Indian airlines have received more than 100 hoax bomb threats in a span of a few days, forcing planes to delay, reroute and make emergency landings – throwing the country’s aviation industry into costly disarray right before one of the biggest festivals of the year.

The epidemic of hoax threats has targeted both international and domestic flights, causing chaos on long-haul trips headed for places such as New York. Although one arrest was made last week, with authorities vowing to punish perpetrators potentially with jail time, the spate of threats has continued, often sent through emails and social media posts.

One airline alone, the budget company IndiGo Airlines, received nearly 30 bomb threats in four days since Sunday, according to statements by the carrier. Other Indian airlines, including Akasa Airlines, SpiceJet and Alliance Air, have also been impacted.

The highest-profile hoaxes targeted Air India last week; one flight en route to Chicago had to make an emergency landing in Canada’s northernmost city in the Arctic, while another flight headed to Singapore had to be escorted by Singaporean fighter jets, with bomb disposal squads waiting at the airport.

Since the flurry of hoaxes first started around mid-October, “we have [had] 150 to 160” threats, said Sanjay Lazar, an aviation expert and former Air India crew member.

Bomb threat hoaxes aren’t a new phenomenon in India – several airports received similar threats in April and June this year. But the sheer frequency and level of disruption in the past two weeks has been unprecedented, sending investigators scrambling to determine who is behind the threats.

Police in Mumbai said last Tuesday that they had arrested a minor suspected of posting threats against IndiGo Airlines on X, formerly Twitter. Police are also questioning a second minor, and “there are chances he played a role in this,” a spokesperson said.

But no further arrests have been made, and more threats have come in despite authorities stepping up security measures, threatening legal punishments, appeasing airlines and reassuring panicked passengers.

“Even though there are hoax threats, we can’t take the situation non-seriously,” said Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu in a news conference on Monday. “The safety and security of people and convenient travel … is always our utmost priority.”

With less than a week until Diwali, the festival of lights – which sparks a travel boom each year as millions of Indians fly domestically and diaspora members come home from abroad – experts worry that the ongoing hoaxes could wreak travel havoc.

Millions of dollars lost

Each bomb threat causes a ripple effect of disruptions, costing both airlines and passengers huge amounts of time and money, said Lazar.

This is partly because of strict protocols set out by outdated laws, he said. Under a 1982 law last amended in 2010, “every threat has to be taken into consideration,” he said – even though the law doesn’t mention modern factors such as social media that complicate the task.

There’s also the “lengthy process” of bureaucracy and coordinating with various committees, Lazar said.

Authorities follow these steps “word for word” with every single threat, said aviation minister Naidu. “Whenever there is a bomb threat case happening, if it is through a call or if it is through social media or if it is through some other means, we have a strict protocol that we follow,” he added.

But the threats – and their aftermath – have caused massive headaches for airlines. Not only do they have to disrupt passenger plans by rerouting or making unexpected landings, but they must also cope with the hours-long process of isolating the plane, checking the aircraft from top to bottom, screening every piece of luggage, and allowing a “cooling period” for the plane afterward, expert Lazar said.

“It’s not very simple … there’s a lot of cost and time involved.”

While the airlines have not disclosed the extent of their losses, Lazar estimated each affected carrier has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars – and the cost for the industry as a whole is likely in the millions.

The losses rack up through landing charges, fuel dumping, bomb disposal squad fees, and providing services for passengers including accommodation, alternate flights and refunds.

These disruptions would be a nightmare at any time – but particularly in the run-up to Diwali, which begins on October 31. Also called Deepvali, the festival of lights is celebrated by more than a billion Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists around the world, with families gathering to feast on food, exchange gifts and make religious offerings.

That also makes it the second-biggest travel period of the year in India, after the Christmas to New Year period, according to Lazar.

By September, flight bookings for the Diwali period had seen an 85% increase on last year – surpassing pre-pandemic levels, according to World on Holiday, an Indian organization that analyzes travel and hospitality data.

“Passengers are going to be scared but those who need to fly will fly … so what’s going to happen if this havoc is created around Diwali?” Lazar said.

He added that while he was worried about the recent string of bomb threats, he was “even more worried about what’s going to happen around Diwali and Christmas.”

