Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen delivers a speech during his visit to Oddar Meanchey province, near the Cambodia-Thailand border, June 26, 2025.

On July 1, in the latest twist in Thailand’s volatile politics, the country’s Constitutional Court voted to suspend Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra after less than a year in office. The decision by a 7-to-2 vote followed weeks of rising public anger over Paetongtarn’s perceived botched handling of a border dispute with neighboring Cambodia in May. Both sides initially played down the clash, in which a Cambodian soldier was killed, but tensions soon flared when Phnom Penh subsequently announced it would take the case to the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, against Thailand’s wishes.

In response, Thailand implemented a series of restrictions at border checkpoints, to which Cambodia retaliated by banning imports of fruit, vegetables and electricity from its neighbor. With leaders in Phnom Penh talking tough, the Thai public’s frustrations over the government’s allegedly weak response boiled over after a leaked phone call between Paetongtarn and Hun Sen, Cambodia’s longtime former leader who remains heavily influential despite having handed power to his son, Hun Manet, two years ago.

Paetongtarn, 38, showed unusual deference to the 72-year-old Hun Sen on the call, referring to him as “uncle” and telling him to disregard inflammatory comments about the border dispute from a senior Thai military commander. The friendly tone was in part due to the close ties Hun Sen enjoyed with Thaksin Shinawatra, Paetongtarn’s father and a former Thai prime minister who is still a major powerbroker in the ruling Pheu Thai Party. Despite those family ties, however, Hun Sen shared a recording he had made of the call with dozens of Cambodian politicians, resulting in a short segment of it being leaked, after which Hun Sen posted the full 17-minute recording to social media.

The fallout from the call has plunged Thailand back into a familiar political crisis with plenty of historical precedents, in which supporters of the army-backed, pro-royalist conservative establishment have taken to the streets in protest and called on a Pheu Thai prime minister to resign. With Paetongtarn suspended and her former deputy Phumtham Wechayachai installed as interim leader, the court could now take months to decide her fate.

Hun Sen, meanwhile, has continued to stir up trouble from across the border, accusing Paetongtarn of committing treason and insulting the Thai king—a serious offence that carries a jail sentence of up to 15 years in prison under Thailand’s strict lèse-majesté laws. He has also threatened to reveal unspecified comments allegedly made to him by Thaksin, who faces a separate trial in relation to his own past remarks about the Thai monarchy.

However, Hun Sen’s meddling might say less about Thailand’s long-standing political divides, which date back to Pheu Thai’s first election win in 2001, and more about Cambodia’s domestic politics. Hun Sen has arguably leveraged the border crisis to boost the political legitimacy of his ruling Cambodian People’s Party, or CPP, provoking nationalist fervor on the border issue while highlighting the contrast between the relative stability of Cambodia’s de facto one-party state and Thailand’s tumultuous politics.

Border Dispute

Initially, the border clash on May 28 seemed unlikely to have such significant ramifications. The incident occurred in an undemarcated area in the Emerald Triangle region near Chong Bok, in Thailand’s eastern province of Ubon Ratchathani, where the borders of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos meet. Both sides accused each other of opening fire first, with Thailand alleging that Cambodian forces had dug a trench in contravention of a prior agreement not to alter the geographical landscape of the disputed area. Both governments initially attempted to de-escalate and reportedly agreed to pull back their troops from the remote forested area where the incident took place. Paetongtarn and her Cambodian counterpart, Prime Minister Hun Manet, spoke over the phone and reinforced the need to keep communication channels open.

Tensions on the border are nothing new for the two neighbors. From 2008 to 2011, repeated clashes took place near the site of the Preah Vihear temple, which was awarded to Cambodia in a 1962 ICJ ruling. After that period of sporadic fighting, in which dozens of soldiers on both sides were killed, Cambodia sought further clarification from the ICJ, which reaffirmed its earlier ruling in 2013. The clash in May occurred in a different area along the two sides’ 500-mile border, parts of which have remained disputed since the frontier was mapped in the early 1900s, during the French colonial period. Ties between the two neighbours have generally been on an upward trajectory since the last major flareup over a decade ago, though in recent years the disputes have become a source of nationalist rhetoric on social media.

The implied message from Hun Sen is that one-party rule in Cambodia is better than the repeating cycles of political chaos and jostling for power among parties across the border in Thailand.

