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The COVID-19 pandemic affected global markets in a very similar way to the 2008 financial crisis. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the 2020 outlook does not project three per cent growth anymore, but a sharp contraction of the same number (minus three per cent), which will be worse than the loss in 2008.

Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, some forecasts on Georgia’s prospects were apocalyptic – everything could have gone wrong. Although Georgia is ranked lower and lower each year (which, in this instance, means improvement) in the Fragile State Index since 2008, many had doubts if the conjunction of several factors would allow this small country in the South Caucasus to manage the incoming crisis effectively. While more than 40 per cent of the population still lives in mountainous, isolated areas, a robust inflow of tourists to the capital city as well as sea and ski resorts could have had a serious impact on the dynamic of the pandemic.

If Ukraine had a term for its current political landscape, “turbo regime” would definitely work for 2019. The cabinet of ministers quickly was staffed with “new faces” coming from a community of activists and technocrats previously engaged in international organisations and reform projects. Yet, the team delivered mixed results. In response, Zelenskyy sacked the government and replaced key officials hoping to keep his popularity high.

Upon being elected to the presidential office, Volodymyr Zelenskyy dissolved the parliament during his inauguration speech on May 20th 2019, paving the way for a snap election. That blitzkrieg helped him remove the unfriendly legislature and expand his grip on power by having his party ride the wave of popularity it was receiving. At that point, the Servant of the People party was ahead of any of its established competitors in the polls. The problem was that the party did not yet exist.

Babyn Yar in Kyiv is the site of the largest Holocaust massacre on Ukrainian territory. The Nazis executed around 100,000 people from 1941 to 1943 on the site, including the killing of 33,771 Jews over two days – September 29-30th 1941. Today it is a place where an appropriate memorial to honour the victims has yet to be created. Since the Ukrainian state has been unable to take responsibility for such a project for years now, private actors have taken it on.

It has been 79 years since the massacre of Babyn Yar. Naturally, commemorative initiatives have been intensifying in Ukraine in recent years, as they usually do before round figure anniversaries. At the moment, there are at least two memorial projects at Babyn Yar, and both have a common aim: to commemorate the Babyn Yar massacre.

Putin’s behaviour is not just an inevitable consequence of the fact that Russia is a great power – it is a combination of post-Cold War historical grievances and a zero-sum conception of the world that positions Russia in permanent opposition to the West.

During the third US presidential debate in 2012, then President Barack Obama mocked his opponent, Governor Mitt Romney, for a remark he had made several months earlier: “When you were asked what is the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. Not al-Qaeda – you said Russia. The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War has been over for 20 years.” This joke got a lot of traction among Democrats who cited Romney’s comment about Russia as evidence that he was clueless about the modern challenges the United States faces around the world.

An interview with Jakub Kornhauser, a Kraków-based poet, literary critic and researcher of avant-garde. Interviewer: Grzegorz Nurek

GRZEGORZ NUREK: You are one of the co-founders of the Centre for Avant-Garde Studies at the Jagiellonian University’s Department of Polish Studies. The work of the centre concentrates on avant-garde research, but is it limited to literature?

JAKUB KORNHAUSER: We established our centre a few years ago convinced that there is a need to get the story of avant-garde out of schoolbook charts and definitions. We are all victims of different clichés which are sold to us by school materials, which tend to repeat the same names and works and which are further spiced up by some remote anecdotes, as if avant-garde was a Sumerian phenomenon. Avant-garde is not only a shared name for numerous artistic searches which took place 100 years ago, but also a state of mind, an experimental potential, which can get activated regardless of the historical context.

The sudden surge in infections is quickly changing life in Belarus, turning earlier calmness into tension and uncertainty.

This episode takes an in-depth look at the political developments in Russia and analyzes the changes that were made in order for Vladimir Putin to stay on as president of the Russian Federation for at least another two terms.

Playing the role as the nation’s leader, Vladimir Putin paid a visit to the Kommunarka hospital in Moscow, the place where those infected with coronavirus are being treated. Just six days later the head doctor of the hospital, Denis Protsenko, announced on Facebook that he had contracted the virus.

The readiness to view the conflict in Ukraine as a kind of civil war because Russia never openly declared war goes beyond what strategists in Russia had hoped for. In the western part of Europe, a lack of knowledge about our continent’s history of the last century clearly plays into the hands of the Kremlin. Six years on, it still needs to be made clear that Putin is waging war against Ukraine.

In late February 2014 the Russian incursion into Ukraine began on the Crimean Peninsula. By February 23rd, then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had disappeared from Kyiv. With his flight, Vladimir Putin’s man in Ukraine evaded accountability for the lethal use of force against the pro-European protesters on the Maidan during the Revolution of Dignity. The Kremlin’s propaganda machine portrayed Yanukovych’s escape to Russia and the subsequent instalment of an interim president by the Ukrainian parliament as a fascist coup d’état.

The road to peace in Donbas has not appeared smooth and straightforward, as had been expected by President Zelenskyy and his team. The emphasis on humanitarian issues cannot neglect the security situation on the ground nor the unchanged role of the Kremlin.

An attack initiated by representatives of the breakaway territories near Zolote, a town in the Luhansk Oblast, in the early morning of February 18th of this year could dramatically change President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his team’s conflict perception. What has been announced as the biggest separatist offense since 2018 naturally clashes with the pacifistic and human-oriented approach of Kyiv’s new leader. But further developments and statements have shown that we can expect no real change in either rhetoric or tactics.