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TAIPEI, Taiwan – North Korea could send an additional 20,000 to 25,000 troops to Russia, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, amid reports that North Koreans had been taken off the front lines in a contested Russian region after suffering heavy casualties.
About 4,000 of the up to 12,000 North Korean troops dispatched to Russia’s Kursk region late last year to help it in its war against Ukraine have been killed or wounded, according to Ukraine.
“While Russia may attempt to deploy an additional 20,000 to 25,000 North Korean soldiers, they have not yet arrived at Kursk,” said Zelenskyy, citing “information from various sources.”
In January, South Korea’s military said North Korea was accelerating preparations to send more troops to Russia amid an increasing number of casualties, while Ukraine believed the North’s additional support would mainly include missile and artillery troops.
Neither Russia nor North Korea has even acknowledged that North Korean troops are helping Russia in its war and information about them can not be verified but Ukrainian, U.S. and South Korean officials have reported that the North Koreans have been suffering heavy casualties battling Ukrainian forces who occupied Kursk last August.
Zelenskyy said North Korean commanders treated their troops as expendable “packages,” at times executing them to prevent them from retreating. He added that the North Koreans were “learning from this war” as they took part in “serious ground operations” and would take this new knowledge home.
“They are truly training under combat conditions. They are learning everything – how to work with drones, how to counter drones, how to hide from drone swarms, how to ensure drone destruction and how to use their own drones,” he said, warning that such transfer of knowledge would be dangerous for the United States and Indo-Pacific region.
Zelenskyy also added that the North Koreans had suffered heavy losses and had not participated in recent assaults on Ukrainian forces in Kursk. Uriane said earlier that the North’s troops were withdrawing from front lines for “retraining.”
South Korea’s main security agency said on Tuesday that North Korean troops in Kursk had not shown any sign of participating in combat since January, citing the large number of casualties as a possible reason.
Last week, a spokesperson of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces also confirmed that North Korean troops had not been seen in Kursk for about three weeks.
Separately, unidentified Ukrainian and U.S. officials told The New York Times that North Korean troops had been taken off the front lines after suffering heavy casualties.
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A Washington-based thinktank reported in January that North Korea could lose all of its troops helping Russia in about three months, if they continued to suffer the high casualty rate.
“North Koreans have likely suffered roughly 92 casualties per day since starting to participate in significant fighting in early December 2024,” said the Institute for the Study of War, citing reports from Ukraine and South Korea as well as Russian military bloggers.
“The entirety of this North Korean contingent in Kursk Oblast may be killed or wounded in roughly 12 weeks should North Korean forces continue to suffer similarly high casualty rates in the future,” the institute added, referring to mid-April.
The South’s top envoy to the United Nations, Hwang Joon-kook, also said in January that North Korean troops were being treated as “expendables” and as a “cynical” means of sustaining the North Korean regime, citing “inhumane” tactics on the front lines as one of the main reasons for casualties.
The British daily The Times cited a Ukrainian military official as saying that North Korean soldiers sent to Russia were being used as “human mine detectors.”
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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US weapon manufacturers and military contractors registered an unprecedented increase in sales of arms and military services in 2024, according to a US State Department fact sheet. This made 2024 one of the most profitable years ever, in large part thanks to wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as the military build up around China.
According to the figures released by the US State Department, the total revenue from arms sales in 2024 reached a record USD 318.7 billion registering a 29% increase from the previous year. The top US military contractors include Lockheed Martin, Raytheon (RTX), and General Dynamics, among others.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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It has become something of a fixation in the Donald Trump war chest of options that cowing, discomforting and baffling his various counterparts on the international scene with tariffs is bound to work at every corner. Certainly, when it comes to allies, the potency of such announcements is magnified. Nation states, confusing common interests with friendship, have dreams broken before the call of firm, sober diplomacy.
