On 20 August, prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalnyi collapsed on board a commercial flight, causing it to make an emergency landing in Omsk. Navalnyi’s condition had changed suddenly and violently during the flight and the aircraft captain’s swift decision probably saved his life. His family, friends and supporters immediately—and with good reason—suspected that he had been poisoned.
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With Belarus rapidly moving towards a post-Lukashenko era, the EU has no credible option but to support Belarusians’ bottom-up demands for democracy. This has geopolitical implications that the EU needs to be prepared to address. Russia is determined to maintain control over Belarus and likely to perceive the EU’s engagement as undesirable if not threatening.
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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko may remain in power, but the election and its aftermath leave no doubt that he is ruling by force and fraud. The West will need to adjust its approach to Minsk accordingly.
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No one, including the growing internal opposition in Belarus, doubted that the country’s long-lived dictator Alexander Lukashenko would formally win a sixth presidential term in the 9 August 2020 elections. Many people in Belarus want change, but he himself is not ready to go.
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The protests in Khabarovsk, a city of 600,000 located seven time zones east of Moscow, drew up to 100,000 people on the latest in a series of marches against president Vladimir Putin on Saturday. Although city officials claimed that only a couple of thousand people were protesting, a quick look at photos of the streets will set the record straight.
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Impact of the 2018-19 Election Cycle on Energy Security and Climate Policies in the Baltic states, Poland and Finland.
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Covid-19 started to spread in China in December 2019. The health authorities in Wuhan (Hubei province) reported the disease on New Year’s Eve. The suspected source of the disease – the Huanan wet market – was closed down on the 1st of January.
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If the Martians had a university where there was a department of European studies, they would be scratching their heads in a thoroughly perplexed fashion. Here is Europe facing its most serious crisis in a hundred years, Covid-19, one that is transforming society, the economy and much else, yet in the midst of it, the Hungary issue erupts yet again as a major source of political argument.
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On 30th March 2020, the Hungarian Parliament adopted a so-called “coronavirus law”, by claiming that efficiently combating the coronavirus pandemic would require extraordinary measures and the ability to make rapid decisions, should that become necessary.
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President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s dream ended on 4 March. On that date he dismissed ten of the most reformist ministers of his still newly formed government.
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