Worldcrunch
The Taschenbergpalais, a splendid baroque edifice in Dresden’s Old Town, stands as a luxury hotel complete with its own patisserie and oyster bar, catering to the affluent, the glamorous, and the influential. It was here that cultural manager Hans-Joachim Frey agreed to speak with Germany’s Die Zeit about his passion for music and his enduring ties to Russia and Vladimir Putin.
Following the contested parliamentary election in Georgia on Saturday, the West must not be quick to pass judgment and must seek to understand Georgians’ fears — which the Kremlin’s propaganda is playing into.
How the women’s partisan movement rose up from the southeastern city of Melitopol to carry out undercover operations in the occupied territories of Ukraine that undermine every step of the Russian troops.
Two residents tell Vazhnye istorii about the Kremlin’s propaganda about rebuilding and the reality of their living conditions in Mariupol, and the pain of fellow Ukrainians judging them for staying after Russia took over.
Both Russian online trolls and Ukrainians who never liked him will be calling into question Volodymyr Zelensky’s right to hold on to the presidency as his five-year term is set to end in May. But they’ll also be questioning the morality and strategy of his war aims. What should be his response?
The 21-year-old French-Israeli woman was captured by Hamas at the music festival on Oct. 7 and brought to Gaza.
The Ukraine war is not just physical — it’s also being fought on a psychological front. Russian soldiers are subjected to complex psychological pressures at home and abroad.
From the depths of his prison cell, President Putin’s best-known opponent, Alexei Navalny, appears to have a plan for how to turn Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed uprising into new momentum for his cause for democracy and regime change in Moscow.
From ballet to opera to classic literature, Russia has turned its culture into an instrument for its own expansion. The West must fight back, Ukraine’s culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko writes in an op-ed in German daily Die Welt. It’s time to stop supporting Russian artists and seek out Ukrainians instead.
Independent Russian media Vazhnyye Istorii has obtained a major data leak from the top Kremlin information agency that reveals the scale and extent of anti-war protests across the Russian Federation.
This is the other side of the Kremlin’s “special operation” in Ukraine. The human cost of the Russian side remains unclear. The reportage takes place in the capital of one of the poorest regions of Russia, in the heart of the Caucasus, where a growing number of soldiers are buried.
And see the contrast with kids in Russia…
The EU is planning to ban state broadcaster Russia Today and news agency Sputnik. But how is the network reporting on the war in Ukraine? And will banning them potentially affect Russians more than Europeans?