The conflict has imposed significant economic strain, with escalating fuel and food prices affecting numerous countries. The continuous stream of news detailing the horrors of the war can lead to emotional desensitization for many individuals. Media coverage of the conflict has either diminished or become lost in the background noise of the overly saturated media landscape. Even discussions about funding allocations are losing their audience.
The value of a country’s currency is highly correlated with the GDP. Before the Ukraine invasion, oil and gas accounted for about 21.7 percent of Russia’s GDP. By December, it had dropped to 18 percent of GDP. Although the ruble plummeted, immediately after the invasion, by summer, it had rallied, because it seemed that Europe had not found a way to do without Russian energy. Meanwhile, Ukraine refused to surrender, dragging out the war, handing Russia defeat after defeat, and the sanctions became ever tighter, driving down the value of the ruble.
At the end of World War II, Russia wanted assurances that NATO would not shift eastward, threatening Russian territory. After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, Ukraine and other Eastern European nations became independent, removing the buffer zones between Russia and NATO. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and the Baltics have all become NATO members, and Russia sees this as a security concern.
In a speech on Feb. 21, 2022, Putin recognized the occupied territories in Ukraine of Donetsk and Luhansk and moved Russian forces into them. In his view, Ukraine’s independence is an anomaly – it’s a state that should not exist. Putin sees his military moves as a way of correcting this divergence. Largely absent from his discussion was his earlier emphatic grievance that an eventual spread of NATO to Ukraine threatens Russia’s security.
More than 2.2 million Americans are barely getting by after most of their extended unemployment benefits were abruptly cut over the Christmas break. In fact, Congress and the president skipped town for restful, holiday vacations soon after. Hopes of a post-New Year’s Day resolution were dashed by stalls and foot-dragging in the Senate, which is finally taking a vote this week. But, a nastier, unsympathetic House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is signaling that he’s not interested in bringing it to the floor for a vote.
Moves to separate Crimea from Ukraine do not meet that standard. The rest of Ukraine has not given its consent to transferring Crimea to Russian sovereignty. Hence Russia’s humiliating defeat in the UN Security Council on 16 March. Not one Security Council member voted on Russia’s side. No state wants to see new precedents that call into question its own control of its own territory.President Putin’s bluntly (or brazenly) opened by asserting that international law was on his side.
The Czech Republic has evacuated dozens of Ukrainians wounded in clashes in Kiev, Urkaine in February and March. After violent protests around Feb. 18, critically-injured victims were air-lifted to Prague hospitals. The Czech Ministry of the Interior and the country´s army collaborated on a special program called Medevac – Medical Evacuation. Founded in 1993 the program was created in order to help with emergency transport of wounded people from abroad. Medevac´s misison is to provide health care to people in critical condition or life-threatening situations.
Recent impressive growth notwithstanding, corruption also threatens to hold back India’s and Brazil’s drive to join the ranks of the world’s developed countries, and has brought Venezuela and Ukraine to the brink of political collapse. Even China, this century’s economic star, is being handicapped in its long-term quest to overtake the U.S. economically by corruption, so much so that China’s new supreme leader, President Xi Jinpang, has made stamping it out one of the main priorities of his time in office.
Each year, governments around the world monitor the Two Sessions to see what China has planned for the coming year. This year is of particular interest because China is in the worst state economically and diplomatically that it has been in for several decades.
Some artists make a splash from their first entrance. With enough talent, timing, and tenaciousness it’s almost a given. In the case of Argentinian-born Marta Minujin, she possesses all those attributes and more. Over a six-decade career that embraced soft post-war soft sculptures, large-scale fluorescent paintings, psychedelic drawings, and pioneering pop art performances, she has collided head-on with her critics.