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On this day between in 1945, following the events of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union met to discuss the postwar reorganization of a war-torn Europe.
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What was the main purpose of the Yalta Conference?
The Yalta Conference was a meeting between the leaders of the Allied powers, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The main purpose of the conference was to discuss the post-war reorganization of Europe after the impending defeat of Nazi Germany.
What were the main topics discussed at the Yalta conference?
The main topics discussed at the conference were the post-war reorganization of Europe, the defeat of Nazi Germany, and the formation of the United Nations. The leaders also discussed the issue of self-determination for Eastern European nations and the Soviet Union's role in the post-War world.
What was the significance of the Yalta Conference?
The Yalta Conference, the second meeting of the so-called Big Three of FDR, Churchill and Stalin, was a significant event in history as the agreements reached at the conference had a major impact on the post-War world and set the stage for the Cold War. It is widely studied as an example of the ideological divide between the west and the Soviet Union.
By shrugging aside Russia’s aggression, India has shown indifference to fears that China could follow Russia’s example.
-OpEd-
NEW DELHI — India is wrong to dismiss Russia’s war in Ukraine as Europe’s problem. The illegality and destructiveness of the invasion, and consequential food and energy crises, have global ramifications.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
India has abstained from every vote in the UN condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The reason? Moscow is India’s top arms supplier and some 70% of India’s military platforms are of Russian origin.
This raises questions about India’s strategic autonomy – but such queries are like water off a duck’s back.
One world, one family?
Justifying India’s refusal to censure Russia’s unlawful assault on Ukraine at the GLOBSEC 2022 Bratislava Forum in Slovakia in June, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar contended that “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems”.
Who would have thought that the person wanting to create "One World, One Family, One Future" as president of the G20 over the next two years could brush off or be slow to recognize the global food and energy crises inflicted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
Russia, not Western sanctions, precipitated the crises by blockading the first of many Ukrainian ports on March 3. The head of the African Union, President Macky Sall of Senegal and President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, then heading the G20, met President Vladimir Putin last June to discuss the food, fertilizer and fuel crises caused by Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met him for the first time since Moscow launched its invasion only in September 2022 — at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting, sponsored by Russia’s iron strategic partner, China.
East Asia spillover
By shrugging aside Russia’s aggression as Europe’s problem, India has also shown indifference to the fears — in and outside the Indo-Pacific — that China, the dominant partner in the Sino-Russian relationship, could follow Russia’s example and try to restructure Asia’s security architecture through war. China menaces the territorial sovereignty of many of its Asian neighbours, including India.
India’s strategic partner in the Quad, Japan, faces Chinese threats to its sovereignty and fears that “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow”. Unsurprisingly, Japan has ended its 77-year-old pacifism. On Dec. 16, Japan announced its greatest military build-up since the end of the Second World War in 1945.
At the economic level, India has purchased unprecedented amounts of Russian crude at discount prices on the grounds that Europe’s energy imports from Russia have dwarfed New Delhi’s buys. New Delhi avows that its “moral duty” is to ensure the best deal for a country “with a per capita income of $2,000″. However, the common man has not benefited from India’s rising oil imports from Russia. Instead, the private companies which have snapped up cheap Russian oil have made huge profits by selling it abroad — even to Europe.
Meanwhile, the foreign minister of a war-ravaged but unconquered Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, laments that it is “morally inappropriate” of India to argue that Europeans are also buying Russian energy. India is buying cheap Russian oil because of “our suffering”.
"Crisis Strike'' rally against climate crisis in Warsaw
New Delhi keeps silent about authoritarian Russia’s silence on China’s expansionism in India and Southeast Asia. In contrast, it has sharply criticized democratic Europe for being silent on China’s activities in Asia: “When the rules-based order was under challenge in Asia, the advice we got from Europe was to do more trade.”
Admittedly, the EU was strengthening its trading ties with China as Beijing displayed its expansionist intentions in the South and East China Seas after 2010. But so was India, whose trade with China has burgeoned to record heights despite border clashes in June 2020 — and again in December 2022.
True, the EU has no defense policy and cannot save "Asia" from China’s belligerence just because France and Germany send a few warships to the Indo-Pacific. But India cannot "defend Asia" from Chinese imperialism any more than the EU. Its GDP per capita of 2,256.6 and military spending of $76 billion are no match for China’s 12,556.3 and $293 billion respectively. So India focuses on securing its borders with China and Pakistan, and on countering China’s fierce economic and military competition in its immediate South Asian neighborhood.
Responding to Russia’s threat to wage nuclear war, India has wrongly sermonized that “nuclear weapons should not be used by any side in the Ukraine war”. And yet, Ukraine is not a nuclear state. In 1994 it chose to denuclearize because the US, Britain and Russia, in the Budapest Memorandum, promised to guarantee its security. By invading Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, Russia violated that commitment, imperiling European and global security.
India could learn something from the EU’s experience. Russia does not menace the sovereignty of any EU country at the moment. But by relying on a territorial spoiler for energy, even after Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, democratic Europe has gone adrift in its strategic thinking.
As India confronts China’s land grabs, its dependence on Beijing for trade could be self-defeating, given China’s contempt for its slow progress.
Risks of Chinese imperialism
Meanwhile, what does New Delhi think of Putin’s assertion that it is “natural” that China’s “military might grows along with the rise in the economic potential”, and that China’s growing might “first of all… relates to its economic might… why should we follow third countries’ interests in building our policy?” Such is Russia’s applause for China’s imperialism.
At another level — amazingly — after supplying India with weapons for over five decades, Moscow has reportedly asked New Delhi for parts of cars, aircraft and trains. So where will that leave India’s dependence on Russian arms against China? At least EU countries are not in the incongruous and shaky position of being reliant on two enemies – Russia and the US – one of which could lose militarily in Ukraine.
The tangled legal, political and economic repercussions of Russia’s devastating war in Ukraine extend far beyond Europe. Unlike India, most members of the G20 — hailing from the Americas, across Europe to Asia — have voted against Russia’s transgressions of international law and human rights in Ukraine.
India will be able to provide constructive leadership to the G20 only if it recognizes their shock and despair at Russia’s blatant contraventions of international norms. Even as democratic Europe confronts the strategic fallout and human distress caused by Russia’s warmongering, it should step up its economic contribution to the well-being of Asia — and the rest of the developing world.
*Anita Inder Singh a Founding Professor of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution in New Delhi.
After almost five years of promises, the UK government says it will again introduce legislation to ban conversion therapy — and in a policy shift, the proposed law would include therapies designed for transgender people.
Conversion therapy, which includes a range of practices that aim to change someone’s sexuality or gender identity, has long been controversial. Many in the LGBTQ community consider it outright evil.
As the practice has spread, often pushed on young people by homophobic family members, there has been a worldwide push to make conversion therapy illegal, with the UK as the latest country set to ban such practices as electric shocks, aversion therapy and a variety of other traumatic, dangerous techniques to try to change someone's sexual preferences or gender identity.
