Midweek: Syria is recovering. Trump's dubious proposal on Gaza. Brutal deportations. 31-year-old Lukashenko

Threatening neighboring countries, openly considering annexation of foreign land, and treating immigrants inhumanely—Trump’s slogan "Make America Great Again" seems to have taken on a new meaning: "Make America Russia." While he engages in these controversial activities at the White House and contemplates redrawing world maps, a Chinese startup has shocked major U.S. corporations, causing their stock prices to plummet.  

In the Middle East—long considered a testing ground for Trump’s geopolitical maneuvers—the situation is showing signs of stabilization. The prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel continues smoothly, and Gazans are gradually returning to their devastated homes. However, Trump’s decision to resume lethal arms supplies to Israel raises concerns about the long-term stability of the region. Additionally, his proposal to relocate Gaza’s population to Jordan or Egypt indefinitely has sparked significant controversy.  

Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe, there are glimpses of optimism. Media reports suggest that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could come to an end by spring, potentially bringing a long-awaited resolution for Kyiv. In response, the EU is ramping up pressure on Russia by preparing a new package of economic sanctions.  

Trump is taking a cue from Putin

Since Trump officially took office, he has yet to take any positive steps that would improve the country's development and its reputation in the outside world. Small things like renaming the Gulf of Mexico to America, renaming Denali, the highest peak in North America in Alaska, to McKinley, and renaming the English Channel to the Strait of America by Trump's close advisor Elon Musk have been the most visible actions of the Trump administration to date. The rest of the new administration's work has only caused chaos on the mainland. In particular, Trump's ruthless deportation campaign has started very painfully. Immigrants who do not have legal status in the "Dreamland" are being "swept" out of the country, stripped of their dignity. In a short period of time, several Latin American countries have accepted their citizens who were returned in handcuffs on US military planes. Guatemala and Brazil are among them. However, this expulsion of migrants who were in the US illegally has met with serious opposition from some countries. Mexico and Colombia have not allowed US military planes to land on their territory. This led to the outbreak of a "trade war" between Washington and Bogota on January 26. Trump threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Colombian President Gustavo Petro's exports to the US in response to this decision. Trump's punishment was not limited to tariffs, but also included a number of sanctions on Colombian officials. Petro, in turn, ordered officials to impose a similar tariff on US goods. Within hours, Trump himself, on the Truth Social platform, and Petro on X, waged a heated battle. However, in the evening it was announced that an agreement had been reached between the two sides. The White House has announced that Colombia has approved Trump's unconditional acceptance of deported migrants in exchange for no tariff hikes.

"The government of Colombia has approved all of President Trump's conditions, including accepting all illegal migrants deported by US military aircraft without restrictions and without delay," the document said.

But Trump’s threats to Latin America don’t end there. After Colombia, Honduras is now in his sights. The Trump administration announced plans to deport tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from the U.S. to Honduras, labeling the country as a major hub for illegal immigrants heading to the U.S. In addition, Honduras was threatened with a 25 percent tariff. In response, Honduran President Xiomara Castro warned Trump to reconsider his stance on relations with the U.S. Castro, who had been threatened with tariffs and sanctions if Honduras refused to accept deported immigrants, issued a statement with a pointed appeal:

“The U.S. government somehow forgets that they have military bases in Honduras. They’ve been here for decades and they pay nothing for it. If the U.S. government is pursuing a hostile policy towards us, then their military presence on our territory makes no sense.”

For context, Honduras is home to the Soto Cano Air Base, one of the U.S.’s most important military facilities in Central America. The U.S. has used this base in the past for military operations targeting Cuba and Venezuela. It’s clear that Trump isn’t interested in fostering equal relations with countries in the region. Through these actions, he’s exhibiting the same imperialist mentality as his “friend” in Eurasia—Putin. No one can be sure whether the pressure he’s applying on Colombia will stop there. Tomorrow, it could spill over to Honduras or other neighboring countries, with his efforts perhaps yielding favorable outcomes for him. So far, Trump’s deportation campaign, accompanied by threats of tariffs, has been successfully tested with Colombia. But his further actions may directly threaten the territorial integrity of certain countries. He’s shown he’s ready to battle Denmark for Greenland, and even challenge Panama’s sovereignty over the Panama Canal—whether economically or militarily. In short, Trump, who has no qualms about demeaning immigrants, eyeing neighboring lands, or appearing as an invader, seems to be becoming more like Putin and his Russia every day. He’s no longer on the path to “Make America Great Again,” but rather, to turn it into Russia.

DeepSeek – is democracy no longer the basis of development?