Government efforts

Authorities still don’t know who is making these threats and why – though Naidu, the aviation minister, blamed the recent hoaxes on “minors and pranksters” in a post on X.

On Monday, he also admitted it’s hard to even say whether the threats are coming from inside India due to the potential use of VPNs to mask users’ locations.

Authorities are now investigating and coordinating with different government ministries, the minister added. Meanwhile, airports have increased the number of security checks and the use of CCTV cameras to monitor their area “more thoroughly.”

The civil aviation ministry is also trying to introduce legal changes as a deterrent. If passed, the amendments would put hoax perpetrators on a no-fly list and criminalize hoaxes as a “cognizable offence,” which allows police to arrest suspects without a warrant, Naidu said.

Lazar argues the proposed measures are far from enough – saying it was “stupid” to dismiss the hoaxes as “the work of a prankster” given the severity of the disruption and potential danger of a real threat.

Authorities should use the country’s technological heft to track down online users, he said, including working with international agencies and social media platforms.

Until then, “I don’t believe we’ve seen the end of this,” he said.

Israeli forces entered the compound of northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital and opened fire after days of laying siege to the facility, health authorities in the enclave said.

Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the hospital director, said in a video that Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the hospital compound late Thursday and began firing at parts of the complex, adding that “all departments of the hospital are under direct shelling.”

“Instead of receiving aid, we are receiving tanks,” he said.

Kamal Adwan is one of three minimally operational hospitals in northern Gaza, and the closest to Israeli military activity in Beit Lahiya and the Jabalya Refugee Camp. Despite its limited capacity, it has been receiving most of the injured from the surrounding fighting.

World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that since the raid on Kamal Adwan hospital, WHO has “lost touch with the personnel there.”

“This development is deeply disturbing given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there,” Ghebreyesus said on X. Prior to Friday’s raid, he said, WHO and its partners managed to reach Kamal Adwan “amid hostilities in the vicinity, and transferred 23 patients and 26 caregivers to Al-Shifa Hospital.”

The Israeli military said in a statement Friday that its forces are operating in the area of the Kamal Adwan Hospital “based on intelligence information regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure,” adding that in the weeks preceding the operation, “the IDF facilitated the evacuation of patients from the area while maintaining emergency services.”

COGAT, the Israeli agency that manages the flow of aid into the strip, said on Friday that with the help of UNICEF and WHO, several patients and their escorts were evacuated from the facility. The hospital was also given fuel, blood units and medical equipment.

But WHO’s Ghebreyesus stated on X that the hospital is housing about 200 patients, along with hundreds more seeking shelter there.

‘Shocked by the entry of bulldozers and tanks’

Shamiya said that the military had entered the hospital yard for a second time on Friday morning and had begun separating men from women.

“After that, it became impossible to communicate with anyone.”

In his video message, Safiya said he was “shocked by the entry of bulldozers and tanks into the hospital compound,” adding that tanks began firing at the upper floors, shattering windows and “creating an atmosphere of panic, terror, and fear.”

“Everyone in the hospital gathered in the stairwell; it was a very distressing scene,” he said.

One video showed Abu Safiya speaking from within the Intensive Care Unit, where patients and medical staff were huddled. He said that some severely injured people were dying. Abu Safiya said that a number of properties around the hospital had been set on fire.

Later Thursday night, a convoy of supplies from the World Health Organization reached the hospital, he said. Video showed a fuel tanker and other vehicles close to the facility.

Abu Safiya said the convoy delivered enough fuel for five days, as well as 200 units of blood and a few other supplies, but no food or water.

He said he had been in touch with Israeli officers.

“I explained the situation of the patients and the injured people in the hospital, emphasizing that their condition was extremely critical and that evacuation was necessary.”

“We have no medical assistance that can reach them, and I do not have the means to help them even if they were able to reach us. We have nothing to offer them.”

It has been 21 days since Israel ramped up its military operation in northern Gaza. Authorities in Gaza say the military has stopped aid from reaching parts of the area and displaced many of its residents. Israel says it is preventing Hamas from regrouping.

Russian soldiers have been heard raising concerns about how North Korean soldiers will be commanded and provided with ammunition and military kit, leaked intercepts obtained by the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine and released on Friday show.

