Vladimir Putin has a theory of victory in Ukraine. It’s not the Russian president’s first theory – that was a quick, dayslong campaign – nor his second or third, which involved different land offensives in the east that quickly petered out. Instead, Putin’s latest hypothesis is that the relentless bombing of Ukrainian cities will impose […]

The post Polling: scorched earth isn’t driving Ukrainians to sue for peace appeared first on Asia Times.

America’s mid-term congressional elections on November 3rdwill mark the beginning of the final two years of the Trump administration and thus the nearing of a potentially historic moment of reckoning for that country’s estranged allies. The reckoning may seem like a long way ahead, but in what historians will see as just the blink of […]

The post Time for the West to plan ahead for post-Trump 2029 appeared first on Asia Times.

Recently, Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, warned that Pyongyang could take strong retaliatory measures if Seoul continues activities it considers provocative. To casual observers, this may appear to be just another routine exchange of verbal threats between the two Koreas. However, a closer examination of the current situation suggests […]

The post Is the Korean Peninsula moving closer to war? appeared first on Asia Times.

Russia is courting the Taliban with one hand and arming the Taliban’s neighbor with the other. Moscow was the first country to recognize the Taliban, a diplomatic coup it has since tried to turn to its advantage. Now it is rushing weapons and border equipment to Tajikistan to guard against threats from Afghan soil. The […]

The post Russia torn between wooing Taliban and protecting Central Asia appeared first on Asia Times.

Indonesia’s leaders promise that the country will be a world power by 2045, the centennial of its independence. Yet when shares plunge or smoke drifts abroad, officials reflexively blame foreigners. That blame game asks nothing of those in charge. Who really owns our listed companies? Who wins contracts through political connections? Who burns the peatland? […]

The post Chasing foreign phantoms in Prabowo’s embattled Indonesia appeared first on Asia Times.

Anthropic, developer of AI chatbot Claude, has filed its prospectus and is expected to go public on Wall Street in November at a valuation of up to US$2 trillion. That would make it the highest-valued initial public offering (IPO) ever, ahead of SpaceX’s $1.77 trillion listing in June. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is expected […]

The post Anthropic’s record $2tn IPO could bring global risks to a head appeared first on Asia Times.

A leader who stood up to US President Donald Trump just won an election in Latin America’s biggest country, reversing a trend of new right-wing governments in the region over the past two years. Incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, having narrowly lost to Flavio Bolsonaro in the first round of voting on October 5, […]

The post How Lula turned the tables on Brazil’s Trump-inspired right appeared first on Asia Times.

The US needs to creatively combine two counter-drone capabilities it already has and do it quickly to deal with swarm attacks of drones and cruise missiles. The Russians are already doing it. Counter-drone warfare is changing as the push for solutions gains momentum in the United States and worldwide. In modern combat scenarios, drones are […]

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