In partnership with
A little-reported Ukrainian drone campaign has closed Moscow’s airports now for three days, producing rolling flight cancellations that resemble a de facto air blockade ahead of Orthodox Christmas on 7 January. This is also a time when many Russians have been traveling for the New Year holiday. Meanwhile, the ground fighting in the Russia–Ukraine war remained hottest in Donetsk, where Ukraine reported heavy Russian assaults around Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka and mapping suggested incremental Russian advances. Strikes also hit Kyiv and its outskirts overnight, with Ukrainian officials reporting civilian deaths and widespread drone activity. Beyond the battlefield, Russia’s war economy is straining: gas exports to Europe have slumped, Urals crude continues to trade at a discount, and policymakers are managing the ruble and inflation with rate cuts and planned shifts in foreign-exchange sales. In Iran, officials are preparing to unify exchange rates, warning of an immediate 20–30% rise in basic goods and offering temporary monthly transfers of the equivalent of $7 to cushion households. This is a tremendously risky move while protests rock the nation. Elsewhere, Venezuela’s post-Maduro transition remains unclear, with legal and political theatrics alongside renewed pressure on crude flows. In the U.S., weak manufacturing signals contrasted with steadier markets and a surge in metals that hints at unease. America’s media landscape is also shifting dramatically as the CPB dissolves. And China, for its part, tightened dual-use export controls on Japan. |
Learn AI in 5 minutes a day
This is the easiest way for a busy person wanting to learn AI in as little time as possible:
Sign up for The Rundown AI newsletter
They send you 5-minute email updates on the latest AI news and how to use it
You learn how to become 2x more productive by leveraging AI
Center of Gravity
What you need to know
Russia’s drones-on-drones air war reaches Moscow’s airports
For a third day, Moscow’s airspace has been cleared of civilian traffic as Russian authorities suspend flights around the capital in response to Ukrainian drone attacks.
This is not a formal, legal “blockade” so much as a rolling safety shutdown: departures are halted and incoming flights are diverted. For passengers, the effect is much the same as a blockade: timetables become aspirations.
The timing appears calculated. Russia’s New Year travel rush runs straight into Orthodox Christmas on 7 January, when domestic demand peaks and disruption multiplies quickly.
Even brief closures at Moscow’s main hubs can ripple across the network because so many routes connect through the capital.
Each interruption pushes crews out of position, strands aircraft at the wrong airports, and triggers cascades of delays and cancellations.
By turning the skies over Russia’s most populous region into an intermittent hazard zone, Ukraine is tightening a civil aviation squeeze at the moment Russians most want to travel.
War watch: the battlefield
Over the past 24 hours (through the morning of 6 January), the fiercest fighting remained in Donetsk Oblast. Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces mounted 43 assaults in the Pokrovsk direction and 21 in the Kostiantynivka direction, amid continued clashes along the eastern front. Battlefield mapping from reputable social media accounts said Russian troops advanced near Fedorivka and around Novomarkove in Donetsk. In the north, Russia claimed it had captured the border settlement of Hrabovske in Sumy.
Overnight, Russia struck Kyiv and the surrounding region. Ukrainian officials said two civilians were killed, including one in Kyiv after a medical facility in the Obolonskyi district caught fire. Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia launched 61 drones, of which 53 were shot down or jammed, and that strikes were recorded at six locations.
Moscow said Ukraine has targeted the Russian capital daily since the start of 2026.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it downed 437 drones across the country in one day, including 57 over the Moscow region. Russian regional authorities also reported a Ukrainian drone incident in Tver that killed one person and injured two after debris struck an apartment building and started a fire.
Russia’s economy remains under wartime pressure. Pipeline gas exports to Europe fell 44% in 2025 to their lowest level in decades. Oil exporters have faced steep discounts on Urals crude, estimated at roughly $20–$30 a barrel below Brent, partly offset by tax relief. The central bank cut its key rate to 16% in December and said it would reduce foreign-exchange sales from 12 January, as households trim spending even as official inflation cools.
