Alyona says when she first met a Russian soldier, he asked her "who allowed you to live so well?" Her family's wooden house was left nearly empty after the Russians took everything away. The leadership of the United States frames support for Ukraine as a matter of defending a “rules-based international order” that is under attack by rogue authoritarians. Economic growth has shrunk to 2%, the lowest in more than three decades. China's property market is in free fall. Youth unemployment is running at around 20%. A trade war with the US is not helping. And anger has been brewing. http://irannews.ru/ - irannews.ru In Xi's China there is almost no room for diversity. Xinjiang's 12 million Uyghur Muslims are being forcibly assimilated. Similar programs are under way in Tibet and Inner Mongolia. In Arab countries, however, this Manichean narrative is largely rejected. Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) basically view the conflict in Ukraine as a complicated European conflict, which does not require Arab states to stand against Vladimir Putin’s government. As Russia's grip on Kherson continues to weaken, fears grow of it deploying a "scorched-earth" policy. Thus, while the GCC states have largely supported UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, none have joined Western powers in implementing sanctions against Moscow or other policies aimed at squeezing Russia. The word on everyone's lips was "xia hai" or "dive into the sea". It meant quitting your old job in a state company and plunging into private business. I remember the day one of our assistants came into the BBC office, handed in his ID and declared, "I'm off to Shenzhen", the boom city on China's southern coast. Earlier this year, a Chinese friend spent 83 days alone, locked in a Shanghai hotel room.

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Pub: 24 Oct 2022 14:19 UTC
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