• China has been trying to get its people to be more vigilant for foreign spies this year.
• The government has pushed warnings for things to beware of, like weird pens and strangers.
• Xi urged officials last year to adopt "worst-case-scenario thinking" for national security.

It's been a busy year for the front-facing team of China's State Security Ministry.

They've been following up on a nationwide push by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to maximize public awareness of foreign espionage.

Xi told officials in June 2023 that the country's national security issues had risen significantly, and that they should adopt "worst-case-scenario thinking" to prepare for potential "perilous, stormy seas" ahead.

That mandate has, in part, taken shape in 2024 through a series of posts on government accounts on WeChat, or China's version of Facebook.

Those include cautionary anecdotes of military documents being found in recycling plants, tour guides uncovering spies, and students getting duped by agencies promising entry into good colleges.

But they also contain clear warnings for things that could seem innocent, such as beautiful women offering "love traps" or drones disguised as dragonflies.

Funny-looking lighters, pens, and dragonflies

Spy gadgets aren't just a movie concept, the State Security Ministry said in August.

"In real life, some inconspicuous daily necessities around us may also contain mysteries," it wrote in a post about "hidden gadgets."

It told the story of an unnamed businessman bidding on an overseas project who discovered microphones in a box of napkins.

The ministry added that pens can be cameras, lighters can be listening devices, and insect-like drones could be used to gather intelligence.

'Good-hearted people' with cash to spare

The same month, the ministry told the tale of Little Wei, a senior university student who grew up orphaned in a poor mountainous region.

It warned that Wei, a budding, top-scoring student, had come across a generous donor named "Teacher L" who offered to subsidize him until he graduated from college. In return, Wei would have to help with research projects and field surveys, for which he would be paid even more money.

The ministry said Wei later found a job that gave him access to confidential information, which he passed to Teacher L at the latter's behest.

The ministry dubbed such people "wolves in sheep's clothing."

"Their methods are despicable and have no bottom line. They often disguise themselves as 'good-hearted people,' 'passionate people,' and 'caring people' around young people," it added.

Job offers

Young students have been a recurring concern in the ministry's messaging this year.

It wrote in September that it had found foreign spy agencies trying to recruit students with market research or science-related jobs touting "small efforts and high returns."

Officials said that eventually, the spies would ask the students to start "collecting and compiling internal scientific research and academic materials, photographing military sensitive areas."

'Handsome men or beautiful women'

Online dating could also be teeming with danger, the ministry warned in the same September post.

Foreign spies may "even disguise themselves as 'handsome men' or 'beautiful women' and pretend to be close friends and drag young students into a false 'love' trap," it wrote.

The ministry urged young people making friends online to be "highly vigilant and clear-headed."

Express delivery

Authorities have also released statements about courier deliveries, which are especially cheap and widely used in China.

"In recent years, foreign espionage and intelligence agencies have been increasingly rampant in stealing secrets through delivery channels," the ministry wrote in August.

It said it had found a case where a "foreign institution" had sent a hazardous powder to a Chinese research center. The ministry also said it had uncovered shipments of non-native animal species, sent to disrupt the local ecology, like "red-eared sliders, alligator snapping turtles, American bullfrogs, fall armyworms, and red fire ants."

Telling your date you work in the military

In November, the Chinese navy told its personnel in the "internet generation" — or millennials and Gen Z sailors — not to post their military status online.

"A military profession is of a political, confidential, and disciplinary nature. Resolve not to reveal your military identity online," the navy said in its post.

It warned especially of young officers and seamen who are "eager for love" and might try to snag dates by displaying their military status.

"If you expose your military identity to gain attention, it's very easy to become the focus of criminals," the navy wrote.

Rock music

The South China Morning Post reported in September that a new foundational textbook for college students warned of rock music and pop culture as "covers" for color revolutions.

Color revolutions generally refer to the Arab Spring and anti-government protests in post-Soviet states. For years, Beijing has accused the US of orchestrating them.

The textbook is likely to be made mandatory reading in at least some schools. State media has called it the "first unified textbook" of all of the principles and ideals that a core committee answering to Xi has tried to promote in the last 10 years.

The part left unsaid

Notably, China rarely says who these "foreign spies" work for, though these messages have come against the backdrop of frosty tensions between Washington and Beijing.

The US Justice Department, on its part, has been regularly charging people this year accused of spying for China and trying to manipulate local politics in Beijing's favor.

"Part of this is inevitable," Dylan Loh, a professor at the Public Policy and Global Affairs program at Singapore's National Technological University, told Business Insider. "As China grows, the amount of national security concerns and interests will certainly increase."

"The other part is reflective of geopolitics today, especially in the context of US-China competition," he said.

Overall, Loh said, it's indicative of a bigger push by China to group more issues into the domain of national security.

Ian Ja Chong, a professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said it's not clear how effective China's messaging is, but that its strategy seems to rely on repetition.

"Even if a vast majority of people ignore or become desensitized to such claims, there may be some among the public for whom these ideas of danger become a source of motivation," he said.

The danger could lie in this suspicion growing into nationalism, he said.

"There remain allegations that attacks on Japanese schools in Suzhou and Shenzhen earlier this year, as well as an attack on US teachers in Jilin, resulted from a growing sense of foreign threat in the PRC," Chong said, referring to China by its formal name.

Xi's drive goes beyond social media messaging. BI's Huileng Tan reported in May 2023 about China's sweeping updates to its anti-espionage law that broadened the definition of spying and the transfer of important information.

Since the original law passed in 2014, China has detained and charged dozens of foreign businesspeople with espionage. One of the most recent cases involves a Japanese employee of Astellas Pharma, a Tokyo-based pharmaceutical firm, accused by China of spying. According to Japanese media, he was the 17th Japanese citizen to be detained under suspicion of espionage in China, and his trial opened in November.

• A Russian-flagged cargo vessel has sunk in the Mediterranean Sea, per Russia's foreign ministry.
• The Ursa Major ship went down after an explosion in the engine room, the ministry said.
• It comes after Ukraine said Moscow had sent four ships to Russian military bases in Syria.

A Russian-flagged cargo vessel has sunk in the Mediterranean Sea after an explosion in its engine room, Russia's foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Fourteen crew members were rescued, but two were missing, the ministry's situation and crisis unit said in a Telegram post.

The ministry said the vessel, the Ursa Major, was owned by SK-YUG LLC, a Russian shipping company also known as SC South that has been sanctioned by the US.

Spain's Maritime Rescue agency told Business Insider that it had received a distress alert call from the Ursa Major last night.

It said the ship was 57 nautical miles off the coast of Almeria in southern Spain in bad weather conditions. This prompted the maritime rescue centers of Almeria, Cartagena, and Madrid to coordinate a rescue effort, it added.

The 14 people rescued were transferred to the Spanish port city of Cartagena, the agency said, adding that another Russian ship later arrived in the area and took over the rescue operations.

Ship tracking data said the 466-foot Ursa Major, built in 2009, last departed from St. Petersburg on December 11.

It comes after Ukraine's intelligence directorate reported on Monday that a Russian cargo ship called Sparta had broken down near Portugal after the engine failed.

The GUR said the ship had been sent to evacuate Russian weapons and equipment from Syria.

The crew was able to fix the vessel, and it continued on through the Strait of Gibraltar, the GUR said.

It remains unclear whether the Sparta and the Ursa Major are the same ship. Maritime tracking data shows that the Ursa Major was previously named Sparta III.

Moscow has operated two military facilities in Syria, the Hmeimin airbase and the Tartus naval base. Both have been crucial for projecting Russia's influence across the Middle East and Africa.

The fall of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad earlier this month has called the future of the bases into question.

Ukraine's GUR said earlier this month that Russia had deployed four ships to help evacuate equipment in Syria, including ships named the Sparta and Sparta II.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

• The UK said it has live-fired its new anti-drone radio weapon that costs only about 10 pence to fire.
• It's been heralding such weapons as a cheap alternative to missile-based systems for killing drones.
• This weapon, the RFDEW, is said to kill drones from 1,000 meters away in land, air, and sea environments.

The UK Defense Ministry said on Monday that it's successfully live-tested its new radio frequency weapon that can take down drone swarms for "less than the cost of a pack of mince pies."

"A live firing trial was recently completed by the Army's Royal Artillery Trials and Development Unit and 7 Air Defence Group at a range in West Wales," it said in a statement. "Where they successfully targeted and engaged Uncrewed Aerial Systems, in a first for the British Armed Forces."

The system is called the Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon, or RFDEW. The UK says it has a range of up to 1,000 meters, or about 1,093 yards, at an estimated cost of 10 pence, or about $0.13, per shot.

The RFDEW uses high-frequency radio waves to detect, track, and then disable critical electronic components in the drones so that they become immobilized or fall out of the sky.

It's meant to be versatile. The UK says the RFDEW can be deployed in land, air, and sea environments.

Development of the weapon was announced in May, when officials described it as a cheaper alternative to traditional missile-based systems for fighting drones. The defense ministry said at the time that tests would be carried out over the summer.

The UK said the RFDEW is mostly automated, meaning it can be operated by a single person and mounted onto a military vehicle.

It's one of London's answers to the growing prominence of drone warfare, brought to the fore by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where cheap drones have become a primary killing tool in the protracted conflict.

The UK is also developing a vehicle-mounted laser beam weapon that fires shots costing 10 pence each, which it said has a range of 1,000 meters as well.

That weapon was successfully tested too, the ministry said on December 11.

Both systems were developed under a government program that partners with private firms such as Raytheon and Teledyne e2v.

The UK also spent about $126 million developing DragonFire, another laser weapon system that uses high-concentrated energy beams to kill drones at less than $13 a shot.

If these systems can be deployed at scale, their advertised low per-shot cost could be a major advantage for the UK. Traditional anti-drone tech that's already considered to be in the lower-cost range, such as the expendable Raytheon Coyote, can be priced at about $100,000 per munition.

Militaries want to go far cheaper, amid a heightened awareness that any armed force — from Russian and Ukrainian troops to Yemeni rebels — can deliver deadly payloads at less than $1,000 through commercial drone parts.

The US is developing a weapon similar to the RFDEW that uses microwaves to fry drone parts and disable swarms. It looks like a container with a satellite dish and is called the Tactical High-power Operational Responder, or THOR.

In April 2023, the US Air Force said it had successfully tested THOR against a drone swarm.