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The British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy, the professional body which governs therapists in the UK, calls the practice “unethical (and) potentially harmful.”
For one Canadian man, therapy included prescription medication and weekly ketamine injections to “correct the error” of his homosexuality, all under the guidance of a licensed psychiatrist. Some people are forced into treatment against their will — often minors — but most of the time, those who receive conversion therapy do so willingly.
The UK announcement of plans to ban conversion therapy for England and Wales comes after four separate British prime ministers had promised, for almost five years, to ban the practice.
When the British government first considered legislation to ban conversion therapy back in 2018, it was expected to include gender identity as well as sexuality. But the government backed down in the face of conservative opposition, watering down the bill to cover only efforts to change sexuality. This week, however, gender identity was reinstated.
If the UK moves ahead with the legislation, it would join more than a dozen other countries and jurisdictions in the world that have enacted some sort of restriction. Here is a quick overview look at where governments have, and have not, moved to ban conversion therapy.
What were the first countries to ban conversion therapy?
Brazil was the first country to pass a nationwide ban on conversion therapy related to sexual orientation — in 1999, almost a decade before any other country. The ban was expanded in 2018 to also include gender identity.
In the following years, Samoa (2007), Fiji (2010), Argentina (2010), Uruguay (2017) and Taiwan (2018) passed laws to ban healthcare professionals from practicing conversion therapy on the basis of sexual orientation, and, in the last three cases, also gender identity.
In Ecuador, conversion therapy was banned in 2014 after media reports prompted more than 100,000 people to sign a petition demanding the government shut down clinics that used brutal techniques including torture, sexual violence and imprisonment. A 2018 Reuters investigation found numerous clinics still operating.
In 2016, Malta became the first European country to introduce legislation criminalizing conversion therapy. The island nation, often ranked as one of Europe's most LGBTQ-friendly countries, announced in Jan. 2023 that the law would be expanded to make it illegal to advertise or promote the practice.
The Maltese legislation came two years before the European Parliament voted to ask member states to ban the practice.
Conversion therapy for minors has been banned since 2020 in Germany, where advocates estimated that prior to the ban, about 1,000 people were subjected to conversion therapy every year.
Previously, some licensed German doctors provided therapy aimed at changing a patient’s sexuality and gender identity. One doctor told a German journalist with Die Zeit newspaper who went undercover in 2014 to document healthcare professionals offering the practice, that he “became” gay because of a scar on his chin. The doctor billed €92.50 for the session; another doctor rubbed oil on the journalist’s forehead and offered a prayer to “exorcise the spirit of homosexuality.”
German law now also makes it illegal for parents to force their children into therapy — but it remains legal for people over the age of 18, a decision criticized by opposition parties when the legislation was introduced. At the time, the German government said that a ban covering adults might not pass a legal challenge, and that their priority was to ensure young people weren’t subjected to conversion therapy.
Albania’s professional order for psychologists banned its members from offering conversion therapy in 2021, effectively making the practice illegal nationwide.
The following year, the French parliament voted unanimously to ban conversion therapy for sexuality and gender identity.
Skirting bans with online therapies
After years of dragging its feet on the bill — which the government had previously introduced but failed to move through parliament despite broad support — Canada banned conversion therapy targeting sexual orientation and gender identity in Dec. 2021.
The law also bans taking minors outside of the country for conversion therapy. No one has been charged since the legislation came into effect.
The law can also only control what happens within the country’s borders: with psychologists and therapists increasingly offering services online since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, conversion therapy practitioners based in the U.S., where it remains legal in many states, have targeted Canadians.
A recent investigation by Canadian broadcaster CBC found American "life coaches" freely offering conversion therapy to Canadians online, despite the ban.
In New Zealand, a ban passed in 2022, with opposition from just eight members of parliament. Like Germany, New Zealand’s law only concerns minors.
In Spain, Australia and Switzerland, several provinces and states have their own bans, and the Spanish government proposed legislation in 2021 that would implement a ban nationwide.
The practice is still legal in Italy, where recent research suggests as many as one in 10 young LGBTQ+ people have experienced it. The current Irish government has pledged that this year it will propose a bill to ban conversion therapy on the basis of sexuality and gender identity, after a 2018 bill failed to make it out of the legislature before an election.
Mixed messages in the U.S.
Twenty five states in the U.S., as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have also banned conversion therapy — in many cases only for minors. However, it remains legal in the other 25 states, and efforts to ban the practice in many have attracted intense conservative opposition, as the debate now includes the movement by conservatives to instead ban gender transition services
Lawmakers in nearly a dozen U.S. states have introduced a wave of anti-trans legislation since 2020, including bills in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Kansas and Mississippi that criminalize providing transition-related healthcare, even for adults.
In Texas, where lawmakers have proposed some of the most extreme legislation, conversion therapy remains legal — and in 2022 the governor ordered the state’s child protection agency to investigate parents whose children had received transition-related healthcare.
Exorcisms and "corrective" rape in Asia
In many countries around the world, conversion therapy remains not only legal, but increasingly popular.
In Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, these “therapies” are openly sponsored by governmental agencies as the official response to sexual and gender diversity issues and can include exorcisms and “corrective” rape. The Malaysian government even produced an app in 2016 that promised to help the LGBTQ+ community “return to nature.” It was removed from the Google Play store only last year, as it was breaching the platform’s guidelines.
In China, patients are subjected to electric shocks or cold showers and are given a cocktail of medication that includes antidepressants and nausea-inducing pills they have to take when watching gay pornographic movies. Some hospitals offer blood tests, DNA analyses and brain scans as well. If the results are normal, and they usually are, the doctor tells the patient that they can be cured because their "problem" is not genetic.
Russia's Foreign Minister is in South Africa for the second time in a year. In spite of the West's best efforts, Vladimir Putin's delegation is still welcomed in large parts of Africa, which still harbors colonial resentment toward Europe.
-Analysis-
PARIS — Sergey Lavrov, Russia's Foreign Minister, has not traveled much since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But he arrived yesterday on an official visit to South Africa, his second official trip there in a year.
But it is not a coincidence: Africa is a priority for Russian diplomacy.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
The West was caught off guard when, at the United Nations last year, a large part of Africa refused to condemn the Russian aggression on Ukrainian territory. They were all the more surprised because, since the 1960s, the African continent has wisely adopted a principle recognizing the borders inherited from colonization: it wanted to avoid possible inter-state targeting, which is what Russia is trying to do in Ukraine.
Russian is blowing on the poorly extinguished embers of resentment towards the former colonial powers. This is currently exemplified by France's announcement to bring to an end its eight-year anti-jihadist operation in the Sahel in North Africa.
The latest addition is Burkina Faso's request for the withdrawal of French troops within a month, as Mali did previously.
Joint naval maneuvers
The case of South Africa is revealing. Even if it is going through a bad patch, it remains one of the continent's strongest powers, regularly mentioned for a permanent seat on the Security Council. It is the interlocutor of Europeans or Americans on global affairs.
