WORLD ROUNDUPEurope Doesn’t Need the U.S. Anymore | Putin Is Losing the Energy War | Israel’s Slide Toward Illiberalism, and more
·· Europe Doesn’t Need the United States Anymore (Rajan Menon and Daniel R. DePetris, Foreign Policy)
The continent can stand on its own feet
·· How an Oligarch May Have Recruited the F.B.I. Agent Who Investigated Him
Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian billionaire, has turned the tables on the FBI
·· To Fix Its Problems in Ukraine, Russia Turns to the Architect of the War
General Gerasimov’s turbocharged strategy is what led to Russia’s problems to begin with
·· Does Deadly Week in Israel Raise Prospect of Third Intifada?
The current wave of violence has lasted ten months and shows little sign of abating
·· UK Extremist Sentenced Over Videos Tied to US Shootings
The judge called him a “propagandist for an extremist right-wing ideology”
·· Is Germany Letting Ukraine Down? It’s Not That Simple
A revolution in Germans’ military outlook will only go so far, so fast. Given history, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
·· Vladimir Putin Is Losing the Energy War
Vladimir Putin’s energy war is suddenly going about as well as his ‘special military operation
·· Is Israel’s Democracy America’s Problem?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is sliding toward illiberalism
Europe Doesn’t Need the United States Anymore (Rajan Menon and Daniel R. DePetris, Foreign Policy)
Until EU leaders accept that the continent can stand on its own feet and Americans give up the role of global police, dependency on Washington will continue.
How an Oligarch May Have Recruited the F.B.I. Agent Who Investigated Him (Rebecca Davis O’Brien, New York Times)
The bureau tried to court Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate, as an informant. Instead, one of its own top agents may have ended up working for him.
To Fix Its Problems in Ukraine, Russia Turns to the Architect of the War (Helene Cooper, Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt, New York Times)
President Vladimir V. Putin is on his third overall commander in Ukraine. But his military’s fundamental issues have not been addressed, Western officials say.
Does Deadly Week in Israel Raise Prospect of Third Intifada? (Anshel Pfeffer, The Times)
At the end of December, when the new far-right government of Binyamin Netanyahu came to power, its incoming ministers competed in making bombastic statements.
The new tourism minister, Haim Katz, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, promised to invest in “our local Tuscany — Judea and Samaria”. He was using the biblical term Israeli nationalists use to refer to the occupied territory of the West Bank, particularly the Jewish settlements there.
Any notion of sending tourists on Tuscan holidays in the West Bank went up in smoke this week when violence between Israelis and Palestinians took a sharp turn for the worse. On Thursday morning ten Palestinians, mainly militants but at least one civilian, were killed in a raid by Israeli commandos targeting a cell of the Islamic Jihad group. On Friday night, a lone Palestinian gunman opened fire in a Jewish neighborhood in northeast Jerusalem — although many would refer to it as a settlement, as it is geographically part of the occupied West Bank — killing seven Israeli citizens.
UK Extremist Sentenced Over Videos Tied to US Shootings (Wesley Dockery, DW)
The far-right videos are believed to have influenced two shootings in New York and Colorado. The British 19-year-old was earlier found guilty of encouraging terrorism in his video content.
