World Briefing: January 24, 2025

In a meandering, wide-ranging speech beamed into the World Economic Forum in Davos, Donald Trump made a link between the war in Ukraine and oil prices. Trump said he would ask Saudi Arabia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to bring down crude prices. “If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” he said. (I later told ABC that OPEC member countries would have little desire to cut prices - especially as they embark on multi-billion, petro-dollar mega projects. Also that western nation price caps on Russian oil has done little to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions).

Barbados, one of the most reputable global ship registry providers, and Panama are set to revoke the registration of over 100 Russian shadow fleet tankers. While most of these Russian vessels will likely find new registration in African nations, the constant need to evade detection significantly increases costs, complicates logistics, and deprives these tankers of high-quality services - Bloomberg

Donald Trump directly blamed Vladimir Putin for the fact the war in Ukraine is still raging — a day after threatening massive tariffs and sanctions on Russian products if he fails to make a deal to end the conflict. Speaking in a video address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the United States president said he would bring down the cost of oil, because “if the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” adding: “It’s time to end it.” Asked whether he believed the war in Ukraine would end by the time the WEF returned to Davos in a year, Trump said: “Well you’re gonna have to ask Russia. Ukraine is ready to make a deal.” The comments explicitly blame the ongoing war on Moscow, as Russian energy revenues are funding its war chest, and are the latest indication of Trump’s evolving perspective on the conflict and warming of relations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It comes after Trump on Tuesday told reporters that “Zelenskyy told me he wants to make a deal.” But, he added in the Oval Office on the first day of his second presidency, “I don’t know if Putin does … He might not. I think he should make a deal. I think he’s destroying Russia by not making a deal,” a reference to the country’s failing economy and inflation - Politico

Donald Trump’s newly-confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first international trip will be to—where else?—Panama. Sources told Reuters that during the first week of February he will also make stops in Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and El Salvador. The State Department has not yet confirmed the visit. During Trump’s inauguration speech, the president accused Panama of secretly letting the Chinese operate the canal, the 51-mile waterway that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean, facilitating shipping trade between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. “We didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back,” Trump said. President Jose Raul Mulino responded by saying the canal “is and will continue to be Panamanian,” and alerted the United Nations about Trump’s remarks. The U.S. largely built the canal and administered the territory that surrounded it for decades, until the U.S. and Panama signed a series of accords starting in 1977 that eventually turned the canal back over to full Panamanian control - Reuters

Satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify have shown a major oil slick spreading across the Kerch Strait that separates Russia from annexed Crimea, a month after two oil tankers were badly damaged in the Black Sea. Oil has leaked into the strait from two ships which ran into trouble during bad weather on 15 December. Volgoneft-239 ran aground following the storm, while Volgoneft-212 sank. Up to 5,000 tonnes of oil has now leaked, and media reports and official statements analysed by BBC Verify suggest the spill has spread across the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. A senior Russian scientist called the spill the country’s worst “environmental catastrophe” of the 21st Century. “This is the first time fuel oil has been spilled in such quantities,” Viktor Danilov-Danilyan - the head of science at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) - said in a 17 January interview with a Russian newspaper. Russian scientists said in December that this spill could be more than twice the size of a similar disaster in the strait in 2007, which saw up to 1,600 tonnes of heavy oil leak into the sea. Ukraine’s ministry of ecology has estimated that the clear up from the latest spill could cost the Russian state up to $14bn (£11.4bn). Paul Johnston, a scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories, said “there’s always an element of uncertainty around oil spills”, but a lack of timely information has heightened this uncertainty further. “I’m not entirely optimistic we’ll ever know the full extent of the problem,” he added.

A Florida man who prosecutors alleged attacked police with an explosive device during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — and whose case was dropped following President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons and commutations issued Monday, was arrested Wednesday on pending federal gun charges, according to court records. Daniel Ball, 39, was taken into custody Wednesday morning, according to an arrest warrant, on a separate indictment returned by federal prosecutors in Florida last summer that charged him for unlawfully possessing a gun as a felon. He had at least three previous felony convictions — one dating back to 2017 for domestic violence battery by strangulation and two in October of 2021 — nine months after the Jan. 6 riot, for resisting law enforcement and battery on a law enforcement officer - ABC News

A fugitive banker accused of orchestrating a $1 billion fraud in Moldova appears to be helping Russian lenders and businesses to continue conducting foreign trade amid payment problems caused by sanctions. Ilan Shor is a 37-year-old former politician in Moldova wanted by that country’s authorities for what officials there have dubbed “the theft of the century” that took place about a decade ago. He has established intermediary companies, including in partnership with sanctioned entities, according to publicly available regulatory documents, that are positioned to help Russian businesses execute international transactions that are otherwise not permissible - Bloomberg

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Pakistani authorities to stop deporting and harassing Afghan journalists who have fled Afghanistan because of threats to their lives. During the first week of January 2025, Pakistani security forces detained two Afghan journalists and their families before deporting them to Afghanistan, according to a letter the independent watchdog group. Separately, Afghan journalists Mujeeb Awrang and Ahmad Mosavi confirmed to CPJ that on January 3 Pakistani authorities detained them at their homes in the capital, Islamabad, and held them in a vehicle for three hours, despite having presented valid Pakistani visas and Afghan passports. The journalists said they were threatened with imprisonment and deportation before being released without explanation. The Pakistani government has instructed Afghan nationals, including journalists, to relocate from Islamabad and the nearby city of Rawalpindi to other cities by January 15, according to a report by the London-based independent media outlet Afghanistan International and a Pakistani journalist, who spoke to CPJ anonymously.

More homebuyers in Hong Kong surrendered their deposits on new flat purchases last year, and property agents expect such defaults to continue at a high level amid elevated interest rates and uncertainty about the direction of the city’s property market. A report from property agency Centaline showed that 449 buyers of first-hand property forfeited their deposits last year, a 75 per cent increase from a year earlier and the highest since 2019. The final quarter saw 104 such cases, just short of triple the 40 cases in the third quarter. The agency did not report the value of the forfeited deposits, but the typical initial deposit is HK$100,000 (US$12,844), according to market sources. The number of default cases will stay high in the short-term, agents said. “As the market will be busy after Lunar New Year, and developers will be offering discounts, we expect the number of defaults on new property units to remain high,” said Yeung Ming-yee, a senior associate director at Centaline. “There will be around 100 such cases in the first quarter of 2025.” - SCMP

This Briefing is reprinted with the author’s permission. Please find the original here.