WORLD BRIEFING: September 8, 2023

Today marks 562 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine

  • Heads of State and leaders from 19 countries (and the European Union), including U.S. President Joe Biden, arrive in India for the start of the G-20 summit. It’s being touted by the host country as a huge accomplishment.

  • As the G-20 theme this year, ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam: One Earth, One Family, One Future’, India has put the focus on sustainability as a core issue. A recent statement from the White House also said that “G20 partners will discuss a range of joint efforts to tackle global issues, including on the clean energy transition and combatting climate change, mitigating the economic and social impacts of Putin’s war in Ukraine, and increasing the capacity of multilateral development banks, including the World Bank, to better fight poverty, including by addressing global challenges” - Indian Expresd

  • Meanwhile in Indonesia, President Joko Widodo delivered a forceful call for leaders to ease tensions and avoid conflict in the region. Speaking Thursday in Jakarta at the opening of the East Asia Summit (EAS), which brings together the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its partners – the United States, China, Russia, Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, Widodo underscored the need for stability for the region to continue its decades-long peace and prosperity. “Everyone in this room has the same responsibility to not create new conflict, to not create new tension, to not create new wars,” he said, speaking in Indonesian. “At the same time, we have the responsibility to lower heated tensions, to thaw frozen state of affairs, to create room for dialogue, to bridge existing differences” - VOA

  • Hong Kong and southern Chinese cities are battling widespread flooding as the region endures some of its heaviest rainfall on record. On Friday, streets and subway stations were underwater in Hong Kong as officials shut schools and workplaces. The weather bureau said the downpour, which began on Thursday, is the biggest to hit the city in nearly 140 years - BBC

  • Two separate attacks by suspected al-Qaeda-linked militants in restive northeastern Mali Thursday killed 64 people including dozens of civilians, the country’s transitional government said. The attacks targeted a passenger boat on the Niger River near Timbuktu and an army base in Bamba, in the northern Gao region, killing 49 civilians and 15 soldiers, according to the interim government’s statement - CNN

  • Russian forces launched a rocket attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya and Sumy regions early on September 8, injuring at least one person, local authorities said, as Kyiv claimed “partial success” near Bakhmut. Waves of Russian drones also targeted the Odesa region

  • Russian authorities are holding local elections this weekend in occupied parts of Ukraine in an effort to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control.

  • Elon Musk secretly instructed his engineers to turn off Starlink satellite communications near Crimea last year to prevent a Ukrainian submarine drone attack against Russian military ships, CNN reported on Sept. 7, citing an excerpt from an upcoming book by Walter Isaacson. As the drones loaded with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they "lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly," Isaacson reportedly wrote in a biography titled "Elon Musk," to be released on Sept. 12. According to the author, Musk's decision was driven by fear of Moscow's nuclear retaliation, sparked by the billionaire's conversations with senior Russian officials. Ukraine's Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov then reportedly pleaded with Musk to restore the drones' connectivity.The billionaire himself later denied that he had Starlink deactivated near Crimea, saying it had not been active in that region in the first place. However, he also said that there was a plan by Ukraine to strike at the Russian fleet near the occupied peninsula's coast, which Musk prevented. "There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol," Musk claimed on his social media platform X. "The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation." - Kyiv Independent

Michael BociurkiwComment