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As top global economic policymakers gathered in Washington for the annual joint Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva delivered a sobering opening announcement Thursday: the ongoing Middle East war will force the fund to downgrade its projections for global economic growth, even if the fragile current ceasefire holds long-term.

Georgieva emphasized that the conflict has left lasting ‘scarring effects’ that will reshape global economic conditions for years to come. ‘Even in a best case, there will be no neat and clean return to the status quo ante,’ she stated. Even under the fund’s most optimistic outlook, upward spiraling energy costs, widespread infrastructure damage, disrupted global supply chains and eroded investor confidence will pull growth below pre-conflict projections.

The violence, which began when the U.S.-Israel campaign against Iran launched on February 28, has upended regional stability and sent shockwaves through global markets. After Iran effectively blocked access to the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for nearly a fifth of the world’s daily oil supply, crude prices surged dramatically, snarling supply chains from the Middle East to the farthest corners of the global economy. While a fragile ceasefire is currently in place, both Tehran and Washington have repeatedly accused the other of violating the agreement’s terms, with negotiations for a more enduring peace set to kick off Saturday.

In anticipation of widening economic fallout, the IMF projects it will need to provide between $20 billion and $50 billion in immediate balance-of-payments support to countries impacted by the conflict. The lower end of that range would be sufficient only if the current ceasefire holds, Georgieva noted. The conflict is also projected to push food insecurity to crisis levels, leaving at least 45 million additional people facing acute hunger as energy and fertilizer price hikes drive up global food costs.

The IMF chief drew particular attention to the asymmetric burden of the crisis, noting that low-income net energy importers will bear the brunt of the damage far more than wealthier or energy-exporting nations. ‘Spare a thought for the Pacific Island nations at the end of a long supply chain, wondering if fuel still reaches them in the wake of such a severe disruption,’ she said.

The warning aligns with earlier comments from the World Bank, which released its own assessment Wednesday noting that the conflict has already taken a ‘serious and immediate economic toll’ across the Middle East. Even excluding Iran, the World Bank projects regional economic growth will slow to just 1.8% in 2026, a massive 2.4 percentage point downgrade from projections made before the war began.

In addition to cutting growth projections, the IMF is also set to revise its global headline inflation forecasts upward, as oil price shocks and supply chain disruptions feed through to consumer prices worldwide. On Wednesday, the heads of the IMF, World Bank and World Food Programme held a pre-Spring Meetings working session to coordinate on the dual economic and food security crises sparked by the conflict, issuing a joint statement warning that rising energy, fertilizer and transport costs will inevitably push more people into food insecurity.

To coordinate a response to energy market volatility, the two global financial institutions have launched a dedicated coordination group, which will hold its first high-level meeting on Monday. As part of the official Spring Meetings agenda, the IMF will also release its annual Fiscal Monitor report, which is expected to highlight growing government debt levels as countries grapple with a consecutive string of major economic shocks.

In a separate analysis of the economic costs of conflict released earlier this week, the IMF found that nations directly experiencing active conflict see an immediate 3% drop in national output, with declines continuing to deepen for years after the start of fighting. A previous analysis focused specifically on the Iran conflict concluded that ‘all roads lead to higher prices and slower growth,’ with a particular focus on how heavily disrupted fertilizer supplies will exacerbate global food insecurity. The report emphasized that low-income countries face the gravest risk of widespread hunger, noting that many will require additional external support even as global development assistance has trended downward in recent years.

In a move that escalates the Russian government’s crackdown on independent civil society, the country’s Supreme Court formally designated Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights organization Memorial as an extremist group on Thursday. This latest designation lowers the legal bar for authorities to prosecute anyone connected to the organization, deepening a years-long campaign to erase one of Russia’s most prominent voices for human rights.

Memorial traces its origins to the late 1980s, founded in the final years of the Soviet Union with a core mission of documenting the millions of lives lost to political repression in the Soviet Gulag penal system. Its founding chairman was Andrei Sakharov, a legendary Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the organization built the world’s largest public database of Gulag victims. Emerging as a beacon of hope during Russia’s turbulent transition to democracy in the 1990s, Memorial expanded its mandate in subsequent decades to track growing authoritarian trends under President Vladimir Putin.

Over the past 15 years, the organization has documented a sharp surge in political detentions across Russia. As of 2026, the group counts more than 1,000 political prisoners held in the country – a massive jump from just 46 recorded in 2015, spurred by a widespread crackdown on dissent following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Memorial’s rolls of political prisoners include prominent Kremlin critics, opponents of the Ukraine war, and religious minorities. It has also documented human rights abuses linked to Russia’s military campaigns in Chechnya and Syria, investigated the mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war, and tracks persecution of religious groups including more than 200 jailed Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The latest designation is not the first time Memorial has faced harsh repression from the Russian state. In 2015, the organization was added to the government’s controversial “foreign agent” registry, a label widely seen as branding groups as enemies of the state that forces mandatory public funding disclosures and prominent disclaimer labels on all published content. In 2021, the Supreme Court ordered Memorial to liquidate all its operations within Russia, forcing the bulk of its leadership and staff to relocate to exile, where the group maintains its work through satellite offices across Europe and beyond. The Russian government further restricted Memorial’s activity earlier this year, when it designated the organization’s international arm as an “undesirable organization”, a status that already banned Russians from collaborating with or donating to the group.