While US President Donald Trump is focused on the above-mentioned scandals, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup has dealt a crushing blow to many US tech giants. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this was the most unexpected event of the past week. The fact is that after the Chinese-developed DeepSeek artificial intelligence system showed that it is more efficient and cheaper than ChatGPT, shares of Western tech giants began to decline sharply. According to reports, during the trading day on January 27, shares of chip manufacturer Nvidia fell by almost 17 percent. This decline led to a decrease in the company's market capitalization by more than $ 600 billion. This is said to be the largest daily loss in history. Nvidia's competitors, including Marvell, Broadcom, Micron, and TSMC, also suffered significant losses. Meta, Alphabet, and Google were among those hit by DeepSeek. The decline also affected Oracle, Vertiv, Constellation, NuScale, and other data center companies. According to the New York Post, the US and European tech giants lost a combined $1 trillion in one day.

“A successful DeepSeek could revive investor interest in China’s undervalued AI companies and offer an alternative growth story,” the report said.

DeepSeek was founded by Liang Wenfeng, a Chinese billionaire and head of the High-Flyer investment fund. The Chinese company DeepSeek, which competes with American tech giants, was founded two years ago and employs only 200 people. For comparison, OpenAI has been around for a decade and has more than 4,000 employees and a capital of more than $6.5 billion. The DeepSeek R1 artificial intelligence application has become the most downloaded free application on the Apple App Store in the US, UK, and China. According to the company, the new chatbot works on cheaper chips and a smaller database. The artificial intelligence assistant is based on the open-source DeepSeek-V3 model, and, according to researchers, it was developed for less than $6 million. This is significantly cheaper than the billions of dollars spent on similar developments by competitors. However, since DeepSeek is a Chinese startup, it has censorship on a number of issues that are contrary to the interests of China. For example, if you ask it a question about whether Taiwan is a full-fledged subject of international law, it will first prepare to answer, but then an apology will appear on the screen, asking "cannot answer this and talk about other things." However, DeepSeek does not have very strict censorship. The chatbot answers questions about the Uyghurs in detail, albeit with some restrictions. Now let's move on to the main part of the issue. Many questions have been raised under the pretext of DeepSeek. One of them is whether this application represents a victory of Chinese authoritarianism over US democracy. Until this application dramatically shifted the stock market, the United States' leadership in the field of artificial intelligence had never been questioned. The fact that DeepSeek was developed for Chinese users at a cost several hundred times lower than similar applications in the US sent a serious signal to Silicon Valley, the world's center of technology and innovation. Against the backdrop of these events, many experts have noted that it remains a mystery how a global breakthrough like DeepSeek was developed in a large authoritarian regime like China.

It is clear that China's economic and technological success will long be a source of debate among scholars and political analysts about whether democracy is a key factor in development. DeepSeek, against the backdrop of events that have caused billions of dollars in losses for companies in the United States, has drawn attention to this question. On January 27, US President Donald Trump announced at an event in Florida that he intends to increase tariffs on computer chips imported from abroad. Frankly, Trump's words about the policy of increasing tariffs are becoming increasingly ridiculous, as he can offer nothing but the suggestion of higher tariffs as a solution to international challenges. Trump explains this approach as an attempt to bring manufacturing back to the United States. At the same time, he wants to encourage domestic manufacturing by calling on Congress to reduce the corporate income tax rate for companies that manufacture goods in the United States, from the current 21 percent to 15 percent.

“We need to bring manufacturing back to our country. You know, we used to build one ship a day. Now we can't do that. It's all gone to other places and other countries. We protect our people, our companies, and our country with tariffs. If you want to stop paying taxes or tariffs, you have to build your factories here in America. And that will be at a record level,” Trump said.

Trump wants to destroy Palestine

Since the ceasefire began, there have been several prisoner and prisoner exchanges between Israel and Hamas. 114 Palestinians released under the ceasefire agreement have arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah. In addition to those sent to Ramallah, 70 were sent to Egypt and 16 to the Gaza Strip. In response, on January 25, Hamas handed over four Israeli women held in the Gaza Strip to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross. All of them are military personnel who were captured by Hamas during an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. They were received by Israeli army soldiers. In total, they spent 477 days in captivity. The girls were Israeli intelligence officers. They also had “souvenirs” from Hamas with them. On January 19, the first exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners took place. Hamas released three Israeli women in Gaza's Saraya Square and handed them over to the International Committee of the Red Cross. As part of the agreement, Israel released 90 Palestinian prisoners on the night of January 20. Of the 97 Israelis held by Hamas, 33 are to be released within six weeks. Israel is to release 30 Palestinians for every civilian and 50 Palestinians for every soldier.

