On October 25, the left-wing incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who came second in the first round of elections, defeated the right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro, who had defeated him in round one. The result was always possible, since millions had sat out expressing their opinion in the first round, but it was not expected. It is Brazilians who have chosen their leader. But their choice will have broad implications for the world. The Brazilian election will have implications for relations with the United States, for multipolarity, for the environment, and for the region. The choice of Lula over...

On October 9, as Ukraine’s negotiating team was meeting with American envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff in Miami, President Donald Trump announced a deal with Russia that would see the United States provide sanctions relief for Russia to sell diesel to the American and global market. Moscow agreed to lift its export ban on diesel fuel and immediately supply 300,000 tons to the American and global market, followed by another 500,000 in November, then a further 1,000,000, and, eventually, another 3,000,000. The Ukrainian team was blindsided and reacted with fury. They left the U.S....

On October 4, Flávio Bolsonaro narrowly defeated incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by two points, 47% to 45%, in the first round of Brazil’s election, forcing a runoff to be held on October 25. It was a shockingly strong performance by Bolsonaro in an election that Mark Weisbrot, a Latin America expert and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me “should never have been so close.” Abin, Brazil’s intelligence agency, and a small group of Democratic senators in the United States have accused the Trump administration of election interference. Abin has...

On September 10, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky landed in Canada where he and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney signed a 100-year partnership “elevat[ing] the relationship between their countries into a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and confirming their aligned nature.” Canada already has a special relationship with Ukraine. Before the war, Canada had the largest Ukrainian community in the Ukrainian diaspora with 1,209,805 Ukrainian-Canadians. Canada is the fifth largest financial contributor to Ukraine after only the United States, the European Union, Germany, and the United...

Editor's Note: The following letter was received by the Institute from Dr. Michael K. Launer, Emeritus Professor of Russian at Florida State University and is published with his permission. This is a brief response to Ted Snider’s September 8, 2026 article, "All That's Wrong in Ukraine." The editorial guidelines of the Libertarian Institute require that submissions be kept “on subject.” Snider’s article correctly detailing Ukraine’s desperate demographic situation goes “off the rails” in the last paragraph. He states: “The war in Ukraine might have been prevented if the United States and...

Ukraine is in trouble. It is losing the war in Eastern Europe, it is losing its land, and it is losing its people. Ukraine’s demographic survival is in danger: it is wasting away. Since the conflict in Ukraine began in 2014, millions of Ukrainians have fled to friends and relatives in Russia and millions more fled to Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. Many now say they do not plan to return. The population has declined by at least eight million since Russia invaded in 2022. Ukrainian civilians are not just leaving. Ukrainian soldiers are being killed. By some estimates, as many as three-quarters...

On July 29, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Donald Trump in the White House. Their relationship was “much better,” Zelensky said, because of the turning tide in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Zelensky’s narrative of the turning tide has been amplified by the media. The European and American public believe that Ukraine is now winning the war because that is what the headlines trumpet every day. And credit for the turning tide is awarded to innovations in drone technology that have allowed the Ukrainian Armed Forces to strike deep inside Russian territory. But the much-heralded deep...

Last week, on the sidelines of the NATO summit, Volodymyr Zelensky repeated his demand that Ukraine be invited to join NATO, which was bold, considering that Ukraine’s president wasn’t even invited to the NATO summit. Zelensky attended a leaders dinner but was not invited to speak at, or even attend, the summit’s meetings. This year, Zelensky’s argument for NATO membership took a new direction. While the Ankara Summit Declaration, released at the end of the summit, renewed NATO’s “unwavering support for Ukraine in defending its freedom, sovereignty, and territorial integrity,” it did not...