Important Takeaways:
- South Korea’s foreign ministry called the Russian ambassador to the carpet Monday over North Korea’s alleged deployments of troops to join the Russian military in its war against Ukraine.
- The use of North Korean troops in the Ukraine conflict is a violation of the U.N. charter and General Assembly resolutions and threatens South Korea’s security, the ministry said in a statement.
- “We condemn North Korea’s illegal military cooperation, including its dispatch of troops to Russia, in the strongest terms,” Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun told Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev, the ministry said. “We will respond jointly with the international community by mobilizing all available means against acts that threaten our core security interests.”
- South Korea’s intelligence service said on Friday that North Korea had shipped 1,500 special forces to train at Russian military bases in the Far East. The troops would likely be deployed to fight in Ukraine, the spy agency said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also accused North Korea of sending 10,000 troops to Russia.
- Zinoviev countered that Russian cooperation with North Korea was in line with international law, and was not directed against South Korea, according to a Facebook post from the Russian embassy.
- Reports that Russia will deploy North Korean troops in its war with Ukraine are unconfirmed. The Kremlin earlier denied them.
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Important Takeaways:
- Reports from Kyiv say 10,000 North Korean troops are undergoing training in Russia’s Far East and could be used to fight in Ukraine.
- The account of North Korea’s deployment of troops to Russia is the latest sign of tightening security ties between two prime U.S. adversaries. Last week, unconfirmed reports said a Ukrainian missile strike killed six North Korean officers in the raging war with Russia across Ukraine’s occupied southern and eastern regions.
- A South Korean military official told the Yonhap News Agency that the reports were being “closely monitored.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel is ‘the most concrete threat to regional and global peace’ says Erdoğan
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told local media on Saturday that Russia, Iran and Syria should do more to protect Syria’s “territorial integrity.”
- “It is essential that Russia, Iran and Syria take more effective measures against this situation, which poses the greatest threat to Syria’s territorial integrity,” Erdoğan said when asked about the recent alleged Israeli airstrike in the nation’s capital, Damascus.
- Shortly after the Hamas invasion and massacre of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Turkish president canceled a planned trip to Israel and refused to condemn Hamas.
- “Hamas is not a terror organization,” Erdoğan said at the time. “It is waging a battle for its land.”
- In November, Erdoğan slammed Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza, calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “the butcher of Gaza.”
- In May 2024, at Erdoğan’s urging, Turkey announced that it was halting all trade with Israel. That same month, it announced it would join South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
- The country also sent its intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, to Doha, Qatar to meet with Ismail Haniyeh, then the political leader of Hamas.
- In July, Erdoğan appeared to threaten an invasion of Israel in support of Palestinians in Gaza during a party speech.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iran’s president on Friday, at a time when Tehran is supplying weapons for Moscow’s war in Ukraine and concerns are growing over escalating attacks between Israel and Iran and its militant allies.
- “We have many opportunities now, and we must help each other in our relationships. Our principles, our positions in the international arena are similar to yours,” Pezeshkian said at the start of his meeting with Putin.
- Pezeshkian said that Israel’s “savage attacks,” on Lebanon are “beyond description.”
- Both countries were accused this week by Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, of carrying out a “staggering” rise in attempts at assassination, sabotage and other crimes on U.K. soil.
- McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022 and warned that it could expand its targets in the U.K. if conflicts in the Middle East deepen.
- Speaking Friday as the forum opened, Putin said he wants to create a “new world order” of Moscow’s allies to counter the West, according to video provided by the Kremlin`
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Important Takeaways:
- Before the Russian invasion in early 2022, Ukraine was exporting about 6.5 million tonnes of grain overseas every month, according to figures from the Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, bringing in revenues of $27.8bn for the year 2021. It was the world’s seventh-largest exporter of wheat and fourth-biggest exporter of barley, according to the Foreign Agriculture Service of the US Department of Agriculture.
- Grain exports had fallen to just over 2 million tonnes per month in mid-2023, just over a year into the war.
- The reasoning behind Moscow’s targeting of grain-exporting ships was not yet clear.
- Russia may be emboldened by its recent gains in Donbas, or it may be seeking retaliation for Ukraine’s surprise attack across the border in the region of Kursk
- It may also simply be looking for new ways to weaken Ukraine. “If you can weaken Ukraine economically, that reduces its ability to resist,” Gorenburg said.
- Rather than targeting ports, the “intimidation of commercial shippers is a much better way to do that”.
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Important Takeaways:
- The country’s adversaries are stepping up efforts to influence the U.S. election, including down-ballot races, intelligence officials told the press on Monday.
- Officials said China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba have sought to “launder their narratives” into election discourse, as well as aggravate divisions among Americans through hot-button issues such as immigration.
- Though four weeks remain before Election Day, more than 16 million Americans had requested mail-in ballots or opted for early in-person voting as of Tuesday, according to an NBC News poll sourced from state officials and market research firm TargetSmart.