After the latest clash, both sides’ governments came under popular pressure to adopt a firmer line, and their initial conciliatory statements soon gave way to discord. Four days after the incident, Hun Sen declared that the entire Emerald Triangle belonged to Cambodia, urging lawmakers to take the dispute to the ICJ. On June 2, the National Assembly, in which the CPP controls all but a few seats, voted to approve Phnom Penh’s decision to ask the ICJ to make a further ruling over four disputed areas, including the site of May’s clash. Thailand, which does not accept ICJ jurisdiction and had hoped to resolve the dispute bilaterally, was caught off-guard.

In response, the Thai army commander in the disputed area declared that the Thai military would not allow “any land to be lost.” Under rising pressure, Paetongtarn also adopted a firmer public stance toward Cambodia, warning that despite the warm relationship between the Shinawatra and Hun families, Thailand’s national interests always come first. Paetongtarn insisted that Thailand “will not cede an inch of territory” and assured the Thai public that the Pheu Thai-led coalition government and military were closely aligned and “working in full harmony” to resolve the border issue.

Paetongtarn’s Leadership Unravels

This proved to be Paetongtarn’s undoing, as her sharpened tone in public was contradicted by the leaked audio of her June 15 call with Hun Sen, in which Paetongtarn promised to “take care” of Hun Sen’s political needs and dismissed the comments of the regional Thai military commander. As a result, when the audio was leaked, it provoked uproar across Thailand’s political spectrum, causing Paetongtarn’s approval rating to plummet to just 9 percent, down from an already low 31 percent due to the Pheu Thai-led government’s inability to boost Thailand’s flagging economy since taking office in 2023.

Supporters of Thailand’s military-backed political parties, some of which are members of Paetongtarn’s coalition, launched street protests in Bangkok, while the progressive People’s Party—the main opposition to the Pheu Thai-led government— called on Paetongtarn to resign or call snap elections.

The second-largest party in the governing coalition, Bhumjaithai, withdrew its support, leaving Paetongtarn with only a narrow majority in parliament. While other coalition partners opted to stay, thereby preventing the government’s immediate collapse, Paetongtarn’s suspension by the Constitutional Court on July 1 leaves her in limbo. She has been named to the reshuffled Cabinet as minister of culture while she presents her defense to the court. But the legal case may stretch out over several months, and past precedents offer no reason for optimism.

Despite Thailand’s ostensible return to elected civilian government in 2019, real power remains with the royalist military—which has staged no fewer than 12 coups since 1932—as well as with the military’s proxy parties and the country’s politicized judiciary. Both Thaksin and Paetongtarn’s aunt, Yingluck Shinawatra, have been removed as prime minister in the past 20 years, via coups in 2006 and 2014, respectively. And Paetongtarn assumed office last year after her Pheu Thai predecessor, former Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, was removed by the Constitutional Court in an ethics case.

If Paetongtarn suffers the same fate, the most likely outcome will be the continuation of the current coalition government under a new leader, whether from Pheu Thai, a military-backed party or Bhumjaithai if it rejoins the coalition. This is a less risky outcome for the army and its proxies than dissolving parliament and holding fresh elections, as that would put it on a collision course with the reformist People’s Party, which represents a bigger threat to the royalist-military establishment than Pheu Thai.

The People’s Party is the successor to the Move Forward party, which won the most seats in the 2023 elections on a campaign platform that included explicit promises to soften the country’s lèse-majesté laws, a first in Thai politics. But establishment forces used the governance system designed by the country’s last military junta to block Move Forward from power. Instead, the military-backed parties joined forces with the chastened Pheu Thai as part of a grand bargain that saw Srettha appointed as prime minister and Thaksin allowed to return from Dubai, where he had lived since being ousted in 2006 to avoid legal cases that were subsequently brought against him. The Move Forward party was subsequently dissolved by the Constitutional Court, but retains its base of support in its reincarnation as the People’s Party.

Meanwhile, the revival of several legal cases against Thaksin in recent months had already signaled that the military’s patience with Pheu Thai may have been running out. In light of the uproar sparked by Paetongtarn’s call with Hun Sen, even another coup cannot be ruled out.

