The Week in Review: December 4-10, 2021

The US announces its Olympic boycott, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin talk things over, and more

This week, the US led a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics that failed (at least so far) to catch on. The Ethiopian government announced it has retaken key cities in its war against the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Negotiations over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal resumed, though there is still disagreement on the starting point for this round of talks. The US military’s combat mission in Iraq officially ended. Finally, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin met to discuss fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine and the state of US-Russian relations.