Status Two informal straw polls have been held in the Security Council on the succession to António Guterres, whose second five-year term expires on 31 December. Neither produced a candidate with nine encourage votes, the threshold that would signal a Council majority. The declared field has doubled since March, from four candidates to eight. The lead changed hands between the first poll and the second. The successor takes office on 1 January 2027.

In 2022, the seven Western members of the Arctic Council — the US, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland — suspended participation in all meetings co-chaired by Russia. Moscow held the rotating presidency. The body, which had spent three decades quietly managing one of the world’s most consequential regions, stopped functioning almost overnight. What followed was silence dressed up as procedure. Working groups on shipping lanes, indigenous rights, environmental monitoring, and search-and-rescue coordination went dark.