Global Pulse

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  • Self-exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui gets 30 years in US prison for fraud conviction

    Self-exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui gets 30 years in US prison for fraud conviction

    On a Monday ruling in a Manhattan federal courtroom, disgraced exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui — who rebranded himself as a high-profile anti-China critic after fleeing his home country a decade ago — received a 30-year prison sentence for orchestrating one of the largest financial fraud schemes prosecuted in recent U.S. history. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres handed down the sentence, following a conviction on nine out of 12 criminal charges stemming from a five-year conspiracy that defrauded thousands of investors out of more than $1 billion.

    Before the sentence was announced, Guo was given the opportunity to address the court, where he used the time to complain about his treatment in detention, claiming he had fainted early that morning, been forcibly returned to jail from a hospital against medical advice, and suffered repeated illness during transport. Through a court interpreter, he repeated his long-held stance that his core goal after moving to the United States was to oppose the Chinese Communist Party.

    A self-styled dissident, Guo embedded himself in far-right U.S. political circles after arriving in New York in 2017. He developed a close public alliance with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, with the pair announcing a joint initiative to overthrow the Chinese government in 2020. Guo lived a life of extreme luxury in a Central Park-view Manhattan penthouse, gained membership at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort, and maintained his lavish lifestyle until his 2021 arrest, after which he has been held without bail.

    Prosecutors had pushed for the 30-year sentence requested, arguing that Guo’s deception, which ran from 2018 to 2023, destroyed the financial and emotional well-being of hundreds of lives. During the sentencing, Judge Torres read excerpts of victim impact letters from investors who lost their entire life savings to Guo’s scheme, with many reporting crippling anxiety, broken family relationships, and long-term psychological harm. The judge noted that Guo specifically targeted people who shared his stated opposition to the Chinese government, preying on their shared political beliefs to gain their trust before scamming them. Torres emphasized that to date, Guo has refused to accept any accountability for his crimes, falsely claiming his actions caused no harm to anyone, and has incited his supporters to harass and intimidate witnesses who spoke out against him.

    Prosecutors detailed in court filings that the more than $1 billion Guo raised through fraudulent investments funded his over-the-top luxury lifestyle, including multiple mansions, private yachts, high-end race cars, designer clothing, and luxury home goods. The scheme centered on three sham entities controlled by Guo: his media venture GTV Media Group Inc., the Himalaya Farm Alliance, and the Himalaya Exchange, which he pitched to thousands of followers as exclusive high-return investment opportunities.

    Guo’s legal team mounted an unconventional defense ahead of sentencing, arguing their client was the target of a global conspiracy orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party, which they claimed recruited U.S. elites across business, entertainment, and politics to frame him. They contended that a 30-year sentence would validate what they called a Chinese smear campaign and embolden efforts to target Chinese dissidents living abroad, noting that defendants in similar financial fraud cases typically receive sentences between two and four years. The defense also cited past physical injuries Guo claims he sustained from torture in China, which required multiple surgeries between 1993 and 2022, as a factor warranting a reduced sentence.

    The U.S. Probation Department had recommended a 25-year sentence, acknowledging the more than $1 billion in total losses suffered by investors, a figure prosecutors described as “astronomical.” According to prosecution filings, Guo remains entirely unrepentant for his crimes, having taken advantage of U.S. asylum laws to build his operation in the country. “He does not even offer the lip service of remorse or acceptance of any responsibility for the harms he caused so many individuals and their loved ones, some of whom have been pushed to consider suicide as a result of his crimes,” prosecutors wrote, adding that multiple victims testified at trial that Guo brainwashed, cheated, and irreparably harmed them.

    Guo’s long-standing narrative, repeated by his defense, holds that he amassed his initial wealth as his family became the largest shareholder in China’s largest publicly traded securities firm, then became a target of Chinese government officials after he exposed their corruption. Chinese authorities have previously charged Guo with crimes including rape, kidnapping, and bribery, charges Guo has always claimed are fabricated to punish him for criticizing senior Communist Party leaders.

  • John Major says Reform are ‘ragbag’ scapegoating Muslims and migrants

    John Major says Reform are ‘ragbag’ scapegoating Muslims and migrants

    In a sharp rebuke that has reignited debate over rising far-right populism in British politics, former Conservative Prime Minister John Major has launched a blistering attack on right-wing party Reform UK, accusing the group of systematic scapegoating targeting Muslim communities and migrants.

    Major, who led the UK as Conservative Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997, laid out his criticisms in a recent interview with The Independent, delivering one of the most high-profile rejections of Reform UK’s growing political influence from within the traditional conservative establishment.

    Dismissing the party’s ideological foundation entirely, Major questioned Reform UK’s core identity: “What is Reform? It’s a ragbag really. What’s its philosophy? What’s its purpose? What are its convictions? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Nobody talks about it. I don’t hear lectures about the convictions and philosophy of Reform.”

    The former prime minister argued that Reform UK’s recent electoral momentum does not stem from a compelling positive policy platform, but rather from widespread public disillusionment with decades of governance from the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives. “Reform had nothing good to offer” and are drawing “wholly negative votes” because successive Labour and Conservative governments have failed the British public, he said.

    Major went on to identify the party’s core unifying tactic: anti-Muslim and anti-migrant rhetoric. “But what positivity is there about Reform? What is their unique selling brand? It’s that they are opposed to Muslims and migrants,” he added. “And when that wears out, because that is the way they operate, they’ll find somebody else in order to be a scapegoat. They are certainly narrow in concept, nationalist in instinct, and hostile to those, in a quite crude way, who don’t actually agree with them.”

    Major’s condemnation comes on the heels of a groundbreaking electoral performance for Reform UK in last month’s UK-wide local elections. Led by veteran populist figure Nigel Farage, the party secured more than 1,300 council seats across England, Scotland and Wales, and won full control of 13 local councils – marking the largest surge in vote share of any political party in the contest.

    Multiple recent opinion polls and electoral projections now place Reform UK on track to become the largest party in the UK House of Commons following the next general election, a shift that has upended traditional British political dynamics.

    Compounding the criticisms leveled by Major are multiple recent reports of inflammatory, racist rhetoric from newly elected and former Reform UK candidates. Last month, Middle East Eye documented several alleged cases of racist comments among the party’s newly elected council representatives.

    In the lead-up to the local elections, the Daily Mail exposed alleged Islamophobic social media posts from Phil Tierney, a Reform UK candidate for the Chelmsley Wood council seat. One public post on X, formerly Twitter, had Tierney openly stating “I am Islamophobic.”