When it comes to dealing with Russia, though, the matter of tariffs sits oddly. In 2024, US imports of Russian goods came in at US$2.8 billion. What is imported from Russia is certainly of value: radioactive materials indispensable for US power stations, nitro fertilisers, platinum.
All this is modest enough, but Trump is convinced that the threat of economic bruising of his own flavour will work to influence Russia’s war policy against Ukraine. Soon after his inauguration, Trump declared that, were a deal to conclude the Russia-Ukraine war not reached soon, there would be “no other choice but to put high levels of taxes, tariffs and sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States and various other participating countries.”
Instead of being dismissed out of hand as unworkable and ill-reasoned, the old idea that Russia will be brought to heel continues to tease a coterie of dreamers. The UK paper, The Telegraph, is very much with Trump on this, claiming that “redoubling efforts to cut off the revenue Russia generates from oil and gas imports” will drain Russia’s war effort. This could involve, for instance, targeting the now famous shadow fleet ships that continue to distribute oil and gas in global markets undetected. But importantly, those in the European Union would have to pull their weight in weaning themselves off a continued reliance on Russian fossil fuels, a reliance that has tended to make something of a mockery, not just of unity within the bloc, but of the very policy itself.
The reading by the US president on the state of the Russian economy is woefully ignorant about the coarsening of Moscow’s resilience since 2014, when Western governments began to impose a sequence of sanctions across Russian banking, defence, energy, manufacturing, technology and other sectors that eventually reached their peak after February 2022. That same month, US President Joe Biden was unwarrantedly confident that the sanctions regime would “impair [Russia’s] ability to compete in a high-tech 21st century economy.”
The Council of the European Union, also keeping in step with Washington’s financial excoriation of Moscow, understood that these moves would weaken the Russian war machine’s “ability to finance the war and specifically target the political, military and economic elite responsible for the invasion [of Ukraine].”
The immediate response was steady, if necessary, diversification. Alternative markets were sought, with willing participants. Russian oil found itself in Chinese and Indian markets. Alternative trade routes were pursued. Moscow was making use of the Global South with relish, and its war economy did not collapse. GDP grew by 3.6% in 2023 and made a similar performance the following year.
This is not to say that the Russian economy is a model of peak health, and certainly not one to emulate. It has been battered and boosted in equal measure, given heavy injections of stimulus. Alexandra Prokopenko of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center describes the country’s economy as “like a marathoner on fiscal steroids – and now those steroids are wearing off.” The real troubles for President Vladimir Putin are more pressing in sustaining not just the war effort but domestic infrastructure and social programs. The juggling act, so far fortuitously favourable to him, is not a sustainable venture.
The broader lesson here is that economic weapons that seek to strangle, coerce and direct a nation state into action are blunt, inconsistent in their application and often counterproductive. The most telling response from the target state is adapting and adjusting to disruption, and Russia shows better signs than most in doing so. Shocks are eventually absorbed.
Furthermore, it seems that Trump’s threats are playing a splendidly inert role in the Kremlin. One public statement made by Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, did suggest that Russia was merely waiting for something more concrete, exempting the president from any lashing words otherwise used for his predecessor. “We have to see what does the ‘deal’ mean in President Trump’s understanding,” the official reflected. “He is not responsible for what the US has been doing in Ukraine since 2014, making it ‘anti-Russia’ and preparing for the war with us, but it is in his power now to stop this malicious policy.”
There may be something in what Polyanskiy says, but in the meantime, Trump will focus on inflicting the most concerted damage that any indiscriminate tariff regimes can do: against countries with which the United States does extensive business with. Mexico and Canada have far more reason to worry than Russia, as do other US allies.
The post Trump, Tariffs and Russia: A Very Muddled Policy first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Russia may expand its arsenal of nuclear weapons if the US goes ahead with a major missile defense program that’s been ordered by President Trump, Russia’s TASS news agency reported on Thursday.