Known Unknowns: The impact of U.S. tariffs on international trade & especially the U.S. bond market. Whether the U.S. and Iran will restart nuke talks, or whether another round of conflict will occur between the US, Israel, Iran, and their respective allies. Relations of new Syrian government with Israel, international community & ability to maintain stability inside Syria. China’s triggers for military action against Taiwan. U.S. and allied responses to China’s ‘grey zone’ warfare in the South China Sea and north Asia. Ukraine’s ability to withstand Russia’s war of attrition. The potential for the jihadist insurgency in Africa’s Sahel region to consolidate and spread.
The Middle East
Birthplace of civilization
Iran tries to cushion an exchange-rate shock
In response to the countrywide protests, Iran’s government is preparing to scrap its multi-tier foreign-exchange system and move to a single rate, a long-discussed reform intended to curb arbitrage and the corruption that flourishes when some importers receive subsidized U.S. dollars and others do not.
The authorities are also acknowledging the political risk: if essential goods are repriced closer to prevailing rates, households will feel it quickly. Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani says the shift could lift the cost of basic goods by 20 to 30 percent almost immediately.
To soften the blow, Tehran says it will compensate consumers directly. The plan is to give Iranians 10 million rials a month (about $238) for the next four months. In practice, this looks less like a stimulus and more like a temporary buffer against a sudden jump in living costs.
The logic is straightforward. Import subsidies are easy to game and hard to police, and much of the benefit can leak to middlemen. Consumer support is simpler to administer, easier to target, and harder to skim, especially if it is delivered as a digital credit for specified staples. Tehran is trying to replace a leaky system of price controls with a cleaner transfer, while betting that a modest monthly top-up will calm public anger long enough for the exchange-rate reform to stick.
However, doing this in the middle of a popular uprising against the government is fraught with great risk.
Latin America
The new Monroe Doctrine era & the Trump Corollary
Venezuela’s political drama is just in the opening stage
On the Venezuelan stage, the actors are still in the first stage of their post-Maduro performance. On Tuesday morning Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty in New York, with the next court date set for 17 March. Former vice president Delcy Rodriguez has been sworn in as interim president.
On Monday, U.S. officials said they were preparing for the possibility that President Donald Trump will decide to reopen the U.S. embassy in Caracas.
Separately, Venezuela’s press association said 14 media workers were detained in Caracas while covering events, before being released; one foreign journalist was deported.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said she has not spoken to Trump since October 2025 and that she plans to return to Venezuela.
Meanwhile, multiple oil tankers hit by U.S. sanctions appear to be probing President Donald Trump’s “total and complete” blockade on Venezuelan crude by moving in a wave rather than one by one. Tracking firms and shipping data suggest roughly a dozen tankers have departed since the start of 2026, and industry reporting puts the figure as high as 16.
If the pattern holds, it looks coordinated: overwhelm interdiction capacity, scatter targets, and force U.S. enforcement to choose between selective seizures and letting some cargoes slip through.
It is less a legal breakthrough than a practical one, because Washington’s move has long occupied a gray zone between sanctions enforcement and what critics describe as a naval quarantine.
The stakes are larger than a handful of hulls. The departing vessels may be carrying around 12 million barrels of crude and fuel, much of it typically bound for Asia, at a moment when Venezuela’s state oil company faces storage constraints and the risk of production shut-ins if exports remain bottled up.
The Global Economy
The ultimate complex system
Mixed signals in the U.S. economy, and an uneasy message from commodities
Over the past 24 hours, the economic picture has been one of mixed signals. In the U.S., Federal Reserve officials remained cautious, with Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari arguing that inflation is easing while warning that the labor market could still soften, a reminder that any move on rate cuts will hinge on incoming data.
The latest activity gauges also leaned weak: the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for December slipped deeper into contraction territory, as firms pointed to cost pressures and uncertainty around trade policy.
Markets were steadier than the data, with U.S. equities modestly firmer, while commodities sent a more complicated message.
Oil prices drifted lower on supply expectations, but gold rose to a one-week high on safe-haven demand and hopes of easier monetary policy.