The Russian soldiers talk disdainfully about the incoming North Korean soldiers, codenamed the “K Battalion,” at one point referring to them as “the f**king Chinese.”

In the same extract, a serviceman describes another who has been tasked to “meet people.”

“And he’s like standing there with his eyes out, like… f**k,” the soldier says. “He came here and says what the f**k to do with them.”

The audio was intercepted from encrypted Russian transmission channels on the night of October 23, according to Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence.

Ukraine’s analysis of the intercepts revealed that North Korean troop movements were planned for the morning of October 24, in the area of Postoyalye Dvory field camp in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a surprise incursion earlier this year.

The intercepts also reveal plans to have one interpreter and three senior officers for every 30 North Korean men, which the Russian soldiers are heard in the audio condemning.

“The only thing I don’t understand is that there [should be] three senior officers for 30 people. Where do we get them? We’ll have to pull them out,” one Russian serviceman says.

“I’m f***ing telling you, there are 77 battalion commanders coming in tomorrow, there are commanders, deputy commanders and so on,” a serviceman says in another extract.

The interepted audio follows a Thursday announcement from Ukraine’s military intelligence service that a group of North Korean soldiers have been spotted in Russia’s Kursk region, an area that borders Ukraine and has seen ongoing military operations.

In a post on its official Telegram account, the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine said some North Korean troops, who had received training in Russia’s far east, have made their way to the western Russian region, where Ukraine has maintained a foothold since launching an incursion in August.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that he received a report on the deployment of North Korean military personnel from Ukraine’s commander-in-chief.

“According to intelligence, on October 27-28, Russia will deploy its first North Korean troops in combat zones. This is a clear step in Russia’s escalation that matters, unlike all the disinformation circulating in Kazan these days,” Zelensky said, criticizing the BRICS summit staged by Russian President Vladimir Putin this week in the southwestern Russian city of Kazan.

The Kremlin had initially dismissed allegations of North Korean troop deployments, but on Thursday at the BRICS summit, Putin did not deny that Pyongyang had sent soldiers to the country.

“The actual involvement of North Korea in combat should be met not with a blind eye and confused comments, but with tangible pressure on both Moscow and Pyongyang to comply with the UN Charter and to punish escalation,” Zelensky added.

Two tickets for passage on what could be the first Chinese rocket ship to take tourists to space were sold Thursday, according to a livestream held by the company, as the country’s commercial space firms aim to join a small but expanding global space tourism industry.

The tickets – priced at 1,000,000 yuan (around $140,000) for a roughly 12-minute trip to the edge of space on a spacecraft set to be launched by Deep Blue Aerospace in 2027 – sold out “immediately,” according to state-linked Global Times.

Some 3 million people tuned in to the broadcast on Chinese shopping platform Taobao, which was the first time a Chinese firm has put tickets for space tourism up for public sale.

The identities of the ticket buyers were not made available.

Deep Blue Aerospace is among a vanguard of Chinese commercial space firms developing rockets to power Beijing’s ambitious plans for outer space, which include building out satellite constellations to rival American firm SpaceX’s Starlink – as China vies to become a dominant space power alongside the United States.

Work remains to be done for the company to meet its announced timeline.

Deep Blue Aerospace’s reusable Nebula-1 rocket – slated to carry the company’s CEO and five others to space for the mission in three years – is still under development.

Last month, the rocket failed to complete a high-altitude vertical recovery test flight, the company said, with footage it released showing the vehicle crashing in its final phase. A new test is slated for next month, while the company has said it will ramp up testing in 2025 and 2026 to ensure the “safety and reliability of suborbital manned travel.”

Companies working in rocket development across the world have frequently faced setbacks and delayed timelines. But on Thursday, Deep Blue Aerospace’s CEO and founder Huo Liang appeared confident that the rocket would be ready to power the 2027 flight, as he discussed the plans during the ticket sale livestream.

Huo explained how passengers can unbuckle their seat belts in space and “move around like fish” in the weightless environment, where they feel “exactly the same lying down as standing up.”

“In this experience, you can not only see how the earth is round, but also the vast universe and the blue planet where humans live,” said Huo, who founded the private company in 2016.

