Tag: Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)

How Russian and Chinese Interference Could Affect the 2024 Election

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The U.S. government is preparing for its adversaries to intensify efforts to influence American voters next year. Russia has huge stakes in the presidential election. China seems poised to back a more aggressive campaign. Other countries, like Iran, might again try to sow division in the United States. As Washington looks ahead to the 2024 vote, U.S. intelligence agencies last week released a report on the 2022 midterm elections — a document that gives us some hints about what might be to come. Spy agencies concluded Russia favored Trump in…

How China Is Profiting From Trade With Russia

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On China’s snowy border with Russia, a dealership that sells trucks has seen its sales double in the past year thanks to Russian customers. China’s exports to its neighbor are so strong that Chinese construction workers built warehouses and 20-story office towers at the border this summer. The border town Heihe is a microcosm of China’s ever closer economic relationship with Russia. China is profiting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has led Russia to switch from the West to China for purchases of everything from cars to computer chips.…

Chinese Traders and Moroccan Ports: How Russia Flouts Global Tech Bans

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Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, engineers at Convex, a Russian telecommunications company, needed to find American equipment to transmit data to the country’s feared intelligence service. But no gear was flowing in after Western nations imposed sweeping new trade limits on Russia. Convex’s employees soon found a solution. While Cisco, a U.S. tech provider, had halted sales to Russia on March 3, 2022, Convex’s engineers easily obtained the Cisco gear they needed through an obscure Russian e-commerce site called Nag, which had gotten around international trade restrictions by…

China and E.U. Leaders Met as Tensions Rise Over Russia

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Leaders of the European Union pressed China on the country’s trade imbalance with Europe and its support for Russia during a visit to Beijing on Thursday that highlighted the growing tensions between the two sides. The meeting, which took place in separate sessions between China’s leaders, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang, and Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, was the first in-person summit of the leaders of China and the European Union in more than…

DeSantis Says He Will ‘Reorient’ U.S. Foreign Policy to Counter China

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Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, working to maintain his second-place status in the Republican primary, said Friday that as president he would “reorient” U.S. foreign policy to give clear priority to China while downplaying national security risks posed by conflicts such as Russia’s war on Ukraine. In a speech laying out his approach, Mr. DeSantis cast Beijing as a greater threat to the United States than the Axis powers and the Soviet Union ever were because of its economic might. As commander in chief, he said, he would “prioritize the…

Biden and Albanese Say the U.S. and Australia Stand Together With Israel

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President Biden and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia expressed their shared condemnation of the Hamas attack this month on Israeli civilians and soldiers, saying during a state visit on Wednesday that they would stand with Israel. In a visit laden with ceremony, military pomp and personal references, the two leaders made every effort to show that the United States-Australia alliance was about more than just the military might of two countries that also cooperate on issues including artificial intelligence and the development of critical minerals. But, given their close…

Biden Visits Israel and Putin Visits China Amid Gaza and Ukraine Wars

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As President Biden visited Israel on Wednesday, seeking to display steadfast American support for the country, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was in Beijing, seeking to display his “no limits” partnership with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. The two contrasting trips show how vastly the global political landscape has been redrawn by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and how that changed landscape is on full display in the war in Gaza. Russia, China and Iran were already forming a new axis over Ukraine, one they have pursued diplomatically, economically,…

Israel-Hamas War Adds to Surge in Global Weapons Sales

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Just days after the assault by Hamas ignited a new war in the Middle East, shipments of American weapons began arriving in Israel: smart bombs, ammunition and interceptors for the Iron Dome missile-defense system. When President Biden meets in Israel on Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, more military aid is a likely topic. The conflict between Israel and Hamas is just the latest impetus behind a boom in international arms sales that is bolstering profits and weapons-making capacity among American suppliers. The surge in sales is providing the Biden…

Fragile Global Economy Faces New Crisis in Israel-Gaza War

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The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that the pace of the global economic recovery is slowing, a warning that came as a new war in the Middle East threatened to upend a world economy already reeling from several years of overlapping crises. The eruption of fighting between Israel and Hamas over the weekend, which could sow disruption across the region, reflects how challenging it has become to shield economies from increasingly frequent and unpredictable global shocks. The conflict has cast a cloud over a gathering of top economic policymakers…

Athens Democracy Forum: Daring to Hope That Democracy Will Prevail

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That Mr. Putin had to journey to North Korea last month to seek support for a long war was a measure of his humiliating isolation, whatever Russia’s ascendancy in Africa, where it has contrived to present itself as an anticolonial power even as it fights a form of colonial war aimed at reabsorbing Ukraine, or much of it, into the “Russkiy Mir,” or Russian world. Ukraine, of course, is fighting for democracy, freedom, the sanctity of sovereignty and the right of a sovereign state to choose its strategic direction. This…