Such technologies are also becoming more mainstream in Ukraine. Kvertus, a company based in Kyiv, sells a handheld "anti-drone gun" that it says can knock out drones with radio frequencies.

• China's internet isn't happy that "Wukong Sun: Black Legend" is due for release on Nintendo's store.
• It's a 2D platformer game with art and a title that resembles "Black Myth: Wukong."
• Immensely popular in China, the game has an ardent player base that is fiercely defending the title.

"Black Myth: Wukong," the high-profile video game that earned superstar status in China, has a new titular competitor on the market: a side-scrolling platformer in which the Monkey King bashes through monsters of ancient legend.

"Wukong Sun: Black Legend," published by Global Game Studio, is now listed for preorder on Nintendo's store for its Switch console — much to the chagrin of China's social media.

Posts deriding the Nintendo-listed game as a knock-off emerged on Monday morning and, within an hour, topped discussion rankings on Weibo, China's version of X, per data seen by Business Insider.

"Hey everyone, have you heard? The stunning 'Black Myth: Wukong' has actually been copied! This really makes you speechless," one user wrote.

"Since Nintendo has removed pirated games from its shelves, this should also be removed," wrote another.

Promotional art for the Nintendo-listed game, which is due for release on December 26 and retails at $7.99, bears a striking resemblance to that of "Black Myth: Wukong."

But the new title's gameplay looks nothing like that of "Black Myth: Wukong," a 3D action game with spruced-up visuals and a famed boss system that's difficult to overcome.

"Wukong Sun: Black Legend" appears to feature 2D sprites that approach from the right of the screen as the player navigates from the left.

"Black Myth: Wukong," produced by Chinese developer Game Science, is based on characters from the 1592 novel "Journey to the West," one of the most famous literary works in the region and a cornerstone of Chinese popular culture and mythology.

The term "Black Myth" in the game's title refers to it telling a story that is not included in the original novel, which has served as the base for a hit 1986 TV show and a plethora of books, games, and other media.

On its Nintendo store page, "Wukong Sun: Black Legend" also references the novel, saying it would allow players to "embark on an epic Journey to the West" and battle characters from its mythology.

Weibo users aren't having any of it.

"Well-known games have been plagued by imitations for a long time," wrote Pear Video, a popular internet news account. "Malicious developers exploit the names of well-known games, reskin various small games, and put them on the shelves of big game stores with similar titles, deceiving uninformed consumers to buy and download."

"I wonder how Nintendo will deal with it," a popular millennial gaming blogger wrote.

Nintendo operates a marketplace that allows developers to publish games for Nintendo consoles. The company did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by BI.

Global Game Studio is listed as both the developer and publisher of "Wukong Sun: Black Legend." According to Nintendo's website the developer has also produced a soccer game, an extreme sports biking game, a "Farming Harvester Simulator," and a zombie shooter.

The studio did not respond to a request for comment in an email sent by BI.

"Black Myth: Wukong" is considered China's first homegrown AAA video game success, selling over 20 million copies on the marketplace Steam, per the data tracker Video Game Insights. The game retails at about $59.99 per copy, putting total sales north of $1 billion.

Its release dominated China's internet this summer and has garnered an ardent cult following. Earlier this month, the title's failure to clinch the coveted "Game of the Year" award from The Games Awards sparked a wave of dissatisfaction on Chinese social media.

• Putin proposed a missile "duel" between the Oreshnik and US-made air defenses.
• He said Ukraine could concentrate its anti-missile systems in one spot and try to counter the new munition.
• In response, Ukraine's Zelenskyy called him a "dumbass."

Russian leader Vladimir Putin suggested on Thursday that an experimental "duel" be held between Moscow's newly unveiled Oreshnik missile and Western-made air defenses.

Speaking at his annual press conference, Putin slammed the idea that the Oreshnik could be shot down by anti-missile defenses.

"If the experts in the West think so, well, let them come up with a proposal to us, and to the US. They can suggest a kind of technological experiment, a kind of high-tech fighting duel of the 21st century," Putin said, per a translation of the conference.

Putin said both parties could agree upon a target in Kyiv, where Ukraine could "concentrate all of their air defense and anti-missile defense."

"We will strike it with Oreshnik and we will see what's going to happen. We are willing to conduct such an experiment," he said.

He also suggested that it could benefit the US by allowing the Pentagon to glean information from the strike.

"So let's conduct this duel and look at the outcome. It's going to be interesting because it's going to be useful both to us and the American side," he added.

Russia initially fired the Oreshnik in late November, hitting the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

The new missile, which appears to have its roots in the RS-26 Rubezh intermediate-range ballistic missile, was described by Putin as flying as fast as Mach 10, or 10 times the speed of sound.

That velocity makes it extremely difficult for anti-missile defenses to counter. The Oreshnik is also believed to deploy a cluster payload and is capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Additionally, the missile's purported range allows it to hit any target in Europe. Russia has, in recent weeks, touted it as a new class of weapon in the Ukraine war.

Shortly after Putin's comment, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to X to voice his disapproval of the "duel" proposal.

"People are dying, and he thinks it's 'interesting,'" Zelenskyy wrote on X on Thursday evening. "Dumbass."

US defenses vs Russian missiles

Ukraine has placed great emphasis on its need for US-made Patriot systems to protect its skies, and Zelenskyy has said his nation needs at least 25 of them. It's unclear exactly how many Patriot batteries Ukraine fields now, but it's been confirmed to have at least four systems donated by NATO members and another five on the way.

They're expensive to use. Each Patriot missile costs up to $6 million and even then, may struggle against advanced weapons maneuvering at the speeds Putin is advertising. These munitions, often called hypersonic missiles, have been a key concern for the Pentagon.

Notably, the Kinzhal, a previously much-hyped missile, was also touted by Russia as hypersonic and "unstoppable." But it has reportedly been downed dozens of times by Patriot batteries in Ukraine.

Still, the Kinzhal appears to be less advanced in maneuverability and glide potential than the Oreshnik and China's Dongfeng hypersonic missiles.

Meanwhile, Western experts still question how many Oreshnik missiles Russia has in its inventory, and the US calls it an experimental weapon. Moscow's strike on Dnipro was largely seen as a show of force, and the Pentagon has said it may launch a similar strike on Ukraine soon.

On Monday, Putin told state media that serial production of the Oreshnik would begin soon.

• Frank Kendall, the Air Force Secretary, hit back on Elon Musk's comments slamming the F-35.
• While Kendall said he respects the billionaire, he said Musk is "not a warfighter."
• Musk has trashed the F-35 as obsolete compared to drones, but Kendall said that reality is decades away.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Elon Musk should learn more about air combat tech before publicly slamming crewed fighter jets as obsolete.

"I have a lot of respect for Elon Musk as an engineer," Kendall said on Thursday at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

"He's not a warfighter, and he needs to learn a little bit more about the business, I think, before he makes such grand announcements as he did," Kendall said.

Musk recently drew public attention for posting on X that crewed fighters, such as the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, were inefficient compared to drones and have a "shit design."

Calling the makers of the F-35 "idiots," Musk posted videos of drone swarms and wrote that crewed fighters would be shot down easily by modern surface-to-air missile defenses and enemy drones.

Kendall, who oversees the US Air Force's budget, said Musk's vision of drone superiority is many years away.

"It's provocative, it's interesting," he said of Musk's statements. "I can imagine at some point; I don't think it's centuries, by the way; I think it's more like decades when something like he imagines can occur."

"But we're not there," Kendall added. "And it's going to be a little while before we get there."

Musk did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Kendall said he pushed the Air Force on a "key decision" to field drones that work in tandem with crewed fighters.

Still, he added the US may eventually reduce its planned purchases of the F-35, a fifth-generation fighter that Lockheed Martin manufactures, depending on how quickly other tech advances.

"Our inventory objective for the F-35 is 1,700 and some. I don't know what we'll end up buying, and nobody can predict that right now," the secretary said.

But he also doesn't think the F-35 will be replaced anytime soon, and said the US is still buying more of the aircraft for now and in the near future.

"It is dominant over fourth-generation aircraft. Period. And in a very, very serious way. It's not even close. And there's no alternative to that in the near term," he said.

The US has been looking into a sixth-generation fighter, also known as the next-generation air dominance program, that will focus on crewed jets that work collaboratively with drones.

Kendall said that if the NGAD program continues, it will still take years to produce that fighter in quantity, and it will be initially "very expensive" to manufacture.

It's unclear how Musk's views on the F-35 and drones may materially affect US defense spending. The billionaire has been made the cohead of a new Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to reduce what it sees as excess federal expenses.

Musk is in President-elect Donald Trump's close orbit and showed this week that he can wield considerable influence in Congress when Republican lawmakers followed his lead on trashing a bipartisan bill that sought to avoid a government shutdown.

Meanwhile, Kendall is expected to step down as Air Force Secretary when President Joe Biden, who appointed him, leaves office in January. The secretary expressed a desire in September to remain in his post as the Trump administration takes over.

• The FAA and FBI want people to stop pointing lasers at what they think are drones in the sky.
• The agencies have received a big spike in reports of pilots affected by lasers over New Jersey.
• Complaints have nearly tripled this month compared to last December, the FAA said.

US authorities want people to know they shouldn't point lasers at what they think are "mystery drones" in the sky.

The Federal Aviation Administration told multiple news outlets on Wednesday that complaints of laser strikes on crewed planes over New Jersey have jumped 269% in recent weeks compared to the same period last year.

Per Reuters, the agency received 59 reports of people aiming lasers at planes in the first half of December, up from eight in the same period of 2023.

The administration also said it had received "dozens of new laser reports from pilots" over the New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania areas.

The FAA told CNN that pilots across the entire US cumulatively report about 30 laser strikes on a typical night. But on Tuesday night alone, the number of reported strikes reached 123 nationwide, the administration told the outlet.

Even if the laser's target isn't a plane, it's illegal under US federal law to point a laser or shoot a firearm at a drone.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation in Newark, New Jersey also said on Monday that it was receiving more reports of pilots "being hit in the eyes" because people thought they were pointing lasers at drones.

The FBI added that local authorities have been out every night for several weeks to track down "operators acting illegally," saying the consequences of shining lasers at crewed aircraft could be deadly.

"Misidentification often occurs when UAS are mistaken for more familiar objects such as manned aircraft, low-orbit satellites, or celestial bodies like planets or stars," the FBI's Monday statement said, referring to unmanned aircraft systems.