Deep Blue Aerospace aims to join a small group of companies globally offering what’s considered the next frontier of adventure tourism – typically expensive trips where passengers willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars can cross the Kármán line some 100 kilometers (62 miles) above Earth’s surface to enter space.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin completed its first commercial human space flight with four private citizens in 2021, while Virgin Galactic, the space tourism venture founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, began offering regular trips to the edge of space last year.

Companies are also looking to expand their offerings to “space tourists.”

Last month, a four-person crew of civilians on board SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission made history as the first group of non-government astronauts to conduct a spacewalk.

Deep Blue Aerospace is not the only Chinese firm with a plan to send humans to space. This May, CAS Space said its “space tourism vehicle” will take its first crewed flight in 2028, with tickets priced expected to cost between 2 to 3 million yuan (around $281,000 to $421,000), according to state media.

The company is among a number of Chinese state-backed and private firms that are vying to develop reusable rocket technology, which could help make frequent missions to space more affordable and sustainable.

Access to reusable rockets could be a key development for China as it seeks to expand its launch capacity to build out satellite constellations and power its ambitious civil space program – as well as build out a space tourism industry.

Commentators on the livestream appeared to express some tongue-in-cheek skepticism about sending people to space, with some asking, “(If we go), can we get back?”

And those interested in the remaining seats will get another chance, the company’s page on Taobao said, noting that ticket sales will reopen on November 23.

At the Joseph Stalin Museum in Gori, the small Georgian town where the Soviet dictator was born, a line of guides is waiting to tell you the story of the local boy who made it big.

They can list the birthdays of Stalin’s family and recite the poems he wrote as a schoolboy (for Stalin “could have been a poet, but chose to be a great leader”). But on other things, they are less exact. Of the millions killed in the gulag, “mistakes were made.” Of show trials, they have little to say.

So revered is Stalin by some that when the government thought it time to remove his towering statue in 2010, they did so unannounced at night, lest locals protest. But while some older voters in rural towns like Gori might harbor fond memories of life under communism and pine for a Soviet past, they seemed set to be swept away by younger generations who have grown up knowing nothing but democracy, and who are happy to see Stalin consigned to history’s dustbin.

Now, as the Caucasus nation counts down to its October 26 parliamentary election, the specter of authoritarianism looms large once again.

Many observers fear the ruling Georgian Dream party will resort to anything to stay in power. It has buried the liberal values it espoused when it took office 12 years ago and effectively torpedoed Georgia’s bid to join the European Union. Its founder, the secretive oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, has threatened to imprison his political rivals after the election and ban the main opposition party.

After spending years in the shadows, Ivanishvili – who made his billions in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union and served as Georgia’s prime minister from 2012 to 2013 – returned late last year as the party’s honorary chairman and has since given a string of conspiracy-tinged speeches. He claims Georgia is being controlled by a foreign “pseudo-elite” and that the opposition belongs to a “Global War Party” bent on dragging the country into conflict with Russia. This year, Georgian Dream pushed through a Kremlin-style “foreign agent” law, which critics say aims to shut down watchdogs who call the government to account.

For many, Ivanishvili’s rhetoric is eerily reminiscent of the past from which many Georgians are keen to escape. And the anti-Western posturing of Georgian Dream, along with the country’s controversial foreign agent law, directly mirrors President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on domestic political opposition in neighboring Russia.

In a speech last month in Gori, Ivanishvili also broke a taboo in Georgian society. He said Georgia should apologize for the 2008 war with Russia, for which many Georgians blame Moscow. Russia fought the five-day war in support of pro-Kremlin separatists in Georgia’s South Ossetia region, just north of Gori. Combined with Abkhazia, another breakaway region, Russia today de facto occupies 20% of Georgia’s territory.

Ivanishvili said apologizing to Russia would help preserve “12 years of uninterrupted peace” the country has enjoyed under Georgian Dream’s leadership, which he warned the opposition could jeopardize. The message has some appeal to his rural base but sparked a political firestorm.

Mikheil Saakashvili, who was Georgia’s president during the war but has been imprisoned since 2021 for abuse of power while in office, called the comments a “betrayal.”