They don't want to take sides because they don't feel concerned by a war between Europeans.
And yet, the ANC, the party in power, Nelson Mandela's party, has not forgotten that during the apartheid, it was the USSR, not the West, that supported it. The ANC is still grateful to Moscow, even if it is misplaced today in the midst of the Russian aggression on Ukraine.
It goes even further, since next month South Africa, with the Chinese and Russian navy, will be hosting naval maneuvers off the coast of Durban, in the Indian Ocean. A South African news site called them "obscene" because the maneuvers will coincide with the first anniversary of the start of the war.
But South Africa, like many states on the continent, is not looking at this conflict the way we do in Europe or the United States. They don't want to take sides because they don't feel concerned by a war between Europeans.
Western irrelevance
The West has not succeeded in convincing South Africa that it is a question of saving international law because their behavior in the past has been far from exemplary.
There is a boomerang effect originating from a history of interference. Because South Africa is a democracy, there is a debate, and the parliamentary opposition is denouncing the "moral fault" of what it labels as alignment with Russia. Yet it was unable to prevent the government from rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin's envoy.
We are not done analyzing why, from South Africa to Mali, African states extend a welcome to Russia despite the war in Ukraine.
Massive disinformation does not explain everything. It is not enough to understand why the West is becoming irrelevant in an increasingly important part of the world.
A new future is unfolding in real time, one that leaders in France, Germany and beyond could not have envisioned even a year ago.
-Analysis-
PARIS — Quick question: do you know which country is on its way to having the largest army in Europe? The obvious answer would be France, the Continent's only nuclear power since the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, and a military that has been tested in multiple foreign operations in recent years.
But the answer is about to change: if we put aside the nuclear factor, Europe's leading military will soon be that of Poland.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
This is one more direct consequence Russia's invasion of Ukraine: a close neighbor of the conflict zone, Poland is investing massively in its defense. Last year, it concluded a huge arms purchase contract with South Korea: heavy combat tanks (four times more than France), artillery, fighter jets, for 15 billion euros.
Warsaw also signed a contract last month to purchase two observation satellites from France for 500 million euros.
This former country of the Warsaw Pact, today a leading NATO member, intends to be ever more consequential in European affairs. The investments in defense are one way of doing that. Yet this is not the only impact of the war in Ukraine.
In fact, all the internal balances of the European Union are being significantly transformed — even if it is too early, as the conflict drags on, to assess the final impact.
The Germany question
The consequences of the war are particularly sensitive in Germany, shaken since the beginning of the invasion by a constant questioning of itself. In question, the chosen dependence on Russian gas; the reluctance to deliver the first weapons to Ukraine when the emergency arose; and still today in agony over the issue of heavy tank deliveries.
So many taboos have been broken that Scholz's coalition sometimes seems disoriented.
This geopolitical earthquake is causing unease about Germany’s position and role. Not that Berlin is questioning its European commitments — this is not on the table — yet so many taboos have been broken that Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition sometimes seems disoriented, despite the proclamationin Scholtz’s speech on the Russian invasion that it was time for a Zeitenwende, or historic "turning point" on Germany taking responsibility.
We will not see the lingering doubts about Germany on Sunday in Paris, because everything will be done so that the 60th anniversary of the Franco-German reconciliation of 1961, coupled with a joint Council of Ministers, takes place without the slightest problem. But this bilateral summit had to be postponed at the end of last year, for lack of sufficient agreements, and it remains to be seen if the leaders can fix this image, even if everything is not settled.
Ukrainian President Zelensky, center, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, left, and Polish President Andrzej Duda, right, hold trilateral discussions on Jan. 11, 2023
France, in fact, has also been shaken by the events of the past year. In fact, each in its own way, France and Germany saw long-held certainties called into question on February 24, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The traditional leadership of Europe was not immediately evident, because it was not ready for this war, while the countries of the Eastern front, more vigilant vis-à-vis Moscow, immediately perceived the stakes.
Almost a year later, the political cost of this discrepancy has not been overcome. Emmanuel Macron is expected to deliver an update to his "Sorbonne speech" from 2017, reasserting France's commitment to a stronger Europe.
On Thursday, the French president signed a treaty of friendship with Spain; and on Sunday, Paris and Berlin will try to speak with one voice on Ukraine and Europe.
Each of these sweeping political maneuvers is an attempt to adapt to the new world of war and, above all, to prepare Europe for the one that comes after. By then, the balance of power will have changed, and today is when that new balance is being forged before our eyes.
Large segments of Taiwan seem underprepared or indifferent when it comes to the possibility of Chinese invasion. But some are actively preparing, using Ukraine as a role model.
TAIPEI — Hsu has just completed the required four months of military service in Taichung, central Taiwan. He had spread the training over the course of the past four years, training for one month every year. “Many guys go there during the summer. It’s like a summer camp: we go to a shooting range, we make friends,” he explains.
Yet these words seem somehow strange, incongruous, as his country is threatened by one of the most powerful armies in the world. “There is a kind of collective denial toward the Chinese threat. Many still think that the possibility of an invasion, in the short or medium term, remains very unlikely,” says Raymond Sung, a political expert based in Taipei.
In Taiwanese companies too, people remain overly confident. "What’s the point of worrying? Taiwanese are working on the technologies of the future! Thinking about war would just distract them," argues Miin Chyou Wu, head of Macronix, a company that makes memory cards.
Though relatively rare, some companies are even expanding in China. That’s the case with Delta, a Taiwanese flagship that produces equipment essential to a green energy transition (including charging stations and solar panels). Based in the outskirts of Taipei, not far from the Keelung River, Delta recently bought new land last May in Chongqing, southwest China. Their goal is now to expand their electric generator factories.
“We’re not very worried: we know that we won’t be the ones who will solve the conflict with Beijing," says Alessandro Sossa-Izzi, the head of Delta’s communication team. "But our grandchildren’s grandchildren will."
“Our fear is that China would invade Taiwan so that people would forget Beijing’s internal struggles. If China’s economic growth slows, if social protests worsen, it’s actually bad news for us,” explains Joseph Wu, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. “Unless you work at the Chinese government, it’s impossible to know what is happening there. The only certain thing is that Xi Jinping’s military defense is getting stronger.”
Trouble with deliveries
Taiwan has also resolved to increase its military capability, but with a reluctance that worries some experts. “Maybe there is some kind of intention, on the military side, of not doing too much. Maybe what they fear is to feed panic and threaten China," says Mathieu Duchâtel, head of the Asia section of the Montaigne Institute in Paris.
Military spending seems low, given the tension engulfing Taiwan. The country is investing about 2% of its gross domestic product, which is roughly the same as most Western countries. “We cannot do much more than that because then we would have to raise taxes. And two years from the next presidential elections, no political party would take such a risk,” explains Raymond Sung.
For Taiwan, the issue is not about economics, explains I-chung Lai, president of the Prospect Foundation, a government counselor on defense matters.
“We have all the money we need, but we just are not able to get the weapons delivered,” Lai says.
