Eurasia

U.S. President Donald Trump’s top Asia adviser deployed fluent Chinese Monday in a speech chastising China’s rulers for thwarting their people’s century-long quest for democracy–likening censored coronavirus doctors and Hong Kong protesters to key figures in “a long-running struggle for the soul of modern China.”

Hezbollah went from a guerrilla group to a terror superpower Twenty years after the last IDF soldier left southern Lebanon, the hostility between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah has only intensified.

Coalition forces continue to battle against Islamic State while the world reacts to the coronavirus pandemic.

Islamic State militants have stepped up their attacks on security forces in north-eastern Iraq, reportedly killing at least 18 people since the weekend.

Lebanon’s foreign minister summoned the German ambassador on Tuesday to explain Berlin’s decision last week to ban the Shi’ite Hezbollah movement on its soil.

In its latest report, U.S.-based democracy monitor Freedom House warns of a “stunning democratic breakdown” across Central Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia as many leaders in the region attempt to do away with any remaining checks on their power.

The Venezuelan military thwarted an attempted naval invasion by heavily-armed mercenaries coming from Colombia on Sunday morning, neutralizing multiple fighters and capturing at least two US nationals among them. More mercenaries have surrendered in the days since.

A briefcase stuffed with ricin… Mayors under police protection… An alleged Russian assassination plot has thrown Czech foreign policy into turmoil. Reports that Russian assassins are targeting Czechs politicians may sound like the plot of a classic Cold War thriller, but they are the product of a very contemporary tussle.

Dozens of refugees and migrants trying to cross Albania have been reduced to begging for food on the streets of Tirana, victims of gang violence and under-funding at a state-run reception centre.

If the EU suddenly seems more interested than it was in integrating the Western Balkans, it is partly because the expansion into the region by large regional powers such as China has got Brussels worried.