The government warnings come as residents along the East Coast have reported seeing "mystery drones" in the sky, triggering conspiracy theories that the unknown objects are being used for nefarious or secret purposes.

The Pentagon and other federal agencies said these sightings likely aren't a threat, and that out of 5,000 drone sightings reported in recent weeks, only 100 warranted investigations.

Over a million drones are legally registered in the US, and officials say the sightings could involve commercial drones, hobbyist drones, or law enforcement drones.

• China's nuclear arsenal now stands at 600 warheads, according to the Pentagon.
• Its new estimate means Beijing is still tracking to reach 1,000 nukes by 2030.
• It's not just about sheer quantity. The US says China is building a wide range of launch methods too.

China has been fielding over 600 operational nuclear warheads since mid-2024, up from about 500 last year, according to an estimate by the Pentagon.

That reported growth puts Beijing on track to hit 1,000 warheads by 2030, a prediction that US defense officials made in 2021.

Those findings come from the Defense Department's 2024 China Military Power Report, an annual summary of Beijing's capabilities and an assessment of its ambitions for its armed forces.

The Pentagon says China isn't just making more warheads — it's building a wide array of capabilities to launch them, too.

"When you look at what they're trying to build here, it's a diversified nuclear force that would be comprised of systems ranging from low yield, precision strike missiles, all the way up to ICBMs with different options at basically every rung on the escalation ladder," a senior defense official told reporters at a briefing on Monday. ICBMs refer to intercontinental ballistic missiles.

"Which is a lot different than what they've relied on traditionally," the official added.

China says it maintains a "no first-use" nuclear policy, meaning it will only ever deploy a nuke in retaliation for another nuclear strike.

But the US has been startled by what it says is a rapid build-up of Beijing's nuclear forces in the last few years. In 2020, the Pentagon thought that China had only 200 nukes and would have 400 by 2030.

The Defense Department's newer estimate of 1,000 warheads by 2030 would put China closer to being a peer threat to the US and Russia, the two behemoths of the Cold War.

A strategic treaty between the US and Russia limits their active arsenals to 1,550 warheads, though they are stockpiling thousands more.

Now, Western arms analysts are concerned that China isn't engaging in talks about its nuclear build-up — a key mechanism that the US and Russia used to prevent nuclear war.

"The PRC has not publicly or formally acknowledged or explained its nuclear expansion and modernization," the 2024 report said.

Advanced systems to counter US defenses

Meanwhile, a debate is raging in Washington about a need for the US to expand and explore more advanced nuke launch methods so it can maintain an edge over China.

The Pentagon's report for 2024 said Beijing is likely developing advanced missile systems "in part due to long-term concerns about United States missile defense capabilities."

These include hypersonic glide vehicles, which use the edge of Earth's upper atmosphere to fly incredibly fast, and fractional orbital bombardments, which launch weapons into orbital space to extend their range and flight time.

Those technologies can make a nuclear strike difficult to detect or track. In mid-2021, China is believed to have combined them in a hypersonic missile test.

For the US, expanding on nuclear weapons will cost taxpayers, a point that arms control advocates often raise when asking for restraint. An already-approved program to modernize America's aging nuclear triad is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over the next 30 years.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

• Russia hasn't mass-evacuated troops and gear out of its key bases in Syria.
• A senior analyst said the signs would be clear — such a retreat would be difficult to hide.
• Russia said it's trying to work out a deal for its bases with the new Syrian government.

The Russian military is still stationed at its Syrian bases after the fall of Bashar Assad's government, and analysts say an evacuation will be easy to spot.

The Kremlin has two major facilities in the country that were hosted by Assad — the Tartus naval base and the Khmeimim air base — which are crucial to Russian access to the Mediterranean and Africa.

According to Russian state media, rebel forces now control the Latakia province, where these bases are located.

With Moscow's long-term access to those bases now under question, satellite images show that its warships have vacated Tartus since Monday. Several were spotted holding positions about 15 km from the coast.

It's unclear if these vessels will return.

But satellite images also show that a full evacuation of Tartus hasn't happened, Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Financial Times.

"And if they have to leave Tartus, you'd actually see more ships show up to help move things out," she told the outlet.

It's possible that Russia moved its ships temporarily out to sea to protect them while conditions in Syria remain uncertain.

At Khmeimim, which Russia uses as its primary channel for flying troops into Africa, satellite images this week showed that much of the Kremlin's equipment, including fighter jets and helicopters, remained on-site.

Massicot wrote in a thread on X that an evacuation of the airbase "will be obvious."

"An air evacuation would take hundreds of sorties of IL-76 and An-124, not the handful identified yesterday at Khmeimim," she wrote, referring to several Ilyushin and Antonov freight airliners spotted at Khmeimim earlier this week.

"When Russian forces deployed to Syria in 2015, they flew almost 300 sorties in two weeks, and that was before base expansion," Massicot added.

Analysts from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, wrote that Russia is likely delaying a total evacuation as it tries to suss out a deal with a new Syrian government.

They said Russia is still maintaining its assets in Khmeimim, and that a "lack of a coherent Russian response" indicates Moscow is still watching the situation.

"The Kremlin is very likely hesitant to completely evacuate all military assets from Syria in the event that it can establish a relationship with Syrian opposition forces and the transitional government and continue to ensure the security of its basing and personnel in Syria," the analysts wrote.

The Kremlin hopes it won't have to evacuate

Russia is also publicly signaling that it isn't giving up on its vital bases.

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, told reporters that Russia has been in contact with "those capable of ensuring the security of military bases."

Meanwhile, Russian state media outlet TASS cited an unnamed source in the Kremlin saying that Syrian opposition leaders had guaranteed the safety of Tartus and Khmeimim.

On the other hand, Ukraine's intelligence division said on Tuesday that Russia has a plan to evacuate Khmeimim with Antonovs and Ilyushins, and that Russian troops have begun dismantling equipment at Tartus under the supervision of special forces. It did not say how it sourced this information.

Russia's future in Syria unclear

Despite those forecasts, it's unclear how a post-Assad Syria will take shape. Rebel forces in the country were largely splintered, consisting of various separate factions sharing the common cause of toppling Assad.

Mohammed al-Bashir, who ran rebel-held pockets of northern Syria, said on Tuesday that he had been named interim prime minister.

The Islamist group at the helm of the rebel victory, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, is led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a former Al Qaeda-affiliated fighter who's said to have cut ties with the terrorist organization.

But he is still listed as a terrorist by the US, with a $10 million bounty on his head. Though he has been a prominent contender for leadership, he has not taken an official leadership position as of press time.

• Igor Krasnov, Russia's prosecutor-general, says the country's bribery problem is getting worse.
• He told state media that 30,000 officials were disciplined for corruption in 2024.
• Bribes are up at least 30% since 2023, with hundreds of companies fined for offering payoffs, he said.

Russia's prosecutor-general said on Monday that detections of corruption among officials have jumped this year, with a 30% increase in bribery cases compared to 2023.

Igor Krasnov told state media that almost 30,000 Russian officials were caught and disciplined for breaking anti-graft rules in 2024.

Of that total, 500 were fired for "loss of trust," Krasnov said.

Krasnov said that at least half of all corruption cases involved bribery and that almost 19,000 such crimes were discovered in the first nine months of 2024.

That's nearly as many as the 20,300 bribery cases his office found in 2023, Krasnov added.

"This year, the number of such crimes has increased by more than 30%, exceeding 6,600 cases," he said.

According to Krasnov, about 760 billion rubles worth of funds and property have been confiscated in the last five years from officials accused of corruption. That's worth about $7.6 billion today.

About 200 companies were fined in the first half of 2024 for trying to bribe officials, the prosecutor-general also said.

Analysts from the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War said systemic corruption in Russia is likely to exacerbate its economic burdens from fighting the Ukraine war.

"Russia's mounting economic pressures stemming from the war, paired with widespread corruption, labor shortages, and inefficiencies in Russia's DIB, will likely compound the cost of Russia's war and further undermine its ability to effectively sustain DIB operations while maintaining economic stability," wrote the ISW.

DIB refers to the defense industrial base, a network of companies and manufacturers that provides governments with weapons and military equipment.

The ruble has already weakened considerably since the war began and now trades at about 100 against the US dollar, compared to about 75 against the dollar before March 2022. With international sanctions hemming Russia in, the country's leader, Vladimir Putin, has pushed its economy and government spending heavily toward defense manufacturing, recruitment, and payments to families of troops.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin estimated on Saturday that Russia has "squandered" over $200 billion on invading Ukraine.

"Russia has paid a staggering price for Putin's folly," Austin said at the Reagan National Defense Forum.

He also said the war has killed or wounded at least 700,000 Russian troops.

Russia's defense ministry has historically struggled with corruption. While the extent of graft within the organization is difficult to determine, it emerges to the fore sometimes when top officials are ousted.

In June, for example, five senior figures in the Russian military, including a former deputy defense minister, were arrested on corruption charges.

The charges came just after Sergei Shoigu, the country's longtime defense minister, was replaced.

Some analysts, such as Mark Galeotti, a senior researcher at the think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Business Insider at the time that they believed the arrests could be connected to Shoigu's replacement.

• Luigi Mangione has been charged with murder in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's killing.
• Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy family, left an online trail before his arrest.
• He founded an app, talked about AI on X, and read the Unabomber Manifesto.

Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old Ivy League graduate charged with murder in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has a vast online trail.

Police arrested Mangione in Pennsylvania on December 9. He initially faced local gun and forgery charges. He's expected to be extradited to New York.

New York court documents show that in addition to one count of murder, he also faces two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, one count of second-degree possession of a forged document, and one count of third-degree criminal possession of a firearm.

Here's what to know about Mangione.

Mangione attended elite schools

Mangione graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020.

He achieved a Bachelor of Science in engineering with a major in computer science and a minor in mathematics. He also received a Master of Science in engineering the same year with a major in computer and information science, a university spokesperson told Business Insider.

Before that, he attended Gilman School, an elite all-boys preparatory school in Baltimore. His yearbook entry, obtained by BI, says he was involved in robotics and Model United Nations.

In his valedictorian speech, Mangione praised classmates for "challenging the world" and thanked parents for sending their children to the fee-paying school, which he described as "far from a small financial investment."

