At an international forum held in Novgorod, Prof. Fen Yu Shun of Shanghai's Fudan University openly stated that in his opinion the invasion of Ukraine is bound to end in a fiasco for Russia. 'Moscow wants to destabilise the world order by forceful actions, Beijing wants to recompose it'.
There are over 8,000 people imprisoned for political reasons and over 300,000 who have been forced to leave the country for the same reasons in a land of just 10 million inhabitants. And ever since the Lukasenko regime forced citizens abroad to return to their homeland to reissue their passports, the number of stateless Belarusians around Europe and the world has multiplied exponentially.
In many regions of the two countries, rivers have been flooding since the beginning of April. Among the worst affected areas are the Kazakh region of Atyrau and the Russian city of Orsk. Astana rejects the criticism that it did not manage the discharge of snow accumulations properly. There is controversy over the Russian civil defence not taking measures to mitigate the impact of the water.
Having archived the historic friendship between Putin and Netanyahu, the change in Russian-Israeli relations did not begin on 7 October 2023, but when Israel began openly supporting Ukraine more than a year earlier. And on the Moscow-Tehran-Beijing axis, Middle Eastern issues are both symbolic and practical.
According to the head of the Levada Center, Russia's leading sociological research institute, “only 10 per cent of Russians are actively interested in politics, and the war involves a super-politicisation of a minority in the face of the depoliticisation of the masses.” Only 30 per cent of Russians are willing to trust people outside their ever-shrinking circle of relatives and friends.
Today's news: over 243 million children in East and Southeast Asia at risk from heat waves:; Beijing denies top management access to two US companies for selling arms to Taiwan; The Taliban want to black out Facebook (and social media) by blocking the few sources of information; Islamabad negotiates the renewal of the rescue plan with the International Monetary Fund; Over 98,000 people evacuated in Kazakhstan due to flooding.