India is seeking the release of its nationals who have been “duped” into serving in the Russian army, a spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said Friday, in a rare rift from Moscow.

“Several Indian nationals have been duped to work with the Russian army. We have strongly taken up the matter with the Russian government for early discharge of such internationals,” said spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal. “A case of human trafficking has been registered against several agents.”

He appealed to Indian nationals to “not be swayed by offers made by agents for support jobs with the Russian army. This is fraught with danger and risk to life,” stressing that New Delhi remains “committed to early release of our nationals serving as support staff with the Russian army and the eventual return home.”

Late on Thursday, the Central Bureau of Investigation of India said it had raided several “major human trafficking networks” that were “targeting gullible youths” with offers of lucrative jobs abroad. The CBI identified at least “35 instances” of Indian citizens being sent abroad as a result of these operations.

“These traffickers have been operating as an organized network and were luring Indian nationals through social media channels like Youtube etc and also through their local contacts/agents for highly paid jobs in Russia,” the CBI said in a statement.

Following their recruitment, Indian nationals were “trained in combat roles and deployed at front bases in Russia-Ukraine War Zoen against their wishes, thus, putting their lives in grave dangers.”

“It has been ascertained that some of these victims also got grievously injured in the war zone,” the agency said.

It comes amid a domestic labour crisis that has incentivized Indian nationals to seek jobs abroad.

India’s unemployment rate climbed to 8% in February from 6.8% in January, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), an independent think tank, as the country’s economic expansion sharply outpaces job creation.

Moscow and Kyiv have been locked in a more than two-year war of attrition on Ukrainian territory, with Russia introducing strict drafting laws and increasing its maximum age of conscription. Volunteer foreign fighters have joined both sides of the conflict.

Indian and international news outlets have carried reports of Indian citizens being stranded fighting for the Russian army. Reuters on Thursday said Mohammed Asfan from India’s Hyderabad city died while fighting in the Ukraine war, after travelling to Russia to work as an army “helper.”

“We have learnt about the tragic death of an Indian national Shri Mohammed Asfan. We are in touch with the family and Russian authorities. Mission will make efforts to send his mortal remains to India,” the Indian embassy to Russia said on March 6 on social media. It did not state whether Asfan had died while fighting for Russia or on Ukrainian territory.

CNBC has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.

The request for the release of India nationals fighting for Russia pits New Delhi at rare odds against Moscow.

Defying the U.S., India has adopted a staunchly neutral position following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abstaining from voting on successive resolutions put to the U.N. Security Council, U.N. General Assembly and U.N. Human Rights Council that denounced Moscow.

India has also offered a rare outlet for Russian seaborne crude volumes, bereft of EU and G7 buyers since sanctions prohibiting its purchase were enforced in late 2022.

The two countries also share close ties as partners in the BRICS economic coalition of emerging markets.

Russia appears to be relishing the gaffe French President Emmanuel Macron made this week in suggesting that NATO countries discussed the possibility of Western ground troops being deployed in Ukraine, saying such an eventuality could not be “ruled out.”

Macron’s suggestion was widely — and very publicly — rejected by NATO member countries Tuesday. The United States, Germany, the U.K., Spain, Poland and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg were among those denying that sending ground troops into Ukraine was an option.

The Kremlin was quick to seize upon the comments Tuesday, warning that any move to put Western boots on the ground in Ukraine would lead to an “inevitable” conflict between NATO and Russia. Since then, state-run Russian media has been dominated by Russian officials relishing the obvious division in NATO, and Macron’s apparent misreading of the NATO mood music.

Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and prime minister, said Macron had suffered a bout of verbal “incontinence” while Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said Macron’s “loud statements … horrified the residents of his country and the leaders of a number of European states.”

“To maintain personal power, Macron came up with nothing better than to spark a third world war. His initiatives are becoming dangerous for French citizens,” Volodin said on Telegram, comparing the French president to French leader and military commander Napoleon Bonaparte, whose invasion of Russia in 1812 is widely recognized as a military disaster for France that led to a massive number of casualties.

“Before making such statements, Macron would do well to remember how it ended for Napoleon and his soldiers, more than 600,000 of whom were left lying in the damp earth,” Volodin said, referring to the muddy conditions that hampered France’s invasion. 

Russia’s Foreign Ministry claimed Wednesday that Ukraine is facing a “catastrophic” situation at the front — Russia is currently enjoying a spate of small territorial gains in eastern Ukraine — and that Macron’s statement had not helped the country.

“The situation at the front for the Kyiv regime is monstrous, catastrophic,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told the Sputnik radio station, the Tass news agency reported.

