Russia’s Defeat & America’s Problem | What If Bolsonaro Won’t Go? | How Does Underwater Sabotage Work?, and more

How Does Underwater Sabotage Work?  (Economist)
In recent years, Western officials have grown increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of undersea cables, which are estimated to carry 95% of the world’s international digital data. “We are now seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of undersea cables that I don’t believe we have ever seen,” warned the commander of NATO submarine forces in 2017, adding that “Russia is clearly taking an interest in NATO…undersea infrastructure.” This January the head of Britain’s armed forces noted a “phenomenal increase in Russian submarine and underwater activity” over the previous two decades, with a particular threat to cables.
Russia has various means of targeting underwater infrastructure. One threat comes from the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, known by its Russian acronym GUGI, which is separate from the navy and reports directly to the Russian ministry of defense. GUGI has a variety of spy ships and specialist submarines which can work at extreme depths. They can deploy divers (known as hydronauts), mini-submarines or underwater drones. In 2019 a fire aboard the Losharik, one of GUGI’s mini-submarines, killed 14 Russians in the Barents Sea—that they were all officers indicated the specialist nature of the organization’s work.

With Winter Coming, Europe Is Walking Off a Cliff  (Brenda Shaffer, Foreign Policy)
Facing the worst energy crisis since World War II as the cold-weather heating season starts, Europe continues to dither. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has presented a series of new European Union energy policies, including planned price caps, additional taxes on energy producers, establishment of a new European hydrogen bank, and new support for electric vehicles. European Union member states, meanwhile, are nationalizing utilities, setting electricity prices, and subsidizing consumers. These EU policies do not represent a significant departure from the policies that got the continent into the energy mess in the first place.
The fundamental problem is that Europe is still not facing the sources of its energy security crisis, preferring to blame outside forces for its current predicament. 

Brazil Faces ‘Moment of Truth’ With Upcoming Election  (Christina Lu, Foreign Policy)
As Brazil’s presidential election looms, there are widespread fears that current President Jair Bolsonaro will borrow tactics from former U.S. President Donald Trump’s playbook in the likely event that he loses his reelection bid.
His main challenger—and the favorite to win—is former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, widely known as Lula, a leftist leader who has maintained a steady lead in the polls. As Lula’s popularity grew, Bolsonaro appeared to lay the groundwork to contest an unfavorable outcome by questioning voting machines, engaging the military, and making unfounded claims that government workers could “manipulate election results.”
As Lula took a commanding lead in the polls, Bolsonaro urged his supporters to prepare to take radical action in the event of an election loss. “There’s a new type of thief, the ones who want to steal our liberty,” he said in June, adding that “if necessary, we will go to war.”
In recent months, violence has gripped Brazil, and more than two-thirds of Brazilians said they are afraid of facing attacks over political differences, according to the polling organization Datafolha. 
This rise in violence as well as Bolsonaro’s efforts to cast doubt on the country’s electoral systems has further fueled uncertainty over what could happen after the election. 

What If Bolsonaro Won’t Go?  (Oliver Stuenkel, Foreign Affairs)
Days ahead of Brazil’s October 2 presidential election, the country is facing the most serious challenge to its democracy since its inception 37 years ago. President Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain, triumphed in 2018 amid a wave of anti-establishment sentiment but is now trailing in the polls in his showdown against former President Luiz Inácio da Silva, or Lula, as he is universally known. Confronted with probable defeat, Bolsonaro has made unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud and publicly insists that the only way the opposition can prevent him from winning a second term is by stealing the election.

China’s Road Not Taken(Julian Gewirtz, Foreign Affairs)
On January 18, 2005, tucked away just above a weather report on page four of People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was a three-line notice reporting on the death of an elderly man: “Comrade Zhao Ziyang suffered from long-term diseases of the respiratory system and the cardiovascular system and had been hospitalized multiple times, and following the recent deterioration of his condition, he was unable to be rescued and died on January 17 in Beijing at the age of 85.”
A casual reader of the newspaper would certainly be forgiven for not noticing the item.

Uganda Rules Out Ebola Lockdown (AFP / Nation)
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday ruled out imposing a lockdown to contain the highly contagious Ebola virus, saying the country had the capacity to contain the outbreak. Authorities in the East African nation declared an outbreak in the central district of Mubende last week after the country reported its first fatality from the virus since 2019. The caseload stood at 24 with five confirmed deaths, Museveni told a televised press briefing. Some 19 people classified as probable cases had also died, he added, explaining that they were buried before they could be tested for infection.

Felicien Kabuga Played Key Role in Rwanda Genocide, Prosecutors Tell Court  (AFP / Nation)
Rwandan tycoon Felicien Kabuga played a “substantial” role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi that shocked the world, prosecutors have said at the opening of his trial in The Hague. Once one of Rwanda’s richest men, the 87-year-old Kabuga used his vast wealth to set up hate media that urged ethnic Hutus to kill rival Tutsi “snakes” and supplied the murderous Interahamwe militia with machetes, the prosecution said. The wheelchair-bound Kabuga himself refused to appear for his trial at the UN’s International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals on Thursday due to a dispute over his lawyer.

Argentine State-Run Miners Launch First-Time Lithium Project  (Reuters)
Argentine officials announced this week that the country’s state energy company will begin exploration at its own first lithium mine next month. Argentina currently produces around 8 percent of global lithium, while neighboring Chile produces around 22 percent, according to Reuters. Private and international companies already operate an estimated 20 other projects in Argentina.
While prices for some globally traded commodities such as oil and copper have fallen in recent months after peaking in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, lithium prices remain high. As of Sept. 28, the price of lithium carbonate remains around double its level at the start of the year.