Rusia

As Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth month, a significant date has recently passed in another country — Belarus. May 23 marked one year since Belarusian authorities hijacked a commercial Ryanair flight transporting passengers, including Belarusian opposition figure Roman Protasevich, from Athens to Vilnius. While the incident may have faded from popular memory in some parts of the world, the situation in Belarus and on its borders is still top of mind for its regional neighbors in the Baltic countries. Trapped between its desire to diversify partnerships and its alignment with its single supporter, Russia, Belarus has pursued toxic policies that have brought new security challenges to the Baltic region.
Migrant crisis: Testing the resilience of the Baltic countries and the solidarity of the EU

Ever since Russian troops first crossed the Ukrainian border on February 24, the Kremlin has employed characteristically euphemistic language in order to downplay the criminal nature of the unfolding invasion. This has led to the creation of an entire alternative reality where Russian troops are noble liberators waging a chivalrous campaign against dastardly Ukrainian Nazis who bomb themselves and stage fake atrocities by massacring their own civilian population.

Since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the United States and Europe have deployed tools of economic warfare with the explicit goal of crippling the Russian economy and rendering the Kremlin unable to wage its war of aggression. The alacrity and scale of the Western response—which has included freezing Russia’s foreign-currency reserves, cutting off many Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system, and coordinating export controls—shook the foundations of the Russian economy.

Cholera outbreaks in Ukrainian cities whose infrastructure has been destroyed by Russian forces has already attracted attention, but Natalya Vinograd, a Lviv epidemiologist warns that there are risks of tetanus and typhoid epidemics there as well for the same reason.

It’s impossible for either side to see, but Russia and NATO depend on each other.

Whichever side you’re on, you

• agree with weapons-maker propaganda that the available actions in the world are (1) war, and (2) doing nothing;
• you ignore the historical record of nonviolent action succeeding more often than war;
• and you imagine militarism to be required completely independently from considering what the results will be.

Sticking to US President Joe Biden’s public pledge to “stay the course,” the White House has made clear both publicly and privately that it intends to sustain and even intensify its support for Ukraine and pressure on Russia. While military support remains the critical pillar of Western policy, especially in the short term, economic pressure is key to the longer-term goal of isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Accounts from MSF’s patients reveal how children and elderly people are affected by heavy weaponry and indiscriminate attacks.

The war in Ukraine is indiscriminately harming civilians who are struck by heavy weaponry in their homes, shelters, and evacuation routes, according to a report released today by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which is based on the experiences of patients that the organization has evacuated from eastern Ukraine by train.

In June, Russia’s state-owned atomic energy firm, Rosatom, made a surprise announcement that it would begin producing equipment for Egypt’s first nuclear power plant in the northwest town of El-Dabaa. The new development has raised concerns in the United States and Europe -which harbor resentment toward Russia for its aggression against Ukraine and see the continuation of the project as a sign of Egypt cozying up to Moscow.

The magnificent resistance of the Ukrainian people has drawn the admiration of the whole world but we must have no illusions. Without a clear shift in policy by the US, NATO and the EU, Ukraine will not win. The consequences of this will be severe, not only for Ukraine itself but for the West and the wider international community.

Russia’s President Putin, in a speech on February 21, 2022, said: “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by….Communist Russia. The process began immediately after the revolution of 1917.” He then described the state as “Vladimir Ilych Lenin’s Ukraine.” Putin was harking back to the Romanov empire of the past, when Ukraine was under the Tsarist regime. Putin is today keen on bringing back Ukraine under the geo-political umbrella of the present Russian Federation that he heads – claiming that Ukraine had always been a part of Tsarist Russia, which Putin inherits now as its president.