    In another high-profile incident, Daniel Devaney, who initially ran as a Reform UK candidate for the Clayton and Fairweather Green ward in Bradford, was forced to step down from the party ticket after old racist posts resurfaced. Despite the public backlash, Devaney still won election to the council seat. His controversial posts included a threat to “blast [Muslims] off the face of the earth,” where he referred to Muslim people as “pure scum.” Devaney later issued an apology for the remarks.

    The extraordinary rise of Reform UK, paired with widespread allegations of bigotry among its ranks, has prompted soul-searching across Britain’s mainstream political parties, with many figures echoing Major’s warnings that the party’s brand of exclusionary nationalism poses a fundamental threat to the country’s pluralistic social fabric.

  • ‘Like living in hell’: The Iran war leaves Indian seafarers dead and trapped at sea

    ‘Like living in hell’: The Iran war leaves Indian seafarers dead and trapped at sea

    The quiet homes of grieving Indian families across Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and beyond hold the same unbearable weight: a framed photograph of a loved one who will never come home, taken by a military strike thousands of miles from shore in the increasingly volatile waters of the Gulf of Oman. For Bhargavi Suresh, 36, every hour brings a cycle of longing: she wipes clean the glass holding her husband Patnala Suresh’s image, kisses it, holds it tight, then reaches for it again just minutes later, her grief spilling over into sobs.

    Patnala, 14-year veteran of the merchant navy and chief engineer of the commercial oil tanker MT Settebello, was one of three Indian crew members killed when the United States military struck the vessel near the Strait of Hormuz on June 10. US authorities claimed the tanker ignored repeated warnings to comply, but that justification holds no weight for the families of the dead civilians.

    “My husband was not a soldier,” Bhargavi told Middle East Eye. “They could have stopped or detained the ship if they wanted to. Why fire a missile at a vessel carrying unarmed civilians?” The strike was an unjustified violation of international law, she says, and the US must be held fully accountable. To the couple’s two young sons, aged 13 and 10, Patnala was far more than a crew member: he was their superhero, a man who crossed rough seas and braved storms to keep global trade moving, and whose strength they admired in everything.

    Aditya Sharma, a 23-year-old deck cadet on probation, was the other Indian fatality of the MT Settebello attack. His 60-year-old father Rajesh, from Hamirpur district in Himachal Pradesh, still cannot bring himself to accept that his only son will never make his daily morning and evening check-in calls home. “He never started his day without calling us, once before work and once before bed,” Rajesh recalled through tears. “He was our only child, we were so proud of him, one in a million. How do we live with this loss?”

    Like Bhargavi, Rajesh holds the US responsible for destroying his family in seconds. He also joins a growing chorus of criticism accusing the Indian government of failing to match the gravity of the tragedy with a strong response. After the strike, New Delhi issued only a diplomatic protest to Washington, declining to summon the US ambassador— a step it did take against Iran following the deaths of four Indian seafarers in earlier attacks that Iran denied carrying out. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised general concerns about seafarer safety during a side meeting with former US President Donald Trump at the mid-June G7 Summit in France, families of the deceased point to a complete lack of a specific public statement, formal press release or public condemnation of the attack that killed their loved ones. “A diplomatic protest alone is not enough,” Rajesh said. “Our prime minister should have spoken directly about this, addressed the grieving families, and condemned the attack himself. We expected far stronger intervention, and it never came.”

    The deaths of Patnala and Aditya are just a small part of the growing human and economic toll of the ongoing US-Israeli conflict with Iran, which has turned one of the world’s busiest and most critical maritime corridors into a deathtrap for civilian seafarers. India, the world’s third-largest supplier of seafarers with more than 300,000 Indians working on merchant vessels (comprising 10 to 12 percent of the global seafaring workforce), has been disproportionately affected by the chaos. Since the conflict began in late February, more than 40 commercial vessels have come under attack, leaving at least 14 non-Iranian and 44 Iranian maritime workers dead. At least seven Indian seafarers have been killed, and more than 1,100 Indian crew members on 37 Indian-flagged vessels remain trapped in the volatile region.

    A fragile June 17 ceasefire between the US and Iran briefly opened the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, but the truce has already teetered on collapse. In recent days, the two sides have exchanged fire near the strait and traded accusations of ceasefire violations, bringing shipping traffic to a halt once again. Washington blames Tehran for attacking commercial vessels, while Iran says foreign ships have violated its navigation rules and accuses the US of intentional provocation.

    Maritime experts and union leaders warn that prolonged anchoring of commercial vessels carries enormous, underreported risks for both ships and crews. Unlike stationary infrastructure, commercial tankers and cargo ships are designed to sail continuously; sitting anchored for weeks or months leads to rapid deterioration of critical systems. Manoj Yadav, general secretary of the Forward Seamen’s Union of India (FSUI), explained that extended idleness allows rust, barnacles, algae and marine growth to accumulate on hulls, while many ships cannot get critical spare parts needed to restore operability when tensions finally de-escalate. More dangerously, long-term inactivity creates hazardous onboard conditions, including the buildup of toxic gases in enclosed spaces, that directly threaten crew health and safety. “Ships are meant to move, not remain idle for months,” Yadav said.

    That risk has already claimed another life. Nishanth Uirthanathan, a 35-year-old second officer on the MT Celestial tanker and father of two, died in early June after falling seriously ill while his ship was anchored at Oman’s Duqm Port. His brother Prashant told MEE Nishanth suffered from fever, vomiting and extreme fatigue for nearly a month, conditions exacerbated by the prolonged anchoring that destroyed onboard living standards: sanitation and food quality had deteriorated sharply, he said, and Nishanth told his wife just days before his death that conditions onboard were unsafe. The family also blames the shipping company for dangerous delays in accessing emergency medical care. “We were poor before Nishanth became a seafarer; he lifted our whole family out of poverty,” Prashant said. “If the conflict hadn’t trapped his ship, he would have come home months ago, and he would still be alive today.”

    Risks of death in these unsafe conditions are well-documented. The International Maritime Organization’s 2025 report records that since 1996, roughly 350 seafarers have died from exposure to oxygen-deficient or toxic atmospheres in ship confined spaces; since 2022 alone, 43 such accidents have killed 70 workers.