- One official said agencies have been privately briefing candidates for president, congress and local elections about foreign influence efforts.
- More of these notifications have already been carried out than during any past election, according to another official, who said suspected cases of foreign influence campaigns against public officials have seen a “more than threefold increase.”
- China-linked actors were said to have directly interfered in “tens” of down-ballot races, particularly when it comes to issues that most concern the Chinese Communist Party, Reuters reported.
- Russia and Iran have been focused on shaping the views of the U.S. electorate,” the intelligence officials said.
- Moscow’s efforts have reportedly been to drive down support for Ukraine, which is struggling against invading Russian forces in the eastern part of the country. Iran has been covertly seeking to drum up support for Democratic candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris, according to officials.
- They believe Cuba has concentrated on giving a boost to its preferred candidates by swaying Spanish-speaking voters on social media.
- The news follows a report released last month by social network analysis firm Graphika that detailed a Chinese “spamouflage” operation attempting to sow division in U.S. social media spaces through fake accounts.
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Important Takeaways:
- As the war in Ukraine enters a critical period, the European Union has decided it must take responsibility for what it sees as a security threat in its own neighborhood, and it’s preparing to tackle some of the financial burden, perhaps even without the United States.
- The EU rarely moves ahead on international matters without the U.S., particularly involving major conflicts, but it hopes this decision will encourage others to come forward.
- EU envoys have been working this week on a proposal to provide Ukraine with a loan package worth up to 35 billion euros ($39 billion).
- “Crucially, this loan will flow straight into your national budget,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv last week. “It will provide you with significant and much-needed fiscal space. You will decide how best to use the funds, giving you maximum flexibility to meet your needs.”
- Zelenskyy wants to buy weapons and bomb shelters and rebuild Ukraine’s shattered energy network as winter draws near.
- Most of the 27-nation EU fears a Putin victory would lead to deep uncertainty. Russia’s armed forces are depleted and currently incapable of another war, but the prospect of a future land grab in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Poland remains.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. President Joe Biden announced more than $8 billion in military assistance for Ukraine on Thursday to help Kyiv “win this war” against Russian invaders, using a visit by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to make a major commitment.
- The aid includes the first shipment of a precision-guided glide bomb called the Joint Standoff Weapon, with a range of up to 81 miles (130 km).
- The bulk of the new aid, $5.5 billion, is to be allocated before Monday’s end of the U.S. fiscal year, when the funding authority is set to expire.
- Another $2.4 billion is under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which allows the administration to buy weapons for Ukraine from companies rather than pull them from U.S. stocks.
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Important Takeaways:
- A satellite image analyzed by CBS News shows a large crater and remnants of a possible explosion on a launchpad at Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on Sept. 21. The crater is approximately 200 feet wide, and the site contains dark rubble and other debris indicating a large fire or explosion.
- Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, an arms control and nuclear weapons analysis blog, said an explosion may have occurred during the defueling of the missile as the images indicate the missile may have “exploded in the silo.”
- The Plesetsk Cosmodrome is located roughly 500 miles north of Moscow and 250 miles east of Russia’s border with Finland.
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment in a press briefing on Monday, Sept. 23, about the alleged explosion, saying: “We do not have any information on this matter.”
- The Sarmat is classified as a “heavy” ICBM designed to reach a target about 11,000 miles away and is capable of carrying up to 10 tons in payload, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Defense Project.
- According to Russian independent news outlet Sirena, Russia has conducted six failed tests of nuclear weaponry since June, including its Poseidon torpedo and Bulava submarine-launched missile.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia and Iran are using artificial intelligence to influence the American election, U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday.
- “Foreign actors are using AI to more quickly and convincingly tailor synthetic content,” an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. “The IC (intelligence community) considers AI a malign influence, accelerant, not yet a revolutionary influence tool.”
- Officials saw AI being used in overseas elections, but it has now made its way to American elections, according to intelligence officials, who says there is evidence Russian manipulated Vice President Kamala Harris’ speeches.
- Russia “has generated the most AI content related to the election, and has done so across all four mediums, text, images, audio and video,” an ODNI official said.
- “Russia is a much more sophisticated actor in the influence space in general, and they have a better understanding of how U.S. elections work and what states to target,” an ODNI official said.
- Iran has also used AI in its election influence efforts, including help in writing fake social media posts and news articles to further Iran’s objectives, which are to denigrate the former President Donald Trump’s candidacy, the official said.
- Officials have previously assessed Iran prefers that Vice President Harris win the 2024 election.
- The intelligence community assesses that AI is an “accelerant” to influence operations, but the risk to U.S. elections depends the ability of foreign actors to overcome restrictions built into many AI tools and remain undetected, develop their own sophisticated models, and strategically target and disseminate such content.
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