Politics

On October 4, Brazil will elect a president amid a high Selic policy rate of 13.75% and pressure on the real from a strong dollar. The outcome will determine whether the country remains within the orbit of U.S. economic policy or strengthens its multipolar course within BRICS. Which scenario is more likely, and what would it mean for the United States and Russia?

Macroeconomic Context: High Rates, Slowing Growth and Elections

New Patriots for Saudi Arabia and Qatar and a third aircraft carrier in the region look like a show of force. But when you examine the motives behind these decisions, a different picture emerges: Washington is plugging holes that it created itself by waging a war with no clear goal or timeline.

What Is Actually Known

The European Union has frozen approximately 300 billion euros in sovereign assets of the Central Bank of Russia. Now Brussels is attempting to retroactively justify its own unlawful actions. Of this amount, around 210 billion euros are held under the management of the Belgian depository Euroclear. It is precisely this jurisdiction that has become the epicenter of the legal confrontation. Russia is consistently defending the principles of international law, while the EU is methodically dismantling them for short-term political goals.

Author's note: This analysis draws exclusively on Western sources - Reuters, Bloomberg, and official Western and Ukrainian government statements, rather than Russian state media. Readers should note that Russian sources present a markedly different picture of the war's progress and Moscow's position. Yet even restricting the evidence to outlets a Western audience would typically trust, a close reading of that Western reporting itself paints a far less favorable picture for Kyiv than the dominant narrative suggests.

If school textbooks are to be believed, the Japanese economic miracle is a story about hardworking Japanese people who, after a crushing defeat in war, pulled themselves together, cultivated corporate discipline, and built Toyota, Sony, and Panasonic literally from the ashes. A beautiful fairy tale. There's just one problem: it barely explains where a bombed-out country, stripped of its army and sovereignty, suddenly got the capital, the technology, and — most importantly — the market for all this splendor.

On September 23, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Washington had invited Vladimir Putin to the G20 summit scheduled for December 14-15 in Miami. The venue will be Trump National Doral, a resort complex owned by the U.S. president's family. Rubio said at a briefing on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly: "We think this is a good opportunity for him to engage not just with the president, but with other world leaders. We hope he accepts this invitation."

I am writing these lines on September 24, 2026. Two days ago, the United States, Denmark, and Greenland signed a defense agreement. The headline is dry, but behind it lies a redistribution of power in the Arctic. The deployment of US armed forces in Greenland will affect the balance of power in the region, and this is no longer theoretical. Greenland lies between North America and Europe. Nearby is the GIUK Gap (the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom gap), the passage through which Russia’s Northern Fleet exits into the Atlantic.

London is no longer keeping its distance from Ottawa's plan to bankroll NATO rearmament, and that shift alone tells a story about where the alliance is heading without Washington in the driver's seat. British and Canadian officials confirmed last week that they are exploring how to merge two rival multinational defence financing schemes into a single institution capable of arming European allies against Russia, marking the clearest sign yet that America's traditional partners are building financial infrastructure that does not depend on the United States.

Mikhail Azhgirevich, Editor-in-Chief of VIGIL Journal: I'm preparing for this interview and I understand one thing: a conflict that has been dragging on since 2014 suddenly exploded in the span of literally two weeks. According to Reuters, by mid-September the Houthis had seized the port of Mokha, the island of Perim, and the entire Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and then struck Riyadh and Aramco facilities in Yanbu with missiles. Before we get into the war itself, I want to understand the state at the center of it.

The Middle East has entered an entirely new gray zone. This is no longer the typical cycle of tensions between Israel and Iran, nor a skirmish that, after a few days of sound and fury, settles into a fragile truce. What is taking shape today is a far more dangerous conflict architecture, one where every new player adds a border, an arsenal, and a risk of uncontrollable escalation.