He favorably reviewed the Unabomber Manifesto

On Goodreads, Mangione reviewed Ted Kaczynski's "Industrial Society and Its Future" book, also known as The Unabomber Manifesto, in early 2024. He gave it four out of five stars.

"He was a violent individual — rightfully imprisoned — who maimed innocent people," Mangione wrote. "While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary."

Mangione's review of the manifesto also quoted another online comment about the book, which appears to have originated on Reddit, praising the use of violence "when all other forms of communication fail."

"'Violence never solved anything' is a statement uttered by cowards and predators,'" Mangione quoted.

He founded an app and worked in tech

In 2015, while in high school, Mangione founded a company called AppRoar Studios. AppRoar released an iPhone game called "Pivot Plane" that's no longer available, but a reviewer in 2015 said it was "a fun little arcade game brought to you by 3 high school juniors."

He lived in a co-living space in Hawaii as recently as 2023.

He posed for photos indicating he participated in Greek life at the University of Pennsylvania.

The fraternity chapter represented in his photos couldn't be reached for comment.

A blog post on the University of Pennsylvania's website that was removed on December 9 said he cofounded a video game design club there.

Stephen Lane, a professor of video game design at the Ivy League university who didn't advise the club, told BI that "the fact he took the initiative and started something from nothing, that means at least in the context of Penn, that's a pretty good thing." He added, however, that Thompson's shooting was "obviously not a good thing."

Mangione's LinkedIn page says he worked as a data engineer at the vehicle shopping company TrueCar starting in 2020.

A TrueCar spokesperson told BI that Mangione hadn't worked for the company since 2023.

Online breadcrumbs and roommate say he dealt with back pain

At the top of Mangione's profile on X — formerly Twitter — is a triptych of three images: a photo of himself, smiling, shirtless on a mountain ridge; a Pokémon; and an X-ray with four pins or screws visible in the lower back.

The Pokémon featured in his cover image is Breloom, which has special healing abilities in the games.

Some of the books reviewed on Mangione's Goodreads account are related to health and healing back pain, including "Back Mechanic: The Secrets to a Healthy Spine Your Doctor Isn't Telling You" and "Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery."

R.J. Martin, the founder of the co-living space in Hawaii, told the Honolulu Civil Beat that Mangione had suffered back pain from a misaligned vertebra that was pinching his spinal cord.

Martin told CNN that after leaving Hawaii, Mangione texted him to say he'd undergone surgery and sent him X-rays.

"It looked heinous, with just, giant screws going into his spine," Martin told the outlet.

It's not immediately clear whether the surgery was related to UnitedHealthcare.

Josiah Ryan, a spokesperson for the co-living space founder, told The Wall Street Journal that Mangione stopped replying to texts about six months ago and "sort of disappeared."

A YouTube spokesperson said that the platform had terminated Mangione's three accounts, adding that they had not been active for about seven months.

A senior police official told NBC New York on December 12 that Magione was never a UnitedHealthcare client and may have targeted Thompson because of the insurer's large size and outsize power. That same day, The Wall Street Journal reported that a company spokesperson said Magione was not a client.

Mangione was interested in AI

On his X account, Mangione posted and amplified posts about technological advances such as artificial intelligence. He also posted about fitness and healthy living.

He frequently reposted posts by the writer Tim Urban and the commentator Jonathan Haidt about the promise and perils of technology.

He also appeared to be a fan of Michael Pollan, known for his writing about food, ethics, and lab-grown meat.

On Goodreads, he praised Urban's book "What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies," describing it as "one of the most important philosophical texts of the early 21st century."

Urban posted to X on December 9: "Very much not the point of the book."

He was previously accused of trespassing

Before his arrest, Mangione had at least one encounter with the legal system. Hawaiian court records indicate that in 2023, he was accused of entering a forbidden area of a state park.

Mangione appears to have paid a $100 fine to resolve the matter.

Mangione comes from a wealthy and influential Baltimore family

Mangione is one of 37 grandchildren of the late Nick Mangione Sr., a prominent multimillionaire real-estate developer in Baltimore who died in 2008, The Baltimore Banner reported. Nick Mangione Sr. had 10 children, including Louis Mangione, Luigi Mangione's father.

Members of the Mangione family own the Turf Valley Resort in Ellicott City, Maryland, and Hayfields Country Club in Hunt Valley, Maryland.

One of Luigi Mangione's cousins is the Republican Maryland state legislator Nino Mangione, the Associated Press reported.

Representatives for Nino Mangione's office, in a statement to BI, declined to comment on the news of Luigi Mangione's arrest.

"Unfortunately, we cannot comment on news reports regarding Luigi Mangione," the statement read. "We only know what we have read in the media. Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest. We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved. We are devastated by this news."

The Mangione family has donated more than $1 million to the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, where all of Nick Mangione Sr.'s grandkids, including Luigi Mangione, were born, the Banner reported.

A public filing from 2022 for the nonprofit Mangione Family Foundation lists Louis Mangione as vice president.

He was arrested while on his laptop at a McDonald's, the police said

When the police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, responded to a McDonald's after a call about a suspicious person, they found Mangione sitting at a table looking at a silver laptop and wearing a blue medical mask, a criminal complaint said.

The complaint said that when asked for identification, Mangione gave police officers a New Jersey driver's license with the name "Mark Rosario."

When an officer asked Mangione whether he'd been to New York recently, he "became quiet and started to shake," the complaint said.

It added that Mangione correctly identified himself after officers told him he could be arrested for lying about his identity.

When asked why he lied, Mangione replied, "I clearly shouldn't have," the complaint said.

His motive is still not known, but police are analyzing his so-called manifesto

An internal NYPD report obtained by The New York Times said Mangione "likely views himself as a hero of sorts who has finally decided to act upon such injustices."

Mangione "appeared to view the targeted killing of the company's highest-ranking representative as a symbolic takedown and a direct challenge to its alleged corruption and 'power games,' asserting in his note he is the 'first to face it with such brutal honesty,'" according to the NYPD report by the department's Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau, the Times reported.

Moments before the December 10 extradition hearing began, Mangione, handcuffed and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, shouted out to the press as Pennsylvania police escorted him into the courthouse.

Mangione yelled out something partially unintelligible, saying something was "completely out of touch" and "an insult to the American people." He also shouted that something was a "lived experience" as a group of officers led him into the courthouse.

NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told NBC New York that Mangione had prior knowledge that UnitedHealthcare would be having its annual conference in New York City.

Mangione has retained a high-profile New York attorney

Thomas Dickey emerged as Mangione's attorney in Pennsylvania after his arrest in Altoona on December 9.

During a December 10 hearing at Pennsylvania's Blair County Courthouse, Dickey told the judge that Mangione was contesting his extradition to New York City.

Dickey later told reporters that Mangione would plead not guilty to all the charges in Pennsylvania. During an interview with CNN, Dickey said he expected Mangione to plead not guilty to the second-degree murder charge in New York and that he hadn't seen evidence that authorities "have the right guy."

Karen Friedman Agnifilo will represent Mangione in New York, a representative for Agnifilo Intrater LLP confirmed to Business Insider on Sunday.

Friedman Agnifilo worked as the chief assistant district attorney at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office from 2014 to 2021. She pivoted to private practice in 2021.

Do you know Luigi Mangione? Have a tip? Reach out to [email protected].

• Western leaders have welcomed the fall of Bashar Assad but warned of uncertainty about what's next.
• Biden warned of "a moment of risk" over Syria's future.
• Assad was ousted by a coalition that included Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose leader fought the US in Iraq.

World leaders are warning the downfall of Syria's dictator Bashar Assad leaves the country's future uncertain, as most of them celebrate his toppling.

Assad had, for more than a decade, faced a loose coalition of rebel groups, including the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. But it was Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that traces its roots to Al Qaeda, that stormed from city to city in days, prompting Assad to flee to Russia, which had helped keep him in power.

Questions remain about what sort of government may form under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham's leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. Though he has broken ties with Al Qaeda and is projecting messages of religious tolerance, the US designates him a terrorist and has a $10 million bounty on his head.

Here's how the world's been reacting to Assad's fall.

US: President Joe Biden

"At long last, the Assad regime has fallen," Biden said on Sunday during a press briefing in the Roosevelt Room.

Biden called the Assad government's expulsion a "fundamental act of justice" and a "moment of opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country."

"It's also a moment of risk and uncertainty," the president added. "As we all turn to the question of what comes next."

The US has been conducting airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria, Biden said.

US: President-Elect Donald Trump

Trump, who is to succeed Biden on January 20, referenced the war in Ukraine as a key reason for Russia's waning military support for Assad.

"Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer," he wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.

In a post on Saturday, Trump wrote that the US should avoid any involvement in Syria.

"THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!" he wrote.

EU: European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen

In a statement on Sunday, Von der Leyen wrote that Europe hoped to support Damascus in "rebuilding a Syrian state that protects all minorities."

"This historic change in the region offers opportunities but is not without risks," Von der Leyen wrote.

The majority of the nation's population is Sunni Muslim, but among them are Alawites, Christians, Shiite Muslims, Druze, and other ethnicities and religious movements.

UK: Prime Minister Keir Starmer

Starmer cautioned on Sunday that Syria's new political situation is still in its "early days," but said Assad's fall was a "very good thing for the Syrian people."

"The Syrian people have suffered under Assad's barbaric regime for too long and we welcome his departure," Starmer said. "Our focus is now on ensuring a political solution prevails, and peace and stability is restored."

Starmer called for a "rejection of terrorism and violence" and for civilians to be protected.

Germany: Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Scholz posted identical statements on Sunday in German, Arabic, and English.

"Today, we stand with all Syrians who are full of hope for a free, just, and safe Syria," the chancellor said.

"A political solution to the conflict in Syria is possible. With international partners and on the basis of the resolutions of the UN Security Council, Germany will make its contribution," he added.

A few hours earlier, Scholz said that the end of Assad's rule was "good news." He also urged that civilians and minorities be protected.

France: President Emmanuel Macron

"The barbaric state has fallen. At last," Macron said in identical statements in Arabic, French, and English.

He called the current situation a "moment of uncertainty" and said he wished Syrians "peace, freedom, and unity."

"France will remain committed to the security of all in the Middle East," Macron added.

Canada: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Trudeau also celebrated Assad's fall as the end of decades of dictatorship in Syria, and said Canada was "monitoring this transition closely."

"A new chapter for Syria can begin here — one free of terrorism and suffering for the Syrian people," he said.

