Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a Russia-Ukraine arms race, Denmark and Greenland apologizing for decades of systemic abuse, and the destructive force of Typhoon Ragasa.
Bigger Threats, Bigger Friends
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a somber message at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday. “We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history,” he warned, pointing to Russia’s continued assault on Ukraine as evidence of what happens when powerful drones fall into an aggressor’s hands.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a Russia-Ukraine arms race, Denmark and Greenland apologizing for decades of systemic abuse, and the destructive force of Typhoon Ragasa.
Bigger Threats, Bigger Friends
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a somber message at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday. “We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history,” he warned, pointing to Russia’s continued assault on Ukraine as evidence of what happens when powerful drones fall into an aggressor’s hands.
“If a nation wants peace, it still has to work on weapons. It’s sick, but that’s the reality,” Zelensky said. “Not international law, not cooperation. Weapons decide who survives.”
Between calls for greater foreign support for Ukraine in its war against Russia and warnings of similar interference against Russia’s neighbors, Zelensky condemned the “collapse of international law and the weakness of the international institutions”—including the very body that he spoke from—for allowing Moscow’s maneuvers to go unchecked. The only security guarantees, he maintained, are “friends and weapons.”
For the former, Kyiv may now have a somewhat more sympathetic ear in the White House. Just hours after delivering his own U.N. speech on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to reverse course on Washington’s Ukraine policy, at least rhetorically. “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday following a sidelines meeting with Zelensky. Trump had said as recently as last month that Kyiv must be prepared to concede some of its Russian-occupied territory, such as Crimea, to secure a peace deal.
It is unclear whether Trump meant Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders or its borders from before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022; however, the U.S. president appeared to suggest that Kyiv could even end up taking Russian territory. “Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that!” he wrote.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied that such an outcome is possible. “The idea that Ukraine can win something back is, in our view, a mistake,” Peskov said. “The situation on the front lines speaks for itself.” Russia controls around one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.
At first glance, Trump’s announcement appears to be a major U.S. policy shift that could signal his blossoming relationship with Zelensky or his growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, experts warn that Trump’s statements still suggest that he is not as committed to Europe’s defense as some of his NATO partners.
Trump also said on Tuesday during his meeting with Zelensky that NATO should shoot down Russian aircraft that enter NATO countries’ territories. When asked if the United States would help NATO in such a scenario, though, Trump responded that it “depends on the circumstance.”
“NATO is a military alliance founded on the notion that its 32 members will defend one another if one of their number is attacked,” Christian Caryl argued in Foreign Policy. “That assumption doesn’t work if one of those members—especially the most powerful one—declares in advance that its participation is conditional.”
Instead, Trump reiterated support for a new scheme that allows the United States to sell weapons to NATO members, which then send them to Ukraine. Kyiv has championed this policy, yet Zelensky continues to warn that more must be done to stop Russia’s weapons development—both to protect Ukraine as well as the world at large.
“Stopping Russia now is cheaper than wondering who will be the first to create a simple drone carrying a nuclear warhead,” Zelensky said on Wednesday.
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What We’re Following
Systemic abuse. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen issued a public apology on Wednesday on behalf of their governments for the medical mistreatment of Indigenous Greenlandic women and girls for decades. Dating back to the 1960s and continuing to the early 1990s, Danish health officials forced Inuit women and girls in Greenland to receive invasive contraceptive measures, such as intrauterine devices (IUDs) and hormonal birth control injections, without their consent or knowledge—oftentimes leading to later health complications or infertility.
“We cannot change what has happened, but we can take responsibility, and we can create the conditions for reconciliation with the past,” Frederiksen said in a statement released Monday, adding that Copenhagen intends to establish a reconciliation fund to compensate the survivors.
An independent report, released earlier this month, detailed the experiences of more than 350 individuals—including girls age 12 and younger—who were forcibly given contraception by Danish health authorities; however, the report covers just a fraction of the number of victims—those who came forward to share their stories. Danish authorities say as many as 4,500 women and girls in Greenland received IUDs between the 1960s and mid-1970s. These procedures occurred as part of a Danish policy to limit the growth of the Greenlandic population, which was reliant on Copenhagen to pay for infrastructure, housing, health, and education services. Greenland took over its own health care programs in 1992.
“King of Storms.” Typhoon Ragasa made landfall in southern China on Wednesday after barreling through the Philippines, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. More than 20 people have been killed thus far, and nearly 2 million others have been evacuated. Meteorologists are calling Ragasa the world’s most powerful tropical cyclone so far this year.
Among the damage reported, a barrier lake in Taiwan’s eastern Hualien county has overflowed, sending a massive wall of water into a nearby town; locals told Reuters that they received insufficient warning of the flood, which was caused by the storm’s torrential rain and high winds. For the first time this year, China’s marine authority issued its highest red wave warning as it forecast storm surges of up to 9 feet in parts of Guangdong province. And when the tropical cyclone first hit the Philippines on Monday, it was strong enough to be classified as a Category 5 hurricane.
Chinese authorities have already allotted $21 million for disaster relief for the southern Guangdong, Hainan, and Fujian provinces. The deadly typhoon is expected to continue its trajectory as far west as Vietnam and Laos later this week.
Transition of power. Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera conceded defeat on Wednesday in the country’s presidential election, paving the way for opposition candidate Peter Mutharika to pursue a peaceful transition of power. Although the country’s electoral commission has not yet released the final results, Mutharika is projected to have secured more than 56 percent of the vote—eliminating any need for a runoff.
This month’s election was the fourth showdown between Chakwera and Mutharika. The last time that the longtime rivals competed for the presidency, Malawi’s Constitutional Court annulled Mutharika’s victory and called for a re-run that Chakwera won in 2020. Pro-democracy activists championed the court’s intervention at the time, even as both candidates found themselves mired in corruption scandals.
A shift back to Mutharika’s popularity, however, demonstrates the public’s discontent with Chakwera’s handling of Malawi’s economy, which has faced worsening stagnation under his rule. Nearly 75 percent of Malawians live below the World Bank’s poverty line of $3 a day.
Odds and Ends
Even world leaders aren’t immune to New York City’s bumper-to-bumper traffic. While attending the U.N. General Assembly late Monday, the U.S. presidential motorcade trapped French President Emmanuel Macron and his accompanying delegation at a busy intersection. Like a true New Yorker, Macron first tried pleading with local police to let him through. When that didn’t work, though, he called Trump. “Guess what?” Macron said over the phone. “I am waiting [in] the street because everything is frozen for you.” The road was eventually cleared, but that still left roughly 30 minutes of walking past food trucks for the French president to reach his destination.
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