July 17, 2023

The Autocrat, the Lapdog

NEED TO KNOW The Autocrat, the Lapdog BELARUS [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/3dffa11e-ac63-436f-a4ed-735a6dabc4a6.png"] Belarussian artist and political dissident Ales Pushkin, 57, recently died in prison from an undisclosed cause. His crime: painting a picture. Prosecutors said, incredibly, that his work glorified Nazism. As the Moscow Times reported, however, the timing of his arrest...

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July 14, 2023

Ubiquitous Aggression and Violence

NEED TO KNOW Ubiquitous Aggression and Violence SERBIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/fd16e594-c67c-41ff-beb7-977236001063.png"] Throngs of Serbians flocked to the capital of Belgrade recently to protest against Pink TV, a pro-government television station that protesters said contributed to the culture of violence that led to two mass shootings in the Balkan country. “This is...

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July 11, 2023

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

NEED TO KNOW Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] The Wagner Group, the Russian military contractor, arrived in the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2018 to help President Faustin-Archange Touadéra fight off a rebellion. Since then, the group has deployed thousands of soldiers to Libya, Mali, Sudan, and elsewhere...

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July 06, 2023

Humbled but Unbowed

NEED TO KNOW Humbled but Unbowed RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has survived Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group’s apparent coup attempt, the world is wondering what happens next. Charges against Prigozhin, who supposedly is in Belarus, and the Wagner military contractors who marched on Moscow...

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July 03, 2023

Western Outpost in the East

NEED TO KNOW Western Outpost in the East LITHUANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/e7852ed7-2760-4e7e-a300-0fc715ec1ca8.png"] One of Lithuania’s first post-independence leaders after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Vytautas Landsbergis, recently had some choice words for officials in Moscow. “Victory will come when there’s no Russian empire,...

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June 30, 2023

AI, Meet Europe

NEED TO KNOW AI, Meet Europe EUROPEAN UNION [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/597ff6f5-aa2a-4913-81c8-7a38f364a41b.png"] The European Parliament recently overwhelmingly passed the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act. While the legislation must overcome more hurdles to become a law, it’s an example of European lawmakers charging forward with regulations to control technology that thinkers like...

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June 27, 2023

Pugachevshchina

NEED TO KNOW Pugachevshchina RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] In the 1770s, a Cossack named Emelian Pugachev rebelled against Catherine the Great. As described in Alexander Pushkin’s novel, “The Captain’s Daughter,” peasants furious at the Russian army’s corruption fueled the rebellion. But Pugachev’s uprising failed. He was captured and publicly executed in...

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June 21, 2023

Contextual Legacies

NEED TO KNOW Contextual Legacies BELGIUM [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/46999ca2-dabf-15d8-3505-820844e95828.png"] History has been stirring passion in Belgium as the country prepares to celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2030. When authorities announced they would spiff up the triumphal arch in the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels – a monument built in 1880 to...

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June 20, 2023

End Game

NEED TO KNOW End Game RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Commemorated on June 12, Russia Day celebrates the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic’s declaration of independence in 1990. Festivities in Moscow this year lacked much patriotic fervor, however. “For me, it’s a holiday of bureaucracy,” an anonymous Muscovite told the Moscow...

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June 14, 2023

When the Levee Breaks

NEED TO KNOW When the Levee Breaks RUSSIA/ UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/1fcd4036-786d-9ce0-309a-14f74105b898.png"] Theories abound about the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine. As CNN reported, Russian officials said the Ukrainians destroyed the dam in order to starve the Crimean Peninsula of water. The region is a former...

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June 12, 2023

Settlement of Evil

NEED TO KNOW Settlement of Evil POLAND [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/31d830f6-377a-4afc-861b-7fbf94dce490.png"] A mile-long mass of hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, recently. The demonstration wasn’t only to mark the 34th anniversary of the country’s first democratic election after the fall of communism...

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June 08, 2023

Far North Face Off

NEED TO KNOW Far North Face Off NORWAY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/65102137-137a-414d-a10e-0cd0d00c7aa4.png"] Norwegian officials recently warned their citizens to avoid Hvaldimir, a beluga whale that swims around the coast wearing a harness that can mount cameras. As CNN explained, the officials suspect that the Russian military trained the cute white cetacean...

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June 05, 2023

Enmity, Long and Deep

NEED TO KNOW Enmity, Long and Deep KOSOVO [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0999f062-2356-43ad-b3b8-f915c7878425.png"] Kosovo declared independence in 2008, around a decade after NATO bombed Serbian forces who were brutalizing the ethnic Albanian communities in the formerly Serb region. It’s one of the final chapters of the tragic, bloody breakup of communist Yugoslavia...

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June 01, 2023

Balkan Malaise

NEED TO KNOW Balkan Malaise ALBANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/0b3746d6-a585-4423-a6b9-37ef4ae614bb.png"] Men from remote mountain regions have been among the majority of the more than 12,000 Albanians who have migrated to Britain in the past year. They ventured from their homes in the Balkans to the West European country due to “a...

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May 29, 2023

Russian Reveille

NEED TO KNOW Russian Reveille RUSSIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/db8acf88-8b4f-4b1c-bf9a-1e71d4eee94b.png"] Twenty-three years ago, respected Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen penned an op-ed in the New York Times describing the remilitarization of Russian life. She described rules and regulations to funnel boys into the service, the boosting of military spending by 50 percent,...

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May 26, 2023

Swinging Politics

NEED TO KNOW Swinging Politics SPAIN [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9867eeee-5129-4a23-af3d-b9c85aeb55a9.png"] Aficionados of Spanish history will likely know that the fascists won the country’s civil war in the 1930s. Socialists took over in the 1980s and 90s, from 2004 until 2011, and again in 2018 when Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of the...

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May 19, 2023

Tough Love

NEED TO KNOW Tough Love GREECE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/29c83f8b-bf10-474d-8514-5af3443c9a4a.png"] Eight years ago, at the peak of the migration crisis in Europe, around one million Syrian refugees fleeing their country’s bloody war traveled to Greece for safety and economic opportunities. Four years ago, conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis defeated leftist Alexis...

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May 12, 2023

Strongman Down

NEED TO KNOW Strongman Down TURKEY [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/c729e5f1-8c42-44f8-a040-a59baad60df0.png"] Turkish politicians have been appealing to voters in the Mediterranean city of Mersin in the run-up to the country’s presidential elections on May 14. Mersin is the capital of a swing province whose residents could decide the seemingly tight race between...

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May 10, 2023

A Pyrrhic Victory

NEED TO KNOW A Pyrrhic Victory UKRAINE [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/974a4247-a9f9-49a9-6238-ece8e1dd27b0.png"] Ukrainian commanders have been establishing protected supply lines and funneling soldiers and weapons to Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city that could become a fulcrum for the long-awaited spring offense against Russian-controlled lines, wrote US News and World Report. Russian forces,...

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May 09, 2023

The Wheels of Fortune

NEED TO KNOW The Wheels of Fortune ROMANIA [map url="https://mcusercontent.com/a2e22d7f24f6d1e3464d05be4/images/9aaceeea-9490-44fc-a4ad-151c831adffc.png"] Romania has emerged from its post-Cold War funk to become a more service-oriented economy that is competitive in acquiring slices of global markets, according to Harvard’s Growth Lab’s Atlas of Economic Complexity, declaring that the East European country has...

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