MNI POLITICAL RISK ANALYSIS - Week Ahead 1-7 December

MNIPOLITICALRISK-WeekAhead1-7Dec.pdf

(MNI) London – All timings are subject to change.

Monday 1 December:

• US-Venezuela: CNN reports that US President Donald Trump will hold a meeting in the Oval Office at ~17:00ET (22:00GMT, 23:00CET) to discuss next steps on Venezuela. This comes after Trump confirmed that he had held a phone call with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and as Trump said that Venezuelan airspace should be ‘considered closed’. Tensions between the two countries remain at record-highs, with reports that Trump has delivered an ultimatum to Maduro to resign from office.
• Ukraine: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Paris for talks with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. Coming just two weeks after his last trip to the French capital, the discussions will focus primarily on this weekend’s discussions in Florida between US and Ukrainian delegations (see below). A joint press statement is set to be delivered in the early afternoon. Starts a week of intense European diplomacy for the embattled Ukrainian leader, whose political currency domestically (and in the US) has been severely dented by a burgeoning corruption scandal at high levels of government.