Worldcrunch
Faced with a $32 billion drop in their wealth this year, Russian oligarchs are looking for assets to allow them to overcome sanctions that will increase with the invasion of Ukraine. Familiar with crises, they see bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as an escape from the hegemony of the dollar, and a way to diversify their holdings.
Moscow’s large-scale attack launched on Ukraine erases any lingering doubts about where Russia’s president wants to go. Vladimir Putin is taking back part of the Soviet empire and attacking the European post-War order. Europe and NATO must respond, by arming the eastern flank.
You can threaten to destroy the Russian economy or target the president’s friends, but you can’t stop Putin’s imaginary vision of the past, and present. It’s bad news for Western diplomats, for peace in the region — and may be the ultimate ruin of modern Russia.
Russia’s president is neither clearly right-wing nor left-wing. As his dubious allies around the world suggest, he simply hates Western liberal democracy and seeks to expand his personal power, at home and abroad, by sowing unrest and conflict.
No girls, no science, no foreign languages, only the Koran. This is how the Taliban want to erase the generation of students educated for 20 years by the “Western usurpers.” La Stampa’s Francesca Mannocchi visits one of the rigid, boys-only madrasas near Kabul.
It’s not the presence of Western weapons that scares Moscow, it is the idea of freedom. And yet by threatening Ukrainians with invasion, his neighbors and rivals in the West rally around that same idea. Has the would-be strategic mastermind in the Kremlin finally painted himself into a corner? Unfortunately, that’s a dangerous place.
Iran’s clerical regime is handing over vital economic sectors to its “allies,” Russia and China. But future generations may end up paying the real price for the country’s “Look to the East” philosophy.
Most Latin American countries fear civil conflicts more than international invasion. A regional union is the best way to assure stability and lawfulness in a troubled but culturally cohesive continent. The EU shows us what that would look like and how to make it happen.
It was Jane Austen, back in 1816, who wrote that “every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.” That neighborhood is getting quite a bit bigger these days as our digitized lives and economies extract ever-deepening rivers of private data from the daily lives of citizens. Of course, with that has also come […]
Western states are taking democratic governance for granted and responding feebly to threats in their midst. With the crisis at the Ukraine-Russia border coming to a head, the 1930s offer lessons on the dangers of complacency in the face of a kind of semi-democracy.
Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko has taken refuge in Poland after being accused of treason and cooperation with Russia. It’s a film we’ve seen before in Kyiv.
A recent tender for Brazil’s 5G network once again highlighted the growing rivalry between the two superpowers. Now, the Biden administration may even have a formula to free countries of their debt to Beijing.
The United States expects Germany to put a halt to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the Americans are not mentioning the fact that they themselves import plenty of oil from Russia.
A former Iranian official being tried in Sweden on charges of complicity in murders of hundreds of prisoners outside Tehran in 1988, typifies the violent nature of the Islamic leaders who took over Iranian institutions 40 years ago.
The Russian president’s much talked-about insult toward Ukrainians and President Zelensky was really part of his long game to force the conditions of the Minsk agreement that would destabilize Kyiv and distract the U.S. and Europe enough to move in on Putin’s terms.
Russian media outlets have received government orders to remove archived material about Alexei Navalny and his investigations into corruption by Vladimir Putin and his associates. While the jailed activist’s past work can be found elsewhere, YouTube and other foreign internet platforms may be the Kremlin’s next target.
With Russian troops now deployed through Belarus, the risk is growing of an invasion through Ukraine’s northern border. Vladimir Putin’s regional strategy and Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorial demands are not always what they seem.
An increase in public protests has sounded the alarm bell for Iranian officials and clerics. But public discontent runs much deeper than discontent over wages and water. There are also signs of nostalgia for the monarchy that ruled the country before the 1979 revolution.
Experts in geopolitics and the workings of world leaders have accelerated a two-decade long quest to understand the motivations of the enigmatic man in the Kremlin.
Even while embroiled in the biggest foreign policy standoff of his reign, the Russian leader has been forced to acknowledge accusations of torture after leaked videos of violent abuse in prisons. Yet proposed new legislation to stem torture risks challenging a regime built on corruption and state-sponsored repression.
A resurgent, ambitious Russia has taken the West by surprise, just when the United States was pivoting and bracing itself to face down China.
Launched in 2017 to combat radicalization, the Moussalaha program is finding success by helping those incarcerated for terrorism by providing counseling, reducing their prison sentences and following up after release.
The desperation to leave Islamic Iran has spread from writers, dissidents and minority groups to hundreds of thousands of Iranians willing to live and work “anywhere that isn’t Iran.”
A mind map of the Russian leader’s possible plans to increase his influence, and expand his territory.
Like other intellectuals of his time, the celebrated Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez admired Cuba’s Fidel Castro. What’s just been revealed, however, is also, as one text reveals, the Sandinista rebels who have stifled Nicaraguan democracy in past years.
In the year since the arrest of Vladimir Putin’s last opponent a new Cold War has begun. In the absence of internal enemies, Russia’s increasingly powerful yet isolated ruler must turn to external targets.
Although Betancourt is best known for surviving six years as a hostage of the Colombian terror group FARC, and is considered a centrist politician, her unlikely new campaign for president will be centered on gender issues.
How do you rebuild a country decimated by four decades of war and embargoes? Following the withdrawal of the U.S. military, Iraq faces many challenges, from oil revenues captured by the militias and endemic corruption to religious segregation. However, there are glimmers of hope for the country’s future.
This weekend’s unprecedented operation to dismantle the cybercriminal REvil network in Russia was carried out on a request and information from Washington. Occurring just as the two countries face off over the Russian threat to invade Ukraine raises more questions than it answers.
Echoing its cultural diplomacy of the early 20th century, the United States is gifting vaccines to Latin America as part of a renewed “good neighbor” policy.
Several notable political prisoners in Egypt have renounced their citizenship to gain freedom. The choice is a difficult one to make personally, and the practice is highly questionable politically.
Russia’s role in in Iranian affairs goes to the highest levels of its military and security structures. But will anyone in Iran dare question Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in spite of the grave risks to the country’s national security?
The COVID-19 outbreak has reshaped the world’s emerging superpower both at home and abroad, making China emerge as a more efficient power and helping Chinese overcome their inferiority complex vis-a-vis the West.
With Russian troops amassed at the border with Ukraine, the writer, who came of age in Kiev in the post-Soviet era, says her fellow Ukrainians of every generation are united in never again falling under the reign of Moscow.
The Danish government has banned further growth in sea-based fish farming, claiming the country had reached the limit without endangering the environment. A marine biologist says it is a misguided policy for both economic and ecological reasons.
As with Ukraine and Belarus, Kazakhstan is falling under the grip of Moscow as a response to disorder and threats to align with the West.
Rising fuel costs were the initial spark for rare public protests in Kazakhstan. But the violent unrest reveals widespread dissatisfaction with the authoritarian regime that has ruled the country since its independence.
Iran’s clerical regime is able to sabotage asylum applications, prompt deportations and, failing that, beat and murder Iranian political refugees in Turkey.
A recent report revealed that Denmark plans to rent prison cells abroad, raising troubling questions about the expanding global trade in penitentiary services.
Joined in their respective confrontations with the West, both the Chinese and Russian leaders are boasting about their burgeoning partnership. Yet there are fundamental reasons the love affair is unlikely to last.