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The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit begins Sunday and will be attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The meetings are unlikely to produce groundbreaking declarations or alliances.
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The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit begins Sunday and will be attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The meetings are unlikely to produce groundbreaking declarations or alliances.
Open source reportGeography
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Shanghai Cooperation Organization dossier
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Islamabad
Pakistan increased security ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit amid concern that Baloch separatists could attempt to disrupt the meeting.
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Chronology
Off Leash update 27 Aug COMING UP THIS WEEK •The two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit starts Sunday. China's Pres. Xi, Russia's Pres. Putin, and India's Prime Minister Modi will all attend, but the meetings aren't expected to lead to groundbreaking new declarations or alliances. COMMODITY AND COIN MARKET PRICES •Aluminum: $2,638/ton •Antimony (trioxide min. 99.65% fob China): $30,950/ton •Bitcoin: $112,266 •Cobalt: $33,335/ton •Copper: $9,837/ton •Ethereum: $4,624 •Gold: $3,396/toz •Lead: $1,988/ton •Natural Gas (Nymex): $2.87/MMbtu •WTI Crude Oil (Nymex): $64.19/barrel •Zinc: $2,814/ton TRADE •Higher U.S. tariffs on India - which are, effectively, secondary sanctions on India for buying Russian oil - went into effect today. •Some feel India was unfairly singled out for an exceptionally high tariff rate of 50%, despite being largely aligned with U.S. geopolitical priorities and buying far less Russian oil than China, which is more of a geopolitical rival and yet enjoys a far lower tariff rate than 50% (for now). UKRAINE •Russian forces captured villages in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time. Analysts suggest Putin is seeking new bargaining chips in case he's pushed to start negotiating a peace deal with Ukraine. GAZA •Two Israeli strikes on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza on Monday killed at least 20, including five journalists, and drew widespread condemnation - including from the UN, which said there "needs to be justice" for the strike. Israel said it was aiming for a "camera that was positioned by Hamas" at the hospital. SAHEL •Russia's state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom, signed a cooperation agreement with the junta in Niger to explore the radical possibility of building Africa's first nuclear power plant in the Nigerien desert. •Niger's current fiscal and technological state renders the construction of a nuclear power plant there virtually impossible - even with Rosatom's strongest. The cooperation agreement is probably more of a symbol of a switch of loyalty from France - whose state-owned Orano mined Niger's uranium for over 50 years - to Russia. DRC •DRC and the M23 resumed mediated peace talks in Doha, despite the M23's continued attacks in eastern DRC. •Both sides insist they're still serious about talking peace, but they've ignored self-set deadlines to resume talks by Aug. 8 and to finalize a ceasefire by Aug. 18, and have no additional motivation to seal a deal now. NORTH KOREA •Following a meeting with South Korea's Pres. Lee Jae-myung, Pres. Trump said he hoped to meet Lee's northern rival, Kim Jong Un, "in the appropriate future." It would be the fourth meeting between Kim and Trump.
Open source reportOff Leash Update 11 October Middle East •Israel targeted a senior Hezbollah leader, Wafiq Safa, with an airstrike on central Beirut that killed at least 22 people and wounded at least 117 more. •Israel has often had a fairly high tolerance for civilian casualties in pursuit of its enemies' leadership, but now that it's taken out all of Hezbollah's top officials and is chasing increasingly low-level targets, its heavy-handed tactics are creating fresh resentment. A Beiruti whose apartment was destroyed in the blast told WaPo: "I am a moderate, but after this I am with Hezbollah. They are pushing me to be with the resistance." •Separately (but relatedly), the UN complained that Israeli troops fired on its peacekeepers in Lebanon twice in the last two days. Iran •Iran preemptively warned Israel that a strike on its nuclear facilities would violate "global red lines." •This seems like part of a propaganda blitz that Long War Journal describes as "a series of threats, half-truths, and outright lies in the service of softening the political blow that any Israeli strike could land while also raising military costs." •Russia's Pres. Putin met Iran's Pres. Pezeshkian in a hastily-arranged sidebar during a conference in Turkmenistan today. Pezeshkian likely hopes to get Putin's blessing for Iran to buy advanced Russian weapons like Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 air defense systems that Iran has long sought. Pakistan •Heavily-armed insurgents attacked coal mines in the Duki district of Balochistan, apparently targeting minority ethnic Pashtuns - at least 20 of whom died - and destroying mining machinery. •Local officials blamed Baloch separatists who have been intensifying their attacks on outsiders they perceive as threats to their quest for an independent state - like the Chinese engineers they killed with a suicide car bomb in Karachi on Monday. •The Pakistani government has ramped up security ahead of next week's Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Islamabad - lest Baloch separatists try to disrupt the talks. Ukraine •Ukraine's Parliament approved a major tax hike that will supplement increasingly hesitant donor contributions for its war effort. Personal income tax will nearly quadruple (from 1.5% to 5.0%) and bank profits will be retroactively taxed at double their previous rate of 25%. Much of the funds raised will go towards the war: military spending is currently over half the country's $100 billion annual budget. •Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna died in Russian detention, aged 27. Russia captured her in occupied eastern Ukraine in August 2023 and has released little information about why she was arrested or where in Russia she was being held. The Ukrainian journalists union is seeking to find out how and when she died. Other News •The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year's peace prize to Nihon Hidankyo, a group of Japanese atomic-bomb survivors, for "its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons." •The chair of the award committee noted that its choice recognized that the "taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure" at present, which some media read as a rebuke on Russia's lowered threshold for using its nukes.
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