She claimed NATO countries’ denials that they planned to send their ground troops into Ukraine showed the West had “betrayed Ukraine and will continue to use and betray it,” repeating Moscow’s baseless claims that Western countries are using Ukraine to destroy Russia.

Macron’s controversial comments came Monday evening, after he had hosted European heads of state and representatives from the U.K., U.S. and Canada for talks in Paris on how best to help Ukraine.

After the conference, Macron said discussions had also covered the possibility of deploying ground troops, although he said there was no agreement on the issue.

“There is no consensus today to officially, openly, and with endorsement, send troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing should be ruled out,” Macron said at a news conference Monday evening, adding that allies “will do everything necessary to ensure that Russia cannot win this war.”

French opposition lawmakers rounded on Macron for making the comments, with the leader of the hard-right National Rally party Marine Le Pen stating on X that by “affirming that sending ground troops was not excluded, Emmanuel Macron took a further step towards co-belligerence.”

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne attempted to ease tensions in France’s parliament on Tuesday without rowing back on Macron’s comments, saying French troops could take on non-combat roles rather than actively battle in Ukraine.

“We must consider new actions to support Ukraine. These must respond to very specific needs, I am thinking in particular of mine clearance, cyberdefence, the production of weapons on site, on Ukrainian territory,” he told lawmakers, Reuters reported.

“Some of its actions could require a presence on Ukrainian territory, without crossing the threshold of fighting. Nothing should be ruled out. This was and still is the position today of the president of the Republic,” he said.

France was left looking increasingly isolated throughout the day Tuesday, with the White House also distancing itself from Macron’s comments.

U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters yesterday that any decision to deploy ground troops was a “sovereign decision,” but that it was not one the U.S. would be taking in Ukraine.

When asked about Macron’s comments, Kirby said “well, that’s a sovereign decision that every NATO ally would have to make for themselves. You heard [NATO] Secretary General Stoltenberg say himself he had no plans or intentions of — certainly under NATO auspices — of putting troops on the ground. And President Biden has been crystal clear since the beginning of this conflict. There’ll be no U.S. troops on the ground in a combat role there. In Ukraine.”

Russia analysts have said Macron’s comments were a gift to the Kremlin, and would be fully exploited by Russia’s propaganda machine at home — and abroad.

The Elysee Palace sought to clarify and defend France’s position on the matter further Tuesday, with a spokesperson stating that “we want to avoid escalation. Let me remind you that we’re not at war with the Russian people, but we can’t let Russia win in Ukraine.”

Timothy Ash, emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, was among those questioning “French foreign policy sense on anything to do with Russia/Ukraine.”

“Literally idiotic comments from Macron,” Ash said in emailed comments Tuesday. “Ukraine does not need Western boots on the ground — it needs Western military kit to do the job themselves of defeating Russia.”

Ash said that “talk of Western boots on the ground is so damaging” as “it plays to the Putin narrative of NATO expansion East, and that this is a NATO war with Russia” and “plays up to similar narratives being plied in the Global South,” referring to countries often described as “developing” economies with whom Russia would like to develop ties.

He noted the comments would also likely be “seized on by Putin’s allies in the GOP [the Republican Party] to stall in agreeing military support/financing for Ukraine.”

“What the U.S. public do not want is U.S. boots on the ground in another foreign conflict. But the beauty of Western support for Ukraine thus far is that it has not required Western boots on the ground, but through a modest financial outlay has had a devastating impact on Russian military capability,” Ash said.

As around half of the world’s adult population heads to the polls in a bumper year of elections, concern over the role of artificial intelligence in disrupting outcomes has topped the list of the biggest risks for 2024, according to a new report.

The World Economic Forum’s “Global Risks Report 2024,” released Wednesday, ranked AI-derived misinformation and disinformation — and its implications for societal polarization — ahead of climate change, war and economic weakness in its top 10 risks over the next two years.

“AI can build out models for influencing large populations of voters in a way that we haven’t seen before,” Carolina Klint, chief commercial officer for Europe at consultancy Marsh McLennan, which co-produced the report, told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro.

“How that is going to play out is going to be quite important for us to watch,” she added.

Looking further ahead, the balance of risks for the next decade shifts toward extreme weather conditions and critical changes to the political world order, with two-thirds of those surveyed anticipating a new multipolar or fragmented world to take shape.

The WEF report, which was also produced in collaboration with Zurich Insurance Group, surveyed over 1,400 global risk experts, policymakers and industry leaders in September 2023 about their biggest global concerns.