Younger, more pro-European Georgians were also outraged. Their earliest memories are not of easier lives under communism, but of Russian tanks rolling into Gori and towards the capital, Tbilisi. Walking out of the Stalin Museum – past his personal railway carriage, past the hut in which he was born – it is easy to find buildings still scarred with bullet holes from the 2008 war. Many buildings still lie in ruins, while Stalin Avenue has been kept pristine.

For these Georgians, Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 rekindled memories of Russian aggression in their own country. They want nothing more than for Georgia to slip from the Kremlin’s orbit and continue its march toward a European future.

But many fear the government is now heading in the opposite direction, and that Georgia could be on the cusp of returning to the one-party rule from which it escaped a generation ago.

At a press conference in Tbilisi on Thursday, Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili – a pro-Western but largely ceremonial figure who has urged Georgians to vote against the government – said she “rules out any outcome other than a victory for the pro-European forces,” citing polls which routinely show that only around a third of the public support Georgian Dream.

‘Soviet mentality’

A question puzzling many is why the formerly center-left Georgian Dream has made a sudden authoritarian pivot.

The party’s origin was unusual. It takes its name from a rap song by Ivanishvili’s son, Bera. Although some suspected Ivanishvili – whose net worth is equivalent to about a quarter of the country’s GDP – might pursue a pro-Russian path, during his brief premiership he tacked close to Europe and even promised eventual NATO membership.

“A modern civil society has been a cherished goal of the Georgian people since we regained our independence 20 years ago,” Ivanishvili wrote in an email to then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012, subsequently leaked. “Unfortunately, old habits are hard to overcome.”

Having abandoned its liberal origins, Sabanadze said, the party is now “clearly copying” the model of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest this year, Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze praised Orban as a “role model,” parroting his claims to defend “homeland, language and faith.” The government has also passed legislation curbing LGBTQ+ rights.

But now it is poised to go much further. Ivanishvili has promised a “Nuremberg trial” against members of the opposition, who have been subject to increasing persecution. During street protests in Tbilisi against the foreign agent law, Levan Khabeishvili – chair of the pro-Western United National Movement (UNM) – said he was brutally beaten by police. He appeared the next day in parliament, his face blackened and swollen.

The Georgian government did not respond to a request for comment.

Preparing for the worst

A consequence of Russia’s war in Ukraine was the EU’s decision to offer Georgia candidate status. Brussels, keen to stem Russia’s influence in former Soviet countries, put Georgia – along with Ukraine and Moldova – on an accelerated path to membership.

Many say this was despite Georgian Dream, rather than because of it. During protests against the “foreign agent” law, the images of citizens waving EU flags being buffeted back by water cannons put pressure on Brussels to reward the Georgian people, of whom more than 80% support EU membership, polls show.

Whether Ivanishvili wanted candidate status is not clear. Joining the EU would require cleaning up the country’s judiciary and giving up power if Georgian Dream is voted out on Saturday. His opponents doubt he is willing to do this.

Under the country’s new proportional voting system, Khabeishvili of the UNM says Georgia’s fragmented opposition will have no trouble forming a coalition after the election. But he fears that Ivanishvili will seek to cling to power after an election loss.

If this happens, he predicts huge protests in Tbilisi and throughout the country. Here, things could get ugly. Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said in August that Georgia’s Western allies are plotting a coup to remove Georgian Dream from power. He warned Russia will be on standby to prevent this.

For Sabanadze, the stakes could not be higher: How Georgians vote on Saturday, and how the government responds, will determine whether the country remains on a path to Europe or becomes more like Belarus.

“When I was in Brussels, I thought that Georgia would never become an authoritarian state again, because it’s just something that we find very difficult to accept,” she said. “Georgians will put up a fight. The Belarus scenario will not happen easily.”

Britain’s King Charles has said the Commonwealth should acknowledge its “painful” history and urged the organization to “right inequalities that endure” as he opened a meeting of Commonwealth countries in Samoa on Friday.

“I understand from listening to people across the Commonwealth how the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate. It is vital therefore that we understand our history, to guide us to make the right choices in the future,” Charles said in his first speech as head of the Commonwealth.

“As we look around the world and consider its many deeply concerning challenges, let us choose within our Commonwealth family the language of community and respect, and reject the language of division,” he said in the speech after the subject of slavery reparations reemerged in recent days.