Trump signed an executive order on Monday to develop an “Iron Dome for America” that can intercept ballistic, hypersonic, and other types of advanced missiles, unlike Israel’s Iron Dome, which is designed to intercept short-range crude rockets. The order also calls for an improvement in missile defense to protect US troops deployed in other countries and the territory of US allies.
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The Ukrainian news outlet Strana has published leaked details of President Trump’s alleged plan to end the war in Ukraine in 100 days.
According to Newsweek, which said it couldn’t verify if the details were accurate, the plan starts with holding a phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in late January or early February, followed by meetings with both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February or March.
The leaked plan calls for a ceasefire to be declared by Easter, which falls on April 20. The truce would involve Ukraine withdrawing troops from Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
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“I’m not looking to hurt Russia,” President Donald Trump recently declared in a statement he posted on his TruthSocial account. “I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin.”
Trump, however, comes from the school of “hard love,” where punishment is applied to achieve the desired results.
And punishment was on Trump’s mind as he expressed his love and admiration for the Russian people and their leader, Vladimir Putin.
“I’m going to do Russia,” Trump wrote, “whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.”
The post Trump’s Doomed Plan For Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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The Doomsday Clock was set at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its 78-year history. The 2025 Clock time signals that the world is on a course of unprecedented risk, and that continuing on the current path is a form of madness. The United States, China, and Russia have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink. The world depends on immediate action.
The Doomsday Clock’s time is set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB) in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes nine Nobel Laureates.
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Special force small team attack craft either surface or subsurface have gained importance in light of their potential for littoral raids. Special Forces (SF) operations at sea have been clouded in a shroud of secrecy compared to land-based SF deployments. But a renewed focus on maritime SF capabilities has been brought into sharp focus with […]
The post Special Force Stealth Attack From the Sea appeared first on Asian Military Review.
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On 26 August the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) monitoring site NKNews.org reported a Russian government Tupolev Tu-154 VIP passenger jet taking off from Vladivostok airport shortly after 07:00 and landing in Pyongyang two hours later. The aircraft was the second flight of this type in August – carrying what was reported as a […]
The post Putin ‘Horse Trades’ With Kim Jong-Un for Weapons appeared first on Asian Military Review.
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On January 19th, TIME magazine published an astonishing article, amply confirming what dissident, anti-war academics, activists, journalists and researchers have argued for a decade. The US always intended to abandon Ukraine after setting up the country for proxy war with Russia, and never had any desire or intention to assist Kiev in defeating Moscow in the conflict, let alone achieving its maximalist aims of regaining Crimea and restoring the country’s 1991 borders. To have a major mainstream outlet finally corroborate this indubitable reality is a seismic development.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Many Ukrainians are expecting the new year 2025 to bring the beginning of peace negotiations and an end to the war by Kiev and NATO against Russia. Hopes have been stirred by the pre-election, populist pronouncements of the new US president. Months ago, Donald Trump made statements promising to ‘end the war in one day’ upon assuming office. But it remains entirely speculative as to whether he would act on that and how. Meanwhile, in the here and now, the outgoing administration of President Joseph Biden is flooding Ukraine with money and weapons so that the unelected regime in Kiev headed by Volodymyr Zelensky may continue a war that it is obviously losing.
The post Ukraine Attempting To Prolong Cruel, Destructive Proxy War In 2025 appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Timing is everything in geopolitics. This past Friday in Moscow, only three days before the inauguration of US President Donald Trump in Washington, top BRICS member leaders Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement, detailed in 47 articles, twice as many as in the recent Russian–North Korean deal.
This strategic partnership is now set in stone just as the – unpayable – humongous debt of the US government reaches an unprecedented $36.1 trillion, equivalent to $106.4k per American, and just as the US share of the global economy falls below 15 percent for the first time, based on World Bank/IMF figures.
The post On The Eve Of Trump, Iran And Russia Launch Historical Deal appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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On 17 January, 2025 Mark Trevelyan for Reuters reported that three lawyers for the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny were found guilty by a Russian court of belonging to an extremist group and sentenced to years in a penal colony.
