Geopolitics

Oscar Jenkins has given his first interview since a Russian court sentenced him to 13 years' imprisonment, filmed inside a jail in Russian-occupied Luhansk by Australian journalist Mark Lowe.

"Earlier today U.S. forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island," Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, the US Central Command spokesperson, said in a statement released on 30 August.

Donald Trump has signed an order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America in US federal usage, the latest escalation in a trade war that already carries 50 per cent tariffs.

Russia's government can now take temporary control of privately owned infrastructure whose operators fail to protect it from Ukrainian drone strikes, under a decree Vladimir Putin signed this week.

Ukraine has secured 600 PAC-2 interceptors for its Patriot air defences from Germany across 2027 and 2028, twice what it asked for and still under two years of cover at the rate its air force says it needs.

The European Commission has approved €6.1 billion in new defence procurement for Ukraine, signed off on 24 August 2026, Ukraine's Independence Day. The money goes directly toward air and missile defence systems, missiles, ammunition and radars.

Pyongyang has long understood how to weaponise diplomatic silence. On 20 August 2026, North Korea broke that silence in a rather more literal fashion: a barrage of short-range ballistic missiles was fired from the Pyongyang area into the East Sea, roughly ten projectiles timed to land in the middle

Volodymyr Zelensky chose his venue carefully. Speaking at a summit of Nordic and Baltic leaders gathered in Kyiv on 23 August 2026 to coordinate security and energy policy, Zelensky delivered his most direct public rebuttal yet of allegations that Ukraine orchestrated the destruction of the Nord