Reuters World News - Putin unfazed, Patriots, Afghan data leak and Emmys

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin intends to keep fighting in Ukraine until the West engages on his terms for peace. U.S. President Donald Trump says weapons are already being shipped to Ukraine as NATO countries in Europe work out the details of a scheme to supply Kyiv. The details of a secret British plan to bring thousands of Afghans to the UK because of a government data breach have emerged after an unprecedented court order was lifted. And who are the winners and losers in the Emmy nominations?  Find the recommended read ⁠here. Our weekend episode is on rising tensions on the border between Finland and Russia. Find it ⁠here⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Visit the ⁠⁠⁠Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement⁠⁠⁠ for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit ⁠⁠⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices⁠⁠⁠ to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Putin has no plans to slow down in Ukraine as Trump ramps up the pressure. European allies figure out how to get more weapons to Kyiv. Americans start to feel the effects of tariffs at the tell. The UK secretly relocates thousands of Afghans following a huge data leak. And who made the cut? The Emmy nominations are in. It's Wednesday, July 16th. This is Reuters World News. bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday.

I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. Russia's president has no plans to pull back in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump's attempts to pressure him into a ceasefire in Ukraine. That's according to three sources close to the Kremlin. They say President Vladimir Putin may demand even more territory from Ukraine. Guy Falkenbridge is one of the reporters on this exclusive Reuters story. Guy, what is Putin thinking here? So Putin is basically in a place where he spent a lot of treasure and blood on a war and he wants to achieve his goals.

And he doesn't think that anybody's really engaged with him over his demands for peace and his demands in the war. So he's going to continue. And if he keeps on fighting, Russia is a very big country. It has a lot of people. It's bigger than Ukraine. it will continue to advance into other parts of Ukraine. And then his territorial ambitions may get bigger. So one source said to us, the appetite comes with eating.

Where does this leave the US-Russia relationship? So where it leaves it is that the US president has basically thrown down an ultimatum to the Russian president. And Russia is saying, whatever, yeah, we're going to continue on. The sources say that they think that there will be a sort of period of escalation. over coming months. Trump has threatened to put secondary tariffs on people who purchase Russian oil. That's essentially China, India and Turkey. I think it would be difficult for them to stop buying Russian oil. What it means is we get to a bit of a crisis over the next couple

of months. Staying with Ukraine and one of the ways Trump is trying to ramp up the pressure on Putin. When do you think the first Patriot missiles, some of these weapons that our allies will buy? They're already being shipped. From what countries that come? Donald Trump with reporters at Andrew's Air Force Base. But his plan to sell them to NATO countries so they can give theirs to Ukraine has yet to be ironed out. While he sounds confident the weapons are already on their way, allies need to agree on who will actually give up their prized systems while they wait on replacements. Reporter Graham Slattery is in Washington.

Germany is one of the countries that is considered a great candidate to send patriots. They've indicated some willingness to do so in the past. They have a lot of them. And they said that it's going to take some months for the Patriots to get there. They have to hash out these negotiations with the U.S. That's going to take days, weeks, if they get there. So there's going to be a delay. And, you know, that's a little bit of an issue for a number of reasons.

One is that the summer months tend to be the most kinetic and the most tactically important and the times when Ukraine is really fighting off the most aggressive Russian offens. Homeland Security says a deportation flight carrying immigrants from different countries has landed in Africa's Eswetini. It follows the Supreme Court's recent ruling, lifting limits on deporting migrants in the US to countries they're not from, and doing so without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. A Homeland Security spokesperson says the flight was for, quote, individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back. Syrian soldiers shoot into the air as they enter the city of Swadeh.

That's where sectarian clashes between Drew's armed groups and Bedouin tribal fighters has erupted. Their arrival is raising fears of attacks against the minority group. There are also concerns it could cause Israel to launch further attacks in Syria. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a visit to a military base the Jordan Valley, says the country must keep the area demilitarized as it borders Israel. And he says they should protect the Druze, who are a religious minority in Israel as well as in Syria. The U.S. has struck a tariff deal with Indonesia, the latest nation to lock in a deal before President Trump's August 1st deadline. But back home, economists say Trump's tariffs are already

beginning to bite. Americans are paying more for coffee, audio equipment and other goods. according to the latest consumer price index. Fed reporter Howard Schneider is here. Howard, would this new data showing inflation is rising? How are officials likely to respond? The Fed's not going to change its tune. The thing that's hard to keep a handle on here is that this process has become so unpredictable

that it's hard to imagine the Fed going too far in terms of forward guidance about rate cuts or approving rate cuts until there's something very dispositive to kind of grab a hold of. Either we know the final tariff rates now and we can kind of model this out and talk to businesses and see what they're saying and come to some comfort level that it's going to be a temporary price shock and inflation will fall. Or the labor market and growth takes a turn and they see the unemployment rate rising and they

say, okay, well, we got to keep a grip on that. In this environment that they've been dealing with now is really since January and first rounds of tariffs come out. It's been hard for them to say we can really say with certainty, and they never have certainty. Britain has set up a secret scheme to bring thousands of Afghans to the UK after a massive data breach led to their personal details being shared online. The leak happened in 2022 and led to fears that they could be targeted by the Taliban. A secret relocation program was then created. But the details of that scheme and the leak only emerged this week after an unprecedented court order was lifted. Our UK politics reporter Andrew McCaskill

is covering this. It began in 2022. When someone working for the Ministry of Defense accidentally sent emails with the personal details of about 19,000 Afghans who had worked with the British government. This information was sent to somebody who would believe was an Afghan national. And then nobody really thought about it for more than a year. And then the leak was discovered when screenshots of the database was published online. Why is this all coming under scrutiny now? In Britain, we don't have what you have in the United States, but it's the First Amendment, the right to free speech. So the courts were able to kind of gag the press for

more than three years. This is called what we call in Britain a super injunction, but it's usually used by celebrities to hide details of their private lives. It's extraordinary that the government was able to sort of use this. It's that time of year when we find out whether our favorite TV shows made it into the awards shortlist. Yes, it is Emmy nomination time. Here's entertainment reporter Lisa Richwine. The most nominated show is Severance, which is a psychological thriller on Apple TV Plus.

The premise is that you can undergo a procedure so you can separate your work life and your home life, if you can imagine such a thing. And the star, Adam Scott, was nominated for Best Actor, and he said he was thrilled by the nominations in part because when they made the show, they thought it was so weird that people might not respond to it. Another show with many nominations was The Penguin, which is on HBO. There's hacks, there is the White Lotus, the murder mystery that is set at a fancy resort,

and the pit, which is an emergency room drama, and it stars Noah Wiley. Any surprising inclusions or exclusions? One of the biggest omissions was Squid Game, the popular, Netflix show, the Korean drama that is really a worldwide phenomenon, this year it has zero nominations. The Handmaid's Tale had one best drama several years ago. It aired its final season. It got only one nomination today. And there's a few nominations to show it's never too late to hit your stride, right? Harrison Ford is 83 and he's getting his first Emmy nomination. He's on a show called Shrinking where he plays a grumpy psychiatrist and Kathy Bates, who is

77 was nominated for Best Actress for her starring role on Matlock, which is a reboot of a show from a couple decades ago. And for today's recommended read, The Vanishing Wetlands, which support fisheries, agriculture, and flood control. A report says the destruction could mean a $39 trillion loss. We'll drop a link to that story in today's pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or The Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player.

We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.