What could this years US presidential election mean for the world?

Published

1 year ago

February 24, 2024

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The second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine comes as America prepares for a crucial election and while funding for a Ukrainian victory remains blocked in a divided Congress.

As our own frontline eyewitness reporting shows, Vladimir Putin has the upper hand.

Western leaders have repeatedly warned that Putin won’t stop at Ukraine given the chance. We are reminded that even on the eve of his invasion two years ago, Putin insisted he would not move into Ukraine.

Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin ‘may achieve war goal’

So what might happen in the months and years ahead?

Here are two scenarios. Far-fetched? It depends if the rhetoric is accurate.

Scenario one:

It’s March 2025 and a few weeks since Donald Trump was inaugurated as America’s 47th president.

Air Force One has just touched down in Istanbul where Turkey is hosting the ‘Donbas Peace Summit’ where an agreement will be signed by Presidents Putin and Zelenskyy.

At the Topkapi Palace overlooking the Bosporus River, the stage is set for a Trump-brokered ‘peace’ treaty.

The treaty comes three months after Ukraine’s weapon supply ran completely dry following an American refusal to pass funding bills and a breakdown in European unity.

This Istanbul moment is the delivery of President Trump’s campaign pledge to ‘solve the Ukraine war in a day’.

It had taken longer than a day but Zelenskyy had been cornered through a lack of Western weapons.

Closed-door meetings between Trump administration officials and the Kremlin (the contents of which have not been revealed) sealed the deal: Ukraine agreed to cede the whole of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to an expanded Russian Federation.

Inside the Topkapi Palace, Zelenskyy first took to the stage, stony-faced and wearing a suit rather than his army fatigues for the first time since the Russian invasion three years earlier.

He signed the document and left the room without acknowledging President Trump who was presiding over the moment.

Minutes later, separately, a beaming President Putin emerged, signed the document and shook the American president’s hand.

Three years later in the spring of 2028, the Russian army which had been massing on Europe’s eastern flank invaded Latvia and Estonia.

The two European nations fell fast.

NATO, abandoned by Trump’s America a year earlier, was unable to defend them.

By the summer of 2029, Chinese President Xi Jinping launches an air and maritime invasion of Taiwan.

Scenario two:

March 2025. Air Force One landed at Kyiv international airport. Joe Biden, recently re-elected as America’s President, descended the steps of the plane with a rare spring in his careful step.

On the tarmac, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy, in a suit, embraced him. Some observers said they could see tears in his eyes.

A week earlier, Russian President Putin had withdrawn the last of his forces from eastern Ukraine after a bitter winter battle in which an estimated 40,000 soldiers on both sides had been killed.

Putin’s army had been decimated after a massive increase of weapons from Europe and the United States.

The consequence of a war which had lasted three years was the near-total degradation of the Russian military.

It had been compounded by a surprise thaw in US-China relations and Beijing’s subsequent abandonment of Moscow.

A dramatic shift in the geopolitics of the Middle East also helped to seal Russia’s fate.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation and subsequent conviction in the 7 October Inquiry of September 2024 had paved the way for the Israeli-Saudi normalisation deal.

This isolated Iran and dented Tehran’s relations with Moscow.

Far-fetched then? Quite possibly. Donald Trump’s first presidency showed that his fickle unpredictability often cancelled out his wild rhetoric.

And a second Biden term is full of profound unknowns. Republican or Democrat, America appears far less engaged than it once was.

In a world of such discombobulating flux, and where global geopolitics is all inextricably linked, don’t rule anything out.

World

Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

Published

9 mins ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.

The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.

Gaza latest: Follow live updates

The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.

The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.

No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.

Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.

There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.

This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.

It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.

Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.

I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.

His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.

“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.

Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.

“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

6 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

12 hours ago

August 10, 2025