WORLD BRIEFING: February 20, 2024

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny, said she will continue her late husband's work. "I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny. I will continue to fight for our country. And I call on you to stand with me. To share not only the grief and the endless pain that has enveloped us and won't leave us. I ask you to share with me the rage. Rage, anger, hatred for those who dare to kill our future. ... It is not shameful to do little, it is shameful to do nothing. It is shameful to let yourself be intimidated," she stated - Nexta

The family of Alexei Navalny have reportedly been told his body will not be released for two weeks. His mother was informed it was being held for "chemical analysis", a representative for Navalny said. There has been no confirmation of the whereabouts of the body from Russian authorities, while efforts to locate it have been repeatedly shut down. In a video on Monday, Yulia Navalnaya alleged his body was being kept until traces of poisoning by the nerve agent Novichok had disappeared - BBC.

A steep rise in malnutrition among children and pregnant and breastfeeding women in the Gaza strip poses grave threats to their health, according to a comprehensive new analysis released by the Global Nutrition Cluster. As the war in the Gaza Strip enters its 20th week, food and safe water have become incredibly scarce and diseases are rife, compromising women and children’s nutrition and immunity and resulting in a surge of acute malnutrition.

Local councils in Britain have called for urgent review of funding for Ukrainian refugees amid alarm that 9,000 have reported as homeless and many more are needing longer-term support – with no sign of the war ending after two years. The U.K. government announced on Sunday that it would extend by another 18 months the three-year visas of Ukrainians who escaped the war. The move was welcomed by councils, MPs and others who had urged the government to resolve the issue of visas expiring in March 2025, with many facing anxiety and poor mental health as a result of uncertainty over their future work or study. However, councils are still facing huge pressure to accommodate refugees presenting as homeless as well as helping those who want to move on from their sponsor hosts, as the second anniversary of the war approaches this week - Guardian

Videos purporting to show Ukrainians in Sudan have been circulating for months. Some appear to be of kamikaze drones striking buildings in Khartoum, the capital. Others allegedly show Ukrainian snipers or commandos conducting raids. The accumulating evidence, open-source investigators say, suggests that a small team of Ukrainian special forces is fighting on the side of the national army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (saf). Some Western diplomats and sources close to the saf agree. Ukraine and America neither confirm nor deny the allegations. Ukraine may have several goals in Sudan. First, it appears to want to disrupt the flow of gold from facilities reportedly operated by Russia’s Wagner mercenary group. Second, Ukraine may have used Sudan as a transit stop to get weapons from other countries. Sudan itself may have also supplied munitions. Last, targeting Russian forces anywhere in the world sends a message. “It would be the right thing to hunt down the mercenaries in Africa,” says Alexander Khara of the Centre for Defence Strategies, a Kyiv-based think-tank. “To make them pay for the genocidal war in Ukraine.” - The Economist

On Monday Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Cuba. He will then travel to Venezuela, and lastly to Brazil to attend a gathering of Foreign Ministers representing the G20 where he and Antony Blinken, United States Secretary of State, are reported to be planning a meeting.

Vladimir Putin's regime is "running out of fuel," and if the Russian president continues to burn through his reserves of oil and gas money, ordinary people will become a threat to his power, according to Aleksei Miniailo, a Russian opposition activist based in Moscow who argues that Putin's grip on power is less steadfast than it seems. In an article for Foreign Affairs in December headlined, "Don't Give Up on a Better Russia," Miniailo made the case that there are groups in the country that want a more democratic future. This week, in the wake of the death of prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Miniailo told NPR that democracy is still achievable for Russia, and that Putin's crackdown on dissent won't change that. As much as it is dramatic — or even tragic, as in case with Alexei's assassination — it is not unexpected, not something that turns the table," he said.

This review is reprinted with the author’s permission from his World Briefing blog.

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