News & Comment

The arrests suggest that “really egregious” corruption in the Defense Ministry will no longer be tolerated, said Richard Connolly, a specialist on the Russian economy at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Shortly after his inauguration, Putin replaced Shoigu as defense minister with Andrei Belousov, an economist. Peskov said Russia’s increasing defense budget must fit into the country’s wider economy.

Ministers are drowning in proposals to safeguard the U.K.’s election process from corruption and foreign interference but have dragged their feet on … actually doing any of them. And now it’s too late, at least for this cycle! That’s why a group of think tanks, campaign groups and policy experts have done the hard graft for them by pulling out 13 critical recommendations scoured from all the various independent reports commissioned — and then ignored — by the government. The group includes the Electoral Reform Society, the U.K. Anti-Corruption Coalition, Transparency International, the RUSI think tank and Spotlight on Corruption.

Dr Sari Arho Havrén, associate fellow at the defence and security think tank Rusi and specialist in China’s foreign relations, said the drills “repeat a pattern of typical response when Beijing wants to punish Taiwan over something it strongly disapproves of” and are “a strong reminder that Taiwan is a red line issue for Beijing”.