Hun Sen’s Role

With Thai politics in the throes of its latest crisis, the role played by Hun Sen in the recent upheaval is striking. It was clearly a mistake by Paetongtarn, who had never held a ministerial post before becoming prime minister, to trust Hun Sen, a wily and ruthless operator with decades of experience. Paetongtarn swiftly apologized after the call was made public and framed her conciliatory language as a negotiation tactic, but it was too late.

Although Hun Sen did not directly leak the initial audio clip, he admitted to having shared it widely, despite the obvious repercussions it would have in Thailand were it ever to be made public. This leads to the question of what Cambodia, or the CPP, might have to gain from the resulting chaos in Thai politics. Statements by Cambodia’s leaders amid the fallout may give some indication.

To start with, defending Cambodia against external threats has long been central to Hun Sen’s narrative of political legitimacy, and the May flareup provided an ideal opportunity for him to appeal to nationalist sentiment and boost the CPP’s image as the primary defender of national sovereignty. On a visit to the border in late June, for instance, he declared that troops were ready to defend Cambodia “in case of any invasion by the Thai army,” even though there had been no further clashes after the shootout in May.

In addition, Hun Sen has long framed the CPP, which has ruled since the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, as the only source of internal unity in Cambodia, citing the country’s history of conflict and routinely warning of war if the CPP were to lose an election. In this sense, his decision to meddle in Thai politics served a useful domestic purpose, as the resulting political chaos in Thailand allows the CPP to project an image of stability, not only in terms of its unified handling of the border dispute, but more broadly.

The implied message is that one-party rule in Cambodia is better than the repeating cycles of political chaos and jostling for power among parties across the border in Thailand. Hun Manet indicated as much at the start of July, following Paetongtarn’s suspension, while briefing reporters on the status of the border dispute, saying, “In Cambodia, there is no confusion or conflicting orders. We are waiting for a leader [in Thailand] with real authority [and] a legitimate mandate.”

The CPP’s legitimacy is key to the Hun family’s dynastic rule, and never more so than now, when power is gradually being transferred from father to son. Hun Sen’s role in setting the tone on the border dispute, however, indicates that he remains the most powerful figure in Cambodia—for now, at least. The concern in Bangkok is that, amid the latest political crisis, the Thai royalist-military establishment may ultimately decide that it too would be better off without any opposition at all.

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Suspended Thai PM Paetongtarn hit by ethics investigation, source and media say

Thailand’s Minister of Culture Paetongtarn Shinawatra leaves Government House, in Bangkok.

Thailand's anti-graft body will investigate suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra for alleged ethnics violations over a leaked phone call with Cambodia's influential former leader Hun Sen, an official and local media said on Monday.

The investigation will be another blow to the beleaguered government of 38-year-old Paetongtarn, Thailand's youngest premier, who the Constitutional Court suspended from duty earlier this month over the same issue.

The leaked June 15 call, during which Paetongtarn appeared to kowtow before Hun Sen and criticised a Thai army commander, triggered a major backlash at home, with allegations she had undermined Thailand's integrity and sovereignty amid a heated territorial dispute with Cambodia.

Paetongtarn has since seen protests calling for her resignation and the exit from her coalition of its second-largest party, leaving her government with a razor-thin majority.

"The commission has set up an investigation panel. There is no timeframe," said an official from the National Anti-Corruption Commission, who declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak publicly about the matter.

The body has a broad remit to probe allegations of offences by state officials beyond graft. Multiple Thai media outlets on Monday reported it had decided to investigate Pateongtarn.

The NACC secretary-general Sarote Phuengrampan told reporters he was not aware of the investigation or any decision by commissioners.

The complaint came from 36 senators who also petitioned the Constitutional Court alleging Paetongtarn, the daughter of politically influential billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, had violated ethical standards and intentionally abused her power. She is suspended from duty until a verdict is delivered.

Paetongtarn has apologised for the call and insisted she was trying to find a peaceful solution to an escalating row with Cambodia, which saw a troop buildup on both sides of their border.

Paetongtarn's battles after only 10 months in office underline a deep rift in Thailand between the Shinawatra political dynasty and its rivals among a conservative establishment backed by the army, a long-running power struggle that has seen two coups and the fall of multiple parties and prime ministers by court orders.

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Cambodia to start military conscription in 2026 as border tensions with Thailand continue

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Manet said on Monday that his country will implement military conscription starting next year, in an announcement that coincides with ongoing border tensions with Thailand.