Igor Sergunin, Alexei Liptser and Vadim Kobzev were arrested in October 2023 and added the following month to an official list of “terrorists and extremists”. They were sentenced respectively to 3-1/2, 5 and 5-1/2 years after a trial held behind closed doors in the Vladimir region, east of Moscow.
“Vadim, Alexei and Igor are political prisoners and must be released immediately,” Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late politician, posted on X.
Human rights activists say the prosecution of lawyers who defend people speaking out against the authorities and the war in Ukraine crosses a new threshold in the repression of dissent under President Vladimir Putin.
“Lawyers cannot be persecuted for their work. Pressure on defence lawyers risks destroying the little that remains of the rule of law, whose appearance the Russian authorities are still trying to maintain,” rights group OVD-Info said in a statement.
It said Navalny’s lawyers were being prosecuted “only because the letter of the law still matters to them and they did not leave the man alone with the repressive machine”.
The Kremlin says it does not comment on individual court cases. Authorities have long cast Navalny and his supporters as Western-backed traitors seeking to destabilise Russia. Despite his imprisonment, Navalny was able via his lawyers to post on social media and file frequent lawsuits over his treatment in prison, using the resulting legal hearings as a chance to keep speaking out against the government and the war. The lawyers were accused of enabling him to continue to function as the leader of an “extremist group”, even from behind bars, by passing his messages to the outside world.
In court, a woman shouted “Boys, you are heroes” and supporters applauded the three men, standing together in a barred cage for the defendants, after their sentencing.
Yulia Navalnaya last month published video of secretly recorded meetings between Navalny and the lawyers in prison, something she said was illegal because an accused person has the right to confer privately with a lawyer. Russia’s federal prison service did not reply to a request for comment.
Navalnaya said the recordings were made by the authorities and handed to her team after it offered a reward for people to come forward with information about Navalny’s death.
She alleges her husband was murdered on Putin’s orders, an accusation that the Kremlin has strongly denied. Navalnaya herself is wanted in Russia for alleged extremist activity but has said she hopes to return to the country one day and run for president.
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Mark Rutte, the current secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), is not a poet. He, like other secretary generals of NATO, is a mediocre European politician who has been given the task of holding NATO’s reins for the United States (to be fair to Rutte, he has been the prime minister of the Netherlands for fourteen years, but mainly as a survivor rather than a leader). Yet, on 12 December 2024, Rutte gave a speech at the Concert Noble in Brussels (Belgium), a venue rebuilt in 1873 by Leopold II, the brigand king who looted the Congo as its sole owner from 1885 to 1908.
The post All Wars End In Negotiations; So Will The War In Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The Shangri-La Dialogue laid bare China’s undeniable support for Russia in the war in Ukraine, as well as Beijing’s blatant hypocrisy when it says it “supports the policy of territorial integrity and sovereignty”. Last October Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government led a series of study groups asking “Is the War in Ukraine Distracting […]
The post The Increasing Impact of Asia in Europe and the Ukraine War appeared first on Asian Military Review.
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WASHINGTON – Heng Sithy, a Cambodian businessman who drew headlines in recent weeks after accusing a number of senior police officials and members of the ruling family of theft, corruption and fraud, was arrested on Tuesday in Russia.
The immediate reason for the arrest was unknown, but Fresh News, a government-aligned paper, published a statement Tuesday from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying the tycoon’s passport had been revoked.
In December, according to the statement, the Phnom Penh Court issued an arrest warrant for Heng Sithy on a charge of blackmail with aggravating circumstances.
A friend of Heng Sithy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for safety reasons, confirmed his arrest.
The friend shared voice messages in which the tycoon made grandiose claims about his reasons for traveling to Russia, none of which could be independently verified.
