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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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November 6, 2025

Russia’s Gas Tank

Nears Empty

Parts of oil-rich Russia have been suffering gasoline shortages amid Ukrainian attacks on petroleum refineries. With Russian crude oil also facing US sanctions, this means a geopolitical strength of Russia’s—its ample energy production—looks diminished, Vadim Shtepa writes for The Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor. 
 
Russia has been able to repair its refineries quickly, as detailed in a Foreign Affairs essay by Tatiana Mitrova of Columbia University and Sergey Vakulenko of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But Mitrova and Vakulenko warn of a longer-term toll: “The Kremlin is determined to prevent visible [gasoline] shortages that could undermine public confidence, but the tools it relies on—export bans, fixed margins, subsidies—are locking the [energy] sector into stagnation. Russian refiners must now operate with little market autonomy; many are postponing investment decisions ‘until after the war.’ Refineries are still running, but with deferred maintenance, rushed emergency repairs, and a mounting backlog of safety and efficiency issues. The result is not collapse, but quiet degradation. … In the end, Russia’s refineries are most likely to wear out under the weight of repeated shocks and institutional sclerosis—a quiet but telling metaphor for Russia’s war economy itself.”
 
This is happening amid a global glut in oil supply, which has lowered prices and dented Russian revenue. Last month, Russian tax revenue from oil and gas sales had dropped 27% from the previous year. Tsvetana Paraskova writes for OilPrice.com: “Forecasters, investment banks, and analysts expect the overhang [of excess global oil supply] to depress oil prices at the end of this year and early next year as inventory builds begin to show up at the key pricing hubs. The consensus appears to be that a glut will soon overwhelm the market. But estimates on how big the overhang will be vary, ranging from a super-glut of record proportions to more modest inventory increases in the historically weaker demand period in the first quarter of any year.”

What Was the Louvre’s

Onetime CCTV Password?

In a high-profile heist last month, thieves stole priceless crown jewels from the world’s most visited museum. Recent reporting on Louvre security indicates that at one point, in 2014, the museum used an embarrassingly weak password to protect one of its digital networks—the one that managed closed-circuit (CCTV) security-camera footage.

What was the password, reportedly?

a) 123
b) password
c) LOUVRE
d) musée

To see the answer, scroll to the end of this newsletter. 

Youthquake!

As youth protests have swept through countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America in recent months—unseating governments in Nepal and Madagascar—the Financial Times’ editorial board has dubbed Gen Z a powerful new force in global politics. Demonstrations are making headlines and busting norms: “Up to now, mass protests in Tanzania have been unthinkable,” Nicodemus Minde writes for the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies.
 
Generally, young demonstrators in these developing countries have railed against poor governance (including corruption) and a lack of economic opportunity. What can be said about the Gen Z protests, beyond that?

Looking at protest movements in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, Peter Lockwood writes for the French Institute of International Relations, in partnership with the Nairobi-based French Institute for Research in Africa, that the “character” of youth protests in those countries “tends to be one of ‘resistance’ rather than ‘revolution’—a desire for a better sort of politics, a more moral leadership than a radical break with the status quo.” Lockwood notes “the enormous numbers of young, economically disenfranchised people across eastern Africa who depend on the informal economy, yet have been promised futures of ‘development’ under the wider narratives of an ‘Africa rising.’”
 
Lockwood sees a “range of political actors” seeking to “leverage” Gen Z as a political bloc that can be mobilized. Whether or not that’s happening everywhere, the Gen Z protest movements seem to share another commonality: repression only fuels them. In Nepal, the government banned a swath of social-media apps, hoping to tamp down on discontent bubbling online; that action catalyzed youth anger, and five days later, Parliament had been set on fire, and the prime minister had resigned. “What emerges is a cyclical dynamic,” Lockwood writes of the East African cases: “each wave of protest prompts fiercer state retaliation, which in turn radicalizes the next wave of dissent. Kenya’s Gen Z, initially focused on tax policies, now frames its struggle in existential terms as a fight for the future of Kenya’s political space.” 

On this weekend’s GPS, Fareed will delve into the Gen Z protests sweeping developing countries. Tune in to CNN at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET Sunday to watch.

News Quiz:

The Answer Is …

Question: What was the Louvre’s embarrassingly weak onetime CCTV password, reportedly? Answer: “LOUVRE.”
 
CNN’s Joseph Ataman writes: “A 2014 report from the French information security agency (ANSSI) seen by French daily Liberation claimed that the password for the server managing the museums’ sprawling CCTV network was simply ‘LOUVRE.’ Access to software managed by the security technology company Thales was protected by a similarly foolproof password: ‘THALES’—according to Liberation.”