Relations between the neighbours have deteriorated sharply following an armed confrontation on 28 May in which one Cambodian soldier was killed in one of several small contested patches of land.

The sides have agreed to de-escalate their dispute to avoid further clashes, but continue to implement or threaten measures that have kept tensions high, alongside exchanging sharp words.

The dispute has also roiled Thailand's domestic politics.

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was suspended from office at the beginning of July after making what critics saw as a disparaging comment about her country's military in a phone call to Cambodia's former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who leaked a recording of it.

Hun Manet, Hun Sen's son and successor, said that starting in 2026, an existing law on conscription would be implemented to fill shortages and upgrade the military's capabilities.

"This is our commitment," Hun Manet said in a speech to military forces in the northern province of Kampong Chhnang. He wore his military uniform displaying his rank of a four-star general.

Hun Manet said that soldiers joining the ranks through conscription were more effective than a voluntary force and at least as professional.

The conscription law was passed in 2006, but never activated. Cambodians of both sexes, aged 18 to 30, must serve but for women, service is voluntary.

Thailand has long implemented conscription for men reaching 20 years of age, with an annual lottery determining who among them is called up.

The CIA's World Factbook estimates Cambodia's armed forces total 200,000 personnel, including a large force of military police.

It says Thailand has 350,000 active-duty personnel in its armed forces.

Hun Manet also called for increasing the military budget. Cambodia is one of the region's poorer countries, with a $9.32 billion (€7.99 billion) national budget for 2025, out of which the biggest share, $739 million (€633 million), went on defence.

He also repeated calls for Thailand to reopen without conditions all border crossings it had closed in June, saying that Cambodia would reciprocate within hours.

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Video shows jets in northern Malaysia, not Thai patrol on Cambodian frontier

Relations between Bangkok and Phnom Penh have remained tense since a long-standing territorial dispute boiled over into cross-border clashes in May, but a video purporting to show Thai fighter jets breaching Cambodian airspace was in fact filmed in Malaysia two weeks before the spat.

"Cambodia in shock as Thai army showcases its jets along the border," reads Thai-language text superimposed on a video shared on YouTube on June 26, 2025.

A Khmer-language voiceover says: "Hi all, please watch these Thai army jets that are flying along the border back and forth. I don't know about their intentions towards Cambodia. Please be careful -- our people, our troops."

The clip also circulated with a similar Khmer-language caption as a diplomatic feud between Bangkok and Phnom Penh continued to fester.

The Southeast Asian neighbours have been at loggerheads since a Cambodian soldier was killed in late May as troops exchanged fire in a disputed border region.

Numerous border crossings have been closed as Cambodia banned some Thai products, and Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was suspended last week pending an ethics probe into her conduct during the spat.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet announced on July 14 that the military will begin conscripting civilians from 2026, citing the rising tensions with Thailand as the reason for activating a long-dormant mandatory enlistment law.

Thailand already has military conscription for young and able-bodied men, who enter a lottery to determine whether they have to serve.

The circulating clip, however, was filmed in Malaysia.

A combination of keyword and reverse image searches on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to a horizontally flipped version of the clip in a Facebook post on May 13

Its Malay-language caption reads: "The last running in...for me. Three pairs of Sukhoi & Hornet fighter jets flying over Sultan Abdul Halim Airport, Alor Setar" (archived link). The airport is in northern Malaysia's Kedah state.

Camera shutters can also be heard in this higher quality version.

The clip was posted by Safuan Salahudin, a Malaysia-based photographer, who often shares his work on his social media accounts.

Metadata from Salahudin's original video file confirmed it was recorded on the same date it was posted on Facebook.

"I didn't expect social media users in other countries to manipulate my video like that," he said.

He also pointed out that the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF)'s F/A-18D Hornet seen in the video was decorated in Pikachu-themed livery, which is used on special occasions such as the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition 2025 (LIMA 25) (archived link).

Malaysian media reported the air force jets were training in Kedah ahead of LIMA 25, which was held between May 20 and 24.

The air force also reassured local residents there was no need to be anxious or worried by low-flying aircraft or the sound of explosions during the training period.

AFP has debunked other misinformation related to the Cambodia-Thailand border dispute.