Despite messages of solidarity offered by Western countries, none have responded to the island’s demands. The U.S. has refused to deliver the latest combat aircraft (the famous F-35) despite an official request from the Taiwanese government. They will therefore have to settle with their fleet of older F-16 aircraft.
Help from the West
The United Kingdom is the only country that has agreed to train Taiwanese soldiers on its soil. While Taiwanese are welcomed in UK schools and think-tanks, they have no official contact with the British army. And Taiwanese defense officials say there is no hope of help from Germany and the Netherlands because of fear of Chinese retaliation.
Lacking those international partnerships, Taiwan has decided to achieve the unthinkable: to build their own ships and their own fighter aircrafts. “The Western world helps us quietly. They don’t want to deal with any problem with China,” says Lai. "This won’t happen in the course of a few months. We think that we will be able to build our own aircrafts in two or three years."
Inspired by the success of similar initiatives in Ukraine, Taiwan is also relying on its population to ensure its own defense and, if necessary, set up a coastal defense brigade. The training is being funded by one of the island's tycoons, Robert Tsao, who is investing to train three million civilian fighters.
On a Saturday morning, in a basement behind a church in central Taipei, we got to meet them.
There, almost 50 of those fighters-in-training listen religiously to instructions on how to react to a Chinese invasion, depending on the nature of the attack. The youngest is 13; the oldest is 70. And they are not learning how to use weapons, but how to defend their families as best they can. “We explain to them how to apply a tourniquet, how to help your family evacuate, how to find a shelter and guarantee that you will have enough water,” explains Ho Cheng-hui, co-founder of the Kuma Academy.
Taiwan's greatest vulnerability
One two-hour class also focuses on cyberattacks. And for a good reason: most experts think that a Chinese attack will start with an Internet attack. “Taiwan is already the country that suffered the highest number of cyber-attacks in the world,” explains the Foreign affairs minister, Joseph Wu.
The issue of cyber-attacks is quite important for Taiwan, and the country even created a new Ministry of Digital Affairs last August. Yet it still remains strangely indifferent to what constitutes its greatest vulnerability: its energy dependency. 99% of Taiwan’s needs are met by imports.
Liquefied natural gas alone constitutes a third of its supplies, and the country only stores up to a 10-day reserve.
If China imposes a trade blockade, the island may therefore not be able to hold out for long.
"We are going to increase our reserves to last two weeks, and even three in the long term,” promises Kung Ming-hsin, Minister of National Development. "And if necessary, we will reduce our electricity consumption," he adds, at the risk of stopping the production of semiconductors that power the entire planet.
Offshore wind turbines have been hastily built in Taichung, in the Taiwan Strait — the very place where the Chinese would land if they launched an invasion by sea. Built a few hundred meters from the beaches, they obstruct the horizon and force fishermen to seek fish elsewhere. "We had problems, and nets had to be cut, but things are better now,” explains a park official.
But to revive the country's nuclear reactors is out of the question. The island is regularly swept by typhoons and the Fukushima accident traumatized its population. Taiwan thus relies on renewable energies to ensure its autonomy. Yet many considered this strategy as suicidal.
The island also utterly depends on its submarine cables, especially for their Internet network. They are now betting on satellite networks: “We have just applied to access Elon Musk’s network, Starlink,” says Ning Yeh, the vice-minister of digital affairs. This network saved the Ukrainian army early during the conflict with Russia, he explains.
No international recognition
One thing is clear, at least: Taiwan’s role model is Ukraine. The island hopes to prove, too, that David can fight and win against Goliath. Still, it must contend with a major disadvantage not shared by any other country in the world: Taiwan is not recognized by the international community. Only 14 countries recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country, and it is not even recognized by the UN, which stripped the island of its seat in 1971 and gave it to Beijing.
Support for Ukraine is based on the United Nations Charter, and the right of UN members to defend a sovereign state. But this is not something that’s replicable in Taiwan.
In that particular context, would Western countries risk supporting the Taiwanese? It is true that Americans leave little doubt about their determination, but it remains uncertain what Europeans would do.
Welcome to Monday, and happy new year from the Worldcrunch crew! 🎊
Ukraine claims 400 Russian forces were killed in a missile strike in the Donetsk region, Lula is sworn in as Brazil bids adeus to Pelé. Meanwhile, Hong Kong-based The Initium focuses on the very particular situation of China’s Catholics, caught between Xi Jinping and Pope Francis.
Tolstoy's lesson: Why boycotting Russian culture is such a bad idea
The Ukrainian Culture Minister has called for a total boycott of Russian culture. But Gaspard Koenig writes in French daily Les Echos that such a move would play into the hands of the enemy:
Oleksandr Tkachenko, the Ukrainian Culture minister, recently called for an international boycott of Russian culture — a measure that has already been put into practice by some Western opera theaters and universities.
Yet, despite the utter sympathy that we feel for Ukraine, the answer for Tkachenko is clear: No.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
Today, Tkachenko argues that Russia is trying to undermine Ukrainian’s culture by destroying its cultural heritage or by eradicating Ukrainian’s language in occupied territories. And that’s precisely the reason why Ukraine, which wishes to be the herald of European democracies, shouldn’t use the same means nor the same logic as its enemy.
The risk of essentializing Russian identity goes beyond the cultural sphere. And it’s disturbing to see a laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize, such as Oleksandra Matviichuk, who runs a Ukrainian NGO that advocates for civil liberties, refusing to be interviewed alongside her co-winner Yan Rachinsky, who runs Memorial (another famous Russian organization for defense of human rights). If Nobel Peace Prize Laureates fail to make this distinction, who will be able to properly make it?
Russian culture deserves even less to be suppressed. Indeed, from Gogol mocking the tsarist bureaucracy to Solzhenitsyn denouncing Soviet crimes, Russian authors have often been some of the most effective critics of political power. Actually, perhaps opening up War and Peace wouldn’t be totally useless. It could help to understand the current war’s ebbs and flows, the imperial craziness, and the indoctrination of a certain portion of the population.
Through his novel, Leo Tolstoy narrates the French invasion of Russia. And one shouldn’t think that civilians were spared at the time, nor that the law of war was respected. In his work, Tolstoy thus describes the behavior of two French soldiers in Moscow: one of them steals an old man’s boots, and the other one is about to rape a young Armenian woman.
The French invasion of Russia can therefore be seen as a mirror — of course, polished by history and literature — of the current tragedy that Ukraine is facing.
Tolstoy also provides us with more general instructions on war, and they are particularly instructive, especially in the epilogue. In his novel, he also becomes a philosopher of history and mocks the pompous reasons that are invoked, through the war, what were actually no more than cold-blood assassinations.
“Men march from West to East, massacre their peers, and while doing so, they perform speeches on the glory of France, on the perfidy of England, and so on.”
Above all, Tolstoy forces men to face their responsibilities. “These justifications,” he goes on, “free the men from facing their responsibilities.” But every Russian conscript today should assume the responsibility evoked by Tolstoy, by choosing to desert rather than to kill (and the Ukrainian army has opened a hotline supporting Russian deserters).
