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Executive Summary 

This week's global risk environment was defined by the convergence of prolonged conflict attrition and sudden shocks to infrastructure, mobility, and state stability across four regions. In Europe and the Middle East, established conflicts increasingly translated military pressure into economic and logistical disruption. Russia intensified strikes on Ukraine's civilian economy, with an ammunition depot strike near Kyiv killing 38 people in the war's deadliest attack on Ukraine this year, while renewed U.S.-Iran strikes around the Strait of Hormuz drew an Iranian missile response against U.S.-hosted bases in Jordan. Continuing Houthi attacks on Yemen's Red Sea ports, escalating Israeli operations in Gaza and Lebanon, and violent unrest over migration in Spain's Ceuta enclave compounded an already volatile regional picture.

In the Americas, the U.S. reshaped its hemispheric posture through two consequential moves: announcing majority control over Venezuelan oil reserves and withdrawing military support from Iraq's Kurdish Peshmerga. Haiti remained in deep crisis amid mass forced returns and surging gang violence. Canada's strong Q2 rebound offered a rare positive signal, though fresh U.S. tariffs cloud the outlook.

Sub-Saharan Africa faced overlapping pressures: a failed military mutiny in Niger exposed dangerous fractures within armed forces already stretched by jihadist insurgencies and coincided with the government's nationalization of French-owned uranium assets; the DRC's Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak continued its geographic expansion even as an emergency vaccination campaign began; Sudan lifted a two-year curfew in Khartoum despite continuing drone attacks on power infrastructure; and Zambia's opposition leader was charged with treason days before President Hichilema's second-term inauguration.

In Asia-Pacific, the catastrophic Nepal-Tibet glacier flood became the region's most consequential immediate crisis, with the death toll surpassing 900 and roughly 4,200 people still missing. Taiwan advanced a major military drone procurement framework, North Korea reshuffled its senior military leadership amid deepening ties with Moscow, and a coordinated insurgent attack wave shook southern Thailand. Papua New Guinea's parliament opened formal debate on Bougainville's independence after seven years of delay, and Myanmar's humanitarian crisis deepened as a regional repatriation program moves forward despite documented ongoing abuses.