“Tomorrow, I am going to Moscow and on Monday I will see Putin’s cabinet regarding drones and will inspect the drones and special forces,” he said on one voice message.
In another, he spoke of the need to continue unspecified plans.
“We must split the work,” he told his friend. “We must convince our working groups to continue the work to establish diplomatic groups and the fighting groups, I will be in charge.”
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Defamation allegations
At 39 years old, Heng Sithy appeared to have achieved the Cambodian dream. In a country where the average income is around $1,500 a year, he was a millionaire and paid all the dues expected of millionaires in a nation defined by its patronage politics.
But last month, following a reversal in his fortunes following what appears to be a business deal gone bad, it seemed something in Heng Sithy cracked.
A disagreement between Heng Sithy and a Singaporean entrepreneur spilled into the courts and then onto social media. As the dispute escalated, Heng Sithy began accusing senior police officials of taking multimillion dollar bribes from the entrepreneur, who he described as running “largest online casino network in Cambodia.”
All denied the allegations. The Singaporean filed a defamation suit and on Dec. 3 the Phnom Penh Court issued an arrest warrant for Heng Sithy on a charge of blackmail with aggravating circumstances.
The same month, he was stripped of his oknha title — an honorific bestowed upon wealthy, charitable and well-connected tycoons. Last week, Hun To, the nephew of the former prime minister, threatened to sue Heng Sithy for alleging that he stole US$9 million from a Chinese investor who sought government approval for a mine.
Prior to his trip to Russia, Heng Sithy worked with his friend to prepare an open letter to Cambodian Prime Hun Manet.
“I have never done anything wrong in business instead I was set up and got robbed [of] my wealth,” he wrote, according to the text shared with RFA.
Cambodia, he added in the unpublished letter, had fallen “into the trap of criminal money when we have such officers in government doing such corruption.”
The open letter closed with a direct appeal to Prime Minister Hun Manet: “Cambodia needs to be in good hands, a country needs a real leader, as a leader if your heart [is]… at the right place all will be good.”
Neither Heng Sithy nor National Police Spokesman Chhay Kim Khoeun could be reached for comment.
Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Abby Seiff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jack Adamović Davies and RFA Khmer.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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ANALYSIS: By Ali Mirin
Indonesia officially joined the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa — consortium last week marking a significant milestone in its foreign relations.
In a statement released a day later on January 7, the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that this membership reflected Indonesia’s dedication to strengthening multilateral cooperation and its growing influence in global politics.
The ministry highlighted that joining BRICS aligned with Indonesia’s independent and proactive foreign policy, which seeks to maintain balanced relations with major powers while prioritising national interests.
This pivotal move showcases Jakarta’s efforts to enhance its international presence as an emerging power within a select group of global influencers.
Traditionally, Indonesia has embraced a non-aligned stance while bolstering its military and economic strength through collaborations with both Western and Eastern nations, including the United States, China, and Russia.
By joining BRICS, Indonesia clearly signals a shift from its non-aligned status, aligning itself with a coalition of emerging powers poised to challenge and redefine the existing global geopolitical landscape dominated by a Western neoliberal order led by the United States.
Indonesia joining boosts BRICS membership to 10 countres — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates — but there are also partnerships.
Supporters of a multipolar world, championed by China, Russia, and their allies, may view Indonesia’s entry into BRICS as a significant victory.
In contrast, advocates of the US-led unipolar world, often referred to as the “rules-based international order” are likely to see Indonesia’s decision as a regrettable shift that could trigger retaliatory actions from the United States.
The future will determine how Indonesia balances its relations with these two superpowers. However, there is considerable concern about the potential fallout for Indonesia from its long-standing US allies.
The future will determine how Indonesia balances its relations with these two superpowers, China and the US. However, there is considerable concern about the potential fallout for Indonesia from its long-standing US allies. Image: NHK TV News screenshot APR The smaller Pacific Island nations, which Indonesia has been endeavouring to win over in a bid to thwart support for West Papuan independence, may also become entangled in the crosshairs of geostrategic rivalries, and their response to Indonesia’s membership in the BRICS alliance will prove critical for the fate of West Papua.