Contemporary Russian culture also participates in resistance. Despite censorship, scathing pieces still find their way to publication in alternative publishing houses such as Popcorn Books.
Summer in a Pioneer Tie is a novel depicting a homosexual love story in a Soviet summer camp has sold around 200,000 copies since it was published last year. The novel is an open critique of communism’s last years, and tenderly depicts LGBTQ+ relationships. As a result, the book is a straight attack of the conservative values that the Kremlin has been promoting.
Actually, the book became such a phenomenon that the Russian Parliament has just unanimously voted a law banning the depiction of “non-traditional sexual relationships.”
Yet, Tkachenko remains right on one thing: culture is a weapon. But instead of negating it, culture should be used against our adversary.
• Ukraine claims missile attack on Russia killed 400: Ukraine says a missile attack on Makiivka, in the Russian-occupied region of Donetsk, killed an estimated 400 Russian soldiers in the early hours of Jan. 1. Pro-Russian authorities have acknowledged that attack but the number of casualties has not been confirmed. Meanwhile, multiple overnight strikes targeting Kyiv caused power outages, the latest in a series of attacks that were stepped up over the recent holidays.
• Pope Benedict lying in state: Pope Benedict XVI’s lying in state has started in St. Peter’s Basilica, drawing tens of thousands of devotees to the Vatican, ahead of Thursday's funeral — the first time a pope’s funeral will be led by his successor. German-born Joseph Ratzinger died on Dec. 31 at age 95, nearly 10 years after becoming the first pontiff in six centuries to resign.
• Mexican jail attack kills 14: Ten prison guards and four prisoners were killed after unidentified gunmen opened fire on a jail in Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico, allowing at least 24 inmates to escape.
• Recession ahead for one third of world: The head of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva forecasts that one-third of the world economy will be in recession this year, adding that the spread of COVID will make the next couple of months “tough for China.”
• France asks other EU countries to test Chinese travelers for COVID: France’s Health Minister François Braun has asked other members of the European Union to follow suit and require travelers from China to provide a negative COVID-19 test before being allowed in. EU officials had failed to reach a consensus before the Christmas holidays, as Beijing relaxed its strict “Zero-COVID” policy despite a renewed coronavirus outbreak.
• Brazil welcomes Lula… Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva was sworn in as Brazil's new president on Sunday, returning to the presidency after a 12-year hiatus that saw him serve time in jail over corruption allegations. Lula used his inaugural speech to vow a drastic change of course from far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, who opted to skip the handover ceremony altogether, instead flying to Orlando, Florida, as he faces various investigations from his time in office.
• …and bids farewell to Pelé:A wake for Pelé will be held today at the Santos Football stadium, before a private burial gets underway. The Brazilian soccer giant died last week at the age of 82 in São Paulo.
Italian daily La Stampa writes that former pontiff Benedict XVI has entered "the Father's house", as the Pope Emeritus's body is lying in state in the Vatican. German-born Joseph Ratzinger, who died on Dec. 31 at age 95, was the first pontiff since 1415 to abdicate the papacy over health reasons. His successor, Pope Francis, is expected to lead a "simple" ceremony for Benedict XVI’s funeral on Thursday.
Bye-bye kuna, hello euro! On Sunday, Croatia bade farewell to its national currency as it officially switched to the euro and entered Europe’s open-border Schengen zone. The switch comes a decade after Zagreb joined the European Union. In Croatian, kuna means “marten”, a species of weasel whose pelt was used as a form of payment in the region in the Middle Ages and which was already depicted on a coin in circulation for 150 years.
Between Xi Jinping and Pope Francis, China's Catholics are still stuck in limbo
An agreement between the Vatican and Beijing was quietly renewed recently. However, China still views Catholicism with a mix of deep suspicion and general distraction. Meanwhile the faithful and pastors are caught between two very different worlds, reports Hong Kong-based The Initium.
🇨🇳 The atheist Chinese Communist Party considers religion to be a spiritual opium, and accuses Catholicism in particular of being an accomplice of Western imperialism. In order to resolve the plight of Chinese Catholics, after the efforts of three popes, the Vatican and Beijing signed a two-year Provisional Agreement on Nomination of Bishops in 2018. On Oct. 22, when the world’s eyes were focused on Xi Jinping’s groundbreaking third term as president, which is also the expiry date of the previous agreement, the Vatican immediately announced the renewal of the agreement for another two years.
🇻🇦Since taking office in 2013, Pope Francis has been in touch with Beijing through cultural exchanges and diplomacy. After Wuhan became the target of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, the Vatican sent a helping hand by facilitating a meeting between the Holy See's Foreign Minister Paul Gallagher and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi around the Munich Security Conference in Germany. This is the highest level meeting of officials from both sides. Three years after the COVID-19 epidemic, Sino-Vatican relations have cooled, with the Communist Party repeatedly refusing face-to-face talks on the grounds of epidemic control. In late August, the Holy See suddenly received an invitation from China, as the Chinese Communist Party was preparing for the 20th National Congress, which they interpreted as a sign that the Chinese Communist Party had room to manage its relations with the Holy See.
✝️ When the agreement was signed in 2018, the Vatican remained optimistic, with Pope Francis calling on the faithful and the Chinese government to "overcome their mutual hostility" and exhorting the faithful to have a strong faith in God. Papal diplomats who have dealt with Beijing over the years have increasingly wondered "are the Chinese to be trusted?" Before the 2018 agreement was signed, a senior member of the Holy See involved in the negotiations said that a bad agreement was better than no agreement at all. Today, 60 to 70% of Chinese clergy would believe that the agreement has so far been a failure. Chinese Catholics make up less than one percent of the country's population, are nowhere near as strong as the Cold War-era Polish Catholic Church, and are more divided than the Vietnamese Church.
“There’s a war raging in the middle of Europe. For me, this meant meeting many interesting people."
— — Germany’s Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht is under fire for her tone-deaf “happy new year” message, which she published on her personal Instagram account. Standing in a Berlin street with new year’s fireworks going off in the background, Lambrecht awkwardly links the war in Ukraine to the personal connections she was able to make in 2022.
📸 PHOTO DU JOUR
As part of an elaborate inauguration day ceremony, Brazil's incoming President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva paraded in a convertible Rolls Royce on the way to the swearing-in in Brasilia. Holding up the "L" for Lula sign, the 77-year-old is accompanied by his wife Rosangela Silva, as well as Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and his wife Maria Lucia Ribeiro. — Photo: Santiago Mazzarovich/dpa/ZUMA
Often referred to as the Paris Climate Accords, the Paris Agreement is an international treaty aimed at forcing countries and companies to change their behavior to reverse climate change. It was signed on December 12, 2015 at the end of the COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference near the French capital.
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Who is part of the Paris Agreement?
The Paris Agreement was negotiated by 196 parties at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and as of September 2022, 194 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are parties to the agreement. The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2020, but rejoined in 2021.