In the meantime, the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, which entered into force on November 27, 2024, has been extended until February 18. According to it, the two countries' officials have agreed to extend the ceasefire until February 18 of this year. In addition, the Lebanese, Israeli and US governments intend to begin negotiations on the return of Lebanese prisoners captured after October 7, 2023. Despite this, just as Israel is not fulfilling its obligations to Lebanon as expected, the same scenario is being repeated in the Gaza Strip with Hamas. For example, on the evening of January 27, Israeli forces killed a five-year-old girl and wounded three other civilians when they opened fire on a horse-drawn carriage in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip. The soldiers opened fire on people returning to their homes in the north of the enclave. The IDF press service explained this action with a very shameful pretext. According to it, the Israeli soldiers “acted against suspects who were threatening the troops stationed in the Gaza Strip.” The horse-drawn carriage, which contained a 5-year-old child and was returning home, aroused “suspicion” among the bloodthirsty IDF executioners.

“In several areas of the Gaza Strip, several suspects were identified as approaching IDF troops and threatening them. The troops opened fire to keep them away. In northern Gaza, they identified a suspect threatening them and fired a warning shot. "The suspect did not move away and as he continued to pose a threat to the troops, additional shots were fired to eliminate the threat," the statement said.

According to reports, on January 27, more than 300,000 residents returned to their northern districts after being given the opportunity. The killing of a 5-year-old girl in Gaza pales in comparison to the inhuman atrocities committed by Israeli forces in the West Bank two days earlier. A two-year-old Palestinian girl named Laila al-Khatib was killed on January 25 by a bullet to the head. The girl's pregnant mother also suffered minor injuries in the attack. The IDF, which has been largely inactive for the past year and a half, claimed that the building opened fire after receiving information about the presence of Palestinian fighters in the area. According to al-Khatib's grandmother, who witnessed the incident, the family was having dinner when it occurred. She said there was a sudden burst of gunfire, and windows were shattered. While the mother was feeding the girl, a sniper's bullet hit the child in the head, also injuring the mother. The deceased, two-year-old Al-Khatib, was her mother's only child.

Thus, at a time when the situation in Gaza has eased considerably, albeit with limited Israeli crimes, Trump has made an "offer" to the Arab states in the form of a demand to evacuate the strip. He wants to resettle the Gazans in Jordan and Egypt. However, Egypt and Jordan immediately rejected Trump's request. The plans to expel the Gazans from the strip have been discussed for many years, but they are a project that has been exhausted, and no Arab country would agree to them. Everyone knows that Palestinians who leave the strip will not be allowed back in. Trump's proposal, supposedly "for the peace and well-being of the Gazans," is actually intended to allow Israeli settlers to enter Gaza over time and establish settlements by building houses in the area. So far, Egypt and Jordan have firmly rejected this proposal, stating that they will not change their historical positions. If we look at Trump's recent foreign policy actions, we can predict the next steps of the US president, who mistakenly believed that Sisi and Abdullah II would accept his proposals. One possibility is an increase in tariffs. Unfortunately, there are countless levers the US can use in the Middle East. However, in any case, losing Gaza would be the de facto loss of Palestinian statehood. Unlike the West Bank, Gaza is currently the only living part of the Palestinian body.

Syria is recovering

A few days ago, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, during a visit to Damascus, said he had received positive news from the US, the European Union, and other countries about the potential lifting of sanctions against Syria. On January 27, at a meeting in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, EU foreign ministers agreed on a plan to gradually ease the sanctions that have been imposed on Syria in recent years. This was announced by the head of European Union diplomacy, Kaia Kallas, on her social media page. Kallas also added that representatives of European countries could reconsider this decision if the new Syrian authorities take the wrong steps.

According to Euronews, the EU Council prepared a document for negotiations on Syria ahead of the meeting of EU foreign ministers. The document proposes lifting sanctions on airlines, including Syrian Arab Airlines, and reviewing the agreement on simplifying civil flights, as well as banning the export of oil and gas technologies. However, sanctions against the fugitive Bashar al-Assad and his supporters will remain in place. According to these documents, the issue of removing the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group from the list of terrorist organizations should be addressed at the level of the UN Security Council. For reference, it is worth noting that the EU has been imposing economic sanctions against Syria since 2012, primarily targeting the Syrian government and military structures. These measures included an oil embargo, restrictions on certain investments, freezing the assets of the Syrian Central Bank in the European Union, and restrictions on the export of equipment and technologies that could be used for repression.

Russia's invasion may be halted in spring

While ceasefires are currently in place in the Middle East, progress is expected to be made soon toward ending Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "The Independent", citing sources, reported that US President Donald Trump aims to end the war on terms favorable to Ukraine by spring. However, one of the sources referenced the visit of David Arakhamia, the leader of Ukraine's ruling Servant of the People party, to Trump's inauguration and the respectful treatment he received at the ceremony. According to other sources, Trump is taking the issue of resolving the war seriously, and an official meeting with the Ukrainian president is expected in the coming weeks.