Charles, who did not directly refer to slavery during his address, also said: “None of us can change the past, but we can commit with all our hearts to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to right inequalities that endure.”

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, or CHOGM, is held every two years, and brings together delegations from the 56 member states to work together to try and tackle some of the world’s most pressing issues such as climate change, creating opportunities for young people and fostering inclusive and sustainable prosperity for all.

Charles was addressing Commonwealth leaders, foreign ministers and dignitaries during the welcome ceremony on Friday.

Ahead of the gathering, the BBC reported that diplomats were preparing text for the summit’s official communique that would commit to a “meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation” on the issue.

In recent years, the British monarchy has adopted a more conciliatory tone when addressing the past horrors of transatlantic slavery. In Kenya last November, his first trip to a Commonwealth nation as head of the body, Charles said, the “wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Tropical Cyclone Dana made landfall along the northern coast of Odisha state as the equivalent of a tropical storm in the Atlantic basin with winds of 110 kilometers per hour (70 mph), according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC). The storm was located about 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of Kolkata, moving north-northwest at 12 kph (8 mph), as of 9 a.m. local time (11:30 p.m. ET).

Dana brought rainfall between 50-150 millimeters (2-6 inches) across Odisha and West Bengal state, with the highest total of 160 mm (6.2 inches) reported in the town of Chandbali. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

Ahead of landfall, authorities evacuated hundreds of thousands of people, shut schools and canceled trains and flights in parts of the country. The India Meteorological Department (India MET) issued its highest red rainfall warning for parts of Odisha and West Bengal.

Odisha’s Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi told the Press Trust of India news agency before the storm’s landfall that around 300,000 people had been evacuated from vulnerable areas, adding that three districts were likely to be severely affected.

Authorities planned to evacuate more than 1 million people from 14 districts. Several teams of aid and rescue workers have also been deployed to the state, which is prone to severe cyclones and storms.

“The government is fully prepared to tackle the situation. You are in safe hands,” Majhi said.

India’s eastern coasts have long been prone to cyclones, but the number of intense storms is increasing along the country’s coast. Last year was India’s deadliest cyclone season in recent years, killing 523 people and costing an estimated $2.5 billion in damage.

Dana is forecast to weaken as it drifts west through Odisha, bringing moderate to isolated heavy rainfall along its path over the weekend.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.

The thousands of North Korean troops US intelligence says arrived in Russia for training this month have sparked concern they will be deployed to bolster Moscow’s battlefront in Ukraine.

They’ve also turned up alarm from the United States and its allies that growing coordination between anti-West countries is creating a much broader, urgent security threat – one where partnerships of convenience are evolving into more outright military ties.

Hundreds of Iranian drones have also been part of Moscow’s onslaught on Ukraine, and last month the US said Tehran had sent the warring country short-range ballistic missiles as well.

China, meanwhile, has been accused of powering Russia’s war machine with substantial amounts of “dual use” goods like microelectronics and machine tools, which can be used to make weapons. Last week, the US for the first time penalized two Chinese firms for supplying complete weapons systems. All three countries have denied they are providing such support.

Taking stock of the emerging cooperation, a Congress-backed group that evaluates US defense strategy dubbed Russia, China, Iran and North Korea this summer an “axis of growing malign partnerships.”

The fear is that a shared animosity toward the US is increasingly driving these countries to work together – amplifying the threat that any one of them alone poses to Washington or its allies, not just in one region but perhaps in multiple parts of the world at the same time.

“If (North Korea) is a co-belligerent, their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf, that is a very, very serious issue, and it will have impacts not only on in Europe — it will also impact things in the Indo Pacific as well,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday in the first US confirmation of North Korean troops in Russia.

‘Driven by survival strategy’

Decades after the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan and the strident anti-West coalition of the Cold War era – and years since George W. Bush’s dubbed US enemies Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil” – there’s a perception that a new, dangerous alignment is on the rise, with Putin’s war as its catalyst.

Such an alignment would bring together two long-time nuclear-armed powers, a state believed to have assembled a host of illegal nuclear warheads in North Korea, and Iran, which the US says could likely assembly such a weapon in a matter of weeks.

North Korea’s military partnership with Russia now links the grinding, hot conflict in Europe to an especially tense period in the cold conflict on the Korean Peninsula, as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has elevated his threats toward the South, with which it remains technically at war.

