European Defence

Russian strikes on Odesa-region ports threaten to turn Ukraine’s export corridor into a lower-capacity, higher-cost system. The under-reported pressure is fiscal: port repair and winter power-grid repair now draw on the same scarce wartime resources.

The G7’s Évian texts did not create a new institution. They made club access to strategic flows sound administratively normal: ships without tolls, minerals outside pure spot markets, and, by diplomatic reporting rather than communiqué text, advanced AI for trusted partners.

The US critical-minerals plan is less a market fix than a managed-pricing system for strategic commodities. The near-term shape is likely bilateral US deals, selective coordination and tariff tools, not a clean G7 institution.