June 08, 2022

Stumbling Ahead

NEED TO KNOW Stumbling Ahead UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b04f8892-ad2c-9be1-f2b6-ab5ebd3fe894.png"] The residents of Bucha, the Ukrainian town where Russians allegedly committed some of the worst war crimes of the conflict, have been cleaning up their streets. They’ve hauled ruined tanks, military vehicles and civilian cars and trucks to a lot on...

Read full story →

June 03, 2022

Closing the Circle

NEED TO KNOW Closing the Circle NATO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/6c767d49-d4bd-b3d7-9222-6eec1d541361.png"] If Finland joins NATO, the Western Alliance will have opened a potential 800-mile-long front in a war against Russia. What’s more, as the Washington Post illustrated, this new front would come very close to Russia's nuclear submarine and Arctic navy...

Read full story →

June 02, 2022

Moving Out

NEED TO KNOW Moving Out NORWAY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/65102137-137a-414d-a10e-0cd0d00c7aa4.png"] Norway has become a key supplier of energy as Europe seeks out alternatives to Russian oil and gas. As the Financial Times explained, the EU imported 40 percent of its gas supplies from Russia before the war in Ukraine erupted. Now that...

Read full story →

May 30, 2022

The Grim Reaper’s Harvest

NEED TO KNOW The Grim Reaper’s Harvest UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/b04f8892-ad2c-9be1-f2b6-ab5ebd3fe894.png"] The Russo-Ukrainian War has now crossed the three-month mark. So far, it’s a stalemate. At the Brookings Institution, researchers see “a war of attrition, with neither side capable of a decisive military breakthrough.” How the war will end remains unclear....

Read full story →

May 25, 2022

Cutting Edge, Blunted

NEED TO KNOW Cutting Edge, Blunted EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] American serial entrepreneur Elon Musk’s proposed purchase of social network Twitter has garnered a lot of headlines lately. But Musk’s plan could hit serious roadblocks if he expects Twitter to operate in the European Union, among the world's three...

Read full story →

May 23, 2022

Payback

NEED TO KNOW Payback UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/976a1d06-3172-737e-86b7-6adaae2bcc0d.png"] Officers with Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) recently seized a man in Sloviansk, a city in the country’s Russian-dominated eastern region, for allegedly collaborating with Russian forces that have invaded the East European country. "What did he ask you for?" a security officer asked...

Read full story →

May 17, 2022

All Hot on the Cyber Front

NEED TO KNOW All Hot on the Cyber Front RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] On May 9, as Russian soldiers, tanks and other vehicles paraded through the Red Square to celebrate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, the Russian news website Lenta.ru was running headlines like...

Read full story →

May 11, 2022

The Boogeymen

NEED TO KNOW The Boogeymen UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9ab09fcd-a2f6-3da1-f121-d5fa811d9ebd.png"] Ukraine’s Azov Battalion started off eight years ago as a group of far-right activists who launched attacks against pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukrainian region of the Donbas. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, they have been incorporated into the Ukrainian military. Russia has...

Read full story →

May 10, 2022

Outsourcing Futures

NEED TO KNOW Outsourcing Futures UNITED KINGDOM [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db250264-45f9-48fa-be6e-ab4d2ef0d6a5.png"] Hundreds of migrants are crossing the dangerous English Channel to start new lives in Britain even as authorities in London unveiled a plan last month to permanently settle them more than 6,000 miles away in the African country of Rwanda. Described...

Read full story →

May 05, 2022

Batons and Bucks

NEED TO KNOW Batons and Bucks NORTHERN IRELAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e1fa23fe-bd64-4526-9f49-8430fef05250.png"] Sinn Fein, with a history as the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, a militant organization, is now poised to win the largest share of seats in Northern Ireland’s regional parliament when voters in the British territory go...

Read full story →

May 02, 2022

No Vacancy

NEED TO KNOW No Vacancy POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] The number of Ukrainian war refugees who have fled to Poland has surpassed the population of the Central European country’s capital, Warsaw. They’ve largely received a warm reception, a stark contrast to how Polish officials welcomed migrants who have fled the...

Read full story →

April 25, 2022

Coming Together, Coming Apart

NEED TO KNOW Coming Together, Coming Apart UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/879da9e8-c310-d6a2-ee6f-8b86fc30a91d.png"] It's been two months since Russia invaded Ukraine to push back against alleged NATO encroachments and bring back into the fold an important region of the former Soviet Union and the late Czarist Russian Empire. Of course, some say that...

Read full story →

April 22, 2022

Wanted: Redemption

NEED TO KNOW Wanted: Redemption RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] A few years before the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian satirist Vladimir Voinovich imagined a story about a former KGB agent who became head of state, created a class of corrupt oligarchs around him, draped himself in the mantle of...

Read full story →

April 21, 2022

Zeitenwende

NEED TO KNOW Zeitenwende GERMANY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/96d66e57-2644-40b9-aed7-fc66370c3077.png"] Are homeowners in Frankfurt to blame for the atrocities in Ukraine? Some critics think so. “Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression runs on the money Russia gets by selling fossil fuels to Europe,” wrote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently. “Germany…has in effect...

Read full story →

April 20, 2022

On a High Wire

NEED TO KNOW On a High Wire TURKEY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c729e5f1-8c42-44f8-a040-a59baad60df0.png"] Turkish leaders have said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal. They have delivered drones and ammunition to Ukraine that have been key to helping Ukrainian forces repel Russia’s invasion. The drones have been used in “pop-up attacks on...

Read full story →

April 18, 2022

Twilight of the Gods

NEED TO KNOW Twilight of the Gods RUSSIA-UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/2aaf5c8d-a4e6-42cf-9dd9-f761d6bfed83.png"] The island of Jersey, a British territory and tax haven in the English Channel, recently froze $7 billion of assets owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. That’s around half the Chelsea football club owner’s wealth, noted Fortune. He’s been...

Read full story →

April 15, 2022

Talk Abroad and at Home

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...

Read full story →

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...

Read full story →

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...

Read full story →

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...

Read full story →