Since Trump stated he was confident in ending the invasion of Ukraine in a surprisingly short time, he has not yet presented a specific plan to the parties involved. After the inauguration, Trump announced that he would tighten sanctions, including a full export embargo on Russian products, if Vladimir Putin did not agree to end the armed conflict. Additionally, the US President gave his diplomats three months to bring Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table. According to sources close to the Russian Foreign Ministry, "The Moscow Times" reports that the Trump administration has already made initial contacts with the Kremlin. However, both sides have publicly denied these talks. In particular, Russian President Vladimir Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said at a briefing on January 27 that Washington had not yet approached Moscow about the issue of negotiations. He reiterated that Putin had said to reporters on January 24 that he was ready to talk to Trump and that the Kremlin was prepared to organize a meeting between the two leaders.

“So far, we have not received any signals from the Americans. Therefore, as they say, we will work according to our own schedule. We only need one message. That message remains on the American side. It seems that this will take some time. As a rule, this is discussed when the heads of state consider it appropriate to organize such a conversation,” he said.

The pro-government Turkish newspaper Hürriyet reported that talks aimed at peacefully resolving the crisis in Ukraine could begin in April-May of this year. The publication's commentator, Abdulkadir Selvi, speculated on a possible scenario for the talks. According to him, a ceasefire would be announced before the process begins. Turkey could play a certain role in the relations between the two countries, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan likely to be given a mediating role. Selvi explained his opinion by stating that Erdogan is currently the only leader who can talk to both Putin and Zelensky. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said last week that the conflict in Ukraine was approaching a turning point and that Ankara was ready to support efforts to resolve it. Previously, Ankara has repeatedly expressed its support for all initiatives aimed at achieving a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, as demonstrated by the negotiations held in Istanbul in March 2022, at the very beginning of the war. The EU is also taking necessary measures to bring Russia to the negotiating table. In particular, on January 27, the same day that the Foreign Ministers of the European Union countries reached an agreement on easing past sanctions on Syria, they also agreed to extend sanctions against the Russian Federation.

“Everything is afraid of time, and time is afraid of Lukashenko”

Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus for 30 years, is being re-elected for a seventh term. The final results showed that 86.82 percent of voters supported Lukashenko. After casting his vote in the morning, Lukashenko held a 4.5-hour press conference. He stressed during the conference that he was not yet considering choosing his successor. In addition to the 31-year-old incumbent, five other candidates participated in the election, but none of them managed to collect more than 3.5 percent of the vote. For context, in 2020, several days of protests took place in Belarus after the presidential election. The participants refused to recognize the victory of Alexander Lukashenko. Several opposition representatives tried to participate in these elections, but some were excluded from the pre-election process or arrested. For example, Sergei Tikhanovsky was arrested before the election and sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2021. Banker Viktor Babariko applied to run in the election but was not registered. In 2021, he was charged with financial crimes and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Another opponent, businessman Valery Tsepkalo, was also wanted. He left Belarus and was sentenced in absentia to 17 years in prison. According to the Central Election Commission, in the 2020 elections, Lukashenko won with 80.1% of the vote, while opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya received 10.12%. After the election, Tikhanovskaya left Belarus and continued her political activities abroad. She was also sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in 2023. The 2020 elections and the ensuing scandals forced Belarusian Alexander Lukashenko to think, at least a little, about leaving his "clinging place." At the end of 2021, he promised to introduce amendments to the constitution. In 2022, a referendum was held in Belarus on amendments to the constitution. According to these amendments, the president cannot hold office for more than two consecutive terms and cannot be held accountable after leaving office. In short, the only autocrat on European soil was re-elected for the seventh time. Re-elected or *re-elected*? Of course, this is questionable. The reason for this is that the elections turned out as follows.

BBC journalist Steve Rosenberg: We spoke to the other candidates. One of them is openly supporting you—your opponent! Another is praising you. Isn’t this a strange race?

Lukashenko: Steve, this is a new experience for you.

It is worth noting that, although Lukashenko has won seven elections since 1994, meaning 31 years in power, only one of them has been widely recognized internationally. That was his first victory in 1994. While Lukashenko is at the center of discussion in his 7th term and 31st year, the African patriarch who will surpass him in this regard and may even stay in power until his death, Cameroonian President Paul Biya, 91, has announced that he will run for president again in October 2025. Since Biya came to power in 1982, he has become one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. This will be his eighth election. Yes, the famous quote about time and the pyramid seems to apply to these two men, who have been immobile for 31 and 43 years. "Everything is afraid of time, but time is afraid of Lukashenko and Paul Biya." However, there is no better quote for these two autocrats than Mark Twain’s: "Pillows and politicians must be changed frequently, and for the same reason."