Mayhem breaks out in Russia and E Europe

by Edward Steen, Vienna

April 19, 2021

The European Council of Ministers meeting in Brussels today faces a series of confrontations, over Russian opposition leader and journalist Alexei Navalny, whose life is said to be “hanging by a thread” in prison  and a full-scale diplomatic confrontation over Russian crimes in Prague and Bulgaria.

In eastern Ukraine, the BBC  and others are covering what could be a new war between Kiev and Russian-backed separatists 

The investigative journalists from Bellingcat LINK TO https://www.aljazeera.com/program/featured-documentaries/2020/4/14/bellingcat-truth-in-a-post-truth-world have been key to the identification of the killers in Prague who blew up armaments and killed two in 2018. They are unquestionably the same faces (if not names) as the Russian Military Intelligence(GRU) agents who tried to poison former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with Novichok in Salisbury in 2018.

The story of a weekend of wild diplomatic flare-ups and expulsions, and the role of attempted murder of a Bulgarian arms dealer, is well described in this account by Euractiv in Brussels:

Euractiv has also published a useful discussion with Commissioner Věra Jourová, Commission Vice-President responsible for Values and Transparency,on the future of European media