Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Chinese military exercises near Taiwan, U.S. diplomatic efforts with Russia and Ukraine, and Israeli demands for the release of Hamas-held hostages.
‘Blatant Provocation’
Taiwan dispatched sea, land, and air forces on Wednesday in response to unannounced Chinese “live-fire exercises” in an area about 40 nautical miles off the coast of the island’s southern cities of Kaohsiung and Pingtung. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said the 32 deployed aircraft were part of a “shooting training” that was unrelated to foreign affairs. But the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said the demarcated zone overlapped with several shipping lanes in the southern part of the Taiwan Strait and fell near Taiwan’s largest port. Taiwan also has air and naval bases in Kaohsiung and Pingtung.
“This move not only caused a high degree of danger to the safety of international flights and vessels at sea, but is also a blatant provocation to regional security and stability,” the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said. The ministry also asserted that Beijing’s recent actions “prove that China is the only and biggest threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the Indo-Pacific region.”
China has ramped up its military activities around Taiwan in recent years to assert its sovereignty claim over the island, including with several rounds of full-scale military drills. Exercises such as Wednesday’s, which Beijing calls “combat readiness patrols,” now occur near Taiwan about every 10 days. Last week, China also conducted live-fire drills near Australia and Vietnam with little prior notice, resulting in a disruption to some commercial flights.
China’s Maritime Safety Administration usually issues a navigational warning ahead of such water or airspace exercises, but in December 2024, China launched major exercises without advance notice; Taiwanese authorities said that Wednesday’s drills were also unannounced.
Beijing’s latest military activity came one day after Taiwan dispatched three vessels to detain the Chinese-crewed Hong Tai 58, which is suspected of severing a subsea telecommunications cable serving Taiwan’s Penghu Islands earlier this week. Taipei fears that such “gray-zone harassment” could be an effort to hinder communication links in a future attempt to blockade or seize Taiwan.
A Chinese-owned cargo ship was also suspected of cutting a subsea cable northeast of the island in January, prompting Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo to announce shortly thereafter that he was charging Taipei’s navy with assisting the coast guard in intercepting future suspicious activity.
Senior Chinese leadership has continued to assert its sovereignty over Taiwan. Beijing must “firmly grasp the right to dominate and take the initiative in cross-strait relations, and unswervingly push forward the cause of reunification of the motherland,” said Wang Huning, the Chinese Communist Party’s fourth-ranked leader, during annual talks on Taiwan this week.
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What We’re Following
High-level U.S. dialogue. U.S. and Russian officials will convene in Istanbul on Thursday to discuss technical issues related to restoring Moscow’s and Washington’s respective diplomatic missions and consulates in each other’s countries. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday that the talks will focus on fomenting better conditions for Russian diplomats in the United States and vice versa before they move onto more ambitious goals, such as the possibility of lucrative business ventures and ending the war in Ukraine. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said that no political or security issues, including Ukraine, would be on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting.
This will be the second high-level meeting between U.S. and Russian diplomats in recent weeks, after Saudi Arabia hosted talks on Feb. 18 with Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among others.
Thursday’s meeting is scheduled a day before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to visit the White House to sign a rare earth minerals deal with U.S. President Donald Trump. Senior Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that the two sides have agreed on a broad framework that Kyiv hopes will ensure the continued flow of U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
“It is going to be a very big agreement on rare earths and other things. It has all been worked out,” Trump said, adding that they will also discuss ending the conflict. It is unclear what the agreement’s details entail, but Zelensky has previously rejected Trump’s proposal for the United States to own roughly $500 billion worth of profits from the minerals as compensation for U.S. wartime assistance.
Zelensky said on Wednesday that the framework deal is “a beginning” but that its “success will depend on our talk with President Trump, if I understand the broader picture that he sees, if I understand this is all a part of broader security guarantees for Ukraine.” Meanwhile, Trump said during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, “I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much. We’re going to have Europe do that.”
Israeli hostages mourned. Israel held a funeral procession on Wednesday for three released hostages who have become symbols of Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Shiri Bibas and her sons Ariel and Kfir were taken from a kibbutz in southern Israel; at the time of their kidnapping, Ariel was 4 years old and Kfir was 9 months old, making him the youngest hostage held in Gaza. Hamas has blamed an Israeli airstrike for killing the three hostages, but Israeli officials said evidence on the children’s bodies suggest that they were killed by their captors “with their bare hands.”
On Wednesday, mediators announced a new hostage release milestone: the return of four killed Israelis in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Israel was supposed to free around 620 Palestinians on Saturday in return for the last living hostages scheduled to be freed during the cease-fire’s first phase. But Israel delayed their release, saying the Palestinians would only be returned once Hamas stops staging “humiliating ceremonies” during the handoffs.
The militant group has released its hostages amid massive armed, masked crowds, arguing that they “reflect [their] humane and dignified treatment.” But on Tuesday, Hamas agreed to hand over the coffins without another release ceremony for the promised prisoners, some of whom have been convicted of deadly attacks against Israelis.
Nationwide blackout. Chile declared a state of emergency on Tuesday after a massive power outage plunged 90 percent of the country into darkness. Locals reported stranded commuters, water shortages, and offline cell service, forcing Interior Minister Carolina Tohá to issue a mandatory nighttime curfew until 6 a.m. local time on Wednesday to “ensure people’s safety.”
According to the National Electrical Coordinator, a disruption had occurred in a high-voltage backbone transmission line, causing a long-distance chain reaction of overloads and plant shutdowns. The cause of such a disruption remains unclear, though authorities have ruled out a cyberattack.
“What happened today is outrageous,” Chilean President Gabriel Boric said. “It’s unacceptable that one or several companies impact the everyday life of millions of Chileans.”
By midnight, power had returned to most residents. But the full effect of such an outage, including lost business and suspended operations at the world’s largest copper mine, is still to be seen.
Odds and Ends
Colombian authorities arrested a man at Rafael Núñez International Airport on Tuesday for attempting to smuggle around $10,000 worth of cocaine into the Netherlands. His tactic: Shove more than 400 doses of the drug in a wig. Local police had to cut off the disguise to confiscate the 19 illicit capsules. It is unclear whether the wig’s return policy covers forced removal.