    Beyond the immediate safety risks, grieving families say the Indian government has also failed to deliver adequate support and compensation. India’s Director General of Shipping says 10 lakh rupees ($10,500) has been distributed to the families of deceased seafarers via the Seafarers’ Welfare Fund Society, and efforts are ongoing to secure additional aid. But Yadav points out that this funding comes from a pre-existing industry welfare pool, not direct government compensation. “These were not accidental deaths,” he said. “These were civilian seafarers killed in military strikes.” The FSUI is demanding 1 crore rupees ($105,000) in compensation per family, a government job for a next of kin, and has petitioned the United Nations for $5 million in total damages for the bereaved. “There was an expectation that the government would stand strongly with these families,” Yadav said. “Many feel that promise has not been kept.”

    As the Strait of Hormuz remains closed once again, hundreds of Indian seafarers remain trapped in the region, living with constant fear, anxiety and chronic psychological trauma. The Indian government says its Directorate General of Shipping has handled more than 12,331 calls and 27,515 emails from seafarers and their families since the crisis began, and has facilitated the repatriation of 3,537 Indian seafarers. But Yadav says the FSUI still receives hundreds of desperate pleas for evacuation from trapped crew members.

    For those who have already survived attacks, the psychological scars never fade. Bhumesh, an Indian seafarer who survived a March 1 attack on the tanker Skylight that killed one crew member before he was rescued by Omani forces, says the memories still haunt his every day. “When the ship was hit, all I could see was my parents’ faces,” he said. “I still live with that trauma. The images never leave. Seafarers can barely sleep from fear. Living out here now is like living in hell.”

  • Israel killing Palestinian children in the West Bank at highest rate since 1967, B’Tselem says

    Israel killing Palestinian children in the West Bank at highest rate since 1967, B’Tselem says

    In a damning new report released Monday, leading Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has exposed an unprecedented crisis of civilian harm in the occupied West Bank, documenting that Israeli forces are killing Palestinian children at a rate not seen since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the territory began. The group’s figures show 54 Palestinian children have been shot dead by Israeli forces in the West Bank in 2025 alone, with minors accounting for nearly one in every four Palestinians killed by Israeli troops in the territory since October 2023 – the highest share of child fatalities recorded in 58 years of occupation.

    Crucially, B’Tselem emphasizes that these child deaths are not accidental or rogue violations of military protocol. Instead, the organization attributes the soaring fatalities to a deliberate Israeli state policy that enforces loose rules of engagement, broadly labels Palestinian people as “terrorists” to justify lethal force, and systematically shields soldiers from legal consequences for unlawful killings. As of the report’s release, no Israeli service members have faced indictment or any form of accountability for child killings in the West Bank carried out since October 2023.

    “The widespread, unprecedented killing of Palestinian children and teenagers in the West Bank is the result of a broader Israeli policy that enables the killing of Palestinians with virtually no accountability,” stated Yuli Novak, Executive Director of B’Tselem. Novak pointed to recent public comments from Israel’s top military commander for the West Bank that confirm this institutional pattern: when commander Avi Bluth openly boasted that Israeli forces are killing Palestinians “like we haven’t killed since 1967”, he inadvertently confirmed that the Israeli system not only backs troops who use lethal force, but grants them effective license to kill.

    Bluth, a West Bank settler who has led Israeli military operations in the territory since 2024, made the remarks during a closed-door forum earlier this year. In those comments, he explicitly defended the relaxed rules of engagement that allow troops to open fire on unarmed Palestinians, and acknowledged a stark discriminatory double standard: Jewish Israeli civilians who engage in stone-throwing are never targeted with lethal force, while Palestinians who carry out the same action are shot. Bluth also framed the escalating killing campaign as a deterrence strategy, claiming that the high death toll has prevented a new mass uprising, noting “the Arabs understand that ‘if someone rises to kill you, kill him first’ is part of the rules of the Middle East, and therefore we are killing like we have not killed since 1967.”

    Beyond the permissive rules of engagement and discriminatory targeting, B’Tselem documented additional contributing factors to the child death toll. In nearly 25 percent of the cases the organization investigated, Israeli forces deliberately delayed or denied access for medical teams to reach wounded children, directly worsening fatality outcomes. Israeli authorities have also seized the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed in operations, and as of the report, 18 of the children killed in 2025 remain withheld from their families for burial.

    Official United Nations data aligns with the scope of the crisis outlined by B’Tselem: the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirms that Israeli forces have killed 1,105 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7, 2023, a count that includes at least 242 children.

    B’Tselem also draws a direct connection between the escalating killings in the West Bank and the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Gaza, where Israel has been accused of genocide that has disproportionately targeted children. The organization notes that more than 21,000 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza to date, and argues that the international community’s failure to hold Israel accountable for mass casualties in Gaza has directly encouraged the expansion of the same lethal policy into the West Bank.

    “By allowing Israel to kill on such a scale in Gaza without consequences, the international community has effectively given it a green light to pursue the same lethal policy in the West Bank,” the report reads. “As long as Israel continues to enjoy near-total impunity in the world, the lives of Palestinians – including children – will remain unprotected and exposed.”

  • How Andy Burnham can win back the Muslim voters Labour has lost

    How Andy Burnham can win back the Muslim voters Labour has lost

    Following a devastating collapse in support for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party triggered by last month’s local elections, Andy Burnham is poised to enter Downing Street without a contested leadership race, after widespread rallying by Labour parliamentarians who see him as the only figure capable of reversing the party’s electoral hemorrhaging.

    Starmer’s strategic approach, crafted over his tenure by former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, centered on courting right-leaning voters who might otherwise back the Conservatives or Reform UK. The strategy operated under the flawed assumption that traditional left-wing and British Muslim voters had no alternative political home and would remain loyal to Labour regardless of the party’s direction. That calculation backfired spectacularly, sparking a mass exodus of core Labour supporters and fueling the explosive growth of the Green Party over the past 12 months.

    The long-held orthodoxy that Reform posed the greatest threat to Labour was shattered in last month’s local votes, which ultimately led to Starmer’s resignation: data confirmed Labour lost far more votes to the Greens than to Reform. The shift has been especially dramatic among British Muslim voters, who once formed a reliably loyal Labour bloc. In 2019, more than 80% of Muslim voters backed Labour, but new polling from heavily Muslim-populated constituencies puts that number at just 33% today. Many have shifted their support to the Greens or independent candidates, a trend that directly impacted the 2024 general election results: four Labour MPs, including former cabinet-hopeful Jonathan Ashworth of Leicester South, lost their seats to independent challengers, while senior figures including current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and former Health Secretary Wes Streeting only held their seats by razor-thin margins.

