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10·10 hours agoThe Crimean peninsula—like a crown—sits atop the Black Sea exercising control over its length and breadth. A Kremlin Crimea renders the Black Sea a virtual Russian lake, awarding Vladimir Putin sway across the entire Ukrainian coast past Odessa to the Danube Delta as well as Moldova and Romania.
Russia with Crimea and the Black Sea under its control will be free to direct its focus on finishing its subjugation of the South Caucasus. Russia has already made deep inroads in Georgia turning the nation away from Europe. Armenia’s nascent counter-revolution to throw away the Russian yoke will not survive an undistracted Russian thrust to bring it back to the fold.
Putin, with Georgia and Armenia under its heel, will achieve his dream of reinstating Russian control of the Black Sea from the Turkish border in the east to Romania in the west. A Russian Crimea enabling Kremlin control of the Black Sea and the Caucasus will constitute a great victory for its special military operation. For America and Europe, this is a immense strategic defeat.
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China will be the biggest beneficiary if Russia controls these Eurasian chokepoints between Central Asia and Europe.** Russia is increasingly an economic vassal state of China and lacks any leverage to compete with it across Eurasia economically**. Chinese engineers are presently paving the road connecting the Iran-Armenia-Georgia-Russia road network. China has inked strategic partnerships with Azerbaijan and Georgia and have secured the concession to operate Georgia’s Black Sea deep water port, Anaklia. Across Central Asia, China has long displaced Russia as the dominant economic actor.
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Mr. Klitschko’s statements sound somewhat like Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace of our time” declaration. We all know how that turned out. Can’t believe that he believes this is a realistic scenario.
This is somewhat related:
Trump helps enflame anti-LGBTQ feeling from Hungary to Romania
Since Trump’s White House return, the Accept group he works for has received dozens of reports from people who say they are facing physical or verbal violence and online threats, with some sponsors now reluctant to support the march …
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban – a “good friend” of Trump – has gradually been rolling back LGBTQ rights in the name of “child protection” in Hungary for years …
Vladimir Putin’s Russia – with which [Hungarian PM Viktor] Orban has warm ties – has also been cracking down hard on gay and transgender communities …
[Romania] as one of the last countries in the EU where same sex marriages and civil partnerships are still outlawed, and where the powerful Orthodox Church wields its influence, defending “traditional, Christian values” against a “decadent West” has appeal for voters.
In Slovakia […] the climate has worsened since the homophobic double murder [committed by the son of a prominent member of an extreme-right party in front of a Bratislava gay bar in 2022], with Prime Minister Robert Fico back in power intensifying his anti-LGBTQ attacks, freezing funds to NGOs and halting procedures for transgender people […] For Roman Samotny, who owns the now-shuttered Teplaren bar where the double murder took place, anti-LGBTQ propaganda has mainly taken inspiration from Russia, just like in Hungary, with Fico and Orban both close to Putin.
Some chinese dudes are working in Russia.
This is a gross trivilaization. China is a decisive supporter of Russia in its war against Ukraine and a big threat to Europe and world. Beijing is closely watching Western democracies’ reaction to Russia’s aggression as they are seeking a war with Taiwan and other neighbours. Just watch China’s increasingly aggressive behaviour against practically all its neighbours in Asia.
French and German government agencies are building a joint Open Source, self-hostable G-Docs replacement: https://docs.numerique.gouv.fr/login
Renaming the EU, Dismantling the Commission: For What Polish and Hungarian Illiberals Seek U.S. Backing – (March 2025)
The Trump administration’s most influential think tank, The Heritage Foundation, is receiving proposals from illiberal forces in Poland and Hungary on how to shape the future of the European Union. The proposals, obtained by VSquare, include dismantling key EU institutions and renaming the entire bloc.
Addition: Just recognised that the article has already been posted here: https://feddit.org/post/11202077 Sorry the double post.
I don’t mean to nitpick, but this has most likely more to do with the US dollar’s weakness -deliberately(!) brought about by the new boss in the White House- than with the ruble’s strengths. Trump and his administration -especially Stephen Miran, the newly appointed chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers- have long communicated the willingness to weaken the dollar to improve the U.S. trade balance. (Some argue Trump’s action will rather lead to a higher U.S. budget deficit and the end of the USD hegemony, replaced by some Central Bank Digital Currency, gold, and maybe some other commodities. If interested, Hungarian-American economist Zoltan Pozsar was likely the first who proposed this afaik.)
The currency games have an effect on everyone. China which has been hit hardest by Trump’s tarrifs, sees it’s yuan at a 17-year low at the moment, at around 7.3 CNH for 1 USD, and the Chinese Central Bank is calling on commercial banks to limit purchases of USD, despite the tariffs conundrum, at least this is what analysts say so far and what we see in the numbers.
It’s hard to tell what happens tomorrow, but I wouldn’t bet on Russia’s currency nor its economy in the long run.
[Edit typo.]
As a side note, Australia’s SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) has just started to partner with Euronews.
Le Monde conducted a joint investigation with VSquare, Direkt36 and Espresso. Here is the unpaywalled/archived report by Vsquare.
The EU is to make Temu, Shein, Aliexpress, Amazon & Co. reliable for their unsafe products.