The report’s authors said the combined risks are “stretching the world’s adaptative capacity to its limit,” and called on leaders to focus on global cooperation and building guardrails for the most disruptive emerging risks.

“An unstable global order characterized by polarizing narratives and insecurity, the worsening impacts of extreme weather and economic uncertainty are causing accelerating risks – including misinformation and disinformation – to propagate,” Saadia Zahidi, WEF’s managing director, said.

“World leaders must come together to address short-term crises as well as lay the groundwork for a more resilient, sustainable, inclusive future,” she added.

The most cited risks for the next two years were, in order: misinformation and disinformation, extreme weather events, societal polarization, cyber insecurity and interstate armed conflict. Also in the top 10 were lack of economic opportunity, inflation, involuntary migration, economic downturn and pollution.

Extreme weather events, critical change to earth systems, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, natural resource shortages and misinformation and disinformation were named as the most likely risks over the next 10 years. Adverse outcomes from AI technologies was also named as a longer-term concern.

“Artificial intelligence breakthroughs will radically disrupt the risk outlook for organizations with many struggling to react to threats arising from misinformation, disintermediation and strategic miscalculation, Klint said in the report.

“At the same time, companies are having to negotiate supply chains made more complex by geopolitics and climate change and cyber threats from a growing number of malicious actors. It will take a relentless focus to build resilience at organizational, country and international levels – and greater cooperation between the public and private sectors – to navigate this rapidly evolving risk landscape,” she added.

The report comes as global leaders are due to meet next week in Davos, Switzerland for WEF’s annual summit, during which they will discuss global issues including the ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, the economy and technology, under the event’s tagline “Rebuilding Trust.”

It also comes as the world embarks on a historic year of elections, with Taiwan this weekend kickstarting the elections, which are also due in the U.S., India, Russia, South Africa and Mexico.

In a separate 2024 global risks report released Monday, Eurasia Group named the upcoming U.S. election as its top risk for the year, with “ungoverned AI” also ranking among the top five.

Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, said in a press briefing that given the wider reaching ramifications of the election outcome, the consultancy had “no choice” but to rank the risk ahead of the wars between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas.

BRUSSELS — European heads of state are gearing up for a difficult two-day gathering where support for Ukraine is at the top of the agenda, but internal divisions threaten any significant action toward Kyiv.

The meeting comes at a crunch time for Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hops across the world seeking further aid in the fight against Russia’s invasion. He started the week in Argentina, then travelled to the United States and landed in Norway on Wednesday.

Throughout all of his stops, he delivered one message: cutting support to Ukraine is a gift to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

“We must make decisions,” European Council President Charles Michel, who will be chairing the summit, told CNBC Tuesday.

“It is our duty to make sure we protect the interest of the European Union by supporting Ukraine.”

Some 50 billion euros ($54.43 billion) are on the table. The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, proposed in June to send this sum to Ukraine between 2024 and 2027, but opposition from Hungary, whose prime minister met with Vladimir Putin in person in October, is blocking the disbursement.

EU leaders will also discuss whether to start official negotiations with Ukraine for the nation’s potential future accession to the bloc. Hungary has, once again, expressed reservations. A handful of other EU member states, such as Italy, have also raised issues over enlarging the EU.

Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna said that the start of official negotiations would be a “major guarantee of Ukraine sustainability.”

“We need these messages to keep on being mobilised,” she added.

Nearly two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, western support for Kyiv is flattening. There has been a nearly 90% drop in newly committed aid to Ukraine between August and October, compared with the same period of 2022, data from the Kiel Institute showed last week.

“Ukraine now increasingly relies on a core group of donors such as the U.S., Germany, and the Nordic and Eastern European countries that continue to pledge and deliver both financial aid and important weaponry,” the institute said.

The recent war between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel has also drifted attention away from Kyiv, while inflationary pressures have limited the ability of western governments to provide more aid. At the same time, Russia retains an advantage when it comes to military strength.

“Russia will likely continue to have a considerable advantage in terms of the availability of military equipment, munitions, and manpower, at least in the first half of 2024,” Andrius Tursa, Central and Eastern Europe Advisor at consultancy firm Teneo, said.

“Having mobilized its economy for the war, Russia is rapidly increasing its military output, in addition to supplies from North Korea and Iran. Moscow is also keeping up military recruitment to compensate for vast manpower losses without triggering visible public discontent.”

Recent surveys suggest that the majority of the Russian population is still in favor of Putin’s actions in Ukraine, although support is gradually declining. According to a poll carried out by the Levada Center and issued earlier this month, 74% of those surveyed support fully or to some extent the war in Ukraine.