Does the Paris Agreement really work?
The agreement is thought to be very important by world leaders, but criticized as lacking teeth by some environmentalists, as there is some debate about the effectiveness of the agreement. Still, the Paris Agreement has been successfully used in climate litigation forcing countries and large corporations and oil companies to strengthen climate action.
Even if COVID cases are rising again, the author isn't ready to mask up again. But she's also not quite ready to say goodbye forever...
-Essay-
PARIS — Waiting in line at the pharmacy the other day, I heard a customer ask for a COVID-19 test. The pharmacist let out a long sarcastic sigh: “We’re still doing those?”
Of course they are, as cases are again rising ahead of winter here in France and many other places around the world. But the true sign of the depth of our collective COVID fatigue were the masks at the pharmacy. That is, there were none, not even the pharmacist was wearing one, even if a sign hangs in front saying they’re required.
The regular announcements that have begun airing again on French radio about the importance of masks in containing the virus sound beside the point. Indeed, wearing masks is no longer a requirement anywhere in France, merely a suggestion.
Still, masks have by no means gone away, either in society, or my mind. That becomes clearest when I’m riding the metro in Paris. As I count the ratio of masked to non-masked, and hear the daily announcements on the benefits of wearing one, a dilemma starts to creep in…
One of the clearest COVID-19 memories for me was riding the subway without a mask for the first time. While in other settings my mask wearing varied according to the highs and lows of the virus and the ever changing French law, I wore a mask every day in the metro or on the bus without exception for almost two years.
When, on May 16. 2022, masks were no longer mandatory on public transportation, I was eager to take mine off. It was a strange sense of liberation mixed with guilt and fear.
During the pandemic, and for what seemed like an eternity, masks became our outside faces. The simple fact of not wearing a mask in a crowd was not just a question of my own personal health, but challenged my sense of what it means to be a citizen. As the question became more and more apparent for city dwellers, I realized that masks didn’t just mean protecting yourself from COVID, but was a way to protect those who might be more vulnerable. And yet…two years.
A long history of masks
Going back to the early days of the pandemic, masks have always been a complicated topic. As panic spread, so did the demand for masks and some early misinformation about whether they actually prevented the spread of the virus. We later found it, public officials were facing extreme mask shortages. Medical staff here in France responded with threats of walking off the job as they did not have the tools to deal with the pandemic.
Meanwhile, luxury brands such as Saint Laurent and Balenciaga started manufacturing non-surgical masks to donate across Europe. Louis Vuitton converted five of its French workshops to make masks for healthcare workers.
But we also found out early that covering half your face could easily ruin an outfit. The world caught up to the fashion industry, and masks slowly became a fashion accessory. Many clothing brands started making their own version of masks, using the same fabric and design as their clothes.
What is mascne?
Even though masks could limit the spread of the virus, it brought other problems. People started complaining about skin problems, like acne, created by the perpetual rubbing of the mask on the skin. I, myself, was a victim of so-called mascne, left reliving my puberty days at the age of 24. The upside? Wearing a mask hid all of it!
Another odd facial side-note to living through a pandemic was the impact on cosmetics. Because the bottom of our faces were covered, lipstick sales plummeted and more prominent eye makeup was in style.
Humans are creatures of habit and hiding half of our face in public soon became comfortable, natural. It was as though we reset a new limit of intimacy with strangers, only revealing our full visage to those in our respective bubbles.
For the past six months or more, a range of COVID regulations have quietly vanished. Part of that is due to an overall reduction of serious and fatal cases, but there are also economic considerations — and perhaps most of all, yes, COVID fatigue. That has meant obligatory masks are virtually all but gone in the West.
Of course, that’s not the case everywhere. As we’ve seen in the past few weeks, China is facing a major public backlash against COVID restrictions, including obligatory masks. In Japan, as noted in German daily Die Welt, where people wore masks in public even before the pandemic, taking them off became unimaginable. The Japanese even invented a new word for the masks: "face underpants" (kao-pantsu) meaning something that you do not take off in public any more than you would your underwear.
Back here in Paris, as I look around on my daily commute, more and more people have again begun to wear masks on the metro. France’s COVID-19 cases have gone up 20% in the last seven days, and it also happens to be good ol’ cold and flu season. For among the facts of science that I firmly believe is that washing your hands often and wearing masks, while not a cure-all, can help reduce the chance of catching contagious illnesses.
Still, for the moment, I’m still maskless, but giving a second thought to one I always keep with me in my bag. COVID, we are told, is destined to fade out of our lives. Perhaps masks never will.
Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party recently called for the introduction of a 25-hour work week, arguing that it's the only way to end "self-exploitation." What a strange understanding of work, argues one German expert in labor law.
-OpEd-
BERLIN — “In order to create a working environment that gives employees a good quality of life and self-determination, we are calling for a working week of 25 hours in the medium term," is the new stance on labor taken by Germany's ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD).
At its recent party convention, the SPD explained its approach: "To ensure that employees do not suffer financial losses, there should be no salary cuts. At the same time, this should not lead to an intensification of work, or increased pressure to achieve results. The reduction in working hours can be achieved through adjusting staffing levels.”
Economists are shaking their heads in bewilderment, and legal experts are just as confused. In Germany, the state does not decide how many hours its citizens work. It doesn’t have the power to do so. It can impose a maximum number of weekly working hours to protect employees’ health, but anything beyond that is unconstitutional.
Personal autonomy, as well as contract rights and freedoms apply here. It is not within the government’s remit to say employers must reduce working hours without cutting pay. Its power to impose laws about working hours is restricted to protecting employees from being overworked against their own will. Everything else is between the employer and employee, as set out in their contract.
Chairperson of the SPD's Young Socialists wing, Jessica Rosenthal, justified her proposal by saying it is about ending "self-exploitation" in this system. What system does she mean? And does exploitation begin as soon as someone begins their twenty-sixth hour of work in a week? I would like to be charitable and chalk up this economically and legally wrong-headed venture to youthful idealism.
It is the prerogative of the young to strive for unachievable utopias. But what kind of utopia is this, what kind of strange understanding of the nature of work? One that means more and more people working fewer and fewer hours, and ideally no one would have to work at all: universal basic income.
What does the Pope think about work?
Anyone turning their back on the world of work risks being accused of wanting to live in a hedonistic, frivolous society. That is perhaps too harsh and doesn’t get to the heart of the issue. But anyone who sees work as nothing more than a burden to be avoided forgets what Pope John Paul II succinctly stated in his 1981 encyclical Laborem exercens.
“Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work," the Pope wrote. "Only man is capable of work, and only man works […] Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature."
Pope Francis expanded on this in his encyclical Evangelii gaudium, writing, “It is through free, creative, participatory and mutually supportive labour that human beings express and enhance the dignity of their lives”.
For those who find these arguments a little too pious, you can find similar sentiments elsewhere. Marx and Engels write, “Labor is the source of all wealth, as the political economists assert. […] But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.”
