The end of Mikhail Gorbachev, an unheroic hero

By Nina Bachkatov

A deluge of comments has been published since the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, passed away on 30 August. No doubts he was different from his predecessors, notably by his approach of power and image well before P.R. invaded political action. After his election as general secretary of the Soviet Union Communist Party, in March 1985, Soviet media had published his official pictures, in line with decades old traditions of portraying leaders with smooth faces defying age – and reality. Gorbachev immediately banned the practice, ordering his pictures to show the characteristic red spots on his scalp.

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Another war in Donbass

By Nina Bachkatov

The Russian offensive in the Donbass on 19 April has been changing the face of the war in Ukraine. For the Kremlin, it was the opportunity to come back with its original narrative about a “special operation” forced upon itself as guarantor of its “brothers”’ security and freedom. Brothers, who supposedly, were threatened by Ukrainian “neo-nazis” who seized power in Kiev and Western Ukraine in 2014 and who trapped them in a pocket territory.  For president Zelensky, the Donbass offensive was the sign that the Kremlin, unable to seize Kiev, was coming back from the East, backed by separatist forces, with the intention to destroy Ukraine as a nation and a state.

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An orgy of summits around Ukraine and global competition

By Nina Bachkatov

In recent weeks, world’s leaders have been running from a summit to another one. Among Western allies, the key words were unity and solidarity; among the others, it was about multipolarity and convergence. But the background of all those diplomatic activities have been, and will be for a while, the war in Ukraine and its global consequences. There is also the growing awareness that the cost of the military operation and sanctions are indeed bleeding Russia, but much more Ukraine.

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EU confronted with too many candidacies

By Nina Bachkatov

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Europeans have never left any doubts about their support for the victim of an aggression by a country already identified as the main threat to the continent’s security and to the Western values. Now, in a couple of weeks, this support has, and will be, tested. In an acceleration initiated from Brussels, EU found itself facing a decisive step in his development. It has to decide by the end of June to grant, or not, the status of candidates to EU membership to Ukraine, lately extended to Georgia and Moldova. This normally very slow process changed gear on 8 April. During her visit in Kiev, the EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen handed to “dear Volodymyr” the questionnaire his country had to complete it if wants to receive EU candidate status. It consists in 2 parts: one contains political and economic criteria and the second one includes an evaluation of the compliance of Ukrainian legislation with the legal acts of the European Union.

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Grain war in the Black Sea

By Nina Bachkatov

Three months after the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, a new front has been open – about grain’s exports and global food security. The concept was hardly mentioned before the fall of Mariupol, when international attention switched from the fights around Azovstal to the inaccessibility of Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea. The accent has been put on its global consequences, from the prices’ increase of basic food in the West to the risk of famine in poor countries. In a couple of weeks, Westerners preoccupied with energy bills discovered that a third of the 200-300m tonnes of cereals exchanged yearly through the world were coming from Russia and Ukraine.

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Strange victory day in Moscow

Nina Bachkatov

The address of president Putin during the 9 May Victory Parade on Red square was shorter than usual. The number of men and equipment was reduced by 30%compared to previous years; seats on the side of Lenin’s Mausoleum, traditionally packed with foreign diplomats and officials, were sparsely occupied. The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, had anticipated unpleasant questions by announcing that no invitations had been sent to former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, nor to Germany or Japan, because it was not an even date, just the 77 th anniversary; and that the event will be scaled down. The surprise was not so much about what Putin said, but what he didn’t.

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The orphans of Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Nina Bachkatov

The picture of President Putin dropping the traditional red carnations on the coffin of Vladimir Zhirinovsky might look like another episode of contemporary Russia’s charade. But the death, on 6 April, of the 75-year-old ultranationalist, leaves a hole in the political landscape that has been built in Russia during the last 30 years. Zherenovsky’s latest speech at the Duma, in December 2022, has been so extravagant, even by his standards, that it was received as another sign of his mental decline. It included his description of 2022 as “a year when Russia finally becomes great once again, and everyone has to shut up and respect our country”.

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