Following the confirmation that Ukrainian forces had crossed the Dnieper river into Russian-occupied territory in recent weeks, hopes have risen that this could be a small but key breakthrough in the six-month counteroffensive against Russia.

The Dnieper has effectively operated as a front line in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, separating Ukrainian troops on the west bank from Russian forces on the east, or left, bank. Russian forces had retreated to the east bank last year following an earlier counteroffensive by Ukraine that left the Kherson region — strategically important given its location above Russian-annexed Crimea — partially occupied.

Then the official confirmation came earlier this month that Ukrainian forces, including marine infantry and special operations forces, had managed to cross the wide Dnieper river in more substantial numbers than in previous sorties, and had established several footholds on the east bank.

The development, described as a small but significant breakthrough by military analysts, has spurred hopes that Ukraine could build on those positions and advance south toward Crimea, potentially breaking a land bridge that Russia has established between its territory and the peninsula via a swathe of occupied southern Ukraine.

“The left-bank [of the Dnieper river] in Kherson is very important because it’s near to Crimea,” Oleksandr Musiyenko, a Ukrainian military expert and head of the Centre for Military and Legal Studies in Kyiv, told CNBC.

“Our forces right now on the ground, on the left bank are just 70 kilometers from occupied Crimea,” he said, “so if we have success in this offensive operation, that means that we will move behind Russian forces, we can break up their logistics, and also we can move forward to the west and to the south to occupied Crimea, and they will have a huge problems because of that,” Musiyenko noted.

The scale of Ukraine’s latest river crossing appeared to catch Russia, which has largely concentrated its forces in eastern Ukraine, somewhat unawares.

The Russian-installed governor of the Kherson region Vladimir Saldo said Ukraine had initially sent “more personnel [across the Dnieper] than our firepower could destroy” but he then vowed to rain “hell” down on the troops that had crossed the river, saying they had been sent to the slaughter as Russian artillery, missiles and drones began to target the men and heavy equipment that had been taken across the river.

Military updates since last week suggest that intense fighting is clustered around several villages on the east bank, with Krynky the epicenter as Russia tries to counterattack and prevent Ukrainian advances southward toward the prized Crimean peninsula.

Ukraine’s military said last Sunday that its forces had pushed Russian forces between 3 to 8 kilometers back from the river, impeding their ability to pound Ukrainian forces back on the west bank of the Dnieper with mortars. It also requested an operational “silence” as it what fought along what it described as a “fairly fluid” front line.

Last week, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said the ground fighting on the east bank as “has been characterised by confused, dismounted infantry combat and artillery exchanges in complex, wooded terrain.”

“Ukraine has made particularly effective use of small attack uncrewed aerial vehicles, while the Russian Air Force is conducting significant numbers of sorties in support of frontline troops, predominantly launching munitions from beyond the range of Ukraine’s air defences,” the ministry said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The ministry noted that, while the fighting around Krynky is on a smaller scale than some major battles of the war, it “will be considered highly unfortunate by Russian leaders” given that they had hopes to “hold Ukrainian forces west of the river, keep the sector quiet, and free up Russian forces elsewhere.”

The outcome of Ukraine’s attempts to maintain and advance positions on the east bank of the river matter at a time when there have been few gains made in the counteroffensive, first launched in June, and as Western support for continued aid for Ukraine falters.

Military analyst Sean Bell told Sky News that while Russia was put on the back foot by Ukraine’s bold river crossing — with its main focus on the Donbas in eastern Ukraine and limited reserves to re-deploy to Kherson further west — the road ahead is challenging for Ukraine.

“Although Russia has established some defensive positions near the Dnieper, if – and this is a big if at this stage – Ukraine is able to develop a robust beachhead on the eastern bank of the Dnieper, this could threaten the western flank of Russian forces,” he told Sky News Tuesday.

“If Ukraine is able to launch an offensive from the Dnieper, that would bypass the layered Russian defences near Zaporizhzhia and potentially force Russia to withdraw its forces in the land bridge back into Crimea,” he added.

This would liberate a huge proportion of the territory occupied by Russia and mark a significant breakthrough for Ukrainian forces, Bell said.

“But, the winter weather precludes manoeuvre warfare, and Russia might yet re-focus its military effort and deny Ukraine a vital breakthrough,” he warned.

Outwardly, Russia has been bullish about the situation in Kherson, with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claiming last Tuesday that Ukraine was suffering “colossal losses” on the east bank of the Dnieper.

