Great power rivalry
Ukraine: United States President Donald Trump denied cutting intelligence to Ukraine this week after its leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, said the country was not warned about a Russian missile attack on Kyiv.
President Zelensky said Ukraine’s partners had failed to provide intelligence about a ballistic missile attack on Tuesday night aimed at a power plant. Air-raid sirens were sounded only after the missiles landed.
“This is absolutely unjust,” he said.
Trump on Wednesday denied that the US had cut intelligence.
“No, we haven’t,” he told reporters. “We are helping them, we are sharing intel. We want the war to end.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, also said US intelligence had continued, blaming the lack of warning on Russia’s use of sophisticated weaponry. But Zelensky on Wednesday said he felt “betrayed” by Trump after Ukraine’s military reported its access to a Pentagon-funded satellite system produced by Elon Musk’s SpaceX had been restricted.
US officials last week threatened to end intelligence sharing with Ukraine if it failed to stop strikes on Russian energy facilities. The threat came as Ukraine and its European partners condemned a deal between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to suspend sanctions on Russia and allow it to sell 300,000 tonnes of diesel in a bid to lower fuel prices. The move was condemned this week by Trump’s Republican colleagues.
A group of six Republican and six Democratic senators wrote to Trump on Tuesday, saying: “This deal is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our allies.”
The neighbourhood
Indonesia: Residents in Batam, an island in Indonesia that is a hub for data centres, have protested over a worsening water shortage that they say is due to the new centres using water from the local reservoirs.
Following weeks of protests, about 200 residents last week blocked access to a compound for the data centres, Nongsa Digital Park, amid growing concern over the lack of water.
Dewi Susanti, a protester, told BBC News this week: “Not a single drop has come through our taps for the last three months … Our water supply had been reliable until the data centres came.”
Batam, which has about 1.3 million residents, has been promoted by Indonesian authorities as a digital infrastructure hub. The island has 19 data centres that are operational, under construction or planned, according to research firm Baxtel.
Protesters say the island, which relies on rainwater and already had low water supplies, has faced worsening shortages. They have demanded data centre operators provide their own water, which is needed to prevent overheating.
BP Batam, an agency that oversees the island’s trade and industry, blamed the shortages on a prolonged dry spell. The agency has instructed data centre developers to secure their own water supply by building desalination plants.
War zone
Yemen: The Houthis attacked one of Saudi Arabia’s main airports and the state-owned energy company Saudi Aramco this week as the escalating conflict threatened to plunge Yemen back into full-scale war.
Authorities in Saudi Arabia were this week investigating the failure by the country’s air defence systems to prevent an attack last weekend on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, which killed at least 13 people and wounded 300, and prompted a weeklong closure of the airport. An initial inquiry found the strike involved an attack by drones followed by the launch of cruise and ballistic missiles.
The Iran-backed Houthis this week attacked sites in Riyadh and the city of Khamis Mushait, as well as the headquarters of Aramco in Dhahran.
Saudi Arabia, which backs the internationally recognised Yemeni government, attacked an oil depot near Sanaa, which is in the Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen. The Saudis also attacked a hideout used by Houthi leaders near the border with Saudi Arabia.
The escalating attacks marked the worst violence since a truce in 2022 following a war that began in 2014 and left hundreds of thousands of people dead. In September, a Houthi offensive resulted in the capture of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a waterway in the Red Sea that has enabled crucial flows of oil since Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi-backed Yemeni forces have been battling to retain control of the strait.
Donald Trump said this week on social media that the Houthis were operating “probably at the behest of Iran” and were seeking to drive up oil prices ahead of the US midterm elections in November.
Two Iranian officials told Reuters this week Tehran was adopting new tactics to target ships in the Strait of Hormuz to try to keep oil prices high ahead of the US elections. Oil flows through the strait increased in September to 15.5 million barrels a day – close to the prewar average – but a series of attacks in the past two weeks have caused volumes to fall. Just 2.9 million barrels passed through the waterway last Sunday, according to analytics firm Kpler.
Spotlight: India detains ‘Cockroaches’
On September 23, The Indian Express, an English-language daily, revealed that two members of India’s three-person Election Commission had raised concerns about a controversial move to remove more than 130 million names from voter lists.
The removal of the names was backed by Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which said the voter list included 30 million people who could not be traced, 28 million people who had died, and millions of duplicates. But critics say the changes to the lists focus on Muslims and other voter groups who are unlikely to vote for the Hindu-nationalist BJP.
The revelations in The Indian Express prompted a wave of protests led by the “Cockroach” movement, which emerged in May to demonstrate against corruption in the university entrance exam system and a lack of job prospects for young people. Those demonstrations eventually led to the resignation of the education minister and resulted in a rare concession by Modi, who promised changes.
But authorities have overseen a harsh crackdown on the current protests and shown little sign of compromise.
Thousands of protesters were detained in New Delhi last weekend as police and paramilitary forces imposed a lockdown, cutting the internet and closing 45 metro stations. Police detained Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, and two other movement leaders at the airport after they arrived from Mumbai. The trio were later released, but two other movement leaders who entered a site deemed off-limits to protesters on Tuesday were jailed for five days.
Dipke said in a post on X this week that Modi was a dictator and “an embarrassment to India”.
“Never has this country seen a bigger coward and bully,” he wrote.
The protests, which have been backed by India’s opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, continued this week, leading to further arrests. The protesters have demanded the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, the head of the Election Commission.
The United Nations human rights office has called on India to ensure the right to peaceful protest – a demand rejected by India’s Ministry of External Affairs as an “unacceptable interference” in the country’s domestic affairs.
On Tuesday, Modi addressed a Bloomberg forum in New Delhi, describing India as the “mother of democracy”.
“In our country, people openly debate different issues and discuss different perspectives,” he said.