Ukraine’s president said Tuesday that Ukrainian military forces have captured two Chinese nationals among Russian troops fighting in the country’s eastern Donetsk region and have intelligence pointing to a much larger contingent of Chinese forces inside Ukraine.

China pushed back Wednesday, with a foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing asserting that Mr. Zelenskyy’s claim “has no basis in facts.” Beijing has consistently sought to portray its posture as neutral toward Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, although China has emerged over the last two years as a key provider of materials for Russian weapons production. Russian forces, meanwhile, are buttressed by more than 10,000 troops from North Korea, which is a military treaty ally of China. 

The Kyiv Independent reported that Mr. Zelenskyy emphasized on Tuesday that Russia’s apparent recruitment of Chinese nationals — whether direct or indirect — highlights the Kremlin’s commitment to continuing its aggression. He added that China, like Iran and North Korea, is enabling Moscow’s war effort.

North Korea’s Kim Jong-un wants payback from Russian President Vladimir Putin for his troops’ sacrifices in Russia’s war against Ukraine — something Moscow is moving belatedly to address, according to Doo Jin-ho, a leading regional defense expert.

Mr. Doo, who heads the Global Strategy Division of South Korea’s state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analysis, told journalists in Seoul this week that he anticipates an upcoming trip by Mr. Kim to Moscow around May 9, the date of Russia’s “Victory Day,” marking the end of World War II in Europe.

Pyongyang is estimated to have supplied Moscow with troops and millions of rounds of munitions, including artillery shells and tactical rockets, for use in its war against Ukraine. The North Koreans are estimated to have suffered as many as 5,000 casualties. 

Former high-level CIA officer Daniel N. Hoffman recently told Threat Status in an exclusive video interview that North Korea’s backing of Russia in the Ukraine war is paying off, with Pyongyang receiving technical and intelligence assistance relating to its ballistic missile program.

The U.S.-China trade war is escalating rapidly, with Beijing on Wednesday announcing new tariffs of 84% on American goods in retaliation for President Trump’s declaration a day earlier that Washington is increasing the tariff rate from 54% to 104% on Chinese goods entering the United States.

The tit-for-tat between the two global superpowers has spiraled in the wake of Mr. Trump’s “Liberation Day” plan to impose a blanket 10% on all imports and heftier levies on countries like China, which export more products to the U.S. than it buys. The U.S. exported $143.5 billion worth of goods to China in 2024 while importing Chinese goods worth $438.9 billion, a trade deficit of $295.4 billion, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Mr. Trump wants to correct those trade imbalances through tariffs, arguing they will raise revenue and bring jobs back to America. Wall Street investors and some of Mr. Trump’s GOP allies are concerned that his plan will spark a global trade war that increases prices, destabilizes the economy and leads to a recession.

The U.S. lacks the defense capacity to meet its own peacetime needs or supply Ukraine with sufficient weapons to fend off Russian invaders, according to a report published this week by The Heritage Foundation under the title: “A Strategy to Revitalize the Defense Industrial Base for the 21st Century.”

The conservative think tank underscores the danger of anemic manufacturing capacity in an increasingly complex and hostile global environment, particularly with regard to China’s rapid defense industrial expansion in recent years. “If the U.S. lacks the capacity to produce just part of what the Ukrainian military needs to fend off Russia, which has an economy less than a tenth as large as that of the United States, it certainly cannot match China’s ability to sustain a war through production,” the report states.

It’s a finding that dovetails with assessments by author and great power competition analyst Seth Jones at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who told Threat Status in an exclusive video interview last year that China’s defense industrial production base is dangerously outpacing that of the United States.

It has been 18 months since “Hamas’ invasion of Israel and the barbaric pogrom that followed,” writes Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a contributor to Threat Status.

“Hamas is still holding and torturing hostages,” he writes. “The Israel Defense Forces are still fighting not just Hamas but also Hamas’ allies, all of them guided and supported by the jihadi regime in Tehran.”

“That’s the bad news,” writes Mr. May. “The good news: Painfully but steadily, Israelis have been making progress against enemies who intend not to subjugate them but to exterminate them. Israel’s first War of Independence, 1948-1949, lasted 20 months. This one will take longer.”

• April 9-10 — 40th Space Symposium, Space Foundation

• April 10-11 — Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats, Vanderbilt University

• April 14 — Tech Cold War: The Geopolitics of Technology, Stimson Center

• April 17 — Persistent Access, Persistent Threat: Ensuring Military Mobility Against Malicious Cyber Actors, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• April 30 —The Hill & Valley Forum