Category ARTICLES

Thank Poles, not government, for Ukraine refugee welcome

Law and Justice (PiS) party leader Jarosław Kaczyński. The current Polish leadership has expressed support for Ukraine’s EU admission — even though Poland itself wouldn't be admitted now due to its rule of law crisis (Photo: pis.org) The Polish government…

In Belarus, the other victims of Putin’s war

A roadsign in Vilnius, Lithuania (Photo: Facebook/Vilnius city mayor) A lot has already been written about the torture, the tactics of the KGB (Belarus’s secret police), and protest-related deaths in Minsk and elsewhere since the contested elections in 2020. Yet…

In Moldova, a sense of foreboding

Ukrainians fleeing into Moldova on 27 February. If a puppet regime is installed in Ukraine, Moldova may be next (Photo: Moldova government) As soon as the war in Ukraine started, concerns were raised over Ukraine’s immediate neighbour, the tiny 2.6…

Time for the EU to protect all refugees

Up to 500,000 people marched in Berlin against the war 10 days ago – now thousands upon thousands of Ukraine refugees are arriving at the capital's train station (Photo: Matthew Tempest) Vladimir Putin’s tanks are firing at kids. Huge numbers…

Russia’s Patriarch Kirill, war criminal?

Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, pictured here in 2012 minus his €23,000 gold watch (airbrushed out by the official press service, but still visible in reflection on table) (Photo: Russian Orthodox Church press service) As Russia’s brutal…

How EU should use economic influence on Western Sahara

Brussels and Rabat seemed committed to preserving the contested EU-Morocco deal (Photo: Western Sahara Resource Watch) Since hostilities between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front in Western Sahara resumed in November 2020, the EU has been reluctant to play an…

Covid as Medusa’s raft

Théodore Géricault painting of The Raft of the Medusa, which hangs in the Louvre Museum, Paris (Photo: Wikimedia) In 1816, the Frigate of Medusa, sailing from France to Senegal for the purpose of colonisation, sank in Mauritanian waters. Of the…