Following the intelligence on the North Korean deployment to Russia, South Korea said it could consider supplying weapons to Ukraine, where the US ally has yet to directly provide arms.

For North Korea, where leader Kim has called to ramp up his country’s illicit nuclear weapons program, there’s been little to lose in sending what’s believed to be millions of rounds of artillery, short-range ballistic missiles and, more recently, troops to Russia.

In exchange, cash-strapped and internationally isolated Pyongyang has likely received food and other necessities – and potentially support developing its space capacities, which could also help its sanctioned missile program.

The importance of drone warfare in Ukraine has also seen Russia look to Iran for procurement – deepening a security alignment that dates to 2015 and the war in Syria, when both backed the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

And for Tehran – weighted by hefty Western sanctions and embroiled in the expanding Middle Eastern conflict with US-backed Israel – supplying Russia weapons is thought to potentially boost its defense sector, while its ties with Beijing and Moscow provide it with diplomatic cover.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who declared a “no limits” partnership with Putin weeks before his invasion, has claimed neutrality in the conflict and has largely steered Chinese firms away from supplying direct lethal aid.

Yet it has filled wide gaps in Russian demand of other goods, including products deemed by the US and others to be dual use, and benefited from Russia’s discounted energy. Beijing defends its “normal trade” with Russia. China has also continued to expand joint military drills and diplomatic ties with a country it sees a key partner in pushing back against the West in international fora.

But even as these four countries have their own motivations to cooperate with one another individually, especially within the context of Russia’s war, clear limits exist in any broader coordination, mutual trust, and even interest in working together – at least for now, observers say.

“This is a set of bilateral relationships driven by each country’s survival strategy, or what’s on the menu for geopolitics and what’s the crisis of the day or the decade that they are dealing with,” said Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

“These are authoritative regimes … and they all see the US as a common adversary. That’s the glue that keeps them together, but whether we can talk about a degree of coordination (between all four) … I think we are very far from that,” he said.

That makes the pressing question whether these current alignments can endure beyond the war in Ukraine and evolve into outright coordination between all four nations.

The China factor

A key factor in how any further alignment develops is China, observers say – by far the most powerful player in the grouping, the lead trade partner for Russia, North Korea and Iran, and the nation viewed by the US as its primary adversary.

As its divisions with Washington have deepened, Beijing has ramped up efforts to challenge US global leadership and shape an international order into one that favors China and other autocracies.

Russia’s role in that effort was on show this week in its southwestern city of Kazan, where Xi and Putin hailed their commitment to building a “fairer” world on the sidelines of a summit of the BRICS group whose membership they’d jointly worked to grow this year.

The two have brought Iran into that diplomatic fold and also largely sided with Tehran in the conflict in the Middle East, where its proxies are fighting Israel. China, Russia and Iran have also held four joint naval drills since 2019, and China is by far Iran’s largest energy buyer.

At the same time, heavily sanctioned Iran is no longer the “favorite state for China’s Middle East policy” as Beijing builds relations with wealthier Gulf countries, according to Jean-Loup Samaan, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.

Beijing also carefully manages its relationship with North Korea – which is almost wholly economically and diplomatically dependent on China. Chinese leaders are widely seen as being wary of the burgeoning Kim-Putin alignment and the potential for an empowered North Korea to cause trouble and draw more US focus to the region.

When asked about the movement of North Korean troops into Russia at a regular press briefing Thursday, China’s foreign ministry said it “does not have information on that.”

While it practices its own aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and toward Taiwan, the democratic island Beijing claims, China may not want to appear to lean too hard into these partnerships and hinder efforts to portray itself as a responsible, global leader.

“Russia, North Korea, Iran is the type of grouping that China least wants to openly associate itself with,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

China has been “desperate to clarify that it is not a trilateral alliance with Russia and North Korea,” and it also “has more options than these countries … and prefers working with larger number of countries” to compete with the West, he said.

‘A real risk’

Viewed from the West, however, China’s refusal to cut off economic lifelines to a UN sanctions-defiant North Korea and a Russia that has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine is often seen as an open endorsement of these regimes.