“All attempts of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to conduct an amphibious operation in the Kherson direction were unsuccessful. Thanks to the proactive and professional actions of our military personnel, units of the Marine Corps and special operations forces of the Ukrainian troops are suffering colossal losses,” Shoigu said in a speech to defense ministry officials, without presenting evidence.

CNBC was unable to verify the claims made by Ukraine or Russia regarding the situation on the battlefield.

Russia is watching very closely as Western nations try to build alliances in what has traditionally been seen as its “backyard” and sphere of influence.

One top official in Moscow was fuming as he claimed the West was “luring” its “neighbours, friends, and allies” away from Russia.

The latest Western leader to court Central Asia is French President Emmanuel Macron. Visiting oil- and mineral-rich Kazakhstan on Wednesday, he complimented the former Soviet state for refusing to side with Moscow against Ukraine.

“I don’t underestimate by any means the geopolitical difficulties, the pressures … that some may be putting on you,” Macron said as he addressed his Kazakh counterpart, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, in Astana.

“France values … the path you are following for your country, refusing to be a vassal of any power and seeking to build numerous and balanced relations with different countries,” he said.

Macron visited Uzbekistan on Thursday, with a delegation including business leaders as France looks to forge deeper ties in a region rich in natural resources, from oil and gas to uranium.

The French leader’s comments are likely to have enraged Moscow, which is already watching Western efforts to court Central Asia with suspicion and disdain. CNBC has asked the Kremlin to comment on Macron’s trip and is awaiting a response.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview last week that the West was trying to pull Russia’s “neighbours, friends and allies” away from it.

“Look at how Western powers are wooing Central Asia,” Lavrov told the BelTA news agency, in comments published by Russia’s Foreign Ministry.

“They have created numerous formats such as ‘Central Asia plus’ involving the United States, the EU, and Japan … On top of the Central Asia plus EU format, the Germans have created their own format. The French won’t be wasting time and will do the same,” he said.

“These frameworks for diplomatic engagements are aimed at luring our Central Asian neighbours, friends, and allies towards the West which promises them economic and trade incentives and delivers relatively modest aid programmes.”

Lavrov said alliances with the West could not be “compared with the benefits the Central Asian countries enjoy from cooperating with Russia … in sensitive areas such as border security, law enforcement training, and traditional security.”

He claimed that Western countries were “funneling money and resources into equipment and technology supplied to these regions” in a bid to woo them, adding, “We openly discuss these matters with our Central Asian brothers.”

Mark Galeotti, a London-based political scientist, lecturer and author of several books on Russia, told CNBC Thursday that Macron’s visit to Central Asia would have touched a nerve in Moscow but that Central Asia had increasingly been looking elsewhere, to Europe, China and the United States, for trade and security guarantees.

“Yes, the Russians are grumbling at what they see as Macron’s posturing … but it’s more that this kind of initiative reminds them of the fact that, really, they are losing their authority in Central Asia.”

“There clearly is concern [in Russia at Central Asia’s geopolitical trajectory], but more than anything else, I think the concern is driven by a painful awareness, that, in a way, Central Asia has already been lost,” Galeotti said.

“Essentially, Moscow’s main hold on Central Asia had long been, essentially, as a security guarantor,” he noted, adding that “Russia was the country you went to when you were looking for assistance in security matters.”

“But ever since February of last year [when it invaded Ukraine], we’ve seen a very rapid decline in Russia’s authority in Central Asia.”

The degree to which a sense of “brotherhood” is felt in Central Asia’s leadership toward Russia is debatable.

Central Asian states have to tread a fine line with Moscow, being careful not to alienate or antagonize their powerful neighbor while also trying to forge their own independent international trade and foreign policies with the West and China.

This ambivalent position has often led Central Asian states “sitting on the fence” when it comes to certain geopolitical matters, such as the war in Ukraine.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as well as neighboring Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, were among 35 U.N. members that abstained on a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s annexation of four mostly Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine last year. Central Asian state Tajikistan was absent from the vote.

Only one of Russia’s neighbors, Belarus — its closest ally in its backyard — was among the five countries to reject the resolution condemning the annexation of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions. The other countries were North Korea, Nicaragua, Russia and Syria.

Central Asian states have been accused of helping Russia to dodge Western sanctions imposed on it for the invasion of Ukraine, with European and Chinese products exported to Central Asia and then funneled into Russia.

Nonetheless, the war in Ukraine has created the irony that a distracted Russia has lost a degree of power, control and leverage over its own wider “backyard” made up of former Soviet states, stretching from the South Caucasus region — which includes Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia — to Central Asia.

