Archive

April 15, 2022

Talk Abroad and at Home

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW Talk Abroad and at Home SLOVENIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/91af5831-13d6-a440-6055-3beb55c4774a.png"] Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa recently joined the premiers of the Czech Republic and Poland in Kyiv to show their support for Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion. The trip into a war zone took even their families by...

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April 14, 2022

Fear and Vindication

NEED TO KNOW Fear and Vindication BALTICS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/5076fedd-d931-e5b0-6e53-8d829a873c67.png"] Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have become the first European countries to cut off gas imports from Russia, a move that seeks to curtail Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main revenue source. Lithuania described the move as a “response to Russia’s energy blackmail...

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April 13, 2022

Sovereignty Un-Stifled

NEED TO KNOW Sovereignty Un-Stifled FINLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/91b0da4b-efc6-40c2-a405-00e958404c77.png"] Finlandization has been proposed as a final status for Ukraine after Russia concludes its ongoing brutal invasion. But the Finns might counsel against it. The Finns are themselves considering joining NATO rather than continuing to accept what the New York Times described...

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April 12, 2022

Shopping Around

NEED TO KNOW Shopping Around AFRICA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b8aca45b-1687-4d5b-b62c-09186470d8a2.png"] Around 45 percent of the European Union’s gas comes from Russia. In the next few months, EU officials expect to unveil a plan to phase out those and other fossil fuel imports over the next four years in response to Russian...

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April 11, 2022

The Wages of the Toady

NEED TO KNOW The Wages of the Toady BELARUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3dffa11e-ac63-436f-a4ed-735a6dabc4a6.png"] Russian soldiers retreating from Ukraine to Belarus are selling goods that they have looted while fighting. They’re also filling up hospitals and, in some cases, overwhelming morgues in the former Soviet republic that lies to the north of...

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April 08, 2022

Ça Marche

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW Ça Marche FRANCE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/d78d9fd2-f0df-4e59-9bd4-334bffdc4974.png"] Folks in the small town of Moissac in southern France are on edge. The ethnic composition of the medieval town has changed dramatically in the past decade. Around 2,000 Bulgarians – mostly Roma – have settled in Moissac. Last year, concern over...

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April 07, 2022

The Game of Neutrality

NEED TO KNOW The Game of Neutrality WORLD [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/486ddb7e-3777-4543-ab44-3536360a3ce9.png"] As his soldiers fight Russian forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently pledged that his country would become permanently neutral – that is, aligned neither with NATO nor Russia – in exchange for security guarantees designed to prevent more fighting in...

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April 06, 2022

Bullets and Choices

NEED TO KNOW Bullets and Choices MOLDOVA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a19755da-0385-95db-b607-df0d274fdb27.png"] Moldovans looking to the east can see smoke on the horizon as Ukrainian troops fend off Russia’s invasion, the Scotsman newspaper recently reported. As a result, one can understand why many in the former Soviet republic wedged between Romania and...

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April 05, 2022

Green Fields, Orange Apes

NEED TO KNOW Green Fields, Orange Apes INDONESIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/ec0c6f24-24ad-434b-bf1d-56e472da6e67.png"] Indonesians are talking about their government’s plan to move their capital from the metropolis of Jakarta on the island of Java to a new city under construction, Nusantara, on the island of Borneo. Expected to be completed in 2045, the...

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April 04, 2022

Push, Pull

NEED TO KNOW Push, Pull CENTRAL ASIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2e2ef13c-a42d-db72-25cb-edaa084a6043.png"] A radio talk show host in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan recently posted a troubling note on Facebook. Noting how Kazakhs have strong feelings about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lyubov Panova warned that criticism of the war could be...

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April 01, 2022

Little Brother

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW Little Brother SERBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/fd16e594-c67c-41ff-beb7-977236001063.png"] American and Western European diplomats recently expressed their disappointment at Kosovo’s decision to disallow people to vote in neighboring Serbia’s elections on April 3. “Such an attitude of the Kosovo government is not in line with our values and principles and...

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March 31, 2022

Russkiy Mir

NEED TO KNOW Russkiy Mir RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Artur and Vsevolod fled to Istanbul, Turkey from their hometown of Moscow fearing that they might face conscription into the Russian military as the country’s brutal but botched invasion of Ukraine continues. “The atmosphere of fear in Russia is unprecedented,” said Vsevolod,...

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March 30, 2022

Between a Hammer and an Anvil

NEED TO KNOW Between a Hammer and an Anvil HUNGARY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f77307e3-d12d-4a63-bcb5-407e519df6dc.png"] Most Central and East European leaders have been outspoken in their condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin and support of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Polish, Czech, and Slovenian leaders made a risky visit to Kyiv earlier this...

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March 29, 2022

Packing Proxies

NEED TO KNOW Packing Proxies MALDIVES [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e808e12a-9c97-7e3a-2d92-f3b344e1fae9.png"] Some in the Maldives want to reduce the influence of India. The same people in the archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean might want to increase the influence of China in their backyard, too. Lawmakers with the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP)...

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March 28, 2022

Just Business

NEED TO KNOW Just Business UKRAINE/ RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] Executives at France-based energy giant TotalEnergies recently announced that they would stop all Russian oil purchases this year in protest against President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian oil accounted for 17 percent of the $190 billion company’s production, reported...

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March 25, 2022

Crisis, Opportunity

[featurecontent] NEED TO KNOW Crisis, Opportunity MALTA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/065f7a50-297e-403d-9a34-a904c51f2f61.png"] Maltese Prime Minister and Labour Party Leader Robert Abela recently handed out tax refund checks as large as $150 to 250,000 workers in his country, the bloc's smallest member. Abela said the checks would probably be the last voters would see...

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March 24, 2022

Four Weeks

NEED TO KNOW Four Weeks UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/a64959d6-63d7-1d66-6bcc-4a03c878854b.png"] The pregnant woman and her infant who died after a Russian airstrike on a hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol might be the most moving, tragic, needless individual story in the war in Ukraine that started one month ago today. Associated...

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March 23, 2022

Egg on Face

NEED TO KNOW Egg on Face EUROPE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/f9c83d42-7d43-4e2f-a6d6-f7bf04744b7d.png"] Populist Italian politician Matteo Salvini had egg on his face recently after a press conference in the Polish town of Przemysl, a destination for many refugees from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Recalling that Salvini had praised Russian President Vladimir Putin...

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March 22, 2022

A Caucasian Puzzle

NEED TO KNOW A Caucasian Puzzle ARMENIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/291ba8a2-3105-41e3-a793-e28cc6a9282e.png"] Armenian President Armen Sarkissian recently resigned from office because he felt that he possessed too little power. "The president does not have the necessary tools to influence the radical processes of domestic and foreign policy in these difficult times for...

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March 21, 2022

An Angry Man

NEED TO KNOW An Angry Man RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Recently, Putin declared that any country that interfered in Russia’s special operations in Ukraine would face “consequences greater than any you have faced in history,” raising the specter of mutually assured destruction, as the Atlantic magazine recounted. Is Vladimir Putin’s threat...

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