China: Foreign Ministry

The Chinese foreign ministry's initial response focused on the status of its citizens in Syria.

A ministry spokesperson said on Sunday that China's embassy in Syria was still operational and was assisting Chinese nationals in the country.

"We urge relevant parties in Syria to ensure the safety and security of the Chinese institutions and personnel in Syria," they added.

On Monday, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry, Mao Ning, said Beijing was "closely watching developments."

"We hope all relevant parties will proceed on the basis of the Syrian people's fundamental interests and find a political resolution as soon as possible to restore stability in the country," she said.

Iran: Foreign Ministry

Iran, which backed Assad for over a decade, indicated that it hopes to continue to establish a presence in the region.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran, emphasizing Syria's role as an important and influential country in West Asia, will spare no effort to help establish security and stability in Syria," its foreign ministry said in a statement.

Despite its past support for Assad, it added that "determining Syria's future and making decisions about its destiny are solely the responsibility of the Syrian people, without any destructive interference or external imposition."

Turkey: Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan

Fidan said Assad's fall paves the way for millions of Syrian refugees in neighboring Turkey to potentially return home.

"As of this morning, the Syrian people have started a new day in which they will determine the future of their country," Fidan said in a statement.

Turkey is home to some 3.6 million Syrian refugees, and Ankara has been actively supporting some rebel forces in the north with troops, drone strikes, and artillery.

Fidan added that Turkey would "assume responsibility for whatever needs to be done to heal Syria's wounds and ensure its unity, integrity, and security."

Russia: Foreign Ministry

In a statement on Sunday, Russia's foreign ministry said it was monitoring Syria "with extreme concern."

The ministry said Assad had resigned after discussing with "a number of participants" in the civil war, and that Moscow was not involved in the negotiations.

"However, we call on all the parties involved to renounce the use of violence and resolve all governance issues through political efforts," it said.

"In this regard, the Russian Federation maintains contact with all Syrian opposition groups," the ministry added.

Russia has said for years that it's supported Assad to protect Syria's legitimacy and to fight terrorism.

It fields two major military bases in Syria, the Hmeimim Air Base and the Tartus Naval Base, which provide Russia with access to Africa and the Mediterranean.

"Russian military bases in Syria are on high alert. There is no serious threat to their security at the moment," the foreign ministry said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

• Syrian dictator Bashar Assad has resigned and fled his country.
• Rebel forces said they seized control of the capital, Damascus.
• The collapse of Assad's government could have major global implications.

Syrians around the world celebrated as rebels, after more than a decadelong fight, finally toppled the country's longtime leader, Bashar Assad, on Sunday.

The Russian foreign ministry said on Sunday that Assad had resigned from his position as Syrian president and left the country. Russian state news reported that Assad had arrived in Moscow, where he's been granted asylum.

Syrian anti-government forces announced early on Sunday morning that they had advanced into Damascus, Syria's capital.

In a post on social media, rebel commander Hassan Abdul-Ghani said: "We declare Damascus free from the tyrant Bashar al-Assad."

"Today 8-12-2024 Syria is officially free," he added in a later post.

Hassan Akkad, who fled Syria in 2015 and is now based in the UK, posted to X, "Syria is free. Syria is free. Syria is free. Syria is free. Syria is free. Syria is free. Syria is free."

World leaders react

President-elect Donald Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday that Assad had "fled his country" after losing Russia's support.

"Assad is gone," Trump wrote. "His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer."

In a press briefing on Sunday, President Joe Biden called the fall of Assad's government "a fundamental act of justice" and "a moment of opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country."

Biden said the US would support Syria's neighbors Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel "should any threat arise from Syria during this transition." Biden said the United States would also "maintain our mission against ISIS" inside the country, referring to the terrorist group operating in the region.

The US military conducted at least a dozen airstrikes inside Syria on Sunday, "targeting ISIS camps and ISIS operatives," Biden said.

The United States will also support Syria through the United Nations to create a new government through a process determined by the Syrian people, Biden said.

"The United States will do whatever we can to support them, including through humanitarian relief, to help restore Syria after more than a decade of war and generational brutality by the Assad family," Biden said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a Sunday statement, echoed the president's sentiment, saying the US "will support international efforts to hold the Assad regime and its backers accountable for atrocities and abuses perpetrated against the Syrian people, including the use of chemical weapons and the unjust detention of civilians such as Austin Tice."

The Syrian people, Blinken added, "finally have reason for hope."

Kaja Kallas, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, called Assad's resignation "a positive and long-awaited development."

"It also shows the weakness of Assad's backers, Russia and Iran," Kallas said in a statement. "Our priority is to ensure security in the region. I will work with all the constructive partners in Syria and in the region."

Geir Pedersen, the UN's Special Envoy for Syria, said in a statement, "Today marks a watershed moment in Syria's history."

How rebels took control of Aleppo

In late November, the coalition of rebel groups launched a surprise offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which traces its origins to the Al Qaeda terrorist network. It has more recently promoted more moderate views.

The rebels quickly took control of Aleppo, one of Syria's largest cities, Hama, and the strategic city of Homs, which sits at an important crossroads linking Damascus to the coast.

Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of HTS, is a Syrian who fought against US occupation in Iraq with Al Qaeda. He is believed to have cut ties with the terrorist organization in 2016 but is still designated a terrorist by the US, which has placed a $10 million bounty on his head.

Al-Jolani has sought to portray himself as a more moderate leader and promoted messages of religious and ethnic inclusivity as HTS pushed toward Damascus. Still, HTS has a reputation as a hardline Islamist faction.

"This victory, my brothers, is a victory for the entire Islamic nation," Al-Jolani said in a speech to his followers this weekend, per a translation by CNN. "This new triumph, my brothers, marks a new chapter in the history of the region."

What Assad's ousting means for Russia and Iran

The collapse of Assad's government could have significant global implications, especially for Russia and Iran, which have been two of Assad's strongest allies.

Moscow operates two major military facilities in Syria — the Hmeimim airbase and the Tartus naval base — which have given its forces crucial access to the Mediterranean Sea and a base to launch operations into Africa.

Losing access to these bases would scupper many of Russian President Vladimir Putin's plans in the region, Zineb Riboua, a research fellow and program manager at the Hudson Institute's Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, wrote on X: "Without a strong Russian military base in Syria, all of Putin's plans collapse."

While Russia intervened to prop up Assad in 2015, its priorities have since shifted to the war in Ukraine, and it had appeared reluctant to divert any significant resources to help Assad this time around.

On Sunday, Russia's foreign ministry said there was no security threat to its military bases in Syria but that they were on high alert.

For Iran, Syria has been part of an important land corridor stretching from Tehran to Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut, helping it support key regional proxies such as the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

"For Iran, Syria is absolutely essential in order to maintain its proxy network," Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, previously told Business Insider.

But Tehran, too, has been distracted by its conflict with Israel, while Hezbollah has been left in disarray after Israel killed its longtime leader and wounded thousands of its fighters with exploding pagers and walkie-talkies.

In a separate post on TruthSocial on Saturday, Trump called on the United States to stay out of the situation in Syria, writing: "Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!"

This story is being updated as the situation unfolds.

• South Korea's president is facing calls from his own party for his impeachment.
• He declared martial law on Tuesday evening, only to backpedal six hours later.
• Yoon tried to arrest top lawmakers during that period, his party's leader said on Friday.

South Korea's president, Yoon Suk Yeol, is facing calls from his own party for his immediate removal after his short-lived declaration of martial law.

Han Dong-hoon, the leader of the conservative People Power Party, told local media on Friday in Seoul that Yoon had ordered the arrest of top lawmakers after he announced martial law.

"Given the newly revealed facts, I believe it is necessary to promptly suspend President Yoon Suk Yeol from his duties to protect the Republic of Korea and its people," Han said, per a translation by the Yonhap news agency.

Han added that he was concerned Yoon would take more "radical" action if he remained in power.

He told local media that leaders had learned on Thursday that Yoon instructed the country's intelligence commander to detain politicians during martial law.

According to Han, Yoon had called them "anti-state" forces.

Yoon had used the same term to describe his political rivals when he made his shock announcement on Tuesday evening, accusing South Korea's opposition of being affiliated with North Korea as justification for martial law.

His declaration, made at around 10:27 p.m. Seoul time, was instantly denounced by Han and the leader of the opposition party, Lee Jae-myung.

They summoned their party members to the National Assembly, where they voted to lift martial law before troops could enter the main hall.

Of the 300-seat National Assembly, 190 members were present that night. They voted unanimously against Yoon's decision. Yoon lifted martial law at about 4:30 a.m. local time.

Impeachment for Yoon looms

Lee's main opposition party, the Democratic Party, has held a majority through 170 seats since the legislative elections in April and has stymied Yoon's parliamentary moves since.

The ruling People Power Party, of which Yoon is a member, holds 108 seats.

Yoon now faces impeachment through a motion filed by the Democratic Party, which must pass a vote in the National Assembly.

Han's ruling party initially stayed out of proceedings and was expected to oppose impeachment. But with support from smaller opposition parties, the Democratic Party only needs eight members of the ruling party to meet the required 200-vote threshhold.

With Han now calling for Yoon's removal, it's more likely those eight votes will come through.

If successful, the motion will suspend the president as a trial against him proceeds in the constitutional court.

Should two-thirds of the court's nine-member council see fit to impeach him, Yoon will be removed, and a replacement must be elected within 60 days.

The South Korean won weakened immediately after Yoon declared martial law to about 1,440 against the US dollar but recovered to 1,420 on Wednesday, a difference of 1.4% from the day before.

• South Korean and Japanese arms dealers are growing almost on pace with Russia's top defense firms.
• New data found that South Korea's and Japan's arms revenues jumped by 39% and 35% respectively.
• The data underscores an aggressive push by Asian firms to fill recent gaps in arms manufacturing.

The top defense manufacturing firms in both South Korea and Japan saw growth rates of nearly 40% in 2023, nearly on pace with that of the top arms dealers in Russia, per a new report.

Data published on Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the top four South Korea-based firms recorded a combined 39% increase in revenue over the year, while the top five Japanese defense firms saw a combined 35% increase.

In comparison, the two top Russian defense enterprises saw a combined 40% revenue increase from 2022 to 2023 and higher revenues. SIPRI attributed the production spike to the huge expenditures required by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The institute analyzed public data on the world's top 100 defense firms by revenue and found that arms revenues across all regions increased by 4.2% in 2023.

