The Czech response to expel 18 Russian diplomats was just the beginning of the biggest conflict between Moscow and Prague in the modern history of both countries, which escalated into an unprecedented expelling of up to 70 Russian embassy staff from the Czech Republic.
With electing the PiS government for the second time in a row, the hope for ending the crisis in the country ended. Any further delay of the ongoing processes from their further development in a hope that Poland shall return to the center of the political debate on the future of Europe seems futile.
PM Orbán has already met the Russian head of state seven times since the Ukrainian crisis began. The more Orbán foments the conflict with the EU, the greater the chance for Russia under Vladimir Putin to influence the diplomatic balance within the EU in his favor.
Ukraine’s dependence on the market for exports to Russia has been declining drastically since 2011. Until then Ukraine’s exports to Russia, the EU, and the rest of the world had been following similar paths.
We may recently often hear that something is a “Putinesque measure”. However, in Hungary, the governing party Fidesz, lead by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is really using Putin’s solutions as its point of reference. Let’s see how similar Orbán’s and Putin’s methods are.
The Liberal movement in Russia is undergoing a serious crisis. There are three reasons for this. First, the Kremlin domestic policies under Putin’s 3rd term in power are designed in such a way that liberals are labelled foreign agents, called enemies of the state, and are being under constant pressure.
Fake news are like religion, you must believe them despite of all common sense and evidence to the contrary. Like any radical religion, it must be protected at all costs. And so, in the fifth volume, Dolores Umbridge made Harry write lines, etching them into his own skin, saying: “I must not tell lies”.
Having said farewell to the year 2016, I do not really know whether I should be happy or worried. Should I be glad that this disastrous year has ended? Or rather fear that 2017 may be even worse. Why? I’ll try to explain it in a nutshell.
With no independent media, no checks and balances, no civil oversight, one of the most corrupt governments in the EU can expand on its already immense powers and get even closer to Putin’s Russia. But it is not too late to act and save what remains of civil society in Hungary.
And that’s how Law and Justice will put the safety of our country on the plater and place it in the hands of Rex Tillerson, for whom keeping Warsaw in the American sphere of influence lost any appeal along with the failure of shale gas extraction on our territory. And Tillerson will pass the plater on to his friends in the East.