Russia has already felt aggrieved to see former Soviet republics incorporated into the West, such as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and to watch as others like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova head in the same direction. Kyiv’s leaning toward the West over the past 20 years laid the foundation for the conflict we see today, with Russia looking to reassert its power and influence over its neighborhood.

Russia’s “final backstop of authority was the possibility that it could invade or intervene,” Galeotti noted, “but now, with 97% of the Russian army mired in Ukraine, no one’s really worried about that anymore.”

There’s certainly a tussle for influence that’s taking place in Central Asia, with China also “courting” the region to a certain extent.

China held a summit with Central Asian states in early summer, months before U.S. President Joe Biden met with the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in September, as part of the first ever presidential summit of the “C5+1” format launched in 2015. The group pledged to expand their economic and security cooperation.

Alexander Titov, lecturer in modern European history at Queen’s University of Belfast, told CNBC that the position of Central Asian states — “squeezed” between Russia to the west, China to the east and Afghanistan to the south — added complexity and nuance to the region’s international relations.

“Central Asian republics have to play their own game in the sense that they are in this region where Russia is an important player, as well as China. China has become a bigger economic presence than Russia in Central Asia,” he noted, particularly when it comes to oil and particularly gas consumption, with China accelerating the construction of a pipeline to source gas from Turkmenistan, despite Russia’s attempts to push its own pipeline proposals with Beijing.

Still, while Russia has been vocally critical of Europe’s and the U.S.’ engagement with Central Asia, it has been ostensibly less so when it comes to its ally China. Analysts say this is based on Moscow’s calculation that China will remain more of a backseat partner in the region, for now at least.

“While there clearly is alignment between Russia and China when it comes to Central Asia, and particularly when it comes to keeping ‘the West’ out of the region after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia is unlikely to relinquish completely its traditional grip on the region, nor is China likely to actively wrestle Moscow for greater control in the near future,” global security analysts Anastassiya Mahon and Stefan Wolff wrote in analysis for the U.K.-based Foreign Policy Centre think tank.

“While there is undoubtedly a rebalancing of power afoot between Russia and China, this is likely to take the form of a gradual power transition.”

The analysts noted that “while the West will hardly be seen as an alternative in such a hegemonic power transition from Russia to China, the transition itself, nevertheless, offers opportunities.”

The U.S., U.K., and EU can strengthen their own engagement and cooperation with Central Asia, they noted, “precisely because this presents the states there with a chance for some re-balancing of their own and for strengthening their traditional aspiration for a multi-vector foreign policy.”

A sharp rise in drone attacks targeting Russian territory is likely to intensify, analysts say, with Kyiv appearing increasingly determined to bring the destruction, instability and unpredictability of war — albeit a fraction of what it is experiencing itself — home to Russia.

Russia has seen a sharp rise in unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, carrying out assaults on western, central and southern Russian regions as well as the capital Moscow and Russian-occupied Crimea in recent weeks.

While Ukraine is continuing a counteroffensive on its own soil to regain Russian-occupied territory in the south and east of the country, and aiming to break Russia’s so-called “land-bridge” to occupied Crimea, the increasing use of drones to assault Russian soil shows another facet of Ukraine’s military strategy.

“The war is coming home to Russia,” Timothy Ash, emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, said in emailed comments Wednesday.

“Ukraine is demonstrating that it can make life very difficult for Russia, Russians and Putin,” he added.

“With attacks in Crimea itself, and the land corridor and the Kerch bridge, and Russian shipping in the Black Sea coming under attack the clear message is that while the invasion was partially sold as an effort to improve Russian security, it has made Crimea and Russia less secure for Russian forces.”

“And it is only going to get worse as long as this invasion continues,” Ash added.

Aerial assaults have intensified in recent days with strikes occurring further into Russian territory. In the early hours of Wednesday morning at least six Russian regions reported attempted drone attacks, one of which destroyed and damaged four military transport planes at an airfield in northwestern Russia.

More attacks followed overnight Thursday, with further drones shot down in the Moscow area and the Bryansk region of southern Russia that borders Ukraine. Airports in targeted regions have been forced to cancel and delay multiple flights as a result of the attacks.

Russia blamed Ukraine for the latest drone attacks while Ukraine remained characteristically tight-lipped about these, and previous, assaults. It’s undeniable that UAVs have become a crucial weapon in both Russia and Ukraine’s arsenals, however.

Ukraine has been targeted with thousands of Russian drone attacks during the 19-month-long conflict, with its energy, defense and civilian infrastructure pummeled by swarms of Iranian-made UAVs. On Tuesday night, Kyiv said it had repelled more than 20 drone and missile attacks on the capital.