Its findings show how rapidly defense industries in Japan and South Korea — two key US allies — have stepped in to fill demand for arms and equipment since the outbreak of recent conflicts like the Ukraine war. The five largest US arms makers top SIPRI's list, but saw slower rates of growth.

Still, Xiao Liang, a researcher at SIPRI, told Business Insider the data doesn't directly translate into military might.

"The true scale of Russia's arms industry is likely a lot larger, so the data presented provides only a general overview and not a detailed representation of the current state of the Russian arms industry," he wrote in an email.

Arms sales take off in South Korea and Japan

South Korean firms, in particular, have caught attention in the last two years for selling billions of dollars worth of artillery in Europe, where it's been in short supply due to Ukraine's dire need for ammo to counter Russia's firepower advantage.

Among the four South Korean companies on the list are industrial heavyweights such as the Hanwha Group and Hyundai Rotem.

"South Korean firms specialize in tanks, artillery, and armored vehicles, with both domestic and international export deals boosting revenue," Liang wrote.

These companies are typically known for producing weapons systems like the K239 Chunmoo rocket artillery system and the K9 howitzer. Poland, for example, purchased 72 K239 Chunmoo systems in April for $1.6 billion; these truck-mounted launchers can fire guided or unguided rockets.

Hanwha Group rose from 42nd place in the world in 2022 to 24th in 2023. It brought in $5.71 billion in arms revenue in 2023, up 52.7% from $3.74 billion in 2022, per SIPRI.

According to SIPRI, much of the Seoul-based conglomerate's arms revenue was driven by its 2023 acquisition of one of South Korea's three biggest shipbuilders, DSME.

Five Japanese firms were listed among the world's top 100 defense firms. They include Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which saw a 23.9% increase in arms revenue to $3.89 billion in 2023, and Fujitsu, which saw a 16.4% increase to $1.85 billion that year.

Liang said Japan's defense industry has benefited from a major increase in Tokyo's military spending policy. "Domestic orders for advanced systems have soared, further driving revenue growth," he said.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, for example, builds submarines and aircraft for Japan's forces, and saw new orders triple in 2023, Liang added.

Russia still leads in absolute figures

Still, the combined arms revenues of all nine Asian firms — about $21 billion — are eclipsed by the $25 billion in 2023 earnings reported by the Russian arms makers that SIPRI analyzed.

The institute didn't account for seven of the Russian enterprises that it listed in the Top 100 for 2022, saying that at this time, their "individual revenue data could not be obtained."

Liang wrote that the Russian defense industry has become increasingly opaque and that two major state-controlled firms — antiaircraft system maker Almaz-Antey and the Tactical Missiles Corporation — were no longer sharing their revenue data.

"Both companies probably have seen a significant rise in their revenue as they produce equipment categories in high demand due to the war such as air defense systems, artillery and missiles," Liang wrote.

SIPRI did cover two Russian state-owned firms: United Shipbuilding Corp and Rostec, a giant defense conglomerate that ranked seventh worldwide and oversees many arms producers.

SIPRI analysts said they normally wouldn't include data from Rostec, but listed it this time because it controls many of the arms manufacturers they could no longer gather data on.

The state-owned entity controls manufacturing for aircraft, electronic warfare systems, helicopters, and battle tanks.

Rostec's arms revenue grew 49.3% in 2023 to $21.7 billion, up from $14.5 billion in 2022, per SIPRI.

Meanwhile, United Shipbuilding Corp, which owns about two dozen shipyards and plants across Russia, paced behind the global revenue growth rate. It earned $3.7 billion in arms revenue in 2023, just 1.9% up from 2022.

• Ukrainian units desperate for drones to hold Russia back are crowdfunding many of their weapons.
• Civilians and veterans have been sponsoring deadly strikes for under $1,000.
• Researchers say it's opened a new era of civilians directly sponsoring war en masse.

With $1 million, Oleksandr Chernyavskiy says he can change the war for him and his comrades.

The enlisted soldier is assigned to a drone prototyping unit with Ukraine's 241st Territorial Defense Brigade — a battle-hardened formation of reservists deployed along the eastern and northern fronts. His unit supplies 11 battalions with new drone designs, mostly cobbled together from commercial parts and Soviet arms. It also makes other weapons, too.

For $80,000, he says his team can completely build a 17-inch drone armed with a rifle — essentially a flying AK-47 or M4. Another prototype, a modified Soviet ZU-23-2 antiaircraft gun, needs $70,000 worth of parts to be fully automated to strike down Russian drones.

Chernyavskiy estimates roughly $1 million in funding would allow his unit to develop home-grown AI-controlled drone swarm tech, primarily using the money to pay software engineers and buy parts.

Much of this work, he said, depends on how much his unit can crowdfund. He ran an NGO before the war and is partly responsible for coordinating and advocating for that money.

"For drones, most funding is from volunteer help, by donors," Chernyavskiy told Business Insider. "When we have government or defense ministry funds, we try to buy regular things like mortars, shells, all connected to ammunition."

Crowdfunding has long been a pillar of Ukraine's war effort, with civilians pitching in for years to send aid supplies, clothing, and cash to the front lines. Low-cost drones, proven to be effective on the modern battlefield, have become one of the hottest commodities among units battling Russian assaults.

A commonly crowdfunded drone, a seven-inch commercial unit that carries a small payload, costs less than $1,000 to build and arm. A typical 155mm artillery shell, meanwhile, costs between $2,500 and $4,000 for Western factories to produce.

Chernyavskiy said that drones can't replace artillery, which can suppress enemy forces, serve as fire support, and hammer front-line positions at range. But drones have their place in this war, as the world has repeatedly seen. With these systems, for around an average of $15,000, his men can take out a Russian tank worth significantly more.

Ukrainian fundraisers like him have formed a robust network that pulls in millions of dollars weekly for drones, working with a mix of local manufacturing lines to turn the cash into precision strike munitions. To keep donors abreast of their work, they report daily with first-person videos of exploding drones slamming into enemy positions and vehicles.

Chernyavskiy said that Russian forces typically can't advance when harassed by drones. "If you can have 100 explosions in one day, it means no Ukrainian will be killed this day," he said. Swarming the air with recon drones also gives Moscow little chance to launch surprise attacks.

Civilian war support at an 'astonishing' scale

But due to availability, there are days when his unit can only deploy five, maybe 10 drones, reducing resistance and allowing Russian troops to get close to Ukrainian trenches and overwhelm them.

Chernyavskiy said the flow of cash from civilian supporters is keeping his men alive.

"I think it's certainly unprecedented," Federico Borsari, a resident fellow who studies technology and drone warfare at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank, said of the current crowdfunding movement.

Borsari said that drones, easy to build and deadly, have changed how civilians can support a war effort en masse. With Ukraine, an individual civilian can now remotely yet directly pay for a hit on an enemy soldier or tank, he said.

"Really, the scale of the rapport is astonishing," Borsari said. "We're talking about hundreds of thousands of drones provided to the Ukrainian military."

Oleksandr Skarlat, a volunteer who has been running a fundraising Telegram channel since the war began, said most of his donors paying for drones are regular civilians sending part of their salaries.

Others are small businesses with cash to spare, he said. Skarlat, a professional swimmer, works as a member of a Telegram network of five fundraising volunteers led by Ukrainian activist Serhii Sternenko. Skarlat told BI he's helped raise $2.5 million for 100,000 drones.

"We started using drones because of the lack of ammunition. It was from a need of striking positions and priority targets in the most effective and cheapest way," he said. Throughout the war, Ukraine has repeatedly struggled with insufficient amounts of ammunition, such as much-need 155mm artillery shells.

In Kyiv, restaurants, cafés, and barber shops often display QR codes for customers to throw in a few dollars for drone production, said Mark J. Lindquist, a former US Air Force analyst now living in Ukraine to crowdfund for local units.

"It has to be in the millions, if not tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, because it's the most effective way for an average citizen to put together a small amount of money and make a huge difference on the battlefield," Lindquist told BI.

Lindquist, who worked as a motivational speaker before leaving for Ukraine in 2022, now flies back to the US regularly to raise money at public events for front-line units.

He estimates that he and his fundraising partners have brought in about $13 million in aid, and he now asks Americans to donate toward civilian vehicles and commercial drones that can be turned into weapons like loitering munitions.

Yet Lindquist is frustrated with donors in the US, whom he says frequently balk at paying for something that can kill.

"Largely, Americans have shied away from things that would drop these bombs you see on Instagram," he said.

Drones aren't always used for deadly ends, though. Chernyavskiy hopes to raise $50,000 to complete a land evacuation drone that can navigate deep forest terrain and retrieve lone Ukrainians guarding trenches.

With the 241st Territorial Brigade low on manpower and guns, Chernyavskiy said soldiers sometimes find themselves stationed alone on the front lines for abnormally long rotations. He said many fear it is a one-way ticket to the trenches.

"If you are injured, no one will help you; you have no chance," he said. "People usually spend one or two days in the trenches. Now they spend half a month. You can go crazy."

A drone that fetches the wounded, or even corpses, raises morale among troops who know that their bodies can still be returned to be honored, Chernyavskiy said.

US and European veterans fueling the crowdfunding effort

Chernyavskiy's unit also receives cash from Americans, often from military veterans willing to chip in anything from lunch money to $15,000 each. He said he's brought about two dozen veterans to the front lines to see his unit's work.

"After they see what is going on, they help much faster," he said with a laugh.

It's a broad effort. Daniel Viksund, a Norwegian veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan as a combat engineer and tank driver, has been coordinating donations to Ukraine, primarily from Scandinavia, since 2022.

He told BI that many of his donors are current and former military members who, after seeing videos of drones in action, sought to send more of them to Ukraine.

"Our main focus is drones. Everybody was doing cars and medical stuff. Army veterans like us, we like to do things and make it happen," Viksund said.

His 20-man nonprofit, Veteran Aid Ukraine, has sent some 500 drones to Kyiv's forces and paid for about 2,500 more. Viksund said videos sent to him from Ukrainian units show those drones have destroyed at least 60 main battle tanks and over 100 armored vehicles.

He's proud of his organization's work in Chasiv Yar, where they sent 200 drones to units defending the embattled city in late spring as US congressional infighting locked up billions in vital aid.

Viksund said Veteran Aid Ukraine alone can't provide nearly enough drones for Kyiv's remote operators. He estimates that they expend 4,000 drones on average a month.

