CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s reported visit to Moscow on 26 August was never going to be a purely diplomatic courtesy call. Intelligence chiefs do not fly to the capital of a nuclear-armed adversary at war in order to exchange weather reports.
2026 August
Serbia has recently experienced a political upheaval, with violent protests rocking the country and undermining President Vucic’s political credibility.
A record number of aid workers are being killed, and the laws written to shield them are being quietly renegotiated by the very governments that drafted them.
Speaking on behalf of Nicușor Dan, Foreign Minister Țoiu announces Romania Is preparing for war with Russia. Analyst, Ion Cristoiu pushes back.
Let us turn, however, to the situation in East Asia. On August 12, Putin visited Iturup Island in the Kuril chain—touring a fish processing plant and some schools—an event that sparked quite a controversy, so to speak.
Beneath the blinding white expanse of the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat on earth, lies a prize the clean-energy age cannot do without, and a political question Bolivia has spent two decades failing to answer.
There is a particular kind of silence that speaks louder than any anthem ever could. On August 13, in a Zagreb arena, that silence descended on Angelina Melnikova
It began with one sentence a prime minister didn’t need to say. Ten months later, Japan and China are locked in their worst rupture in a generation.
Riyadh has placed transfers to the Emirates under the kind of scrutiny reserved for jurisdictions considered dangerous for illicit money flows.