In recent months, Russia has experienced more drone assaults too, however, with military bases, airfields and fuel depots, as well as neighborhoods in Moscow, targeted. Experts agree that Ukrainian forces direct attempts to attack Russian territory and are likely to be assisted by disaffected anti-war Russians at times.

While drone attacks are causing a headache for Moscow on a military and political level, forcing the country to re-allocate air defense complexes to its own territory, analysts say they’re unlikely to destabilize Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime unless an attack directly affects the elite.

“All these drone attacks force the Russian Ministry of Defense to distribute its limited number of defense assets deeper into Russia, for example, moving them from the frontlines to Moscow and airfields on Russian internationally recognized territory,” Kirill Shamiev, a Russian political scientist and a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC Thursday.

“This is especially important for these limited number of assets such as Pantsirs, which are good and powerful [anti-aircraft missile] systems on the frontlines, but now they need to bring some of them home. So this basically reduces the effectiveness there when they’re fighting Ukrainians,” he noted.

Shamiev said the increase of attacks on Russian territory was unlikely to cause a stir among Russian society, given that it was not close-knit and there had been few deaths from drone attacks.

Still, if UAVs continued to be used to target the more elite neighborhoods of Moscow, those where Putin’s allies and associates live, that could pose a problem for the Kremlin.

“If these drones continue hitting targets inside Moscow, and especially if they kill somebody, among the people closer to the Kremlin, this would be unfortunate and this is something they want to prevent from happening … I think they would rather prefer Ukrainians hit military targets than the civilian political infrastructure in Moscow, for example,” Shamiev said.

CNBC has requested a response to these comments and is awaiting a reply from the Kremlin.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in mid-August that Kyiv was working to significantly increase its drone production, aiming to manufacture UAVs with different ranges and different purposes.

“Production is necessary. We are increasing production significantly. However, we need to systematize what is already being supplied to the troops and used. Drones are the “eyes” and protection on the frontline,” Zelenskyy said in a nightly address, adding that “drones are a guarantee that people will not have to pay with their lives when drones can be used.”

Oleksandr Musiyenko, a military expert and head of the Centre for Military and Legal Studies in Kyiv, told CNBC he expected drone attacks to intensify further as Ukraine increased domestic drone production further.

“I think that the scale of these attacks will be higher .. Ukraine has tried to use different types of drones to launch attacks on Russian military objects, on Russian objects of the defense industry. And I think that these drones can be the game changer in the Russia-Ukrainian war,” he told CNBC Thursday.

“We do not have different types of missiles like Russia has, but we will increase the production of different types of drone.” “It’s very important for us,” he noted.

The chief of the Wagner Russian mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is believed to have been killed in a plane crash, Russian state media reported Wednesday.

The aircraft, a business jet, crashed in the Tver region northwest of Moscow, leading to the deaths of all 10 people onboard, according to Russian authorities.

While Russian officials said that Prigozhin was on the passenger list, it was not immediately clear if he was in the aircraft.

“An investigation of the Embraer plane crash that happened in the Tver Region this evening was initiated. According to the passenger list, first and last name of Yevgeny Prigozhin was included in this list,” Russia’s Federal Agency for Air Transport said in a statement.

The plane was flying from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow to St. Petersburg, the agency said, according to a Google translation.

The Russian Ministry of Emergency Services wrote on its Telegram account: “In the Tver region, near the village of Kuzhenkino, a private Embraer Legacy aircraft crashed while flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg. There were 10 people on board, including 3 crew members.”

“According to preliminary information, all on board were killed. EMERCOM of Russia is conducting search operations,” the post read, according to a Google translation.

U.S. President Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation, a White House spokesperson told NBC.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said that, if confirmed, Prigozhin’s death should come as no surprise.

“We have seen the reports. If confirmed, no one should be surprised,” Watson said. “The disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now — it would seem — to this.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also commented on the developing situation.

“The fact that Prigozhin made a direct challenge to Putin’s authority, the fact that he questioned publicly the very premises that Putin has advanced for the aggression against Ukraine – that’s playing out and will continue to play out,” Blinken told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday when asked about the incident.

“We’ve seen the ongoing drama, too, of where is Prigozhin, what is the arrangement with Putin?” he added. “If I were Mr. Prigozhin, I would remain very concerned. NATO has an ‘Open Door’ policy; Russia has an open windows policy, and he needs to be very focused on that.”

The “open windows policy” was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that numerous prominent Russian officials and businessmen who fell out of favor with Putin died by what local authorities described as falling out of windows or off of balconies.

