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  • News & article

    Crimean conflict simmers on with Jamala's victory

    News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 18/05/2016

    » Ukraine may not be able to win its wars against Russian-backed rebels and against domestic corruption, but it has just beaten Russia in spectacular fashion at the Eurovision Song Contest. The political message has been amplified by the pundits, but the Russians and Ukrainian voters themselves seemed unwilling to be dragged into the propaganda war.

  • News & article

    The cyber whodunnit and the global blame game

    News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 21/12/2017

    » The US government has officially attributed to North Korea the WannaCry ransomware attack, which encrypted hundreds of thousands of computer drives around the world in May, 2017. And yet as with a series of other highly public cyberattack attributions, little evidence for the claim was made public. It's time for the cybersecurity world to follow the advice of the Rand Corporation and set up an unbiased international consortium that would seek to attribute attacks based on a common set of rules.

  • News & article

    Violence takes root in our words

    News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 14/12/2015

    » The Oxford Dictionaries' selection for the 2015 Word of the Year -- the "Face with Tears of Joy" emoji -- suggests that UK linguists live in a rather carefree world. In other countries, the selections were not as upbeat.

  • News & article

    A Brexit lesson from the cradle of democracy

    News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 16/01/2019

    » The Macedonian parliament's vote to rename the country and thus remove the biggest obstacle to its integration into Western institutions is evidence that intractable political issues are best resolved through the traditional backroom dealings of representative democracy rather than through the direct expression of popular will.

  • News & article

    The year of the woeful world leaders

    News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 28/12/2018

    » The dictionaries have decided on their 2018 words of the year. Oxford picked "toxic". Merriam-Webster went for "justice". Collins chose "single-use". However, I'd zero in on "misgovernment". Surely, 2018 saw a number of countries misruled by the worst crop of world leaders in recent memory.

  • News & article

    Don't write off Merkel prematurely

    News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 31/10/2018

    » I have warned repeatedly against writing off German Chancellor Angela Merkel as she faced challenge after challenge in recent years. I'm going to issue another such warning now, even though it might seem counter-intuitive given her announcement on Monday that she will give up the leadership of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in December and not run for a parliamentary seat in 2021.

  • News & article

    Death, diamonds, Russia and Africa

    News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 06/08/2018

    » The murder of three Russian journalists last week in a remote area of the Central African Republic, the world's poorest country according to the World Bank, has turned a spotlight on what looks like a big Kremlin play for influence and resources in Africa. Where China has spent decades and billions of dollars trying to entrench itself there, Russia is offering its brute force and strong appetite for risk. It's already making headway.

  • News & article

    Putin, Trump have nothing to talk about

    News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 29/06/2018

    » The Singapore meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un made for a great propaganda film for North Korean TV, with swelling music, a swooning commentator and swanky pageantry. The planned summit between Mr Trump and President Vladimir Putin won't even produce that; it will be a pure waste of time for everyone involved.

  • News & article

    Putin struggles to keep wars separate

    News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 16/02/2018

    » Late on Feb 7 and early on Feb 8, US forces in Syria likely killed the greatest number of Russians since the end of the Cold War -- more than 200 soldiers. There will, however, be no international repercussions, nor will any of the Russians get posthumous medals like Roman Filipov, the fighter pilot who was shot down over Syria earlier this year and resisted capture until he was forced to blow himself up with a hand grenade.

  • News & article

    EU rubber boat ban won't halt tide

    News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 20/07/2017

    » If it looks as though Europe is clutching at straws to stop hundreds, sometimes thousands, of migrants from crossing the Mediterranean into Italy every day, that's exactly what's happening. On Monday, the European Union's (EU) foreign ministers approved restrictions on the supply of inflatable boats and outboard motors to Libya.

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