In July, the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, an independent group tasked by Congress with evaluating US defense strategy, said China and Russia’s partnership had “deepened and broadened” to include a military and economic partnership with Iran and North Korea.

“This new alignment of nations opposed to US interests creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multi-theater or global war,” it said.

China has repeatedly insisted that its relationship with Russia is one of “non-alliance, non-confrontation and not targeting any third party.”

NATO has also in recent years moved to ramp up relations with US allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific, with a meeting of defense ministers last week joined for the first time by Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

In the short term, Russia’s weapons partnerships also open the door for Iran and North Korea to potentially obtain and produce Moscow’s sensitive weapons technologies and even ship them around the world, according to Carnegie’s Zhao.

The current dynamics also raise the risk that future conflicts – including one where China is at the center and not Russia – see coordination between the four, some analysts assess.

For example, in a potential conflict in the South China Sea or over Taiwan, there is debate over whether Beijing would want to see North Korea or Russia play a role in creating a distraction in North Asia.

But some experts also warn against seeing this “axis” or such a future as a foregone conclusion – as these relationships remain opportunistic, rather than based on deep ideological alignment or trust.

For one, it’s possible that “some more moderate behavior” could be incentivized on the part of China, which could dial down this potential, according to Sydney Seiler, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

But as the optics stand today – “the risk is sufficiently present” that the US could face a future conflagration involves multiple of these countries, he said.

Violence is intensifying in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, this week, which saw a United Nations helicopter hit by gunfire and two gangs apparently target US embassy vehicles.

The evacuation of “non-emergency” diplomatic workers will be rolled out in the “coming days,” the second source said.

Also on Thursday, a humanitarian helicopter used by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) in the country was hit by heavy gunfire as it was airborne over Port-au-Prince, causing the agency to cancel Friday’s scheduled flights.

“Humanitarian air transport is essential to delivering a response across Haiti,” the WFP statement also said. Many roads in the Caribbean nation are too dangerous to use for overland transport due to gang attacks and roadblocks.

This isn’t the first time a helicopter used by the WFP is hit by gunfire. Last July, an apparent stray bullet hit a helicopter while parked at the Toussaint Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince.

Gang violence in Haiti has spiraled in recent years, with attacks becoming more brazen and violent. Gangs in Haiti control much of the capital, and the ongoing violence has left nearly 700,000 Haitians homeless in recent years. The UN reports that 3,661 people have been killed since January this year.

Earlier this month, three infants were among the scores of people brutally killed in a gang attack in central Haiti. Members of the “Gran Grif” gang used automatic rifles to kill at least 70 people in an attack that displaced 6,000 people, said a UN agency at the time.

A group of North Korean soldiers have been spotted in Russia’s Kursk region, an area of ongoing military operations, Ukraine’s military intelligence service announced Thursday.

After receiving training in Russia’s far east, some troops have now made their way to the western Russia region where Ukraine has maintained a strong foothold since launching an incursion in August.

In a post on its official Telegram account, the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine said the troops had been spotted in Kursk on Wednesday.

The intelligence service said the roughly 12,000 North Korean soldiers that have been deployed to Russia are receiving training at five military training grounds in the east.

Thursday’s 12,000 figure is larger than had been previously been flagged by US officials. On Wednesday, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers arrived in eastern Russia this month.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Ukraine had intelligence about Russia “training two military units from North Korea” involving perhaps “two brigades of 6,000 people each.”

Ukrainian intelligence services said Thursday that “several weeks” have been allocated for the coordination of the North Korean troops which includes 500 officers and three generals.

Moscow ‘in contact’ with Pyongyang

Ukraine had repeatedly warned that warming relations between Russia and North Korea could see Pyeongyang taking a more direct role in the war in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin did nothing to dispel this suspicion when questioned by journalists at the BRICS summit on Thursday, saying Russia is currently “in contact” with North Korea.

“We have never doubted that the North Korean leadership takes our agreements seriously,” Putin told the press conference in Kazan, Russia.

“But what and how we will do is our business,” he added.

Putin’s Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov has been tasked with overseeing the troop’s training, the Ukrainian intelligence service said.

The soldiers are thought to have received ammunition, bedding, winter clothing and footwear, and hygiene products from the Russian authorities, the Ukrainian intelligence service reported.