Ukraine at war shares a river border with eastern Romania: the Danube. On the Romanian side of the river, as summer approaches, residents are worried.
In Plauru, a balcony on the war
The war in Ukraine has repercussions on all border countries, Poland, Hungary, Moldova… and Romania. To the east of this country, the Danube forms a natural border with Romania. It is on this river that cargo ships transporting Ukrainian wheat from the ports of Odessa and Izmail pass; and last year (2023), Russian bombings hit very close to the territory of Romania, a NATO member country. So close that debris fell on the Romanian side, in the delta countryside. A small fishing village found itself at the center of global attention when fragments of a Russian drone were found on its land. With disastrous consequences for the inhabitants. Reporting, Leonard Vincent.
In Moscow, the clear hawk leads his perpetrators to prison
In Russia, opposition to war is still severely punished, but the repression does not stop there, the government has strengthened its legislative arsenal so as to be able to make any public expression illegal. A particularly high-profile trial opened last month (May 2024) in Moscow. That of two women, Evguénia Berkovitch and Svetlana Petriïtchouk: one is a director, the other is a playwright. Against the backdrop of a popular tale glorifying Prince Charming, their play, Finist, the clear hawk (ed. For a moment) tells the story of 2 young women who fall in love with Daesh fighters. Which means they are judged for “apology of terrorism”. Antoine Nicolle translated the play into French, he explained to Étienne Bouche why the play displeased the government so much.
In Croatia, for the first time since the country’s independence, an openly xenophobic and anti-Serb party came to power. Following the legislative elections of April 17, 2024, conservative Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic was forced to form an alliance with the Patriotic Movement (the far-right DP). The leader of this party, Ivan Penava, is the mayor of Vukovar. In this city, symbol of the atrocities of the war of the 1990s, he pursued a policy of division, exploiting the trauma of the conflict and attacking the Serbian minority. Report from Vukovar, Louis Seiller.