And this move is overdue. Many of this cheap crap is a threat to people’s health and the environment. I don’t want our children to be confronted with things that pose a threat to their health.
And it is also an important social issue. If you pay a few bucks for a product -with shipment from China to Europe included- it is impossible that workers who manufacture these things receive even a remotely decent pay. In Europe and other democracies, people criticize (often rightfully) a lack of workers’ rights and call for better labour protection, unionization, and stuff like that, but the same people are happy when they can get clothing for absurdly little money to ‘shop like a billionaire.’
I would really like to know what they are negotiating as experts say Ukraine doesn’t have minable rare earths deposits, say proposed deal with U.S. makes no sense
Beijing, in its turn, has been opening up sectors such as telecommunications, banking or manufacturing for foreign investment, he said.
What? Beijing has done the exact opposite. The latest brick in China’s legal wall took effect just last year with what the party-state calls “anti-espionage law”, an opaque regulation that creates new risks for foreign companies, business travelers, academics, journalists, researchers. Its nebulous language allows China significant leeway to investigate and prosecute foreign corporations at will.
And China makes wide use of this. Last year, even before the new law took effect, Chinese authorities detained staff of Mintz Group, a US due diligence group. They were later released as far as I can remember, but all they did was market research.
As a foreigner it’s also impossible to found a subsidiary in China, you need a Chinese partner that would then own the majority of the joint venure. China has been closing down further in recent years.
“We should put our focus on partnership. China will never be a threat or any kind of enemy to the EU,” Yao said, praising the bloc’s multilateral approach to foreign affairs, as opposed to President Donald Trump’s isolationist agenda.
China has no interest in a partnership, not with the EU nor anyone else. They are a constant threat to their neighbours, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Buthan, and all the others. In addition, China has been engaging in transnational repression, targeting political exiles abroad to silence dissent across the globe, including in Europe.
And this is just a TINY selection of issues with China.
[Edit typo.]
North Korea is now supplying almost half of Russia’s artillery ammunition, think tank reports
Evidence suggests these containerised munitions are shipped from North Korea’s port of Rajin to Russia’s Far East, then transferred by rail to ammunition depots closer to the frontline. With an estimated cadence of 750 containers per month—equivalent to roughly 600,000 to 783,000 munitions per quarter—North Korean support has likely eased pressure on Russia’s defence industry and extended its capacity to wage high-intensity warfare […] If left unaddressed, this flow of arms could tilt the battlefield further in Moscow’s favour and accelerate broader security risks across both Europe and East Asia.
War in Ukraine: Has Sumy attack destroyed all hope of peace?
The war in Ukraine looks set to escalate again. Sunday’s deadly Russian rocket attack on the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine has made it more challenging than ever to find common ground between the two sides, to form the basis of a ceasefire or peace negotiations.
“Russia is waging deliberate war on the civilian population,” Wilfried Jilge, a Ukraine expert and historian of Eastern Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), told DW.
“Sumy is a new extreme, but it’s not the first. I think we still haven’t grasped just how brutal this regime is, both at home and abroad.”
2·10 days agoThere are also articles about this. Feel free to apply the whataboutery also there. (s/ just to be safe, it would indeed be better to stop whataboutering and stay on topic.)
… indicating that [China’s] BGI units’ “collection and analysis of genetic data poses a significant risk of contributing to monitoring and surveillance by the government of China, which has been utilised in the repression of ethnic minorities in China”. It also claimed “the actions of these entities concerning the collection and analysis of genetic data present a significant risk of diversion to China’s military programs”.
Just read the article. The Moscow Times is referring to numbers provided by Rosstat, Russia’s official Statistical Office. This is official data by the Kremlin.
According to data released by the state statistics agency Rosstat, 195,400 children were born in Russia during January and February 2025 — a 3% drop compared to the same period in 2024.
The decline was even steeper in February alone, with births falling 7.6% year-over-year to 90,500 — 7,400 fewer than in the same month last year.
Some regions saw even sharper drops. Births fell by 18.7% in Arkhangelsk, 19.4% in the republic of Karelia, 18.6% in the Oryol region, 21.6% in Kostroma and 26.6% in Smolensk.
One of the more elaborated news on that topic:
Chinese officials have implicitly acknowledged responsibility for a series of sophisticated cyber intrusions targeting critical U.S. infrastructure.
During a high-level meeting in Geneva with American officials, representatives from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs indirectly linked years of computer network breaches at U.S. ports, water utilities, airports, and other critical targets to increasing U.S. policy support for Taiwan […]
Wang Lei, a top cyber official with China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made the comments after U.S. representatives emphasized that China appeared not to understand how dangerous prepositioning in civilian critical infrastructure was, and how such actions could be viewed as an act of war […]
The admission is considered extraordinary, as Chinese officials have typically denied involvement in cyber operations, blamed criminal entities, or accused the U.S. of fabricating allegations.
Dakota Cary, a China expert at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, noted that such an acknowledgment, even indirectly, likely required instructions from the highest levels of President Xi Jinping’s government.
[Edit to insert archived source link.]
They are fighting on European soil against a European country.
Tihis is somehow related regarding ‘sanitising:’
Uyghur Genocide: Activists slam Disney for filming Mulan in Xinjiang