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EsadeGeo Daily Digest, 09/07/2024

EsadeGeo | 9 Jul, 2024

Narendra Modi will hold formal talks with President Vladimir Putin in Russia on Tuesday as India’s prime minister seeks to shore up relations and stem concerns about Moscow’s drift towards China.
Putin welcomed Modi on Monday to his suburban residence at Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow, where the pair held informal talks over tea and took a walk in the park. Further formal negotiations are expected on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticised Modi for the visit trip, calling it “a huge disappointment”.
India, meanwhile, has avoided taking sides in the war in an effort to protect a decades-long relationship with Russia, its largest arms supplier and — since the conflict began — a significant source of cheap oil.

Bucking recent predictions, the left-wing New Popular Front alliance won the most seats in the final round of the parliamentary election on Sunday, overtaking Macron’s centrists and trouncing Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.
But the result left the French parliament in limbo, without an obvious candidate for prime minister and with no single party in a position to form a government.
On Monday morning, the left was still firmly in its honeymoon phase and pledging to back a single person to become prime minister by the end of the week. Macron’s liberals however hope it is simply a matter of time before the left implodes and the center emerges as the largest group in parliament.
The French president meanwhile has been strangely quiet and appears to be biding his time. On Monday French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal offered to resign but Macron asked him to stay on ‘‘for the stability of the country’’, according to a statement from the Elysée Palace.

Foreign Affairs - Frederic Wehrey and Andrew S. Weiss / The Right Way for America to Counter Russia in Africa

A string of coups across Africa since 2020 has allowed Moscow to strengthen its position on the continent, even as it funnels vast military and economic resources into the war in Ukraine.
More than two years into that war, Russia clearly remains capable of seizing opportunities to expand its reach in Africa and other parts of the world. With so many other crises calling for the Biden administration’s attention, rolling back Russia’s advances in Africa will not be easy, not least because the Kremlin has ingratiated itself with many unsavory regimes there.
The key question for the United States is how to identify realistic policy goals that play to Washington’s strengths, align with U.S. values, and harness Africa’s enormous potential while recognizing that many countries want to hedge their bets when it comes to foreign partner.
Instead of simply trying to compete for the affections of African leaders who are sometimes more of a liability than an asset to the United States, Washington should continue helping its current partners deliver good governance, economic opportunities, and security for their citizens.

Russia blasted the main children's hospital in Kyiv with a missile in broad daylight on Monday and rained missiles down on other cities across Ukraine, killing at least 41 civilians in the deadliest wave of air strikes for months.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who stopped in Poland before heading off to Washington for a NATO summit, put the death toll at 37, including three children. More than 170 were injured. But tallies of casualties from the sites of attacks in different regions totalled at least 41.
The Interior Ministry said there had also been damage in the central cities of Kryvyi Rih and Dnipro and two eastern cities.
The government proclaimed a day of mourning on Tuesday for one of the worst air attacks of the war, which it said demonstrated that Ukraine urgently needed an upgrade of its air defences from its Western allies.

Our opinion reads for today:

The Washington Post - Max Boot / Lessons from the French and British elections for bolstering U.S. democracy
Al-Jazeera - Ghada Ageel / Gaza’s ‘safe zone’ of horror

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