The German Federal Labour Court said something similar many years ago, when it emphasized the employee’s right “through exercising their contractual occupation, to develop their personality and be respected and valued by the people around them.”
Don't gamble away your gains
That is all being cast aside. The main aim of a society can’t really be to work less and less. We must create a culture that values work. The aim of labour laws is to create better working conditions, to create a framework for good work that does not tolerate discrimination or exclusion, in which employees can rely on the stability of their working relationships, and in which their salary does not suddenly plummet.
That is the justification for laws about working hours, laws that protect employees against discrimination and unlawful dismissal, the minimum wage and safety regulations. In the past, the SPD themselves made lasting gains here. They shouldn’t gamble them away; they should remember and build on them.
Corporate social responsibility is also about how a company treats its employees.
It is a question of achieving a good balance between economic demands and protections for employees. People must be at the heart of businesses. Corporate social responsibility is not just about making donations to good causes, and not just about complying with environmental standards and acknowledging cultural realities, but also about how a company treats its employees.
The legal system has a right to demand this responsibility from employers. Labor law is an important tool in the fight. But that is its lasting justification, the reason why it is necessary. Twenty-five-hour work weeks are a mistake that a mainstream political party seeking to be taken seriously can ill afford.
Fears of European discord over energy prices, as Ukraine is facing what the UN calls "appalling conditions of life" amid Russia's onslaught timed with the arrival of winter.
Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky declared Friday that Europe remains unified in its support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. In a virtual address to “The Idea of Europe” conference in Lithuania, Zelensky said “There is no split. There is no schism among Europeans. We have to preserve this so this is our mission number one this year.”
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
Zelensky made the case that both Europe and Ukraine are suffering from Russia’s military aggression and manipulation of energy markets.
“It's not just in Ukraine that millions of people have no heating, and no power. We are talking about millions of Europeans who suffered from the Russian terror. It's not just Ukraine that is attacked by Russia... it's Europe and we are all part of the same home,” Zelensky said.
European Union governments remained split on Friday over proposed caps on Russian oil prices. Western leaders must find a deal that undercuts Moscow’s ability to use oil revenue to pay for its war without sparking a global oil supply shock. Reuters reports that six of the EU’s 27 countries are said to be opposed to the current price cap level proposed by the G7.
As negotiations continue, it is Ukraine alone left trying to restore cut-off power after Russian attacks over the past month have deliberately targeted critical infrastructure — just in time for winter.
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said Friday estimated that millions of Ukrainians have “plunged into extreme hardship and appalling conditions of life.”
In the capital of Kyiv, only 30% of residents have power and the city is operating on reduced power of 2-3 hours a day. Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK said it will report back to scheduled outages when the system is stabilized.
NATO Will Not “Back Down” From Supporting Ukraine
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference on Friday, that the military alliance will not reduce its support for Ukraine.
“Most wars end with negotiations. But what happens at the negotiating table depends on what happens on the battlefield. Therefore, the best way to increase the chances for a peaceful solution is to support Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said, speaking ahead of a NATO foreign ministers meeting, which will take place next week in Bucharest, Romania. “So NATO will continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. We will not back down.”
Stoltenberg also said foreign ministers are providing “unprecedented military support” and he expects they will agree to increase “non-lethal support,” at the Bucharest meeting. NATO has been delivering fuel, medical supplies, winter equipment and drone jammers, according to the secretary general.
Multiple Billions In Additional Aid For Ukraine From UK And World Bank
President Volodymyr Zelensky. While in the capital, Cleverly announced the UK would send 24 ambulances to Ukraine, along with 11 other emergency vehicles, including six armored vehicles, which will all be part of the emergency package the UK is providing.
The aid package will also include $3.6 million in funding to aid the rebuilding of Ukraine's damaged infrastructure, such as schools and shelters, that have been destroyed since the start of the war. The funds will also be used to support survivors of sexual assault.
On Thursday, World Bank Regional Country Director for Eastern Europe (Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine) Arup Banerji signed an agreement to provide Ukraine with an additional $4.5 billion.
Boris Johnson Awarded Honorary Citizen Of Kyiv
Boris Johnson on a surprise visit to Kyiv back in August
The Kyiv City Council has awarded former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson with the title of Honorary Citizen of Kyiv, Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko wrote on Telegram. “Boris has visited the Ukrainian capital several times — both during peace and the most dramatic period of our struggle against the Russian aggressor,” Klitschko said, adding that Johnson is a “great friend of Ukraine."
He said that he is confident Johnson will continue to do "everything possible" to ensure continued support for Ukraine from the UK and other world leaders.
Johnson’s successors, led by fellow Conservatives, have maintained strong UK support for Kyiv.
Ukraine-Russia 100 Prisoners Exchanged Include Mariupol And Chernobyl Veterans
Russia and Ukraine carried out a prisoner exchange on Thursday with 100 soldiers in total returning to their respective home countries, 50 from each side.
Among the released Ukrainian prisoners of war were 19 from the battle of Mariupol, including 12 who participated in the siege of the Azovstal steel facility, 15 people who’d been taken prisoner at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, and seven from Zmiinyi Island, reports Andriy Yermak, a top official at the Ukrainian presidency.
Since March, more than 1,000 Ukrainian civilians and military personnel captured by Russia have been brought back home. ‘We’ll bring everyone back,’ Yermak wrote.
Russian “Revenge” Killing Of Civilians In Kherson, Three Weeks After Withdrawal
Russian forces launched a series of 17 attacks on the liberated city of Kherson, using artillery and multiple rocket launchers. Kherson Oblast Governor Yaroslav Yanushevych reported that 20 civilians had been killed and 54 wounded following Russia's attacks on the city.
"Today is another terrible page in the history of our hero city," Yanushevych wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that the Russian attacks on Kherson and the surrounding area "began immediately after the Russian army was forced to flee from the Kherson region" early in November.
Zelensky said Thursday's deadly shelling was an act of revenge for those defeated Russian forces. The Russians do not know how to fight he said: "The only thing they can do is terrorize."
Kherson Tears On Belgian Daily Front Page
Antwerp-based daily De Morgen reports from Kherson, where “after the liberation and the euphoria,” more and more residents are choosing to leave the warn-torn city.
Swedish Spy Case Shines Light On Rise in Russian Espionage Of Nordic Neighbors
This week marks the opening of what's been described as the biggest Swedish espionage case since the end of the Cold War, as tensions rise in the face of the Russian war in Ukraine.
Over the last decade, due to rising geopolitical tensions, the threat from spies has increased all over Europe. According to a study published by the Swedish Total Defence Research Institute in May, the most active spies are in Northern Europe and the Baltics, and work in their vast majority on Russia’s behalf. No doubt the beginning of the war in Ukraine has raised the stakes, and activity, for those working undercover on both sides. Read more here.
Russia Has Spent $82 Billion On The War, How Do You Calculate Total?
During the nine months since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has spent around $82 billion on the war, totaling a quarter of its annual budget,Forbes reports.