Prigozhin effectively disappeared from public life after the failed mutiny. But just on Monday, Aug. 21, the mercenary leader appeared in a video published by Wagner-affiliated channels on Telegram, which suggested the footage was filmed in Africa. It was believed to be Prigozhin’s first video address since the coup attempt.

In the clip, the Wagner leader is holding a rifle and standing against a desert backdrop. The camera briefly pans to other armed men in a pickup truck.

“We are working. The temperature is plus 50 [Celsius]. Everything’s the way we like it. PMC Wagner is conducting reconnaissance, making Russia even greater on every continent – and Africa even freer,” Prigozhin said, according to a NBC News translation.

“Justice and happiness for the African nations,” he said. “We are messing with ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other banditos. We hire real supermen and continue working on tasks that were set to us and we promised to carry out.”

NBC News was not able to verify the video’s authenticity, as well as when or where it was shot.

Wagner has operated in parts of Africa including Mali, the Central African Republic and Libya.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive that launched in June against Moscow’s invasion has run into a Russian wall. 

In the run-up to the Ukrainian push, weapons from Western allies — such as tanks, artillery and other equipment — poured into Ukraine. Despite some small gains, Ukrainian forces have yet to see a large breakthrough, leaving some to wonder what else is needed.

“This is about as hard as it gets,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Think World War I with drones. … That’s a little bit what the Ukrainians are facing. And so in our microwave culture here in the United States, we want results yesterday, but that’s just not the way it works when you’re confronting a military like the Russians.”

Land mines have been a massive problem for Kyiv’s forces. Russia has deployed large tracts of the explosive devices, including mines aimed at troops as well as mines that are designed to take out armored vehicles like tanks, slowing down any Ukrainian advance. And with Russia’s ability to lay mines with specialized artillery, keeping cleared lanes open to send forces through has been a struggle.

“Let me be clear, this would present a significant challenge for any force that is trying to take it without the full scope of Western capabilities,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, executive chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator and co-founder of CrowdStrike.

Many in Kyiv have called for the introduction of Western fighter jets, such as the F-16, to beef up the beleaguered Ukrainian Air Force, which has managed to keep flying and fighting despite what on paper is an overwhelming Russian advantage in air power. These fighters would also help take the pressure off of air defense forces, which consists of older Soviet surface-to-air missile systems that are difficult to resupply, and the newly provided Patriot missile system. Just sending F-16s to Ukraine wouldn’t turn the tide overnight. It would take months, if not years, of training to get the most out of these expensive jets.

“These weapons are not silver bullets,” said Mick Ryan, a retired major general of the Australian army and adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There’s no such thing as a single weapon system that will provide that. It’s when you have lots of different weapons systems in the air on the ground. You have operators who are technically proficient and then you’re able to undertake the collective combined arms training, that’s when you have a really war-winning capability.”

Watch the video above to find out if more big-ticket, U.S.-made weapons such as F-16s, the Patriot missile system and HIMARS can turn the tide in Ukraine.

Oil prices surged Monday to their highest since mid-April, following an attack on a key Russian oil export hub and extended production cuts by OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Over the weekend, Ukraine launched a naval drone attack on Russia’s port of Novorossiysk, a critical hub on the Black Sea for Russian oil exports. Ukraine did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

In addition, the world’s top oil exporter Saudi Arabia last Thursday extended its voluntary crude oil output cut of a million barrels per day to the end of September. Saudi Arabia’s million barrel per day cut was implemented in July through to August, and the cut “can be extended or extended and deepened,” the state-owned Saudi Press Agency said last week.

“Now that we’ve seen supplies come off, I think I think we’ll see much higher prices,” said Josh Young, chief investment officer at Bison Interests, an oil and gas investment firm.

Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter, also pledged Thursday to voluntarily trim oil exports by 300,000 million barrels per day in September.

Global benchmark Brent futures traded slightly below the flatline at $86.17 a barrel — the highest since April 14. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures dipped 0.1% to $82.74 per barrel, hovering close to mid-April highs.

“I actually think they’re going to be quite volatile,” Young said, adding that prices will be much higher over the next five years.

“We might see all time-highs and prices crash as we go through this dynamic of insufficient supply relative to demand,” he said.

Citi’s Ed Morse was slightly more optimistic about crude oil supplies after September.

Morse, global head of commodity research at the bank, says Saudi Arabia and Russian output is “likely to come back” in October, and that oil prices will hit $90 per barrel at most this quarter.

“We just don’t see demand growth being that spectacular,” Morse said, projecting that there will not be “this huge incremental spurt in Chinese demand.”