Thursday’s extremist designation adds much harsher legal penalties for any association with Memorial, even for actions connected to the group’s exiled network. Memorial officials have denounced the ruling as unlawfully overbroad: the designation formally targets a non-existent entity called the “Memorial international public movement”, a vague legal wording that gives Russian authorities wide latitude to target any group or individual linked to Memorial’s legacy. All logos associated with any Memorial affiliate are now classified as extremist symbolism, meaning even public display can open people to prosecution.

Natalia Sekretaryeva, head of Memorial’s legal department, told Agence France-Presse that the ruling was “absurd” but widely expected. She noted that even Russians who participated in the organization’s long-standing annual *Returning of the Names* ceremony – a quiet, public event to honor victims of Soviet political repression – now face the risk of being charged as accomplices to extremism. In an official statement, Memorial called the ruling unlawful, framing it as “a new stage of political pressure on Russian civil society”. International human rights groups have swiftly condemned the move: Amnesty International described the extremist designation as “deplorable” and called on Russian authorities to immediately reverse the ruling.

In 2022, just months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside imprisoned Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties. The Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized the three groups for “an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power”. Within hours of the prize announcement, a Moscow court ordered the seizure of Memorial’s former headquarters, transferring the property to state ownership.

Work with Memorial has long carried severe personal risks for activists on the ground in Russia. In 2009, Natalya Estemirova, the organization’s lead researcher in Chechnya, was abducted outside her home and found dead hours later from multiple gunshot wounds. In 2020, Yury Dmitriev, a 70-year-old historian who spent decades locating unmarked mass graves of Gulag victims in Russia’s Karelia region, was jailed on widely contested child sex charges that supporters frame as retaliation for his work. Most recently, Memorial co-chair Oleg Orlov was jailed in 2024 for protesting the Ukraine war, and was only released months later during a high-profile prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States.

Since the 2021 liquidation of Memorial’s Russian operations, all the group’s financial assets in the country have remained frozen, and its core activities have been shifted to exiled satellite offices across Europe and other regions. The latest extremist designation closes off any remaining space for even informal association with the group inside Russia, cementing its complete erasure from the country’s public sphere.

The fragile calm brokered by a US-Iran ceasefire in the Middle East shattered Wednesday when Israel launched its most devastating wave of airstrikes on neighboring Lebanon since Hezbollah joined the regional conflict in March, leaving more than 180 people dead and hundreds injured, and drawing widespread condemnation from world leaders and international aid organizations.

The death toll from the single day of attacks, which targeted areas across Lebanon including densely populated central Beirut, stands at 182 killed with 890 wounded, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. In response to the carnage, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam designated Thursday a national day of mourning across the country.

Agnes Dhur, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation in Lebanon, described the sudden, deadly assault as a catastrophic blow to a population already clinging to hope for a ceasefire. “People across Lebanon were holding their breath for a ceasefire agreement, but a wave of deadly strikes plunged the country into panic and chaos,” Dhur said, adding that the ICRC is outraged by the devastating death and destruction inflicted on densely populated civilian areas. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk echoed the condemnation, saying “The scale of the killing and destruction in Lebanon today is nothing short of horrific. Such carnage, within hours of agreeing to a ceasefire with Iran, defies belief.”

In the aftermath of the strikes, the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah announced it had launched rocket attacks toward northern Israel, framing the action as a response to Israel’s violation of the US-brokered truce between Washington and Tehran. The group had previously asserted its right to retaliate for the deadly wave of bombardment.

Global powers have widely called for the existing ceasefire between the US and Iran to be extended to Lebanon to prevent further escalation. British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told Sky News she was deeply troubled by the escalating Israeli attacks in Lebanon and strongly supports extending the ceasefire to the country. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot condemned the ongoing strikes, noting they “undermine the temporary ceasefire reached yesterday between the United States and Iran” making them all the more unacceptable. French President Emmanuel Macron held phone talks with both US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to push for Lebanon to be included in the truce. “I expressed my hope that the ceasefire will be fully respected by each of the belligerents, across all areas of confrontation, including in Lebanon,” Macron wrote on social media platform X.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson emphasized that “Lebanon’s sovereignty and security should not be violated. The safety of civilian lives and property must be guaranteed,” and called for urgent de-escalation across the region. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has already listed a halt to Israeli strikes on Lebanon as one of the core conditions of Iran’s 10-point plan to end the broader regional war, according to Iranian state media.

Despite the regional escalation triggered by the Lebanese strikes, many residents of Iran’s capital have welcomed the ceasefire with the US, breathing a collective sigh of relief after weeks of cross-border bombardment. While some residents expressed fear the truce would ultimately collapse, others celebrated what they framed as a victory for their country. “Everyone is at ease now, we are more relaxed,” 50-year-old Tehran housewife Sakineh Mohammadi told Agence France-Presse, adding she was proud of her country’s actions.

In other regional developments, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares announced that Spain will reopen its embassy in Iran, a mission that was shuttered in March following the outbreak of the latest war. Iran also announced that it is rerouting commercial shipping through an alternative route in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global energy chokepoint, citing risks of sea mines in the main shipping lane. The Iranian government released official navigation instructions for the new entry and exit corridor through the strait.

A new round of direct talks between US and Iranian officials is set to open Saturday in Islamabad, with US Vice President JD Vance leading the American delegation. Vance will be joined by White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, former President Trump’s son-in-law. Speaking to reporters during a stop in Hungary, Vance urged Iran not to allow the truce to collapse over the conflict in Lebanon, noting that a halt to Israeli military operations in Lebanon was never included in the original ceasefire agreement reached earlier this week.