Politics (Page 219)

Would Russia really use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine? Tereshchenko Dmitry via Shutterstock Warning: this article is accompanied by an image that some readers might find distressing. The United States has issued a stark warning that Russia is preparing to use biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine. The claim comes off the back of accusations by Russia that it is Ukraine who is willing to resort to chemical and biological warfare. A spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova, has alleged that the US is collaborating with Ukraine to develop these weapons of mass destruction. White House press secretary, Jan Psaki, strenuously denies these claims. She has stated that Russia is the real threat. Psaki announced on TwitterContinue Reading

The Ukraine war has become to some extent a proxy conflict between Nato and Russia. The American president, Joe Biden – supported by other Nato leaders – made it clear even before the invasion that the US and Nato would not become involved in the conflict militarily. Instead, Biden sought to deter Russia with the threat of severe economic sanctions. But as the invasion and occupation of Ukraine has continued, Nato has been drawn ever more deeply into the conflict with the provision of lethal military hardware which is enabling Ukraine to mount a serious defence and inflict significant casualties among Russian forces. US officials have estimated that up to 6,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, including some very high-levelContinue Reading

Teacher and artist Sunn M’Cheaux has been posting on social media about “linguicism” after a reader asked him about the word “ax”, saying: “Why did we struggle saying ‘ask’? Like when I was little, I always said ‘ax’. Like I couldn’t say the word correctly.” M’Cheaux’s response counters the common idea that “ax” (spelled also “aks”) is incorrect: “ax” isn’t a mispronunciation of “ask” but an alternative pronunciation. This is similar to how people might pronounce “economics” variously as “eck-onomics” or “eek-onomics”, for example. Neither of these pronunciations is wrong. They’re just different. Linguicism is an idea invented by human-rights activist and linguist Tove Skutnabb-Kangas to describe discrimination based on language or dialect. The prejudice around “aks” is an exampleContinue Reading

A protester outside an immigration detention facility in Melbourne, Austraila. FiledIMAGE/Shutterstock The life of limbo for people in immigration detention is often deeply traumatic. In this week’s episode of The Conversation Weekly, we talk to two experts on immigration detention in Australia and the UK about why people are waiting months, sometimes years, for a decision about their future – and the impact it’s having on them. And as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushes more than two million refugees to flee the country, we speak to a sociologist about Russia’s history of using refugees from Ukraine as geopolitical tools. The Park Hotel in Melbourne made headlines in January this year when tennis star Novak Djokovic was temporarily detained there. Djokovic,Continue Reading

What you need to know right now President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday Ukraine had reached a strategic turning point in its war with Russia, but cautioned that it was not possible to say how long fighting would continue. Russian President Vladimir Putin said there had been some progress in Moscow’s talks with Ukraine with “certain positive shifts,” but provided no further details. The United States, together with the Group of Seven nations and the European Union, will move to revoke Russia’s “most favoured nation” status over its invasion of Ukraine, multiple people familiar with the situation told Reuters. Satellite images show a Russian military column threatening the Ukrainian capital from the north has dispersed to new positions, private USContinue Reading

Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine on February 24 2022 and the war that has ensued are part of the history of what happened in eastern Europe in the years following the cold war. As the European Union is debating what to do about Russian aggression, it is important to remind ourselves of that complex history of relations between the bloc and the nations on its borders. This war is part of a story of how eastern European countries rebuilt nation-states after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. And it is about the role successive versions of the European Union’s neighbourhood policy played in this process of state-building – and how Russia responded. It is a story about how,Continue Reading

Two weeks into Russia’s war on Ukraine and the small sense of optimism some of us felt this time last week at the strength of the resistance to Putin’s war machine has given way to dismay at the atrocities we are now seeing daily as Russian forces lay siege to Ukraine’s big cities. What Vladimir Putin may have imagined as a relatively easy “military operation” looks to have descended into siege warfare, with all the horror that entails. Yet Russian military losses are mounting, the ruble has gone through the floor as sanctions bite and, all the while, a constant message of defiance emerges from Kyiv where Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is rallying resistance to the invasion. This is ourContinue Reading