World
Australia signs security pact with Vanuatu. UN reports on torture in Myanmar. Plans for lunar nuclear reactors. By Jonathan Pearlman.
Trump calls in the National Guard to patrol ‘unsafe’ DC
Great power rivalry
Ukraine: Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, insisted this week he would not give up the eastern Donbas region as part of a ceasefire deal, as Russian troops advanced 10 kilometres and made one of their biggest gains in more than a year.
As United States President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, prepared to discuss the future of Ukraine at a summit in Alaska on Friday, Zelensky downplayed Russia’s advance and warned that ceding territory would allow Moscow to launch a fresh offensive. Zelensky said Ukraine would destroy Russia’s new forward positions, saying that Moscow’s offensive was designed to give the message ahead of the Alaska summit that “Ukraine is losing”.
“If we withdraw from the Donbas today – our fortifications, our terrain, the heights we control – we will clearly open a bridgehead for the Russians to prepare an offensive,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
Russia now holds about 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory. In the Donbas, which includes the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, Russia holds almost all of Luhansk and about 70 per cent of Donetsk. Russia this week seized settlements around the city of Dobropillia in Donetsk, prompting further evacuations of the estimated 250,000 residents who remain in Ukrainian-controlled parts of the region.
Trump has suggested Russia and Ukraine should make “land swaps” as part of a deal to end the war.
Zelensky has rejected ceding territory but is under pressure to make a deal as Russia advances and the Ukrainian public increasingly backs a negotiated agreement. A poll in early August by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found 39 per cent of Ukrainians would accept a deal allowing Russia to retain occupied territories – up from 29 per cent in May – and 49 per cent oppose it, compared with 62 per cent in May.
Trump assured European leaders on Wednesday he would not agree to territorial changes at the Alaska talks without involving Zelensky. Having repeatedly threatened, but not imposed, sanctions on Russia, Trump said a failure by Putin to agree to a ceasefire would result in “very severe consequences”.
Meanwhile, Trump this week deployed the National Guard in Washington, DC, and said he was taking control of the police department because crime in the city was “ridiculous” and the city was “unsafe”. Police data showed violent crime was down 26 per cent compared with a year ago and was at its lowest level in 30 years, and rates of homicides, robberies and burglaries have all dropped.
About 800 members of the National Guard began deploying to the capital this week as well as 500 federal law enforcement officers, including more than 100 FBI agents.
Trump has painted the city as mired in “bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse”, though when in the capital he rarely leaves the White House, except to drive to his golf course outside the city.
The neighbourhood
Vanuatu: Australia signed a $500 million security and economic pact with Vanuatu on Wednesday to counter efforts by China to develop closer ties with the Pacific nation.
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Pacific Island Affairs Minister Pat Conroy travelled to the island of Tanna to conclude the agreement with Vanuatu’s prime minister, Jotham Napat. The wide-ranging agreement, set to cost about $500 million over the next decade, involves cooperation on infrastructure, economic development, climate resilience and data centres. Few details have yet been released.
The agreement follows media reports in 2018 that China had approached Vanuatu about building a naval base there. Despite both nations denying plans for a base, the report sparked anxiety in Canberra about China’s growing influence in the region.
These concerns were heightened in 2022 when China and Solomon Islands signed a secret security deal.
During negotiations on the pact with Vanuatu, Napat had warned he would not sign it unless Canberra made it easier for ni-Vanuatu citizens to travel to Australia. Canberra has been reluctant to offer visa-free travel to Pacific citizens due to concerns that many may remain in the country unlawfully.
Asked whether the deal included any concessions from Australia on visa-free travel, Napat told reporters: “There will be a subsidiary agreement … I believe that my counterpart from Australia, they will also get back to us on that.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to sign the deal in Vanuatu next month.
Democracy in retreat
Myanmar: The military in Myanmar has conducted “systematic torture” – including electrocutions and gang rapes – of children and adults at detention centres, a United Nations investigation has found.
The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, established in 2018 to examine rights violations, scrutinised the treatment in the past year of detainees who had been targeted as opponents of the military regime. It found evidence of murder, rape, sexual slavery, abuse of genitals, beatings, electric shocks, strangulations, burning of body parts and removal of fingernails with pliers. Children as young as two were detained, often as proxies for their parents. Nicholas Koumjian, head of the mechanism, said in a statement: “We have made headway in identifying the perpetrators, including the commanders who oversee these facilities.”
Investigators found evidence of summary executions of people accused of being informers by the military and affiliated militias as well as by opposition groups.
The findings were based on hundreds of eyewitness testimonies, forensic evidence, documents and photographs. Investigators made repeated requests for information about the crimes and asked to enter the country but received no response from the government.
The military seized power in 2021 and ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking a civil war that has left the regime controlling only about 21 per cent of the country.
Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the military government, plans to hold elections in December, but opposition groups say the poll will be a sham and they plan to boycott it.
Spotlight: Lunar nuclear reactors
United States: The US is accelerating plans to put a nuclear reactor on the moon as it competes with China and Russia to establish a long-term occupation there.
In April, China revealed it supports putting a reactor on the moon to power an international research station it is planning with Russia, which proposed having the reactor in place by 2035. China plans to land humans on the moon by 2030.
NASA plans to send people to the moon in 2027 and – like China – wants to eventually establish an outpost that could be used for research and deeper space missions.
A directive by acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy emerged last week that proposed sending a reactor to the moon by 2030.
“There’s a certain part of the moon that everyone knows is the best,” Duffy told reporters. “We have ice there. We have sunlight there. We want to get there first and claim that for America.”
Scientists believe nuclear energy would be required to sustain life on the moon, which receives insufficient sunlight for solar power.
Kathryn Huff, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said having a small reactor on the moon was not necessarily a major risk – as the lack of wind and rain would prevent radioactivity being spread – but dealing with the reactor at the end of its life could pose dangers.
“If you’re considering bringing that reactor off the moon someday, making sure that its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere is flawless will be pretty important,” she told the US public broadcaster NPR. “No one really wants to see a repeat of the Kosmos 954 [incident].”
In 1978, a Russian nuclear-powered satellite, Kosmos 954, exploded while re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, spreading radioactive debris across northern Canada.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 16, 2025 as "Trump calls in the National Guard to patrol ‘unsafe’ DC".
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