Biden administration. Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, you look at Asia relations and certainly Trump and the US on trade worrying them, making them sort of react in a more defensive posture. Seeing how much, how more quickly, they can get something to the US that will lead to trying to diffuse potential conflict there. But not radically different from the way they thought about the United States in 2017 in the first Trump term.
Mexico, Canada, Panama, here you've got countries that are facing very significant challenges from the United States, but also ultimately understand that they have no other options. Now, in Canada, that's a bigger fight because there are elections coming up at the end of April. But after those elections are over, I certainly expect that they will move quickly to try to ensure that ongoing relations are functional and stable. That's already true for the Mexican government with a president who has 85% approval, can do pretty much everything necessary to ensure that US-Mexico relations aren't dramatically impacted by everything Trump is demanding. So that's everywhere else.
But in Europe, that's just not the case. Three different reasons why the Europeans are facing a much more permanent impact. The first is on the trade side, like everybody else, and trade is well within the European Union's competency. They understand that they have leverage. If the Americans are going to hit them with significant tariffs, they're going to hit back with the same numbers. But that doesn't mean it's going to be relatively difficult and take a long time to resolve it, as opposed to places that are much weaker where they just fold quickly to the United States. Okay, fair enough. But still, that's not all that dramatically different from first term. Second point is there's a war going on in Ukraine, and the United States has made it very clear that they want to engage, to re-engage with Putin, who is Europe's principal enemy. And they're going to do that irrespective of how much the Europeans oppose it, and they're not going to take any European input in those conversations.
Trump would like a rapprochement with Russia to include a Ukrainian ceasefire. But if that doesn't happen, he is oriented towards blaming the Ukrainians for it, towards taking Kremlin talking points on Ukraine not really being a country, and then on moving to ensure that US-Russia relations are functional again. All of that is deeply concerning, is existentially concerning, particularly for a bunch of European countries that are on the front lines spending a lot more in defense, not because the Americans are telling them to, but because they're worried about Russia themselves, feel like they have to be more independent. Then finally, because Europe is the supranational political experiment that relies most on common values and rule of law, and the United States under Trump is undoing that component of the US-led order specifically.
I wouldn't necessarily say that about collective security or existing alliances and willingness to provide some sort of defense umbrella, but I would certainly say that in terms of rule of law and territorial integrity. And here, the fact that the United States no longer really cares about territorial integrity, is prepared to tell Denmark, "Hey, you're not a good ally. You're not defending Greenland. We're interested in moving forward ourselves, and we don't care how you've treated us historically. We're going to send our leaders and we're going to cut our own deal inside your territory." That's exactly the way the Germans felt when JD Vance said that he wanted to engage directly with the Alternatives für Deutschland, who the Germans consider to be a neo-Nazi party.
Everything that's core to the Europeans in their statehood and in the EU, the United States under Trump is on the other side of that, and it's increasingly conflictual. It's directly adversarial. And so I would say number one, the Europeans are aware of these problems. Number two, they're taking them late, but nonetheless finally very seriously. And so they understand that the Europeans are going to have to create an independent strategy for their own self-defense, for their national security, for their political stability, for their democracies, and they have to do that outside of the United States. In fact, they have to do that and defend themselves against the United States.
Now that reality doesn't mean they're going to be successful. And indeed, the more summits I see on Ukraine, frankly the less I have been convinced that the Europeans will be able to do enough, quick enough to really help Ukraine dramatically cut a better deal with the Russian Federation that is very uninterested in doing anything that is sustainable for the Ukrainians long term. It makes me worry that the EU longer term is not fit for purpose in an environment where the principle, the most powerful actors don't care about rule of law. The United States, China, and for Europe, Russia right on their borders. So for all of those reasons, I mean, the European markets have gone up recently. European growth expectations have gone up because the Germans and others are planning on spending a lot more, that's short-term. Long-term here. I worry that the Europeans are in an awful lot of trouble. So something we'll be focusing on very closely going forward over the coming weeks and months. I hope you all are well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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