Critical questions
The crucial questions facing the Pacific Islanders are perhaps related to their loyalties: are they aligning themselves with Beijing or Washington, and in what ways could their decisions influence the delicate balance of power in the ongoing competition between great powers, ultimately altering the Melanesian destiny of the Papuan people?For the Papuans, Indonesia’s membership in BRICS or any other global or regional forums is irrelevant as long as the illegal occupation of their land continues driving them toward “extinction”.
For the Papuans, Indonesia’s membership in BRICS or any other global or regional forums is irrelevant as long as the illegal occupation of their land continues driving them toward “extinction”. Image: NHK News screenshot APR The pressing question for Papuans is which force will ultimately dismantle Indonesia’s unlawful hold on their sovereignty.
Will Indonesia’s BRICS alliance open new paths for Papuan liberation fighters to re-engage with the West in ways not seen since the Cold War? Or does this membership indicate a deeper entrenchment of Papuans’ fate within China’s influence — making it almost impossible for any dream of Papuans’ independence?
While forecasting future with certainty is difficult on these questions, these critical critical questions need to be considered in this new complex geopolitical landscape, as the ultimate fate of West Papua is what is truly at stake here.
Strengthening Indonesia’s claims over West Papuan sovereignty
Indonesia’s membership in BRICS may signify a great victory for those advocating for a multipolar world, challenging the hegemony of Western powers led by the United States.This membership could augment Indonesia’s capacity to frame the West Papuan issue as an internal matter among BRICS members within the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs.
Such backing could provide Jakarta with a cushion of diplomatic protection against international censure, particularly from Western nations regarding its policies in West Papua.
The growing BRICS world . . . can Papuans and their global solidarity networks reinvent themselves while nurturing the fragile hope of restoring West Papua’s sovereignty? Map: Russia Pivots to Asia However, it is also crucial to note that for more than six decades, despite the Western world priding itself on being a champion of freedom and human rights, no nation has been permitted to voice concern or hold Indonesia accountable for the atrocities committed against Indigenous Papuans.
The pressing question to consider is what or who silences the 193 member states of the UN from intervening to save the Papuans from potential eradication at the hands of Indonesia.
Is it the United States and its allies, or is it China, Russia, and their allies — or the United Nations itself?
Indonesia’s double standard and hypocrisy
Indonesia’s support for Palestine bolsters its image as a defender of international law and human rights in global platforms like the UN and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).This commitment was notably highlighted at the BRICS Summit in October 2024, where Indonesia reaffirmed its dedication to Palestinian self-determination and called for global action to address the ongoing conflict in line with international law and UN resolutions, reflecting its constitutional duty to oppose colonialism.
Nonetheless, Indonesia’s self-image as a “saviour for the Palestinians” presents a rather ignoble facade being promoted in the international diplomatic arena, as the Indonesian government engages in precisely the same behaviours it condemns Israel over in Palestine.
Military engagement and regional diplomacy
Moreover, Indonesia’s interaction with Pacific nations serves to perpetuate a façade of double standards — on one hand, it endeavours to portray itself as a burgeoning power and a champion of moral causes concerning security issues, human rights, climate change, and development; while on the other, it distracts the communities and nations of Oceania — particularly Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, which have long supported the West Papua independence movement — from holding Indonesia accountable for its transgressions against their fellow Pacific Islanders in West Papua.On October 10, 2024, Brigadier-General Mohamad Nafis of the Indonesian Defence Ministry unveiled a strategic initiative intended to assert sovereignty claims over West Papua. This plan aims to foster stability across the Pacific through enhanced defence cooperation and safeguarding of territorial integrity.
The efforts to expand influence are characterised by joint military exercises, defence partnerships, and assistance programmes, all crafted to address common challenges such as terrorism, piracy, and natural disasters.
