Rusia

Despite promises to support Ukraine for as long as necessary, many NATO Allies are starting to reach a tipping point in their military assistance to Ukraine. That reality, and the specter of Donald Trump’s reelection this November, has led some within the Alliance to call for the NATOization of the war in Ukraine. Absent consensus on extending Ukraine an invitation for NATO membership, NATO Allies have spent the last few months finalizing plans for alternative ways to show support for Ukraine at the upcoming Washington Summit. Intended to be a ‘bridge’ to NATO membership, the new measures—which will see NATO taking a larger role in coordination of allied training and security assistance—are unlikely to resolve the underlying dilemma the Alliance has faced since 2014: determining how far NATO should go in supporting Ukraine absent a formal collective defense security guarantee by the Alliance. Moreover, by fundamentally altering NATO’s role in the conflict, the new measures could actually increase ambiguity surrounding the Allies’ commitment to the defense of Ukraine, prompting Russian president Vladimir Putin to potentially test the Alliance’s resolve.

Continentalism, a geopolitical concept coined by Algis Klimaitis, adviser to Algirdas Brazauskas, the first President of Lithuania after it became independent, stands for a Europe focused on itself. (1) Continentalism is directed against transatlanticism, because it stands for a European social market economy, in other words the continental model of “Rhenish capitalism” and not the Anglo-Saxon model of “shareholder/stakeholder capitalism”, for a Christian-conservative culture, as opposed to the “woke” ideology that has come from the United States, and for a European security system that eclipses NATO.

The military spending race that has begun in the world in recent years (primarily because of the war in Ukraine) has become a burden on the budgets of many countries, but for Russia in particular, dependence on military injections could prove disastrous, believes Oleg Itskhoki, professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. While military spending in the world is growing from 2% to 3% of GDP, in Russia it is already almost 9% of GDP and 40% of the budget. And even if the war ends tomorrow, it will not be possible to simply get off this needle of military spending, and the money will run out sooner or later.

The whole point of rebranding what was first conceptualized as the “Baltic Defense Line” is to market this project as an inclusive pan-European one that’s supposedly being built for the “greater good” of the bloc’s citizens.

How the Fight Against Climate Change Can Overcome Geopolitical Discord

The clean energy transition has reached adolescence. Its future direction is not yet set, and in the meantime, its internal paradoxes make for a volatile mix. Political leaders fret that ambitious steps to address climate change will aggravate geopolitical problems in a world already troubled by wars and humanitarian crises. Governments worried about energy security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have advocated for strategies that embrace both fossil fuels and clean alternatives, lest dependence on imported oil give way to reliance on imported lithium. Rising inflation and economic slowdowns, too, are exacerbating concerns that the energy transition will lead to job losses and price hikes. The warnings are coming in quick succession. In March, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink championed “energy pragmatism” in his most recent annual letter, and a few weeks later, a JPMorgan Chase report called for a “reality check” about the transition away from fossil fuels. In April, Haitham al-Ghais, the secretary-general of OPEC, wrote that the energy transition would require “realistic policies” that acknowledge rising demand for oil and gas.

Foreign spy agencies were likely involved to an uncertain extent, but they still relied on radicalized locals to do their dirty work, not their own compatriots.

The southern Russian region of Dagestan was hit by several terrorist attacks in Sunday after armed militants targeted a churches, synagogues, and a traffic police post in two separate cities. Abdulkhakim Gadzhiyev, who’s one of that region’s representatives in the Duma, promptly blamed Ukraine and NATO. Former Roscosmos chief and incumbent Senator from Zaporozhye region Dmitry Rogozin, however, politely rebuked him shortly thereafter in a Telegram post that reads as follows:

So long as Russia remains committed to midwifing complex multipolarity together with India, and the argument in favor of continuing this policy is that it would give Russia more strategic autonomy than in a restored Sino-US bi-multipolar system, then it mustn’t change its policy towards India’s conflicts.