For international observers, Russian President Vladimir Putin either will start a new war in Ukraine or he will not. But for Ukrainians, the war started when Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, and it has continued …
After a long, mysterious silence, US President Joe Biden has spoken out about the ever-increasing concentration of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border. He would have been better off keeping quiet, given his astonishing and …
The outcome of this week’s eight-hour-long US–Russia talks in Geneva wasn’t reported on the main news broadcast of Russia’s state-owned Channel One, a primary propaganda outlet for the Kremlin, until the 11th minute. The first …
Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party knew well what to expect from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko before he started funnelling refugees from the Middle East to the Polish border. Belarusian authorities had already done …
The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan has already deepened conflicts elsewhere, including Europe, where a confrontation is escalating between Belarus and its European Union neighbours: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. Even before the meltdown in Kabul, Belarusian …
In July, Donald Tusk, the former European Council president who served as Poland’s prime minister from 2007 to 2014, returned to Polish politics. Many voters remember him as the politician who raised the country’s retirement …
Former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has come back to where he started, reclaiming his position as head of Civic Platform (PO), the party that he led to electoral victories in 2007 and 2011, before …
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has once again demonstrated the lengths to which he will go to crack down on his opponents. On 23 May, he deployed a MiG-29 fighter jet to force down a commercial …
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent annual address on the state of his country was so ostentatiously threatening as to sound reassuring. Not only did he forbid the West from crossing red lines, but he announced …
US President Joe Biden is very familiar with both Poland and Ukraine. His decades of service as a United States senator and his eight years as vice president under Barack Obama taught him that the …
The biggest wave of protests in years has swept Russia, raising hopes that popular pressure will persist and intensify, gradually eroding an autocratic regime, as is happening in neighbouring Belarus. But we should be wary …
Joe Biden’s election as president of the United States has seriously weakened authoritarian and populist governments around the world. For independent global powers like Russia, Brazil and Turkey, Donald Trump’s departure need not amount to …