However, most critically, Indonesia’s engagement with Pacific Island nations aims to undermine the regional solidarity surrounding West Papua’s right to self-determination.
This involvement encapsulates infrastructure initiatives, defence training, and financial diplomacy, nurturing goodwill while aligning the interests of Pacific nations with Indonesia’s geopolitical aspirations.
Indonesia has formally joined the BRICS group, a bloc of emerging economies featuring Russia, China and others that is viewed as a counterweight to the West https://t.co/WArU5O2PfT pic.twitter.com/IQKmPOJqlS
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 7, 2025
Military occupation in West Papua
As Indonesia strives to galvanise international support for its territorial integrity, the military presence in West Papua has intensified significantly, instilling widespread fear among local Papuan communities due to heightened deployments, surveillance, and restrictions.Indonesian forces have been mobilised to secure economically strategic regions, including the Grasberg mine, which holds some of the world’s largest gold and copper reserves.
These operations have resulted in the displacement of Indigenous communities and substantial environmental degradation.
As of December 2024, approximately 83,295 individuals had been internally displaced in West Papua due to armed conflicts between Indonesian security forces and the West Papua Liberation Army (TPNPB).
Recent reports detail new instances of displacement in the Tambrauw and Pegunungan Bintang regencies following clashes between the TPNPB and security forces. Villagers have evacuated their homes in fear of further military incursions and confrontations, leaving many in psychological distress.
The significant increase in Indonesia’s military presence in West Papua has coincided with demographic shifts that jeopardise the survival of Indigenous Papuans.
Government transmigration policies and large-scale agricultural initiatives, such as the food estate project in Merauke, have marginalised Indigenous communities.
These programmes, aimed at ensuring national food security, result in land expropriation and cultural erosion, threatening traditional Papuan lifestyles and identities.
For more than 63 years, Indonesia has occupied West Papua, subjecting Indigenous communities to systemic marginalisation and brink of extinction. Traditional languages, oral histories, and cultural values face obliteration under Indonesia’s colonial occupation.
A glimmer of hope for West Papua
Despite these formidable challenges, solidarity movements within the Pacific and global communities persist in their advocacy for West Papua’s self-determination.These groups, united by a shared sense of humanity and justice, work tirelessly to maintain hope for West Papua’s liberation. Even so, Indonesia’s diplomatic engagement with Pacific nations, characterised by eloquent rhetoric and military alliances, represents a calculated endeavour to extinguish this fragile hope for Papuan liberation.
Indonesia’s membership in BRICS will either amplify this tiny hope of salvation within the grand vision of a new world re-engineered by Beijing’s BRICS and its allies or will it conceal West Papua’s independence dream on a path that is even harder and more impossible to achieve than the one they have been on for 60 years under the US-led unipolar world system.
Most significantly, it might present a new opportunity for Papuan liberation fighters to reengage with the new re-ordering global superpowers– a chance that has eluded them for more than 60 years.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, the tumult of the First and Second World Wars, coupled with the ensuing cries for decolonisation from nations subjugated by Western powers and Cold War tensions, forged the very existence of the nation known as “Indonesia.”
It seems that this turbulent world of uncertainty is upon us, reshaping a new global landscape replete with new alliances and adversaries, harbouring conflicting visions of a new world. Indonesia’s decision to join BRICS in 2025 is a clear testament to this.
The pressing question remains whether this membership will ultimately precipitate Indonesia’s disintegration as the US-led unipolar world intervenes in its domestic affairs or catalyse its growth and strength.
Regardless of the consequences, the fundamental existential question for the Papuans is whether they, along with their global solidarity networks, can reinvent themselves while nurturing the fragile hope of restoring West Papua’s sovereignty in a world rife with change and uncertainty?
Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic and writer from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He lives in Australia and contributes articles to Asia Pacific Report.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.