"But when all the small rivers come together, you make a big river," he said.

Russian organizations have also been donating drones for Moscow's units, but not on such a scale.

"You don't necessarily see the same level of grassroots efforts in Russia because they have the state capacity and state resources to marshal the economy toward the war in a different way," said Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the think tank Defense Priorities.

Kavanagh said the crowdfunding effort has been meaningful in filling gaps in Western aid, though it's dwarfed by the sheer might of the traditional arsenals sent to Kyiv.

The US and Europe have collectively sent about $90 billion in military aid to Ukraine, including powerful F-16 fighter jets, long-range missile platforms, and millions of ammunition rounds.

Return on investment in war

Some Western donors and volunteers say that lower-tech drones can make a significant difference for just a fraction of that cost.

One such donor is a wealthy software engineer in the US Mountain West who said that he had spent about $105,000 sending 142 drones to Ukraine, including eight Chinese-made Mavics that cost around $1,700 each and are popular for recon missions.

With six kids at home, he told BI that he's cut back on purchases like upgrading their 2011 GMC Savannah and fixing his couch.

"I just think that if I spend a little less, someone will survive. Someone will have a husband and father," said the software engineer, who asked not to be named out of concern that Russian intelligence services would target him. BI knows his identity and has verified his donations to a Ukrainian platform.

One of his favorite items is a 10-inch drone made from DJI parts that can be converted into a bomber with a six-pound payload.

He said each of these $1,600 drones has a typical lifespan of 50 missions and that, with a minimum hit rate of 33%, delivers at least 16 strikes on Russian targets.

"If you give these guys $100 million, they can win the war for you," he said. A common hope among drone warfare enthusiasts is that with more drones and jammers, Ukraine can effectively slow the Russian advance while exhausting its manpower and equipment.

Chernyavskiy holds on to the dream that when those resources run dry, Ukraine will have an opening to strike back and reclaim territory. Yet he cautioned against thinking that only deploying low-cost drones will win the war.

"For example, if you have fog weather, you can't fly these drones because you can see nothing," Chernyavskiy said. "But artillery does not care about the fog. If they have coordinates, they will fire and destroy whatever is alive in this sector, no problem."

Western donors wish they had more to give

Questions loom for Ukraine's future in this fight. The country continues to face shortages of troops and matériel, persistent Russian advances, and the possibility that the incoming US administration will restrict or cut the critical aid it relies on. But private citizens retain the ability to make a difference, fundraisers say.

Lindquist, the former US Air Force analyst turned fundraiser, said Americans haven't realized how far their money can go if they help fund drones in Ukraine.

"The Ukrainians have come up with a solution to be able to strap a bomb to a $500 drone and take out a $2 million tank," he said.

"If people were to understand that power of drones, we could do what our grandparents did in World War II," he added.

The software engineer in the Mountain West said he's been trying to get his friends to donate, too, but to no avail.

"They'll say they don't want to kill people. Then I ask if they want to buy a tourniquet," he said. "They think it's cool that I'm doing it, but they want me to be the one doing it."

In Ukraine, Chernyavskiy is frustrated, too. But as he says, "feelings change nothing."

"Lack of money, lack of resources. This is the nature of war," Chernyavskiy said.

Yet he stressed his brigade is stretched thin, and that if they run out of drones, the fighting turns to rifle combat. Outnumbered in the trenches, it's a battle the Ukrainians almost always lose, he said.

Last week, he said, a commander who ran one of the drone development projects with him was killed by Russian fire.

"If we have a lack of donors' help, our friends are killed, and then we are killed," he said. "If we can't pay for drones, if we don't have ammunition, we pay for it with lives."

Translation by Sofiia Meleshenko.

• South Korea's president, Yoon Suk-yeol, declared martial law late on Tuesday in a surprise announcement.
• It sparked a night of urgency in Seoul as lawmakers, troops, and protesters raced to parliament.
• Here's what unfolded over the crucial six hours that squashed Yoon's move.

South Korea's president, Yoon Suk-yeol, shocked the nation on Tuesday evening by declaring martial law.

The measure, voted down unanimously by parliament hours later, plunged Seoul into a night of confusion.

The National Assembly building became the epicenter of the early morning's dramatic events, as lawmakers raced to reverse Yoon's decision, military forces tried to enforce martial law, and thousands of residents arrived in protest.

Just before dawn, Yoon rescinded his declaration of martial law, returning rule to the civilian government.

Here's how Yoon's night of short-lived martial law transpired.

10:27 p.m. — Yoon declares martial law

Yoon, a conservative leader who narrowly won the 2022 election, announced his decision in an unannounced broadcast on live TV.

He accused opposition parties of trying to take parliament hostage, saying he was removing pro-North Korean forces in the country.

"I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free constitutional order," he said.

Yoon has been struggling to pass laws because his party's main rival, the Democratic Party, secured a majority in parliament during the legislative elections in April.

South Koreans react with confusion

In the entertainment district of Hongdae, 29-year-old Kim Hongmin was watching the news with his friends.

"It felt unreal. Martial law was something I had only studied as part of Korea's historical events, I never imagined I would actually experience it myself," Kim, a freelance English translator, told Business Insider.

The last time martial law was declared in South Korea was in 1980, when a military dictatorship took over.

10:45 p.m. — Parliament leaders denounce the decision

In an early blow to Yoon's declaration, the leader of his own party, Han Dong-hoon, quickly told local media that the move was "wrong."

"We will block it together with the people," Han said, per the Yonhap news agency.

Yonhap also reported that the opposition leader, Lee Jae-Myung, said Yoon had declared martial law "illegally and unconstitutionally against the people."

10:50 p.m. — Parliament mobilizes to stop Yoon

Both parties issued summons to their members, telling them to convene for an emergency vote.

Lee, who runs the Democratic Party, live-streamed himself on the way to the National Assembly, urging people to protest outside the building.

"Tanks, armored vehicles, and soldiers with guns and swords will rule this country," he said.

In Hongdae, Kim and his friends decided to heed the call to protest, driving to Yeouido, where the National Assembly is located.

"I didn't know what I could do, but I just felt that I had to be there," he told BI. Thousands of others would also make their way to the complex.

11 p.m. — Martial law takes effect

The race was on. Lawmakers were trying to vote quickly against Yoon's decision.

With martial law in action, troops would move to seize control of all political mechanisms.

Photos show that police began to set up a perimeter at the National Assembly building. Protesters started arriving.

The speaker of parliament, Woo Won-shik, said lawmakers would open a session as soon as enough of them were present to hold a vote — 150 assembly members.

11:15 p.m. — Lawmakers jump fences and walls to get inside

The politicians, including Woo, rushed to the National Assembly building. Some had to navigate barricades as protesters shouted for officers to let them through.

Kim, the translator, said that when he arrived, he filmed aides and journalists climbing over fences.

"It turned out that all entrances to the National Assembly were blocked by the police," he said.

Lee, the opposition leader who had been live-streaming his journey to the complex, ended his broadcast after hopping a fence and arriving at his office.

At about 11:40 p.m., veteran lawmaker Park Jie-won wrote on social media that over 100 opposition members had already gathered.

11:45 p.m. — Crowds assemble outside parliament premises

Protesters started to throng the streets outside the National Assembly complex.

"I began shouting: 'Abolish martial law!' It was the only thing I could do," Kim said. "Others joined in and were chanting the same."

Park Minjun, a 27-year-old graduate student who was present, told BI that there seemed to be no central leadership among the crowds.

Those who arrived first were party members and unionists, he said. Other civilians and families would join them in the cold, but only about an hour later.

Before midnight — News emerges that Yoon appointed his martial law commander

Meanwhile, South Korean media broke the news that Yoon had appointed Park An-soo, the army's chief of staff and a four-star general, as the commander overseeing martial law.

Park laid out a series of rules, including full state control of the press, the banning of worker strikes, and the prohibition of rallies.

Notably, he declared that any activities of the National Assembly would have to cease.

12 a.m. — Martial law forces reach the complex

As the National Assembly started to meet its quorum requirement, the first of the martial law forces arrived outside. Three helicopters unloaded armed teams with tactical gear.

Watching the troops pour out of their choppers, Kim recalled the last time martial law had been declared, when soldiers massacred protesters in the Gwangju uprising four decades ago.

"Would the tragic history of soldiers shooting civilians repeat itself?" he said.

A small crowd of protesters and aides had pushed into the complex and stationed themselves at the main entrance of the parliament building.

Scuffling with the arriving military teams, they stalled these forces from entering the main hall for some time.

12:30 a.m. — Troops clash inside the building

Eventually, the troops broke into the building via glass windows. But they were soon met by parliamentary aides, who had blocked corridors to the main voting hall with chairs and desks.

In one tense encounter, a civilian tried to drive back military forces by spraying a fire extinguisher.

Within the voting hall, politicians called for the count to start immediately, but Woo insisted they would follow procedure.

12:45 a.m. — Korean currency dives to its lowest in years

The Korean won began to plunge as soon as Yoon declared martial law and now had reached its weakest, at about 1,442 against the US dollar.

12:48 a.m. — Lawmakers vote to lift martial law

Led by Woo, the National Assembly officially began the vote on reversing martial law. At that time, 190 of the assembly's 300 members were present.

In less than a minute, every single person voted to rescind Yoon's declaration.

From the count, it's clear that those who voted to strike down Yoon's decision included more than just the opposition — which has 175 seats.

1 a.m. — Troops leave the building

Heckled by aides and protesters, the troops departed the building almost immediately after the measure passed.

Almost immediately after the vote, the won recovered to about 1,420 against the dollar, or about 1.4% weaker than Tuesday.

1:10 a.m. — Protesters linger

Kim said that as news of the successful vote reached the protesters, cheers broke out among the crowd.

"I was conflicted, but I saw hope," he said. He and some 4,000 other protesters, including Park, stayed outside out of fear martial law would still continue.

4:26 a.m. — Yoon relents

Six hours after his shock announcement, Yoon acceded to the National Assembly's vote and declared an end to martial law.

4:40 a.m. — Martial law is lifted and troops withdraw

Yoon's martial law was officially rescinded by an emergency Cabinet meeting, and dispatched forces returned to their bases.

With the threat of martial law receding, protesters like Kim and Park decided to return home.

8 a.m. — South Koreans wake up to an uncertain future

For many Seoul residents like Lee Tae-hoon, news of martial law — declared and then rescinded — arrived only in the morning.