As part of its financial calculation, the U.S. magazine estimated that Russia was using 10,000 to 50,000 shells per day, and that the average price of a Soviet-caliber shell was around $1,000.
Taking artillery supplies alone, Russia has spent more than $5.5 billion. Russia has also fired over 4,000 missiles into Ukraine, the average cost of which is $3 million each.
Russia has also lost 278 combat aircraft, each with an average cost of $18 million, and 261 helicopters, with an average cost of $10.4 million. The total losses of Russian aviation amount to roughly $8 billion.
“Only Power Counts” Merkel Says Putin Refused 2021 Talks Because Her Term Was Ending
In a candid interview with German weekly Der Spiegel, former Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had tried to organize talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in the summer of 2021, but that plans had failed to materialize due to her nearing the end of her chancellorship. “For Putin, only power counts," Merkel lamented.
As Deutsche Welle reports, Merkel wanted to create “an independent European discussion format with Putin”, as she felt the 2014 Minsk Agreement (designed to resolve the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv) was no longer effective.
More Than 15,000 People Reported Missing Since Beginning Of War
More than 15,000 people have been reported missing as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) reports.
Matthew Holliday, the ICMP’s program director for Europe, said Thursday that it was difficult to state precisely how many people had been forcibly transferred, held in Russian detention, separated from family or had been killed and were buried in makeshift graves.
In this respect, the 15,000 figure is a conservative one, he told Reuters, as in the southern city of Mariupol now occupied Russia, where authorities estimate a possible 25,000 people are either dead or missing.
Why Is The Russian Military Interested In Foreign Home Appliances?
A recent increase in European exports of washing machines, refrigerators and even electric breast-pumps to Russia’s neighbors is raising security concerns. Why? There are special chips in these appliances that the Russian army needs in order to repair their military equipment.
“The Russian military is taking chips from dishwashers and refrigerators to fix their military hardware, because they ran out of semiconductors,” warned European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen.
PARIS — There’s a dual story about the U.S. tech scene circulating in the world’s media. The first is structural, about trendlines and economics as Silicon Valley’s all-powerful platforms and companies have seen their stocks tanking and announced large layoffs for the first time ever. The second storyline is about the big tech titans themselves.
No surprises, Twitter is still taking up extraordinary amounts of headline real estate. And it’s impossible to disentangle Twitter the company from its Very-Online new owner, as Elon Musk’s barrage of changes continue to cross new red-lines that could wind up threatening the viability of the company itself.
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France’s Alternatives Economiques holds no punches in comparing Musk to Donald Trump, saying that like the twice-impeached former president, Musk uses Twitter to “shock, provoke, and even manipulate markets and public opinion.”
On Tuesday, Dubai-based Al-Arabiya quotes one of Musk’s irreverent Tweets warning (or threatening) that the company “will do lots of dumb things.” Al-Arabiya declares: “He couldn’t have made a clearer statement.”
International observers note that the spate of firings at Twitter may come back to haunt the company. Musk, who has laid off roughly half the company’s workers, has, by all accounts, decimated the teams responsible for content moderation.
In the U.S., this might be causing problems with advertisers, but in Europe, it’s potentially a problem with governments — which impose much stricter regulations on hate speech, and requirements that companies remove it. Italy’s Il Fatto Quotidiano and France’s Le Monde contextualize Musk’s purchase of Twitter as a peculiarly American battle about the limits of free speech.
Another French daily, La Croix, also expressed its worries about "the shadow side" of Twitter
“Elon would like to present himself as the grand moderator of the most political content on social media in the name of free speech,” Il Fatto’s Luca Ciarrocca writes. “The risk though is that it won’t be necessary because if he continues like this all the users could wind up leaving.”
As the FT reports, this puts Twitter on a “collision course with Brussels,” which has the ability to fine the company up to 6% of its global revenue under the Digital Services Act.
The upheavals at Twitter are partially responsible for the precipitous decline in the stock price of another Musk company — Tesla. Investors in the electric vehicle manufacturer are concerned that Musk might have to unload significant numbers of Tesla shares in order to cover the debt incurred in the acquisition of Twitter, leading the stock price lower.
But falling tech stocks are more than an Elon Musk story. Where the world used to look at Silicon Valley in awe, publications are striking a different tone these days. France’s Le Figaro writes: “There’s something broken in the kingdom of American tech.”
That something increasingly now includes employee headcounts.
It seems that Silicon Valley is cracking right now.
From Facebook’s parent company Meta (11,000 jobs cut) to Amazon (10,000) to Twitter (3,700), U.S. tech companies are trimming their employees by the thousands. That’s a lot of newly unemployed programmers… But the one company that’s not laying anyone off en masse? Dutch payments darling Adyen, botes Business Insider Nederland — even though its main competitor Stripe is cutting 14% of its workforce.
German weekly Die Zeit sees a deja vu: “The wave of layoffs brings back uncomfortable memories of 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst. At that time, the prices of the Internet companies, that were so new at the time, increased highly before crashing violently,” the German weekly writes. “It seems that Silicon Valley is cracking right now. Google was hit by collateral damages after the cryptocurrency crisis. And crypto itself is also struggling to survive.”
Not all are ready to count out the American tech giants so quickly. Georges Nahon, writing in French business daily Les Echos, notes how many fields are now opening up to the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and the blockchain-backed web3.
“In Silicon Valley the next cycle has already started, driven by Generative AI which is already setting off a new gold rush with the creation of more than 100 start-ups in a very short time,” Nahon writes. “Any obituary of Silicon Valley has been written prematurely.”
Mexico City daily La Jornada was one of many international newspapers to feature former U.S. President Donald Trump on its front page Wednesday, following the announcement that Trump would be a candidate for the White House in 2024.
In an article titled “Trump: The Monster’s Back”, French-language Canadian daily Le Journal de Montréal compares Trump’s comeback plans to a zombie movie, writing: “Le Grand Orange was stabbed in the heart when he lost the House of Representatives back in 2018. He was gunned down when he lost the presidential election on Nov. 3, 2020. Now he’s tasted some midterms flamethrower. And still, who crawled out from his grave last Tuesday?”
😅 GOTT BLESS AMERICA
“That was one of the greatest football experiences I’ve ever had.” That’s how Tampa Bay Buccaneers superstar quarterback Tom Brady described the NFL game between his team and the Seattle Seahawks, which was for the first time taking place on German soil. The game, which the Buccaneers won 21:16, saw 69,811 fans gather in Munich's Allianz Arena (more used to the other kind of football, i.e. soccer).
It was also a streaming hit, with 5.8 million viewers on TV and online, the highest ratings for an NFL game played abroad to date. As German sports website Ran writes: Deutschland ist ein Football-Land!
There is definitely bad blood between Taylor Swift fans and Ticketmaster, after the ticket giant canceled this week’s general public sale for the U.S. singer’s upcoming tour because of “historically unprecedented” demand.
As for Europe, as Belgian media Moustique notes, Swift is not expected to tour there before fall 2023, which should leave local ticket providers ample time “to avoid a new fiasco”.
