Worldcrunch
After Beijing’s dubious push to lead negotiations on settling the war in Ukraine, now it’s South Africa’s turn. But its “ambiguous” neutrality on the war — and reports of secret weapons sales to Russia — raise serious skepticism in Kyiv and the West.
A spate of speculation on the health of Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko follows similar reports about would-be Vladimir Putin illnesses. Such talk feeds the hope of the Russian opposition and many in the West. Ukrainians have a different agenda — and timetable.
Chairman of the Parliament of Moldova Igor Grosu has announced the nation’s withdrawal from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Will Moldova succeed in making a final break with Russia?
French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that France will train Ukrainian pilots appears to pave the way for the delivery of fighter jets to Kyiv. Similar moves are coming from the UK. It’s a delicate process to never declare war on Russia, while maximizing Ukraine’s ability to repulse the invaders.
Pavlo Kazarin is a journalist for Ukrainska Pravda. He is also serving in the Ukrainian army: With the good and the bad, heroes and otherwise.
May 15 – May 21, 2023
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna and her German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock have issued a strong and united call on Beijing to pressure Russia to end its war in Ukraine. It is a reminder of the potential of European power. But the “European Project” is as loaded as ever.
Russia has just celebrated its Victory Day over Nazism. It’s a good time to reflect on what retribution means, and how it’s not always black and white.
May 8th and May 9th crystallizes the divergent fates of Ukraine and Russia. For Vladimir Putin, the victory of the “Great Patriotic War” is at the core of his national narrative. More than 14 months into his invasion of Ukraine, who still believes the story?
After its initial blitzkrieg failed, and with Ukraine gearing up for a counteroffensive, Russia sees its best hope in holding out for a protracted conflict. Kyiv, instead, is trying to convince its Western allies that achieving victory as soon as possible is the only path forward.
Moscow is accusing Kyiv of trying to assassinate Putin in a drone strike on the Kremlin. It will likely be used as a pretext for Putin to escalate attacks.
Whether Ukraine or Russia is behind the clamorous attack on the Kremlin, which Moscow says was an assassination attempt against Vladimir Putin, it is bound to shape the imminent counter-offensive.
Even as Ukraine’s Western allies are sending much needed military hardware, there is an unofficial market for used equipment — from armored vehicles to drones and satellites — that has been vital for Kyiv. But how do these second-hand goods make it from Britain to the front?
The war in Ukraine has launched an epidemic of denunciations in Russia: 145,000 individual reports to the security services in just the first six months of the war. It’s the latest evidence of the current regime’s Stalinist approach.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accepted an invitation to attend the next NATO summit in July, but he will arrive with expectations that the alliance is ready to pave the way for the country’s accession to the military alliance, even as the state of the war itself remains crucial to the decision.
Desperate to supply depleting forces in Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry has taken up the dubious recruiting method of offering prisoners freedom in exchange for going off to war. The same technique was begun but then halted in February by the Wagner Group mercenaries. It’s Putin’s latest attempt to avoid a nationwide mobilization.
Ukraine became the country with the most landmines in the world. Kyiv has limited resources, so NGOs are trying to help by training soldiers to identify and destroy the potentially deadly devices even while protecting themselves from new assaults from Russian forces.
“We are realists, and therefore we do not believe in the possibility of a compromise between freedom and slavery…” Poland’s foreign minister has outlined what the country’s foreign strategy will look like in the coming years, built on support of Ukraine and steadfast resistance to the Russian aggressors.
It was one of the most striking photographs since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with a tragic postscript. A year later, it has been chosen as World Press Photo of the Year award.
Suffering heavy losses, the Russian army is undertaking an intensive recruitment drive. We take a look at the heavy-handed adverts and offers that encourage men to go to war.
The Ukrainian and Russian presidents made separate visits to the frontline recently, in closer physical proximity than anytime since the war began. It was a sign that we should not expect negotiations anytime soon.
In the parts of eastern Ukraine liberated by Ukrainian forces’ lightning counteroffensive six months ago life is bittersweet, including a constant lack of electricity and water — and the constant risk of shelling.
Vladimir Kara-Murza was handed the heaviest prison sentence since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin is making an example of the rare few who dare to speak out against him, evoking the reign of Joseph Stalin.
Poland’s unilateral decision to ban imports of Ukraine’s agricultural products, in violation of EU agreements, has caused shock among Ukrainians. Nazar Bobytsky, head of the Ukrainian office of the Polish Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers, says Brussels must show Kyiv it is serious about Ukraine joining the EU.
Confronted with a significant security breach, the U.S. is learning a brutal lesson about modern warfare.
Even as Ukraine struggles to hold onto the last remaining bits of the eastern city, military experts say the official Russian military apparatus may have decided to rid itself of the Wagner mercenaries and bury them all in Bakhmut.
A confrontation between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches has been brewing for centuries. But a video showing a Ukrainian war veteran being beaten up in church shows that the standoff has become all-out war.
Reporting from agricultural centers in eastern Ukraine confirms a landmark study: Extensive wartime damage to the country’s crucial agricultural sector risks raising hunger in places that have counted on Ukrainian grain.
Even if Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky were willing to find a compromise on territory, their respective constitutions explicitly forbid signing off on such a deal.
According to a new report, the world’s primary recipient of Ukrainian grain is China, and the pace of exports has exceeded pre-war levels. But the Chinese leader’s long game goes much further.
The issue of Taiwan has come up during French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to China. The unresolved question of the island’s independence shows Europe will find it hard to remain neutral as tensions between the U.S. and China reach a new peak.
A visit to the Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia, which borders Hungary and is home to about 150,000 Hungarian-Ukrainians, where the pro-Russian stance of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is wreaking havoc.
After more than a year of war, a journalist from Spanish publication La Marea returns to one of the capital’s top clinics for foreign couples looking for children. Business is better than ever, though the clinic is looking for women from other former Soviet republics to become surrogate mothers.
Russia’s president only has himself to blame for historically neutral Finland acquiring NATO status.
Few believe the Russian government claims that it can recruit 400,000 new troops as volunteers, even with cash bonuses. But the alternative, a nationwide draft, may be too high a risk for Vladimir Putin.
It sounded made for April Fool’s: Russia is taking over the presidency of the UN Security Council, the highest governing body in the world. But this is all too real. It’s time to rethink how the council works, Pierre Haski writes.
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.
Citizens of the now destroyed Ukrainian city of Maryinka are left struggling to remember what their town used to look like.
With a decisive deal with Putin out of the question, the only way to create a lasting peace is to recreate some fundamental dynamics of the Cold War.
Thousands of foreign soldiers are fighting alongside Ukraine. German daily Die Welt met a Chechen battalion to find out why they are fighting.