In their 2022 book Sinostan, Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen saw Central Asia as China’s “inadvertent empire”. If that is true – and the five-country region embracing Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan (informally called the C5) certainly sits at the heart of China’s Belt and Road Initiative – then Beijing could not have chosen…
Hong Kong — Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up a two-day visit to North Korea on Tuesday by vowing to deepen ties and expand cooperation with Kim Jong Un. Xi called the summit a “new historical starting point.” Beyond the optics and the carefully choreographed messaging from the Chinese and North Korean governments, experts say the…
By Brenda Goh and Liz Lee SEOUL/BEIJING, June 10 (Reuters) – North Korea and China both walked away claiming major wins from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit this week to the isolated state, which helped elevate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s global stature and pulled Pyongyang more tightly into China’s orbit. The two countries each…
TALLINN, June 9 (Reuters) – Ukraine has signed a drone deal with Latvia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday as he met with Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs on the sidelines of a summit between Ukraine and Nordic and Baltic states in the Estonian capital Tallinn. “These are concrete things to strengthen our joint defense…
NEW DELHI: India has deployed 12 nuclear warheads in peacetime for the first time, signalling a significant shift in its nuclear posture, according to the latest assessment by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).In its Yearbook 2026 released on Monday, SIPRI reported that India now possesses a total nuclear arsenal of 190 warheads, up…
June 9 (Reuters) – Three people were killed in a Russian attack on the town of Chuhuiv in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday, with emergency services working to extinguish a fire. Two men, one 70 years old and one 50, and a 70-year-old woman…
GENEVA, June 8 (Reuters) – Spending on nuclear weapons by the world’s nine nuclear-armed states rose by almost a fifth in 2025 to $119 billion, a report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said on Tuesday. The 19% increase from 2024 produced the highest expenditure on nuclear weapons since the campaign group began…
By Brenda Goh and Kyu-seok Shim SEOUL, June 7 (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un welcomes Chinese President Xi Jinping to Pyongyang on Monday, feeling in a position of strength with a firm ally in Russia, a nuclear arsenal and little apparent appetite to engage with Washington. For Xi, leader of the world’s…
Central Asia can become a strategic logistics hub for Hong Kong as wars in the Middle East and Europe persist, with cargo volume between the city and two countries in the region surging nearly fivefold year on year, the Airport Authority chairman has said. Fred Lam Tin-fuk, who joined a recent trip with Chief Executive…
KYIV, June 5 (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s open letter offering face-to-face peace talks to end the war in Ukraine was addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin but meant to echo through the corridors of this week’s St Petersburg investment forum, and beyond. Zelenskiy published the letter on Thursday evening as Putin briefed foreign news…