Month: February 2022

The suspense has been mounting and mounting on a daily basis, like in a bad Hollywood action movie. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Tony Blinken have warned for the past week that Russia could launch an invasion of Ukraine “any day now”, even before the end of the Winter Olympics on Feb. 20, with British […]

Vladimir Putin’s Dec. 17 decision to negotiate directly with the United States on the issue of a new security architecture in Europe, over the heads of European leaders, was motivated in large part by the failure of France and Germany to pressure the Ukrainian government into implementing the Minsk accord. It had the positive effect of pushing the Europeans – […]

In response to the Ukraine crisis, Peter Dittus and Hervé Hannoun make a strong case for France to leave the integrated command of NATO in an op-ed published by the French “souverainist” weekly Marianne on Feb. 11. German economist Peter Dittus is the former secretary general of the Bank for International Settlements (2005-2016), while the Frenchmen Hannoun is the bank’s […]

On Feb. 8, Italy became the first major industrialized country to include protection of biodiversity, ecosystems and animals in its Constitution. The change, promoted by “Ecological Transition” Minister Roberto Cingolani, was voted up by the Chamber of Deputies with only one nay and six abstentions, all from the opposition party Fratelli d’Italia. This will make it virtually impossible in the […]

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has recruited none other the head of Greenpeace International, American national Jennifer Morgan, as her special envoy for international climate policy. Ms. Morgan has frequently taken part in the organization’s aggressive, high-profile campaigns, joining last year, for instance, 40 Greenpeace activists on kayaks, protesting against the Shell company’s oil drilling. But she has also had […]

In an attempt to drum up enthusiasm for the EU-Africa to take place this week in Brussels (Feb. 17-18), Commission President Ursula von der Leyen went to to Morocco and Senegal last week, to tout the European Union’s Global Gateway project – which is explicitly designed to compete with Chiny’s Belt and Road Initiative. The project, announced on Dec. 1, […]

A joint seminar sponsored by the Schiller Institute (SI) and the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) on Feb. 10 took up the challenge of how to overcome the deadly humanitarian crisis which threatens the lives of more than 23 million people in Afghanistan. The two opening statements, by Dr. Andrey Kortunov, the Director General of RIAC, and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder […]

After months of urgent appeals to the Biden Administration to release the $7 billion of Afghan assets frozen by the Treasury Department in order to alleviate the acute humanitarian crisis, President Biden finally issued an executive order on the issue on Feb. 11. Of the $7 billion in funds of the Afghanistan Central Bank (DAB) that have been frozen in […]

The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the Schiller Institute (SI) will be convening a seminar on Thursday, February 10, 2022 from 2 PM to 4 PM CET, which can be followed at https://schillerinstitute.com/. Among the topics to be addressed by a panel of six speakers will be: What are the causes of the Afghan humanitarian crisis? What are the […]

Just prior to attending the opening ceremony of the XXIV Olympic Winter Games in Beijing on Feb. 4, President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin held wide-ranging talks, saw to the announcement of 15 economic and policy deals, and issued a “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New […]