Arkiv-Global View

The argument for splitting Ukraine is that this would merely establish de jure a situation that already exists de facto, because Ukraine is deeply divided by its cultural identity/language differences. It would also supposedly settle tensions between the West and Russia because Moscow would get what it wanted and would not venture further. With Ukraine split into two, its western part could eventually move closer towards Europe while its Russian-speaking East and South would establish a state allied closely with Russia.

Europe began to prepare for a possible trade war with Russia over Ukraine on Friday, with the EU executive in Brussels ordered to draft plans for much more substantive sanctions against Moscow if

Search planes joined a freighter early Friday to scan rough seas in one of the remotest places on Earth after satellite images detected possible pieces from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the southern Indian Ocean.

The United States has unveiled a new round of punitive sanctions against Moscow for its appropriation of Crimea, targeting several close associates of President Vladimir Putin, including his chief of staff and his personal banker, and served notice that Russia’s key oil and energy sectors would be targeted next if it goes any further into Ukraine.

Over the last couple of years we have regularly witnessed popular protests and uprisings in the post-socialist Balkans. The well-known mobilisations, struggles and street violence in the southern part of the peninsula, in Greece and Turkey, have a constant and yet under-reported echo in other Balkan states.

The most depressing thing about all this Fifa corruption business is that no one can have been surprised. That Jack Warner, the organisation’s former vice-president, who had responsibility for deciding the destination of the 2022 World Cup, appears to have been paid $1.2 million (£720,000) by a Qatari company involved in the bidding process hardly counts as the most earth-shattering revelation. It is news that has dispirited and angered in equal measure. But surprised? Not a chance.

The plane must be somewhere. But the same can be said for Amelia Earhart's.

Ten days after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared with 239 people aboard, an exhaustive international search has produced no sign of the Boeing 777, raising an unsettling question: What if the airplane is never found?

Such an outcome, while considered unlikely by many experts, would certainly torment the families of those missing. It would also flummox the airline industry, which will struggle to learn lessons from the incident if it doesn't know what happened.

L'alunno Matteo Renzi è uno scolaro fortunato. È stato interrogato dalla maestra Merkel alla vigilia della campagna elettorale e poi del semestre italiano alla guida dell'Europa. Queste sono le prime elezioni dopo le mazzate europee e la conseguente diffusione di una forte e variegata protesta antieuropea e antieuro. I governi temono i populismi e devono disinnescarli alleviando l'arcigno rigore e le misure sacrificali se non vogliono essere spazzati via o duramente mutilati.

'A democratic reply to undemocratic pressures.’ This is how Radovan Karadžić's party characterised the referendum it organised in Bosnia in November 1991. The anti-democratic measure, as they saw it, was the majority vote by the then Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina declaring Bosnia a sovereign republic within its existing borders. Karadžić had a legal case for lodging a complaint against this vote but instead his party upped the ante, abandoned the Assembly and organised a mono-ethnic referendum outside the existing legal structures of the republic.

Nel 1984, trent'anni fa, moriva Enrico Berlinguer, segretario del Partito comunista italiano (il più importante e imponente del mondo occidentale), oggi formalmente morto, ma tenuto artificialmente in vita dai comunisti di risulta, non più numerosi quanto allora, ma nemmeno così pochi da non contare nulla.