Co-ordinated cyberattacks can create massive disruptions to infrastructure and supply chains. New treaties are needed to prevent cyberwarfare, but it’s challenging to predict technological advances.
At this month’s summit, US President Joe Biden warned his counterpart Vladimir Putin of reprisals against ‘persistent malicious cyber-attacks’. But it will take more than posturing to end the stand-off.
Nord Stream 2 is a pipeline that will deliver Russian gas to Western Europe – and, by extension, increase Putin’s influence across the continent. That makes Ukraine and some other countries nervous.
Matthew Sussex, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
This could have been a feisty exchange between two adversaries. But the summit was a calm affair, with each side hoping their hostile relationship could be ratcheted down a notch or two.
When announcing financial penalties on Russia earlier this year, Biden hinted at the prospect of ‘further’ sanctions. An energy scholar explains what Biden may have meant.
Some tension was inevitable at the June 16 US-Russia summit. But Vladimir Putin’s defiant support for Belarus’s rogue regime now pits him harder against the West.
Belarus’ leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has gone to extraordinary measures to cling to power. Last weekend, this included the state-sanctioned hijacking of a passenger plane.
There’s not much the world can do to stop authoritarian rulers from persecuting their political opponents, as shown by the standoff over Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who is ill and imprisoned.
The new US administration has talked about setting up an alliance of democracies. For the time being, the project seems vague. Yet such an alliance is necessary.
Both Russia and China are signalling they will only deal with the West where and when it suits them. They are also increasingly comfortable working together as close partners.