    Contrary to the popular narrative that British Muslim voters hold unique, sectarian policy priorities, data shows their concerns align closely with other traditional left-wing Labour voters who have abandoned the party. Cost of living topped the list of issues for Muslim voters in the 2025 local elections, followed by widespread opposition to Britain’s foreign policy on Israel and Gaza. This alignment is not an isolated trend: a recent study found that more than half of former Labour voters who now plan to back other centre-left parties cite Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a core factor in their decision to leave the party.

    There are clear signs Burnham is already aware of the urgent need to repair Labour’s fractured relationship with Muslim and left-wing voters. Ali Milani, chair of the Labour Muslim Network (LMN), has been a close ally of Burnham for years and played a key role in his successful campaign to win the Makerfield parliamentary seat earlier this month. Milani, who rose to national prominence after challenging Boris Johnson in the 2019 Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, warned early in 2024 that Starmer’s unwavering support for Israel’s actions in Gaza would destroy Labour’s standing with Muslim voters.

    While LMN is not formally affiliated to the Labour Party, it maintains deep connections within the party and draws heavy attendance from Labour MPs at its events. A 2025 LMN poll of Muslim Labour elected officials found that 82% believed Starmer had handled the Gaza war badly, two-thirds said Muslim representatives did not receive equal treatment within the party, and 64% agreed the party operated a “hierarchy of racism” that sidelined Muslim voices.

    A recent revelation that Burnham has asked James Purnell, a former Blair and Brown era minister and one-time chair of Labour Friends of Israel, to serve as his chief of staff has sparked speculation about the incoming prime minister’s policy direction, with Muslim and left-wing groups calling for a clean break from Starmer’s legacy.

    Samayya Afzal, vice chair of LMN, laid out the scale of the challenge in an interview with Middle East Eye, acknowledging the decades-long relationship between Labour and British Muslim communities had been pushed past the breaking point. “The Labour Party has lost the trust of Muslim communities and voters,” Afzal said. “From the scale of Islamophobia within our own party and its prevalence in wider society, to our approach to the genocide in Gaza, we have seen a historic relationship between British Muslims and the Labour Party driven well past the point of crisis.”

    Still, Afzal framed Burnham’s leadership as a rare opportunity to reset the fractured relationship. “With a real commitment to truly engage with the breadth of our Muslim communities, ending the factional and unfair treatment of Muslim representatives, and taking seriously the concerns around the genocide in Gaza, Sudan and ongoing situation in Kashmir, we may be able to begin to rebuild relationships with Muslim voters,” she added.

    Other Muslim advocacy organizations echoed the call for sweeping change on both domestic and foreign policy. Mustafa al-Dabbagh, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, emphasized that British Muslim voters demand to be treated as equal partners, not spoken through third-party gatekeepers. “Any incoming prime minister must also reckon honestly with the deep anger felt over the genocide in Gaza and our government’s response to it,” al-Dabbagh said. “They must not only fix our broken public services, ensure a better NHS and education, and tackle this cost-of-living crisis, but bring people and communities together.”

    Abubakr Nanabawa, a spokesperson for The Muslim Vote (TMV), a campaign group that backed independent challenges to pro-Starmer Labour candidates in 2024, said any meaningful trust-building requires a total rejection of Starmer’s policy approach. “If Andy Burnham wants to win back the trust of voters, he needs a clear break with the legacy of Keir Starmer,” Nanabawa said. “In the short term that means a complete arms embargo on Israel and sanctions on all trade with the West Bank. He also needs to put ordinary Britons first and that means delivering a bold economic agenda that deals with the cost-of-living crisis. The strategy is simple: stop supporting genocide and make life affordable for everyone.”

    Early hints of a potential policy shift have already emerged from the UK Foreign Office. Current Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper recently acknowledged the need for stronger action on Israel-Palestine, with Whitehall sources confirming the Foreign Office has long pushed for tougher measures against Israel, only to be blocked by Downing Street under Starmer. Privately, Foreign Office ministers have accepted that banning goods from illegal Israeli settlements is consistent with Britain’s official position on the occupied territories.

    It remains unclear who Burnham will appoint to the critical foreign secretary role. Some speculate Cooper could retain her post, while others point to Wes Streeting, who ruled out a leadership challenge and is widely expected to receive a senior cabinet role. Streeting, who narrowly held his Ilford North seat in 2024 against a challenge from British Palestinian independent candidate Leanne Mohammed, has privately pushed Starmer for a harder line on Israel and publicly accused Starmer of ignoring evidence of Israeli war crimes, making a significant policy shift likely if he takes the foreign secretary post. Even a formal acknowledgment that Israel has committed war crimes – a step no UK government has taken to date – would mark a major break from Starmer’s approach.

    Other potential candidates for the role include Emily Thornberry, chair of the parliamentary foreign affairs select committee and former shadow foreign secretary under Jeremy Corbyn, who has emerged as a leading internal voice calling for stronger action against illegal settlements in the West Bank. Burnham is also widely expected to consider appointing progressive, pro-ceasefire MPs to senior roles, including Abtisam Mohamed, the 2024 elected Sheffield Central MP and Britain’s first Yemeni-origin MP who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as the eight backbench MPs who resigned their shadow ministerial posts in 2023 to vote for a Gaza ceasefire. That group includes high-profile figures such as Naz Shah, Andy Slaughter and Sarah Owen, all of whom retain strong credibility with Muslim and left-wing voters.

    Despite some media speculation that Burnham will avoid major foreign policy changes, advocacy leaders argue a significant course correction is non-negotiable. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu), noted Burnham has long supported the organization and traveled to the occupied West Bank with Caabu and Labour Friends of Palestine in 2012. “Burnham will need to make a really significant course correction on Middle East foreign policy,” Doyle said, adding that the incoming prime minister will need to resist pressure from the U.S. Trump administration and avoid caving to demands for continued unwavering support for Israel.

    Caabu and the British Palestine Project have laid out five core policy pledges they are calling on Burnham to adopt: banning all UK trade with goods and services from illegal Israeli settlements, upholding international law, guaranteeing unrestricted access for UN and humanitarian agencies, opening the occupied territories to international journalists and investigators, and working with allies to end unlawful regional occupations. The call for a full ban on settlement goods has broad backing within the parliamentary Labour Party, with recent polling showing 87% of rank-and-file Labour members support the ban, compared to just 6% who oppose it.

    Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians, laid out clear expectations for the new prime minister: “The next prime minister must do what Starmer would not to end these horrors: stop providing arms to Israel, stop trading with illegal settlements in the West Bank, guarantee unrestricted humanitarian access, and ensure that those responsible for crimes against humanity are held fully accountable.”

    Liverpool Labour MP Kim Johnson, one of the most prominent progressive voices within the party, emphasized that Gaza is not a peripheral issue but a core test of Labour’s values and credibility. “If Andy wants to win back traditional Labour voters, especially those who feel abandoned on foreign policy, he has to show the moral clarity [Starmer] has too often lacked on Gaza,” Johnson said. “He needs to be prepared to say clearly what Starmer would not: that a genocide is ongoing and that Labour’s refusal to speak honestly and act decisively about it has come at a huge political cost.”

    Recapping the damage of Starmer’s approach in last month’s local elections, Johnson noted: “We lost 58 percent of the seats we were defending in England and lost almost four times as many voters to the Greens than to Reform UK. We cannot deny that Gaza is a major reason many have walked. Foreign policy isn’t a side issue. It’s about values, credibility and whose side you are on when it matters.”

    For Burnham, the path to holding power and reuniting the Labour movement will depend entirely on whether he is willing to make the bold breaks from Starmer’s legacy that disaffected voters are demanding.

  • Lebanon-Israel deal could block war crimes accountability, experts warn

    Lebanon-Israel deal could block war crimes accountability, experts warn

    A US-mediated framework accord reached between Lebanon and Israel late last month has ignited fierce domestic and international backlash over a hidden provision that critics argue could permanently block Lebanese efforts to hold Israel accountable for alleged war crimes committed since the start of its 2024 military campaign. Signed on June 26 in Washington D.C. by the U.S., Lebanon, and Israel, the 14-point trilateral deal’s Article 13 requires both signatory nations to commit to “good faith measures demonstrating positive intent”, which explicitly includes halting all hostile or adversarial actions in international political or legal bodies. For Lebanese legal and human rights advocates, this wording amounts to a blanket ban on pursuing justice for thousands of civilian casualties documented over the past eight months of conflict.

    Halima Kaakour, a Lebanese member of parliament, international law scholar, and prominent human rights activist, was among the first to condemn the provision. Speaking to Middle East Eye, Kaakour emphasized that decades of documented Israeli violations against Lebanese civilians have cemented the inherent legal right of the Lebanese state and public to demand full reparations for harms suffered. “This clause strips that right away and robs the Lebanese people of the justice they are owed,” she said. “The right to justice cannot be traded away for any political deal, no matter how important it is framed to be.” Kaakour further noted that the provision exposes a calculated political bargain by Lebanon’s ruling authorities: the government has agreed to abandon international legal action in exchange for a promised Israeli withdrawal from occupied Lebanese territory, a withdrawal that is already Lebanon’s legal right under existing UN resolutions, and should never have been conditional on surrendering justice.

    Since October 2023, Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon has been linked to widespread accusations of war crimes, including the forced displacement of over 1 million Lebanese civilians and the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and non-combatants. Official figures put the total Lebanese death toll from Israeli strikes at more than 8,000 people since the conflict began. A sharp escalation in hostilities that followed Israel’s March 2024 strike on Iran has pushed the four-month death toll alone above 4,200, including more than 300 medical and rescue workers and 11 professional journalists.

    Farouk al-Moghrabi, a former senior legal advisor to the Lebanese government, echoed Kaakour’s criticism, arguing the deal represents a deliberate attempt to override longstanding international legal frameworks designed to protect victims’ rights and guarantee accountability for mass atrocities. “This right to justice belongs exclusively to the Lebanese people and the individual victims of these crimes,” al-Moghrabi told Middle East Eye. “Not even the Lebanese state, nor any authority signing this agreement, has the legal power to eliminate this inalienable right.” He added that the provision is fundamentally unconstitutional under Lebanese law, which explicitly enshrines that valid international treaties take precedence over domestic legislation, meaning no domestic political deal can erase the rights granted to victims under international human rights law. Al-Moghrabi also raised urgent questions about the upcoming planned visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to Lebanon, which is intended to document war crimes on the ground, asking whether the terms of the agreement would force Lebanon to block the UN’s investigation.

    Lebanon’s National Human Rights Commission released an official statement backing these criticisms, stressing that no sovereign agreement can supersede the fundamental right of victims to pursue legal redress. “The commission underlines that prosecuting perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and torture does not qualify as a hostile act or partisan political position,” the statement read. “It is simply the legitimate exercise of the core human right to justice.” Middle East Eye attempted to contact Lebanon’s presidency for an official response to these criticisms but received no reply before the publication of its original report.

    A key complicating factor in this debate is that neither Lebanon nor Israel are member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC), meaning the court currently holds no formal jurisdiction over crimes committed on Lebanese territory. For decades, regional human rights organizations have pressured the Lebanese government to grant the ICC jurisdiction over its territory, a move that would open the door to formal investigations of alleged war crimes committed by all parties to the conflict. For the ICC to gain jurisdiction over crimes committed during the current conflict, either nation would need to ratify the Rome Statute, the court’s founding international treaty, or Lebanon could submit a special declaration under Article 12(3) of the statute that grants the court temporary jurisdiction over crimes committed on its soil. This exact mechanism was used by Ukraine in 2014 after Russia’s invasion of Crimea, when Ukraine was not yet an ICC member.

    Lebanese civil society groups have pushed for exactly this step since October 2023, after the outbreak of the latest conflict. In April 2024, the Lebanese government came close to meeting their demands: the Council of Ministers formally instructed the country’s foreign minister to submit the Article 12(3) declaration, granting the ICC jurisdiction over all crimes committed on Lebanese territory starting October 7, 2023. The move came after Israeli forces killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and independent investigators confirmed Israel had illegally used white phosphorus against civilian populations. Just one month later, however, the government reversed its decision without any public explanation, and the declaration was never filed. Unconfirmed reporting from Middle East Eye indicates the reversal stemmed from fears the ICC would also open investigations into military actions carried out by Lebanese armed groups against Israel.

    The June 26 framework deal, which capped five rounds of direct talks brokered by the U.S. starting in April, includes a pilot program that would allow Lebanese military forces to take control of two small areas currently occupied by Israel, as well as a vague process aimed at the disarmament of Hezbollah. Critically, the agreement sets no clear timeline or conditions for Israel to withdraw from the much larger swathes of Lebanese territory it currently occupies, instead tying any full withdrawal to progress on Hezbollah disarmament and unspecified “security improvements” that eliminate threats to Israel.