Lee, a 28-year-old researcher at a university, said he relies on his friends to get his news and he woke up to texts about what transpired the night before.

"After today, I'll probably take voting more seriously," Lee told BI. He did not vote in the last election, which Yoon won.

Despite the reckoning the country just faced, Lee said life had moved on quickly. He received a text from his boss not to show up to work, but said he was on deadline for a project and clocked in anyway.

"It looks like everyone came to work as normal, seeing that the carpark was full," Lee said.

What happens next?

"It is not clear what Yoon was trying to achieve," said Ellen Kim, a senior fellow at the Korea Chair for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, with regard to Yoon's decision to implement martial law.

"He may have thought he did not have much choice to break the political paralysis of his government created by the opposition parties that hold a majority in the National Assembly," she told BI.

The president now faces motions of impeachment filed by the opposition. His party leader, Han, urged that the defense minister also be removed over reports that the latter suggested the idea of martial law to Yoon.

Several senior aides to the president have also offered to resign, per South Korean media.

Kim, the CSIS fellow, said Seoul is already in a tense position internationally, with North Korea engaging in the Ukraine war and with Donald Trump soon taking the US presidency.

"The political vacuum created by Yoon's departure will create a huge political instability in South Korea," she said of the possibility that Yoon steps down.

Meanwhile, protesters like Kim, the translator, say they're not done. Kim is joining a protest at Gwanghwamun on Wednesday evening and Saturday to call for Yoon's impeachment. Counter-protesters have also taken to the streets to defend Yoon.

Seoul's younger generation, Kim said, has lived through tragedies like the Itaewon Halloween crowd crush, which sent Yoon's popularity plummeting.

"We share a collective sense of grief and urgency," he said.

Correction: December 4, 2024 — This story was updated to clarify the status of several senior aides to South Korea's president. The aides were widely reported to have offered to resign; it's unclear whether those resignations were approved or whether they have left their roles.

• Russia has been trying to get its big social media accounts to register with the government.
• But Kremlin-affiliated and pro-war accounts aren't playing ball, independent Russian media reported.
• A new analysis found that only 10 of the top 82 political pro-government Telegram channels had registered.

Nearly 90% of Russia's top pro-war Telegram channels have been ignoring a government directive to identify themselves in an official registry, per an analysis by independent media outlet Vertska.

The findings come four months after Russian leader Vladimir Putin signed a decree on August 8 for all owners of social media channels with 10,000 or more subscribers to disclose their data to the federal telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor.

Should they fail to do so by January 1, 2025, the law says these channels will be blocked from advertising or raising funds from subscribers. The decree came into effect on November 1.

Vertska reported on Monday that it analyzed the top 100 Russian political channels on Telegram and found 82 of them that were pro-government.

According to Vertska, of those 82 pro-government channels, 72 had not registered with Roskomnadzor less than a month before the deadline.

These include the Kremlin-affiliated blogger Rybar, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and Operation Z, a group of war correspondents and bloggers.

Politicians such as Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council, and Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow's mayor, were also among the top 100 political channels but have not registered, per Vertska.

Notably, the Russian Defense Ministry's channel is also not registered, per Vertska.

In an analysis published on Monday, the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War wrote that these pro-war channels may have failed to register "possibly because they are already Kremlin-aligned and do not threaten the Kremlin's deserved control over public discourse in Russia."

But the move was originally unpopular with pro-Kremlin military bloggers, who often maintain anonymity and sometimes post analyses and criticism of Russian war leaders.

Some top voices said the decision would dull Russian analyses on Telegram, while others complained of "draconian" censorship and a possible decrease in war news shared via the platform.

"Russian Telegram will become censored and uninteresting," wrote Two Majors, a popular channel with nearly 1.2 million subscribers.

Still, Vertska reported that several popular bloggers have registered with Roskomnadzor, including Boris Rozhin, who runs the channel "Colonel Cassad," and Dmitry Nikotin.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia's State Duma, runs the most popular registered channel. He is the country's eighth-most popular channel that discusses politics.

Another Vertska analysis of the 32 top Telegram channels posting solely about the Ukraine war found that only eight, or a quarter of the total, were registered.

Roskomnadzor did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Putin's decree on popular channels, which applies to platforms like VKontakte, Telegram, and TikTok, comes as Moscow has sought to exercise more control over mass communications channels since the onset of the Ukraine war.

Russia has already blocked Western platforms like Facebook and X and has repeatedly been reported to have throttled connectivity to YouTube.

In October, it also blocked the messaging and call platform Discord, sparking outcry from commentators who said the gaming comms tool was used by Russian units to coordinate drone operations in Ukraine.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pushing this week for NATO to invite Ukraine to join its alliance.
• He said on Sunday that NATO's self-defense pact wouldn't have to apply to Ukraine's occupied territory.
• His proposals come amid anticipation that Trump's incoming team will stall Ukraine's NATO accession.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that his country could join NATO without the alliance's collective self-defense agreement applying to its territory occupied by Russia.

That suggestion means that Article 5, which states that an attack on one member state is an attack on all, wouldn't automatically drag the rest of the alliance into war with Moscow if Ukraine joins.

Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said that any invitation for Ukraine to join NATO still has to recognize all of its territory as Ukrainian, including areas occupied by Russia.

He said his reason was that NATO/the alliance couldn't extend an invitation to only a "part of the territory of Ukraine," per Ukrainian media.

Zelenskyy added that Ukraine "would never accept" an accession plan that says otherwise.

"But we understand that Article 5, when you're a member of NATO, cannot apply to the entire territory of Ukraine during wartime, as countries are against the risks of being drawn into the war," he said.

Such a proposal could essentially split Ukraine into two regions as far as NATO is concerned. The region that includes all of Ukraine's current territory, like Kyiv and Kharkiv, would have to be defended. There would be no obligation for the rest, which is the Ukrainian territory seized by Russia in the east.

Ukraine launched a campaign this week to pressure NATO into extending an invitation to Kyiv, a move the alliance already promised in 2008 would eventually happen. NATO has not provided a specific timeline for when that invitation might be extended.

On Friday, Zelenskyy told Sky News that he would be willing to freeze the front lines if whatever territory Ukraine still holds is placed under the "NATO umbrella."

"If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we should take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control," he said at the time.

This indicates that Ukraine would cede its occupied land, at least temporarily, in exchange for a cease-fire with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

It's a concept that Zelenskyy has adamantly rejected before.

In April, he called a land swap for peace a "very primitive idea." Discussion of such a plan emerged that month because of reports that President-elect Donald Trump was thinking of championing it. He was still running for president at the time.

Now, the Ukrainian president is recalibrating his conditions for NATO membership. This reconsideration comes as US support for Ukraine sits on the cusp of extreme change. His renewed effort to join the alliance comes amid anticipation that Trump and his advisors would pressure Kyiv into negotiating a quick end to the fighting while withholding membership indefinitely.

There are, however, fears that Russia may renege on a cease-fire — as Putin has done several times in the past — or that such a deal could create a split of Ukraine reminiscent of Cold-War Germany.

Many who want an immediate resolution to the fighting in Ukraine hope that it will relieve the economic strain the war has brought to the globe.

Ukraine is a major supplier of corn and wheat, and while a US-led corridor has allowed it to start selling much of its accumulated stock, its exports are estimated to take several years to hit pre-war levels.

Meanwhile, European reliance on Russian energy has led to a complicated situation, where Ukraine is still allowing Russian gas to transit through its borders to Western customers despite the war.

That arrangement, agreed upon in 2019, is set to expire at the end of the year. Both Moscow and Kyiv have said they're not ready to renew the contract, though there is talk from Ukraine of extending it.

Several European countries, including Slovakia and Hungary, expressed concern that their energy markets could be skewered by a nonrenewal, though many are starting to replace their gas by buying from the US and Canada instead. Hungary, in particular, hopes a pipeline through Turkey will help to sustain its supply of Russian gas.

• A member of China's highest military body is being slapped with a corruption investigation.
• Adm. Miao Hua is one of six members of an exclusive commission led by Xi that oversees China's military.
• He's the latest in a string of high-ranking defense officials to be purged from China's military.

A top-ranking admiral in China's Central Military Commission — the highest body commanding its forces — has been placed under investigation, the country's defense ministry said on Thursday.

Adm. Miao Hua, who's in charge of the Political Work department, was suspended and is being probed for "serious violations of discipline," said ministry spokesperson Wu Qian at a press briefing.

That accusation usually refers to corruption.

An investigation into a commission member like Miao is significant because the six-member committee, helmed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping himself, is the top body that oversees China's military forces.

However, Miao is not one of the commission's vice-chairmen, who are usually considered China's strategic leaders. Two People's Liberation Army generals, Zhang Youxia and He Weidong, hold those positions.

Xi, who has consolidated much of China's decision-making power under himself in the last 10 years, is the commission's highest authority as chairman.

Miao, 69, was an army political commissar based in Fujian in the 1990s and early 2000s, about the same time Xi was governor of the province.

The overlap between their rising careers led the two to be seen as having worked closely together. Two years after Xi became paramount leader in 2012, Miao was transferred to the PLA Navy to be its top political commissar.

The announcement of the probe into Miao comes as The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Adm. Dong Jun, China's defense minister, was also placed under investigation. The report cited unnamed US officials.

That would make Dong the third officer involved with the defense ministership to be implicated in a string of corruption probes. His two predecessors, Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe, were found guilty in June of taking bribes.

Beijing has denied the FT's findings, with a foreign ministry spokesperson dismissing them as "chasing wind and shadows."

Unlike those in the Central Military Commission, the defense minister holds a mostly diplomatic and symbolic role and has no real operational command over China's forces.

CNN reported that Miao "is seen as a political patron of Dong," with both men having served in the PLA Navy.

In China, top officials are almost always found guilty in corruption investigations, though some have received reduced sentences.

Two vicechairmen of the Central Military Commission have been investigated before, but only after they exited the commission. Both were in the top-ranking body until 2012 when Xi rose to power.

The probes into the careers of the pair — Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou — were launched in 2014 and 2015.

Since his beginning as paramount leader, Xi has championed a sweeping crackdown against rampant corruption in China's central and local governments.

It has more recently involved purges in the military, including the ousting last year of several high-level generals and officials. The push has coincided with Xi's heavy emphasis on modernizing China's military and catching up in strength with US forces.