Abroad, Europe looked sluggish rather than in free fall, with final PMI readings implying subdued growth as services partly offset manufacturing weakness, and France’s December inflation remained low. I
n Asia, attention stayed on Japan’s gradual shift away from ultra-loose policy, with signals consistent with continued normalization.
The next near-term focal point for U.S. macro sentiment is the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey report due on 7 January, which could move expectations if vacancies or quits swing sharply.
Commodity prices, meanwhile, look more like a difficult-to-interpret warning rather than a clear story. On 6 January 2026, gold was around $4,463 an ounce, silver about $78.6 an ounce, and copper pushed to fresh highs above roughly $13,370 per tonne (about $6 per lb).
In a typical cycle, copper’s strength is read as confidence in growth, while gold’s appeal is insurance against disorder.
So they are not supposed to sprint higher for the same reason and at the same time.
When they do, it can look less like a tidy inflation trade and more like investors reaching for scarce, durable collateral, partly because the usual portfolio mechanics, such as bonds buffering risk and real yields anchoring gold, feel less reliable.
It can also reflect a market that is pricing a world in which policy tilts toward protecting the debt structure, even if that means gradual devaluation and higher nominal prices for physical assets relative to paper claims.
Trump Administration
Move fast and break things
Public broadcasting retreats
On 5 January 2026, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) voted to dissolve, closing a body created in 1967 that for 58 years served as the main federal pass-through for public-media funding.
CPB did not “run” PBS or NPR so much as finance the ecosystem around them, sending grants to local public television and radio stations and supporting shared services that many outlets cannot fund on their own.
Its disappearance is likely to produce less a sudden blackout than a slow squeeze, felt most sharply by smaller and rural stations with thin donor bases.
It also comes amid a broader reordering of America’s information system. As public broadcasting weakens, more agenda-setting power concentrates in private hands, especially across platforms and media groups steered by a small number of billionaire owners and corporate gatekeepers.
Some of the loudest megaphones now sit with figures widely viewed as sympathetic to President Donald Trump or the Republican Party, including X under Elon Musk, Truth Social under Trump Media, and Fox News alongside the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post within Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
A large conservative-leaning local-television footprint is also held by groups such as Sinclair, which owns or operates roughly 185 stations across dozens of markets. The result is a shift away from a publicly underwritten, locally rooted layer of media and toward an ecosystem where reach, incentives, and politics are increasingly shaped by concentrated private control.
Cold War 2.0
It’s the U.S. vs China, everyone else needs to pick a side
China tightens dual-use exports to Japan
China has imposed an immediate ban on exports of “dual-use” goods to Japan when the end-use is deemed military.
It said such items may not be shipped to Japanese military end-users, or to other end-users in Japan if the transfer would bolster Japan’s military capabilities.
China’s Ministry of Commerce warned that individuals and organizations that breach the restrictions will face legal consequences, including for unauthorized transfers of controlled items.
Initial reports did not include a detailed public list of affected products, but coverage presented the move as part of China’s broader dual-use export-control regime and linked it to rising China–Japan tensions, including those tied to Taiwan.
Center of Gravity sign up link: https://www.namea-group.com/the-daily-brief
What happened today:
1066 - Harold Godwinson is crowned king of England. 1492 - Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile enter Granada, ending the Granada War. 1641 - The Parliament of Quilín establishes a truce between Spain and the Mapuche in Chile. 1842 - The retreat from Kabul begins during the First Anglo-Afghan War. 1941 - Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers the “Four Freedoms” State of the Union address. 1946 - Vietnam holds its first general election. 1949 - The U.N. announces Egypt’s consent to begin armistice talks with Israel. 1950 - The United Kingdom formally recognizes the People’s Republic of China. 1960 - Iraq’s Associations Law comes into force, allowing registration of political parties. 1974 - The U.S. begins a trial of year-round daylight saving time in response to the oil crisis. 2021 - The U.S. Capitol is stormed during certification of the 2020 presidential election. 2025 - Justin Trudeau announces his resignation as Canada’s prime minister and Liberal Party leader.
