Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia wants a written response (RFE/RL) to its security demands from the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by next week. Moscow has called for guarantees that NATO will not expand or deploy forces to Ukraine and other former Soviet states. Several days of diplomacy between Russia and Western countries this week failed to yield a breakthrough (FT), and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the threat of a Russian military invasion of Ukraine is high. 

Amid the tensions, a cyberattack brought down several Ukrainian government websites last night. A message displayed on hacked websites warned that Ukrainians should “be afraid and expect the worst” (Reuters). Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the identity of the attacker was not immediately clear, but that Russia had previously carried out similar attacks.

The surplus reached $676.4 billion (Nikkei) amid the global economic recovery despite China’s unresolved trade war with the United States.
 
North Korea: The country fired two suspected ballistic missiles (Yonhap) after Pyongyang publicly warned of a stronger response to new U.S. sanctions on five North Koreans.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a path (TOLOnews) toward the conditional release of Afghanistan’s foreign currency reserves to improve the country’s humanitarian situation.
 
This photo essay looks at Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis.
 
Pakistan: The foreign ministry said Pakistan welcomed a statement (Al Jazeera) from the permanent UN Security Council members on preventing nuclear war. Pakistan’s neighbor and rival India welcomed the statement one week ago. Both countries possess nuclear weapons.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian is in Beijing today (Mehr News Agency) and is expected to discuss (SCMP) a twenty-five-year agreement on economic and security cooperation that Iran and China signed last March.
 
Iraq: Security forces are investigating a rocket attack that hit Baghdad’s Green Zone (CNN) yesterday and wounded a woman and a child.

The committee, which awarded Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, issued a rare statement (AP) that said Abiy “has a special responsibility to end the conflict” in the country.
 
Sahel/Sweden: Sweden announced that it will withdraw its troops (Reuters) from the European special forces mission in the Sahel region.
 
This Backgrounder examines the role of peacekeeping missions in Africa.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 and the countries reached an agreement in 2009 to establish formal relations, but it was never ratified. Turkey said it is coordinating (Hurriyet Daily News) the normalization process with Azerbaijan, which opposed the 2009 agreement.

Mexico has requested a dispute settlement panel (CBC) under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact over differing interpretations on how vehicles and auto parts can qualify for duty-free treatment.
 
Colombia/Peru: The countries’ presidents met to discuss (MercoPress) resuming cooperation on security at their shared border, as well as on migration and climate policy. The meeting had been postponed for two years due to the pandemic.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged eleven people (WaPo), including the leader of the far-right militia the Oath Keepers, with conspiring “to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force” the U.S. government.
 
For Foreign Affairs, Larry Diamond discusses the January 6 Capitol riot and the paradoxes of the United States’ democracy agenda.