A group of five will soon be a concert of eleven. At last week's summit of the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa agreed to invite Ethiopia, Argentina, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to officially join the group on Jan. 1, 2024. The expanded BRICS shows its members' dissatisfaction with the Western-led economic and political order.
Europe
After Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, Russia's long-term trajectory under Putin looks increasingly dire. The enormous complexity of Russia’s challenges is more likely to paralyze Russia’s elites in ways that will enable Putin to delay a reckoning until long after the damage he has done can no longer be fixed.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, independent Russian journalists who refused to follow the Kremlin’s narrow rules have had to flee the country, endure persecution by Russian intelligence and suffer the suspicion of those in their new homes. Now the attempted assassination of one of their own has raised their fears to new heights.