Section: Newsweek (USA)
‘People Starving’ in Eastern Ukraine as Humanitarian Crisis Unfolds
Vulnerable people living in east Ukraine are in serious danger of starving if normal government services aren’t restored by the government in Kiev. In November 2014 the decision was made to stop social benefits being sent to east meaning, among other things, that elderly Ukranians in the region are no longer receiving their pensions....
Poland Snubs Putin in Arrangements for Holocaust Commemoration
WARSAW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to join world leaders gathering at the site of the Auschwitz death camp this month because distrust caused by the conflict in Ukraine has cast a pall on arrangements to commemorate the Holocaust. The Nazi camp where about 1.5 million people were killed, most of them Jews,...
Putin Is Losing the Battle to Restrain Online Media
Many Russian journalists have become experts in black humor. They have to be if one of their goals is to remain sane. One reporter at a state-owned Russian newspaper joked privately with friends that they would have to scribble the “true story” in milk between the lines of ink, the way underground messages from exiles were conveyed back to Russia...
Europe’s Big Fat Food Problem
Aross Europe, families have been eating the most traditional meals of the year – the great blow-out that for most of us is the key ritual of Christmas, the New Year, the Feast of the Epiphany and the winter solstice. A stroll down a European shopping street these days might tell a visitor that our food culture has become dull and homogenised,...
European Court of Human Rights Becomes UK Electoral Battleground
The building of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg shimmers in the winter sunshine. Its two asymmetrical steel cylinders and futuristic glass atrium are a beacon of hope for those in Europe who feel their human rights have been violated – but many miles away in London’s Downing Street the building represents something...
Putin Seeks to Influence Radical Parties in Bid to Destabilise Europe
This past November, Russia’s Berlin ambassador, Vladimir Grinin, invited two representatives of the surging new party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) for a meeting. According to German news media, Grinin offered the party strategic advice. In an email to Newsweek, the embassy declined to comment on the meeting, but one of the guests was...
Putin Cracks Down on Critics, But Winds Up Looking Vulnerable
When it comes to finely calibrated police brutality, Moscow’s riot cops are masters of the art. When several thousand Muscovites gathered on Manezh Square just before New Year’s Eve to protest the jailing of a leading opposition activist, the paramilitary police were ready and waiting. Two hundred “troublemakers” were picked out of...
Lithuania Publishes Survival Manual in Case of Russian Invasion
Lithuania’s national defence minister Juozas Olekas unveiled a new public information book entitled ‘How to act in extreme situations or instances of war’ at a press conference on Tuesday evening, prompted by the threat of a Russian invasion, Baltic news service Delfi reports. Olekas was speaking in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius,...
Putin Critic Navalny Complains Over the Price of Milk After Three Men Follow Him to Supermarket
Kremlin critic and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has reported that on Tuesday evening he was met by three strangers outside his house who urged him to “turn back immediately”, while he was on his way to the supermarket. Navalny was given a three year suspended sentence last week after a controversial trial in Moscow last week and has...
How Russians Are Sent to Fight in Ukraine
In Yekaterinburg, the main city of Russia’s Ural region, retired army officer Vladimir Yefimov organizes army veterans to fight for Russia in southeastern Ukraine, more than 1,000 miles away. While Russia’s deployment of army troops and non-official Russian “volunteer” fighters in Ukraine is not news, Yefimov describes in new detail...
