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Putin Calls, Missiles Fly & EU Enlargement Shifts | Geopolitics Briefing
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Trump spoke with Putin for 90 minutes — then Russian missiles hit Kyiv and Ukraine struck deep inside Russia: diplomacy and escalation running in parallel. Today's briefing covers the Ukraine war's dual track, EU enlargement reform, US growth forecast cuts, and an Ebola outbreak the world is underreacting to.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Trump called Putin on Saturday. Ninety minutes.
Russia launched a second major missile and drone attack on Kyiv on Monday. At least eleven people killed.
Elsewhere in Europe, Brussels is formalizing what had been a passive debate. The EU Commission is now actively drafting enlargement reform proposals, aiming to reassert control over an accession process that's increasingly been shaped by individual member states.
On the economic side, the fragmentation that's been building for years is now showing up in hard forecasts. Morgan Stanley cut its US growth forecast for twenty twenty-six to two point two percent, citing tariff uncertainty directly.
The broader context around all of this is a measurable decline in confidence in US global leadership. Only thirty-seven percent of analysts now believe the US will lead the international order by twenty-thirty.
One story that deserves more attention than it's getting: the Ebola outbreak in the DRC is now the third-largest on record, with fourteen hundred cases. The USAID closure and funding cuts directly delayed detection and hampered the response.
The next forty-eight to seventy-two hours are the real test of Trump's diplomacy push. If Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilians continue while the diplomatic channel stays open, that tells us something precise about Moscow's intentions.
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