    Hezbollah, the dominant Lebanese armed and political movement, has long maintained it will only agree to disarm if Israel fully withdraws from all occupied Lebanese territory and ends all threats to Lebanese sovereignty. Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem has already rejected the framework deal outright, calling it “null and void” and demanding an unconditional Israeli withdrawal with no concessions required.

    For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the deal represents a major diplomatic win. Netanyahu confirmed that the agreement permits Israeli forces to remain in occupied southern Lebanon indefinitely if Hezbollah refuses to disarm, and framed the accord as a significant geopolitical defeat for Iran, which provides political and military support to Hezbollah. “Iran is trying to force us out of southern Lebanon through violence,” Netanyahu said. “In this agreement, Israel, Lebanon, and the United States are collectively telling Iran: this conflict is no business of yours.”

    The United States, which served as the broker and third signatory to the deal, hailed the agreement as a historic breakthrough. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the signing “the beginning of the beginning” of a long-term peace process between the two long-adversarial nations.

  • ‘Calmly resilient’: Injury-hit New Zealand guts out a rare test series win in England

    ‘Calmly resilient’: Injury-hit New Zealand guts out a rare test series win in England

    When the final test of New Zealand’s 2024 series against England kicked off at Nottingham’s Trent Bridge, few pundits gave the understaffed Kiwi side a chance. The Black Caps entered the series decider missing virtually all of their standout match-winners: top wicket-takers Matt Henry and Kyle Kyle Jamieson, first-innings century-maker Glenn Phillips, and franchise totem Kane Williamson – the team’s all-time leading run-scorer – who had pulled out of the clash while the camp was based in London. Adding to the pressure, New Zealand had not secured a test win on Trent Bridge soil in four decades, and had fallen to a humbling defeat against England just days earlier in the series. On the opposite side, England entered the match at full strength, retaining fast bowler Jofra Archer over Ollie Robinson – the star of England’s opening series victory at Lord’s – to lead their attack.

    Against all pre-match predictions, and despite even more injury setbacks unfolding during play, New Zealand walked away with a dominant 160-run win just after lunch on the fifth day, sealing a 2-1 series victory. This historic result marks only the fourth time New Zealand has claimed a test series win on English soil in 95 years of touring the country.

    The story of this win is one of relentless team resilience and depth, starting on the opening day amid a British heatwave. Long written off for their poor run of form leading into the match, opening pair Tom Latham and Devon Conway defied expectations to put on a 317-run opening stand that set the foundation for New Zealand’s total. Early in the match, enforced change Blair Tickner – one of the uncapped replacements brought in to cover the absentees – was forced out with concussion after being hit by a high bouncer, forcing 26-year-old allrounder Zac Foulkes into only his sixth test match. Foulkes stepped up immediately, claiming three key wickets on day three to help New Zealand secure an 84-run first-innings lead.

    A middle-order collapse that left New Zealand at 51-3 threatened to derail their progress, but 24-year-old rising star Rachin Ravindra steadied the innings, partnering with Daryl Mitchell to calm the dressing room and rebuild the total. Ravindra fell just six runs short of a century on the fourth morning, but Mitchell held firm, absorbing 13 blows to his body and gloves en route to his fourth career test century against England. The massive first-innings total left New Zealand with a 372-run lead heading into England’s second innings, putting the hosts under unrelenting pressure.

    More injury trouble hit New Zealand on the final morning: senior seamer Will O’Rourke, who had already been playing through a split fingertip, pulled his left hamstring and was forced to leave the field, leaving a second-string attack to finish the job with England on 133-6. The ragtag group of replacements – Nathan Smith, Foulkes, travelling reserve Ben Sears, and part-time spinner Mitchell Santner, backed up by wicketkeeper Tom Blundell’s sharp work behind the stumps – rose to the challenge, wrapping up England’s innings shortly after lunch to secure the win.

    The stunning result arrived alongside the sudden announcement of England captain Ben Stokes’ retirement from international test cricket, capping a dramatic final day of the series. Brendon McCullum, England’s head coach and former New Zealand captain, acknowledged the gulf in performance after the match, simply saying “We were outclassed.”

    This win extends New Zealand’s outstanding recent away form: the Black Caps have now claimed eight wins from their last nine test matches played outside of New Zealand. Latham, New Zealand’s stand-in captain for the series, made history as the first skipper in the 21st century to lead test series wins in both India and England in the same cycle.

    “Probably the most pleasing thing — different guys who have put their hands up at different times,” Latham told reporters after the win. Nathan Smith, who entered the series as the fourth-choice seamer in the Kiwi squad, finished the match with six wickets and ended the tournament as the series’ leading wicket-taker with 16, earning him player of the series honors. Daryl Mitchell, whose unbeaten century and five catches anchored New Zealand’s second innings, was named player of the match.

    “To come here and do it in a style that’s true to us as Black Caps and as Kiwis is something we’re really proud of. It’s going to be a cool one to reflect on,” Mitchell said. “We’re a small country down the bottom of the Earth and it’s something that I guess we pride ourselves on is that we just get stuck into whatever’s needed to be done and try and get the job done. Sometimes it’s been pretty and sometimes it’s getting dirty and doing the little things really well.”

    Former New Zealand captain Jeremy Coney, who led the first Kiwi side to win an English test series back in 1986, praised the current side’s unique team culture. “(This is a) different side than we had. But calmly resilient,” Coney told the BBC. “They play for each other. They care about each other. They’ve grown up together. If someone doesn’t have a good day, someone else fills the gap.”

  • Wall Street’s got China’s currency ambitions all wrong

    Wall Street’s got China’s currency ambitions all wrong

    For nearly 20 years, Wall Street has operated under a pervasive, yet fundamentally flawed assumption about China’s long-term financial ambitions. The consensus held that Beijing ultimately sought the same global financial status as Washington: control of the world’s primary reserve currency, the deepest and most liquid capital markets on the planet, and the unmatched geopolitical leverage that comes with systemic financial dominance.

    Today, that long-held consensus is looking increasingly misaligned with Beijing’s actual policy choices — and if the assumption is indeed wrong, global investors are likely underestimating one of the most consequential structural shifts unfolding in international finance right now.

