WORLD BRIEFING: June 11, 2024

U.S. officials expect the Group of Seven (G7) wealthy democracies to send a tough new warning next week to smaller Chinese banks to stop assisting Russia in evading Western sanctions, according to two people familiar with the matter. Leaders gathering at the June 13-15 summit in Italy hosted by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are expected to focus heavily during their private meetings on the threat posed by burgeoning Chinese-Russian trade to the fight in Ukraine, and what to do about it. Those conversations are likely to result in public statements on the issue involving Chinese banks, according to a U.S. official involved in planning the event and another person briefed on the issue. The United States and its G7 partners - Britain, Canada France, Germany, Italy and Japan - are not expected to take any immediate punitive action against any banks during the summit, such as restricting their access to the SWIFT messaging system or cutting off access to the dollar. Their focus is said to be on smaller institutions, not the largest Chinese banks, one of the people said. Daleep Singh, deputy national security adviser for international economics, told the Center for a New American Security this week that he expected G7 leaders to target China's support for a Russian economy now reoriented around the war. "Our concern is that China is increasingly the factory of the Russian war machine. You can call it the arsenal of autocracy when you consider Russia's military ambitions threaten obviously the existence of Ukraine, but increasingly European security, NATO and transatlantic security," he said. - Reuters

Mustafa Nayyem, the top official overseeing Ukraine’s defense fortifications and reconstruction efforts, announced his resignation on Monday. The news marks the latest high-profile departure that has shaken Western confidence in Ukraine’s government. Nayyem, who resigned alongside two other officials in Ukraine’s Restoration and Infrastructure Development agency, claimed his work was being undermined by the government.Nayyem told the Financial Times that prior to his resignation, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal prohibited him from attending the annual Ukraine Recovery Conference on June 11 and 12 in Berlin. The conference brings together potential donors interested in funding reconstruction projects in parts of Ukraine where infrastructure has been damaged by the war. Zelensky is expected to attend the conference and deliver a speech addressing the German parliament while he is there. In his resignation letter, Nayyem said that he had faced “systemic obstacles” that made it difficult for him to use his powers effectively, according to the Financial Times. Nayyem’s resignation raises new questions about reconstruction efforts and the ability to protect critical infrastructure amid the ongoing war. Last month, Ukraine’s minister of infrastructure and deputy prime minister of reconstruction Oleksandr Kubrakov was removed from office following a vote by the Ukrainian parliament - Time Magazine

North Korea has floated hundreds more refuse-carrying balloons into South Korea after Kim Jong Un’s influential sister warned Seoul to halt propaganda broadcasts across their tense border. Pyongyang sent more than 300 waste-loaded balloons across the inter-Korean border overnight, South Korea’s military said on Monday, after Kim Yo Jong warned earlier that the loudspeaker broadcasts risked provoking a “crisis of confrontation”. The latest balloons carried only scrap paper and plastic, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, unlike previous batches that carried unsanitary material such as manure, toilet paper and cigarette butts - Al Jazeera

Monks in Myanmar who support the regime have seen their cash flow increase along with their influence, as the generals make a show of embracing Buddhism and dole out handsome rewards to the abbots who help them do so. Increasingly, however, these opportunistic mendicants are coming under fire from the public, earning epithets such as “cele-monks” and “crony monks” and becoming the targets of popular boycotts.The country’s oppressed people, activists and opposition politicians have taken note of the well-known abbots who have publicly supported the coup while remaining silent on the regime’s violence and atrocities across the country. Myanmar’s Buddhist monks were once known for their political activism, first as agitators challenging British colonial rule and later standing up to the regimes that preceded the current military junta. Today, many monks, especially senior and influential ones, are facing questions about their political stances, unaccountable wealth and the flourishing businesses they have built in recent decades. It is a marriage of convenience. Military leaders offer cooperative monks wealth and protection. In return they gain a measure of legitimacy, portraying themselves as protectors of Buddhism, safeguarding it from what they claim is a threat from the spread of Islam in the Buddhist-majority country - The Irrawaddy