    Signs of this revised strategy were clearly on display at this month’s Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai, an annual gathering widely viewed as China’s equivalent of the Davos World Economic Forum, where top policymakers and financial leaders gather to outline official priorities. At the event, senior Chinese officials unveiled a new suite of policy measures aimed at expanding offshore renminbi markets, strengthening cross-border financing infrastructure, boosting international participation in China’s domestic capital markets, and solidifying Shanghai’s positioning as a leading global financial hub.

    Key initiatives announced included a new renminbi repurchase facility open to foreign central banks and sovereign wealth institutions, expanded offshore renminbi trading frameworks, and additional programs to deepen cross-border liquidity and payment settlement channels. Most global investors interpreted the announcements through the same lens they have used for decades: as just another incremental step in China’s long-stalled push to fully internationalize the renminbi. The market reaction was muted, with the announcements dismissed as incremental progress on a familiar goal. But this reading may turn out to be a critical misjudgment.

    What many observers are missing is that China is no longer seeking to displace the U.S.-led global financial system. Instead, its core goal is to eliminate its exclusive dependence on that system. These two objectives could not be more different. One requires an all-out push to unseat the dollar as the world’s leading reserve currency. The other focuses on reducing the strategic vulnerability that comes with operating entirely within a dollar-dominated global financial order.

    This distinction carries far-reaching implications for nearly every dimension of global finance: from geopolitical power dynamics and cross-border capital flows to sanctions risk management, global reserve diversification, and the long-term pricing of all classes of international financial assets.

    For decades, mainstream discussion of China’s financial ambitions has revolved around a single question: Can the renminbi ever replace the dollar? The data to date strongly suggests that answer remains no, at least for the foreseeable future. The U.S. dollar still makes up roughly 58% of global foreign exchange reserves, compared to just 2% for the renminbi. It is also involved in nearly 90% of all global foreign exchange transactions. U.S. capital markets remain unrivaled in their size, depth of liquidity, strong institutional frameworks, and broad global investor confidence. By every traditional metric, dollar dominance remains firmly intact.

    But Beijing’s recent policy moves make clear that displacing the dollar may no longer be its goal. Instead, China is pursuing a far more achievable, and ultimately more market-shifting, objective: building a self-controlled financial ecosystem that can operate alongside the existing dollar-based system, rather than being entirely contained within it.

    Crucially, this new ecosystem does not need to replace the dollar to succeed. A useful analogy is not found in 20th century monetary history, but rather in the development of China’s digital economy. For years, Western analysts assumed China’s internet sector would eventually converge with the global open internet. Instead, Beijing built a separate, self-governing domestic ecosystem, developing its own homegrown search engines, mobile payment platforms, social media networks, cloud infrastructure providers, e-commerce giants, and independent regulatory frameworks. China never replaced the global internet — it just built a parallel system that it fully controls. Increasingly, the same logic is shaping China’s modern financial strategy.

    Over the past two decades, China has quietly assembled almost all the core components required for a parallel global financial architecture. Beijing has negotiated dozens of offshore renminbi clearing agreements and more than 40 bilateral currency swap deals with central banks around the world. It developed the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), which processed more than 175 trillion yuan ($24.5 trillion) in transactions in 2025, marking a 43% year-over-year increase. Today, more than 1,700 direct and indirect participants from nearly 190 countries and territories use the system.

    China has also rapidly expanded cross-border renminbi settlement, advanced central bank digital currency pilot programs, and gradually opened targeted segments of its domestic capital markets to foreign investors. Meanwhile, China’s banking sector, with total assets exceeding $60 trillion, is now the largest national banking system in the world.

    None of these individual developments threaten dollar dominance on their own — and they do not need to. Taken together, however, they achieve a fundamentally different strategic goal: they reduce China’s reliance on U.S.-controlled financial infrastructure, and create alternative channels for global trade, financing, liquidity provision, and investment in the event that geopolitical tensions escalate sharply.

    In effect, China is building a parallel financial architecture. But unlike all previous challengers to dollar hegemony, Beijing does not seem to believe this system must replace the existing order to meet its core strategic needs.

    This priority has grown far more urgent in recent years. Chinese policymakers have carefully studied the impact of Western sanctions on Iran, the financial restrictions imposed on Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and most notably, the freezing of more than $300 billion in Russian sovereign foreign exchange reserves following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Regardless of one’s perspective on these policy decisions, they made one reality undeniable: U.S. and Western financial power carries extraordinary global reach, and core components of the existing global financial system — reserve assets, payment networks, and clearing infrastructure — are no longer politically neutral.

    From Beijing’s vantage point, excessive financial dependence on the West has become an unacceptable strategic vulnerability. For global investors, this shift signals that China is preparing for a future in which financial fragmentation, elevated sanctions risk, and persistent great power competition become permanent, structural features of global markets, rather than temporary disruptions.

    This framework helps resolve the apparent contradiction that has long confused Western investors about China’s financial reforms. On one hand, Beijing actively courts greater international participation in its domestic capital markets. On the other, it refuses to cede control over capital flows, exchange rate policy, and critical financial infrastructure. The reality is that China may never have been pursuing traditional Western-style financial liberalization at all. Instead, it is prioritizing financial resilience — and for Beijing, resilience is a far more important goal than global financial dominance.

    So while global investors continue to debate whether the renminbi will eventually displace the dollar as the world’s top reserve currency, Beijing is asking a very different question: Can China maintain stable trade financing, provide sufficient cross-border liquidity, support its global economic partners, and sustain domestic economic stability through a prolonged period of geopolitical confrontation with the U.S.?

    These are fundamentally different objectives. China does not need to build a carbon copy of the U.S. financial system to reshape the global geopolitical balance, alter long-term global capital allocation, reduce the effectiveness of Western sanctions, and force markets to re-evaluate decades-old assumptions about financial globalization. It only needs to build a system that works well enough for its core needs when access to the U.S.-led system becomes uncertain.

    For decades, global investors have priced assets based on the assumption that financial globalization and integration would continue to expand indefinitely. Beijing increasingly appears to be betting on the opposite outcome. While Wall Street continues to debate whether China can replace the dollar, Beijing has already concluded that it does not need to.

    This analysis comes from Nigel Green, founder and chief executive officer of the deVere Group, a leading independent financial advisory firm.

  • Azerbaijan issues rare rebuke against key ally Israel over Armenian genocide recognition

    Azerbaijan issues rare rebuke against key ally Israel over Armenian genocide recognition

    In a move that has upended long-standing diplomatic ties between Israel and one of its closest regional partners, the Israeli government’s Sunday cabinet vote to formally recognize the 1915 Armenian genocide has drawn sharp public pushback from Azerbaijan, a strategic energy and military ally that has stood alongside Israel for decades.

    Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released an official statement quickly after the Israeli announcement, framing the recognition as a matter of profound diplomatic concern. The Baku administration rejected Israel’s position as a deliberate misrepresentation of documented history, arguing that a nuanced historical debate had been reduced to a cynical political calculation. The statement emphasized that the Israeli ruling lacked any credible legal or academic foundation, branding the decision fundamentally unacceptable to Azerbaijan.

    “Steps of this nature do nothing to foster reconciliation or build cross-community understanding,” the foreign ministry statement read. “On the contrary, they widen existing divides and erode ongoing efforts to cement lasting peace and stability across the South Caucasus region.” The ministry closed its statement by calling on Israeli officials to reverse course and reconsider the controversial decision.

    The diplomatic fallout comes against a backdrop of deep, mutually beneficial ties between the two states. For years, Azerbaijan has ranked among Israel’s top crude oil suppliers, while Israel has become Baku’s primary source of advanced military hardware, a partnership that strengthened during and after the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Just last year, Azerbaijan leveraged its good relations with both Turkey and Israel to host reconciliation talks between the two nations, aimed at de-escalating tensions rooted in disputes over Gaza and Syria.

    Turkey, Azerbaijan’s closest strategic partner bound by a mutual defense pact under the 2021 Shusha Declaration, also quickly condemned the Israeli move. The agreement commits both nations to mutual military support if either faces foreign aggression, and both Ankara and Jerusalem backed Baku during the 2020 conflict that saw Azerbaijan retake large swathes of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenian occupation. In its own statement Sunday, Turkey argued that Israel’s recognition was a calculated distraction from growing international legal pressure on Israeli leadership: just weeks prior, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials over alleged war crimes in Gaza, while Israel also faces ongoing genocide proceedings at the International Court of Justice.

    Notably, the Israeli cabinet’s recognition is not yet the official position of the Israeli state. The measure still requires passage through the Knesset, Israel’s unicameral parliament, to take full legal effect. Dunya Basol, an academic researcher specializing in Israeli political affairs, told Middle East Eye that Azerbaijan is likely to ramp up diplomatic pressure on Jerusalem to block the resolution from advancing through the legislative process. Basol added that it remains surprising that Israeli lawmakers appear willing to dismiss Baku’s well-documented sensitivity to the Armenian genocide issue, and underestimate the depth and strategic importance of the Azerbaijan-Turkey alliance.

  • Russia rejects Turkish ceasefire push in Ukraine ahead of Nato summit, sources say

    Russia rejects Turkish ceasefire push in Ukraine ahead of Nato summit, sources say

    In mid-June, during a high-profile diplomatic visit to Moscow, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan tabled a new peace initiative aimed at halting active hostilities between Russia and Ukraine and reopening bilateral negotiations, multiple anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the talks confirmed to Middle East Eye. But the proposal, which called for establishing a tentative ceasefire window and aligning on a foundational framework to resume dialogue, was firmly turned away by Russian officials, who declined to open discussions on the terms.

    Fidan held meetings with Russia’s top leadership during his trip, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin. Had the Turkish initiative gained traction, the plan would have brought Russian and Ukrainian negotiating teams to Turkey for formal talks coinciding with the upcoming NATO summit scheduled to be held in the country in July. For now, that diplomatic path appears all but closed, according to sources familiar with Ankara’s strategic planning.

    Russia’s non-negotiable precondition for any lasting agreement with Kyiv remains unchanged: Ukraine must formally recognize Russia’s 2014 and 2022 annexations of the Donbas region’s provincial borders, a demand Kyiv has repeatedly rejected outright. While Ukrainian officials have pushed back against claims of expanding Russian control along the Donbas frontline, recent on-the-ground reporting from *The New York Times* confirms Russian forces have advanced into the outskirts of Kostyantynivka, one of the last remaining major Ukrainian-held urban centers in the region.

    Russia currently holds more than 80 percent of Donetsk Oblast, the economic heart of Donbas, and is continuing offensive operations to encircle both Kostyantynivka and Lyman. The neighboring city of Druzhkivka has been reduced to a largely uninhabitable wasteland by months of heavy fighting, leaving Sloviansk and Kramatorsk as Kyiv’s last significant fortified strongholds in the oblast. Despite Kyiv’s unwavering public commitment to retaking all of Donbas, military analysts warn that many of the region’s key population centers may be left unrecognizable by the time frontline fighting stabilizes, leaving little infrastructure or civilian presence to defend.

    Parallel to Russia’s incremental territorial gains in eastern Ukraine, which come even as Ukraine expands its long-range strike capacity to hit Russian energy infrastructure deep inside Russian territory including within Moscow, multiple independent economic analyses paint an increasingly grim picture of strain on Russia’s domestic economy. The Russian government has already imposed intermittent full shutdowns of mobile internet access in parts of the country to curb unrest, and after more than two years of full-scale invasion and sweeping Western sanctions, deep structural fissures have begun to emerge in the country’s financial sector.

    A confidential European economic analysis reviewed by MEE reveals that Russian regulators and top government officials are deeply alarmed by growing systemic risk in the domestic banking industry, which faces overlapping threats that could trigger a widespread sectoral crisis. The report notes that Russian banks’ balance sheets have been artificially inflated by aggressive risk-taking designed to attract new investment, leaving institutions heavily exposed to widespread loan defaults from borrowers who overstate their income and creditworthiness.

    Multiple factors have amplified this risk. Widespread government subsidies for low-interest mortgages have driven a rapid surge in residential property prices, creating the conditions for a potentially destabilizing property bubble that could pop once demand cools, triggering mass defaults on home loans. Additionally, public-private partnership schemes used to fund regional development projects have shifted billions in regional debt onto the balance sheets of private and state-owned Russian banks, forcing financial institutions to absorb losses from unprofitable infrastructure projects as regional governments struggle to repay their obligations. As of 2024, Russia hosts roughly 3,500 active public-private partnership projects with a combined total valuation of nearly €50 billion, all of which place additional pressure on the banking sector.

    Industry projections indicate that more than a dozen Russian banks will be forced to cease operations by the end of 2025 amid mounting insolvency risk. Personal financial distress is also spreading rapidly across the country: more than 500,000 Russian individuals filed for personal bankruptcy in 2025, marking a 31.5 percent jump from the total number of filings recorded in 2024.